A few more days

The last full week of October is upon us. And I finally feel a little better! It's totally the placebo effect, or in this case, sort of a reverse placebo effect, but I don't care what caused it, I'm just going with it.

What happened was this: on Friday, October 14th I got a bunch of labs done. My blood sugar and A1c were high, which is bad, but what I was interested in was my cholesterol levels. Since last spring, I've been taking a statin, rosuvastatin, even though my cardiac catheterization showed absolutely no sign of heart disease, because diabetics have to take statins, it's the law. At first I was taking 20 mg/day, and then in April after we found out I don't have heart disease and I said Why do I still have to take this, hmm???, she dropped me to 10 mg/day, which is considered a moderate dose -- but rosuvastatin is a very strong statin.

OK. Back in February my total cholesterol was 192, which is normal, but considered borderline. My HDL was 43 (it should be above 50, preferably 60) and my LDL was 123 (it should be under 100). Flash forward eight months, seven of them spent taking a statin, and my total cholesterol is now 121, which is quite low. My HDL is still 43 but my LDL has dropped to 53, which is crazy low. If I'm doing the math right, that's a 57% reduction. According to a website called hcahealthcaretoday.com, "At the highest tolerable dose, [high-intensity statins] can reduce cholesterol levels as much as 50 percent." And I've been taking a low dose.

I googled LDL numbers and discovered that it is possible for your cholesterol to be TOO low. Very low LDL numbers are associated with an increased risk of cancer, anxiety, and DEPRESSION.

And with that, I took myself off the statin. I mean, come on, this is ridiculous. Immediately, I felt better. I know, my LDL couldn't have gone up immediately, and probably my LDL isn't what's been making me depressed anyway, and it's all a reverse placebo effect, but I don't care. I feel better, which is all that matters to me. Placebo effects rule!

I see my endocrinologist this coming week and I'll probably have to go back on a statin, but I'm going to advocate strongly for one of the weaker ones, not rosuvastatin. We'll see what happens.

***

There were other things that happened this week that probably also contributed to my mood shift, but I can't talk about them (family related, too personal, etc.). All I can say is that they shifted my thinking a little, enough to sort of jar my sad mood loose. If that makes any sense. It makes sense to me.

Oh, and the tile guy finished, on Thursday. That gave me a big boost. I don't adore the new tile, but I adore the fact that it's in, that the bathroom problem is over, and that the tile guy is gone. I gave him all our money (most of what was left in our two savings accounts), and I don't have to worry about the bathroom anymore.

***

So, suddenly Halloween is only a week and a day away and I'm not ready. One problem is that Rocket Boy was supposed to be here by now, and only he is tall enough and thin enough to get the Halloween decorations out of the garage, because they are in boxes on a very high shelf that is blocked by the train table. I do not know why we have to have a train table in the garage. It is one of those things.

He was supposed to arrive today, but he got a late start yesterday and now probably won't get here until Monday afternoon. Which is fine, except that my book group is arriving at 5:30 pm Monday. 

It's still fine. If he gets here by 4:30, we might be able to get the decorations up by 5:30. Hold that thought.

It occurred to me that we could go get pumpkins this weekend, even though all the non-perishable decor is trapped in the garage, so yesterday Teen B and I did that. Teen A didn't want to come, which kind of blew my mind. It's the first year he didn't want to participate.

Next year Teen B probably won't want to come either.

Having your kids grow up is kind of painful. Though, of course, the alternative would be much worse. Must always remember that.

Teen B and I selected five pumpkins, which cost (wait for it) almost $60. Inflation, la la la. We brought them home and put them on the front porch. Later I brought the two smaller ones inside, to protect them from teenagers out looking for trouble. This morning, a squirrel started eating one of the three left outside, so I put an old tablecloth over them, and that seems to have worked -- he's leaving them alone. But now we don't have a pumpkin decoration on the front porch, we have an old tablecloth.

***

I spent most of the week reading a single book, I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, because it was so scary that I couldn't actually read it at night. I couldn't read it during the day either, because I found it embarrassing to have the tile guy see me reading. I finally buckled down and finished it on Friday after he was gone. Oof. If you want a really scary book, I'd direct you to that one.

Then I quickly read what I thought was going to be another ghost story, That Beckoning Ghost by Douglas G. Browne, but it turned out to be a very soothing British mystery from the 1940s, no (real) ghosts involved at all.

And now I am reading Ghosts, a collection of ghost stories by Edith Wharton that she assembled just before she died, in 1937. I started the first story last night and immediately realized that it was too late and dark for me to read something like that. I'll save it for after Rocket Boy gets here. 

This month of reading spooky stuff has been fun, but at the same time I'm kind of looking forward to November, when I can go back to things like Presidential biographies and the Classics Challenge.

***

It wasn't a great cooking week, in part because of the tile guy. That is, I could cook when he was here, but I felt as though I shouldn't cook anything smelly, like onions, because that would stink up the house and it might bother him.

Also, while he made it possible for us to use the shower (carefully) over the weekend, during the week we couldn't use it. So on Wednesday evening we finally took our filthy selves to the East Boulder rec center to take showers. We also swam in the leisure pool, and went in the hot tub, which was really fun, but it all meant that there wasn't time for dinner, so we got McDonald's on the way home.

One thing I did make this week is shown in the photo above: Broccoli Cheese Soup from the Cookie & Kate website. Despite all the glowing reviews, it was terrible. I mean, just the worst. The twins took one spoonful and stopped. I finished my bowl, but I was gagging the whole time. One problem was that I didn't cook the broccoli enough the second time (you add the broccoli in two sections), so it was a little crunchy. But I don't see how that would have ruined the flavor.

Anyway, I ended up throwing it in the bushes the next day. Maybe a squirrel got a little nutrition out of it.

And last night we went to Wendy's, sigh. I'm really looking forward to having Rocket Boy here -- he can make some of his specialties and we can have fish again. I never want to cook fish when he's not here, because Teen B won't eat it, which means 1/3 of the family won't eat it. But when he's here, it's only 1/4 of the family that won't eat it, so it's all right. OK, that doesn't make sense, does it? Somehow to me it does.

***

We have a front moving in, with a slight chance of snow tonight and tomorrow morning. We'll probably just get a dusting, if anything, but it feels like it's time for something like that to happen. Often we have our first snowfall before this. 

The beautiful fall color is starting to fade. I saw a tree last week that just blew me away: red, orange, and yellow all in the same tree, and it was a really big tree. I kept meaning to go back up there (it was on Dartmouth near Kohler) and take a picture of it, but I never did and I'll bet by now it's not so dramatic. We've had wind, and it's getting colder. Maybe next year I'll see it again.

I'll try to make this a good week. It will be great to have Rocket Boy with us. I have a bunch of appointments, including (finally) my omicron booster, so that will take up time. And we can enjoy the last of October's glory together.