Lord, I need a cleaning service, I really do. Pretty much all this month has been taken up with digging out this house and turning it into a place where you can welcome people without them recoiling in horror, waving furiously at the dust.

Or to be more specific, my sister’s coming for a visit. I haven’t seen her since January 2020, and she’s vaxxed and really wanted to come down for a long weekend so I said do it, hence the deep clean of the house.

The worst part was probably the guest room, which hasn’t been used for its regular purpose in four years and has instead been a designated Final Destination for junk that needed to go upstairs, be sorted through by Lyndon, yadda yadda yadda. But no longer is that the case. Sunday Lyndon pulled all of the junk out of there, lifted the bed up against the wall and vacuumed thoroughly underneath it. I then took down the drapes and a wall hanging and washed them, washed the window, dusted/washed every piece of furniture and decor in the room, dusted the ceiling fan, vacuumed the carpet again and then shampooed it. When I put the bed back down, I discovered that the J Crew had left a few pee deposits here and there before they were permanently barred from the room, so I had to get rid of those. Luckily I have a gallon jug of My Pet Peed, which lifted everything out of the mattress and made it like new again. Today I went through and organized the closet, which included washing everything fabric that had been stored in there and hanging up a mothball bar to fend off moths. The room is currently a thing of very bare beauty, as I’m not putting on the new bedding/mattress cover until the morning of my sister’s arrival.

The weird thing is, while this has definitely been a huge time sink I feel so much better knowing that it’s done. I don’t actually like having a dirty house, and the guest room has been preying at the back of my mind for four years. Now that it’s tidy and smelling nice, I feel like I can relax.

Well, once I finish cleaning the rest of the house, that is. Technically, I still have the kitchen, upstairs bath, craft room, my office, master bedroom and master bath to do. Realistically I’ll get the kitchen, upstairs bath, and my office cleaned. The craft room will be vacuumed and if I can get the master bedroom/bath done, great, but those rooms are the least of my worries right now. I can always clean them after she goes home.

Now the question is, once I get the place clean can I keep it clean? Stay tuned.

As you may know, Bob, the knee that I violently dislocated in college (snapped a chip off the underside of the patella, required surgery to relocate it) has finally deteriorated to the point where I need a knee replacement. Well, to be honest I needed one about two years ago, but we weren’t in a financial position to afford that.

We are now, thanks to my contract work, but of course COVID-19 has made going into a hospital something of a crap shoot and I’m willing to put it off until the curve flattens to my satisfaction here in the clavicle of Texas. While I am waiting, I have decided to see if I can reduce my weight to the point where 1) it makes surgery safer and 2) it takes pressure off my bad knee.

Now, I’m a heroically sized woman with two metabolic disorders, so I’ve tried every frigging diet there is over the years. The only ones that ever seemed to work were some form of carb restriction, but for me those are hard to maintain because 1) buying all that protein and good fat gets expensive and 2) you have to do a shitload of cooking. Also, the moment I went off them the weight came back on, so not a long term solution for me.

In parallel, one of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that my metabolism adjusts really quickly to any sort of change. Calorie reduction diets tended to work for about a week, and then I hit a plateau as my body clearly assumed I was in a famine situation and it had to hang onto every ounce of fat possible, so it slowed to a crawl. In the back of my mind I’d mused that I really should try mixing up eating programs in order to fool my metabolism and get past those plateaus. Hold that thought because we’re going to come back to it in a minute.

Last Thursday, I was idly doomscrolling through Twitter when I saw a promoted tweet by a trainer inviting me to find out what kind of body I had and what my unique metabolism needed in order for me to get fit. Normally I ignore those, but since I was in “let’s get knee surgery” mode I figured I would check it out. It led to a website that asked my sex, age range, height, activity level, and what my body shaping goals were. I entered everything honestly, and a video started that told me I was an endomorph.

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock, kinda aware of that. But the trainer went on to explain that endomorphs are metabolic marvels because — ta da — our metabolisms will adjust quickly to any sort of caloric restriction and slow down to a crawl in order to save our lives because clearly we’re living in a famine. Once regular caloric intake is resumed, it starts storing fat again to ward off the next famine. Okay, knew that already.

He then explained that what endomorphs needed to do in order to get fit is engage in metabolic confusion. Essentially, instead of restricting calories we need to talk our metabolisms into not shutting everything down by cycling calories and macronutrients — days that concentrate on good fats are followed by days that concentrate on complex carbs, and low calorie days are followed by normal calorie days.

*blink*blink* Oh. OH. Like mixing up those eating plans. Like the times I was surprised when I didn’t eat a lot one day, then ate a bunch the next day, and on day 3 I lost weight. You mean, I was supposed to be doing that all along?

Now, the science behind this is still a little murky, and proponents admit this. But from an evolutionary standpoint, metabolic confusion does make a certain kind of sense. We’re descended from primates that were never sure where their next meal was coming from, so lean days followed by feast days was just another week for them, and we still have those genes. (Man, do I have them.) Also, this may not work for everyone. If you can eat whatever you like and not gain weight, obviously this is not a good eating plan for you, and it’s probably not the best thing for athletes or bodybuilders. But for me, a 54-year-old writer whose exercise methods have been curtailed by COVID-19 and a crappy knee, and who regularly hits plateaus on other eating plans? Yeah, it might just work.

So I figured fuck it, it sounds reasonable (moreover, it sounds DOABLE), and I’d try it. I didn’t have anything in the house for a proper low-carb day so the next day, Friday, was a carbs day with a serving of carbs at every meal. I masked up and hit Kroger to get what I needed, and Saturday was a fats day, Sunday was a carb day, and Monday was a fats day — my schedule for the next four weeks would be M-W-F-Su as fats days and T-Th-Sa as carb days.

Now, mind you, even on carb days I’m not going crazy with carbs — I’m eating vegetables and lean protein, and drinking 64 ounces of water, and I’m doing my best to focus on complex carbs. Have I had some cookies or ice cream? Yes to both. But as the occasional treat, not as meals.

Today is Tuesday. Last Thursday I weighed 331.2. This morning I weighed 327.8. I haven’t done anything unusual, didn’t even really start working out (that starts this week), ate plenty, never felt hungry, and dropped 3.4 pounds. But that happens every time I start a new eating plan. The question is, will it actually continue this time?

I don’t know, but it’s not as if I have anything else to do right now, so what the hell, might as well experiment. The goal is to get under 300 pounds because that will be a point where a surgeon will be more willing to take me on as a knee replacement candidate (it also means I can climb ladders with some degree of safety). If I can go lower, great, but right now I’m just focusing on those 27.8 pounds. And if it looks like I’m plateauing, I’ll switch it up to fats on MTWTh and carbs FSaSu, or even do it one week fats and one week carbs, and continue to switch things back and forth as necessary.

Let’s see how this goes.

On Tuesday, I had a doctor’s appointment to remove a small epidermoid cyst on my upper back. No big deal, totally benign, it’s basically skin cells that become envaginated inside the epidermis and slowly grow until the cyst is removed.

While I was stretched out on the exam table as Dr. W did his job, I mentioned that my BP had been elevated when the nurse had taken it (she’d done it on my left arm and had gotten a reading of 180/100, which scared the crap out of her. When she tried my right arm, it was 160/88, which was better but still not good) and how I’ve been having an elevated BP all year and maybe it was time to discuss hypertension meds. He agreed, took my BP again after the removal procedure (it had dropped to 130/84, go figure) and said, “Yeah, considering your history and all, let’s put you on an ACE inhibitor. It’s effective, dirt cheap, and the only side effect most people report is a dry tickle in the throat.”

So off I go with my spandy new prescription for lisinopril, get it filled, and take the first dose. No side effects, but I did notice that there was a certain loosening in my chest, which felt good. I then went home and researched my new med, and found medical studies that recommended taking it at bedtime so that it would be most available during the night when the heart repairs and remodels itself. Makes perfect sense, and last night was the first one I took a dose at bedtime.

Then I found another study on ACE inhibitors from 2008, an Australian one with an absolutely fascinating result. It had been reported in a lot of the news agencies at the time, then promptly disappeared. I did some more digging and found follow-up studies from 2012 and 2013 that seemed to reinforce the conclusion from the 2008 study. I don’t want to wander off into tinfoil hat woowoo territory so I’m not going to go into detail about this, not yet. Not until I’ve had a chance to see how the conclusion of the study applies to me, if it does at all.

Although if it does, I may have to fly to Australia and give those researchers some big ol’ kisses because it would explain one hell of a lot about the hot mess that is my endocrine system. Stay tuned.

Man, this month pretty much flew by. I know I got various things done (the taxes, a start on the weightlifting, voting for the Nebulas, writing up outlines for the next two books, finishing a novella) but it seems like it was just February 28 a few days ago.

Then again, the weather was around the high 80’s today, so I suppose I should be grateful it wasn’t that warm AND February. It’s bad enough that we’re getting those kind of temps in March, along with the mondo storms that force me to shove the Brit’s leathercrafting stuff to one side in the garage so that I can park my car in there and away from any possible hail damage.

But climate change isn’t real. 45 said so. *rolls eyes*

Anyway, today finished my second week of weightlifting, and I’m pleased to say that my Eastern European genes are kicking in as expected and putting on muscle tissue like you wouldn’t believe. I haven’t lost a whole lot of weight yet, but I didn’t expect to because some of it is being converted into muscle. More importantly, I can see a noticeable difference in my silhouette (not to mention the definition in my arms and legs), and I can feel a definite increase in my strength and stamina. Turns out that going to the gym at 4:00 PM instead of late at night might have been what I needed to do all along.

The interesting thing will be when I go in next week to get my Synthroid scrip refilled. I fully expect them to do a blood draw and test things like my triglicerides along with my T3 and T4 levels. Staying away from carbs and other foods that aren’t good for Hashimoto’s patients, using the 16/8 IF protocol, and three weeks of weightlifting by then will hopefully have some nice knock-on effects on my bloodwork. We shall see.