Life Without Cheese

And Other Events Since July 18 (For Real This Time)

Happy Solar Eclipse Day! This is perfect for today - I'm talking about cheese and my path - perhaps my path of totality.

Moon made of cheese, Total Eclipse

Once again, it has been more than a month since I have posted. Ugh.

I have written pages and pages in my head but haven't been able to make myself sit down at the computer and type. I'll say this: pneumonia recovery is intense; pneumonia recovery with the stress of borrowing money to pay bills, meeting with attorneys to discuss lost job and severance docs and attempting to file for unemployment benefits (mostly an exercise in frustration) is painful and overwhelming.

I'm going to try to not make this a whine fest. I'm struggling with that lately. I'm letting everything get to me and feeling like a failure most days when most of my life I have been an upbeat, positive, glass half full, PollyAnna Glad kind of girl.

Since my last post, lots and lots of ups - improvement in my health. I still sleep 9-10 hours a night (this for a lifelong 5-6 hour a night sleeper sounds crazy) but I haven't been napping during the say along with that sleep. I want to most days but it's not required as it was for two months. I turned a corner about a week ago - more energy, more color in my face and the lung exerciser (you know the weird plastic contraption where you have to keep the ball between the lines while getting the plunger to rise) is much easier now and stairs no longer cause a panic.

I have run - well walk/run - 3 times this week. Two to three miles. I'm as sore as if I had run a marathon - not kidding. For my running friends, I walk downstairs sideways. At night, I am coughing more, but from what I have read, I will likely have mucus created by the pneumonia for several months. Mucus is the enemy of asthma so I'm watchful of my peak flow numbers and how my lungs are feeling. B is incredibly watchful - he is very observant of my breathing and my purple lip when it shows up and takes better care of me than I do of myself. 💓

Eating - here's the cheese part. I miss cheese. I'm pretty sure I will always miss cheese. Dr. Trudy says I will likely not be able to have it again - at least not without consequences. I don't think I will get over not having cheese. I likely will get over having wheat and gluten - though I Do miss sandwiches and beer. As of Aug. 13, I made it two months on the elimination diet and ultra supplements including my daily shake (sometimes twice a day). I was supposed to only have one month left before the great adding back experiment began but Dr. Trudy thinks because of the pneumonia-steroids-antibiotic gut set back, I should add another month before I start the experiment. The experiment involves eating three servings of a banned food in one day and waiting 72 hours for any effects. You might remember I have 34 banned foods. If each food only takes the three days (in that it doesn't make me so sick I need more time to get over it), that's 102 days.

There are worse things and I feel better. My gut feels better. My brain feels better. My body is on the mend. I imagine I would be feeling pretty tremendous by now had I not gotten pneumonia.

Other happenings

My other sailboat is dead. My wooden sailboat - named Sloopy but I had another name chosen. I won't share it because I never put her in the water and conducted the name changing ceremony. I had to destroy her and throw her away. I went to move the boat from one storage spot to another and she had rotted out. My friend Karl and I figured out how to keep her local by chopping her up and dropping her at the local recycling center. That was July 19.

Since then, I have seen some beautiful sunsets; taken a couple of boat rides; had a couple of meltdowns - over feeling like a failure, questioning my existence, upset I still have barrel belly; made some fun food, watched a lot of HGTV and FOOD; discovered a decently yummy but weird vegan gluten free mac and cheese; had some very nice chats, texts, prezzies, coffee visits, boat visits and words of encouragement from lovely friends; packed and unpacked from my missed trips; celebrated B's birthday; and found more restaurants and kind chefs to put up with all my eating restrictions.

I have figured out a new path or a new path to begin the path of totality - more on that later. I'm excited and nervous. It's not traditional. I can keep getting well and do it. I might need a part-time job for a bit to go along with it. That's enough information for now. 

I made quinoa and roasted tofu stuffed poblano peppers

Those are sun dried tomatoes

From Jeri

I made edame hummus stuffed endive with seared tuna and scallions

The Heart and Home Update

An Overdue Post, Pneumonia and Finding New Paths

This post is a month overdue - since the first writing before posting, I wanted to mull it over more and show it to B since I was spewing stream of consciousness about love, life, relationships. My thoughts were about what I want, what I'm realizing I want or have always been searching for. I am hopeful the relationship I'm in is as described instead of how I seem to have worded the post - still looking. I'm not looking outside of the current state of B and K.

This post also is a month overdue because on June 22, I was fired - part of restructuring and downsizing but since I won't be called back, my profession calls this a firing. I was fired after 16 years as a financial journalist at a company at the top of the industry. Shocked doesn't do my feelings justice. I was trying to recover from an asthma exacerbation when I got the call - your job no longer exists as of this moment.

While reeling from this sudden change in my life, I contracted pneumonia, made a 4 a.m. visit to the ER on July 6 - a few hours later I was supposed to fly to Kentucky for a family reunion set around my grandaddy's 90th birthday. Obviously, I didn't get to go and have mostly been in bed since that day.


I'll miss another summer trip starting this weekend - B's family vacation in the Outer Banks. He feels comfortable enough now leaving me here this Friday but fears for me trying to travel there in a weakened state, weakened immune system (airports, planes, babies, overexertion that's sure the ensue, no hospitals nearby). My doctor today agreed. She said if I were to catch something on the plane, it would cause a real set back and possibly land me in the hospital. "You know this," she said. I do - I just don't like it and I'm bummed.

B has been a rock, as Jess put it, and I completely agree. Taking amazing care of me. I haven't driven and have barely left the house in the past 12 days. Doctors  - and my Mom who had pneumonia in December - say this is to be expected.  At least a month before I'll have any decent energy and months more before I'm 100%. My doctor today said I'm on track in my misery - chest pain, still coughing, exhausted, no appetite, toddlers can beat me walking. That's going to go on for a while, she said.

I have kept up with my new functional-medicine-directed regimen - as B says, it probably is helping a lot that I had a month in my system.

Today was a big day - I visited Oscar at Wake Up Marco, I walked the 1/4 mile home from there after B dropped me off. I slowly climbed the stairs at my home. showered. drove my car, went to the drugstore and the grocery store. Now, I'm pooped beyond believe and I suspect I'll sleep for the next two days.

So here you go - two posts in one. Below is a post I wrote in June. Lots of heart in here. Lots of head stuff going on too. New paths ahead - no idea when I will find them  (or they find me) or where they will take me. And that's OK. I'm ready - or perhaps I will be after I recover from pneumonia, after I get my already started path toward health back on track and after settle things with my old job and feel like I can move forward.

Stuff that Runs Through My Head (You've Been Warned)

Floating in the blue-green waves of the Gulf of Mexico recently, I thought about something my older sister Michelle said to me a few months ago. Chelle said she feels certain there's some purpose in life that hasn't found her yet. I have been thinking a lot about that because my sister is someone to admire.

Chelle put herself through nursing school while raising four children and working full time, as was her husband. Their four children are wonderful humans - the youngest just graduated from high school; one is in college; the oldest - my godchild - is a teacher and mother of two boys; and the fourth was in the Army and now is in the reserves, is married to his high school sweetheart and is about to be a father. Chelle is a caregiver to everyone whether at work or outside of it. She is a two-cancer survivor. She has run two marathons (one I ran with her!) And she's a grandmother (a very young one) who enjoys every second with her grandbabies.

And this amazing woman thinks she should be doing more in the world. Well that certainly makes me an utter failure. I'm divorced. I didn't do what I set out to do journalistic-ally - though I enjoy(ed) what I am doing in that realm.  I have no children. I don't even have a pet.  I have no one committed to share my life with, no one who is committed to creating and walking a path with and me with him. No one who I have committed to love and adore and who has committed to love and adore me. Michelle's and husband Jeff certainly do - oh sure they bicker and disagree sometimes but seriously you should see them together. There is zero doubt. I haven't finished my condo. My finances remain a mess. I haven't learned to sail. I let a con artist break my heart and take my money. Yep - I have failed in comparison for sure.

I have always tried not to compare myself with others but to just be myself. It's just - reflecting on my life now, at this point, I'm wondering where it leads. So many people look at my social media and say - oh Kyle, you sure live the life.

I have managed to move somewhere that many would be envious of - there are many TV shows dedicated to just that. But would they trade their current location filled with family and friends for the vacation location and for the hope of being healthy? They might if it were with the their true love and partner. I did it alone. To be fair, I see my family more since I moved to Florida than I did living in North Carolina or New Jersey. I of course wish we lived closer but that's not where life and work took me.  I miss my amazing friends in New Jersey (especially my hockey girls) and North Carolina and Kentucky and Ohio (that one is you Jeri).

I have made wonderful friends here - though we don't see each other often. I'm not part of that sense of community - but maybe that takes time. I don't go to or have dinner parties, pool parties, weekly get-togethers. Part of that, I think, is that our community is made up mostly of families and baby boomers. In NJ, I hung out with all my close friends' families. Perhaps I just need to live here longer to make those closer relationships.

I always thought I would be building a life WITH someone. I'm very independent - and yet I want a my friends partner too. I guess I'm needy too  - see all my health issues and all the support B has given me. Couldn't have gotten through without him. And he certainly shows me everyday that he cares deeply about me. But aside from that, I need someone to love and be loved by. I need someone to hold hands with. I need someone to plan with, look to the future with, travel with, have intelligent conversations with and snuggle with, comfort and be comforted by.

Doesn't everyone want this?

Doesn't everyone want to shout from the rooftops - I'm with this person. I love him and he loves me?!

Does it matter where you live as long as you are together? Do you find the perfect place together?

I'm a romantic. Yes, you can be independent, strong, feminist (that just means equal, people) and athletic and still be a romantic. My favorite movies are love stories: "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Sharade,"Sweet Home Alabama," "Sabrina," "The Quiet Man," "The Bishop's Wife," "To Catch a Thief," "An Affair to Remember," "The Notebook," "Gone With the Wind," "The Princess Bride," "Casablanca," and many more.

I want that.

**I can totally see how I wrote this - a little sad, a little what if. I think that's ok. I don't doubt B or us. I also don't doubt future heartbreak is possible. That is the chance I'm - we're - taking. It's part of the journey.