Remember the nice guy who helped me with buying my bed a few weeks back? Well, yesterday I went out to the mailbox and sitting in it was a thank you note from that nice gentleman, along with a 20%-off coupon for my next purchase at Mattress World!! Now, it's not likely I'll be purchasing another bed before October, but STILL. How NICE was that?

The funny thing is, since buying the bed and having the very good experience with the people at MW, I've talked to several people who've had BAD experiences with them. Of course, their bad experiences were at different stores from the one I went to, so I guess it truly all depends upon where you go and who you meet when you get there.

I've been feeling pretty blah the last few days. I had to go into the office for a meeting this morning and, as it has the last few times I've done it, it totally exhausted me. Of course, I didn't get to bed early enough and thus didn't get a lot of sleep so that didn't help at all. On the upside, though, I did get to have lunch with one of my dearest friends and I picked up the docking station for my work laptop.

Of course, I had to set up my new workstation when I got home, and despite being pooped, I worked at it for a little while before dragging the laptop back to bed with me and finishing up the day's work there.

This evening, despite the fatigue, I decided to give a yoga DVD a try. My aunt had sent me 7 or 8 DVDs and 3 or 4 videos a few months back, along with one of those nifty exercise balls that's supposed to help improve core strength. I've done a lot of yoga in my time (though not with any degree of regularity or any kind of frequency), but I've never done any work with the exercise ball. So I pulled out "On the Ball with Sara Ivanhoe: Yoga Workout for Beginners" and stuck that in the DVD player. In the process of trying to follow along with the video, I discovered a few things:
1) I'm still pretty flexible, though not nearly as flexible as I once was.
2) The left side of my body is ridiculously stiff. Not surprising considering that's where most of the MS symptoms have been occurring
3) I need a yoga mat.
4) The damned ball is both helpful and hurtful: helpful because it provides a measure of stability that I couldn't otherwise get; hurtful in that it allows a really deep stretch that will likely result in me not being able to move tomorrow.
5) After doing the DVD workout, I'm feeling much less fatigued than I was earlier!!

Although discover #3 seems like a no-brainer, particularly considering I was doing the workout on hardwood floors, I am actually much more surprised and heartened by #5: if 45 minutes of easy, relatively low-impact yoga can help improve my energy level, what would several 45-minute workouts a week do??

By now I know better than to set myself up for failure by trying to do too much right out of the gate: my guess is I'm going to wake up stiff and sore tomorrow and unable to move. But if I continue to walk daily with Rennie and do yoga a few times a week, maybe I can get some strength and flexibility back along with better stamina! (Confidential to ACJ: you were right!)

And, last but not least...my dog gets territorial over cold, cooked broccoli. Last night, my friend Fran came over for dinner and in addition to a crock-potted turkey breast (the only way to cook when it's hot out!) and rice, I steamed some broccoli in one of my new pots with the steamer insert. (Worked great!) We ate most of the broccoli ourselves but I gave a couple little pieces to Rennie. She gobbled them right up, so I saved the last couple left-over stems for her breakfast today. Well, when I put it down for her this morning she started gobbling it up so fast I thought she was going to choke. When I went over to check on her she growled at me! I couldn't believe it. For a minute I thought she might be guarding the two little pieces of turkey I'd included but no - she'd eaten those. She was getting all aggressive over broccoli. Yeah, you read that right! There wasn't even any cheddar on it or anything!

Such a weird dog. :) (She ended up fine and had no trouble wolfing the rest of it down - but not before I insisted she drop the broccoli and let me pick up her bowl. She's a good girl - and I do insist she does what I say when it comes to food-bowl aggression!)

Oh, I almost forgot: the best news I got all day was that my new duvet cover should be arriving tomorrow! Yahoo!! As soon as it arrives I'll put it on the bed and snap a photo. I can't wait!