​If you have been a follower of my Healthy Playful Living blog for a while, you may have noticed that I stopped posting a few months ago.
When I first started this blog several years ago, I was in a very different place in my life. I was “In the Before”. Before the cancer came into our lives and changed everything.
Writing on the Healthy Playful Living blog helped me get through many of those times. But it did not feel the same anymore. Eventually I realized because I was not the same person anymore.
So I started toying around with the idea of starting a new website that was more in line with where my life is now.
Back in September, I jumped in and bought my own domain name and started working on a new website. After toying around with several names, I ended up choosing to just go with my own name.
That way, no matter where I am in my life, it will still apply to me. Plus I feel like I have spent a lot of time trying to find myself the last couple of years.
Hope to see you visiting me on my new website: www.tracyhinton.com! 

​Monday update
I shared my plan last week to start tracking and writing down my blood sugar and food again. So I started yesterday and I am happy to report that I wrote down my breakfast, lunch, and supper blood sugars as well as the food that I ate yesterday.
This morning I head to a work meeting so it will be a little more challenging the next few days. I will just do the best I can.
As for my heels, my mom reminded me of soaking in Epsom salt and I have been doing that the last couple of days. It seems to be helping some, so send up some prayers that I can resume exercising soon. I’m a little annoyed at myself that I hadn’t thought of that already.
Thank you to all who have prayed for me since last week’s post. 

​I’ve really been on the struggle bus the last few months. Covid knocked me off my two year exercise accomplishment. The fatigue from the Covid lasted FOREVER! I mean, I was taking 3-4 hour naps every weekend just trying to feel human. In May, I was starting to feel like I might be coming out of the fatigue when we had a death in the family. Grief tends to cause fatigue as well. So…I haven’t been doing much of the things that help me take care of myself. I haven’t been exercising, I haven’t been writing much, my food choices haven’t been as healthy, and just for the icing on the cake, my heel spurs have reared their ugly heads and it hurts to take a step. So today, I am working to make a plan to take better care of myself.
As much as I dislike tracking my food and blood sugar numbers, the truth is that I tend to eat better when I do both. So starting Monday, I’ll be writing my food and blood sugar down in a little notebook. I’ve found that I do better using a little notebook than I do tracking it electronically. I will check in periodically next week to let you know how it’s going. It will be a challenge because I have a lot of work stuff going on next week. I may also need to set up a different form of accountability to help me reset this habit.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! 

Something for my poor neglected blog...lol

​I Wished...

I wished upon a dandelion,
I wished upon a star,
I wished upon a candle,
I wished with all my heart.
I wished for one more day,
I wished for one more week,
I wished for one more lifetime,
I wished to hear you speak.
I wished for one more chance to say,
All the things I never said.
I wished for more time with you,
But the wish just blew away. 

​May Day! or Mayday?
Yesterday was May Day or Mayday? May Day is the first day of May and is traditionally honored by hanging flowers on people’s doors. Mayday is an emergency procedure used mostly in radio communications. I’m using it as a wake-up call for myself to get back on track with my Healthy Year. March was a minefield of emotional bombs and April…well it was just insanely busy!
I’m setting two Healthy goals for this month. The first one is to check AND record my blood sugar each morning. I usually check it every morning but have not been recording it in the glucose tracker I installed on my phone. My goal this month is to keep up with doing that each morning with my fasting blood sugar. The second goal is to have a No Complaining Month. I am going to work to catch myself when I want to complain and re-think it. I want to focus on being much more thankful for what I have rather than complaining about it. I am going to track that by using the Happier App and the one sentence journal tool in there to write down how it’s going. The idea isn’t perfection, but awareness. If can become aware of when I have the tendency to complain, I can refocus my mind and think about why I’m complaining. Is it just mindless complaining? Is it something I can change about myself? Is there something I can do differently? I’m also going to put a bracelet on one wrist and switch it back and forth when I catch myself in complaining to help with being cognizant of when it’s happening. 

​Earlier this week, I had a strange thing happen with my atomic clock in my living room. I woke up one morning and it was set to March 2000. I laughed it off and then I went ahead and reset it the next day since it hadn’t reset itself.
When I posted about it on Facebook page, I had someone make the comment that they’d like to go back to 2000. My immediate response was that I would too, it would give me another 20 years with Tom.
Then I got to thinking about all the pain and joy and laughter and hurt from those years. Tom losing his mom and stepdad, our house fire, moving into this home, graduations (high school and college), marriages, grandkids being born, the cancer diagnosis, losing Tom’s dad, the cancer journey, and losing Tom. These are just the tip of the iceberg from the last 22 years. Lots of memories, both good and bad, are piled into those years. If I COULD go back, I would get Tom to go to the doctor sooner. I would have insisted we annoy the heck out of the medical profession until we figured out what was going on with him. Maybe we could have caught it soon enough to save him.
But as you all know, we can’t turn back time. We can only go forward with what we have. I am thankful for all of those years with Tom and if I could go back and do them again, I would. Because it would mean more time with him. I think sometimes how I’d like him to hold me just one more time. But then I know, it would not be enough. I miss him so much. 

​First off, sorry for the long time since my last post! April was just incredibly busy and writing kept getting put on the back-burner. ☹
Now, on to my post. This is not my typical blog post. But it has been swirling around in my mind the last few weeks, so it was time to write about it.
Unless you live under a rock or completely avoid TV and social media, you’ve heard by now that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the end of March during the Academy Awards ceremony. I am not a big Oscar’s fan; I never watch them. I will usually read who won what, but most of the time, I have never even heard of the movies that have been nominated for the different awards. I am not going to get into the logistics of who was right and who was wrong or who was more wrong, etc. They are both in the wrong. Chris Rock should definitely not have made fun of Jada and her medical condition, and Will Smith most certainly should not have slapped him for it. Something I used to tell my children (my own and the ones I cared for over the years); “It is okay to be angry. It is not okay to smack someone when you’re angry”. So that is all I am going to say about that.
What I want to comment on is that over the last several years, the Academy Awards have seemed to lose a lot of their popularity and have been declared irrelevant and out of touch by many different individuals and groups. I even saw comments that people would not have even known they were on if it weren’t for the “slap heard round the world”. So, now, more than a month after the ceremony, I still cannot go a single day without hearing or seeing something about it. I would say it’s the first time I have known anyone (in my lifetime) to still be talking about the ceremony more than a day or two after it happened. So, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, what if this is all some huge publicity ploy? What if this is a way to make the awards relevant again and gain people’s attention? Has anyone else had these thoughts? Just tossing this out to see what others have been thinking about the situation. 

3-17-22
Dear Tom,
Justin Bieber has a song called “Ghost” and when I heard the lyrics, they really spoke to me. Then I watched the video (it’s the story of a grandmother and grandson mourning the loss of the grandpa) and I was crying so hard. The lyrics that really get to me are:
Youngblood thinks there's always tomorrow
I miss your touch on nights when I'm hollow
I know you crossed a bridge that I can't follow
 
Since the love that you left is all that I get
I want you to know that if I can't be close to you
I settle for the ghost of you
I miss you more than life (more than life)
 
And if you can't be next to me
Your memory is ecstasy
I miss you more than life
I miss you more than life.
 
As I was listening to this song a few days ago and thinking about it, I just started laughing. Because you were not a fan of Justin Bieber AT ALL! The fact that a song he sings reminds me so much of you…well, it’s just really kind of hilarious. But the words are just so true, especially the “I miss you more than life”. Because I do miss you every day.
 
Today is the anniversary of the day we saw the oncologist for the first time. I will never forget the words “Your cancer is treatable, but not curable. This is serious enough that you need to get your end-of-life affairs in order.” I am thankful for the 3 ½ years we had together after that. But I definitely miss you more than life.
Love, Tracy


Link to the song: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp8msa5uYsc

​Well, hello there March! Maybe third time will be the charm?
Here it is a new month with new possibilities. I would say I did so-so on my goals for February. Since I was sick in January, I have had a hard time maintaining my walking every day goal. But I am not getting down on myself. I am still doing more than I used to do and feeling bad about myself is not going to help me do better moving forward. So here are my goals for March:
 
Walk 20 minutes a day/get at least 8000 steps a day Monday-Friday
Track blood sugars and food intake
Drink water
Devotional/journal
Read
Clean for 15
Say positives to myself in the mirror each day and say one thing out loud to myself that I am thankful for that day.
Eat two servings of fruits and two servings of vegetables a day
 
Have a great day everyone!

Two years ago today was the day that the doctor told us that he thought it best to stop Tom's chemo treatments. So today, I am looking for my brave face.

​The Brave Face
For the world,
I put on my brave face.
I pretend I’m okay,
When inside,
My heart is breaking.
My loneliness is,
Eating away at me,
To the world,
I say “I’m fine”,
Inside, I’m not.
The loneliness, the sadness,
It’s a lot to feel.
To the world,
I am strong.
To myself,
I feel weak.
Time to put on,
The brave face.