Yep, I used the term “hunky dory.”  Got your attention, didn’t it?  🙂  Just got back from my ASL class and it went great.  I am really enjoying it.  I get teased by my family about talking to myself (I’m actually thinking out loud rather than talking TO myself) and I realized on the drive home that I was doing that in ASL!  I guess that’s a good thing!   I really didn’t realize initially that I was doing it.  I still have a very long ways to go to communicate effectively in ASL, but I am starting to get a small base to work from, and it helps tremendously.  I still need lots of help coming up with the signs for the words I want to say, but it’s coming along.  It makes me want to practice practice practice.

The diet and exercise plan is really going great.  I’ve lost 16.3 lbs so far.  I can tell that my heart is already responding to the exercise in a positive way.  I am having to work a little harder to get my rate up to 130 whereas before, I was constantly having to work to get it DOWN to there! It is also recovering much more quickly when I do need to stop and let it go down.  Still have a long ways to go, but I’m really feeling good about it all so far.  I have been very surprised at how easy this has bee so far.  A friend recommended an app (thanks Louise!) that has helped me tremendously!  It keeps a running total of your calories so you always know how many you have used and how many you have left.  It also can search for the calorie content of foods or you can scan the UPC codes right into your phone.  I love that feature!  You can also find many restaurant foods on it which helps with planning meals out.  Overall, this is very doable for me and is working well.

I found some very interesting information today online.  I am signed up for “My Chart” with my clinic where you can access your test results and things online.  I was going through some of that stuff today and saw that the results of the heart stress test I had in 2010 were on there.  I was reading through the results and saw that they found something called an “atrial septal aneurysm.”   From what I gathered from various articles I googled on the topic, it seems that it is something that might not cause you any problems, but can make you more susceptible to strokes and that it has been linked with  several health problems, including clots in your arteries .  It looks like it is tends to run in families and is basically a mild abnormality of the heart.  There was one article that said there’s a possible link to blood clots in your whole system.  When I had they test done, they told me that everything looked normal.  No one mentioned this at all.  It might not be anything , but the information I read was enough to make me feel kind of excited that this might have something to do with all of the stuff that has happened.  I could definitely be wrong, but it’s worth asking the doctor about when I go later this month.  Who knows?

I’m thinking about Cody and Jessi’s upcoming wedding every day now!  I’m really getting excited.  Jessi and I got to spend some time together visiting yesterday, and it was so nice.  She and I have a friendship of our own, in addition to the fact that she’ll soon be my daughter-in-law and I love that!  Final details are in the works and I’m looking forward to a beautiful day of celebrating the beginning of a new family and the start of their life together.