After 30-Odd Years?! You've Got to Be Kidding Me

I am very determined to exercise. I hate it. But I must do it if I want to stay alive because regular exercise is one of the three keys to life with diabetes (the other two being diet and insulin). If I skip on one my quality of life suffers. I don't mind doing stuff, gardening, hiking, swimming, what have you, but I hate making myself exercise because when I have to do something all the enjoyment of the thing is gone. I can't enjoy my hike because I'm wondering how much sugar I'm burning off. And while exercise is necessary, it has an evil twist- at first sugar goes up. Exercise is an oxymoron; my sugar goes up so it can go down later in the long run. And THEN, there's a second evil twist- it can lower my sugar too much leaving me weak and confused. Exercise makes no sense what so ever.

You're probably wondering why I don't just keep busy and let exercise work itself out. It never works that way. I mean never. This weekend I planned to plant pumpkins. I still have to pull weeds and that's a ton of exercise, right? It rained. Well, whatever, I'll clean house instead. Except Kurt decided to be a good house-husband and he mopped, did laundry, and took care of the dogs. He stole my exercise from me and there wasn't anything left for me to do but cook and wash dishes which hardly causes me to break into a sweat.

Sunday morning I went for a long walk. My ankles started to itch. Both legs. I thought that was odd, but I just scratched my ankles and marched on. Then the backs of my knees started to itch. Hmmm. I headed back home. The itching worsened. It felt like the burning, stinging itch of poison ivy. I didn't understand at all, I was walking down a paved road, not ambling around the woods. I didn't see how anything could sting me through my jeans on both legs at the same time. The itching burned in a maddening way. I started getting really irritable. I called Kurt on my cell and snapped at him to come get me NOW. He was damn slow about it and I snapped his head off again for not letting me out before parking his truck.

I started undressing as soon as I entered the house. My legs were an ugly, splotchy red. I showered in cool water because hot water hurt. Then I applied powder and took an allergy pill. The itching stopped but I still couldn't figure out what happened. I suddenly had a memory of being a small child, crying on a hot day, and my mother telling me I had heat rash so we had to go inside.

When I was small, I got heat rash all the time. My mother carried a change of clothes and powder everywhere we went. All my clothes had to be cotton. I would always become cranky and that's how my mother knew. She'd carry me into another room and sure enough, ugly red covered my skin. I don't remember having heat rash after I got old enough to go to school so I thought I just grew out of it.

This weekend we had record breaking low temperatures. Kurt informed me that on this date in 1954 it was 50 degrees. Then he told me the current temp was 49. Sunday night he checked again and it was 48. I was glad we were in our warm little house. I wondered if it was wise to plant pumpkins. I wondered how long it would be cold. And how in the hell did I get heat rash on the coldest Sunday in May?

Today I took another walk. I wore shorts. I also had on a jacket because it's still cold. Before I had gone very far, my ankles started to burn. Maybe my socks aren't 100% cotton. I turned around. I was generous with the powder. I'm going to put a bottle in my truck and I'm thinking carefully about what to wear to work. As for exercise, I guess I'll have to find something I can do in the house- naked.