Updates

It has been the sort of week that is both too busy to find time to blog much -- and not interesting enough to try harder. ;)
Between endless rounds of laundry, we have been on the run.

Fitness update: I have only managed to walk once so far this week. I have, however, established (thanks, Mark!) that I was 1.8 miles per hour. Way behind the 4 miles an hour I walked as a teenager, but not too shabby for the tired old fart I am now.

Crafting Update: I have been struggling with crafting. Even when I sit down with a very specific design in mind -- one I have made before, things aren't working well. Partly, I think, it's just a lack of creative energy right now and that happens from time to time. Partly, maybe it's my eyes. I have broken my glasses on a number of occasions and I think the lenses are scratched beyond usefulness. I'll see an ophthalmologist for my annual diabetes check and then I'll worry about getting the lenses replaced. Meanwhile, I have two Mothers Day cards and three birthday cards to get made. Hmmm...

Gardening update: I was not sure how much to worry about moon phase in gardening.

Last year, I wasn't specifically paying attention, but I did note that my planting happened at good times anyway. and as I talked about endlessly last year -- my results were astonishing.

This year, Ostara fell in a "bad" gardening moon, but we went ahead anyway. I have complained about the results...we have very few germinated seeds and none of the ones that sprouted seem to be thriving. I tried again under a better, though not ideal, gardening moon and already those plants are much larger than the many weeks older seeds, though not everything has germinated. I plan to try again next week under the 'optimal" gardening moon on Tuesday and see what happens.

I'll update the homeschooling stuff later. Now, I am off to the shower.

I did it!

After all these months, I managed to walk today! I have lost an astonishing amount of fitness..I had been walking 2.2 miles every afternoon in addition to the 1/2 mile to and from my car, but today I was only able to walk 9/5 of a mile. The last two circuits wre just too much. Part of it was that I got too hot (a velvet blouse on the fourth floor --ugh) and part was that my feet hurt (I wasnm't wearing waslking shoes and the stiff "dress" shoes started to pinch afteyr a while) but the important part is, I DID it!

I'm happy.

Fitness Update

Sadly, I have little to report on this.

Remember back when I commented that I really needed to get back to walking? Never did. The only part that I have stuck with is that I park at the far end of the parking lot, so I walk 1/4 mile to and from the car. And I suppose it could be significant that in the current temperatures, I am walking at a good clip.

Still, I felt so much better for the many months when I was walking a lot that I really do still want to get back to it.

I just got some more incentive this afternoon, too.

My hbA1c is up top 6.3 from the 5.0-5.5 that I prefer and my cholesterol is still in ned of work. My total is 198, which I consider just fine (though my doctor disagrees), but my LDL is 139, as opposed to the 100 I think it should be, and my HDL is way too low. Currently it's at 34 and I want it up to at least 60. That imbalance suggests a systemic inflammation. Of course some of that would be my totally irresponsible (and utterly fun) holiday indulgance. ;)

But while returning to eatign better (fewer cookies) will help a lot, walking also helps.

Work is busier than I think I have ever been, but I just ahve to work out a time that I can walk again.

Fitness Update

Oh well. *sigh* I haven't walked in weeks.

First I came down with a cold and felt woozy and weak. Then I developed shingles and really just didn't feel up to it. Then came the holiday.

I think it's time I made an effort again. Now my only excuse it a sluggish feeling that makes it feel 'too hard'. I think this is exactly what has always stopped my efforts before. Fortunately, right now I am reading Jackson's Track by Darryl Tonkin. It's MOST compelling reading, and I think that is enough to get me moving today. And then maybe it will work again tomorrow, too.

Oh, and by the way, this has to be the fastest case of recovery from shingles on record! I was diagnosed on Thursday and by Sunday, I was all but recovered! I still have a mild neuralgia but the pox are gone, the fever and swollen lymph nodes are gone. I am pretty much completely recovered just a week late. Shingles usually lasts a month or so! My deepest thanks to my energy worker friends! You are amazing!!!

Fitness Update

Interesting thing I noticed today ...

I had to move inside for my walks earlier this week when it got just too cold and wet to walk outdoors with a book. Outdoors, the track is 1/2 mile. Indoors, the track is 1/5 of a mile.

When the increment is a half mile, there is an mild emotional block to adding another circuit. It feels like a lot. I did it, I went from one circuit to two, to three over the course of the summer.

But when the increment is only 1/5 of a mile, it's pretty easy to add another one because it doesn't feel like all that much. Over the course of the week, I went from 8/5 of a mile each day to 11/5 or 2 1/5 miles today. Because it was easy. Also,m because the track is a lot smoother, I am walking faster as I read, so it's not taking me much longer to walk 2 and a bit miles than it was a mile and half outdoors.

Hmm. Maybe instead of losing fitness over this winter, I'll actually make strides. Wouldn't that be cool?!?!? *happy grin*

Interesting fitness development

I am experiencing something delightful that I have never felt before...and it seems like a good development.

For some time (a week, perhaps) I have been waking up to realize that my arm and leg muscles are alternately tensing and releasing, increasing the circulation as I wake up. It feels really nice, and it seems to start just as I wake up (or at least, it hasn't wakened me before I wanted to get up yet) so I just noted it without worrying about it.

However this afternoon, about the time I would usually have started my walk, I noticed that my arms, legs, and back muscles were alternately tensing and relaxing, increasing circulation in a very pleasant way as i worked at my computer as if in preparation for my walk.

Today, because I went out to lunch, I didn't walk at 3 as I usually do, and I can feel my body "missing it". I have to say that reaching the point where regular exercise is something my body is actively enjoying is quite a treat -- I feel like I'm really on the right track as far as the type of exercise and the amount and frequency being about what my body needs right now.

I have some hand weights somewhere in the house. I have been looking for them, and once I find them I am planning to add a little weight training every few days. That made a big difference to me several years ago when I was working out in a gym regularly and I'd like to get that strong feeling back.

It's also about time to dig out the Richard Simmons video I bough early last spring and see what I can do about hooking the laptop up to the stereo so I can hear it well enough to play along. (It was too hot to dance over the summer, but gardening helped.)

(Yeah, I am feeling a LOT better than I was yesterday. I doubled up on my thyroid meds starting three days ago, so the symptoms are abating rapidly. It seems that slightly under my usual dose was causing trouble over time, so I'm stuck with slightly over that dose. I'll feel good for as long as the tablets last - and with any luck, I'll find a good doctor before they run out.)

Fitness Update

I think today may be a crucial, make ot break day for my walking routine. I only got 4 of my 10 miles in last week. I walked Monday, as usualy, but Tuesday, I was on the help desk phones and couldn't get away to walk. Wednesday, I went out to lunch and couldn't stay late, so there was no time to walk. Thursday and Friday, it was rainy and I was sick and just not up to walking.

Today I should walk, but I feel so tired at the thought. That probably means I really *need* to walk though.

Thirty minutes to psyche myself into it...can I do it?

Edited 4:15 to add: It took me closer to an hour to work up to it, and I only made a mile and a half rather than two miles, but I'm back on track. This distance matetrs less than getting out there.

Fitness Update

Whew, on the fitness front, I am so very glad that autumn is coming.

After my feet healed, I managed to get back up to a solid mile and a half every day, sometimes with a bit extra, but pushing much further seemed unwise since I was returning to my desk looking like I'd been swimming!

As the weather cooled down, though, I was able to ease into a regular 2 miles and a bit every day. It's not the 3 miles I was sometimes managing in the first flush of enthusiasm before my foot troubles, but I am happy. Even better, when it heated up again this week, I was able to maintain the two miles anyway!

The key has been the books -- I walk easily when my mind is off in a book. I have caught up on a a lot of my stack of "want to reads" and have started to work in the occasional mystery. I have to admit -- I always notice when my goal time arrives when I read for information, but I could probably walk for hours and hours when I am reading a mystery! *laugh*

There is a downside, of course. (Isn't there always a downside?)

A few months after Jack weaned, I had to go out and buy all new trousers because the ones I had been wearing were (literally) falling off. It was a horrible experience. It was nearly impossible for me to find trousers intended for middle aged women. Now, I am happy for pretty young girls who want to show off their lovely tummies to do so, but a half century and 16 pregnancies have not been kind to mine, and it and I are much happier if it can hide discreetly inside my clothes.

After four months of consistent walking, those new trousers are starting to fit like the old ones did just before they reached the crisis point.

I hate shopping! I am hoping to put it off until the fashions change again and "low rise" trousers become "so last year"! Hey, maybe those trousers that looked so good on me back in the mid-1970s will come back! They were high waisted with a deep waistband and then they fell down the leg as full as the 1920's zoot suits had. Now *those* were cool!

Oh, and as a side note, my doctor did call a prescription in the the local pharmacy on Monday, so I am back on my medications (though she only called in a half dose, so I am having to double up and will run out in a couple of weeks. Yikes!) But it means that I didn't get run down enough for my walking routine to suffer. That's excellent!

Walking routine update

I feel pretty comfortable that my walking routine has become a habit these days. Hot or comfortable, wet or dry, I have managed to walk at least a mile and a half at least four days a week since I got my new shoes.

I am aiming for two miles a day once the weather starts to cool down a bit more, but I am a bit concerned about how this is going to go once the frigid weather starts. That's months away yet - - and there is an indoor circuit, so it's *possible*. But it means making 10 circuits indoors rather than 2 outdoors. It also means dodging people who are walking to and from meetings and other "official business", so reading is more of a problem, though if I can time it right, I might be able to minimize the dodging part many days. I'll have to make a beaded counter to keep track of circuits, though. Two is pretty easy. Even three gets hard to keep track of -- and with 10, I'd end up confused long before I'd made my daily goal.

Interestingly, simply walking doesn't seem to be making me feel any stronger. Not the way working out at a gym did. I actually seem to be more achy than I was before.

Ahh, aging is such a treat. ;)

Walking update

I am back to my 10 miles or so a week! Hurray!!!!

The new shoes were a great help and my feet and legs stopped hurting after a week and a half of wearing them whenever I was on my feet at all.

Oddly, my back and neck had started to be very stiff and sore and that was discouraging me from walking, too. I wasn't sure whether that was from bad shoes for too long -- but it seemed unlikely. Turned out it was a coincidence. Mark created a stand to boost my monitor at work about eight inches and within a day and a half, the pain was ebbing. Thanks, Mark!!!! Now I need to find a way to do that at home -- but I think lowering the seat eight inches will work better there. My computer hutch is pretty limiting that way... hmmm

Anyway, my time is dropping on the main leg of my walk and within a week or so, I may very well add another half mile a day. Of course, Mark is also adding milage, which boosts mine, too. But I am shooting for a total of 60 minutes a day walking. Between the company for one part and the book for the other, this is going great! The book even gets me out there when it's sweltering. I am happy to drip as long as I can read!!!

And I love how strong and energetic I feel with all this walking. I may even work on ways to add a weight lifting routine a few times a week ... right after I figure out how to squeeze crafting time in.

Updates

In the Garden

As July crawls to a close, the garden is really starting to get fruitful. We now have at least three caulies, a hundred tomatoes, probably a dozen (non-zucchini) squashes, about five zucchini a day!, and the potted cabbage is gonna be a biggie.



We have no sign of shoulders on the carrots, so I don't know yet whether we'll get any real carrots this year. they may be too crowded in the pot. The strawberries never did bear this year, though they seem happy enough. The thyme, basil, and sage are huge and happy, though they're disappearing under the tomato plants. The oregano is all but dead. Yes, I killed an un-killable oregano. *sigh* But Valerie has offered me some more, so I'll try again. (Thanks, Valerie!) Now to do some research and find out what I did wrong.

The tomatoes have gone nuts and have knocked over every last tomato cage and are now crawling all over the place. And that, needless to say, has made the slug population in the garden very happy! because we have so many slugs, I am not entirely sure how good the tomato harvest will be from the plot garden, but even if all we get come from the pot garden, we should be tired of tomatoes by Samhain.

The squashes are fine in the plot garden but in the pots are having problems. They're producing ok, but they get these yellow leaves that then turn black. And the Zukes from those pots also seem to rot easily. (Several have rotted while still infants.)


My guess was "blossom end rot", since it was at the blossom end -- which could come from a) lack of calcium, too little water, or too much water. Great. Well, I tried green sand and egg shells for calcium, and we have tried watering more regularly and that didn't help. So we'll try watering less regularly less often and see if that helps.

For what it's worth, it's not *all* of the zucchini, just one in a while -- but that hasn't happened at all in the plot garden..


Walking
It's been a week and a bit since I got my new shoes and I am back to walking with energy and enthusiasm! I walked four days last week - -the fifth was just too crowded with meetings -- and am pretty sure I can make it five days this week! Especially with Mark joining me to make it more fun and interesting. (Getting out of my chair in the first place is the only hard part these days...thanks, Mark!)

Walking program

Two weeks of...not much.

The last two weeks, my legs and feet have been so painful that I got out for walks exactly twice each week (out of my goal of five times per week). (Well, that and the half mile every day because I am parking way at the back of the lot to ensure myself at least some exercise.

It was clear to me that it wasn't only my walking program that was going to suffer if I didn't do something. It wouldn't be long before I started to do myself real damage.

I got new walking shoes on Friday (Hurrah, payday!) and have been mostly wearing those all weekend, so I have high hopes for getting back into it this week.

Exercise program...

I am posting more than I did in As Jack grows...but I have to admit that the posts are far less well thought out. I'll try to get to a more thought out post soon. Maybe in the autumn...? [grin] No, I'll try sooner.

Anyway, my walking routine hasn't fallen apart yet, but I have had to curtail it a bit. I get out there five or six days a week, but I have had to drop back from 2 miles a day to 1.5 miles. That last half mile is more than my legs and feet can face. I persist in hopes that getting new shoes will make the Plantar Facitis less painful. Unfortunately new shoes are somewhat down the list right now. Next to new glasses, to be sure, but it'll be a while yet. But I am feeling better anyway. My feet may not be thrilled, but the rest of me loves the exercise.

I have a half-written post about nutrition and diet thoughts that Rod made reference to in his post on baking. Trouble is, every time I sit down to finish it, I realize we need more crackers or muffins or bone broth. One of these days.

Drat: foiled again!

*sigh* I was doing well with my exercise program until last Thursday.

On Thursday, I woke up with such awful planta fasciitis that it was hard to walk to the bathroom. It cleared up by the time I got to the bathroom, of course, as PF does. But then, every time I sat down, I stood up to more pain.

*sigh* Wisdom is better than bravery, so I skipped my walk on Thursday. Friday it felt a little better -- I was still sore when I first stretched our my fascia (that band of tissue that connects your heel to your toes along the bottom of the foot.) after sitting or sleeping, but it abated pretty quickly, so I walked two of my three circuits and then stopped when it started to really hurt.

This week, it has started to hurt pretty consistently as I started into my second circuit. I've decided that if I push through the pain, I am more likely to hurt myself and far less likely to make the long haul with my walking habit, so I've been stopping at the end of the second circuit.

So this week's total is more like 7.5 miles. Oh well. That's a whole lot better than the 0 miles I was walking in May. ;) And this isn't *really* about walking a specific number of miles, it's about starting a habit I can live with for 20 or 30 or 40 years! (Yes, I like to think I might still be here and walking in my late 80s and beyond.)

Progress...finally!

I have been craving exercise for several years now. I have made sporadic attempts to work some in to my daily routine, but the problem has been...time. There never seems to be any.

For a while, I was attending a gym of sorts. I liked the Contours workout a lot -- but the really obnoxious weight loss message screamed in my face the entire time I was there. I hated that! And Rod and Jack started to feel really neglected after six months of my working out for an hour after work, three days a week. We don't get that much time together as it is and that extra hour was a lot. So, I quit.

And just as I was getting into a walking routine each summer, fall and cold would set in and I'd give up. *sigh*

My mother has been walking for 45 minutes every morning for something like 30 years. I have known that -- but until recently I wasn't aware of just how much that habit has done for her. When she came to visit last year, I saw her ahead of us at the airport and tried hard to catch up. I was amazed as I chased her across the airport that there was just no way I could catch her until she stopped! (And I don't think of myself as especially out of shape -- I leave many of my friends 'in the dust" when we walk together.)

This year when she came to visit, I was again impressed with Mom's non-stop energy and I was determined to start a routine that I could continue so *I* can have that level of vitality 20 years from now.

When Mom left, I took a good look at my life and figured out that my best bet for walking was to take time at work. For the last several weeks, I have been walking at lunchtime. My employer, conveniently, has a half-mile track laid out in the parking lots, so I am able to get in a good long walk safely.

Now a part of the problem with sticking to a walking routine has always been boredom...walking alone is boring unless I am walking to a destination and there are things to see as I walk. Walking with someone means that when they poop out, I lose a lot of my own incentive.

Another ongoing frustration has been my inability to find time to read. I *love* to read! But there simply hasn't been time since Jack was born. (It doesn't help that Rod sees me picking up a book as a sign of desperate boredom, and being a gallant soul, he always comes to my rescue and comes to chat with me as soon as I pick up a book. Once i give up and put the book down, we wanders off, his job here done.

So...I have been walking this nice flat track every day and reading! Hurrah!! I have finished two books and am starting on a third -- my densest reading rate since Jack was born! And I am up to a little over 10 miles per week for several weeks now...

Happily, there is an "indoor track", so I can probably transfer my walking circuit indoors when the weather is rainy or cold -- though that's a quarter mile and there3 will be more foot traffic of people coming and going for meetings so reading won't be as easy...

I really hope I can stick with it this time -- and I think that getting a chance to read may be just the incentive I was looking for! ;)