Rainbow’s Point

gone by. this week, i took an exam in my english (not british!) history 1 class that was one of the most challenging essay exams i’ve ever taken. the question, asking the student to trace the evolution of the legal system of england and the centralization of the nation state from 55 b.c. to 1189 a.d., was a 55 minute exam with no notes. i did better than i’d feared, but not as well as i’d hoped. we’ll get grades on monday.

the tuesday evening class, about the american criminal justice system, is being taught by a rabid republican. yeesh.

my meds continue. the doc has also offered me a sleeping pill, which i’m taking very conservatively. weight remains stable at 240.

sue has decided to quit smoking. i’m thrilled, and as i told her, i’ll jump through my asshole to help her. she’s being a grouch, though. can’t imagine why.

the other day i bought $300 worth of meat from a door to door salesman. not something i’d ordinarily recommend, the reason i did it was because we’d bought from him before and i’d been very happy with his product. it’s not cut quite as thick as i like, but that’s part of the game, i guess. it filled up a freezer.

i subscribed to myself on bloglines to see how many people were subscribed. as i feared: the only people reading are the spambots; number of subscribers: 1 (me). boo hoo. oh well, when i’m a famous legal personality, you can use this to dig up the dirt.

saving dinner is a menu service that’s pretty cool. they offer weekly by-subscription menus created for dinner. they offer regular meals, low-carb stuff, vegitarian, and others.

my mother pointed it out to me and so i thought i’d try out a 3 month subscription and see how it does for us. what’s good for me is that it includes prepared shopping lists, which makes meal preparation lots easier.

i’d very much like to eat healthier, and this is a cheap tool without a lot of paper behind it to help me start giving it a shot.

cecily has been sharing a little about her battle with weight and all the things she’s tried. like i wrote in a comment there, my own weight is something that’s been concerning me.

a bmi calculator i found puts me right at 30, the dividing line between “overweight” and “obese.” my wife’s bmi is higher; we weigh about the same, but she’s considerably shorter.

i feel trapped by circumstance and my body.

any exercise that’s hard on feet won’t work for me. i have plantars heel spurs — bone spurs my heels. the spurs cause tendon inflammation, and the inflammation cause so much pain that people notice a limp. especially in the morning and when i’ve been off my feet a while, walking can be extremely painful.

there are four basic treatments:

• shoe inserts
• non-steroidal anti-inflammatories
• cortisone injections into my heels
• surgery to remove the spurs

i’ve reached surgery. the shoe inserts help but not enough, and i have trouble finding shoes that fit with the inserts in, even if i rip out the insoles. the cortisone injections only last a week or so and are extremely painful, and i wind up with bruises on my heels that last a couple days besides. the nsaid drugs stop working; i’ve done feldine, naperson, celebrex, and bextra.

but i can’t afford the copays and the recovery time.

so much for walking for exercise. other exercise also tends to be heavy on the feet, even stuff like exercise bikes. swimming is good, but i don’t have an indoor pool handy. to be consistent i need to be able to do it all-weather, and all-season. otherwise i won’t bother. my housing development has a pool, but it’s only open memorial day through labor day, and it’s usually overrun with snot-nosed little brats who have no consideration for adults who might want to use the facility.

i have my kids.

anything i do needs to be something where i can arrange childcare, or be able to schedule during times when my wife is home (like 3am).

and my diet sucks. high carb, high fat. i’m a carnivore, and rice is cheeeeeep and easy to cook. i enjoy eating veggies but am not very good at preparing them. we don’t buy much fresh food, so the stuff i do get tends to be frozen or canned (thus high sodium). plus many of the things i might like to learn to cook — like, say, fish — sue won’t touch.

meanwhile, i watch my beer gut grow and my weight slowly rise. in high school i topped out at 180. somewhere along the lines i’ve gone up considerably. not 100 pounds, but more than 50. i didn’t have a beer gut when i quit drinking 11 years ago. (kinda like getting arrested, that didn’t start until sobriety.)

i hate the way i look. i hate the way i feel. yet, as always, i feel powerless and trapped and unable to do anything constructive about it.