Great!!!!  That is how I am feeling!!  Yes, it is due to the raised steroids, but what a relief!  I have slept for hours and  hours at a time.  I have been able to do things that I wouldn't even consider 2 weeks ago.  It is wonderful.  I did lower the steroids a bit on Friday and I am still feeling great!  I think I am going to try to start exercising again.  There is no reason not to.  We have a recumbant bike here at work and tonight I will get on it for a while before I go home.

The weekend was pretty quiet.  I cleaned some closets, did some shopping and just did whatever I felt like doing at that moment. 

It has been a painful and expensive weekend.  Started with a toothache on Friday afternoon.  Suffered through it while I had both the hot water tank and living room fan replaced on Saturday.  Sunday was continuing with both Tropical Storm Isaac and the painful toothache.  Monday, went to the dentist who immediately sent me to the guy who did a very painful and expensive root canal!!!  Ugh!!!

So now I sit here at work with a sore mouth, and by the time all is said and done,$ 2000.00 poorer.

Agghhh!    7 lbs lighter though :-)

Good Morning!  Well, I am feeling a little better today.  Went to the Rheumatologist yesterday and he decided my pain was too bad to continue cutting back on the steroids.  He upped them, as a matter of fact, but only for a week.  He has also started me on some Rheumatism medication which takes about a month to really start working.  So now I am on another pill, plus I have to take folic acid along with the rheumatism medication.  Just call me the pill lady!!  But I did get a decent nights sleep last night with just one dosage of the upped steroid.  It felt really good!

Will this ever end??

The weekend was interesting.  The air conditioning man showed up at 5pm and installed the sensor so the water wouldn't overflow anymore.  He commented that it was an awful lot of water on the floor (I ran a big fan for 2 days to dry out the carpeting).  Well Saturday morning when I went to take a shower, I could not get any hot water!  Well, guess what!  It wasn't the air conditioner that overflowed... it was the hot water tank that broke.  So, it has been cold showers for the past 3 days.  Not to bad in Florida in the summer.  The water isn't that cold!!

I have a friend at work whose husband has been out of work for a couple of years, so he has started his own little fixit job.  After talking to Linda, he can come on Saturday and replace the tank.  I thought about getting one of the waterless ones, but it is only me and it is only one of those short stubby tanks.  I wouldn't be saving that much energy by getting a waterless one!  I know I will be taking cold showers all week, but if it will help my friend out.... I will wait a few days.  Plus, he is going to replace the ceiling fan in the living room that blew the circuit breaker when I turned it on a few months back.  I could use a fixit man at my house for a few weeks, I think!!!

So Saturday afternoon I decided to see if I could find a flapper for my commodes.  They are the old Standard brand and the normal flaps don't fit well. (Against what they all say on the outside of the package!)  It has to sit exactly straight, or it drips and drips and drips and then reloads the water again.  I had decided to go to a plumbing parts store and if he couldn't suggest anything I was just going to replace the whole commodes.  I am very tired of replacing the flappers every couple of weeks!  He suggested a retrofit of a bigger flapper and an additional rubber piece.  I thought, yeah, yeah....... this will work like all the others!!  Eureka!!!!!  It took about 2 minutes to install and it works perfectly!!!!  I could hug that wonderful man!  I am going back tonight to get another one for the other bathroom!!  I was my own Mr fixit on that one!!!

Had a nice birthday Wednesday.Lots of facebook friends greetings, texts from the grandkids, (grandaughter felt bad that I didn't have a cake so she made me one on her ipod and sent it to me via text message.  During the day, I got a nice phone call from Sismo, and when I got home there were flowers and a balloon waiting for me from daughter, son in law and the grandkids ( very pretty) and then I received a phone call from Sissip, and a nice long phone call from daughter.  Her card has not arrived yet and I told her I would call her when it arrived.  We talked about her first day back to work and then about her knit night.  She really had me laughing!

For some reason, I was in terrible pain Thursday, so I stayed home.  Couldn't work from home because the x#&@* computer wouldn't log onto the server at home!!

Today I am at work, but woke to water all over the hallway where the air conditioner is.  Called my air man and he is in Orlando taking his son back to college.  He is going to come late this afternoon after he gets home!  Geez!!  What a week!!!

Today is one spectacular day!!!!  I got text messages from Jake,Matt and Emily for my birthday!!!  Woohoo!  That makes me feel all warm inside!! 

Nice weekend!  I don't know what has helped the pain...... but I am going to say it was the cherries I ate!!!!  Yes, they are an antiinflammatory food and after I started eating them the wrists quit hurting as did the fingers.  I can now twist off bottle caps and pick up my coffee mug with one hand!!  Woohoo!  Now it might be the Naproxen that I am taking twice a day, but.... naaahhh.  Cherries sound better.  I have been researching what foods will help bring down inflamation and I am going to try to eat these regularly!  I am slowly getting off the steroids and I need something to offset the decrease of assistance they do.
Working from home today.... and have already been at it for 2 hours.  I started at 5:30am.  I wish I could sleep at night.  That would help a lot in my overall health and energy!

Today is another painful day. I don't know what brings these on....... I wish I did! Maybe it will get better as the day goes on. As of this morning, I am not able to open a bottle of Iced Tea, I had to have Linda do it for me. Is that pathetic or what?

Found a new app and website. It is caloriecount,com.  It counts my calories for the day and has a very large database of items.  I can put it on my phone as well as my Ipad and track my vitamins, calories, fat intake, cholesterol, sodium, etc.  Speaking of sodium....... I can't believe how much I have during the day and I don't even like salt.  Everything has a lot of salt in it.  So my challenge for now is to lower my salt intake.  We shall see.

Bought the Platinum Keurig and hopefully this one will last a while. It was nice being able to have coffee in the A.M. when I first wake. I have been trying tea and flavored coffee at night while I relax after dinner.

Went to the Endocrinoligist and her words were "When are you going to get off those steroids?" They are playing havoc with my weight and my blood pressure and she doesn't like it. Me either!!! Well, another couple of weeks and I will reduce a little more of those awful pills............ even though I am in pain. My rheum doctor says "Take the Naproxen if it helps" My endocr doctor says, " It is not good for your kidneys!! Only take as a last resort" I think I will listen to the endocr doc....... which means you will be hearing me moan and groan all the way from South Florida!!
Cholesterol is down to 192........... whoo whoo. Much better for me!!!!

So it is Monday............ start of a new week, and hopefully I will try some exercise, some modification of food intake, and see how many hours I can sleep at a time!!!!!

Woke this morning and in my daze went to the Keurig to get myself a cup of coffee. No power on the coffeepot. Unplugged it and took it to another outlet. No power. Now I am fully awake and pissed off. I shook it, turned it upside down to see if something wasn't connected, after pouring all the water out of it, of course, I pounded it and last but not least...... I thought I heard myself go ARGGGHHHH!

So, I have started researching on buying a new one. I love them and I just bought 6 boxes of different flavors this week!!! I logged into a number of places to see prices and ran across the reviews for all of the different models. It seems this is a problem with these coffee pots. They don't last long. None of the models..... everyone loves them, but they just don't last long.

Took a few days off of work, thinking I was going to get a lot done! NOT!!! My aches and pains got the best of me and I just didn't do a heck of a lot! I am going to try a new plan. Do something every night when I get home. Anything....even if it is small. Tonight I am going to try to empty out and throw away all the alcohol that has just a few drops in it and then put the rest away. Right now, they are still in a couple of boxes from when we did the tenting of the condo. I have quite a number of bottles that I will never drink and they need to be tossed. Then I will be able to find a place to put the drinkable stuff. Closet, cupboard, we shall see. I should then have 2 empty boxes!! So that is the job for the night!

Wednesday......... where has the week gone? Let's see Dentist on Monday, Tuesday the CTO was in the office, today, working hard. I have decided to take off the 2 days after 4th of July which will give me a 5 day break! Woohoo!

Pain is a little achy today.. hands, fingers and wrists, while the shoulders aren't perfect either. Took the naproxen today to feel better. Hope it won't harm me.

Brought my new vacuum cleaner in to the office and fellow employee John has helped me get the handle on correctly. I have a vacuum cleaner..... but I did feel silly standing in the parking lot with my vacuum cleaner. Well, I get to take it hone and use it but tomorrow I have to bring in my desktop computer so that I can connect to the company network. I am having a problem getting it to connect.

TGIF is the acronym of the day!! It has been a long day with nothing working. I wound up keeping busy but boy it was tough. At lunch I went to get lunch for a coworker who couldn't get out because of meetings. So, off I went to Wendy's and went in and ordered our lunches. While waiting for the food to be prepared, the rain started coming down in buckets outside!! So bad that you couldn't see anything further than a foot away. There I sat at Wendy's waiting for it to stop..... didn't happen! So finally I just said the heck with it and out I went with 2 huge beverages and a bag of food that had a container of chili in it. The bag got wet and ripped and the chili went flying. I got soaked as I went back in and ordered another chili!! By the time I got back to work I looked like a drenched rat............. TGIF

Much better day today. Slept fairly well and woke with less pain. My age has lowered some!

I am starting to get used to my new cubicle. Moved about 2 weeks ago. The only problem I have is the noise over here. People take their conference calls using speakerphone and it is very annoying. Some of them have very loud voices, so when they talk they seem like they are right in front of me! Headphones are going to be the norm, I think. I have been listening to CNN live on my headphones lateley but the closer we come to elections, I will have to find something else to listen to!

I have requested the Thursday and Friday after the 4th off from work. Let's see if I get it. I know we have regression testing then, but I could use 5 days off at home.

Better night sleep. Still wake up every couple of hours but went back to sleep after. I turned the TV off, but I don't think that made a difference.

Was in a lot of pain when I awoke this morning so the first thing I did was take a Naproxen... in fact 2 of them. The pain eased up enough to get moving after a half hour or so.

More changes at work.......for the good? I don't know for sure, but we will just have to go with the flow.

Nothing else going on....... hopefully this will get more exciting once I start feeling better.

It was an achy weekend. For some reason I felt about 80 years old all weekend. Got my nails done on Saturday, did some shopping and then went home. Unpacked, straightened the kitchen and then tried to take a nap to see if I felt better. Couldn't sleep. Saturday night I was up until about 2:30 am because I couldn't sleep and then woke every hour. Didn't go anywhere at all Sunday..... never left the house and got very little accomplished. Tried a nap in the afternoon, but to no avail. Tried to sleep last night with the same problem! Geez!!!! So my eyes are a little droopy today. This can't be because of my trip. I didn't have a time change and it wasn't too stressful. The only stress part was my kids..... but what else is new. I don't figure much will change in that area.

Lowered my steroids this weekend and maybe that is the reason for the aches. I am just going to smile and keep plugging along!

First Post of living to be 65

First post of the new blog! Yes, 65 is the new beginning... so much to figure out, so many decisions, so many aches and pains! Isn't it great? At 65 I find that I am the oldest full time employee in this building. Not something I enjoy, but most people here don't realize how old I really am! So, the first thing I had to do a few months ago was sign up for Medicare.... I don't plan on using it yet.............but they say I need to sign up for it anyway. I don't plan on retiring........but there certainly days that I sure would love to. The aches and pains are telling me so. PMR started about a year ago. They say only a year or year and a half............ so hopefully I am on the downside. I just returned from a visit to my older sister...... she is 12 years older than me and between the two of us, there were a lot of moans and groans when we tried to get up from a chair, or some 'ugghhh' when getting in and out of the car. And the biggest feat of all........ try to clasp the bra in back...........oww, oww, oww! So if you have an ache or pain to tell us about............ here is the place!!

More Work

A new day and more changes at work. Lost another to a different division so there are only 2 of us left in this department. More work, but still working.

Woke this morning to a hand that won't close. Hopefully it will correct itself by the middle of the day. Working at a computer all day should exercise it enough to get it moving. Is this arthritis or part of the PMR?

It's Friday! I will try to get my energy up to do a bunch of things this weekend. Wouldn't that be great. That patio needs a lot of work and I would love to start on that.... or maybe the spare room. I want to collect books to give away. Hand don't fail me now!!