Hot and Healthy – Thriving Through Menopause One Pound at a Time – Day 65-67, April 15- April 17, 2024

Sometimes it is hard to get motivated.  

Right now, I am in a slight bit of depression due to something that came up at the shrinks office. Maybe writing about it will get it out of my system. 

In 2015 we left PA for FL for warmer weather. Our house had not sold so we rented it out and the tenants let us know that, in a few years, they would like to buy it. Fast forward to December 2019. I am offered a position at the Humane Society of St Thomas in the Caribbean, where I would also be allowed to do my accounting work. 

DREAM JOB. 

That’s it. Dream fucking job. 

Hubby and I fly to St Thomas to check it out in Feb of 2020. You can see where this is going, right? We peruse the island(s), decide we can do this, meet with the appropriate people, I have this job. It is MINE. 

The tenants are dragging their feet with the purchase of the PA house and we need to get a lawyer and finalize this sucker, which caused a huge drag down between me and hubby. He wanted to wait it out longer, I did not. It had been 18 months since the first agreement to purchase the property. It should have closed in less than 6 months. I was done. We had also now put our FL home up for sale and it sold in a week. 

As of March 1, 2020, we had both houses sold, I had a job in St. Thomas, we were selling our stuff and packing up. 

March 9, 2020, we had a contractor laying tile in a guest room and he mentioned he had to leave on time to go with his wife to stock up on supplies. Huh? WTF? Why? He told us about what he had heard about this sickness. 

We were stunned and went the next day and stocked up on supplies as well. A couple of weeks, how long could this last? We had to be out of the house by about 5/1 I think, worst case. 

As much as we were hearing about this, I was kind of in denial in the beginning about how bad Covid would be. I thought the same as most, “It’s a bad flu”. Then people started dying in the nursing homes, alone, without family or friends.  

We got masks, stocked up on TP, bought sanitizer, and quarantined for almost two years. 

Less then three weeks into Covid, my friend in St Thomas called and told us to tell us to stay away. Their hospital system sucked.. so do not come. We did not. We were also now “homeless”.  

Stuck in FL, the state was on initial lockdown for rentals and such, we could not find a place to stay. Luckily a client of mine had a friend, who had a friend, who got us a rental. With a pool. Ok, so the house had a spider problem. Like I was killing between 8 and 30 a day, for four months, but it had a pool. 

But what to do now? Where to go? 

When we realized Covid was going to last a while, we decided 2 more years in FL wouldn’t be the worst thing so we looked for a cheap place we could fix up and sell while we waited Covid out. 

We found a place quickly, but it needed everything. Roof, electric, plumbing, floors...pick it, we had to fix it and, again, because of Covid, it was not easy to do by ourselves. Eighteen months later though and we had it done. It even had a coffee bar. 

Between selling the 2 houses, Covid, losing St Thomas, etc., hubby and I were starting to have issues. Rebuilding a house can be tough on couples and it was on us. Time went quickly and due to the political climate in FL, we chose to leave as soon as we were able, so we bolted and headed for West Canada. We were going to hang out with our friends for a year, but that got thwarted too because of something Hubby did in his early 20’s. So, we had to pivot again, and we drove to Southern California where we hung out for a few weeks deciding what to do and where to go. 

Side note: It was during this stay in Manhattan Beach, CA that we met and became friends with Ray Stevenson, who sadly passed last year. 

St. Thomas was not my dream island, but the opportunity, the location...it was perfect for me but there was no going back at this point. My dream island(s) is and always will be Hawaii, so we decided to more here. 

While it is everything I had hoped for, it is also no longer the Hawaii I knew and loved growing up. Everything changed when they closed the REAL International Marketplace on December 31, 2013, and replaced it with high end shops that no normal people can afford. 

We have been here two years, and we get just one more, but we don’t know where we are going next. A year can change a lot of things, right? 

I have no idea where we will go or what we will do but I’m hoping for an adventure before I get too old. 

Now do all of this with MENOPAUSE. 

Where are we today? Ok, so writing it out did something but not enough. I still feel like crying, like I need to mourn the loss of something that now happened four years ago. Seems like a waste of time with the consequence of swollen and puffy eyes, which I already have from lack of sleep.  

I’m changing my weigh in days to Tuesday mornings. Hubby’s weekend is Tuesday/Wednesday so I tend to use those as my rest days for an in home workout. This week, and last, we went to the beach both days and got some sun. I was also able to go swimming for a bit, the water is still a touch cold, but the sun was out, and the winds were calm. Not the workout I would normally do in the water but it’s a start. Probably starting in May, I can swim in the water for 2 hours or more hunting for sea glass and doing the breaststroke. Amazing exercise if you can get it. So, in the future my “weekends” will be spent outside now that winter has ended. 

On Monday I did this workout which I liked a lot. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aFNVtPi2m4&t=16s 

And, I really LOVE doing this on a daily basis with my physical therapy: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChYOlljDZ8s 

The next time I jump on here I want to discuss Whey protein shakes verses Vegan Protein shakes versus everything else. I have learned a lot about this recently and you should know this information if you are trying to stay healthy, build muscle and lose weight. 

One pound at a time. Ladies. One pound at a time.