Back in the Saddle Again

Well, howdy do there! Talk about not keeping up with my blogging! I guess I just don't have a lot to say these days, or possibly just not the time to do it. Maybe just a bit of both. The good news is that I'm feeling sooooo much better. I've lost weight, I'm back to martial arts, I'm clearer headed, I'm cooking up a storm with my pressure cooker..I've got a rock'in vegetable garden... and, get this.... I'm cleaning my house like crazy!!

I know.. it's insane! I will spontaneously clean a closet for NO GOOD REASON!!! This has all come about because the doctor says I'm getting more blood to my brain... I guess you need that, huh?! Isn't that crazy? You never think that you have to worry about things like that... that your body just puts the blood where it's supposed to go, right?.. well, apparently not. I've got a kink in my blood supply around my shoulders and with the help of my wonderful Physical Therapist, Elisa, she's freeing up the blockage(she really is a doll... and I've been to others and I know she knows her stuff...but she's tough as nails too!).

It's a lot of hard work. I'm always doing these exercises to keep my shoulders back, squeezing my muscles and they are sore constantly. I have to put my neck in the right position although it doesn't feel like the right position.. she calls the wrong position "turtle neck".. but the right position gives me too many double chins! But I guess it's right over my shoulders. Anyway, it's difficult for me to always "feel" when I'm corrected, but I'm learning. Elisa says that I've improved very quickly since my doctor has said that it would take 8 months to a year to see any change and it's only been a few months for me. The next work we are doing in on my abdominals... OY!! These are difficult because 1) I have always been lazy in this area, and 2) this is where I was cut during surgery 13 years ago and these muscles haven't been used since I learned to work around them.. especially the obliques...now to engage them, they are like spoiled children and they don't want to play. But I will beat them into submission!! Eh, comrade ladies!! LOL!

I have planted my vegetable garden for the season. It is beautiful. We had a small patch of lawn in the back of our house. Very small and not used much and it was turned brown from all of the fires that we have had here in Santa Barbara... also from me not paying a lot of attention to it! At one time I had a huge garden at another home and grew almost all of my own food and food for a lot of my friends. I loved doing it and I wanted to feel that love again so we had two raised beds built and now we are back in the food business again on a smaller scale. My husband is excited about the tomatoes and really wants to grow corn, but our space doesn't allow for us to grow things as high as an Elephants eye (i.e., Oklahoma!)... I told him that we'd leave that for the local growers.... he was sad, but he'll be happy when he sees the bumper crop of fresh tomatoes and zucchini... (zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, stuffed zucchini, zucchini ala king, etc....) :)

With my new found energy like I said I am now cleaning! For years I just felt like crap. It wasn't that I didn't want to do anything, I thought about everything that I wanted to do, I made lists, I drew pictures, I made plans... I just never had the energy to actually DO IT! Now, with the whole blood to the brain and other parts of my body....very much helps.... I'm actually getting these LONG needed things done! We took a trip to Burbank yesterday and visited Ikea... OMG! I LOVE that store. If we didn't have to be back in Ventura by 5:30 to have dinner I would have stayed there until closing. We had to just go in, figure out how the whole Ikea experience worked, look at the beds/mattresses, do the measuring...then find the item and leave.. but I could have stayed and outfitted my whole house... and let me tell you, it certainly needs it! In retrospect, maybe it was better that we had to leave right away since I may have had to mortgage my house to pay for everything that I wanted. Gotta love those Swedes though, everything was so eficient... not all to my taste, but I just like decorating and the storage stuff, WOW.. when you live in a house with very little storage... you REALLY like the storage stuff!!

There is probably more going on.. but that's enough for now.. I'll try to post more often... if anyone is still reading.. if not, that's OK.. it's just good to get it all out there.

SUPRISE!!

I'm still here!! OH MY GOSH... we are so busy... every dang minute is filled with things to do! Things are still really good.. NO JOKE.. we are doing great.. business is good. My body is really getting better... I'm losing weight - very slowly...but dang it, it's finally moving. I've spent years busting my ass and this thoracic outlet stuff blocked everything... so as I'm unblocking, it's moving and it's easier for me to sleep and do just about everything else too... GREAT!

We tore out the back lawn and going to put in a vegetable garden. I'm really looking forward to that. All kinds of perks there....lower grocery bills, yummy, fresh food... and since I just had my first mojito this weekend, I MUST grow my own fresh mint to keep those mojitos flowing!!! Yeah BABY!!

OK, I'm on facebook now too: http://www.facebook.com/ come play... Jennifer Meeker Mishkin.

Everything is GREAT!!

Hi.. is there anybody out there???

I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't. I haven't posted here since the beginning of the year. Not because things have been bad, but because things have been really, really GOOD! We have been so incredibly busy with our business. We thought that we'd have some time off over the holidays, but we've been going non-stop. It's really been great for us. I've even hired an employee to help us, which we've needed for a long time and now we can afford it with the new clients that we've taken on... so..... things are great.

I got confirmation that I have thoracic outlet syndrome with a really cool 3-D MRI at UCLA. My vascular system is pretty clogged up but I've been working with a great physical therapist and just in a short time I've made some progress. The bummer for the short term is that I can't lift more than 5lbs, this includes a purse, weights, kettlebells.. anything. I'm using a special vest during the day for a short time to help train my shoulders back (it's way more technical than that...there are a lot more muscles involved...but shoulders is the easy description)... and I wear the vest at night when I sleep to help open my chest up so I can sleep through the night because they found that one of the reason that I wake up every two hours is because not enough blood gets to my brain because of the thoracic outlet syndrome and so my body wakes me up, then I stand up, then I go back to sleep...then the cycle starts over again.. with the vest, I've been sleeping through the night.. I'm on night number 5.. It's amazing to have some good sleep in me for a change!

So life is good. Business is good and my body is getting squared away.. yahoooooooo!!!

Orca tries to sink kayak

Whoa!

Another year

They go so fast, don't they? It used to seem like summer and winter breaks used to last forever.. now they just blink away.. and they are just another day. We're always having fun and doing what we want most of the time so we're basically on holiday year round... Tracy just posted about this very thing.

I've been under the weather for a few weeks with a low grade virus... so no posts here. Working and doing my home physical therapy and that's about it... I'm just a party animal! :) Tonight is our big New Year's Eve celebration with the Geezers... the fun starts at 5:30pm at the chinese restaurant... Greg and I will be the only people at the table under 70! It'll be fun.

Everyone have a great New Year and there will be lots of great things ahead in this life for all!

WPIX Yule Log

put another log on the fire.. this one is really warm!

CHRISTMAS YULE LOG FIREPLACE (The Original)

Member this one??? A tradition!

Merry Christmas Ya'll!

Guitar Swap.....and do it as an athlete!!

Today we did a little guitar swapping. We went from a acoustic Gretsch to an electric Gretsch. Don't they look COOL!!! They sound even cooler!! I'm having so much fun learning and I'm really having fun playing electric.. this is my first time. I'm practicing every day and making progress every day. It's a really great creative outlet like cooking and painting but in a different way. It helps to keep the TV off in the house and that's been a real problem for Greg. He is so talented and it's so great to see him play music again.

I'm turning my middle weird room in our house into a Martini lounge and the featured band every night is OUR BAND!!! How fun is that??!! I'm going to put stars on the ceiling and still figuring out how I'm going to set it up and decorate it.. something cute and fun.

12 more days til I go to UCLA for my big MRI test to see what's going on inside my shoulder/neck area. My neck has been super stiff lately and arms and hands keep wanting to fall asleep.. bugs the crap out of me. I can't wait to hear what they find. I'd love to know a way to relax my neck and shoulder muscles easily... I've always held a lot of stress in that area of my body and I'm sure that my lifestyle as well as the jobs I've had contributed to this. All of the data entry I've done forever didn't help... plus carrying heavy purses and lifting heavy weights and not standing up straight or who knows what else. I just hope that I am connected to the right people so that I can do the exercises that I need to do to relieve this without surgery. I will do anything to fix this and fix the sleep apnea and every other thing.. I'm done with all of the health problems... I got off of all of the medicine before and I felt great.. but I just couldn't get away from this on my own and I trust my neurologist. He really did save me from Bell's Palsy.. if it wasn't for him I would have ended up with a terribly crooked face. He has been the only doctor that has treated the whole body and he doesn't over do anything. He gets right to the point... it's just that this stupid MRI test takes forever to get into because it's so specialized. So once it's done we're on our way and we can really zero in on the physical therapy....

as for the physical therapy... starting tomorrow I am going to approach it as the athlete* that I am. I have a home PT program that I am working on... as an athlete. Then when I am recovered enough to be able to work again with Kettlebells and do Bikram Yoga, I will do those...as an athlete... because I am!

Damn Straight!

*as inspired by Tracy Reifkind! I'm forever inspired by Tracy