A Better Day

One thing I really like about not working for someone else is that I get to get up when I'm finished sleeping. Oddly, that's somewhere between 5:30 and 6:45 a.m. I can also take a nap if I want to. Or go for a long walk, which is a healthy thing to do.

My blood pressure is consistently low since I left "that company" and "that boss." Even if I drink too much coffee and eat too-salty snacks like I did last night. 116/75 is pretty good.

Well, back to the great possession toss.

Who is that fat lady?

So far, in a week and a half, I’ve unofficially lost about 8 pounds. Instead of “Desperately Seeking Susan,” I’m desperately seeking myself. I’m in here somewhere trying to get out.

When I could no longer do tai chi chuan without my bulging stomach getting in the way, I got annoyed with my weight, but I wasn’t willing to stop eating all the yummy foods available to me.

When I started really having trouble getting my pants to close, I wasn’t yet willing to stop eating.

When I found out that my nagging, hacking cough is the result of GER (Gastroesophageal Reflux—I don’t think it’s GERD yet) because partially digested food/vapors backing up into my esophagus were triggering nerves shared with my trachea, causing my trachea to think I couldn’t breathe, well, I decided I really had to do something about it. Too much fat in the gut area leaves too little room in the abdomen for those important things, like organs.

So, I’m using the Calorie Counter app on my cell phone (I could just as easily use the little calorie/carb book I found at home under a stack of other things) to count calories, carbs, fat, sodium, and fiber. I’m trying to stay below 1500 calories (succeeded all but one day), 15 grams of fat (I have yet to come anywhere close to that amount—no Alli for me), and 2400 mg of sodium (I missed that mark twice but I’m out of Jolly Time Better Butter popcorn now) per day.

To keep me on track, all I have to do is look at the videos David took of Sifu and me doing the 2-person form. I don’t really recognize that fat lady in the movies. She isn’t someone I want to be.

Check back next month (or sooner) for an update.

Ah, Spring.

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away... .

OK, here in Minnesota about 20 years ago, I used to take off work on my birthday, April 1st, to go to Taylor's Falls for a hike. I haven't been able to do that since then because it's always been way too cold and icky. Winter has moved at least one month into spring. Actually, I think all our months, weather-wise, have moved one month later.

So yesterday, when the weather was predicted to be in the 80s, and since I'm being forced to not work (no pay--they call it a furlough and say it's better than being laid off), I drove to Taylor's Falls. Actually, I went to the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River to Interstate Park.

These might be anenomies.
I gave my flower books to Ben and Steph so I can't look them up.
The white ones look like wild strawberries.

Ah, I love the natural pine smell of the forest floor in the warmth of the day.

These are the ones that look more like strawberries.

Lake O' the Dalles Trail on the SE side.

A view of the river.

A pothole.

I first walked up the Ravine Trail. The map says it's only .5 miles long. For someone who hasn't been hiking lately, and who is just a little over weight, I thought I was going to die from a heart attack. When I saw the 260 feet rise notation on the map, I felt better about myself.

From the top of the Ravine Trail, I turned south west on the Skyline Trail. (I'd wanted to walk the Meadow Valley Trail but it's under water. Actually, the picnic tables just north of the parking lot were in an inch or so of marshy water. And I forgot my hip waders.) Anyway the Skyline Trail is about 1.6 miles and mostly down a very gentle slope. The only green things visible are the flowers I photographed.

Digital photography has given me the option of taking enough shots to be sure to get one or two good ones. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the camera to focus on what I want to take a picture of when it's in macro mode.

Skyline Trail ended in the Pines Group Camp area. After an outhouse stop (I know, TMI), I hiked a trail that parallels the Eagle Peak Trail but instead of going up it goes down further to the South Campground. I came out on the south end of the campground. Turning back north east, I hiked to the Camp Interstate Shelter where I had my lunch.

From there I headed to the Lake O' the Dalles Trail and walked the south eastern side of the lake. After my afternoon snack and general laziness reading my book, I drove up to the Pothole Trail to do some more relaxing. I thought about knitting but couldn't bring myself to do more than one round.

Around 3:30 p.m. I drove into Taylor's Falls and had some chocolate almond fudge ice cream with a cone.

On the way home, I thought I'd stop at the little bar/restaurant in Marine on St. Croix. Unfortunately, it is closed with a For Sale sign on the door. Too bad. It was a great place to stop, especially when riding the Gold Wing, for a brew and a burger.

One thing nice about this time of year is there are few bugs. There were some black flies when I first started out but they disappeared along the Skyline Trail and never returned. No mosquitoes. Also, no kids and no dogs. I think I only saw about 5 cars.

Being a loaner I like that sort of hike. In my humble opinion, there are too many people in the world and most of them are next to me most of the time. No offense intended. That's just the way I am.

Happy Valentine's Day

This is what the view from my desk looked like Wednesday-Friday this week.

David gave me one long-stemmed red rose for each of the 10 years we've been hanging out together. Aren't they pretty?

Thoughts while sitting at my computer

Sometimes, when I'm sitting at my computer cruising the web, I feel like I'm omniscient.

om·ni·scient
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin omniscient-, omnisciens, back-formation from Medieval Latin omniscientia
Date: circa 1604
1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge
from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omniscient

It was always my dream that when I died and went to heaven, I'd be able to sit at a TV/Computer monitor and tune into different times and places to see what "really" happened. How did the Chicago fire "really" start? Was there anyone else involved in the Kennedy assassination?

At this point in time, we can google almost anything and anyone. We can use Google Earth to look at nearly the entire world. Some places in the world, we can even see things from "street level" and look at buildings and sometimes people.

We can look at what the weather is like anywhere, too.

News is almost instantaneous. Just 150 years ago, news was hard to come by. A hundred years ago, telegraphs made news more timely, but we still had to wait until it was printed. Radio brought the news into our living rooms. TV brought the news with pictures every evening. Now we have so many channels with news to choose from, all with a slightly different slant on the news, that it is increasingly difficult to know who to believe.

A few years ago a friend of mine came back to us with the very same information shared a week earlier by someone in our peer group, which my friend had pointedly ignored at the time. He now said it must be true because he had found it on the internet.

That scares me.

Hurricanes

Hurricanes are a fact of life, even more so now with the rise in the Gulf water temperatures. My first reaction to people who chose not to evacuate was "Why did you stay? Quit complaining! It was your choice!" Some of the people who stayed behind are too stubborn or too stupid to understand what the consequences are and then they scream bloody murder when they find out.

But I realize as I read the news accounts from various sources that one big reason so many stayed is money. It costs money to get into your car and drive and it costs money, usually, to stay somewhere other than your own home. The extra cost after having evacuated once already for Gustav can be too much for a family.

To these people I suggest, "Stop complaining!" Stop complaining because it took rescuers so long to get to you. Stop complaining because you don't have any power to run your air conditioner or refrigerator. Stop complaining because you can't use your toilet. These things happen.

To the ones who are in shelters, again, "Stop complaining!" Perhaps you are only getting a small amount of water every few hours and a little peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat. Perhaps the folding cot you are sleeping on is uncomfortable. This isn't your home. It's a shelter. Things are supposed to be meager in shelters because of the sheer numbers of people needing assistance. I suspect a large percentage of people giving the assistance are volunteers. Give them a break.

Because of the increased number of hurricanes and their increased size and intensity, I say it's time for people to start thinking about living somewhere else. Somewhere farther inland and up the hill.

Living in New Orleans, for instance, below sea level, is just asking for problems. Living inland but still at sea level is still asking for trouble. I understand there's a lot of history to be lost by abandoning places like New Orleans or the many small towns along the gulf that have been there for a couple hundred years. But that history is in danger of being washed away anyway. Better to lose history than lives. Things can be replaced. People can't.

- - - - - - -

Sometimes I wonder if the earth is just getting back at us for trashing it. I read in the Discover magazine about all the trash in the oceans. There's a huge floating garbage dumb that circles the Pacific. I'm glad Jacques Cousteau isn't alive to see it. We have land fills containing poisonous trash. We have industrial sites that seep poisonous chemicals into our drinking water. We have nuclear waste that will never go away. We have trashed Mother Earth.

I think she's pissed and wants to wash us away like so much dirt on her hands.

All shapes and sizes

As I sit here on the deck of our park-model trailer at the co-op campground we belong to, I marvel and the variety of shapes and sizes in this small community.

Very few have "perfect" shapes; some are thin; some are not. A few have had bariatric surgery, and some of them have defeated it and gained back all the weight they had the surgery to lose. Some of them have lost the weight and kept it off by whatever methods they chose. One went on a severe calorie-counting plan and lost over 100 pounds. A couple years later, it looks like he's gained back about half of it.

Weight loss is definitely not an easy project. Our bodies have been hard-wired since we started walking upright (and probably before that) to eat when we can because you never know when there won't be any food available. Now that we live in an era of abundant food, much of it not even especially good for us, we still eat as if there's no tomorrow. To not eat excess calories takes effort. It is effort so many of us are not willing to make.

Last January I reached my own milestone in weight. We got back from a lovely week in Jamaica, the Christmas and New Year's holidays came and went, and I climbed onto my scale and was within a pound of 200 pounds! That was a shock.

I'm happy to say that I now weight 185 and have held it for the last couple weeks. My weight loss plan is simple. Fewer cookies, fewer cakes and pies, smaller portions, take some home if I eat out and eat it tomorrow. Yes, it has taken 8 months to lose 15 pounds, roughly 1.8 pounds per month. It could be faster but think of how easy it has been!

I know the times when I'm likely to eat extra sugary foods or foods with butter slathered on. So I've found other things to eat instead that are equally appealing to me. At my age I've learned the necessity of F-I-B-E-R. Fiber One (no they are not paying for this entry, but they should) has a lot of foods that taste good and have more fiber per serving than any other so-called healthy, whole-grain foods. I like their caramel cereal. It has the consistency of a Chex-like cereal but fewer calories. Their granola bars have only 140 calories but 9 grams of fiber. Yes, there's a fair amount of sugar, but that satisfies my sweet tooth and still there are only 140 calories.

I guess I just want to say that I'm serious about losing weight and gaining some stamina. I'm appalled that I can't walk as far as I used to and find it so difficult to climb stairs. Yes, I'm older, but I have a few older friends who have far less trouble than I. Yes, arthritis seems to run in my family, but I don't want to force myself to get new knees and hips. I've already got two bionic shoulders. If I can avoid getting anything else replaced, I really want to do that.

Let's see, my goal is to lose 50 pounds at least. I've lost 15 so that leaves 35. Hmmm. 35 lbs. / 1.8 lbs./mo. = 19.4 months. I can speed that up. I don't know if I will. But I won't stop.

It's Spring Somewhere...

The Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Como Park in St. Paul is a great place to take flower photos.

The Sleeping Sloth

Fiddlehead

There's a spider here.

Fountain

Perfect

Spring in Minnesota

While the drive to work this morning was difficult on the side streets, the world around me was lovely. I took these photos with my SideKick cell phone. Not bad, actually. (Yes, I pulled over to take them. This phone is too difficult to use for even an ordinary phone call while driving. Very safe, as a result, since I refuse to use it while driving.)


It looks like more snow than there actually was. I think maybe a couple inches fell over night. The side streets were covered with compacted, icey gunk. Fortunately, the freeway was just wet. We didn't top 37 F today as it stayed foggy for quite a while and then just overcast. Very gray.

But spring is on its way.

Catching Up

Every once in a while I "Google" the names of people I've known over the years to see if I can find them or to find out what they're up to. This week I found a lady I hadn't seen in over 10 years. It's good to know she's well and she sounds happy in her life. That makes me happy. Hopefully, she'll answer the e-mail I sent and we can reconnect.

I have enjoyed contacting and reconnecting with a number of people I've found through various means. I have a cousin in Georgia I haven't actually seen since the 1970s. My first husband found me by "Googling" me and now we correspond from time to time. As I get older, this just seems like the thing to do.

Now to my current life. I've made a lot of progress on my socks in the last week. My friend Betty says that turning the heel on a sock is an act of faith. I'd gotten quite comfortable doing it just one way and decided it was time to try something new. It's always scary and last night I was sure I was doing it wrong. It may not be exactly right, but it doesn't look too bad.


I had to take the sock off the needle with the other sock to work the back of the heel. When the other one is done, I'll put them back together on the same needle again. While it may be a bit putzy to work two at a time, it certainly gets them both done faster. It just seems more efficient. I might even have this pair done in time for Easter church!

The Finished Tenderloin

My September 22 blog entry discussed the end-of-summer and a final dinner party at the campground. Since David actually read that blog, he sent a photo of the finished, cooked, resting-for-a-few-minutes beef tenderloin.

Also, since I'm still sick, I don't want to spend much time sitting here at the computer. So here it is. It was really delicious.

Thanks again, David.

Tai Chi

Fall is officially here. The weekend after labor day, David hosted a lovely dinner party at the campground. There were two other couples with whom we hadn't socialized much over the years. It was fun to get to know them.

This is the meat he cooked on his grill. It is in the process of being seared here. I didn't get a photo of the finished meat. We were too busy eating and making "yummy" sounds.





Another harbinger of fall is Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong's annual visit to Chinatown Tai Chi Center. That's me in the upper left corner with my head cut off. The next photo is Grandmaster demonstrating Fair Lady Works the Shuttle on Jerry.





This is a photo of Grandmaster holding the snuff bottle I gave to him. He really liked it. He went into great detail telling how these bottles are painted on the inside with tiny little brushes that have a bend in them.
















I want to thank my "co-mother-in-law" for finding and acquiring this snuff bottle for me. She collects them and knows several good sources.

Tai Chi is something I really enjoy. I credit tai chi with keeping my joints moving. I'm developing osteoarthritis and have already gotten one shoulder joint replaced. I have full range of motion in that shoulder because of tai chi. When I can, I'll get the other replaced as well. And I know I'll attain full motion in that one, too.

The Great Minnesota Get Together

Betty and I went to the Minnesota State Fair on Labor Day. Our second order of business, after eating breakfast, was to demonstrate lace making in the Creative Arts building. I had my mystery stole (almost half done) and the beginnings of a nice lace-top sock.







Betty brought her bobbin lace pillow to show a LOT of people how bobbin lace is made. She's incredibly good at helping people understand how it's done. Click on the photo to see her butterfly and not-quite-finished apple.

And a very nice lady named Lara, whose photo I neglected to take, demonstrated tatting. She does very nice work.




After 3 hours of demonstrating we went to the Hippodrome. Oh, I forgot, it's called the Coliseum now. Anyway the first show was Trailer Racing. There were 8 pickups with horse trailers behind them. The object is for the rider to run from the front of his pickup to the back while his partner carries the saddle. The rider takes his/her horse out of the trailer, takes off the halter, puts on the bridle, saddles the horse...

And rides as fast as possible around the arena twice. Then he/she stops behind his/her trailer, gets off, removes saddle and bridle, puts on the halter, stuffs the horse back into the trailer, and runs to the front of his/her pickup to stop the watch. Amazing. Fastest and shortest race I've ever seen.

It looked like the guy driving this tractor might have been a zamboni driver. His tee shirt had a Minnesota Wild logo on it. He was preparing the arena for the Royal Canadian Mounties.





You'll have to click on this one to see the Mounties--all in a row.

That was the only time they were easy to photograph. Look at the video below to see some of their action. It was most elegant to watch. Handsome men and women riding handsome black horses.

In the horse barn we visited with some of the mounties who were preparing their horses for shipping east by truck to their next state fair gig. I saw these black horses and just had to take their picture.





Actually, they are miniature horses. Aren't they cute?











Of course, a trip to the fair isn't complete without deep-fried cheese curds.







Betty's food from Famous Dave's almost looks healthy. Eeew.











We noticed two huge piles of uncut spuds near a French fry stand. It was late in the afternoon on the last day. I hope they had somewhere to use these potatoes.

All in all, it was a very good day. Kinda hot (I think it was over 90F) and fairly humid.

Take a peek at the videos. They're short. The second one shows them performing one of their more intricate routines. (Isn't Betty's laugh contageous?)

Huh?

For several years now I've had trouble hearing. I have tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Twenty years ago I was told there wasn't much to be done about it. The ringing would always be there. Now, in the age of digital hearing devices, hearing help can be had for enough money.

While Googling around the web, I found Hearing Planet. I got in touch with them and Gina, from somewhere in Tennessee put me in touch with Jim at Alliance Hearing in Roseville. (I want this to be a surprise, so don't tell David. I feel safe putting this in my blog because I'm pretty sure he rarely reads it. If he does, oh well.)

For just about what I paid for my 1996 Saturn a couple years ago, I'm GOING TO BE ABLE TO HEAR AGAIN!!! No more asking people to take their hands away from their faces. No more asking them to turn around and look at me so I can see their mouths move. No more TV AT FULL VOLUME. (Was that too loud?)

I put one in my ear (no battery) just to feel it. I will have to be careful to remember they're there so I don't go swimming with them. Bad idea to get them wet. But, for the first year or two (can't remember which), they are covered for water damage: shower, rain, whatever. It comes in colors but I think dull, boring, skin color would be best.

Jim said I could probably get them in by next Tuesday or Thursday. That means I'd have them when we go see Spamalot. I won't miss any words!

I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

Shhh. Don't tell David. It's a surprise.

Aaaahhhh . . . Summer!

Fresh sweet corn, melted butter, a little salt. Fresh tomatoes cut in wedges and served at room temperature. Bing cherries for dessert. A lovely ending to a lovely weekend.

I'm finally on Clue #3 of the MS3 (see earlier posting). Some rows go really easily; some have to be tinked and reknit two or three times. But I just finished row 162. There's hope.

My Balcony - a good place to sit and knit

I started planting on my balcony May 13, 2007. This old, old pot came from a friend and has four plants in it: dusty miller, vinca vine, snap dragon, and a lovely dark purple/green fuzzy leafy thing.








This is the whole balcony with the hanging petunia plants, some solar lanterns, a cement dragon that I got from my son and his wife. Oh, and the strawberry pot I got from QVC. Cool.












June 14, you can see some progress. Everything is bigger.










The pot full of plants is really full today, June 28.












This is the purply fuzzy plant. It has tiny 3/4" flowers in it.












And this is where I like to sit and knit and read when the weather is not too hot or rainy.