“If you knew you were destined to be poor all your life and never truly happy or able to live where you wanted to, would you take your life?” I asked Nane earlier today before we were knocked offline for hours.

“NOOOOOOOO!” she said.

Then I guess I better keep winning, as I told her. :)

Irene’s back to “liking,” commenting and sending me hugs, kisses and other goodies, and we’re waiting for the guy to call and let us know we can go online and I can catch up on people’s messages and other things. After months of wasting hours on the phone trying to get them to help us, and money on a new modem, we finally got someone out here who confirmed the problem was indeed on their end somewhere within the wire that connects from their modem to ours. Tom watched him as he worked the wires in the box up by the fork and then it was perfect. So even though he’s continuing down the 500-foot or so drive, it appears the problem was in that box. I just wonder how long it’ll last before there’s another problem.

Now the guy just called saying something about a voltage problem on their line that he can’t fix himself, so to make it even better he’s sending a crew out tomorrow. Already, though, our connection is better than it’s ever been since we’ve been here, so that’s good. :)

I think they should give us a few free months for all the hell we’ve gone through trying to get online and stay online. We’ve lost a lot of time and money to these incompetent assholes.

Although I still have a ways to go I’m really starting to feel the results from all this fun slavery, as I’d describe it, that goes with dieting and working out. I love the added energy and watching the inches melt away while I continue getting firmer. Ripples of muscle are now visible in some parts of my body, especially the abs, calves and shoulders. Definitely something to be proud of at any age but especially for 45:) Once I clear more fat, it will be even more evident as I continue building muscle.

It’s nice knowing I could probably get my purse back if someone snatched it, for example, unless they were fitter or pulled a gun on me, I could probably outrun them. And once I caught them they’d be tired and I’d be able to kick them to the ground. I don’t think they’d like being kicked in the head and face or me stomping on their neck, which would be sure to come next. :)

Before I get into the former professional bodybuilder who’s inspired me and that I’m now “working” with, yesterday turned out kind of interesting. The hunger got so bad by the end of my day, as usual. This time I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it another few hours and then try to go to sleep with such intense hunger. So I decided to consider the day a waste and go fuck up really bad. First I started with 8 meatballs and a banana. But I was still hungry, so I tossed down a yogurt. That didn’t quite do it either so I had a slice of cheese. After that, I was still hungry so I threw on some eggs. Even after all that I could have eaten more, but decided to quit while I was definitely not ahead and expect to be up a pound the next day. I wasn’t, though. Instead, I was down half a pound and am now 137.0 pounds even though I’d consumed between 1500-1700 calories the day before.

Teri is a Facebook friend who’s another VH sister and living back east. We weren’t at VH at the same time, though. She’s a former bodybuilder who’s won many competitions. As good as I am at winning, I don’t care to compete or have as much muscle as she did but was delighted that she offered to help give me tips and pointers on how to go about losing more fat and building at least enough muscle to suggest to anyone with the wrong idea that they better not fuck with me. :) I may have more muscle as it is, but right now my arms just look like arms when they’re relaxed, not muscular arms.

I told Teri about my overall diet and exercise routine and she said she liked most of what I’m doing but suggested a couple of minor tweaks. She thinks I should eat closer to 1 hour after waking and not 2, and that 1000-1200 calories is too low. Up it to 1500, she said, and don’t go longer than 3 hours without eating. She said this will keep my blood sugar at an even keel and (I told Tom he’d love this part) help eliminate mood swings and PMS.

It’s true that while I love to laugh and joke I’ve been having more mood swings lately and it gets a bit worrisome the way they’ve been fluctuating throughout the day. I want to kill myself for breakfast, kill the people responsible for collapsing the economy for lunch, then collapse in a heap of tears for dinner. By bedtime, I’m 1 taco short of a #4 combo.

But help is limited to me because we’re uninsured and most doctors tend to take the easy way out which means they’d just want to drug me up and expect their little pills to cure my depression and anger. I also have to be careful cuz of my history. The laws are getting stricter with those who have attempted suicide. And even though I was only 17, a 20-foot jump is not just a cry for help or a means of “getting attention.” In other words, they’d funny farm me in a heartbeat if they knew what thoughts sometimes ran through my mind at times! :( I entered to win a free funeral (no joke) and told Tom that if I win the thing I’m outa here for damn sure, LOL!

Back to Teri. She said not only to up my calories but up my workout to 30-45 minutes from 20 because then I’m further into the fat-burning zone. LOL, I know a lot about fitness and nutrition as this isn’t totally new to me, but I didn’t know there was a “fat-burning” zone. She said I should take 5-10 minutes to warm up and the same amount to cool down but only stretch AFTER the workout because you can cause serious damage by stretching a cold muscle.

The last thing she told me was to take one day off each week to eat and drink anything I want.

Just talked to her again. I told her I did one of my treadmill’s programmed workouts. For most of the 30 minutes, it walked me between 2.8 and 3.1 MPH. It felt good, too. Just a little stiffness in the hips afterward. I was sweating and my heartbeat was up, but it was a bit easy. She said if I could I should go faster, so I’m going to go back to alternating between 3.3 and 4.5 MPH. I could run up to 6 MPH now, but not for more than a few minutes.

Anyway, I wish we had the home gym we have no space for. I’d love to get at least somewhat ripped. I started to down in Arizona till the freeloaders destroyed our lives. But I simply don’t have anything here that could offer the resistance needed for building serious muscle.

I suppose if you’re not into fitness and exercise this entry would bore the hell out of you, LOL, but I’m done with my workout report for now! It’s taken me hours to do this entry because I either keep waiting to get online or something comes up.

Later…

The crew turned us off again to work on the lines. Let’s hope they really do fix things and don’t fuck things up worse or only provide us with another quick fix of sorts.

Finally heard from Alison. The chemo is really whipping the life out of her and she feels a lot of anger toward most of the world. So do I!

The troll is both creepy and amazing. She accessed every single one of my entries today. Not even Marie was that “dedicated.” I wonder if it’s because I mentioned redoing my post pics since I realized I could drop and drag from MyOpera.