Starting Over

My hard drive on my laptop died last month. I got the blue screen of death one night while booting up to watch "The Office" on Netflix, and my beloved "C:" never was to be seen again.

Of course, I've been meaning for months to back the thing up. Even put an external drive into my cart at Sam's only to remove it after saying to no one in particular (because I was by myself, but that never stops me from talking while shopping)-- "I don't want to spend $100 today."

If only some fortune teller had been walking by to warn me I was making a huge mistake. Now I'm way over $100 in costs for the computer guy to have removed the old & put in a new hard drive. He is also trying to recover the data on my old drive, but it's a monumental task because (a) the drive was encrypted because it's also my work computer, and apparently decrypting the data is not easy to do, and (b) the darn drive stopped spinning altogether.

There's a lot of precious data on that drive. Pictures and videos of the kids, mostly. But there's one thing in particular that's dear to my heart. The excel spreadsheet that chronicles my weight loss & running journey from 2007 through 2009.

It's. Just. Gone. (for now anyway....hopefully my guy can bring it back to life through some miracle)

That spreadsheet was my accountability partner for 3 years. It's got my highest weight and my lowest weight. It's got the first time I ran a full mile without stopping. It's got my four Half Marathons and the training (or lack thereof, for the one I ran last October) I did for each one. Until last fall and the crisis with my Dad hit, I was in that spreadsheet almost every day.

Yesterday, on a sunny, breezy, 80 degree Monday, I decided I was finally going to walk/run outside again. The last time I used my Garmin to run outside was in January, in the bitter cold, when I was still planning on running the April marathon.

Since then, I've done some walking/jogging on our treadmill and have walked a couple times with a friend outside, but my beloved trips around the park with just me, Garmy, and my Shuffle have been absent from my life since last fall.

And so, on my walk yesterday--walking with intermittent running thrown in, because I'm WAY too out of shape to run much yet--while I was thinking my thoughts, it dawned on me that I lost my spreadsheet in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2010. I realized that I would have to start all over again. Which is what I'm having to do with the rest of my fitness life, so I suppose it's fitting that I start over with a new spreadsheet.

I only did 30 minutes, 2.3 miles. I felt great the first 5 minutes, and then after I'd run for one minute it was obvious just how out of shape I am. My sports bra was so tight it was uncomfortable. My skin is so loose (no muscle tone) that it itched from the bouncing and the blood coming to the surface. My knees hurt. My lungs hurt. My heart hurt.

It's frightening how fast I've lost what I worked so hard for from 2007 - 2009. No, I don't weigh 209 pounds like I did in February 2007. But I do weigh almost 160 pounds, and I have next to no muscle tone in my arms, legs, stomach, and butt. And I am having similar kinds of food struggles as I did in my past--eating for comfort, eating in secret, eating at night.

I've tried off & on all year to get myself straightened out. It's not worked, obviously. I know I have a lot going on in my life, but honestly there's no reason to continue like this. My dad's situation isn't getting any worse for me personally, and I can't keep using him as an excuse for failure.

If only I had LA Weight Loss again. That kind of guidance, support, and accountability in my day to day life really makes a difference for me. I found an Evansville center called The Perfect Plan which sounds like it might be helpful. I left a voicemail for them to call me back--the fact I had to leave a voicemail makes me doubt them, though. If they aren't it, I'll keep looking. I'm not going to let this go any farther than it already has.

For today, I'm taking it one meal at a time. I'm going to walk/run again this afternoon. I posted a blog entry today. I had protein with breakfast & lunch. I'm trying to talk myself back from the ledge with "It's OK! It's happens to everyone sometimes. You've done it before, you can do it again." But it's still really hard to face facts, which now include the nasty reality that I'm no longer in my 30s.

So that's the scoop. Lots of work to do. I've done it before. I can do it again.

****
Update on my Dad: He's slowly declining. We did get him to agree to hospice, which means we won't be doing a feeding tube at all. We already had palliative care, and the level of care hasn't changed that much since we added hospice. But knowing we have hospice in place for when he's in the final stages is comforting.

When those final stages are likely to happen is anyone's guess. One week, he won't eat and won't have a BM, and the next he's back to eating and digesting. His circulation is still very poor. His breathing is weaker. He sleeps for days, but then he's awake for days. He does have a lot of body fat to keep him alive if he doesn't eat, but he is starting to burn through it. His upper body is wasting away; his lower body is swollen from fluid retention; his middle body is distended and swollen. His urine production is way down and his knuckles and fingernails have a blue hue. His BP was down to 112/60 last week. It's quite possible he's with us all summer.

He's still being very demanding at times and can be a big jerk most days. I haven't "spoken" with him for almost a month. I visited on Sunday, but he was asleep the whole time I was there. My sister is there 4 or more days a week and she and I talk every day, so she keeps me in the loop. He can still move a pencil around a letter board to talk, but my sister says he's losing control of his right hand too, so we don't know how much longer he will be able to communicate. He has an expensive eye-gaze machine (thanks to the VA) that allows his eyes to choose letters to talk, but he won't use it (it won't work with his glasses on, and he won't use it with them off--I don't know why, b/c he can see the letters with them off).

It's heartbreaking to see him like he is. It's just as hard to think he's going to be gone soon, even though I wish for everyone's sake--especially his--he'd let go & pass on. But he can't or won't. Eventually this will be over, but it may be months and months yet. We just don't know.