I’m not sure why I keep paying for hosting or to keep this domain since I just don’t really feel the need to blog like I used to. I’m just too busy. Edward and I both leave for work at 12:20 PM and catch the bus and by the time I get home at 11 PM and take my insulin, change and head out in the car to pick Eddie up for Midnight and drive home it is almost 12:40 AM. We sleep 7 or 8 hours get up and do it all over again. That’s been the last year and a few months in a nutshell.

At first I was working 3 PM to 11 PM and was able to get discounted Parking at $76 a month but then I requested an earlier shift at my doctors suggestion to help regulate when I ate supper and had my afternoon and evening breaks before and after supper because I was on both short and long acting insulin. Testing my Blood Sugar when I woke up and went to bed and before and one hour after every meal. They put me on a 1:45 PM to 9:45 PM shift with a 3 PM break, 5 PM lunch and 7:30 PM break which works out pretty nicely except that now I get to work about 1 to 1:15 Pm because I like being early and discount parking doesn’t start till 2 PM at Scotia Square’s Parkade. So I switched to taking the bus back and forth to work as the non-discounted parking is something like $200 a month with taxes.

It means using less gas, less wear and tear on the car and also more walking (walking to the bus stop, being outside more) and generally getting a bit more exercise so that part is a plus but I have to leave at 12:20 PM to get there by 1:08 PM for my 1:45 and when I leave at 9:45 the next bus is not till 10:23 PM which gets me home about 11 PM. So it’s a bit of a trade off. Bus passes are like $78 a month so only $2 more then parking. It’s just I could have left around 12:45 and got home by 10:15 If I drove.

There is no like work vs life balance really. Our weeks are taken up so much by work and getting to and from work that we have time for nothing else. When I worked at a place that had free parking and when I was on day or rotating shifts I found I could typically get more time to have a life and do things on the days I worked. So right now we are really living for the weekends lol.

I shouldn’t really complain. I get paid more then most people I know, more then my husband by about $6 an hour and because of me we have health benefits that cover 80% and dental that covers 90%. As well as I have short term disability benefits that cover 100% for a certain number of weeks and then 66.67% for the remainder until I am back at work and since I have been hospitalized twice since I started working there a little over a year ago and had to go on short term benefits 3 times in a year and 3 months I am really extremely lucky there.

Because of my benefits I was able to get this. It’s been’s a wonderful tool to have, the Freestyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system. After installing the sensor on the back upper arm you can just scan it whenever you want to see what your blood sugar is. Took me a little bit to get the hang of using it but now I use it almost exclusively and only test when it shows I am rapidly going low or high and even then when going low I know it. I can feel it and can act to catch it before it happens because the arrow shows me going low and then within minutes I feel symptoms. I admit I scanned like 35 times a day in the beginning. I was paranoid it was not working as I didn’t understand the 10-15 min delay and how to spot trends but now I can accurately use it to dose. Even though I still use my Contour Next One to double check.

I was able to bring my A1C down from 8.2% to 6.1%. With 8.2 that means my average blood sugar was about 11.9 mmol/l (215 mg/dl) and I brought it down to 6.1 which means average of 7.8 mmol/l (140 mg/dl). My target right now is I would like to get below 5.6% for my A1C and keep it there. But as with a lot of diabetics it will likely fluctuate I will likely go up and sometimes down. I just have to really use the Freestyle Libre and I am also going to try signing up for and using the LibreView software which I am going to sign up for after this blog post to see if I can figure it out. There is so much more I can be doing with it like recording insulin, carbs, exercise and using the charts to determine where I need to make more changes.

At the beginning of this post I said I don’t know why I keep paying for hosting and keep this domain but maybe I can use it to connect with other bloggers who are diabetic either type 1 or 2. I always loved the support you could receive in the blogging community and have been blogging for over 18 years. In fact I bought this domain in 2008 though I do not remember the month so this blog is now in it’s 10th year or almost in it’s 10th year! Wow