I love the Fourth of July. Like most kids, fireworks have always entertained me. The bigger and the louder, the better!

But living in Southern California and having fire season pretty much year round means fireworks are not legal in many cities, including my own.

So this year we will get together with my sister at her house where you can still light off fireworks and celebrate the country’s birthday.

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Last October, I totally ditched an appointment with my endo.

Why? I didn’t want to face the music. I didn’t want to hear about what I have not done right and I just did not want to see my A1C.

My last A1C was from last July and it was an 8.9%. Not good at all. I was upset about it but in the end I knew it made sense. I was not on top of things.

And this year was no different. I just kept gaining weight, snacking, and my BG was high a lot of the time. So when the time for the appointment came I wrote a post here about wanting to ditch and how I needed to face the music.

I still ditched it. (READ MORE)

I've really been struggling with the Lantus and exercise mix. When I first started out, I did okay with a few lows here and there (nothing out of the ordinary for me). But as I added in new and different work outs and upped my intensity, I'm struggling to keep my blood sugars stable before, during, and after exercise.

With the pump, it was so easy to decrease my basal so I started my workout in the 180-200 range. I struggled with maintaining a higher level during exercise, often going low...but at least I wasn't concerned with those numbers completely wrecking my averages.

Now that I'm back on Lantus, I'm re-learning everything that I did five or six years ago (since high school held my hardest workouts). But I'm failing miserably. I can't get the range right before working out, often soaring to the 260's. And during, I'm flatlining in that same range.

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For the past few days, I've been battling a terrible thing (I'm being quite sarcastic here, with a little hint of truth). This thing comes around every once in awhile, but usually it comes with explanation (hello, Mother Nature!). However, this thing of late is out of the ordinary. This thing is hunger.

For the past week or so, I've been ravenously hungry all the time. Occasionally I get this way when it's that time of the month so I eat a little extra and go on my way. But this time, I'm perplexed. And annoyed.

Is it the extra exercise? Have I been skipping lunch? Am I not consuming enough calories in general? I'm quite annoyed because food is such an integral part of everything.

Food is expensive. Food is time-consuming. Food spikes blood sugars. Food can lower blood sugars (by this, I mean crazy crashes after boluses). Food is life. But now, food is just plain annoying. (READ MORE)

When you think about the weather in Phoenix what's one of the first phrases that comes to your mind? C'mon, I know you know it. Yep, "It's a dry heat."

Well, that's definitely true. It's quite dry here. I can feel fine just before leaving the house for my walk and within the first two minutes I feel absolutely parched.

So, while it's dry, it's still hot. Really hot. I'm amazed at the number of people I see exercising outside in the middle of the day. All I can think is how crazy they are! This is yet another reason why I walk in the early morning; I'm out the door before 5:45 a.m., preferably by 5:35 a.m., but some mornings require a few more minutes to get my tired butt out of bed.

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"Exercise is key to lifetime management of type 2 diabetes".  How many times have we heard that or a variation of that statement?  dLife even has a whole section devoted to the topic.

I started picking up the exercise habit last summer, when I was laid off by my employer.  But I tried to get the habit for many years prior to that event.  If I only had exercised for all the months that I paid for gym memberships, I might not be writing first hand about type 2 diabetes! 

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