Coffee

I have now been off of caffeine for one whole week.  The shakes have calmed down and the other symptoms have almost disappeared.  But boy, do I want a cup of coffee. I have a hard time getting my car to drive past a Starbucks without going in.  :)

On Wednesday my knee felt so good I went out and did a bunch of errands.  That was the wrong thing to do.  I should have waited another day or two.  By the time I got home I could barely put any weight on that knee.  So I guess I'll give it more time.  It is so frustrating.  But as Bette Davis said: "Old age is not for sissies."

My patio has been overrun by centipedes and I am so scared of bugs.  I sure miss Marshall.  He was Chief Bug Killer.  But I guess every time I have to do something that freaks me out -- like spraying for centipedes -- it builds character.  Right?  So I sprayed twice and now when I go out the door there's a bunch of dead centipedes.  Still yukky but not like seeing the live ones.  I hope I have gotten rid of them.  So far I haven't seen any in the house -- thank goodness!!

There was a wasp's nest on the garage side of the townhouse and I've never had to get rid of a wasp's nest before (again, where is my Chief Bug Killer?).  But I guess I built more character.  I sprayed the nest for three consecutive nights and all the wasps are gone.  But I just can't bring myself to actually remove the empty nest.  Spraying was a little easier because I could do it from 20 feet away.  But I just can't get close enough to remove the nest.  Some day somebody will drop by and I will be able to talk them into doing it for me. (ha) In the meantime, I don't linger when going in and out of the garage.

July 22, 2015

Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of Marshall's death.  💔

Arthritis

Well, it turns out that doing a lot of kneeling in a 90-minute yoga class can cause a swollen bursa that brings a lot of pain.  I've been babying the right knee but finally went to the doctor for x-rays.  The right knee has two bone spurs on the right and one larger bone spur on the left and the bursa is swollen.  The doctor said the swollen bursa is normally caused by kneeling and the only kneeling I've done recently was in that yoga class.  The doctor advised me to stay away from yoga for the time being.

And last week I decided -- for the millionth time -- to give up coffee because it is causing me to have extreme tremors.  So I stopped coffee around the same time I took the yoga class.  Over the course of the next few days the tremors stopped, but I also developed extreme joint pain -- especially the hips -- and when I did some internet searches one thing that I came up with was caffeine withdrawal.  Caffeine withdrawal can cause a myriad of side effects that can last 7 to 14 days.  The sciatica has let up a bit so I'll wait it out and see what 14 days brings.

I did a bit more "surfing" and came up with a blog of someone who gave up caffeine and they were recording each day of withdrawal.  Sciatic pain was at the top of his list.  But he included a little blurb that I thought was hilarious:

Once upon a time everyone woke up and all the coffee in the world had vanished. In the next week all companies went bankrupt except panadol and ibuprofen. Everybody got divorced or killed someone. Nobody blogged or did any study. Children took over the world and the remaining parents didn't care about that or anything else. The end.