Weekend Recap: Blue Zones, Allergy Testing, and Frozen Ladle

My week overall was kind of uneventful, aside from meeting the blogger girls at Parkside 23 in Elm Grove on Monday for a wonderful meal, so I don't have an everyday life post to share this week. I decided to replace it with a weekend recap.

On Saturday morning, I got up early for an 8 a.m. doctor's appointment. While eating breakfast, I was excited to find a segment on the CBS morning show about Blue Zones. It's actually something I have been talking about a lot at work lately and educating my co-workers on (it applies to something coming up at my work in winter). The author of the book called The Blue Zones, Dan Buettner, was featured in the segment and talked about why certain areas of the world have citizens living to 100 years old or past it. Here are the longevity clues:

• No Smoking
• Plant-based diet
• Constant moderate physical activity
• Social engagement
• Legumes

Buettner has been working with a company named Healthways to get areas of America on a healthier track by following rules like the ones below.

This is the stuff that I love to talk about and I definitely need to channel that excitement into a career down the road.

Gross picture warning: my doctor's appointment was with an allergist. This summer has been the worst for allergies and I finally decided to get the skin prick tests done. They pricked my back and my two arms with the most common allergens. Here is my arm after sitting for about 10 minutes and not being allowed to itch those inflamed areas. The inflammation and itchiness would continue well into the afternoon.

It turns out, I am allergic to a lot of things (which is exactly how the doctor phrased it), including cat dander (boo)!

• I am severely allergic to ragweed and dust mites, which explains the horrible hay fever I get every year and the symptoms I experience from dust mites in the bedroom. My nose is always stuffed up and I have a post-nasal drip cough every morning. We need to get allergy covers for the pillows and the bed.
• I am moderately to severely allergic to tree pollen and grass. 
• And finally, I am moderately allergic to weeds, cat and dog dander. There's no way we are ever not having cats, so I have to deal with changing a few things around our house. Tanzi can't go into the bedroom anymore, because his dander will get on everything and make my allergies worse.

So my lesson for you readers is that if you suspect that you or someone you love are suffering from allergies, get the skin tests done and start preventing your allergies ASAP. I'll have to start using nasal spray soon and see if that helps.

The only good news I received is that my lung capacity is excellent--extremely above average and I don't have any signs of asthma.

After the allergy doc, I went grocery shopping for lots of healthy foods and then came home and cleaned. I think all of the videos I watched about dust mites at the doctor's office made me feel proactive about cleaning!

Then, I had to go to the car dealership to get a recall test done. I sat there for an hour reading. I read something different than this book, but I've been getting through Whole slowly all week and weekend. 

We had to go to New Berlin later that evening, so I remembered that I hadn't been to a newer frozen yogurt place there called Frozen Ladle and decided to check it out.

They had one of my all-time favorite frozen yogurt flavors, White Chocolate Moose, so I got that with pistachio and cake batter.

While we were out in New Berlin, we decided to drive to the nearby community of Muskego to check out subdivisions and one lot in particular that I had seen on a real estate site. Turns out that the subdivision I had my eye on is near a busy road, a marshy area in the backyard, and power lines. Not good! It was still fun to drive around and look at houses.

I'm attempting to eat totally vegetarian, no meat whatsover, so I had a big salad for lunch and it was delicious. I had some meat while we were up north last weekend and it really upset my stomach. Plus, I don't even enjoy eating it, I usually just do so because it's more convenient to share some foods with Craig, like pizza with sausage.

Other than that, I just did a lot of cleaning and organizing in preparation for my upcoming ankle surgery on Thursday. I've got a three day week ahead of me at work and then it's time to have my ankle fixed at last!