Mom Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar

Who me?

Yes you!

Couldn't be!

Then who?

Allow me to sound like an old curmudgeon for a moment, but what in the world is wrong with parents these days?

While I was picking out bagels at Schnucks, a mom brought her two kids over to the cookies. She picked out a cookie for each of them and handed it to them. They ate it while she piddled around looking at the rest of the desserts. Um... HELLO??? Aren't you going to pay for that!? What in the world. Showing your kids it's okay to steal food? They're not free samples. I was so taken aback A, that she wasn't even the least bit ashamed, B, that she didn't even try to hide it, and C, how matter of frank the entire thing was, like they do this all the time. It's time like this I wish I was more bold, I wish I would have called her out for it. Part of me wanted to, the other part told me to mind my own business. That part won.

Starting Rehab

...but not THAT kind of rehab.

Yesterday was my first official day of pulmonary rehab! Tuesday was my 'setup' day where we went over all of my information, made sure my chart was up to date, and went over the program and what I would be doing.

Every day I do exercises on the treadmill, then the arm machine (that little thing that sits on a table and looks like your arms are pedaling a bike), and a step machine which is like climbing steps but you're sitting. I think they're excited to have me because I'm a slightly different case than usual. I'm excited about it too.

When I walked in, I immediately saw a woman doing crafts to pass the time while her husband was in rehab, talking with another lady about their AARP benefits. Yep, I'm definitely the youngest person there.

The most common reasons cardiac and/or pulmonary rehab is prescribed for heart patients and adults with COPD or emphysema. Even the nurses commented how they weren't sure I was the patient, saying "Your chart painted a different picture." I get that a lot, and my doctor and I have talked about it. It's a blessing and a curse. I look healthy—my skin has good color, I'm young, I'm not overweight, I don't struggle to walk or display problems with my joints. But my insides, mostly my lungs, tell a different story. It is difficult because it takes some mental power on my part to also admit that I'm as sick as I am, when I show no outward signs. But hopefully it'll stay that way for a long time!

Spoiler Alert on "Reality" TV

It seems ages ago when "reality tv" became a thing, when we progressed away from scripted sitcoms to real life shows. Even so, reality tv has morphed into something else and it seems every new show follows an obscure person or obscure group of people; that's the million dollar formula. And somehow you make a show out of it.

But I'm not so sure how many people actually realize that almost every show is still scripted; I think it's understood by most, but I am also confident that many people would be aghast if you told them that their favorite show is faked, as I was with the last example I'll give. 

It's one thing if you choose to ignore it. You want to be entertained, don't want to have to think while you watch TV, so you bite and take the bait. That's fine, and I get that. I watch Duck Dynasty but I am fully aware (and fully okay) with the fact that they feed them situations to help create the show. But I'm a thinker and in my truthful core, I always try to figure out if they're pulling one over me or not. Sometimes I'm okay with it, sometimes I'm not. Consider the following a "How Do They Do It" and I'd advise you to stop reading now if you want to remain blissfully immersed in Call of the Wildman, American Pickers, or House Hunters. If you're curious, read on.

Cold Tuesday

It is a whopping 14 degrees outside, bitterly cold once again. Luckily it wasn't too windy today, or else it would have felt like it did right after New Year's. It sure was windy overnight though.

We got a dusting of snow overnight and schools were called off today. When I woke up, I thought that sounded ridiculous! Once again, it seemed that everyone was scared away by the tiny amount of snow. Then I learned from Jarrod that his drive to work was kinda rough, hitting a solid sheet of ice on the way. And the weather lady said that the snow fell on warm roads, melted, and then refroze as it got colder. Oh... now I get it.

Not wanting to risk it, I cancelled my doctor's appointments today and will do them in a couple weeks. The nurse understood completely and didn't want me to try and venture west (where they didn't get any snow). So I stayed in and worked from home all day and then went to Walmart tonight. I must say, that was possibly the best Walmart experience I've had in a while. Turns out no one shops at 6-7 pm, there was hardly anyone there. It was great, and I was out of there in less than an hour.

I also finished a book that I've been reading like crazy; I don't think I've ever attacked a non-fiction book so quickly. It was Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer. It was such a good book. The author did a fantastic job researching (he listed his sources, broken out by paragraph) and you could tell he strived to give an accurate portrayal of the Busch family, unlike the media coverage that they received in the newspapers (especially in recent years) which sounded as if it was practically dictated by those in charge to spin things in a good light.

But it is a sad tale, really. In a nutshell, I'll give you my thoughts: To go from the founding father Adolphus, with his glamorous over-the-top-ness, to his son who was just as flashy, to "Gussie" Busch, the stubborn man who was respected by most of St. Louis and who turned the company into a booming business, to August III who ousted his father, yes, but still had a good work ethic and believed in quality and being the best, to his son August IV, the hard-partying cocaine-addicted mess of a CEO (and mess of a guy in general) who never really cared enough about the business to take it seriously—that is a sad story. None of these men were perfect people by any means, or very moral, and they spent/wasted a lot of their millions, but they all believed in their business and their community, except for the last guy, IV. A-B was a source of pride for StL where a man could get a job, make a career there, buy a house, send his kids to college, but now that pride is mostly gone and everyone says it's just not the same since InBev bought them out. I feel like I learned so much St. Louis history in this book and like I said, it is a sad story to go from so much pride to so much disgrace and scandal. I highly recommend it especially if you are from St. Louis, like non-fiction, or enjoy a good well-rounded story.

Yesterday

Yesterday, the 15th, was Jarrod and I's anniversary of being together. Eight years ago, in the wee hours of the morning while talking on the phone Jarrod asked me out. And you could say the rest is history.

Wow, eight years!

In other news, I've started training for my 5k! So far it's been good. I'm trying to build up my endurance walking at a brisk pace of 3 miles an hour; not attempting jogging just yet. Because even if I walked at that pace the whole time, I'd finish is just over an hour, which is pretty good.

Jamie's Big 5K

It's snowing right now, yay snow! I haven't gotten a chance to see an updated weather forecast but hopefully it'll amount to something. I believe it is supposed to.

Tonight I had a good walk on the treadmill, which was great because lately I've been feeling a little more 'meh'. But before I took my walk I finaaallllyyyy… wrote out my 5K training schedule! Woo hoo!

Now that I have it down in pen and ink, and have it planted on top of the treadmill, I know what I need to do. On the website for GoSTL they had a suggested training schedule that lasted 9 weeks. I am going to need to ease into it a little more, so I modified it out to start next Monday, which will make it 13 weeks of training. Then tonight I've been reading up on some tips for your first 5K, which were helpful.

• Mentally break the race out into 4 mini-races, three 1-mile races, then a fourth (and easy) tenth of a mile.
• Do your first mile slow, pick up the pace for the second, then kick it in gear and try to pass a person in the last mile.
• When training, develop a brisk walk, then add in some jogging, then add in running as you can handle it.

I'm super excited, and hopefully that'll stay that way and I won't get discouraged. The next thing I've done tonight is research for backpacks for oxygen tanks. I have not needed oxygen while exercising her at home, yet, but I figure I will probably need it for this since it's 3.1 miles. I was happy to see a bunch of options, so looks like that shouldn't be a problem.

Furthermore, if I can get all set up with the pulmonary rehab my doctor wants me to do, that will really help me in training for this because the point of rehab is to build up your endurance. Pulmonary rehab would be three times a week, MWF, and those days coordinate perfectly with my training schedule and what I'm supposed to do on MWF.