1) Supplements

I’m trying out some new supplements to see if they’ll help with my chronic inflammation (which I think is the reason behind all of the nerve pain I’ve been experiencing lately, and may even help lower my A1C). My dietician recommended I start taking fish oil and from there, I went down a rabbit hole of other supplements that could help improve inflammation. Ultimately, I decided I’d start taking fish oil and turmeric, in addition to the multivitamin and Vitamin D supplement I already take. I’m hoping that the addition of these supplements and the changes I’m already making to my diet will start to shift the tide of the health issues. Fingers crossed!

2) Birchie Made Me Do It

This week, Birchie posted about the American Lung Association’s Fight for Air Climb that she’s doing, and because I’m a masochist, I looked up to see if there’s one of these climbs happening near me. Unfortunately, I found one. There’s a climb in Tampa at the Bank of America Plaza on April 5th and my mom and I are thinking of signing up. Are we CRAZY?! I think we’re crazy. I know we work out regularly but are we in climb-900+-stairs-at-once shape? But also, we lost my uncle (my mom’s brother) to lung cancer in 2023 so it feels like a good cause and I love a good fitness challenge. Maybe I’ll meet a hot firefighter on my way up and we’ll have the sweetest (or sweatiest) meet-cute.

So here’s my plan: Tomorrow, I’m going to use the stair stepper at the gym and see how long it takes me to climb 100 stairs and how I feel afterward. If I do not feel like dying and that I could feasibly keep going if needed, then I’ll sign up for the stair climb. I’ll have six weeks to prepare, which would give me enough time to feel confident that I won’t die in a stairwell in Tampa.

3) Downtime

I have re-engaged the Downtime feature on my phone. From 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. five nights a week (Sunday – Thursday), I will lose access to those apps that tend to suck me in and keep me from doing my evening and morning routines in a timely manner. I am hoping this will help me get to bed earlier and be more productive in the morning because those phone games and Instagram and Reddit apps can really slow me down. Plus, it will bring down my average screen time, which is so high that I can’t even talk about it. (After two days of using Downtime, my average screen time was already down by almost two hours. That should tell you how often I was using my phone in the early mornings and evenings! Oof.)

4) Warm-Ups Do Work!

Last week, I complained about my Wednesday night HIIT class and how I feel that I’m not adequately warmed up for it. After sitting all day at a desk and then immediately jumping into a workout class, my body is usually very unhappy with me! This week, I got to the gym early and did 20 minutes on the elliptical and then spent 10 minutes stretching. I really focused on my hip flexors and hamstrings (as directed by Nicole!) and I think it helped so much! I felt a lot more loose and limber starting class and my lower back didn’t hurt nearly as much as it usually does! One of the stations we did this week was a repeat from last week (single-legged RDL with a ball, and then we throw the ball at a target). I could only do one of the three circuits for that station before my back started hurting too much. This week, I could do most of the circuits (my back started hurting about halfway through the third circuit) and with a heavier ball (15 lbs vs 10 lbs). Now I know: the warm-up is key to a better workout.

5) Weekend Plans

I don’t really have much going on this weekend! Today, I am taking Lila for her annual vet appointment (please send prayers that I can get her in her carrier without too much drama) and then I will have a low-key evening at home. Tomorrow, I plan on going to the gym for a workout, getting a pedicure, and in the evening, it’s game night with the fam! And Sunday will be an easy day. I’ll go to a yoga class, do my weekly grocery shopping, do some meal prep, but mostly take it easy.

What are your weekend plans?

1) Book club 2025

For the past two years, my book club took a different approach to our monthly meetings. Essentially, since we had six members, every member got to “own” two months (their birthday month, since none of us share a birthday month, and a non-birthday month). When it was your turn, you chose three book selections that the group would vote on and planned a fun book club outing. This year, we decided to switch things up because a) we now have a seventh member, which makes evenly splitting the year was not possible and b) it can be a lot of pressure on people to own all of the planning for one month. Instead, we all came to our January meeting last weekend with a selection of book ideas and a selection of activity ideas. We all wrote our ideas on Post-It notes, folded them up, and placed them in two jars. Now, every month, we will select three book ideas and three activity ideas to vote on! This is going to make things very exciting, I think.

We kicked things off by selecting our February book (our February activity was already chosen; it was actually supposed to be our January activity but the place we were going to had to cancel on us) so we only chose a book during our meeting (it was between The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Good Material by Dolly Alderton, and What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon—we chose Good Material). The books/activities that aren’t chosen go back into their respective jars to be perhaps picked another month.

God, I love my book club. We’re the best.

2) Goods Unite Us

My friend Amber introduced our group to this app during book club called Goods Unite Us. The app shows you all different companies and where they stand politically. It takes into account any donations made to political campaigns by the organization and its senior employees. It also gives each company a Campaign Finance Reform Score from -100 to 100. You want a positive number here. As the app states, “The higher the score, the more likely that purchases from the company or brand will lead to meaningful campaign finance reform.” And vice versa – buying from a company with a negative score means helping to keep corporate money in politics. I’ve been obsessed with looking up companies on this app, and I feel like it is one small way I can try to make a difference by not shopping (or shopping a lot less) at companies who (a) lean Republican and (b) have a negative CFRS.

You can also answer a few questions to learn what your overall rating is and CFRS. That was a sobering experience for me. (My score was -4, sigh.) But knowledge is power, right?

One big change I want to make is to switch from Publix (86% Republican with a -86 CFRS) to Aldi (they have a perfect CFRS because they do not give significant money to political campaigns). I love shopping at Publix, but do not love their political contributions, so this is an easy change I can make. (Plus, Aldi is a lot cheaper than Publix so that’s a win/win if I’ve ever heard one.)

3) Medical routines

There’s nothing that screams “I’m getting old” than talking about medical routines, eh? I seem to be building a repertoire of them. Let’s discuss:

• Radial nerve pain – Every night, I use a hand massager to try to reduce some of the inflammation and then I slather on topical lidocaine all over my fingers, palm, and wrist. Right before going to sleep, I put on a splint to keep my wrist immobile.
• Scalp psoriasis – Every night, I use a prescription-grade scalp solution on my problem areas (I have three of them, two on each side of my head and one at the base of my scalp) and 1-2 times a week, I wash my hair with a prescription shampoo (clobetasol propionate).
• Sleep apnea – Obviously, I sleep with my machine every night. In the mornings, I wipe down my mask and dump out the humidifier water. Once a week, I take apart the whole machine and soak it in unscented, gentle detergent.
• Hidradenitis suppurativa – My newest condition! Twice a day, I slather on antibiotic ointment and whenever I shower, I use a prescription-grade soap for my underarm where the burst cyst is located. Hopefully, this will clear up within a few weeks.

And if I have to add an entire diabetes treatment regimen to all of this, I might lose my mind.

4) Mushrooms (not those kind)

One of my goals for this year is to try one new thing every month. I almost missed January because the thing I was going to choose as my “one new thing” ended up getting cancelled. But I did my new thing this week, which was eating a new type of food! This week, I made beef stroganoff and typically I leave out the mushrooms because ick. But then I got to thinking… are they ick? I’ve never actually tried mushrooms. Maybe I’ll love mushrooms! So this time around, I dumped in a whole carton of mushrooms into the meal and hoped for the best.

And… ick. My spidey senses were correct. I do not like mushrooms. Live and learn!

5) Weekend plans

Oh, I have a beautiful plan-less weekend ahead of me, which is great because my upcoming weekends are going to be quite busy. I will have my regular writing date with Mikaela on Saturday morning and my mom and I are going to try out a new yoga class on Sunday morning. Other than that, the weekend is all mine!