In closing I would like to say...

To all my wonderful readers (aka my personal friends):

With the sleep apnea diagnosis and my use of the CPAP machine, I no longer consider myself disabled. I've retrained my body to be able to walk on a treadmill and drive, I'm back to being able to read for school every day, and I've just landed two freelance jobs.

Because of all these other commitments, I'm going to step down from this blog for the foreseeable future. I leave you with the following fun facts:

1) I have plans to meet with Middle Eastern "S" on Sunday -- a 26-year-old recent immigrant student looking for a road trip buddy,

2) I've been emailing back and forth with Pacific Islander "R" -- a hard-working painter, musician, writer who is recovering from war injuries,

3) And I'm planning to ask my white massage therapist "C," who will be biking from Alaska to Argentina, if he wants to join me for tango lessons (with my new and improved, functional body!).

I end this blog with some questions answered. I now know that men chomp at the bit to devirginize a woman no matter how old she is. I know, through my roommate's successful relationship that blossomed through OkCupid, that sometimes men just aren't very photogenic and if there's any inkling that they might look better in person than on the computer screen, I should give them a chance. Lastly, I learned that right when you think your health won't improve... Bam!... you get an answer.

So, lovely readers, don't give up on yourself and don't give up on love. Laugh at those first dates that don't work out, don't try to change an elusive man, and it's okay to cry over things that don't work out, as long as you dry your tears and get back up, fighting.

It's an uphill climb

A couple weeks ago I tried to exercise in the condo complex's gym. I had been there a few times before, but making the trek up a somewhat steep incline in order to use the only machine I can, and limiting myself to daylight hours when I sleep twelve and am up in the early afternoon, led to a somewhat difficult exercise schedule. On this particular day I woke up "early" and walked to the gym three times in three hours only to find someone on the treadmill each time. On my fourth trek over the gym was finally empty, but my key failed to work for some inexplicable reason. I came home in a tizzy and bought a compact treadmill on Amazon. Turns out, it might not have been the best idea.

My goal with all of this is to work my legs and stay in shape. Walking is always said to be the best exercise for fibromyalgia sufferers. If I could walk at all hours of the day I would, but living in the rainy Pacific Northwest, and being somewhere where you don't feel completely safe walking by yourself at night, makes getting consistent walking into each day difficult. Hence, the treadmill.

Turns out that I have only been able to use the treadmill two or three times in the two weeks that I've had it. This isn't due to time restraints but because my legs must be feeling 100% in order to walk on something that moves without my moving it. Really, I should have known. Somehow I thought it would be a good replacement for the exercise bike I had on the East coast, but that little variation between walking on something that moves on its own and pushing pedals to move something that doesn't makes all the difference in whether I can use the equipment or not. This inability to use something that moves on its own translates as well to wheelchairs and cars. Sure, in a wheelchair you push a button and in a car you push a pedal, but my brain doesn't understand that I am actually in control of the machine. Instead it only lets me move when I am doing the moving. This is ironically especially true in flareups when I can barely move at all. Hence, I trudge up steps instead of taking elevators. I carry a shopping basket instead of pushing a cart because moving something with my arms and not my legs doesn't count to my befuddled brain.

Fortunately I am good at reselling items for a fractional monetary difference of what I purchased them for. Now the question is, do I get an exercise bike at 1/4 the price of the treadmill and go back to that form of exercise, or do I trust my legs to get me through a summer of walking now that the weather is getting nicer and the days are lasting longer? I'm thinking the latter. Bring on the sun.