Monday June 25, 2012: The Mishmash Edition

Daily stuff:

Thank you all for your sweet and lovely comments on my Italy posts. And thank you for the compliments of how I look. I do feel good in my body and despite all the great food we had I even lost a little weight on vacation because we walked a lot every day. But …. when we were on vacation I made the decision that I want to lose weight till I’m at goal weight. Two things happened on vacation which made me decide this, one of them is a sad reason.

Tuscany has hills, most of the towns are on those hills and streets can be steep. We had to climb a lot (good exercise for my calfs). We noticed a lot of older people that were overweighted and couldn’t walk very good anymore. They had to stay below because they couldn’t walk up to the towns and missed a lot because of that. We said to each other that we want to be able to do as much as possible when we are old and the best way to accomplish that is by living healthy, have a healthy weight and move enough.

I don’t know if you know it but I have a sister. She’s 4 years younger than me. We don’t have much contact because we are very different persons. I’m okay with it and she’s okay with it. But she is my sister and I have had bad news from her when we were on vacation.

My mother had 4 brothers. Three of them had a muscle disease and all died between the age of 45 and 60.  It’s this disease:

Myotonic dystrophy (dystrophia myotonica, myotonia atrophica) is a chronic, slowly progressing, highly variable, inherited multisystemic disease. It is characterized by wasting of the muscles (muscular dystrophy), cataracts, heart conduction defects, endocrine changes, and myotonia.

It’s genetic but the rest of the family had no signs of it. Till now. We are waiting for the final test results but it’s almost certain that my sister has the disease too. It’s incurable and it can’t be said how the disease will progress for her. Symptoms can be that it is noted in face and jaw muscles, the drooping of the eyelids, weakness of the neck muscles, hands and lower legs.

My sister has lost about 30 kg (66 lbs) over the past 2 years but still is heavier than I am. Her doctor said she can’t gain anymore weight now because of the disease.

The doctor asked about her parents and her sister and when my sister told her that I was a runner, the doctor said that changes are very small I have it because if I do, I couldn’t be a runner.

I’m not worried I have it but decided it’s better for my health if I have a healthy weight and that’s why I want to lose weight (about 8 kg / 17 lbs.). I’ll start working on it next week because we still have vacation this week.

Back to normal and happier things. Last Saturday I went with R. to one of his motor races. A long day because we left at 6 am and were home at 8 pm. It was a bit cold because of the hard wind but at least it was dry. Below a few pics of my motor hero.

Of course miss Bella came with us

Number 11 is R.

Book I’m reading

John Grisham
The Associate
Finished it on vacation

Karen Rose
Silent Scream
Finished it on vacation. As usual another great book by Karen Rose.

 

E.L. James
Fifty Shades of Grey
Finished it on vacation. I have to say I wasn’t very impressed with this book but … I am going to read the other 2 because I want to know how the story ends.

 

George R.R. Martin
A Game of Thrones, book one of a Song of Fire and Ice
Finished this yesterday. I didn’t expect it but I love it and the best part: there are 6 more books in this serie.

 

TV shows I watched last week

Mad Men, Downton Abbey, Touch, Once upon a time, King.

 

Have a lot of catching up to do on shows I recorded during our vacation.

Cross Stitching

This is what I worked on this weekend: Nefertiti.
I have finished ¾ of this work but still a lot to do before it’s finished.

This is how it will look once it's finished.