Today is the inaugural Diabetes Art Day (I’ve learned that it’s improper to call something The First Annual…)!!

Lee Ann Thill at The Butter Compartment came up with the idea, and it’s spreading faster than HPV on a college campus.

Diabetes bloggers across the web are creating D-related art and posting it to their sites.  Plus a few lucky artists will win a copy of the No-Sugar Added Poetry Book.  Which is kind of an incentive to post your art.

A lot of people spent a lot of time on their creations, and I kind of feel dumb posting my lame-o piece of art, but a month ago when Lee Ann originally posed the idea, I said that I was going to give it an honest go.

I’m going to spend some time later this afternoon clicking around and finding some other people’s diabetes art.  If you posted some that you think I should see, don’t hesitate to leave me a link in the comments to this post.

Ironically, today I went in to visit my doctor, and my a1c was identical to my last a1c.  WTF, right?  6.2.

Anyway, happy Diabetes Art Day!  Here’s the crayola crapola I created:

Dear people who make blood glucose monitors,

Testing your blood glucose levels sucks.  Totally blows.  Pricking your fingers and recording your numbers is a freaking chore.  One of the few upsides of having diabetes is playing with all the gadgets and technologies that are made to make our lives easier.

My blood glucose meter is pretty lame sauce though.  I use the One Touch Ultra 2, but I also use a One Touch Mini at times.

Here is a list of things that I wished my meter could do.  Some of them are simple things that you guys could easily merge into the newest version, and other things are crazy dreams that might take some more effort.

LOG EVERYTHING – I know that “blood glucose meters” are really only responsible for logging my blood glucose levels…but I want a place to log how much I inject, how many carbohydrates I eat and the time I spend exercising.  What a huge selling point it would be if my meter could keep track of everything diabetes instead of just my bgl.  I want to be able to link my glucose levels to real events.

ADD AN ALARM – I’m not just talking about a ring-when-i-tell-it-to alarm.  I want a smarter alarm than that.  As stated above, I want my meter to keep track of my carbohydrates…and then two hours later beeps to remind me to do an after-meal test.  And maybe this is going over board, but I want it to keep beeping until I’ve tested.

CONNECT VIA WI-FI – This might be asking too much.  But I’d like to be able to sync the data on my monitor via wi-fi to an online spreadsheet.  Any time I enter a hotspot I can choose to sync.  No wires.  Just a simple press of a button.

SMALLER – This is something that might take some time to perfect, but I’d like all the above features in a meter that was about the size of an iPod nano.  Skinny and sleek, yet functional and useful.

COACH – If I were uploading my data regularly via wi-fi, all of my numbers would be easily accessed by a coach that could give me suggestions on how to perfect my levels.  I know that there are bizarre laws about privacy and health care, and I can’t imagine any company that would dish out medical advice because they would fear getting sued…but this is MY dream.

CHEAPER STRIPS – Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the strips only cost a penny instead of a dollar?

DATA SORTING – I’m a graph nerd.  I love seeing my numbers in a line graph.  I really enjoy figuring out my average fasting BGL.  And the dream meter of the future would do all that for me.  Not just an average BGL…but more specific.  For example: your average after-lunch glucose level is 109.

PRETTY PRINT OUTS – After I’ve uploaded everything, I want to hit a button and print a range of my glucose levels and activities for the doctor.  Additionally, the print out should have a box of special events.  For example: In the past three weeks Mike has had four readings below 40 mg/dl.

WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT – Diabetes is hard.  I want my meter to recognize when I’m doing well and to tell me “wow…that’s three readings in a row that are right on target.  Good job!”

I don’t care if you makers-of-meters use any of my ideas.  Take them, please.  But if you feel like you owe me something, you could send me a complimentary meter with a few strips.

And readers, what am I missing? Add in the comments any features you’d like to see on a glucose monitor.

When I was diagnosed with diabetes I knew almost nothing about it.  In fact when I was diagnosed I kind of thought that maybe the doctor would tell me that I had some form of diabetes that a few pills and a little attention to my diet could cure.

Five years later, that’s not exactly the case.

I never thought that maybe I should write down the date of my diagnosis.  Some of my online friends celebrate their diagnosis day (D-Day)…another year under the belt where diabetes didn’t get the best of them.

George celebrates his on October 2nd.

Lee Ann’s is in October too.

Kerri was diagnosed September 11th.

Ashley celebrates on August 4th (and has quite a diagnosis story).

And I have no date to celebrate.  I just don’t remember when I was diagnosed.  I think that I was diagnosed around mid-August or early September.  But I don’t know the exact date.

Should I care?  Should I just make up a date and go with it?  Or should I just live like I have for the past five years…just celebrating each day as an accomplishment?

I kind of think that there should be an e-card for this occasion.  Something like this:

First off, I bought a Speedo.  Don’t judge.  I just put it on in the locker room, and prance out to the pool.  Nobody has time to see how I’ve inelegantly squished my junk into it.  This does, however, call for some serious manscaping.  And since I’ve started seeing results at the gym I’m not all embarrassed to be seen in the speedo.  The one area that really needs some of my attention tanning.  Why are gay men so superficial, btw? (There was a lot of TMI in that paragraph…sorry.)

Since my guest post on SixUntilMe.com, I’ve received a lot of really supportive emails, tweets, comments.  Thanks to everyone that read it and sent me support in any form.  Additionally, I should mention that I wrote the post soon after we hit splitsville and just posted recently – so I’ve done some serious healing since then.  And if you liked the post, you might also like the comments that people posted (at the time of this writing there are 31 comments).  The majority of them are supportive, but there’s also a few criticisms of my diabetes v.s. cancer comparison.

I’ve been pretty religious about the my gym routine.  Sure there is the obvious benefits…I use less insulin in a day after I’ve run a couple of miles, my energy level is higher, etc.  Those are all really great reasons, but the main reason I’ve gone six or seven times a week is to keep up the foursquare mayorship.  Since the last time I obsessively blogged about foursquare, I have earned a Photogenic badge for checking in at three locations that have photo booths (?!) and a Bravo Newbie badge when I ate dinner the other night at Fez…which, like Bravo, is clearly gay but straight people don’t always realize it.

My reading has slowed down a bit.  I blogged about the bizzaro couple of days where I was starting books and then deciding not to reading them.  If I’ve ever made fun of you for starting books and never finishing them, I take it all back.  It’s really not something that I do…and it has kind of ruined some of my momentum.  But then I found a James Patterson book (so?!) that gave me my mojo back, and I’ll be posting about the 22nd and 23rd book I’ve read this year pretty soon, I’m sure.

I’m listening to a lot of podcasts now.  A lot.  Like close to a dozen.  Since I’ve last updated y’all on my podcast listening, I’ve added The Big Gay News Podcast (daily gay-related news), Democracy Now! (daily political talk show that I used to listen to on Pacifica when I lived in LA), Johnjay and Rich (it’s a cut up version of their local radio show), Jordan, Jesse GO! (nerdy weekly podcast by two straight guys), NPR: Fresh Air (daily interview show), Pod Is My Copilot (weekly shoot-the-shit podcast), Stuff You Should Know (they pick one topic and break it down so even us stupids could understand it), The NerdistThe Q Cast Connection (which is Chris Hardwick’s podcast), (a bunch of homos from Florida sit around and talk).  My iPod has basically been turned into a podcast-listening device.  Music is for emotional people.

My friend Kerri took a break from her blog to do some selfish things…like have a baby.  And when she was getting ready to burst she asked for some of us to write guest posts for her site SixUntilMe.com.

This was back around the time that Dan and I broke up, so now you have the incredibly depressing story of how diabetes affected my love life.
Read it on Kerri’s page here.

I wanted to blog today, but couldn’t think of something substantial enough to fill an entire post.  So instead you get pieces of me:

* I finished my 20th book in 2010.  I read A Good And Happy Child by Justin Evans – it’s the story of a crazy kid that thinks he’s possessed by demons.  Or is he a kid possessed by demons that everyone thinks is crazy?  Kind of a long read…about 100 pages too long.

* I received my latest a1c results, and I’m quite happy with myself.  Approximately one year ago my a1c was 12.3.  Seriously.  And this week it is 6.2.  Seriously.  If you’re not diabetic, these numbers might mean nothing to you…but to me it shows that I’m on the right path.  Regardless of how bad some people make me feel about my chronic illness, I’m getting closer to control.  Sure, it might not happen over night, and there will most definitely be mistakes…but I’m not a bad diabetic like some lead me to believe.

* Mother’s Day is on Sunday, and I really want to make my mom a blog as a present.  I doubt that she would have (a) the discipline to blog regularly (b) the technological knowledge to do anything creative with the blog and (c) the brain power to remember a username and password.  But a boy can dream.

* In one short week I accomplished all of my Foursquare goals…additionally I became the mayor of my gym, and I’m battling it out with some guy named Fadi and I can’t let him re-gain the mayorship.  Now I need a new Foursquare goal.

* I’ve downloaded about a dozen new podcasts that I’m auditioning.  So far I absolutely love Pod Is My CoPilot and the iTunes Celebrity Playlist podcast.

* Have a good weekend, bitches.

I woke up this morning with the best blood sugar reading that I’ve ever had since my diagnosis.  Seriously.

I did do 45 minutes of cardio after work yesterday…which made me dip to a 66, and then I just skipped my bolus insulin for my dinner (14g of carbohydrates, btw).

I’ve had quite a bit of stress in my life the past month, but for some reason my glucose levels aren’t reacting that way.  It’s really empowering to see my choices having immediate positive effects.

I’m a sucker for results.

I’ve blogged about it before (here and here) I absolutely love Easter Peeps Candies.  And it’s that time of year again when Easter candy starts filling the grocery aisles of my mind and I find that I can’t concentrate at work because I can’t think of anything else.

Luckily last year we found sugar-free peeps at Walmart and other fine retailers.  When I went to pick up a package at Walmart yesterday I found out that the stupid things have almost 30g of carbohydrates in them.  And I’m not just sugar-free any more…now I’m practically carb-free too.

So if I want to have a sugar-free Peep for dessert, I can – just as long as my entire meal contains close to 0 carbohydrates.  Lame sauce.

Because of the move, I’m pretty late posting my 12 of 12.  Forgive me.  If you don’t know what 12 of 12 is, here’s the basics: On the 12th day of each month bloggers all over the world take 12 photos throughout the day and post them on their blogs. It’s Chad Darnell’s idea, and you can see his website and a list of links here.

To see my photos from past months, click here.

Here are my photos from January 12, 2010.  This should be called “The Diabetes Edition” of my 12 of 12:

What a cute face! Beezus is getting big, right?

Dan and I are obsessed with these Not-A-Paper-Cup ceramic coffee mugs. They look like disposable coffee cups, but are made of glass and can be washed in the dishwasher.

Kind of a boring morning for 12 of 12...I had a meeting in Gilbert until almost 1:30. Bleh.

My office-mate is kind of disorganized, and it drives me nutso! This is what I'm greeted with each day when I arrive.

When our members arrived I took a couple of minutes to play some CandyLand. Damn, my job is hard.

We installed these lights in both bathrooms. It's kind of dark, but you can see the paint color too.

This is the beginning to a very long night. 233 is WAY too high.

My friend Lee Ann Thill writes a blog called The Butter Compartment, named after the place that most of us keep our insulin. Maybe I should create a blog called "The Mustard Shelf."

After some insulin, my blood glucose level is slowly creeping down. 196 is still too high. I'd be happy at 85 or 90.

Getting there...

Not on target, but close enough to go to bed.

Fucking Diabetes. I woke up feeling panicked and shaky, and tested. 66 is too low. I drink some Mountain Dew and wait.

Exhausting. This picture is taken after 2 a.m...which is technically the 13th, but whatever.