24 February 2013

Lose Weight Fast, the Cold and Flu Way

I feel like I don't run this body lately.
Image from the mile-posts blog and pinterest.
Take a cold that's so bad that all food tastes awful and my throat hurts so much I can't swallow anyway, a molar without a crown, and add a little bit of E. coli and you have the perfect way to drop those last few pounds before summer! Never mind all the running, yoga, and ab workouts I'd planned. A pair of shorts that was too tight two weeks ago fits perfectly now. And summer comes early in the year in Hyderabad. In just a couple weeks we'll be approaching 100-degree days and Muffin's play group will start meeting at the swimming pool at one of the hotels where Western bathing suits are not frowned upon. All of this could not have come at a better time to get me into bathing suit shape.

I still have the same nasty cold as last weekend although it's less nasty now. On Sunday I ran a little bit on the treadmill, finally feeling more bored than sick. On Friday night, though, my sore throat had gotten so bad that I couldn't eat, talk, or even move my head from side to side.

And yes, I said E. coli. It was found in our water distiller last week. Not all strains cause the violent food poisoning symptoms so we were lucky to avoid that. However, when I reached out to other distiller owners I learned that it can be the source of a "general malaise," which we have definitely had in this household for a few weeks. Not quite sick, but feeling yucky all the time. I'm feeling less yucky since I stopped drinking from that distiller on Thursday.

Since the root canal, my tooth still doesn't have a crown. I'm not sure of the exact reason but I suspect they wanted my cold to clear up before I went around breathing all over the office and people stuck their fingers in my mouth. That makes sense. I've had the permanent filling in for over a week now and the tooth feels fine. Frankly, I've been too stuffed up and had too sore of a throat to contemplate sitting in the dentist's chair any time soon.

Every time I try to do yoga, my sinuses start pounding when I put my head down, so I'm taking the rest of the month off from my classes. I'll start up again in March. Our housekeeper should be back to work this week so I can get out to the treadmill a couple times while she baby-sits Muffin.

I hope that we can only get better from here. We need a few weeks of good health and activity before the summer heat saps us of all our energy.


22 February 2013

Resiliant

I don't know if I'm cynical or realistic or if I've been living in high-security areas so long that I'm tired or desensitized, but I'm not that phased by the bomb blasts in Hyderabad last night. I'm sad for the victims and their families. I'm angry that cowards can do this to happy young people and get away with it. But it's life as usual in so many parts of the world.

New York Times: Two Explosions Kill at Least Eleven in Hyderabad
Washington Post: Explosions Rip Through Southern Indian City
Local news, NDTV: Hyderabad Blasts: At Least Fourteen Killed

People were just getting off from work, waiting at the bus stop, shopping at the market, getting snacks at cafes, and waiting in line for movies -- the same things people do every evening in cities all over the world -- when apparently bombs attached to bicycles went off, two of them within a couple hundred meters of each other, a few minutes apart. Numbers of the dead and injured vary from newspaper to newspaper, but there are certainly more than ten people dead and the number of injured has topped out at more than seventy. People frantically tried getting the injured to hospitals, but as one friend noted, even with the well-trained doctors here what chances do the injured have in poorly maintained hospitals? I wouldn't be surprised if secondary infections raise the death toll.

There were rumors of a third blast; there were rumors of unexploded IEDs being found around the city. As of yet those are just rumors as far as I know. No terrorist group claimed responsibility but people have their suspicions about who did it. The government shut down cell phone networks, claiming it's best people don't use their phones to spread rumors. Spectators rushed to the scene of the blasts, rather than staying safely at home, and now police have the convenient excuse of the crime scene being contaminated, in case they can't, or don't, find the culprits. One political party has called for a strike today, in protest of something or other regarding the government and the suspected terrorist group. It feels like there's a lot of frenzy but not a lot of real work.

This happened on the other side of town and in our neighborhood it's nearly business as usual today. Muffin's school and Mike's office are closed, although Mike has a lot of work to do from home. There are no busses due to the strike, so traffic is light and I took Muffin to the park this morning to run off some steam. She has no idea what's going on, other than that she and Daddy are home on a school day and Daddy's on the phone a lot. She has no idea that last night, just in case, I moved bottled water, boxes of milk, and cases of granola bars into our bedroom and had a plan in mind in case I had to grab her and hunker down. My laptop and cell phone were fully charged and I made sure there were chargers in the room, as well as flashlights and batteries. It's not the most prepared I could be for an emergency, but it was something. Having a plan helps me stay calm.

Hyderabad has endured for hundreds of years. When we first told people we were moving here, people told me they'd never heard of it and asked what its name was during colonialism. It was always Hyderabad. It will recover from this too.

19 February 2013

No Smelly Lake 5K on Sunday

We didn't make it to the second 5K on Sunday. I'm sick -- again. My root canal is still not finished. I have the permanent filling but no crown. A friend of Mike's was visiting this weekend and on Saturday afternoon when I realized I wasn't in the mood for being congested, having an achy jaw, and running around the smelly lake at 8 o'clock in the morning, I released Mike of his obligation to race, too, so he and his friend could stay up late on Saturday night. We all went out for a nice breakfast on Sunday morning and met up with some of the racers (who shared their specially ordered Shamrock Shakes with us! Thanks guys!).

Our housekeeper has a twisted nerve from her fall on Friday. She's on bed rest for several more days and is wearing a support belt. She sent a friend over to our house today to do a little cleaning in her absence. I really appreciate having someone here to wash dishes and fold laundry. Our house in the U.S. must have an automatic dishwashing machine. It is non-negotiable. Doing dishes is the worst. I'm without a baby-sitter for a few days, though, so no yoga classes and no treadmill. I've got the jogging stroller and I've got my Jillian  Michaels DVD. I'm also expecting some yoga DVDs in the mail any day now (birthday present to myself) so I am not entirely without a workout strategy. And there's always Just Dance on the Wii, which Muffin loves.
From AnotherMotherRunner.
My new shirt arrived on Friday (above). It made me feel like taking charge of my life. Until I got so sick I could barely stand. I'll have to take charge in a few days.

15 February 2013

And I Thought Our Case of the Mondays Was Bad

I don't even remember now what happened on Monday to prompt me to write the Facebook status, "This family as a serious case of the Mondays." (By the time I finished writing this post, I remembered. In the hour between Mike leaving for work and Muffin leaving for school, Mike lost his wallet and Muffin simultaneously peed on the floor and spilled strawberry-banana smoothie on the dining room table. From 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning is a magical time of day in our house.)

This morning on the way home from dropping off Muffin at school, I noticed a person laying on the ground with another person standing over him or her and our driver pointed out that it was a woman being beaten by a man. I wanted to stop and help. I think he wanted to stop and help. But instead I asked him to call the police and report it. I knew it probably wouldn't do much good, but I didn't think my stopping would have helped the situation much, either. She probably would have just been beaten even more later on. I was torn up all morning about not doing more. I hate feeling so helpless. I can't help thinking, though, that if the reports keep coming in then eventually the police will have to do something.

After lunch and after Muffin went down for her nap, I was reading in the living room when our housekeeper limped in, crying. She'd slipped in the laundry room and had severe pain in her hip / lower back / tailbone area. I gave her an ice pack and some Tylenol and told her to sit or lie down for a few minutes, whichever was more comfortable. By the way she was crying and wincing I was afraid she may have actually broken her tailbone. It became evident that even if nothing was broken, she was uncomfortable and didn't have the physical ability to baby-sit Muffin later this afternoon when I went out for my dentist appointment. I told her our driver could take her home. But she couldn't stand up. So I had our driver take her to a local hospital for x-rays. The driver and I had to carry her down to the car. Thank goodness Muffin was napping and didn't have to see all of that. The driver is staying with her until someone from her family can join her.

I'd really like to crack open a bottle of wine right now and throw in the towel on this day, but there's still the matter of my dentist appointment. I was able to push it back from 3:00 to 6:00 in hopes that Mike will be home in time to stay with Muffin. It's the fourth, and hopefully final, visit of a multi-visit root canal. Real fun. It might hurt less and I'll be more relaxed if I've had a drink or two, but it somehow feels inappropriate.

And there was no hot water for my shower.

And  Top Gun was on TV and I turned it on just in time to see Goose die.

I should have known what kind of day this was going to be when two Smiths songs in a row came up on the iPod shuffle this morning.

10 February 2013

Motivation Monday: H'bad Grethon 5K Recap

Image from Pinterest.
We ran around the lake yesterday for the Hyderabad Grethon 5K, so boy, did we earn our showers. The lake is so smelly that even after you shower and throw your clothes in the laundry, something still lingers with you all day, like the BO episode of Seinfeld.

I had no clue what to expect from this race and we (Mike and me, with Muffin in the jogging stroller) were telling ourselves that it would be fun because it would be someplace to run other than the treadmill or the park we always go to. We were right about that part, and had to admit afterwards that it was nice to run somewhere different. "In the now," though, as the morning was going on, we lost sight of the fun a couple times.

There was no formal registration like you would normally expect for races. I bought two tickets online and they never asked for any personal information for registrants. The event started at 7:00 a.m. but there was no indication if that was when the race actually started or not. To be safe, we arrived around 6:45. And the race didn't start until about 8:15. "Registration" consisted of showing printouts of online receipts to get tickets and then turning in those tickets to get t-shirts, water bottles, and hats.

The t-shirts were plain white. And so oddly sized that I have no idea who could actually wear them.

There was a bunch of thanking of sponsors and "Hip-hip, hooray!" about things. Every few minutes they mentioned another cause that the race was supporting -- polio-free India, illiterate orphans, English dictionaries for students, and my favorite, being "green," all while people were throwing chai cups and sticker backings on the ground. We finally moved into the street and there was more thanking of sponsors and cheering -- in the middle of a road that had not been closed to traffic, so cars were honking and trying to edge by.

The race finally started. Fortunately it wasn't too hot and sunny yet, although the fog was starting to burn off. (So if they'd started an hour earlier the weather would have been just about perfect!) Most people started off way too fast and it didn't take long for us to find plenty of running space and then start picking people off. Cars kept stopping to look at Muffin in the jogging stroller to the point where there was nearly a pile-up. Lots of people needed to take her photo but once we started running we didn't stop for the paparazzi.

We ran along and I glanced at my Garmin every few minutes. Eventually we reached 1.5 miles, but there was no turnaround in sight. We turned around at two miles. The question became, is the finish going to be exactly where we started or are they pushing it up? Are we running one more mile or two? We decided to gamble on two. And we were right. A 5-kilometer, 3.1-mile race was 3.98 miles in length according to my Garmin. Even if my Garmin is off by a little bit, our finish time indicates that the race was longer than a 5K.

When we crossed the finish line I mentioned that to some of the people who seemed like they were part of the organizing group but they didn't seem very concerned. They were more excited by us being the only white participants and having a baby with us, too. I may have even been the first female finisher. I don't know, I didn't stick around to find out. They wanted us to stay for the final presentation, but we couldn't. Muffin was tired and Mike and I were, too. We didn't want to be part of the show anymore.

There's another race in the same location by the same organizers next week. We're torn on if we should go or not. It might be more fun now that we know what we're getting into, but it was an exhausting morning, dealing with Muffin and the crowd.

And we still smell like the lake.

03 February 2013

Motivation Monday: Playlist Edition

Mike sent me this in reference to Muffin's
being in school some day. This is the closest
anyone will ever come to knowing what's on
my playlist. Original source unknown.
I'm going to come right out and say it and what few fans I have may decide to drop me. I don't care what's on anyone else's playlist. I'm actually embarrassed to read about other people's playlists. People that I enjoy reading and that I admire as runners, I completely glaze over and skip the parts about how great certain songs are. It sounds goofy and all it shows me is that runners who like to talk about their playlists listen a lot of Top 40 music, which isn't really my cup of tea. It doesn't inspire me at all. A runner's playlist should be personal.

While we're on the subject of music, please think long and hard before listening to it while running on the road. It's a distraction from your surroundings and it's a clear signal to the bad guys that you have something worth stealing.

I was motivated by last week's MM post to set my alarm for 5:15 for one morning. That morning Muffin woke up about ten minutes before then. She had a valid reason -- she wanted help using the toilet and that's a huge milestone for her -- but by the time I got through helping her I went straight for the coffee rather than my running shoes. I spent my afternoon on a treadmill rather than taking the nap I'd dreamt of taking when I first set the alarm for so early.

This week I'm starting another course for my master's degree and I think I'm having a root canal on Thursday. But I will squeeze in a couple runs and one yoga session. We're signed up for a 5K on Sunday.