We’ve been back for about a week from our four-plus weeks of travel. As always, it’s a bit of a whirlwind from the beginning to the end. The end is always sad, not just because our travels are over, but also because we are returning to a Northern Hemisphere winter. And while that winter may have been relatively mild over the last few years, it’s still what it is, which is… WINTER. That means it’s cold, the heater will need to be on, the apartment will be dry, and we will have seasonal sadness at the short days, long nights, and cold temperatures. The reality is that January in the Northern Hemisphere is always bleak. The festivities and excitement around Christmas and New Year’s have ended. And everyone is getting back into their usual routine for the new year.

I hate to be trite about it, but one goal that has been a goal since September is trying to lose the excess weight I gained as a result of weaning off breastfeeding/pumping. I’m about five pounds off of where I want to be to get back to pre-pregnancy weight. So while I’ve never had a new year’s goal to lose weight, this time around, I actually do… it’s just that it happens to coincide with a new year.

I’m also trying to stop grinding my teeth at night… which is a hard goal, but one I’m attempting with “natural” methods. I’d been wearing a mouth guard for years, but I recently realized that it was digging in my gums and possibly making defects in my gums and teeth. I had a new mouth guard made and am having it adjusted so that it’s comfortable. But a mouth guard doesn’t prevent you from grinding; it simply protects against tooth damage from grinding. And the grinding has been having negative effects on me this last year: I have extreme cold sensitivity in three of my top teeth to the point where I can barely talk outside in this cold weather and not have my teeth hurt. The dentists are planning to apply a desensitizing treatment to those teeth tomorrow.

A tip that my childhood dentist gave me years ago to prevent the problem of grinding was to put a wine cork in between my front teeth and hold it there for 10-20 minutes before bedtime. I’d follow it with a jaw joint massage for a minute or so. This would supposedly relieve any jaw tension (we all have jaw tension) and prevent my jaws from wanting to clamp down while I’m sleeping and thus subconscious. I’ve been trying that since we came back from our trip, and I do notice that my jaw seems less tense when I wake up.

Other little goals I have this year: I want to make more soup, which also means making a lot of the traditional soups I grew up with, that I took for granted, that my grandma used to make. I’m sourcing places to find pork and beef bones to help out with this goal. Soup is nourishing for the soul, and especially during a cold winter, but I also want Kaia to be able to appreciate traditional Chinese and Vietnamese flavors in the form of this nourishing liquid. I also want to explore more Taiwanese cooking, regional Chinese cooking, and Vietnamese cooking. I’d like to start cooking for friends more the way I used to before the pandemic and before Pookster was born. We’ll likely just need to shift to lunch time parties rather than dinner parties given Pookster’s sleeping schedule, but we shall see how it goes.

I also want to start doing more activities with Kaia now that she’s getting older, more nimble, and has increasing awareness of her surroundings. I’d like to take her to the zoo, the aquarium, and do more arts and crafts and cooking. I’m looking forward to the day when she can help meal prep with me and have already bookmarked some toddler-safe practice knives on our Amazon list.

I still have my usual goal of reading about one book a month. January is a cold, hibernating month, so I tend to read the most books this month most years. I’ve already finished one book this month — a mystery/thriller novel called A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto. I decided on a Japanese author so that I could relive the sounds and sights of Japan.

More goals and things to do will follow, but these have been what’s on my mind for now.

Since we moved into this building in 2017, there is a small handful of faces I recognize who are still here, and we oftentimes will say hi and exchange pleasantries. One of these guys used to be in the gym with me pre-pandemic, but since then, he’s always sitting in our building lounge with a direct view of the elevators. So when I get off on that floor, which is the same level as our gym, he generally will always see me get on and off, and we’ll wave to acknowledge each other just to be friendly.

We happened to run into each other in the elevator today when I went to pick up Pookster from school. He asked me how my workouts have been going, and I told him that I might have overworked my legs yesterday because they are extremely sore today. Out of nowhere, he says, “Can I be honest, and I hope you aren’t offended… you have lost, so, SO much weight since last year and look great!”

I was so confused. What is he referring to? I haven’t lost weight since last year…? And then it suddenly hit me, AFTER I got out of the elevator: he likely confused this for when I was actually pregnant — you know, he probably thought I was fat when in reality, I was actually growing and carrying a BABY? Most people’s perceptions of time have been muddied from 2020 through now, so everything seems to blend.

Freakin’ men. Can’t live with them. Can’t live without them.

This time last week, I was getting a chest x-ray done at a radiology lab. The results got sent back to my pulmonologist’s office this week, but given he’s been out since he’s on vacation, no one has followed up with me, even his backup doctor (how nice). So I called the office today, when the receptionist said the backup doctor would be available to review the results with me, and the receptionist said we actually didn’t need to have me talk to the doctor because she could see the notes from the radiology lab on the x-ray: everything was normal.

I wasn’t sure whether to be happy about this or not. Obviously, I didn’t want to hear anything dire or terrifying (like a tumor or abscess) in my lungs. But I did want some understanding of why the heck I keep getting these stupid coughing fits. It’s clear now, after over three weeks of being ill, that the only symptom I have left is the coughing, which is occasionally accompanied by coughing attacks that result in vomiting up phlegm or a little food. That is not normal. No one has given me a real, easy to understand explanation of why this keeps happening. The ENT doctor telling me that it’s just recurring silent reflux when I get sick just is not helpful. Why can’t anyone help me understand this better….?

This morning, I made my way over to the east side once again for my ENT doctor visit. I have only ever had one ENT doctor visit, and that was almost six years ago after I lost my voice during a Hamilton Island/New Zealand trip and got another bad virus that also felt like it was going to kill me. I decided to go back to the same ENT since he already had my history, and I remember enjoying meeting with him. I thought he was quite friendly and smart, so why try someone new?

Somehow, after six years, this doctor still remembered me. He said he remembered my symptoms, voice, and face (how sweet). We talked through what’s been happening in the last six years, and once again, we did the dreaded laryngoscopy: he sprayed my nostrils with numbing spray and got me ready to thread yet another camera down my freaking throat. It lasted about 15 seconds, and somehow, it wasn’t as awful as I remember. After the exam, he told me I still had evidence of silent reflux. It may just be that I had always had it but was asymptomatic, and whatever virus I picked up six years ago just triggered it in me and drove me over the edge. He suggested that I try the following for the next three months (!!): Prilosec at least an hour before dinner; famotidine/Tums or Pepsid Complete before bed, and to elevate my head so that my throat was above my stomach at bed time. Somehow, being diligent this way had cured many of his other patients with the same recurring coughing fits when they had colds. And maybe, he said, I could be one of the lucky ones this works for. He insisted I do this for three months straight and be consistent about it; I had nothing to lose… other than all the money I’d have to spend on freaking Prilosec – NOT a cheap OTC medication!

I may just be more genetically inclined for this. I guess it makes sense: my maternal grandpa did die from choking on his own mucus when my mom was six. My mom gets mucus constantly.

Ughhhhhhhhhhh.