Puppy Update

This is the big update of the week.  HE has arrived and is better than cute.  We are besotted and spend all our time just watching him play.  Our lives are ruled by his schedule, a little bit, right now.  We get up when he does, let him outside, feed him, play with him and then walk him and hope that he is happy to go back to sleep for a little while so we can get some other things done.  So far so good.  He had one night that wasn’t perfect but the others have been good and he has slept for at least seven hours and as long as nine hours.  You can’t ask for more than that.  Miss Q is adjusting to him and now accepts him as part of the household.  She is not quite ready to play with him and she may never be as she is 11 and might feel it is beneath her.  However, never say never she might surprise us yet.  Portia thinks he is an interloper and has had nothing to do with him but I think she will come around.  We left on Wednesday to go to Asheville to spend the night before going to Charlotte to pick him up Thursday morning.  To say we were excited is an understatement.  The whole trip was filled with anticipation and he didn’t disappoint.  We arrived just about on time and he was bathed and looking as cute as a puppy is supposed to.  John did all the paperwork while I took him outside with Miss Q to see how things would go and they went very well.  They slept side-by-side all the way home with the puppy in his crate and Miss Q beside him.  It was rather cute.  There has been much discussion about his name.  We started with The Bishop of Winchester and after more exploration we learned that the Bishop’s real name was William Wykeham who was Chancellor to Charles I and Richard II and figured in Shakespeare’s play Richard II.  We thought he would be called Winchester but somehow he has morphed into Wyke or  Wykeham (rhymes with Bic).  He seems to respond to it quite well.  We first learned this when coming out of church and a fellow parishioner overheard our conversation about the puppy and said “Did you know that students at the College of Winchester are called Wykamites?”  Of course I did not know this so immediately set out to discover the root of this information.  So long story short, we welcome Wykeham and happily so.

House Hurricane Update

The other big update this week was that finally, after many, many phone calls, the tree people came – 1/2 hour after we left for Asheville – to take the tree off our roof.  Our neighbor, Melanie, very happily took pictures and video for us.  She had a vested interest in the event as it was her tree that fell on our house.  We could not be more relieved to have it gone and to have such a wide open view.  We were very lucky.  We have one friend who lost over 20 trees on his property and over 60 among his immediate neighbors.  They now have a 180 degree view of the marsh and river.  Ours is not quite that good but it is much more open.  More sunshine means perhaps a garden?  It was a frustrating business waiting for the tree folks.  They kept running into issues at other jobs and since ours was pretty straight forward we kept being bumped to the bottom of the list.  We were, in fact, the last house that they did before departing for Hilton Head.  It took them less than two hours to do the job which is amazing but it was because they could bring the crane into what is called the back of our house on the golf course side and then it became a rather easy job.  They did a terrific job of cleaning up the yard after themselves and actually after all of us as there was a huge pile of debris in the yard.  Now to get the skylight and the dormer fixed and all will be good.

Health Update

Once a year it is important to have a physical (I guess).  I am not a big doctor person and I think secretly believe if you go to the doctor they are going to find something wrong with you even if you feel well.  So far the jury is still out.  The doctor I go to has a two part system.  You go in one month before and have all kinds of tests done including blood tests, eye tests, hearing, memory, balance, breathing, and all the regular stuff plus some fancy machine that figures out your body mass index and other relationships.  The follow-up is a two hour – yes two hour – visit with the doctor herself.  She goes over all the tests, of which there seemed to me to be hundreds of them, and then she does her own physical.  In addition, I had a DNA/Gene test done to see how my body metabolizes various medications and foods.  The results of this will take a science degree to figure out.  I am healthy but my body comprised of my lifestyle and healthy eating and exercise is fighting like the dickens against my genes.  I inherited some ugly ones but because of my commitment to healthy eating, to exercising every day and my efforts to try and overcome the stress in my life, have done a remarkable job at fighting the bad stuff.  More work to be done but overall I think I got an A – certainly for effort.  One fascinating thing was discovering the medications I should not ever take and one of them was the statin that I had been on after the heart attack.  I knew, instinctively, that it was not good for me and it turns out that is in fact true.  My good cholesterol is fabulous and so are my triglycerides its the bad cholesterol that I inherited that I am fighting.  So, we are going to try Red Yeast Rice, Steel Cut Oats, Artichokes, and Walnuts plus some other dietary additions.  Also discovered my body does not process B12, B6 and Folic Acid the way it should, maybe getting 50% of what I should so I now have a supplement to help with that.  The really good news is that my heart seems to be doing very well.  I have gained some weight but that is a side effect of some of the medication and now that I am off that and changing up the diet again, the extra pounds should come back off.  The other good news is the diabetes is essentially no longer an issue.  My readings are all normal and have been now for a number of years so thank you Dr. Mark Hyman.  It was his diet that turned it around for me and continues to do so.  Check him out if you have a problem with sugar levels.

Exercise

I am not going to make my 100 mile goal this month.  It’s close (80+/-)  but too much time in the car plus shorter walks here on the island and I am going to come up short.  When in Canada I walk on average 4.5 miles a day with a couple of good hills.  Here I walk with John in the morning and we go around the island but it is only a little over 3 miles.  I keep saying I am going to do a second walk but once done I move on to other things in my day.  Maybe with the onset of the puppy we will get out for a few extra miles a day.  However, I will make up for it because this week Zumba starts twice a week and so does Yoga so I will fill in my week with not only walking but two of my other favorite exercises and with winter coming that should serve me well.  Granted our winters are not as harsh here but we do get rain and cold and that makes for unpleasant walking.  No matter, the idea is to get up and move.  Also, the golf courses are getting opened again after the hurricane so we will be out on the links again soon.  My exercise routine is the single most important thing that I do for my health so I encourage you to start if you haven’t already and to push yourself to go a little bit farther if you already have a routine.

One other little item is that I discovered when going to the Eye Doctor, that I have cataracts.  See, I told you that when you go to the doctor they always find something wrong with you!!!  Anyway, this week I will meet with the eye surgeon and decide what I am going to do about them.  To me they are not a problem but my eyesight is not as good as it was and I really can’t drive at night so I guess I should do something.

Have a great week everyone.  We are going to hunker down and enjoy the puppy before he grows up too fast and try and get some sleep!

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