Yoga-and-Air-conditioning

    It has been a few (weeks?) since I've updated my blog. Just thought I'd point that out if you weren't paying attention. LOL. Anyway, I guess I can tell you, or re-tell some of you that I have started taking a Yoga class at our YMCA. I have only been to two classes so far. The main reasons for starting that is to hopefully get my balance to improve, another is to stretch and strengthen my leg muscles, especially my left thigh muscle. I am hoping for the latter especially, to either stop the foot-drop from happening, or at least improve my walking by being able to raise my foot higher off the ground. That way, the brace, also referred to an AFO (Ankle Foot Orthotic), will be more beneficial to my gait.

    Let's see… what else is new? Not a hell of a lot to be honest. I'm having a difficult time deciding what to write. I don't want to share too much information with the public. Then again, I hear that any and everything that goes out electronically, either via email, video, or a blog, can be seen by pretty much anyone who wants to snoop bad enough. That doesn't mean we should make it easy though, right?

Anyway, I do believe that spring has sprung here in TX. Am I enjoying it? Only a little. I'm really hoping that my electric bill will go down to less than $250-$300 a month, which it has been the last couple/few month, that greatly impacts our money that could be spent on groceries. I'd probably enjoy Spring more if I was better able to tolerate heat. Even with a cooling jacket on, I can't be outside in heat that is much over 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit for very long. I fucking hate MS (multiple sclerosis). I have decided to try something different when running the air conditioner. Prior to this year I was setting it on "energy saver" mode, so that it would go off completely (well, almost) when it reached a certain temperature in the living room (it's a window unit). However, it wasn't being very efficient, meaning that it (the AC) would allow the room temperature to get to 80*F, or a little above even with the setting being on 75*F. So this year I am leaving it on "cool", still set at 75, but it'll go into 'fan mode' when the temp. gets to the set temp. I don't know if that'll save any money or not, but I get sleepy and lose all my energy when it gets to almost 80 in here. Besides, if I can (barely) pay the heating bills of almost $300, I should be able to wrangle less than that for a cooling bill.

Heat.Light.Cleaning.and.Friends

    So here I sit with the heater going because I was cold earlier. But now that I've put my pullover and jacket on, eaten, read from a couple of sites on the computer, I'm warm. Guess I should probably turn the heater off, huh? Alrighty, the thermostat knob has been turned down. Hopefully the heater won't kick on again for a while. I was freezing earlier, and it was a little over 70 degrees in here. Sigh. Anyway, I heard someone say at the exercise class this morning that it's supposed to get up to 70 degrees (Fahrenheit) by this Wednesday. That'll be nice. I'm just so tired of gray. I still plan on going to the hardware store and looking for natural-light bulbs to help simulate the effects of sunshine when I'm inside the house. I'm hoping that will help with the probable affliction of SAD (seasonal effected disorder).

    Browsed through a few of my earlier blogs looking for when I wrote that I hadn't even used the mop that I had bought to do the kitchen floor in over 4 months (wanted to add a link to it), but alas I couldn't find it. No matter, all I want to say it that I did finally use it last week. The kitchen floor has now been mopped. It doesn't look any different. At least it's cleaner, though I still probably wouldn't eat any food that's been laying on it for any length of time over the 5 second rule. OK, so that's a myth, but I've never been one who's a germophobe, so I don't really care. The "it's just a rental" reason was NOT the reason for not doing it. My reason was because we rarely get visitors. Now that I think about it, that's really nobody's fault but my own. I should invite more people over. The truth of the matter is that I suck at making friends whom I could invite to visit. I just remembered that I did decide shortly after mopping that I will clean the rest of the kitchen, eventually. I need to wash the cabinet doors. I suppose I could wash the windows as well.

    Enough of that. Too depressing. Yesterday was a good day. Although I spent all day in the house because it was cold and cloudy, it was still good. I had access to, and used the computer all day. I got to watch videos. I got to be on my support site and FB. Even added several friends from my "team" on my support site as friends on FB. Now I get to 'see' them twice as much.

    That's pretty much all I've got. If you've read this far down the page, thank you. I hope you'll stop by for the next episode of "So THIS is Todd's life?" ROFL!!

    Addendum: Just read a post from a friend on FB about there being someone, somewhere, poisoning dog treats and leaving them laying around for pets to eat. Another one of my friends commented that she has trained her service dog not to blindly accept and eat treats from strangers. I think that's a brilliant thing to train into pets and service animals. Anyway, that reminded me that I want to visit the MS Society's web page and see if they help find and/or finance getting service dogs for those of us with MS. I'm thinking that one might be helpful as a companion to relieve some of my depression.

Cold, Shower, Exercise, Phone and Internet

    Hi, hope this finds you doing well. Well, it was cold this morning. The forecasted low was to be 21 degrees Fahrenheit. Don't know if it actually got that cold, but I am assuming it did because I think that both of the utility heaters ran all morning long. God I hope that the help we get to pay our utility bill is a big help. I know it'd be hard to afford another $300+ bill this month. Obviously we'd have to, but that would mean a couple of companies would not be happy. Actually I'm sure a few are already not happy only getting $5/month instead of the full amount owed, but oh well.
    Despite it being cold, I still managed to drag myself out of bed and take a shower. I was taking showers the evening before I figured I needed to, but have decided I'm more motivated to actually get out of bed if I know I need to take a shower. Besides, it's wakes me up better than sitting and sipping on a hot cup of tea.
    I also managed to get myself to my thrice a week exercise class. It went okay, despite being the only male to be there, and having to sit inside the outer circle because there wasn't room for another chair. Ah well, it was alright. 

(my new phone, a Prelude-2)

 

    Came home and played on my phone; reading posts on myMSteam, Facebook and email. When I got tired of doing that I laid down and was going to take a quick nap, but my phone rang. I sat up on the sofa to answer it and promptly hung up on whoever called. Since the # was saved on my phone, I just called back and talked to him. It was the man who installed the modem for our Internet service. He just wanted to know if I'd be home, and of course I said yes. We now have Internet service. So once again we can watch videos and talk on Skype with video.

 

(our new to us cable-modem)

A comment, rearrange, phone service

I recently wrote on a social site that for me it sometimes feels like my life is just a matter of killing time. Just waiting for it to be over. Or as they (The rock group Pink Floyd has as part of some lyrics in a song) "hanging on in quiet desperation", from "The Dark side of The Moon." One of the responses to my statement was, "That's no fun." No, it's not, but it is how I feel at times. That being said, it's not the side of me I show 99% of the time.

Last night while laying in bed, I had an idea of how to rearrange the living room. After it gets done, I think it will give the living room a more open look and feel. But first we need to get the non-working television moved off of the cabinet it's been sitting on.

Today was pretty productive, once I forced myself to get out of bed after hitting the snooze alarm twice. It wasn't because I was sleeping, so much as it would be so much colder once up and in the living room, which I knew would only be around 65*F. I'm just really feeling down with it being being cold outside. Plus it's been ugly/gray out there for a couple of weeks. Just tired of it and it has really deepened my depression. Sigh! I'm not telling you this so you'll feel sorry for me. Just letting you know how I've been feeling the last couple of weeks. I have had days of feeling good tho, just can't seem to string them together is all.

Anyway, today I went to my exercise class. Then I stopped by my landlord's office and paid our rent. I also was able to tell him of a couple of issues, so now we just wait for this cold spell to end so he can get them looked into. I also got to spend a couple of hours using the computer while my son napped.

We've eaten supper. Now I'm back on my phone, which I still need to make decisions on this week. Do I stay with the same provider and just finance a new phone, or do I see if another provider will let keep this phone even though it was programmed to work with the current one's service? I actually don't even know if I *can* use it with another provider. I plan to start looking deeper into the situation tomorrow (Tues.)