I was out on my walk this morning and was pleased that I was able to feed all of my cats (one had been missing the last few walks). There are a couple areas that I actually travel through twice on my 1 1/2 hour walk including an area with townhouses. There is a lovely cat there that each morning seems to want more affection than treats (though she gladly accepts the treats). Usually on my 1st pass through that area I give her lots of petting and some breakfast then on the 2nd pass it is just affection. This morning on my 2nd pass I gave her some pets and skritchies but when I walked away she decided we were not done and literally launched herself at me digging her claws into my leg. Needless to say she got more attention. If you have ever owned a Siamese cat you will know they decide when they are done with you.
A memory on Facebook popped up today and it brought on a lot of anger. 3 years ago my brother was hospitalized with a bad infection in his foot. It turned out his femoral bypass from a decade earlier had failed and he had little circulation in his leg hence the infection was not healing. He was hospitalized immediately after seeing his vascular specialist and he advised the hospital that I was his medical advocate and had to be in on all of his medical discussions. Now this was during the pandemic and our health authority had a policy that anyone with a disability, including intellectual disabilities, were allowed to have an essential visitor to help them navigate medical decisions. My brother absolutely fell into that category however, this hospital decided they did not have to follow the health authority’s policy and refused to allow me to visit my brother (though we did have some lobby visits until he fell off his knee scooter and broke his shoulder so he was no longer allowed to go to the lobby unless in a wheelchair which was a whole other issue).
I want to be clear, I was not involved in the discussion when he had to make a decision regarding either life risking surgery or amputating his leg (he chose the surgery). I was not included in the discussion when they advised him despite the aforementioned surgery in order to save his life they had to do the amputation. While after the amputation they allowed me to visit him occasionally it was always on their terms. That means they would say things to me like well you were here 3 days ago so he doesn’t need to see you again so soon. His social worker would call me and say he seemed depressed and I would tell her, because they won’t let me be there to be his FUCKING SUPPORT (sorry for the profanity). The one that just killed me was when I wanted to bring the dogs to visit him to lighten his spirits and they told me dogs weren’t allowed in the hospital because of COVID (huh?). By time he left that hospital I despised all of them because in my eyes they were abusing a disabled person for absolutely no reason.
The picture that popped up today was my brother at the hospital he was sent to for physical rehab and that showed him in a wheelchair holding one of our dogs. You see the day he was transferred there I got a call from his social worker saying she thought it would be really good for his mental health if he got to see the dogs. Wait what? What happened to that whole COVID thing? She explained to me they recognized the healing power of pets and that all I needed to do was provide their vaccination certificates and she could book a meeting room for a pet visit (meeting room was so that if there was anyone on the ward that was allergic to dogs they too would be safe). You bet we got to do that visit within 48 hours and my brother was thrilled.
But that memory also brought up a ton of anger for me. It reminded me of how administrators at that first hospital decided that just for the sake of demonstrating their power could undermine their health authority orders. It reminded me of heartbreaking calls and FaceTime conversations with my brother when he was struggling to understand and deal with what was going on. It reminded me of how medical professionals couldn’t see what was clearly abuse of a patient that was completely unnecessary.
Having done all of this rant, even before I started it I had decided it was time to let go of this anger. At the time this was finished and my brother was home I was advised he should file a formal complaint against the original hospital. He decided not to do that because he wanted to move forward. He was far more forgiving than me because I would have nailed them to the wall. But today I’ve realize I need to let all of this go. I don’t need that anger to cloud my memories of my brother. Instead what I need to remember from that difficult time in our lives was how brave he was and how hard he worked to come home and make his new life normal. And let me say that is exactly what he did. He was walking with his prosthetic far sooner than anyone anticipated and within 8 months of leaving hospital his wheelchair became obsolete for him. A year later he was helping mentor an acquaintance who had also had a leg amputated. Those memories are so much better than memories filled with anger.
And so I am letting all of that go. I truly believe holding on to that anger was also holding part of me back. I guess that means that as of today I am moving forward to an entirely different view of that dark time for my family. I am doing what my brother did 3 years ago, moving forward.
At our condo in Mexico we have well water. That means all of the water coming in is not only extremely hard but it is full of minerals we don’t see in our water at home. Because of this all glassware tends to be cloudy and appliance using water frequently needs descaling. And so today, even though I just did this 3 weeks ago, I descaled both the electric kettle and the coffee maker. It’s not that difficult to do, I simply boil the kettle with diluted vinegar then run a water boil a couple times to rinse it. The same with the coffee maker, first run a pot through it with the diluted vinegar then twice with just water. This method works every time though I will note we still have to replace the coffee maker every couple years because the humidity here significantly corrodes the heating plate.
Sometimes I admit I need to find motivation to get moving in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, most days the alarm goes off and I am out of bed starting my routine without a moment’s thought. Please remember that at home by 9:00am I have usually done 3 hours of some sort of exercise. I do back off a bit while here but still most days by 8:30am I have put in 2.5 hours of exercise. Some days I can even convince my husband to join me with a walk to get to that 3 hours of exercise.
However, there are those days where I just want to go back to sleep and today was one of those. We had been out last night with some of our good friends and by time we got home it was later than normal for us. That, of course, meant a later bedtime that what I am used to. I had decided to let myself sleep in for an extra 1/2 hour. This is easy to arrange without resetting my electronics, I leave the alarm at the normal time but I always have a backup alarm on my Fitbit set for 15 minutes later just in case. When that alarm went off I simply hit snooze a couple times (something I really don’t often do). But I lay there in bed thinking will it really make that much difference if I skip today?
I was truly thinking of just back to sleep when it suddenly hit me, the cats. Yes those cats around the complex that I feed whenever I go for a walk would be missing out if I stayed in bed. While a few of these cats I know are pets, 5 that I regularly feed are obviously feral. Knowing that I will not be walking tomorrow I thought about how they would be going 2 days possibly without food and I just couldn’t take that so out of bed I got. I should note that instead of the normal 1 1/2 hour walk I cut it short just 1 hour because thunder and lightening had started and I didn’t want a repeat of last Saturday.
I get that feeding cats might not motivate a lot of other people but it truly was that incentive I needed to get out of bed this morning. I do have other things that normally motivate me when I am home including just not willing to lose my fitness level or needing the workout to clear my head. When I am signed up for a fitness class my motivation is that I don’t want to disappoint the instructor by canceling on them. And sometimes going for my walks just gives me time to be by myself for a couple hours.
And so each day find your motivation to get yourself moving. Your motivation may be entirely different than someone else’s but really that is how it should be. No matter what it is, if it keeps you going, keep using it.
Weather and technology are playing havoc with my workouts. Yesterday we caught some weather from hurricane Helene. I got up and it was windy and the rain was just pouring down. I had no intention of walking in that kind of weather (the rain continued to come in squalls for the rest of the day) so had already decided I would do a quick Zoom recorded fitness class. Now this seemed to be a good idea except the Mac Mini we use to run Zoom on our tv didn’t want to play the recording and I eventually gave up. This morning it was still raining so I rebooted the Mini and it still wouldn’t play the recording. I decided to try doing the class using my iPad but gave up after about 5 minutes because I really couldn’t see much of what was going on (note, I wear reading glasses but not really able to if I am doing a workout). My husband and I will be looking to find a work around today so that if I need to skip my walk again I have a backup. I do want to point out I still did my usual live online class each day.
I know it is hard going through life without having regrets. I also know is some we can be accountable for while others were out of our control. For example, my big ones are that my Dad never got to see me be the first on either side of the family to graduate from university. I also regret that he didn’t get to meet my husband nor see me get married but those are things I had no control over as he passed before they happened. I regret that I wasn’t there the day my Mom died because as usual I put work first, now that is something that is on me. And I am sure if I really thought about it I could come up with more.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of the number of people who have come up to me to tell me things they regret regarding my brother’s death. Most of them centre around not finding the time to spend with him. Someone told me that they regretted putting off getting together with him and now really wished they had found the time. Another felt bad that they had canceled a coffee date with him as they had something else they decided they wanted to do. Recently a friend told me they regretted not responding most of the time when my brother sent them friendly texts just checking on them.
But you know what, there is a huge lesson here. We have the ability to live life relatively regret free, we just need to remember that everything can change in a heartbeat. I think if you live life by knowing your priorities, following your values, doing everything you can to help others and always trying to be kind you can minimize being regretful when you look back in hindsight. I have for quite a while now tried to always do the right thing but now I am even more determined to make time for others whenever I possibly can. I don’t ever again want to lose a loved one and have thoughts of what I could have done better.
So it is your choice as to how you want to look back at life in hindsight.
One last thing that I regret, I so wish I had started looking after my health and fitness long before I did. What I don’t regret is that once I decided to go down this journey I have kept at it.
I did my usual walk then Zoom fitness class this morning. As I finished I noted a lot of thunder happening so looked outside. I said to my husband, hmm, I think we will skip our morning walk. Within about 2 minutes the skies had opened up and it started pouring rain. I checked my weather app to find that tomorrow we are going to get a serious storm. I decided I might as well acknowledge there will be little chance of me doing a long walk in the morning. Instead I will find a recorded course from my fitness centre, probably one involving cardio and will throw that into the mix tomorrow.
Today was a mobility and strength class with an instructor who doesn’t know me well (I’ve only taken 1 in-person class with her) and so she doesn’t know that I have some limitations. The first exercise she had us do was to do bicep curls while lifting up onto your toes. I tried a couple of these and realized that going up on my toes was causing pain in my ankle. I opted not to try that again right now. There were several other exercises where we were to do similar moves just varying the arm exercises so I stuck with just doing the weights.
Sometimes there seems to be a fine line between muscle fatigue, discomfort and pain. One of my instructors reminds us all the time that the burn we feel is our muscles becoming fatigued which will help them grow stronger as they recover. I can also assure you that sometimes I also feel more discomfort such as when I am stretching muscles in a new way and you feel the muscle pulling (note by that I mean you really feel the stretch of the muscle). But these are ok, they can be a real sign of improvement.
Pain, is not ok. I cringe when I hear that you have to work through the pain, no you do not. Pain is an indication of potential injury. I remember when I first started at the fitness centre and I was bound and determined to push myself. That meant I would do exercises that involved kneeling even though the scar tissue and arthritis make doing that very uncomfortable. After trying that a few times I had so much pain in my knee that I could barely walk. And look at my ankle, I knew I often had pain but it took me months to finally get to the point to have it looked at only to learn I had a serious injury.
So know the difference between fatigue, discomfort and pain. Know what is ok to ‘work through’ and what isn’t. And seriously, if something causes you actual pain, step back and determine why.
My alarm went off this morning and I laid there for a few minutes thinking I should take the day off. Then I reminded myself the commitment is at least 6 days a week and I want to take tomorrow off because it is Sunday. While I realize that is not really a reason to take the day off but my husband and I like to make a nice breakfast Sundays while we are at the condo so Sundays tend to be my day off. I dragged myself out of bed and once that happens I am always good to go.
I followed my usual routine, breakfast, water read the paper, update games on my devices, everything was the same as always. I actually was little ahead of schedule today and despite having a fight with an alarm sensor on the front door I managed to hit the road by 5:20am. When I started out it was slightly raining. By that I mean that coming from Vancouver, BC it wasn’t enough for me to even consider opening an umbrella. Off I went and after about 10 minutes the skies opened up and it was pouring. Here in Playa this often happens but it normally is just a squall coming through so I thought I can handle this for a few minutes and I continued on. This might not have been my brightest decision.
I normally walk on the road because the sidewalks in our complex are not well tended and are very uneven but due to the heavy rain I decided I might get at least some cover from the trees if I used the sidewalk. That worked for a little bit and then the monsoon rains started. By this point I am 20 minutes into my walk so I figured I could keep going for a bit longer. That is when the thunder and lightening started and much to my surprise the rain got even heavier. Ok, time to turn around and go home.
Here are the things I learned trudging back to the condo, my cats are not going to greet me in this weather, even if you think it can’t rain any harder apparently down here it can and our complex does not have enough drainage. Why do I say that about the drainage? Well, walking back it was not puddles I had to deal with, it was lakes. Seriously, sometimes I was walking through water deep enough that it came up to my ankles. And I will note this was not an occasional situation, it was most of the way back to the condo.
When I got in the condo water was literally pouring off of me. I managed to get in the front door where I immediately took off my socks and shoes (good thing I am taking tomorrow off because there is no way those shoes will be dry by then). I then woke up my husband (because misery loves company) so that he could see how bad things were. He of course just laughed at me. Off came my wet clothes and all of my equipment (water belt, hi-vis vest and ball cap) which are now hanging out to dry. I put on a big heavy robe (also not the best idea since we are in Mexico and it is still very warm) and made some coffee. Of course once I had myself all sorted out the storm ended. I so hope this is not an indication of how may day is going to be.
But you know what, I still got in a 40 minute walk today and have a funny story to tell.
Thursday’s fitness class tends to be brutal. It is called Power Hour and the instructor changes it up quite often with unexpected routines. Today it was no different. We were given 8 exercises and in round 1 you would do 15 of each exercise, round 2 was 14 of each and so on until the last round at 2 of each exercise. There was a time limit on this but you had to do as many rounds as possible. I completed 11 rounds which meant I was at the point of doing 5 of each exercise. To put that in perspective, I did 110 reps of each exercise. Seriously, 110 pushups and sit ups? A year ago I would have laughed at the thought that I could do that.
When I come to Mexico it is not like I drop everything I do at home. As a matter of fact only 2 of my volunteer gigs are removed from my list, facilitating the caregivers support group and doing dog walking for a senior once a week. The only reason those are dropped is because obviously they require me to be there in person. Still on my plate while here is being financial agent for a candidate in an upcoming election, doing work for clients (it actually looks like I am picking up a new client and will be meeting with them virtually next week), phoning seniors each Friday and of course working out at least 2 1/2 hours each day (ok, maybe not quite so much on the weekend). Really, that is a lot.
So how do I manage to do it all? The workouts are simple, walking around the complex for 1 1/2 hour each morning then an online workout. The workout is in real time because as I have mentioned before I have my big screen tv set up as a computer with a webcam so I just Zoom into the class. The others are a little more challenging simply because of the time difference. However, in this world of electronics and virtual pretty much everything I can do most of my work anywhere that I go. I actually travel with a little case of USB drives each of which contains information for clients or volunteer organizations. The laptop that I am currently using is going to be staying at the condo since I purchased a new one for home a few months ago. You add to that a Mexican phone that allows me to deal with my emails wherever I am down here means I am still connected 24/7.
What the biggest challenge is though is actually to force myself to do anything. Ok, the workouts are a no brainer for me but I get them done very early in the day because of the heat and the fact I would talk myself out of doing them later in the day. The problem with the rest of the stuff is that choice between sitting poolside enjoying a beverage or working. Trust me, it would be easy to allow myself to choose the former over the latter. But I made myself a deal, the first week that we were here I would do as little as possible other than relaxing and spending time with my husband (I successfully accomplished this) but as of Monday this week I was back to doing all the rest. As a matter of fact I spent 2.5 hours watching training videos for my financial agent role yesterday.
Bottom line is I try not to put off any work/volunteer stuff while I am here. I know it would be easy to procrastinate but quite frankly I just don’t allow myself to do that. I would much rather keep on top of everything rather than let it get behind and then I have a huge pile of things to get through later on. Though I will admit, it all depends on the amount of tequila involved 🙂
Today I realized they should start a new fitness program, Hot Bootcamp. You know, it would be like Hot Yoga only conditioning workouts. I say this because when I went out for my 5:30am walk I noticed it had rained and realized this would not be good. Sure enough it is super humid today. And since I did a 1 1/2 hour walk I didn’t get back to the condo until 7:00am giving the air conditioning only 1/2 hour to work before bootcamp. Trust me, there was a lot of sweat involved even though bootcamp was strength and mobility.
For years now I have had problems sleeping. It got so bad when I was still working that there were days that I was almost falling asleep at stoplights. My doctor tried putting me on sleeping pills but I hated them. I learned that I would just have to get through each manic insomnia cycle until the point where I was exhausted and then possibly get a good night sleep (by that I mean maybe 6 hours). They say exercise helps with sleep but that has not been in my case.
You would think that when I am in my happy place here in Mexico I would sleep like a baby but no. When I check my Fitbit in the morning I am lucky if I get a reading of fair. Yesterday we even did a ‘dry’ day with no alcohol but still to no avail (note when I do a month of no alcohol it still has no impact on my ability to sleep). So right now I am apparently going into one of those manic cycles and have had very little sleep over the past few days. It gets frustrating because when this happens I get cranky and I don’t like being cranky when I am in Mexico because I just want to enjoy myself.
So today I am joining some friends and we are going to relax at a beach club that we love. I am hoping that the hypnotic sight and sound of the surf will relax me to the point that I at least need a nap. If that fails then tomorrow I am trying a deep stretch class at my fitness centre (online of course) and maybe that will do the trick. Here’s hoping.
How to tell I am in Mexico? Well the dermatitis is back around my eyes. I don’t know why but each time I come here it flares up again. Ok, I do know why, the heat and humidity make me rub my eyes with a cloth which then brings on the dermatitis and the worse it gets the more I tend to rub. However, this time I am prepared. I have ointment that I got at a local pharmacy in January and as soon as I saw the dermatitis coming on (yesterday) I started applying it. Hopefully by being proactive I won’t get to the point where it looks horrible. Usually a couple days with the cream and all is good.
I’ve talked before about how when I doing a fitness class I watch myself in the floor to ceiling mirrors. I’ve also mentioned how frustrated I get when other participants block my view (which I tell myself is completely unintentional but it is still frustrating). This is not a vanity thing for me, rather it is all about me watching my form. I find that I need to actually see the motions I am doing to know if they are correct or not. It helps me to focus on things such as is my core engaged or am I engaging the right muscles, is my back being protected. It’s easy to think that I should be able to do that without staring into a mirror but in actual fact there is a lot of stuff to think about doing correctly. To me, focusing on that mirror and what I am doing helps me.
But really, why I do this is to try and avoid injuries. Since I started on my fitness journey I’ve had a few issues. The first was a repetitive strain injury from doing so much walking (seriously it was nowhere near the amount of walking I normally do now). I was able to correct that injury with the help of some strengthening exercises via my chiropractor. The next was my arthritic knee bothering me after walking up steep hills which actually turned out to be caused by issues with my hip muscles. Again, corrected by adjusting my posture and more strengthening exercises provided by my physio. Finally we are at the ankle issue which I am hoping will be resolved with my daily targeted exercises and the supportive brace I am wearing. While I realized none of these is really related to my form if I can avoid an injury by simply ensuring I am doing exercises correctly then I will do everything I can to watch my form.
I will acknowledge that it is a little more challenging when I am not at the fitness centre but rather am doing the classes online. However, I have realized that I can use the large living room mirror in the condo to assist me as well as positioning myself so that I can see as much of my body as possible on the Zoom video. While it is not quite as good, it is still helpful.
It has been a fun few days. On Saturday I attended my 40th high school grad reunion. I have to admit there were a lot of people I didn’t recognize and some even when I learned their name I didn’t remember them from high school. Still there were some that I was really happy to have the chance to chat with. In order to be able to go to the reunion we had to take a red eye flight from Vancouver to Houston then on to Cancun. We got to the condo at 11:45am Sunday, unpacked, had a brief nap then it was out to dinner with our friends to celebrate my husband’s birthday.
I had full intentions of getting back to my routine yesterday. Then reality set in. There was no way after doing a red eye flight Saturday that I was going to be able to get up early enough yesterday in order to get a workout in and then be able to shower and be ready for when our cab was to arrive at 8:30am. Hell, I even did something I never do, when the alarm went off at 6:30am I hit snooze. I decided it was a good call to not try and workout just for the sake of being able to say I had done so.
But today I started to get back to a routine. So, up at 4:30am so I had time to eat breakfast and hydrate. Then it was off for an hour walk. I admit I had planned to do 1 1/2 hour walk but I am not quite acclimatized to it being 27 C at 5:30am (even warmer because of the humidity) so an hour was enough for day 1. I then came home and rested a bit before getting online for my fitness class. When the class was over I took my husband (kicking and screaming I might add) out on another 1/2 hour walk. Not bad for my first workout day here.
Getting back to a routine fairly quickly is important to me. I know if I don’t do it then my motivation ebbs pretty quickly. I still have a little ways to go in terms of getting up to a minimum of 2 hours of walking each day but I am fairly confident that a few early morning 1 hour walks and I will get myself up to the 1 1/2 hour walk goal. I admit the easiest part is doing the online classes. As a reminder, we have an Apple Mini hooked up to our 55″ tv which also has a web cam attached to it so I like doing the classes. I even managed to bring down a nice, thick exercise mat. I’m still working on finding heavier dumbbells but I will get there.
So I am basically back to my routine that I will follow for the next 6 weeks. I had pretty good success last time at sticking to it so hopefully I can do the same this time.
It was a brutal fitness class today. It was one of those sessions where you do 100 of the first exercise, 90 of the next and so on. Once you completed them all you d0 another round. Afterward it was a finisher doing 4 rounds of 30 second planks followed by 30 seconds of crunches. I really pushed myself today to clear my head and by time it was over I had done 300 jumping jacks, 120 full sit ups and had managed to do 1 minute of single arm planks on each side. Not bad for someone pushing 60.
I was really starting to panic this week. I just had too much stuff to do before heading off to Mexico tonight. It included my usual weekly events such as volunteering to lead a group of seniors on a walk, co-facilitating a caregiver support group, and calling isolated seniors. Add to that picking up a new tax client who was 5 years behind in filing, agreeing to help a senior through the volunteer income tax clinic and dealing with being the financial agent for the upcoming Provincial election. On top of that I had 4 dogs that all needed rehoming. Of course there was also at least 4 hours of exercise each day and a physio appointment. I am sure you can imagine my days were pretty full.
My husband was the one who realized something had to give. We had decided to do a day trip Wednesday and go out for lunch. That morning while we were having coffee with friends he suggested that maybe we put off doing our day trip until we return from Mexico and my sister agreed (she was going to be joining us for the day). I almost cried in relief, that gave me an extra 4 hours that I could spend completing everything and I managed to do so by Thursday afternoon.
But there is a real lesson for me here, I can’t do it all. Seriously, I overbook myself like this all the time because I am just not good at telling others I am too busy for them. Then, I get myself into a state where I am super stressed. Trust me it is not because I am not good at time management, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t get half the stuff done in a normal day. It is just I think I need to be everything to everyone and quite frankly I need to stop doing that.
Here’s hoping during the next 6+ weeks in Playa del Carmen that I find some time to just sit back and relax and develop that manana attitude.
gwennefarrell 