Wednesday 1/30/08

Sleep:
woke at 12am 'cause hubby's cell phone was beeping with low batteries, used temperature taking device as flashlight to plug in cell phone & messed up taking temperature so had to skip the temperature this time
up at 6:30am
to sleep for night at ~10pm

Food:
~9am - water from 3 young coconuts
~9:30am - 2 or 3 large tangerines
~noon - about a dozen large tangerines
~3:30pm - 2 small baggies of garbanzo sprouts while in traffic to pick up son
~7pm - 4 green olives given too me, eek! too salty, but liked 'em, ug! ruined my plans
~7:30pm - 3 more green olives, tahini/lemon dip with 2 med. tomatoes in it - celery dipped in it (~10 sticks)

Wow, I am soooo glad I've gotten enough fruit to last me now. Today was a disaster for me (well, not a complete disaster, and certainly wouldn't be for everyone, but certainly not how I like to be doing and not how I'm used to be doing, that's for sure)- not enough carbs, too much fat and salt on top of it. Ick! All I had left to eat this morning before the farmer's market was tangerines (and the coconut water), but I figured it'd be fine 'cause I would be getting food at the market. I did get lots of food there, but it wasn't accessible to me due to how it was packed in the back of the truck and how it was raining. I didn't realize it'd take so long to get home after market too.

Here's how it all happened. I went to pick up my son at college after market and he was a half hour late. I munched on the garbanzo sprouts I'd been given at market then so wasn't feeling like I needed to pull out any food from the back of the truck at that point. Then we went to pick up my hubby at the farm we're starting up and he had to gather some stuff, etc. which took a bit more time. Then on the way home I wanted to get celery and tomatoes at the grocery store to be sure I had enough stuff for the week. When we stopped there our son went to see some friends at a store next door and then got some food from the grocery store's deli that he was eating on the way back. My hubby and son stopped at a restaurant in town to get some take-out food they like, which took a bit longer. Just before they went to get it my son offered me the olives, which I took, unfortunately. They made me interested in getting live pizza that a neighboring restaurant sells so I went by there but they were closed. (Thank goodness). I went back in the truck and waited for them. When we got home we needed to unload and put away all the stuff in the back of the truck, including the food I'd gotten at market. By the time we were finished I didn't feel like making or having OJ or anything much, which led me to the fats again. Darn.

I know what I need to do to avoid this in the future. I've done it before and I just have to be more prepared for it in the future. When I haven't been eating enough carbs. lately I need to make sure to keep some fruit accessible to me at all times when going out with a group of people 'cause I'm likely to get caught out later than I planned and go to fats as a result. I also need to avoid the olives - especially ones that I haven't soaked for a long time in water and rinsed several times to get most of the salt out. I'm excited and happy that I think I've gathered enough bananas and other fruit so that I won't be undereating carbs (fruits) anymore, which I know will allow me to feel better and not be led to fats and such too.

The guy I get my regular order of 'cooking' and lady finger bananas from was back this week. Yay! He wasn't there last week 'cause of the rains. The guy we used to regularly get apple bananas from still doesn't have enough to make a case of them so I had to look elsewhere again. I reserved a tray of the ripest ones I could find early on. Then I saw a box of some nice looking apple bananas under another farmer's table & got them. After that I also saw a nice looking racime of apple bananas at a booth that doesn't always have them and got them too. So now I have a variety of types and ripenesses of bananas, with the majority being apple bananas 'cause that's the kind my hubby likes. I also got 20 pounds of rambutan and 7 pounds of longan from a friend. I got 12 large navel oranges and 7 large tangerines as well. I got a box of jicama from the lady I get jicama from and she gave me a couple of bags of older ones free. I got the regular 10 young coconuts too. There was more lettuce available too, so I got about 8 of a few different heads of lettuce as well as a few avocados.

I think that should do it. It's the bananas I needed most. Rambutan, longan, surinam cherries and starfruit just don't have many calories for their volume so it's hard to get enough just eating them all the time. The same thing goes for oranges, but it's a little easier when you juice 'em, but I don't think that's ideal. I think I might get some dates tomorrow too, so I can put them in smoothies with my chocolate sapotes and a little banana to start to get the carb calories going again. We also might go pick some of the fruit off the starfruit and surinam cherry trees tomorrow. Friday I plan to go see if I can pick some chocolate sapotes with a friend of mine. I still have some of them ripening and I think there will be some ready tomorrow. Yay!

I'll have to get my camera back from who's borrowing it and start taking picks of what I get at the farmer's market again for y'all.

Exercise:
some push ups in the morning, not sure what time (7am maybe?)
farmwork (light today) - helped hubby with measuring and marking 200 foot long sections where papayas will be planted, and where vegetables will be planted in-between, drove wheel barrow with amendments, etc. - so involved lots of walking, some running and squat walking, light carrying
farmer's market carrying - parked at one end and carried all cases of food, etc. (ranging from 10 - 40 (or 50?) pounds) to truck from there, most of which were about a 'block' away - as well as unloading them at home
stretching while waiting for the computer to start up tonight

Detox:
Thirsty after having the olives - what was I thinking? Wasn't actually, that's the problem, heh.

I'm sure I'll have salty mucus for a while to report after this for y'all...

Female:
skipped temperature today, day 9 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons

The Rest:
It's late now, and I need to rest so I can run tomorrow and recover from the icky food today. I'm so looking forward to getting back on track with it all again! I love how I feel when I'm on track so much better.

Today I saw a friend of mine at the farmer's market that I was so close with that we called each other sisters, but have been out of touch with for about a year now. It was so great to see her again! Yay! We're gonna' get together again soon and catch up.

Nightie night & Aloha! :)

Tuesday 1/29/08 - Ran 2 Miles Solid Today!

Sleep:
woke at 2:15am to pee & took temp.,
up at 8:30am
laid down from ~2-3pm, slept about 1/2 that
to sleep for night at 11pm-ish?

Food:
~10am - fresh squeezed orange juice (OJ) from I don't know how many oranges, after run ~1 gallon
~11am - ~dozen Surinam cherries as I picked 'em from our tree/bush after OJ settled
~3pm - young coconut water ~1 gallon after getting up from laying down
~4pm - ~7 medium chocolate sapotes after the coco water settled
~5:30pm - dozen or so langsat - the ones that were good to eat, not all were
~6 or 7pm - small avocado, 3 yellow tomatoes, ~1 large head romaine, ~8-12 sticks celery, 1-2 Tbs tahini, ~4 Tbs lemon juice from lemons from our tree

I was a little concerned in the morning about the continuing lack of ripe bananas and fruit in general, but was able to get by with some oranges and the chocolate sapote that ripened. Yay! Well, that is, until dinner... planned to have jicama with the yellow tomatoes and celery, but the jicama I'd been given for free turned out to be moldy (guess that's why it was free). So I decided to have a salad, but the lettuce I'd gotten was really super bitter and tough so that I just couldn't deal with it without some fat on it. I gave the outer leaves to my guinea pig 'cause I couldn't even deal with them with dressing and then made the dressing with tahini and lemon, saved some thicker to dip celery in too. I discovered that one of the avocados was ripe and ate it 'cause I just haven't been getting enough calories lately from this little fruit shortage I've been going through. Yeah, definitely having some difficulty with the fat percentages here, as well as undereating the carbs. I'm gonna' make sure I get lots of fruit tomorrow to straighten this all out.

Exercise:
~9:30am - running! Ran 2 miles today without walking in between - for the first time ever. It took 22 minutes and 5 or 6 seconds, so I guess the average pace was a 11 minute and 3 second mile. I was supposed to just run for 22 minutes today, but was so close to the 2 mile mark I kept going. Of course, I am still doing the walking warm-up and cool down, but haven't been timing that part in particular. We've been walking to a spot that we measured a mile from, which takes about 5 minutes brisk walking to get to/from so figure it's about a 5 minute warm up and the same for cool down. I got to the 1 mile mark at 10 minutes and 25 or 26 seconds, turned around and guess the second mile was at a 11 minute and 40 second pace. Not bad for the first time I've ever run 22 minutes solid without stopping to walk as well as the first time I've ever run two miles without stopping. I'm happy with it, for now that is. ;) As I said before I'm working towards various goals and am happy with my progress. Yay! I think I just might be getting through the non-runnerness of my life after all.

~11am - push ups - sorry, forgot to count again
~3pm - more push ups, didn't count them either - also did some partial ones on knees with the clapping thing & just training the clapping part a bit
followed by pull ups - assisted by my feet a bit on the way up for now - am doing them off my hammock chair's bar and using the hammock chair to put my feet on for the assisting
~6pm - more push ups before dinner
~10pm - stretching

Detox:
A bit of a feeling in my lungs after my running, but nothing specifically detoxing - think it was more recovery.

Female:
2:15am temp: 96.58 degrees Fahrenheit, day 8 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I was going to go into the farm with my hubby today, but didn't have time to get ready so skipped it. We had clothes in the washer that needed to be hung up to dry too. At the last minute we found out that our son wanted to go in to class earlier than my hubby and I thought. That's fine. I'm going there tomorrow anyway. It's a good thing I stayed with the clothes 'cause they needed to be dried and they had to be monitored 'cause it was an off and on rainy day. It would have been a hassle to take 'em with us and try to dry them at a laudramat 'cause we needed to leave the truck at the college and take the bus back so our son could get home in the evening. He has a class today that lets out after the buses stop running. Staying at home also gave me enough time to cut lots of fresh grass for my guinea pig, deal with the compost and various other things so it turned out great.

No spinning cotton this night.

Aloha! :)

Monday 1/28/08

Sleep:
woke at 6am to wake people, laid in bed for a couple hours after everyone left at 7:30am, up at about 9 or 10
to sleep for night at ~ 11pm

Food:
gallon of young coconut water
rest of the rambutan I have (about 3 pounds)
only banana that was ripe :( it was a 'cooking' one though, which helps 'cause they have more calories
5 large tangerines
rest of last night's dinner left overs with a small avocado added
a couple of handfulls of my hubby's raw peanuts - probably about two dozen in those shells
tahini-lemon dip with about 12 sticks celery

Yeah, I definitely overate percentage-wise on the fat calories today. It's probably 'cause I didn't have enough ripe fruit and didn't have a way to get any at the time. Hopefully I'll have enough ripe tomorrow or can go get some somewhere... I wonder how it will affect my running tomorrow, if at all.

When I go into town on Wednesday I'm definitely gonna' stock up on bananas however I can - I'll get 'em from Safeway if needed. Still it will take a while for them to ripen so I'll stock up on other fruit to last me in the meantime. Last week I thought that I'd be able to get at Thursday's market what I wasn't able to get at Wednesday's, because that's how it usually goes here for me. It didn't pan out this time and I couldn't even find enough at Saturday's market either. Looks like I might have to start getting myself to regular grocery stores and eat the imported stuff 'till the bananas recover here. When I'm travelling I am more prepared for this situation than now. Guess I'll hafta' start thinking of it as a travel time for a while.

A friend of ours said that they had lots of Surinam cherries and starfruit on their trees that we could go pick, so I'll have to make a point of going there before my hubby and son take off with the truck for the day. If I could just find the air pump that actually works I could ride my bike over there. The only gas station for miles has a broken air valve. I want to start riding my bike again anyway so hopefully that will work out too.

Exercise:
~15 push ups
~12 push ups
more push ups, not sure how many, forgot to count.. oops
Callanetics warm up, stomach & hip things I could remember
side-to-side rear leg lift exercise I invented
stretching

This is supposed to be my 'rest' day in between running. Since getting my running going well is HUGE for me (it's always been one of my weakest areas), I'm trying to keep the exercise down on these days until I get my running level to my goal length of time running solid: 50 minutes. I've decided to see if I can remember to do push ups before each time I eat or think about it to get my pushups going again. I've sort of slacked on keeping up with them and discovered that I couldn't do more than 10 regular ones in a row anymore before putting my knees down. Funny how I could also do 10 hopping ones as well though - prob. 'cause I'd been doing them more often than the regular ones, although had stopped doing them both for a bit.

I'm also vaguely working on getting my pull up back. I say vaguely 'cause I'm not very consistent with it still. Perhaps later. I'm also similarly working on handstands.

My hubby found my old yoga mat tonight! Yay! It's quite dusty and icky from where it had been stashed somehow though. :( We'll probably fix it up tomorrow or the next day sometime so maybe I'll be able to start using it Friday. :)

Detox:
Nothing here.

Female:
5am temp: skipped 'cause I was awake too much before & after the time. day 7 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons

The Rest:
Not much else to report on for today. I spun some more cotton tonight and I'm getting better at it, so that's nice. I'm not sure how well I'll be able to knit or crochet it unless I ply it first, but I think weaving will work fine. We'll see, we'll see.

Sunday 1/27/08

I'm posting this on 1/28/08, so anything I didn't write down at the time is from memory. I'm sort of out of the swing of keeping track of it all.

Sleep:
don't remember when I got up, think it was about 8:30am, had gone to sleep pretty late the night before
laid down from about 5:45-6:45pm 'cause my neck was a little stiff and I had a tad of a headache - figured out that it was from working it the day before. I had walked to the farmer's market (about 3-5 blocks-ish) and gotten two bags of stuff. When I was leaving a farmer told me that they had a bunch of chocolate sapotes for me, so I took the box of them. I carried the box of them home, with the bags over my right shoulder. I carried it with my right shoulder up a bit attempting to keep the bags from falling off my shoulder, which eventually they did and I carried it with them fallen to my elbow. I'm pretty sure it's 'cause I carried it so strangely that my neck was a bit sore on the right side. Amazing to remember how I wouldn't have been able to even lift that box to put it in my car before I started 80/10/10 over 5 years ago, and now I'm carrying it home. If it happens again, I'll figure out a way to secure the bags in a different way so I don't have to do that thing with my shoulder the whole way again.

Food:
small cup of thin banana smoothie after run when stretching (not many bananas ripe)
lots of rambutan - probably about 5 or 6 pounds
lots of water
6 or so medium chocolate sapotes
~8 medium jicama, 3 medium tomatoes, 7 sticks celery, 5 large leaves romaine, 1 small "Hawaiian oregano" leaf, 1/2 avocado - actually only ate about 3/4 of this jicama mix

There's a bit of a shortage of bananas on-island right now due to high winds knocking over the fruiting ones a little while back, so I had a little shortage of ripe bananas. It takes a bit longer for them to ripen in the winter so there's a bit of a gap right now. Luckily I've got the chocolate sapotes instead. I'd love to have 'em both though. I probably overate the fat percentage-wise for today, but I think it'll even out with other days when I eat less or no overt fat in relation to my calories. It didn't feel too heavy last night (the 27th) or today (when I'm writing this). Perhaps it's 'cause I didn't eat the whole evening thing so didn't overeat the fat after all...

Exercise:
Running!
Followed by stretching
some pushups or some sort of calestenic sort of thing, can't remember which at this point
2 or 3 sets of bench press & fly equivalents on an exercise machine
little bit of quick squats followed by stretching before bed 'cause leg muscles wanted something...

I've continued to run every other day with my hubby since I posted last. It's been working out really well. He used to be a really good runner before he broke his leg and had a metal plate in it. It took a long time to get them to take the metal back out and he couldn't run with it, so he got out of the swing of it. He hasn't really run the whole time we've been together so he's excited about getting back to it (after 20 years away from it) too. I knew that he'd still be better at it than me 'cause of his muscle memory vs. my muscle inexperience running-wise. It's worked out well though 'cause he's been able to just carry dumbbells and/or do fancier stepping to even it up so we can still run together. It's fun! He's up to carrying a 8 pound dumbbell in each hand by now when all I can do is just run. LOL. I'm still running for longer times than ever before in my life each time, and my pace is gradually getting better as well, so I'm running farther than ever too.

We ran 20 minutes solid this time, with 5 minute walking for warm-up and cool-down. We travelled 1.85 miles in the 20 minutes of running, making it an average pace of a 10 minute, 48 second mile. I wanted to push the pace a little for the first mile, but not too much 'cause I had to keep going. I ran the first mile at the fastest pace I've done yet: 10 minutes, 7 seconds! Yay! I then decided to slow a little for the rest 'cause I didn't wanna' miss out on running for longer than ever (20 minutes solid) either. So the rest of the run (.85 miles) was at a pace of a 11 minute, 37 second pace, still not bad for me. Yay!

I'll probably not push it as much the next few times. Part of the reason I decided to push it this time was to see how close I could get to 2 miles in the 20 minutes and also 'cause I knew that I was increasing my time by 2 minutes from the last time and will increase it 2 minutes the next time as well. This is less of an increase than I'll have for a few workouts 'cause the time after that will be 3 minutes more and then 5 minutes more before it goes back to 2 minutes more again. The 5 minute more workout will take me to 30 minutes of running solid! Yay! I'll probably push the pace again the workout after that, when it's a 32 minute run - assuming I'm able to keep up the increases each time as planned.

One thing that's cool is that I've realized that I now can sort of maintain a jog at about a 12 minute mile pace as a rest if needed, almost like walking used to be. That's huge for me 'cause I started out at a 13 minute mile pace or slower for my running/pushing it just a little over a month ago. Nice.

My Ashtanga video series arrived too! Now if I could only find my mat... I thought I knew where it was, but can't find it now. Ug. Well, I did watch the 1st two of them already and confirmed that they are exactly what I wanted, which is great! If I can't find my mat soon I'll figure out something else or get another one. I kind of wanted to wait to start on it full on until after I'm not increasing my running time anymore (which would be once I'm doing 50 minutes straight, in about 2 or three weeks - Feb 16th-ish according to my plan). That was when I thought I'd be doing the primary series though, which is about 2 hours long. There is another one that has a lot of the same stuff in it that's only an hour and 15 minutes though, so I might start on that earlier. I'll probably start on the surya namaskaras sometime this week. I'll start on them as an every other day thing too, then do them 6 days a week, then adding the rest of the shorter (1 1/4 hour) one every other day, eventually becoming 6 days a week later on. After seeing that 75 minute thing I might put off doing the full primary series 'till later, once I'm doing well with that first. I figure it might prepare my muscles better for some of the more advanced things towards the middle of the primary series better that way. It'll be sooo cool to be able to do that stuff. I just love it!

Detox:
Hmm.. can't remember anything in particular in this area..

Female:
5am temp: 96.67 degrees Fahrenheit, day 6 of my cycle, amber (yellow) day, no kid icons

The Rest:
About the cotton spinning:
I did make it to that meeting with my friends. It turns out that there's nothing special or different. We sort of determined that part of my problems with it had to be with the nature of cotton - it doesn't hold its spin as readily as wool, and also my spinning wheel. I wasn't able to bring my spinning wheel 'cause when I went to get it I discovered that it needed some restoration and repair before using it again. Apparently the metal pieces had rusted, which maybe was part of the reason I was having difficulty with it before - it was probably affecting it before it was visibly rusty.

My hubby and I got new solid brass hooks for guiding the yarn on the spindle to replace the rusty ones. They should not rust so readily. I also got a new spring. We sanded and oiled the rust in the aperture and turning parts and got a new string to replace for the 'drive belt' of it. Now it's working peachy-keen! ;) I've been able to start spinning again. Yay! Once I get a bunch of yarn done I'll figure out whether I'm gonna' weave, knit or crochet it. I think I might start with weaving it because of the spin thing, unless I ply it first. That means I've gotta' make a loom again (gave away the ones I had that my mom made before, but remember how to do it). I'm having fun spinning the cotton when I have time. I just love treadle operated things, so cool!

1/21/08 - I ran over a mile straight for the first time, ever! :)

Sleep:
woke at 6am for temp., up at about 9am?
nap from 4:30-5:30ish
to sleep for night at 10pm

Food:
~10am: young coco water after run from about 3 cocos (shared 5 with hubby)
followed by smoothie of 7 ripe raw "cooking bananas" and filtered water

~1pm: 5 medium papayas from our yard
followed by 5 small chocolate sapote

~6pm: orange juice squeezed from 5 large oranges
followed by about 1 bunch celery stalks (outer ones from several, actually) dipped in lemon-tahini dip (2Tbsp tahini & lemon juice to desired texture), a little nutritional yeast sprinkled on top of a few bites (~1Tbsp total)

I don't usually eat nutritional yeast, but felt like having some tonight, so did. It was nice.

I think I might have had more bananas in there somewhere, but can't remember at this point, sorry.

Exercise:
~9:30am: Running! :)
~10:15am: stretching after running
~12:30pm: something before lunch that I can't recall now - busy day, didn't think I'd need to remember at the time
~5:30pm: some pushups and stuff before the OJ

I'm actually working on my running and making loads of progress now! Yay!
Today I ran for 12min. solid, followed by 3 min. walking and 5 more minutes running (plus 5 min. warmup walking and more than 5 min. cool down walking to get back home) When I got to the mile mark from where I started running, it was 10min. and 20 seconds later. Cool! Back in December when I started back at working on my running I couldn't even run 2 minutes solid like I had been able to before. Wow!

This is my 10th running session since I started this new plan and it's working fantastically! I'm running every other day (except a time where I skipped two days instead of just one and another where I skipped three days - both towards the beginning). I've been breaking records for myself left a right with this, very exciting. My body keeps pulling through and amazing me. The plan started out with a series of one minute running with one minute walking and that was challenging back then. I'd never timed myself running in the past, but know that when I did and was running better than I could remember being able to do in the past, two minutes was the limit of what I could do before having to walk again. And even after walking for a while I wasn't able to run the two minutes again that same day. So needless to say, I was breaking my own records fairly quickly with every workout, heh. Helps to start with such a low bar for that. LOL.

But now I'm not only running for longer periods of time than I ever recorded before, but I am also running farther than I know I've ever done without stopping before - AND increasing my pace from workout to workout at the same time as increasing my and length of time running, which both increase my distance as well. The day before yesterday I ran the fastest and longest ever as well: 10 minutes solid which got me to about .9 of a mile, which was a pace of about a 11.11min. mile. That was an increase of both pace and length of time from two days before that where I ran 8 minutes solid which got me to about .7 of a mile, which was a pace of about 13.33min. mile.

Today I can now say that "I'm a runner." I'm still not a good runner IMO, 'cause I'm still not going as fast as I want or as long as I want, but I am running regularly and can run over a mile solid at a decent enough pace (close to a 10 min. mile). I'm certainly not ready to win any races (except I could blow my 2-month ago self away now LOL), but I do now consider myself a runner.

Growing up with asthma I never developed running 'cause they always said it wasn't good for me and I'd get weezing and such when I tried. Apparently it can be good for people with asthma, if kept in the comfortably moderate range. I don't have asthma anymore, so can't say. I can say though that I have felt mucus come up from my lungs during my recovery in the day and a half between workouts, sometimes coughing as a result. I had a tiny hint of a weeze one night if I took really deep breaths. All of that was early on though and now I don't get it as much if at all.

It's interesting how I've done lots of aerobic exercise of other kinds through the years and was able to get my heart rate up without feeling it in my lungs like that. I've noticed that the thing that allowed me to work out so that I felt it mostly in my heart was rebounding and the thing that did the same for my lungs was and always has been running. Well, actually swimming might be more than running but it's hard to tell 'cause I've never mastered the breathing with the stroke dealy - so far, at least. Perhaps in a year or so after I've got the running down I'll work on the swimming...

My initial goal for running was to be able to run over 8 minutes straight without having to stop to walk. I've done that already. Next it was to increase it up to 30 minutes and then 50 minutes at a time. I also wanted to have a pace of at least a 10 minute mile (which I'm close to doing already), then 8 minute mile. I thought I wouldn't be doing the 10 minute mile 'till I was up to 30 minutes running at once, so it's cool I'm ahead of schedule in that way.

I'll be happy with maintaining at 50 minute runs every other day at a pace of at least 8 minute miles and will build up to that, which also lets me meet my goal of around 20 or so miles a week 'cause I'd be basically doing a 10K every run at that point. If I get to a pace that allows me to run about 7 miles at a time in the 50 minutes or decide to do a longer run once a week, then I might run on a regular schedule 3 days a week rather than the every other day thing. It's a bit easier to arrange other things around it if it's happening on the same days of the week every week. I like having the day off in between to do other stuff or simply recover (although I haven't felt like I'm actually recovering so far). It is tempting to run every day though 'cause I like how I feel from it... we'll just have to see what I end up doing.

I want to start doing Ashtanga again. I've missed it terribly. That would be for about 2 hours a day, six days a week. I've broken down and ordered a video of the primary series the teacher I used to have (that moved away) recommended. It should arrive around when I'm up to 50 minutes of running at a time which will be good timing. I've been trying to do some on my own, but can't quite remember it all well enough and will appreciate the guiding of the video.

I also want to do stuff with weights 3 times a week (about an hour each time) instead of just when I think of it or have a chance like I'm doing now. I want to continue doing bodyweight things, going to the beach and such too. I'm going to be helping my hubby with the farm again fairly soon, so I need to schedule that in as well.

I want to pump up my bike's tires again now that I can actually get to it again (it was sort of buried in stuff our garage for a while) and use that to get around with in town and for fun. And, of course there are the occasional classes, videos and dancing that I love to do... so you can see why I want to keep the running down to every other day so that I can do all the other stuff too, heh. It's all so fun and nifty it's hard to limit it to one or two things. I guess I'm sort of making up for all the time in the rest of my life that I wasn't into exercise or something. It's just too much fun now! :)

Detox:
Nothing much to speak of.. a tad of mucus in the shower in the morning, a little feel in my lungs that they're clearing out from the running in the evening after the run...

Female:
6am temp: 97.14 degrees fahrenheit, day 27 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons
I thought that I might be starting my period today 'cause my temperature was down a bit, but it wasn't down as far as it usually is during the first couple of weeks of my cycle. I thought it might happen over night between today and tomorrow, but wasn't sure what would happen when running as I don't have any experience with running that far and long at a time. It's 10pm and it hasn't started yet, so guess it'll happen later tonight or tomorrow...

The Rest:
Not a whole lot else to report in this area for today. I was going to help a friend with their computer tutoring them, but they decided to do it another time once we got started.

I thought I had to go in to jury duty tomorrow but it looks like it's been postponed a month. I'm really happy about that for two reasons. I can help out my friend sooner and another who wanted help in a couple of days too. Mostly I'm excited 'cause I will be able to make it to see if I can learn how to spin cotton tomorrow after all. We had it scheduled for last week, but had to cancel 'cause the woman that was going to show us had a cold or something like that and rescheduled it. I was afraid I was going to miss it due to the jury duty, but won't miss it now. Yay!

I have a spinning wheel that I used to spin wool on about 15 years ago, and a hand spindle that I did the same. I haven't been able to get the cotton to spin so am not sure what's different about it. My friend and I that are going to learn how to spin cotton have both personally hand harvested our own cotton from organically grown plants here on-island and hand picked the seeds out of them as well. She has not spun yarn before and I have not been successful with cotton so we're both really excited about this meeting. We both want to be able to grow our own clothing and such. I'm thinking that perhaps I need to card the cotton in order to spin it properly. The wool I had was already carded and such. Or perhaps there's another requirement or difference in doing it.

My hubby has been working on making me some circular bamboo knitting needles with bamboo and some heavy fishing line I got. It's so nifty to make stuff with the crochet hooks he's carved for me and I know I'll love the knitting needles when they're done too! I'll try to post some pictures of some of the things I've been making with the unbleached bulk cotton string I got from the hardware store sometime soon. I think the first thing I'll make with the hand spun cotton is a yoga rug/mat for Ashtanga. I need to make another loom for that though 'cause about 7 or so years ago I gave away all the looms I had that my mom made, but it's fairly easy to do and it'll be fun to show my friend how to make her own at the same time. :)

Well, this is a very long post. I'm going to end it and post it before it becomes yet another unfinished draft of a post not ever posted...

Aloha Everyone!
Happy New Year! :)