Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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I need to start using my Wii Fit again

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Do you remember back in January how excited I was when I bought a Wii Fit on eBay?

Once it, and the console that I purchased after the fact since I didn’t know I needed that too finally arrived I used the Wii Fit and played games like Wii Sport bowling and tennis for about two weeks. Unfortunately, at the end of that two week period my Crohn’s got worse and so did my back so I didn’t feel up to using the Wii Fit.

Can you believe that I haven’t used it since then? Even though I’ve purchased four more games to use in the meantime?

Sad isn’t it?

My Crohn’s is still flaring, but overall I feel a little better this week. Oh and my back, probably thanks to the lower back stretching exercises I’ve been doing for the last two to three weeks seems to be getting a lot better. So I think I’m ready to start working out with my Wii Fit again.

I have been getting physical activity in other ways though. I’ve been trying to get out more often to take the dog for long walks. Plus I’ve done about 10 hours of work in the garden this week! Hmmm maybe I should be logging some of this activity into my Wii Fit? There is a way to do that – I just have to remember how, and I think you have to do it on the day you do the none Wii activities as you can’t go backwards in the calendar if you forget.

I’ve also put several hours of work into clearing out the basement so that there will be room for the workmen to work when they replace our oil tank in a week! Sometimes I think it would be easier dealing with our cluttered basement if we just got a truck rental and carted all the stuff we’ve been storing down there to some storage facility … even if it’s only temporary. That won’t work though – I’ve got to go through the stuff and probably throw out half of the stuff we don’t use and probably won’t use.

So back to the Wii Fit … for those of you with a Wii Fit – do you use it regularly? Or did you use it a lot at first and then start to slack off?

I slacked off due to health problems, but I know that if I start to use it regularly I might feel a bit better – or at least my back might as my stomach muscles get stronger again.





More doctors, new meds and Thyroid nodules

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What an exhausting day!

I had an appointment with a new doctor this afternoon. An Internist. My family doc had suggested I see him over a year ago but delayed referring me until recently. Uh huh … she’s become a dud in the last year or so.

Anyway, I went to see the new doctor, the Internal medicine guy, just to get another set of eyeballs on my Crohn’s case. Nothing has been helping ease my pain and symptoms in the last four years, so as long as I don’t end up having to go through all the tests like yet another colonoscopy, gastroscopy and other tests I’m fine with seeing if this new doctor can help me.

After discussing my medical history and recent symptoms he decided to try me on a different Crohn’s drug. I’m to try it for two weeks and see if I feel any better on the new meds. Of course I probably won’t be able to fill the prescription until the weekend as we go to Costco to fill our scripts these days- it’s cheaper!

I hope this works.

I’m tired though … it’s exhausting seeing a new doc when you have Chronic health problems.

Plus … last week I thought my throat looked a little puffy so when I went to see my pain doctor I had her take a look at my neck and she sent me for an ultrasound. Just as I thought, the right side of my thyroid (the only part of the thyroid I have left since I had the left side removed 19 years ago when I had a tumor with pre-cancerous cells in it!) has lots of solid thyroid nodules in it.

I just got that news yesterday so that’s been worrying me too. I mean, since the last thyroid growths I had had precancerous cells and resulted in surgery I have a feeling that these ones will be precancerous or perhaps even have developed into cancer since my family doc hasn’t been keeping an eye on my thyroid function over the last several years – so I’ll probably end up having surgery to have the rest of my thyroid removed soon too. Biopsies first though …

So now I’m waiting for my family doctor to call me. My pain doctors office, the one who sent me for the thyroid ultrasound, called me yesterday with the results (solid nodules, one more dominant than the others) and said they were faxing the info to my family doctor that day … so why haven’t I heard from my family doctor today? I know she works everyday, but Monday … Grrr … I just want to get started, as in get a referral to an Endocrinologist, and find out how serious these new growths are. Not to mention that I shouldn’t have had new growths since I’ve been on Thyroid replacement therapy for almost 20 years!

The only good news that happened so far today (well other than trying a new medication) is that there was a message on my phone saying that we won a free hotel stay. LOL I’ll have to see if that’s for real or not, but a little good news is nice.

I hope that you had a better and healthier day than I did!

Yard work and a bad back do not mix

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Chris and I took advantage of the beautiful day here in Toronto and went outside for several hours to tidy up the garden.

My mind was into the work, but my body wasn’t! I’m certainly not made of Ferrari parts – not anymore anyway! LOL Nope! I just found out I have a slipped disk in my back which explains the back pain I’ve been having for over a year now. Naturally, twisting, bending and standing and sitting in odd positions while cleaning out the garden beds did absolutely nothing for my back except cause more pain!

So now I’m lying on the couch watching TV with a heating pad on my back. Oh yes, I’m also full of Advil and Tylenol. None of it seems to be helping at the moment … maybe a good rest will relax my back … maybe!

The backyard does look beautiful now though! All the dead leaves, dead foliage and most of the dead branches on the rose bushes are gone. I didn’t “technically” prune the roses – just cut off the obviously dead branches. It’s still too early to do a real pruning …. or is it?

I mean .. I was totally surprised at how many plants were coming up when we uncovered them! Not just the usually suspects like crocus, daffodils, tulips and hyacinth no … my Hollyhocks, Phlox, honeysuckle vines, and many of my clematis have leaf buds on them. I swear my garden is at least two weeks ahead of it’s self if not a full month ahead!

Now that the back garden is all cleaned up and the sun can get at the tender shoots poking their heads out of the ground I’m sure that everything will really start to shoot up! In just few days (if the weather holds) I’m sure there will be a lot more green in my garden!

The grass is already starting to green up too. On Monday evening we raked the front and back yards as well as started cleaning up the garden beds and the grass was dead looking – not a hint of green. But just 6 days of above freezing temps and a tiny bit of rain later and it now has quite a bit of green.

Now if only my back could make such a quick turn around as our awakening garden is!

Oh BTW did you participate in Earth Hour? We had a candle light dinner after expending all that energy outdoors! What did you do during earth hour?

My husbands 150 dollar mistake

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Why do guys tinker with things that don’t really need fixing? Why???

Last weekend Chris was in the basement cleaning up our tool area when he found our old Brita “on tap” water filter. The one that we had on our kitchen faucet had been leaking a little bit so Chris came up with the great idea that he’d just put the old Brita filter back on. (of course I think we replaced the old filter because it was leaking …)

I think that Chris thought something was screwed into the end of the faucet so after removing the first Brita filter and trying to replace it with the old one (which didn’t work) he started prying away at the end of the faucet. I think he was doing that so that we could put the end cap back on the end of the tap – if he could find it in the basement where I’m sure he put it when he took it off so that the Brita Filter could be added to the tap.

The next thing I knew I heard swearing. Chris had somehow broken off a piece of the end of the faucet!

Chris’ tinkering of course meant that we needed to replace the whole kitchen facet! Why? Well when we turned on the water it pretty much sprayed all over since the end of the tap was broken. I guess it’s good that we aren’t totally broke, but it was an expense that we certainly didn’t need!

It was about 7 pm when we decided we needed a new tap so we rushed off to Home Depot. We had to go fast because it was closing at 8 pm! Once there we picked out a Moen facet – chrome to match our double sinks. It was something like $126 for the faucet, plus we bought some plumbers tape and putty to prevent leaks – all in all with tax it came to just under $150!

It’s one of those that have a long arching tap and a single levered handle to control the stream of water and temperature of water. Similar to our old one, but much nicer. The old facet was a very cheap set that the previous home owners must have put in when they “cheaply” redid the kitchen before selling.

I like faucets with a lever handle. Maybe it’s the nurse in me liking to keep things from getting contaminated, but if your hands are dirty you can just use your wrist or the side of your hand to flip the water on – that way the handle doesn’t get contaminated with whatever is on your hands that needs to be washed off.

The next day when Chris went into the basement to continue cleaning up the tool area and to try to clear out some of the clutter in the basement (we’re having our oil tank replaced in April so the basement needs to have some space to move around) I told him to stick to his work and not find things to fix or that would distract him from the job he was supposed to be doing! God know we don’t need any more expensive mistakes!

Guys! Geesh!

One of the things I hate about Spring

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One of the things that I hate about Spring is all the garbage that suddenly appears on our lawn, sidewalk and blows around on the street once the snow melts.

Toronto overall is a very clean city, but there are still people who toss tissues or other garbage on the ground once they are done with them. There’s certainly enough public garbage and recycling bins in the city that no one walking down a city street would have to walk very far before they’d find one to dispose of their garbage … but some are too lazy to do that. I mean there’s three garbage and recycling bins each within a two to three minute walk from my house alone, yet my lawn has junk on it.

So now .. with the rain and wind blowing, every time I go outside I discover used tissues stuck in my bare rose bushes, crumpled fast food wrappers, paper cups, newspapers, flyers, plastic bags, cigarette buts and other garbage that I have to clean up.

This year seems worse than others. Either the city hasn’t been cleaning the streets as much as they used to or people are getting lazier about properly getting rid of their trash.

Even in the winter when there was snow on the ground I found garbage in the snow bank that wouldn’t normally be there like plastic pieces of broken car tail lights and something that I think was some kind of industrial knobs. Strange stuff … maybe some of it fell off a truck or something.

Like I said earlier Toronto is a very clean city compared to many large cities. So I really don’t have much to complain about … but still, there just seems to be more leftover winter garbage around this year than there usually is.

Do you hate cleaning other peoples garbage off your property once Spring arrives and the snow melts to reveal all the extra junk you have to pick up?

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