Early Morning Thoughts

Today it is a cool and sunny morning. I was up at 5 this morning.

A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to check on Malcolm-the-Chow who spent the night outside as he always does. {Mike and Melanie { and, of course, Gretta} are away for the weekend since it is their anniversary.} Last night Malcolm looked somewhat confused when the door of his house opened and *I* was the one who came out to give him his food and his pill! {There is a door under our stairs whereby we can get into the downstairs apartment.} This morning when I went to check on him, he was lying in a patch of sunlight. He was pleased to see me and I rubbed his ears and scratched his head. I checked to be sure he had food and filled up his water container.

If you are reading my dear partner’s diary, you may have caught his reference to me as his warden! He had it made quite clear to him yesterday at the doctor’ s appointment  that losing even a bit of weight will be really beneficial to his kidneys. What I can and will do is to give him encouragement and reminders as he did for me when I lost weight. We are both adult human beings.  I realized early on that *I* was the one who was going to benefit from what I was doing and therefore *I* was the one who decided what would or would not go into my mouth. Fred did not tell me that wine is empty calories—I knew that, and so I was the one who decided it was not, for me, worth the calories. I am not going to tell him what he can or cannot eat. I would have been very annoyed if he had done that for me. However, I can and will encourage him to walk a little bit daily. If he wants it, I will lend him my calorie count book. I will be pleased to help him in every way I can, but I can’t do it for him—and he knows that.
Yesterday evening, I had a really odd episode. I felt "floaty" and my skin, especially my fingers, were tingling. The last time this happened was after I had given plasma and then I passed out very dramatically at the local library in Mississippi when I was visiting my sons. I was fairly sure that this time I was dehydrated so I managed to get up and drink a very big glass of raspberry iced drink. The problem is that in my mind I have linked walking and drinking. I have trained myself to drink a 16 oz glass of water in the morning when I get up and another glass full right after each walk which means that at the minimum I drink 6 cups of water a day. But, if I don’t walk, I don’t drink and yesterday I did only one walk and a stroll up the hill to the drug store. And yesterday was very hot. Anyway, after I had drunk the fluid, I went into the air conditioned bedroom for a while and then I had supper. I felt amazingly better after that so I guess I needed both the water and the food. And, to stay out of the heat. Today is much cooler and I will walk when I have finished here and also this afternoon. When the heat comes back next week, I must make more use of the air conditioned bedroom and drink 6 to 8 cups of fluid a day as I usually do even if I won’t walk in the heat {which I won’t.}

Number of Steps on the pedometer for yesterday: 7026  Quite good since it was so hot yesterday. I did one early morning walk and one stroll up to the drugstore and back.