Losing a part of me

Author: Mitch Garvis

  • Day 1119

    My cold keeps getting worse. I was really hoping that yesterday would have been the worst of it, but no such luck. I will spend most of the day resting, and then will wake up to shower, then teach for four hours before heading to the airport. There will be plenty of fluids and vitamins in me today!

    I neither lost nor gained weight this morning… and while I slept over eight hours, my fitness watch gave me a lousy sleep score. Boo. Fortunately my anxiety did have some relief yesterday. Thanks goodness for friends… and my father z”l.

  • Day 1118

    My head cold is worse today than it was yesterday. At least I dropped a pound. I am heading to see a friend who might be able to help me with one of my most pressing stressors right now. I am hoping it works.

    While I have my day to get through and I’ll do what needs to get done, I am quite relieved that I do not have to lecture this evening. I do not know if my head would get through it.

    Have a great day.

  • Day 1117

    I wonder if there is a better indication of how difficult weight loss is than the fact that over the past 1,117 days my weight started at 395, dropped down to under 240, and is back up hovering above 300. I want to get back down there, but man is it a challenge.

    With all of the stress and anxiety I was not surprised that my weight did jump up this morning… not to where it was on Friday, but it is still 2 lbs. up from yesterday. I am still under 309, but f.u.c.k.

    To make things so much more pleasant, I started feeling a cold coming on yesterday. I am glad that I went to the store to pick up meds because today it is full-on in my head, nose, and throat. It’s a good thing the class I am teaching is an entry-level one… and that I proactively assigned the students labs for the first hour. Yes, I will have to lecture… but not as much as I might have.

    I am meeting with someone tomorrow that might help relieve some of my other stresses and anxieties. I am crossing my fingers but not getting my hopes too high.

    Have a great day!

  • Day 1116

    A good 9”. I suppose there are contexts in which that is a good thing, but when it is how much snow fell overnight then it just means that slogging through it with a dog (who is not much taller than that) and digging my car out because that’s how much snow fell, then maybe not. Fortunately, the snow has abated, the sun is out, and the streets (and hopefully the sidewalks) are being plowed. It’s a good thing too… I have to do some shopping today. Yes, I need to buy the usual groceries, but I also need to go to a hardware store because the flush mechanism of my toilet broke, and while I don’t mind opening the top to pull the chain by hand, I will have to fix it eventually… and rather than wait for it, I figure it best to take care it before my wife arrives on Wednesday. I do not want to make her reach into the water every time she flushes. Yes, I have been washing my hands religiously each time… not because the water is dirty, but because of the blue puck chemicals that are in there. Yuck.

    I have been eating badly these last few days, so I was shocked to see that my weight dropped again this morning… significantly. I weigh less than I did right before leaving for Montreal, which is good. I expected that with the stress and anxiety I’ve been eating that my weight would be above 310 lbs. still. Nope. PHEW! I am still a bit more than six pounds heavier than the terrible mark, but at least it’s not worse… with everything I’m going through it could have easily been much worse.

    I have to find a way to get back on track. Hopefully with Leslie coming for a few days I will be able to get a bit of a handle on myself.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1115

    I confess, I did not expect to see my weight drop this morning. It did, and I am grateful for that. I am still in a terrible headspace, but I have thought of a couple of possible solutions for at least one of my issues.

    I had breakfast this morning with a lodge brother who has been very ill, and it was wonderful to see him again after two months… and to see his health improving. I then met with another brother for coffee, and we had a good chat. I went to see a third brother for a cigar, and between the three of them, I think I am feeling slightly better.

  • Day 1114

    I drove home last night in terrible weather, but I was safe and did not rush or speed or try to be a hero. I pulled off the road every couple of hours to pee, top off my windshield wiper fluid, and that stuff. I pulled into my parking spot around 3:15am. You would think that would have been the end of my stress for the day, but no… I discovered that my Internet service had, for the second time in less than three weeks, been cut off. I did a couple of quick diagnostic checks to make sure it was indeed cut off, and not an internal connectivity issue. I was not going to try to call them in the middle of the night, so I did my best to go to sleep. I would deal with it in the morning.

    It turns out that without asking me the service provider switched me to paperless billing (despite my telling them twenty times that I did not want that). It also turned out that they had the wrong e-mail address for me (.com instead of .ca) so I did not get the bill, which means that my account was past due. Just one more annoyance that I had to deal with, but I did.

    I went to my appointment today that I needed to go to in order to fix the one piece of paper that I was told was wrong at my appointment yesterday. They were happy to redo it for me at a discount… and they even admitted that their employee had made a mistake. Hey, it cost me over a thousand dollars, and I have to reschedule my interview that took months to schedule that will affect the rest of my life, but I’m glad you gave me the discount and apologized for the inconvenience. Stress, anxiety… Grrr!

    I gained a couple of pounds in Montreal. The fact that I did not gain ten pounds frankly surprised me. I did not eat well at all… but I did not expect to – especially after the unhappy results of yesterday’s appointment.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 1113

    All of the stress and anxiety that led up to today led to… one single incorrect sheet of paper that was not properly formatted (by a third-party). I was up at 4:20am to be in downtown Montreal in plenty of time for my interview; I had breakfast and then waited in line, and when I got to the clerk, she told me that I would need to get that paper corrected and then make another appointment to come back. I was not happy. The stress and anxiety shall continue… but at least I had a few of my questions answered.

    Obviously, my sleep score was lousy, what with my teaching until 10:30pm last night and then needing to decompress, and then eventually recorded 3:51 of actual sleep, and a commentary of ‘short, poor recovery.’ No kidding. When I finished at the cemetery, I came back to where I am staying, answered some emails, arranged my appointment, and then took a nap. I did not sleep much, but I did rest for two hours.

    I made an appointment for tomorrow to redo what needs to be redone, but in the meantime, I am going to have an early dinner with my friends and then I will drive home tonight instead of tomorrow during the day. This so that I could take the appointment with them for tomorrow afternoon.

    Despite the -12 temperatures and having to slog through (and stand in) seven inches of snow to do so, I visited my father’s grave site and had a cigar while I spoke to him. I miss him so much.

    Have a great day folks.

  • Day 1112

    Today was a busy day. I saw some friends, and shortly I will begin teaching. I am still anxious and stressed to my limit. Tomorrow is the day.

  • Day 1111

    I arrived in Montreal… I brought my stress and anxiety with me. Thursday can’t come soon enough. I am eating like crap. I am going to gain ten pounds before I get home Friday evening.

  • Day 1110

    My sleep score was a 71 last night, which is better than the last few nights, but still not very good. I took something for my anxiety before sleeping and maybe it helped a little. It is also possible that my headache this morning is because of that. I’m not sure, but it has been throbbing since I got back in from walking Her Floofness.

    My weight is out of control… it is higher this morning than it has been since November of 2022. I hate myself for it. On the other hand, it is not the most pressing issue in my life right now. If I can stay under 310 by the time I get back from Montreal, then I will consider it a minor success.

    Yes, I am driving to Montreal tomorrow. Yes, I will try to eat properly, but again… not the most pressing issue weighing on me right now. I can only do my best and then we will see. There are too many external factors weighing on me. I am hoping that after Thursday things will get a little better. In an ideal world, after my appointment on Thursday there will be a great huge relief, and I will know that the rest of my life will go according to plan. In the event that they do not let me know that day, then it will be at least a few more weeks of stress and anxiety… but at least Leslie is coming to visit next week, and I will have a few days with my best gal.

    Have a great day folks!