Puttering in the soil...

I haven't had the day straight since Tuesday.  Basically, it has been Friday three days in a row.  SIGH.

Nine days into the CLS setting, I do not think that it is any better for me than the motion sensor setting and wonder if switching back to the motion sensor setting at a higher level would be more productive.  Mostly, I see little rhyme or reason to the setting triggering the accelerometer.

For example, nine days of riding the bike since the setting change.  Only four of them have had the help of the accelerometer. Without that, the highest my heart gets whilst killing myself on the bike is in the very low 100s, but it is usually in the low 90s.  Personally, I think that makes exercising harder and why my pace is dropping the longer I'm riding.  Well, that an the whole exercise intolerance.  I also wonder what benefit there is.

The two times I have come back home from being out and was greeted by Amos, most enthusiastically I might add, the CLS setting thought I needed the help of a higher heart beat.  Frankly, I did not feel the need for the boost.  I do note that I get boosted when trying to kneel and get back up or bend over and get back up.  Rarely, though, do I get a boost transitioning from horizontal to vertical in my "mornings."

Mostly, I am un-impressed, even if I am having ample opportunity to "get used to" the accelerometer. Yes, well, I remain un-used to it.

The nightly testing, thanks to the daylight savings time, is now at 1:33 AM.  I sent an email to my cardiologist asking if I could get that changed.  But I have not yet heard back from him.  I had asked if the standard for the CLS boost is 130 beats per minute, because that's what mine is doing and I would prefer a smaller jump in heart rate.  I did not send a second email because I am mostly frustrated.  I mean, maybe the only help I'm going to get from Georgie is with the bradycardia and monitoring, not with the exhaustion.

Biking means that my days are primarily that and little else.  I am just too exhausted and my legs have enough work out of them that they don't work really well the rest of the day.

I roll out of bed around 2:00 PM, often nauseous.  I try to adjust to being vertical and get past (with the help of Zofran) the nausea.  Somehow, it is then 4:00 and time for medications.  I eat something and then spend the next two hours working up to putting on my sweating-on-the-bike clothing.  I bike, do the arm weights, stretch my legs (since I cannot walk or stand for a while), do the arm weights (every other day), and nap a teeny bit.  Then, I try to shower, which calls for more resting afterwards, if not napping.  I am usually nauseous again late evening, but I am also so weary that it is hard to put two thoughts together. I think about blogging, but rarely get very far.  The worst nausea and the writhing starts anywhere between 2:00 AM and 4:00.  It usually abates between 9:00 AM and 11:00.  So, I sleep until 2:00ish.

Today, since the bone meal I ordered arrived, I planted the six black lily bulbs (the type pictured above) that my mother sent me last week.  Lowe's was out of bone meal, so I had to wait for it to arrive from Amazon.  I forgot just how much Amos loves the bone meal.  We've been arguing over him digging up the bulbs, eating them, and eating the soil all evening long.  SIGH.

My bed is primarily yellow day lilies, but I do have some red Easter lilies in there.  I would like to have a bed full of a variety of lilies, so I welcome gifts of bulbs like that from my mother, even if I have to fend off my Fluffernutter until the smell of the bone meal is gone.

I also spend my 5 minutes on the dirt pile.

This is what I was left with after the sewage pipe repair.

If you squint at the photo, you will see, at the front of the pile by the bed, two bamboo stakes that mark the edges of the hole.  I should have taken another photo today, but I have systematically been trying to rake back the dirt toward the center of the hole.  There dirt on the non-hole ground is not going to sink, right?

It wasn't until I went hunting the first photo for Facebook that I realized just how much the clumps of clay had broken down with the snow and the rain.  That was a bit cheering for me, as well as how the pile had significantly sunk.

Raking the stuff is arduous.  I literally can barely get through five minutes of clumsily wielding the rake I borrowed from Firewood Man (mine broke with the weight of the clay).  Today, I noted good progress toward the lines from the stakes.  Maybe in another couple of weeks of daily feeble raking I can get it where the weight of the bulk of the dirt is located atop the hole into which it needs to sink.

I am dying to get the dirt covered, though.  Amos will run through it when the new (not nice) dog from next door starts barking at him.  He gets black paws and a black belly and I have to clean him up in the kitchen sink.  Sometimes two or three times a day.

It is exhausting.
And annoying.
And exhausting.

Having puttered outside a bit, I really did not want to get on the bike tonight, but I knew that if I didn't, I might never get on it again.  I really am not a glutton for punishment, even if it seems like it. Another month of this....

I would like to find a way to sleep between the late-evening nausea and the wee-hours-of-the-morning nausea instead of just passing the time.  Maybe if I sleep before and aft the worst spate, then I could get up earlier than mid afternoon.  Of course, that would mean that the testing really needs to be much earlier or much later.  The sending of test info happens at 4:00 AM.  Sometimes I am on the bathroom floor at that time, but I do try to get back to bed (near the monitor) around then.  I wonder if the test could be run then, right before the data send.

Anything ... anything to be less tired....