Where is the time going?

It's really true what they say, the older you get the faster time flies. As I'm approaching 56 in a couple of weeks I feel like time is speeding up. What seems like a few days is actually a few weeks. It's like I'm living a movie where everything is being fast-forwarded.

That's part of the reason my posts have been so few and far between. Every day I think of several topics I want to write about, but I never seem to find the time to actually sit down and write.

It's the same with my dieting. Almost every day ends on the same note...well, I screwed up again today, but there's always tomorrow. I've been saying that for weeks, or actually, I guess it's been months, perhaps even years now.

How have I been doing?
I've been doing better in all areas of my life. Not perfect, just better.

Work is still work, and I've decided to learn something new at work. All my protesting that I didn't want to learn anything new is what led me down the path of my job ending in a few years.

I work in IT. It's a changing world. If I want to stay in IT I have to change with it. I don't know why it took me so long to accept this fact, but I have and now it's time to get going on learning the new technologies that I was unreasonably dead set on not learning. I decided that was a career ending move on my part, and now is not the time to end a career. I'm almost 56 and we're in an economical crisis here in the United States with record unemployment rates. It's really not the time to consider a career change. I've accepted this and it's made things much better in my workplace.

The unending quest to lose weight continues. Sometimes I amaze myself at my refusal to give up on losing weight, especially considering I've felt like a miserable failure in the weight loss arena for many months now.

Since Monday I managed to lose six pounds, from 199 to 193. Some of that weight loss is from the Triamterene blood pressure meds, a very low-dose diuretic. My BP is now 121/62, a huge improvement from 148/98 that it was on Monday. I hate taking a medication, but I hate the possibility of a stroke or doing damage to my heart even more than I hate taking a tiny pill each day.

I cut back quite a bit on my food intake last week so I know it wasn't all water weight that I lost. My binge food all week was cherries. The Asian market, HMart, sells the most incredible tasting local sweet dark red cherries as well as Rainier cherries at a crazy low price ($1.49 & $1.99 a pound). I think I've finally eaten my fill of them for a while. I'm actually glad they're seasonal because I was wondering if I'd ever get tired of them.

My exercise is still not up to the level it should be. I keep finding reasons to skip the gym in the mornings. In the last week I only went four times (since last Saturday). That might sound good to a lot of people, but it's not that good for me. Five or six times would be better, and what I've been doing the past three years. My latest excuse is I'm tired and sleep is more important than exercise. They're both important. I really shouldn't be making a choice of which is more important, but when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. I often go with the sleep is more important.

Speaking of sleep, I think the Melatonin is actually working for me. I've been waking up less in the middle of the night and my sleep feels deeper and more restful. When I get up I don't feel groggy or exhausted. There's a lot of conflicting information out there on the internet regarding Melatonin, some say it works, others say it doesn't.

The most interesting thing I read is that melatonin is naturally secreted by the pineal gland in the brain. As we age, our brain secretes less of the hormone, which is possibly why older people have trouble sleeping. Of course, they're still doing research to prove this fact. At least I didn't read about any negative effects. The worst case is that it doesn't do anything. Maybe it's all in my head, but I really think it's helping.

Well, as I said when I started this post, time is slipping by me. I have a lot of things to get done today, top of the list is physical activity. My plan is to bike ride to the gym, then a lower body weight workout, then ride home. The temperature is suppose to get up to 80 degrees today. So far this year, we've had 78 minutes of temperatures at 80 or above here in the Seattle area (I think the highest was 81 one day for a couple of minutes). It's the running joke around her, 78 minutes of summer so far this year.

Almost forgot to mention my Body Media. It was sent out on the delivery truck yesterday morning by UPS at 9 a.m. for delivery by the end of the day. It never arrived. I checked the UPS tracking site at about 9pm and they changed the delivery to Monday. Slightly annoying since I live about three miles from the UPS station that was the delivery truck origin. I was really hoping to play with it this weekend, but looks like I have to wait until next week.

Now for a quick breakfast and get out on my bike, hopefully for noon before our Northwest "heat wave" hits. I'm sure folks in the 105 temps find it pretty funny that we think 80 is is HOT.

On the agenda for tomorrow is a hike up near Mt. Rainier. My husband said he wants to go, and since it's our first nice weather weekend in weeks, we're going!