Life below 7

6.7 baby. 6.7
It's been so many years since I had an A1c that low that I truly thought I wasn't capable.
And this is despite a really bad couple of days a fortnight or so ago when I couldn't get a sensible reading at all. It started after I'd upped my workout quite a bit. I had a BG reading of 429 that I corrected (probably a little too aggressively) and I rebounded to 33. By dinner time it was back in the 400s and although I corrected it (a lot more conservatively) for the next day I hovered around the 300-450 mark. Then just as suddenly I was back down to 117 and I've had no real issues since.
I don't know if my body just got stressed by the extra exercise or the insulin was just not getting to where it needed to be but I was expecting that this would throw my A1c out. And that would have been really unfair. But my endo was really excited by the rest of the numbers and there was a lot of cheering when they phoned them through to me today. I put this down to them being hyped up on Hallowe'en candy but who cares? I got the pat on the back that I though I would get three months ago.
Whoopee.

Orange Cheese is Everywhere

It's bad enough that I had a nightmare about orange cheese but it seems that I can't turn around these days without seeing it somewhere.
American "cheese" was the secret ingredient in the first episode of the TV reality show Top Chef. Then we went to the movies on Sunday to see Infamous, about the life of Truman Capote, which in one scene featured an entire chest cooler full of Velveeta.



It's so ironic that I could go throughout life without this product puncturing my consciousness and know I am pursued by it. As long as I never have to taste it!

Thanks for your support, sweetie

"Why are you limping?" my man inquired this morning.
I explained that I wanted to beat my 5k time on the elliptical yesterday and my ankle was objecting today.
"Don't you think you should have a day off?"
"But I'm never going to be thin." I wailed.
"Exactly. Accept it and move on."
Am I weird because I find this hysterically funny?

Cheese gives you nightmares

Last night I dreamt I had put cheese in the dishwasher. Orange cheese, which I had previously shaped into spirals and cones and placed on cocktail sticks and skewers. Then, so I wouldn't eat it, I cleared it away into the dishwasher, carefully placing the cheese kebabs upright in the cutlery basket so they wouldn't get damaged.
This is worrying on so many levels:
Firstly, I put cheese into the dishwasher. The new dishwasher. Why would I do that? Why not just through it in the garbage?
Secondly, it was orange cheese. I love cheese but only, for example, the sort of artisanal cheese made by lederhosen-clad goatherds on a hillside in Sicily. That artificially coloured mass-produced stuff? Ugh. That sits right along with pumpkins, carrots and the actor George Hamilton - all lurid shades of orange are kept well away from my kitchen.
Then there's the cheese-shaping aspect. I have absolutely no Martha Stewart tendencies. Cheese is served on an old but impeccably designed wooden Bodum platter, the only adornment a handful of whatever nuts are available at that moment. I don't shape food, I eat it or rather at this moment I avoid it.
This must be my psyche telling me that I am taking this dieting thing too far. Cheese denial. Cheese dreaming. Can sleepwalking refrigerator raiding be far behind?

Why I really shouldn't exercise in the company of others

Back to school means the gym is fuller than usual, especially in the mornings. And that means that sometimes there is only one machine free downstairs.
I hate exercising next to people because I make a lot of noise. I grunt and puff and I sing along to my iPod. In short I think I'm really annoying, so what other people think must be much worse. I always try to leave at least two ellpiticals free on either side of me. Today that wasn't possible. The choice was take the free machine or go lift weights without warming up. So I sucked it up and jumped on. Then I noticed that I had inserted myself between ultra-fit man and tireless woman.
This is the other reason I shouldn't exercise with other people. I am horribly competitive. I could not get off the machine until the people on either side had finished. And I had to match their fitness level too. So I set the elliptical at cardio/random, plugged in the iPod and walked.
I figured I was good for thirty-forty minutes, but after twenty it was getting to be really hard work. My lips were fizzing and my legs felt like lead. A normal person would have stopped, tested their BG and taken some dextrose. A stubborn person might have reached into their pocket pulled out the dextrose, and chewed it while exercising. A complete idiot would think: I can't stop now, these people were here before me and they are still going. I'm never going to be fit if I quit.
Luckily, at that point the tireless woman got off and a few minutes later the ultra-fit man started his cooldown. I was now going so slowly I think I was going backwards. I got off and went to test my BG. I was so hypo I could barely read it, but I think it was 36. Oh, shit. I didn't bother with the weight-lifting today and it was nearly 30 minutes before I was fit to drive home.
Well, at least I'm only a danger to myself when I disobey the one free machine on either side rule. Look what could happen if men disobey urinal etiquette.