My Blogs are Moving! - March 2025

I’ve spent the last couple of days looking around at WordPress and I’ve decided that I’m going to move my blogs over there. I won’t delete what I’ve posted here, but I will no longer be doing reviews, weight loss progress or high thoughts on Blogger.

If you still want to follow me and/or read my various blog posts, please feel free to visit the new blogs.

High Thoughts ⟫ is my medicated by cannabis thoughts!

SKM Loses It! ⟫ follows my weight loss journey following my VSG surgery in November 2024

Book_Endz ⟫ will have my book reviews featuring arcs from Gay Romance Reviews, Foreword PR, BookSirens, Indie Author Creative and various authors.

If WordPress isn’t to your taste then thank you for the time you’ve spent with me – I hope you’ve enjoyed being part of my little blog empire.

Stay safe, stay kind and stay well

SKM

Cough, Cough, Whoops!

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 151 | IGW ⟫ 139.5

Transition to Normal Food⟫ Ongoing

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been sick on and off ever since the surgery. This past week, I have been struggling with a wracking cough that has grown progressively worse. I was planning on trying to get a doctor’s appointment to discuss my blood test results anyway but got kinda derailed as Book_grim already had an appointment booked which meant Stripes wouldn’t be available to help me.

Anyhow, things got worse over the course of the day on Thursday and I ended up filling in the form on NHS 111 Direct. They then called and asked a few questions and then said I needed to go to the Urgent Care Treatment Centre over in West Bromwich to be seen, just to be sure.

We pre-booked a TOA cab and made sure to say any car, and to be fair, it did turn up on time. We got there just a little after 8.30pm (the appointment time we were given was 8.30) and didn’t have to wait long to be seen. I feel a little chastised because he asked me a couple of times why I hadn’t gone to my Doctor about the cough previously – he was right, the girls were right, they were all right – I should have tried to get in with the doctor much sooner.

Anyway, he reckons it’s a chest infection so has prescribed antibiotics and steroids, with the strict warning that if things get worse over the weekend I am to go to A&E. Stripes and I also had a bit of a chat about how worried she and Book_grim have been about me with the light-headedness, not being able to catch my breath, etc and we decided we needed a code word for when someone wasn’t allowed to brush things off and had to take them seriously. Pterodactyl. Hopefully, we won’t have to use it in the foreseeable future.

Book_grim is off to Asda today (yes, I stayed up all night but my chest really hurts and this cough is driving me insane) and said she will pick up my prescription. I feel rotten because in the back of my mind I’m worrying about whether she’ll forget to pick it up or has some other issue. She doesn’t like the pharmacy next to the Doctor’s surgery because the people there aren’t very nice, so I can’t really ask her to go there instead.

In between acting as Patient Advocate for both me and Book_grim, Stripes made some protein cheesecakes. I believe she used this recipe here as a base, then used sugar free digestive biscuits to make the base. She used two different toppings: maple syrup on some and salted caramel sauce on some others, whilst she left a few blank. The whole recipe made 8 cheesecakes using the old GLU fancy yoghurt jars that Book_grim used to get as a treat!

They definitely have the texture of cheesecake but they weren’t mega-flavourful and definitely not what I would call sweet, which is odd because Stripes felt like she had to add a lot of granulated sweetener. We’re going to experiment with that – we have skinny syrups, peanut butter powder and various protein powders to play with. Very filling and counts as a full meal even though it’s around 171 kcal per portion with 11.3 g of protein – actually less calories than the ones from MyProtein. Next time, we might try using cottage cheese instead of Greek yoghurt, but I don’t recall ever having cottage cheese before and am a little unsure about the texture. I say next time We but it was Stripes doing all of the work! I imagine she looked a bit like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, slaving away on these new recipes!

We’ve booked the restaurant for Book_grim’s 21st birthday lunch with Mom, Vee and Shar, and The Oldest is travelling up to be there too!! It would be nice if Book_grim would give me a clue what she actually wants for her birthday, but there are a couple of birthdays ahead of hers so I can nag them first. And of course, there is Mother’s Day later this month and I need to figure out what to get for someone who insists they don’t want anything but would pout for a decade if we didn’t get her at least a little something!

Since it’s nearly 8 am, I might as well stay awake and see if I can get a Doctor's appointment for the cholesterol thing, just to make sure I’m on top of everything. And then I plan to spend the day sleeping, reading ARCs and playing with WordPress!

And into March 2025 we go...

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 151.1 | IGW ⟫ 139.5

Transition to Normal Food⟫ Ongoing

I wonder if it’s possible for me to start the month with a cheerful post? Don’t expect miracles, especially with this post.

So let’s see, I lost the grand total of 1.4 kgs over February which I found really disheartening. I should have been happy to hear from my weight management team that I am doing ‘good’ and am well within the numbers they would expect, but instead it got me wondering if I was going to need a revision to a bypass in order to get to a ‘normal’ weight. I can’t imagine going through the surgery stage of this all over again – I’m even thinking excess skin removal is not something I want to go through because it looks so incredibly painful. I know some people use GLP-1s after surgery to assist with food noise and further weight loss so maybe that’s something I’ll have to look into at a later date – a much later date.

Stripes took my first day of the months photos and I spent a little while looking at them. I think it is possible to see differences in some areas, but it’s also depressingly easy to see all of the places I need to work on.

I’ve been walking around the car park again, fortunately without incident. I have been going alone and using my crutches for stability, but my pace has crept up a little which is good. Food-wise, I’m wondering whether I need to change things up a bit. I have been drinking at least 60 oz of protein water per day and thinking I could swap one of those for plain water, just to see if it makes a difference. I guess it’s that balance between getting all of my fluids in and avoiding dehydration AND getting my protein goals in.

I think I also need to look at my daily food. Basically, by the time I wake up I seem to ‘decide’ that there’s no point having breakfast, which means my first meal is generally dinner. Then I have a yoghurt, a myprotein cheesecake and the protein water. I sometimes have string cheese or babybel but even though I’m reaching between 800 and 1200 calories, I don’t think it’s very balanced. There’s very little fresh produce in there and the weight loss isn’t happening. So maybe I need to shake things up? I’m hoping that I get to speak to a dietician at some point this month and I will bring it up with them.

March is looking busy. We have an assessment on 4th for some equipment around the flat – a new hand rail in the toilet next to the kitchen to help me get up, as well as possibly some handrails outside the flat for when I enter and exit. Stripes is out for a blood test on 4th but should be back before the assessment. I also have a Mamedica appointment on Tuesday because I tried to put through a repeat prescription and apparently I need to talk to them before they’ll let me have any more. It’s a good thing – I realised that I have packets of ‘old’ weed going back to December 2023 and I need to know how to safely get rid of them. I’m out of Farm Gas and Sourdough and am using the Morroccan peach to get to sleep, which isn’t the most effective but at least it’s better than the Lot 420.

I’m tired as all heck and also feeling a bit meh. I used one of the MicroLax things last week and was beginning to feel a bit better, but now I’m back to feeling all bunged up. The wind has also not improved very much, which is another reason I might need to look at what I’m eating. I’ve finished all of the knitting I was doing – I have a little bit of wool left over but not enough to plan a project or anything like that. Ah well, I do have a couple of books to read, and we have the finale for Mayfair Witches to watch tonight. I think I’m gonna settle down to do some reading and chill.