9/29/08

This was posted two weeks later and dated as if it was posted on the 29th, so the day of the week will show correctly and it keeps things in chronological order...

Sleep:
up at 3am to get ready for my shift at the gym - will be doing so all week...

Food:
~7am: I found 3 mangosteen in the kitchen and my hubby said that I could have 'em. Yum! :)


Then I had the rest of the starfruit from the day before:


~8:45am: When we got to the farm I had the water from two of the coconuts we got from our yard the night before:


I had lunch a couple of times 'cause I was too busy to eat it all at once. It was all bananas from our yard:


I can't remember what I had the rest of the day anymore and lost the pics later in the day so I don't have the pics to remind me. I think it was salad from our farm though.

Exercise:
Harvesting and light calisthenics as I had time, stairs and such at my shift at the gym... so not much, but I was still taking it easy with the jet lag and all.

Detox:
Yeah, I'm sure. Can't remember specifics though...

Female:
I think this was the first day I took my temperature again for a long time. I think it was day 5 of my cycle, but can't remember specifically at this point... It was a green day though, I remember that. :)

The Rest:
It was my first day back at the gym for work. It was nice to see everyone again too. I did the farmer's market with my hubby since he'd been doing it while I was gone. We went and got the freezer after market.

I took a few pics of a chameleon at the farm when drinking my coconuts and lost all the pics on my camera card that I hadn't copied over yet when deleting the ones I didn't want. Even though only a few were highlighted and I hit the delete key on my computer and it asked if I wanted to delete that many pics, it somehow deleted all of the pics on my card in that folder. :( Bummer. I had taken some pics of ukuleles I saw at Costco that I thought my dad might be interested in that I lost too. Now I'll hafta' figure out how to get in there again to do it again. I don't have a membership, but he does... I do have the web optimized pic I did for y'all of the chameleon though. Here it is:


K, I've only got one more day's pics from two weeks ago (the 30th), but will hafta' post 'em another time. It's getting too late tonight (the 12th) as I'm getting up at 3am again tomorrow...

Aloha! :)

9/28/08

I'm posting this two weeks later, so I don't remember much at this point. I'm gonna' override the posting date so it shows up as if I posted it on the 28th though.

It was my first day back, so I was short on food still and still jet lagged...

Food:
Breakfast was stuff I found around the house...
~10:15am: Star fruit - the first pic's what I started with and the 2nd is what was left when I was 'done' with the star fruit...


~10:30am: Then I decided to have some of the corn in the fridge 'cause even though I was done with star fruit, it wasn't enough calories. I find it hard to eat enough star fruit at times due to the waxiness of it. I realized that the corn wasn't fresh and I wouldn't usually eat it beyond the first day from harvest, but I was foraging so-to-speak, so I ate one to see how it sat with me. It did fine, so I ate another. The pic's of the second one and one like the first...


~12:15pm: My son told me that there were some longan around for me (gift from other farmers at market) so I searched around some more and found them. There weren't many so I ate 'em on the way into the farm...


~1:15pm: I got to the farm and looked around at what was still growing in the personal section I took care of before I left. The cucumbers were pretty much all done by then, there were still some tomatoes and basil, the peas were long gone and there were a few long beans still though. So I ate what long beans I could find. Here's a pic of 'em growing, followed by a pic of me with some of 'em. :) I was wearing the lei my hubby gave me at the airport when he picked me up 'cause it was still good...



~3pm: It was time for more serious calories, the foraging wasn't doing it for me anymore. So we went to the grocery store that usually has ripe bananas, but they didn't have any ripe right then. :( So I decided to get dates and eat 'em with apples to clean my teeth and lessen the sweetness. Yep. Home in the tropics and stuck eating imported stuff still. LOL I'll be able to go to the farmer's market soon and get things going again. No worries. :) My hubby got stuff from their deli and we ate at the mall. Here's my stuff in the re-usable bag that stuffs into a smaller attached one for storage:


When we got home (at about 6pm) we discovered that the rack of bananas in our yard that my hubby was so excited about ('cause it was sooo large and his favorite kind) had ripened while I was gone and some of them were already eaten by the birds. He was so busy doing everything, leaving in the dark and arriving back in the dark that he hadn't noticed... He harvested it and we harvested some coconuts for me to have in the morning too. I got lemons from our tree and noticed that there were roses ready for eating as well. (I eat the petals in salads). No papayas ready just yet). I gathered some yellow lilikoi (passion fruit) too. :) No more avocados left at this point. Oh well. Here's a pic of the coconuts from our tree after I put them in the back of our truck to take to the farm the next day:


~7pm: Dinner was cucumber noodles with cukes from our farm that I harvested before we left, topped with some julienne sun dried tomatoes from a jar that were soaking in olive oil. Eeek! Yeah, olive oil... Oh well. It was yummy at least. :)

I also sprinkled basil flowers on the 'pasta' that I'd gathered at our farm earlier too. Here's a pic I took of the basil flowers in the field...


Exercise:
Not too much today, just harvesting and stuff...

Detox:
Can't remember at this point (2 weeks later) - I figure there was something though as I'd been not eating all that optimally... I can see my skin and hair weren't up to par in the pic. That's sort of a usual thing for me after flying as well.

Female:
I didn't take my temperature this morning yet 'cause my sleeping was still messed up from jet lag and all..

The Rest:
It was really nice to be home. There was a strange smell the night before that we couldn't place. It smelled like something burning or something else, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from or what it was... In the morning we still smelled it and it was worse so we tried to figure it out even more. I finally decided that it was coming from the back or underneath the fridge. My hubby wasn't convinced and thought it was coming from a different area. Then we sort of converged to a similar area and I thought it was coming from the back of the fridge where a little fan was and he thought it was underneath the fridge. It was hard to locate 'cause the smell would sort of come and go in it's intensity. I thought it was related to the fridge's operation 'cause the smell would be more noticeable when the fridge was powering on and less when it was not. At a certain point late in the morning we discovered that it was indeed the fridge 'cause when my hubby was cleaning out the floor behind the fridge it started sparking when it powered on. He promptly unplugged it and we realized that we needed to get a new fridge. LOL Good thing we kept at it and didn't just go off to the farm. It made us rather late to get to the farm for watering, but it saved our house from burning down... My hubby cut the cord so our son wouldn't come and plug it back in when we were gone ('cause he wasn't there at the time and didn't know what was up).

So after going to the farm and watering and foraging we went to the mall and any other place we could think of with refrigerators to see our options. They were much more expensive than we thought they'd be and not all of them on display were available right away. We decided on one at Sears and were going to go back the next day to buy it and get it delivered. They said that if we got it delivered it wouldn't happen 'till Wednesday so there was no rush. The delivery would be free - we pay it upfront and get a rebate that will refund us. Hard to pass that up, especially since they had the best one in our opinion.

Since I'm writing this 2 weeks later I'll keep going with this thread... I went in the next day and saw the same sales guy to buy it. Then it turned out that the stainless steel one we were looking at wasn't the price it said on it and that we'd discussed. That price was apparently for the white model. Ug! We'd talked all about how it was the same as the white model beside it and that must be the difference in price - the sales guys had participated in that discussion too. Doi. There was another sales gal there on Monday who explained the difference in the price between the white models of the stainless steel one we wanted and the white one beside it was that the shelves inside had a slight lip on the sides of the shelves rather than just glass at the sides of the shelves. Quite minor. ANYway... the stainless model was $200 more than we thought and I wasn't prepared to pay for that. I'd gone in alone and didn't have the money for it with me or my hubby to discuss it with. At this point the other white one seemed like a better deal 'cause of the $200 difference. The thing was, they didn't even have the stainless steel one in stock either! Ug! So I went back to the farm and told my hubby about it and he agreed that perhaps we shouldn't get either of them.

We thought about just getting a freezer that opens at the top in order to freeze the water bottles for the farmer's market and leave it at that. Our son could use the little 3/4 fridge we had but weren't using and we didn't really need refrigeration for most things. We used it for left overs from market, but nothing else much. Those freezers are more efficient and cheaper to run, better on the environment... So that's what we did. We got it and brought it home that night. We got one that was the right size to fit where the fridge was, but didn't put it in there 'cause we still had the fridge and didn't have time to move it first.

We were able to plug in the freezer in the middle of the night and had the bottles of water in there to freeze for the farmer's markets. We were buying bags of ice to use for markets in the meantime. The freezer turned out to be not so great for this. It wasn't freezing the water as quickly and solidly as the refrigerator had - and hadn't even frozen one solid after 2 days... We then re-examined the owner's manual and noticed that it said that it was designed to store frozen foods.. so perhaps it didn't get cold enough to freeze things, only cold enough to keep things frozen that were already frozen?!? Ug! We gave it more time and my hubby noticed that it seemed to do better when we had more things in there and theorized that it needed less open space to freeze things. So we've been working on increasing the amount of bottles in there and it's been working better for us. It still takes about a day and a half or two days to freeze the bottles (whereas the fridge would take only overnight or one day), but we haven't been able to fill it up enough quite yet either. It'd be nice to have it full though so we'd always have plenty of the refreeze containers for the larger markets and the day we have two markets and all. So we're keeping it.

On a different note. I pulled out my son's ukulele and used the tuner my dad got me to tune it up. The pegs were a bit rusty so it was a bit more difficult to tune, but it tuned up nicely and I like the sound. So does my hubby. Yay! :) I started to practice the cords I knew and experiment with things with them and trying to find other notes or chords that sound good w/'em. I also looked at another string instrument we had around the same size. It was a banjo thing I guess my mom had and looking at it again I noticed that it had four strings. A banjo uke! Cool! I always liked the way that thing looked, now perhaps I'll know how to tune and play it too! Sweet! :) There were only 3 strings on it and it was very dusty and dirty so I took the strings off and cleaned it up some. I figured I'd bring it into a music store and ask them how best to clean it up further and get it restrung.

I wasn't able to go in right away to get it looked at, and when I did I found that I had to go back another day when the guy who did repairs would be there. That was Friday (the 10th) and he said that it was missing it's bridge, but he could order one fairly inexpensively. He told me a bit about it and will help me string and tune it when the bridge arrives. It should be here at the end of next week. Cool! :) He said it wasn't a top of the line sort of thing even in it's time 'cause it didn't have tension adjustments on the sides and all, but it could still have a nice sound. I like the design of it so I want to find out what it sounds like, so I'm going for it.

In the meantime I've been practicing and playing on my son's uke, which has been fun. I found that I needed to tune it almost every time though and figured it was partly 'cause of the rust on the pegs and more likely 'cause it didn't have a case and was getting untuned in transit. I found a nifty camo case and got it on the spot. Yay! I'm lovin' that case, yeah.

I haven't been playing the harmonica since I got back... want to find the book I have on how to play it here first...

K, enough on this day and updates on that stuff since...

9/27/08

This was posted the day afterward and dated as if posted on the 27th...

Sleep:
was excited about going home and getting started on making my dreams of my future will be, so had a bit of trouble getting back to sleep when waking early in the morning to pee..

Slept a little on the last plane, but not much. Was very tired when arrived. Jet lag. Went to sleep Hawaii time around 8pm-ish, which was 11pm-ish in California...

Food:

Breakfast was a muskmelon:


Lunch: I ate at the airport when waiting for my first plane... bananas, of course ;) I took the pic before leaving in the morning - they're in the container I took with me to carry them in.


I had the sprouted and dehydrated bread with cinnamon and dates in it when waiting for the second plane, then felt like I needed something fresher to eat. It was about 6 or 7 hours 'till I'd get home & the airport's about an hour from our house, so I decided to try and find something fresh to eat at the airport. Not an easy thing to do a LAX... I ended up getting a salad that had some cheese in it and picked out as much of it as I could. I ended up getting a bit of it anyway 'cause it was crumbled blue cheese and hard to pick out completely. Salty stuff. I wondered what it'd do to me, thought it might not be bad 'cause it was such little amounts left after I picked it out... The rest of the salad was lettuce, tangerine, walnuts and cherry tomatoes, so was nice. Good enough. Should have brought more food for the 3 hour layover, that ended up being 4 hours... Maybe next time.

I didn't have the camera anymore 'cause I was using my dad's wife's camera when there & had to leave it behind. My camera had been delivered at home though so I'll have pics of everything else later...

Exercise:
Not really much at all - was traveling most of the day.

Detox:
Yep. Still...

Female:
day 18 of my cycle, ?? day, ?? kid icons

The Rest:
Was traveling all day, not much else to say... well, perhaps later I'll talk about some of it anyway, but not much time right now so am posting this for now & hoping I'll be able to get back to it later...

9/26/08

I'm writing this a few days later, so don't remember some of the specifics. I'm gonna' override the date so it shows up like I posted this on the 26th.

I have pics of the food though, so can at least post about that ('cause the pics jog my memory)...

Food:
Breakfast was melon (including the ones not cut yet too):


Lunch was bananas (pic taken in the car, had already eaten 3 not pictured):


Dinner was spinach salad with tomatoes (2 or 3 large) and tahini-lemon dressing:


Exercise:
This was my last day to go to the gym while on vacation so I decided to just do some of my favorite things. I rowed for about 40 minutes or so, and basically did the same routine as Wednesday. I meant to also do the speed bag, but ended up not having enough time left for it. I thought that if I had time the next day I'd just go in and do it, but didn't end up having time on Saturday so didn't.

My dad and I went on a walk by the waterfront in the evening and I did some of the par course things. Fun! :)

Detox:
Yeppers. Mainly cloudy BMs...

Female:
day 17 of my cycle, ?? day, ?? kid icons

The Rest:
It was my last day away and I spent most of the day w/my dad. We went to get some brown jeans I found (not an easy thing to find, especially in my size); played the drums, ukulele and harmonica; played around with his laptop and a program he got to be able to record stuff from the TV and VHS, etc. (so he can convert his VHS tapes to DVD); talked and all. It was nice. Now that I'm writing this, it reminds me that we did much of that the day before as well (mainly the talking & music stuff).

I had messed up when reading my itinerary at one point and thought I was leaving on Saturday at 4:40, and discovered on this night that it was actually 12:10 instead. Ooops! That meant no way I'd get back to the gym... and we wouldn't have time for the other things we had planned either. :( Oh well. At least I discovered it the day before, rather than after it was too late...

9-25-08

Sleep:
woke at 7am-ish, up at 8-ish
to sleep last night around 10:30-ish, didn't sleep very well

Food:
Breakfast was melons:

I constructed a little thing for fun with the rinds:

If I had some little squat candles or tall skinny ones they might look good in there too (inside the top one). :) As it was I just composted 'em.

Lunch was some bananas, sorry didn't get a pic...

Dinner was celery & tomatoes with tahini-lemon dip (all organic):


Exercise:
I made it to the Pilates class! Yay! It was nifty and fun! :) We did Pilates Tower stuff, so didn't use the sliding seat but did use the springs, handles, bar and such on the riser. I have an area of my lower back that's always been sort of flat when I'm trying to ball up and roll. The rest of me does fine it's just that part - been that way since I can remember. I remember when I was a kid I couldn't do somersaults very well 'cause I'd roll up to it, then my back would slam down ('cause it was flat there) and it'd stop my momentum (unless I got up enough speed to go past it fast enough, which is what I used to do). ANYway... I could feel it sort of curling a bit at a certain point toward the end of the class. Nice. I had a nice talk with the instructor after and she showed me another machine, MVp, that was more portable and compact and a book that showed all the things you could do with it. Perhaps I can get them to use that at my gym since we could move 'em out of the way (space is limited there). It wasn't an aerobic sort of workout, or bodybuilding sort of thing, but it did challenge my muscles in certain spots and was good for muscle tone and flexibility and balance. Cool. :)

I decided to leave it at that exercise-wise at the gym today. I was still a bit constipated feeling from the stuff I ate yesterday. *insert embarrassed smiley here* LOL That's why I didn't sleep so well too. Oh well. At least I didn't have the bad breath thing going too. My dad and I might go for a walk later on and I might try out whatever par course stations are still in good enough shape, so I'll get other exercise later.

Detox:
Not as much as I expected - at least so far... I was definitely thirsty during and after yesterday's digestively challenging meals, and it seemed to sort of sit like a lump in my intestines overnight and this morning so I felt constipated, but did have a BM so wasn't really I suppose. I got quite hot last night (in relation to how I usually feel) and didn't want the covers I usually bundle up in and felt that it was stuffy inside so opened a window that I haven't needed open before. I don't know if that's from the meals or from ovulation, both or neither. LOL No BO so far or bad breath either. It's about noon right now, so we'll see when I finish this later if there are any other things.

Yeah, there were... some cloudy BMs started in that evening.

Female:
day 16 of my cycle, probably a red day, probably both kid icons... I think I might have ovulated yesterday evening, but don't know 'cause I haven't been doing my temperature and all 'cause I left my BabyComp at home. I sometimes have a feeling in my cervix area when I'm ovulating & I felt that yesterday evening. I was also hotter last night than I've been, possibly from the degree of body temperature increase that happens at ovulation and last 'till menstruation. But then that temperature thing could have just been an increase from my body to deal with the food I ate yesterday...

The Rest:
It's the 28th now, when I've gotten back to updating this post. I have pics of my food, but don't remember the specifics of the rest, so I'll just leave it as-is.

Aloha!

9/24/08

Sleep:
up at 7:30-ish

Food:
Breakfast was melons:


Lunch was at Cafe Gratitude:




Dinner was the sandwich splurge:


Exercise:
Did stuff at the house 'cause my dad forgot to leave the car key out for me (and he sleeps in 'till almost noon & we were going out not long after that). So did some yoga and calisthenics and all. I figured it'd be a light day on the exercise which might help me with the Pilates tomorrow...

Detox:
Nothing yet, amazingly. I would usually get a runny nose and mucus before finishing a meal like I had at Cafe Gratitude. It wasn't very spicy with garlic and onions and that sort of food usually is so perhaps it was mostly that that caused me to have the mucus so fast - in order to protect my mucus membranes from it all. This meal was gentler somehow. Nice. Either that or my body's just a bit overwhelmed from the traveling and all to deal with it... I think it was just a more gentle meal, but whatever...

Female:
day 15 of my cycle, red day, kid icons of some sort

The Rest:
We went to a drumming circle today and then Cafe Gratitude and then a music store. It was all fun.

9-23-08 and update

Sleep:
been catching up on my sleep, more gradually than before, didn't sleep very well on Sunday night - the shitake breath was bothering me, but I don't know if that was the only reason... Good sleep otherwise though

Food:
Monday
Breakfast was 'half' a watermelon (organic this time, yay), actually it was probably more than half in reality:


Lunch was organic bananas again. So simple, no brainer, nice. I ate 3 less than pictured:


Dinner was organic salad again. Yummy! I'm lovin' this salad lately: baby spinach and tomatoes (this time it was 3 heirloom roma tomatoes) with tahini-lemon dressing:


Tuesday (this day, the 23rd, but I'm writing it on Wed. morning)
Breakfast was the other 'half' of watermelon from yesterday, so it was probably less than half that watermelon:


Lunch was the regular for now, organic bananas. I ate 3 less than pictured again:


Dinner was the same as last night, still organic spinach & tomatoes with tahini-lemon dressing, except the tomatoes were a different kind (beefsteak large and medium instead of heirloom roma):


We went to the farmer's market in Berkeley today, different one than the one we went to before. It was nice. I'd been there last year too. I don't remember it being there when I lived in this area before though. I remember the other two markets and used to go to them in Berkeley when I lived in that area. ANYway...

I got a bit over 12 pounds of melons for my breakfasts the rest of my time here, some dirty girl early girl tomatoes and some beefsteak tomatoes, all organic. I wanted lemons and salad mix too, but didn't find any. Good thing we were going to the Berkeley Bowl later so I didn't have to re-figure out what to eat.

I got a pleasant surprise at market. Someone who knows me from my website here and I've emailed with a couple of times saw me there. We talked a bit and it was really nice to catch up a little and see each other face to face. I took a pic of us, holding the camera myself. That's such a fun way to take pictures. I have a friend, who also eats 80-10-10 and visited Kauai for a few months, who is a master at taking pictures of herself this way (holding the camera out in front of her). She has even taken nice profiles and silhouettes at sunset and such. After seeing her pictures I got inspired to take pictures that way too. It's such fun to do when taking a pic with someone else too 'cause it's sort of a grab bag to find out how it turned out. I'm getting better at aiming though, but I still need to get my shoulder to look more natural and stop opening up my mouth weird when I'm aiming it. LOL I usually have to take a few pics just 'cause of my mouth. Luckily digital cameras are like Polariods in that way & you know right away whether you got the pic enough. So here's the pic we liked the best:


We had planned to go eat at Cafe Gratitude in Berkeley after the farmer's market to check it out. I've never been there and my dad and his wife wanted to take me out somewhere. I've been curious about tasting the food there 'cause I've heard other people talking about it. I can't remember what they said in particular, but know that it's not the optimum food, like all the 'raw' restaurants, and that it sort of stretches the 80-10-10 thing and even the raw thing a bit IMO, but it's close enough to try out on vacation as a splurge. All the menu items are named like affirmations and all, things like "I am happy" and "I am feeling warm", so it would be sort of fun in that way too. We didn't end up doing it because when we got there it was closed 'till Thursday (supposedly) for repairs or remodeling or upgrading or something. I thought, "Bummer, we came here mainly for that & now my dad & wife are gonna' be hungry and all". I also was a bit disappointed 'cause I was 'up' for trying some of their stuff and had sort of planned out what I got at the farmer's market and what I was gonna' eat according to having eaten stuff I'd have to recover from today. LOL Then I thought that it was probably a blessing 'cause I wouldn't have to recover after all.

At the Berkeley Bowl my dad said that I was having an effect on them 'cause they were getting excited about buying veggies and fruits and stuff. It's pretty easy to get excited about that at the Berkeley Bowl too 'cause they have so much of a variety, and a variety of the variety. LOL I got baby spinach instead of salad mix 'cause it cost the same (all organic of course). I also got another large tomato 'cause I realized that I needed to account for an additional dinner since we weren't eating out after all. I got lemons to last for the dinners 'till I go too. I was done, but they were just starting. I then got to thinking about how I had planned to splurge and remembered a thing I'd been wanting to try out at some point. I decided to get the supplies as my substitute splurge, so I did. I had thought about making sandwiches with the sprouted and dehydrated breads you can get here, using avocado instead of mayonnaise and putting thick slices of tomato and lots of lettuce and/or salad mix/spinach on it. I got one that didn't have fruit in it so it'd be less of a digestive challenge and all. I don't know what temperature they dehydrate those breads at and all, but I'm not too concerned about it for a splurge. To me, dehydrated is dehydrated and it's not really raw; it's not necessarily exactly cooked either, so it's okay enough for a splurge. I don't eat grains otherwise so it's sort of a double-splurge, but still a lot less of a health challenge than what I'd probably have eaten at the restaurant.

It turned out that the bread was frozen. Guess they don't get it regularly enough to keep it just refrigerated. I got it anyway, which makes it a triple-splurge 'cause I don't eat frozen stuff otherwise either. LOL Oh well. I noticed my old favorite mix of it (one with dates and cinnamon) and then remembered that I could probably take that on the plane with me but not fresh produce... and got it too. Doi. Guess I'm doing the vacation eating thing after all. Good thing I'm not here much longer in that regard. LOL I know that I'd have been fine just eating my lunch early before my flight and having my dinner late after the flight, like I usually do. Oh well. Now I'll have a dessert thingy to munch on instead...

Now I'm wondering how much I'll be temporarily set back from all this 'cause on our way to my dad's house after leaving the grocery store my dad said something about going to the restaurant another day before I left. We thought that maybe Friday night, and his wife said it could be a farewell dinner. He usually wants to avoid a possible lunch or dinner rush so I guess that's why he later suggested we go on Wednesday instead. The Berkeley one is still closed on Wednesday, but we could go to one at a different location.

So I'm gonna' be splurging left and right here. Ooops. Oh well. It's still all under the general category of organic raw vegan, even if it skirts the line of raw a bit IMO. I'll survive... and then thrive later on when my body's dealt with it all. LOL I'll make a point of enjoying it all as much as possible too, so it's worth it. :) I'm wondering how to space it all out now though, not sure if I can do it well. The frozen thing was too frozen to have the sandwiches last night and I'll probably not want to eat anything else in the day after we've been to the restaurant. I had already taken the bread out to defrost before my dad suggested going to the restaurant the next day, so I should eat it fairly soon... I'll just see how I feel and either have it later that day or the next day. Perhaps the bread will last 'till the day after, which would be nice... We'll see. I'll probably have some detoxing things to tell y'all about in the near future, heh.

Exercise:
Monday
I pretty much did my usual thing lately at the gym: rowing and weights. I had noticed that the TVs in the cardio room had a number displayed below them that looked like a radio station and wondered if they were doing local broadcasts of the TV channel sound so you could tune in and listen to it while working out (and other people wouldn't have to listen, and you didn't have a lot of competing channel sounds going all over the place). I asked 'em at one point and they said it was just that. Cool! I thought about how they had loaner gloves and speed bags and all and wondered if they had loaner radio tuners and earphones too, so I asked this day. They did! Yay! I got them and enjoyed watching TV that I wouldn't usually watch while rowing. It was sort of educational for me, LOL, really. I don't usually shop in regular stores and haven't seen The Price is Right since I was in Elementary School probably (I know at least since before college). I watched that while rowing and enjoyed people watching on the TV as well as seeing how much stuff costs and all. Interesting enough to supplementally entertain me while rowing for a bit over a half hour. It's a good thing too 'cause I was feeling a bit low energy-wise that morning due to not sleeping so well the night before. Once I got going though I felt great, like I could row forever, as long as I had something mildly interesting enough to watch as well. LOL I figured I shouldn't go much beyond a half hour though 'cause I didn't want to overdo it and get set back from my back thing and all.

After the rowing I went and did the shoulder dumbbell routine: 3 sets of reps to 'failure' of: lateral raises; compound lateral up to front and down; compound biceps up to overhead and back; reverse fly. Then I went and used some machines for more of the same: chin ups & bench press. I had noticed that my usual bench press weight seemed a little light before, but didn't see any 5 lb adders. This day I decided to try it with 10 lbs more. It worked just fine, so now I'm doing 10 lbs more for them in the bench press machine. I don't know if I'd be able to do that same weight with a barbell as well or not, but don't want to try it without a spotter. Perhaps when I'm home again I can try it with my hubby spotting me. He's a terrific spotter for me 'cause he's so careful that I don't get hurt. LOL

I thought about maybe doing some of the speed bag too, but then decided to just end it there as I remembered how I was a bit low energy to start with.

Tuesday
I basically did the same routine as the day before, but felt that I'd recovered enough to try out adding in the adductor/abductor weight machine, so I did 3 sets at weights low enough for high reps (12) with that machine in-between the dumbbells and the chin-up machine. I watched the Today Show instead of the Price is Right this time though. I like the Today Show and I'd already gotten what I was gonna' get from the Price is Right the day before. When I started my rowing session I decided to try out the Games option they had on there. There was a fishing game that was sort of fun, but didn't seem to be good for exercise 'cause I had to slow down or speed up in order to play the game and found that slowing down worked better for scoring and the way the fish were arranged which meant I wasn't really rowing as much as usual and it was sort of a jerky thing. The game was cute, sort of a PacMan dealy where you ate smaller fish or the larger fish would eat you and you'd move up and down the screen according to how fast and hard you stroke. The fish would move across the screen horizontally, moving up and down a little. So after I messed with that a bit, I did about 35 minutes or so of regular rowing before going on to the weights.

When I went to turn in my locker key I saw the gal that was rowing with me after class last week and she asked me if I rowed. I said I had and we had a discussion about where I was from and such. She had been talking to the Pilates instructor I'd talked to the other day. I told her that it didn't look like I'd be able to take her class after all, that it wasn't working out timing-wise. She made a pouting look and asked, "you can't make 9:30 on Thursday?" I said that I could make that class, but it didn't look like I was gonna' be able to make it to a Pilates Mat class beforehand like she'd recommended. She said that if I was there on Thursday that I could take the class anyway since she was the instructor. She said it'd be challenging, but that she thought I'd do fine. Yay! That sounds great! I have been curious about the Pilates with the equipment and all. After I went home I looked at the schedule and realized that I had spaced out on a Pilates Mat class that was actually happening as I was talking to her at the gym. Doi. It had started a half hour before that so I totally could have gone to it... if I hadn't spaced on what day it was. Vacation spaciness, forget exactly what day it is and all. LOL Oh well. I'm gonna' try to make sure not to miss the thing on Thursday. It's not gonna' do all the equipment, but I'm hoping that she might show me the other stuff afterward just for fun...

Detox:
A touch of BO under one arm after working out on one of these days - a rinse with water took care of it.

My skin is always so much drier when I travel than usual, so I realized that since I don't really have BO that I could just skip the shower after my workouts since I like to shower before them. That allows my skin to not get as dried out and has been working fairly well for the last few days.

Female:
days 13 & 14 of my cycle, red days I'm sure, probably some sort of kid icons (if I had the BabyComp with me, that is)

The Rest:
I think I covered most of it already in the rest of this post... Oh yeah! Instruments!

On Tuesday morning my dad found his harmonica and the instructional book that came with it so I took out my new harmonica and started to do some stuff on it with the book. He did some of it with me too. Fun! :)

On Tuesday night my dad and I watched an ukulele video he'd gotten from the library. I had the uke and tried out some of the things that he introduced us to on the video. It was pretty cool, but I had a hard time figuring out when to change cords and what cords to change to by just watching him and he wasn't calling them out or anything. Later in the video we found out that there was a booklet that came with it (that wasn't with it anymore) that probably would have done the trick for me. It was fun anyway though and I learned some stuff. He had 3 guest ukulele professionals towards the end of the tape that had some pretty nifty strums going. Inspiring. I have no idea if I'd ever get to the point of doing anything like that, but it's nice to know I could if I spent the time. :)

K, that's "it" for now.

Aloha!

9-21-08 - Happy Equinox! :)

Sleep:
woke at 7 or 7:30am and layed around/went back to sleep for a bit
up at 8:30-ish

Food:
Breakfast was a cantaloupe-y melon, a musk melon of sorts. The first pic's before I opened it, the second's after opening and scooping out the seeds. It wasn't as orange inside as I expected, but it was ripe:



Lunch was bananas:


Dinner was salad: baby spinach & mixed baby lettuces & 2 heirloom roma tomatoes with dressing: juice of 2 lemons and ~2 Tbsp tahini. I put the rest of the button shitake mushrooms on top & ate 'em first, by themselves, like an appetizer. I'm kinda' glad to be rid of them, even though I like the taste and texture of them. They're not ideal and my breath bothers me overnight and the next morning after having them. Here's the pic:


Exercise:
I did 3 each of the beginning of the Primary Series warmups for Ashtanga (Sun Salutations) and the next one after that, then a few of the sitting poses (the ones to lean forward and the ones to twist). Then I rolled on the wooden roller a bit, not as much to get now. Yay! I then took my shower and went off to the gym! :)

I did a bit of rowing today again. Nice to be back. :) I took it easy on that, just in case and did the 2000m thingy on the one downstairs. It didn't tell me my expected finish, which was probably good for today so I didn't decide to challenge myself and all. LOL I just stayed around 30 strokes a minute, give or take a stroke or two, most of the time. I do have to confess, I did go a bit faster towards the end, but that was sort of a reflex/habit... I slowed down after the 2000m for a few minutes to cool down and all so I think it was fine.

After that I went and got the gloves and speed bag and had a fairly quick, fun workout with that. I think it was about 15 or 20 minutes. I discovered that part of the trick of keeping it going well was to hit it fairly hard and sharply, and try to do it the same way all the time. Fun! :) It's pretty loud though, so I'm not sure if I'll have one at home or not. It's tempting though...

Then I went to the free weights again and did the shoulder things I've been doing. 3 sets each of: lateral raises (I think that's the name of the ones you bring your arms up on each side), using 3 weight amounts and going down on the weight in the set in order to keep going; the raise up to the front, then out to the side and down on the sides, then back up on the sides and to the front and down again - for one rep; hammer curl up to overhead raise (with dumbbells) and back down again - for one rep; and another I forgot to mention yesterday that I added yesterday: rear delt flys that I do on a bench with my legs forward and leaning all the way over into them so that my arms go under the bench for full range of motion.

I then went up to the youth circuit room and tried out the jump rope they had there. Yep. Not ready for the jump rope quite yet. But I was surprised to find that I actually was able to "get" the single hop/fast rope turn thingy you see people doing for workouts all the time. Yay! I'd never "gotten" that down before! :)

Since I couldn't do the rope I decided to do 3 sets each on their machines for chin-ups and bench press there in that room. After that I figured it was enough for today and left.

Detox:
Had a hint of BO after doing the yoga this morning before my shower, that went away before I actually got in the shower.

Female:
day 12 of my cycle, red day, ?? kid icons

The Rest:
The rest is yet to see... I'll add to this post later. :)

update: Couldn't post this - problems with Blogger... So it's a few days later (the 23rd) now and I still can't post. :( I figured that since I can make the entries still (off and on) that I'll try to catch up... wonder if I'll remember everything...

Hmmm.... you know, I can't remember what else I did on Sunday by now. Sorry. At least I took some pics to help me remember my meals...

9/20/08 & updates

Sleep:
been catching up well, sleeping extra to recover from back thingy too

Food:
I took pics of most of it...

Thursday's Breakfast:

1/2 a watermelon, non-organic

Thursday's Lunch: more bananas, didn't take a pic of them

Thursday's Dinner: basically the same as Wednesday's, except I skipped the oranges

Yesterday's Breakfast:

It was basically the same as the day before (the other half of the watermelon), so I took a pic of myself with it for y'all so it was a bit different looking. I was also experimenting with the new camera and taking pics of myself while holding it and all. That's why my shoulder looks a bit strange - I was trying to hold it as far away from me as possible. LOL

Yesterday's Lunch:
Just bananas...


Yesterday's Dinner:

Salad of lettuce mix I got from Berkeley Bowl, heirloom tomatoes from the local grocery store and dressing of tahini and lemon juice (like before)... with some button shitake mushrooms & olives on top. It was all organic, but not all optimal... the mushrooms and olives, mainly - they were a splurge. I don't have access to an olive bar with organic olives in water or organic button shitakes, so I splurged. They were raw and organic plants, fresh and all though. The olives were from an olive bar at the Berkeley Bowl, organic in water with salt. I got a variety of them to try, one of them also had lemon juice, some pitted, some not. I rinsed them several times beforehand and soaked them in water a while to get most of the salt out (but they were still a bit salty). I mixed it all up and ate 3 of the mushrooms before remembering to take the pic. oops! Oh well...

Today's Breakfast:

An organic French melon that I don't remember the name of. Nice though. Very aromatic and tasty. :) I ate the ones that weren't cut up too BTW

Today's Lunch:


It was a late lunch 'cause I lost track of time when working on someone else's website before we went to the craft fair today and didn't bring food with me either. I ended up having lunch around when I should have had dinner. Oh well.

I ate the 3 "Hawaiian plantains" - a favorite kind of banana for me - and then had the other bananas about a half hour later. I didn't end up eating 3 of the bananas pictured in the second picture.

Today's Dinner:

I started making dinner about an hour or so after I finished my late lunch. I forgot to take pics of the stuff before I put it together again. Oops. It was just baby spinach with lemon juice (from 2 lemons) and one large heirloom tomato - and the rest of the olives from yesterday on top (after they were rinsed, soaked and rinsed again in water to get salt out). It's all organic.

Yesterday we went to the Berkeley Bowl to get me more food and my dad took a picture of me in the produce area. It's much bigger than you can see there. Soooo much variety. Wow!


Exercise:
I took it easy on Thursday 'cause of the thing with my back. After some experimenting and pondering I figured out that it was probably from trying to sleep on the plane in weird positions during the red-eye flights I had from home to Washington which put my back out of line to begin with. I usually am quite active and get realigned in the process of my life and physical activities, but wasn't as physically active for about a week and a half after that. I figure it had kinda' gotten stuck that way since I wasn't moving it around as much and all. Now that I started using it again more it was trying to unstick itself, which hurt 'cause my muscles were a bit tweaked about it all. So I worked on moving the back vertebrae with the wooden roller my dad has that's like the one I have at home and keeping mobile, but not challenging my muscles much 'till they were ready for it. I got extra sleep and all too. That meant that I didn't go to the gym on Thursday.

I was feeling a bit better by the end of Thursday and changed positions fairly frequently when sleeping that night so that I felt like I could try out some things at the gym on Friday morning. I woke a bit stiff and used the roller again, followed by some Ashtanga (Sun Salutations & some of the sitting poses that twist), which got me less stiff and unstuck enough. I heard some things unsticking, but not quite all of it.

I decided to skip classes 'cause I didn't know what they'd have me do and just do workouts that didn't challenge the muscles in ways that made them tweak out. It went well. I tried out the step machine they had there that we don't have at the gym at home. It's like an endless set of stairs - actual stair-type of stairs. Nifty. I did it for 20 or so minutes. It said I did loads of floors worth of stairs. LOL I guess you'd travel a lot of floors if you were spending that amount of time climbing stairs without landings and all. After that I went and did some free weight dumbbell work for my shoulders: 3 sets each of: side arm raises (can't remember their official name); compound up to the front and out to the side and down then up to the side and to the front and down as one rep; bicep curl up to overhead press and back as one rep. I left after that. I figured that was good enough for getting back to things. I also had slept in a bit and got a late start with all the yoga before showering and leaving, so needed to get back and all. I wasn't sure if I'd played it safe well enough or if I'd figured out what was going on well enough that I wouldn't "feel it" later or not, but it worked out well. I felt even better by the end of the day.

This morning I was a bit stiff again, but not as much as yesterday and I didn't move around as much during the night 'cause I didn't feel I needed to. Yay! I went to the gym earlier and stayed a tad longer. I decided to try out the heavy bags if they had 'em (and if they had gloves for me to use too). They did, but the gloves weren't really heavy bag gloves 'cause they were sort of the gel type, but the padding wasn't at the main knuckle area - more towards the finger knuckles instead. I'm not sure what they're for, perhaps speed bag or something. I had a great workout with the heavy bag though - until it became evident that these gloves weren't gonna' cut it - or my knuckles would (cut), heh. So I stopped the heavy bag after about 10 minutes or so. Too bad, 'cause it was looking like a great workout. But not too bad for other reasons. :)

I noticed that they had a paper on the wall that told you how to use the speed bag and they had speed bags you could get from the desk and use. Cool! I'd never used one before and wanted to try it out. No time like the present, right? Right! :) So I went back to the desk and told them that I wanted to try out the speed bag 'cause I'd never done it before and saw the instructions on the wall. She said that I'd probably wanna' start with the larger of the 3 they had, unless I wanted the smaller ones. I said I'd go with her recommendation and took the large one and went back there. The stands were adjustable and I put it to the lowest setting (of course 'cause I'm short). It's supposed to be set so that the bag's bottom is at the level of the bottom of your chin. It was a bit higher than the bottom of my chin, but it still worked anyway. Guess the bigger one's best for shorties too. ;):D

Apparently the way you do it is hit it and let it hit the back, front and back again before hitting it again - with your other hand. It makes a nifty rhythmic sound and the stand squeaked a little in there too so it was very percussionistic and I found myself sort of mini-dancing to the beat. Nice. Fun! I thoroughly enjoyed it. It didn't seem to be much of a physical workout, but it was a good neuro sort of thing. After about 20 minutes or so of it I decided that I should do some weights and turned in the speed bag and gloves.

I did 3 sets each of the shoulder things I did yesterday and looked for a machine for aductors and abductors, but couldn't find one in that room. When I did find one my body was sort of telling me that I probably should wait a bit more on that one, even though I didn't actually even sit down at it. LOL Gotta' listen to those things, so I did. I did chin-ups with the nifty chin-up thing and explored some other machines too.

My back's still getting better all the time, so I figure I'm treating it how it needs. Yay! :)

Detox:
Been having a tad of gas here and there again. I'm not sure what it is specifically. Perhaps it's still some of the stuff I did before. Since I splurged yesterday and today it would be hard to say if it's new or older stuff, but I was having it before the newer splurges so who knows... maybe it's the traveling and all. Whatever.

I do know that the shitakes were on my breath this morning when I awoke, to my displeasure. I keep learning that about them. It's why they are less than optimal to me, perhaps it's part of why they are less than optimal for Natural Hygiene too. I only ate half of them yesterday so I'll eat the others at some point before I go, but I wanted to space it out a bit.

Female:
day 11 of my cycle, red day, ?? kid icons

The Rest:
Yesterday my dad got an ukulele for himself and I'm gonna' practice on it while here. He got me a clip on tuner that I can take back with me for mine too. Yay! That's gonna' make a big difference in my playing or not. He also got me a harmonica that I was gonna' get for myself. Thanks Dad! :) I'll try to take pics of them for y'all at some point and post 'em here.

On Thursday I went and saw Momma Mia with my dad's wife. She'd seen it before and loves it. I liked it too. :) It was quite well done for a musical. The actors did a good job of acting while singing (even though they weren't really singers) and the story did a good job of working in all those ABBA songs and all. It was a cute story too.

Today I went to a craft fair with my dad's wife and her mom. It was fun. I got a couple of green glass vases that look like flowers themselves, sort of. My dad has a print of a Diego Rivera painting of a woman with her back to you that's probably Frida Kahlo. She's embracing the kind of flowers these vases remind me of, so I took a picture with the print behind the vases and put them on a wicker thing that reminds me of the one in the painting. :) Fun. Here it is:

It was hard to get the right angle on it all in order to get the pic without rearranging my dad's whole living room. LOL So I just got what I could to capture the likenesses. :) Here's a pic of them alone so you can see their shape better:

They were pretty inexpensive and I only have one vase at home so I got 'em, not sure how I'm gonna' get 'em home safely though... Sometimes I get flower left-overs from the flower farmers at the farmer's markets and I'm planning on growing flowers at the new farm.

Did I tell you? My hubby told me that the tractor guy finally contacted him and has now mowed the entire 3 acres for us! Yay! He wasn't able to do the discing yet, but should be doing that in about a week or two. Yay!!! Our expansion is in-progress. Whew! I was wondering if it was ever gonna' happen...

Today we looked for some brown jeans for me. I'd love some for home - great for farming and farmer's markets, but I'm having a hard time finding any that are my size. It's hard to find actual brown denim jeans to begin with and then they've all been in larger sizes than fit me. :( Perhaps some time I'll find some. The guy at the Army/Navy surplus store said that we might be able to find some at a kid's store that had work clothes for kids. We're gonna' call 'em Monday and see.

Let's see, what else has happened? Hmmm... can't remember right now. I'm pretty tired. Guess I'll just go to sleep and post about anything I forgot about another day.

Nightie Night! :)

update: it wouldn't post correctly last night, so I'm posting it on Sunday morning, not sure if it will say Saturday or Sunday at the top....

9/17/08

Sleep:
woke at 7am, up at 7:30am
to sleep for night last night at 11-ish

Food:
I'm gonna' try to take pictures of all my food now that I've got a camera I can take with me... Here are the first ones:

Breakfast: 1/2 watermelon ("something grey" was the name - can't remember the first word) - I ate some before the pic :)


Lunch (all organic): bananas and dates - most into smoothie for dipping the rest into (pic 1 is before smoothie, pic 2 is after)



Dinner (all organic): 3 oranges (quartered & eaten off the rind - well, except one quarter that was squeezed into the dressing); salad: baby spinach (~5/8 pound), 2 heirloom tomatoes with dressing: ~2 Tbsp of tahini and juice of 2 lemons
Here's a pic of the ingredients (I couldn't fit all the spinach into the largest bowl I have here, so it was less than that - and I only had a little of the tahini)


Exercise:
went to the gym again today - took the yoga class & intended to do the power pump one after it, but the yoga class went overtime so it was too late to start in on the other one. So I did a circuit in the youth circuit room ('cause I'm short and the machines are supposedly more fitted to shorter people there). The machines were nifty in that the seats would often move with your movement so I think you're moving some of your own bodyweight along with the weights you pick (but I'm not sure of that 'cause I was lifting basically the same weights as with other machines that didn't do that). The chin-up one was nice in that way 'cause the seat would tilt as you go up in a similar manner as your body does when doing them straight up. Nice.

After I finished exploring and using the weight machines in the youth circuit room I went into the adult circuit room and used one of the rowing machines in there. They were a slightly different design than the one at home and the ones they had in their cardio room. I think I like the foot things best on the ones they have in the cardio room. The ones in the cardio room had curved heel rests that worked better IMO than the flatter, more squared off ones here in this room. Both of them work better than the wooden one that is at my gym at home though so it's all good.

I decided to check out more about them this time. You apparently can adjust the drag on the wheel and they suggested a range of drag for training. It was already set on the high end of drag for that so I left it there. I then explored the workouts and decided on the 2000m one for today. It was fun to feel like I was racing more. It had what my expected finish was based on my stroke rate I suppose - don't know if they also figured in the drag and tork (sp?) or anything else. I was doing my regular 30-35 strokes a minute rate and noticed the expected finish changing a lot. At some point it seemed to even out at around 11:30 (minutes: seconds) or just over. I decided that I'd try for just under and raced for that. I did it! Yay! I finished at 11:29:02 with an ending stroke rate of 36 per minute (I think - that's the stroke rate that displayed at the end and I'm supposing that's not my average rate).

I've been having a little back issue here and there since I've been here and was hoping the yoga class would help it out. I know that I had gotten that sort of back (actually more like a hip/pelvis thing) when doing Ashtanga and when I'd get to a certain point of the routine it'd go 'pop' and resolve itself. This class was not as organized and progressive so unfortunately it didn't resolve. I've tried stretching and stuff today and so far it hasn't resolved. It's not a big thing - just affects me when I bend over a certain way, sometimes.

My dad and I walked a bit along the water this evening and then some more along a nice trail by a different water & nature area. It was nice.

Detox:
Yesterday I realized that I'd forgotten to mention how I was getting a sty from about the time I got to my dad's at first. It is still there a bit, but it never became a full-on sty, just a reddish spot that was a bit tender. It seems to be going away. I know that I sometimes get them when I increase my physical activity and then stop a bit, accompanied with a bit of dehydration. So if I start to get one I make sure to keep up with my exercise (especially bouncing sorts of things and/or aerobics to keep the lymph moving) and make sure I'm well hydrated. It's worked well so far.

Female:
day 8 of my cycle, red day, ?? kid icons

The Rest:
I'll finish this later. I'm off to a farmer's market to see what it's like. :)

LOL It's later now & the farmer's market wasn't there. Apparently they only have it on this day there during July and August. It's fine, we had a good time anyway. We went to the library and I got a book on learning to play the ukulele. I've been feeling like practicing since I have some time and I started to learn it at that party the other night. My dad said I could use his (once he gets one LOL) while I'm here so I might be practicing it with the book next week. :) The book doesn't look all that great, but it's what they had and it might turn out to be terrific anyway, so I'll see. After that we went for a walk on the waterfront walk by the harbor and watched the sailboats sailing out in races for fun. After that we were driving home and I asked my dad if he ever walks along a trail we were passing. He said he did and asked if I wanted to go there then. I thought that would be nice so we did. It had a par course along it too - it wasn't well maintained but it was there. It looks like fun. I love par courses, so I want to go there again when I'm not taking it easy on my back/hips. They felt pretty good during the walk, but they usually do once warmed up and I'm not bending over and all. It's strange 'cause I haven't had that problem (with my back/hips) in years. Oh well. At least I know how to deal with it better now - and I recover faster too. :)

At dinner time I took out the orange fleshed honeydew rind I had carved yesterday morning for ambiance. I planned to put some votive candles in it to show the carving but found that there was a lamp above right were I wanted to put it so I didn't need the candle after all. I took some pics of it. It was not one of my best 'cause I was going to eat that for breakfast after my workout. I was a bit impatient 'cause I wanted to get the glucose into my system before my window of faster recovery time was over. So I did it quick and then ate the stuff out of it before finishing it (not a good idea 'cause it was too thin and floppy). So it wasn't suitable as a container like ones that I carve completely when whole and scoop out less. It still works for decoration and candle-holder cover though. The leaf tops were a bit curled over from being in the refrigerator since yesterday morning, but it still works okay enough for my dad's. Good thing I didn't do them that way at H&F Week. LOL I always did them early in the morning there before I was hungry or exercised yet, which works much better. :) ANYway, here's a couple of pics of it (1st is with flash so you can see the outside, 2nd is without so you can see the glow):




I'll try to post some pics from H&F Week of some of the carvings and stuff when I have them. I didn't take pictures there, but there was a photographer there and I'll be getting copies.

K, well I think that's it for now. Aloha! :)

9/16/08

Sleep:
woke at 7:30am,
up at 7:45am
to sleep for night last night at 11pm
I'm still needing to catch up on my sleep, but we watched a movie that turned out to be longer than we thought last night, so I'll have to catch up more with a nap today or tonight

Food:
Let's see... yesterday... hmmm... having a hard time remembering specifically... oh yeah! I remember (at least some of it)
breakfast: 5 small french melons
lunch: bananas that were ripe enough - think it was around 8 or 9
dinner: a couple of asian apple pears then slowly went about gathering and preparing the salad and such of: about 3/4 pound salad mix with all sorts of greens and edible flowers, and a few herbs in there here and there (got it at the farmer's market Saturday); a very large heirloom tomato; small avocado; lemon-tahini dressing (yep, shouldn't mix the avo & tahini and was probably over 10% fat for today, but I went over fat-free the other day so it'll be okay for now)

today:
breakfast: large orange fleshed honeydew melon followed by about 7 bananas about a half hour or hour later ('cause I had breakfast a bit later - around 11:30-ish)
lunch: I think I'm gonna' have more bananas and possibly asian apple pears
dinner: will probably start with oranges, then have a salad with tahini-lemon or tahini-orange dressing

update: I did have the apple pears and then bananas for lunch and salad for dinner, but I didn't have the oranges and had a small avocado in the salad - my last one. The salad was from Safeway - organic. My dad and I went out and on the way home we stopped there so I could get more food. I needed to get more bananas so they could ripen in time and was low on salad, tomatoes, lemons and breakfast stuff. I got bananas, heirloom tomatoes, salad mix, baby spinach, and lemons - all organic. I also got a watermelon that wasn't organic 'cause they didn't have any organic and they have been agreeing with me better than the other options like pears, apples, plums, grapes and such ('cause I don't usually eat 'em 'cause they don't grow on Kauai).

Exercise:
Yesterday I went to my dad's wife's gym and did a Balletone class while she did an exercise class in the pool. It was fun but not enough of a workout alone for me on a regular basis. That gym also had the rowing machines. Cool! :) I didn't want her to have to wait for me and they were gonna' get me a membership to the other gym in my dad's town that has all sorts of equipment. I figured it was a good way back into things and that I'd just start working out more the next day.

We signed me up at the other gym later in the day and today I went there and worked out. It was fun! :) I went to a Zumba class for the first time - fun! :) I didn't get the Rumba step quite down so I'm looking forward to the next one so I can get better at things. :) After that there was a body sculpt class that used a yoga mat, stability ball and weights. That was fun too! :) I couldn't leave without at least using the rowing machine for at least 20 minutes, 'cause I wanted to try out this new one so badly. It was waay fun! Yay!

I discovered that they must have put the seat on the machine at home on backwards or something 'cause the seats on this machine were much better situated. I had a problem with getting a bit of a blister in-between my butt cheeks at home. LOL Kinda' embarrassing when it's popped during a workout and you're changing in the dressing room, not to mention painful when showering afterward. I had worked out a way to not get them most of the time by folding an extra towel a bunch of times and put it on the seat so that I could sit on it and have a gap at the back. The seats here on these newer ones were built with a gap there - and the form rise on the seat in in the front (rather than the back where they have it on the one at home). I'm hoping I'll be able to simply turn the seat around on the one at my gym at home and it'll work just as well. In the meantime I'm really enjoying the rowing - in fact I may only take one class tomorrow and row more. :)

There are a couple of things about the new rower that I don't like as much as the older one: the fan is more enclosed, which is good for liability I'm sure, but not so good for getting that terrific air flow in your face when rowing. You still get some air, but it's not like the other one that only has a cage around it. The other thing is that it rows so smoothly that I don't feel as much resistance. The smoothness is good for it being quieter 'cause it's very quiet and the other one makes more noise. I'm thinking that there would be a way to make resistance and all, so I'll fiddle around with it more tomorrow. I just wanted to row for a while so I put the setting on just rowing and rowed away at about 30 or so a minute - just for fun. I also did a few minutes really slowly (at about 15 or 20 strokes a minute) as a cool down after.

So I guess I had about two and a half hours of official exercise today so far. I don't know what my dad & I will end up doing, but I'm fairly certain it would mainly involve walking at most. I may stretch a little this evening before going to sleep too. I like to stretch before bed while reading or something.

Detox:
There is something about my dad's house or the area or something that makes me have a tendency to wake with puffy eyes. They drain out into my nose once I'm up for a while and it makes me sneeze and have to blow my nose sometimes. I've been having that while here so far.

I don't have much else to report. Yesterday after eating my bananas I had a bit of loud digestion that sounded like a cat or something. LOL I don't usually have that, not sure why I got it then either, but it wasn't accompanied with gas or anything so who knows... I smelled a tad of ketones in the shower at the gym after my workouts today and had a tad of underarm BO for a few minutes when driving back to my dad's but it had gone before I got there and hasn't come back since.

Female:
It's day 7 of my cycle, most likely a red day, probably no kid icons

The Rest:
Yesterday we went shopping a bit. They want to get some window coverings in their kitchen and so we went to a window covering place to figure out what kind of style they want and all. Then we went to Fry's and I looked at cameras to see if I could find a tiny one to wear and take more pictures for y'all and all. I wanted to try and find a keychain one that had some sort of Megapixel thing going so it'd be better than my cell phone's camera. My cell phone's camera take pictures that look almost like they're black and white or something. The colors are all grayed out. I'd found a 3 megapixel keychain one on Hammacker Schleckter (sp?) for $70 but it was out of stock and I couldn't find it anywhere else - even on the manufacturer's website. So I started thinking of buying a 8 megapixel Elph instead. It's smaller and more lightweight than my phone and takes better pictures. It turns out that my dad was looking for one for his wife too and that the exact one that I was thinking of getting (color and everything) is the one she ended up getting. LOL So now I'm testing it out to see if it will work for what I want and if so, I'll get one too. I'll probably get it through Amazon instead though 'cause it's cheaper that way. Guess I should call and see if they're gonna' have that 3 megapixel one any time soon first as well. My son has a 12.1 megapixel camera that's about the same size as my phone and about the same weight and it takes great pictures so I'm not sure if I should get another one around that size or just borrow his. The idea was to have one with me all the time though, so I suppose I should get some sort of one... Ug! Decisions can be difficult sometimes - especially when you found what you want and it's not available anymore...

I got some RAM for my laptop. I'd been meaning to get more RAM for it since I got it. It had the minimum RAM practical for Vista so it's been a bit slow on some things. Now it's doing much better. Yay! :) The RAM is much cheaper now too, so that's nice.

Not much else to tell y'all right now in terms of yesterday and today so far. Perhaps I'll have time to add more stuff to the website today too. :) I'll let y'all know later.

update: I decided to get the camera my dad's wife got yesterday and ordered it today online. It cost less today than yesterday - cool! So I got a spare rechargable battery for it too - all for less than I was gonna' pay before. Nice. I'm gonna' use her camera while here so I went shopping for a case for it so that I can carry it on my purse or belt loop to have it with me. This means that y'all should see new pics soon! :) Yay! :) K, gonna' go now. Type to ya' later.

Aloha!

9/14/08

Sleep:
woke at about 8:30am,
up at about 9am
to sleep for night at about 10:30pm the night before
still catchin' up! :)

Food:
Yesterday:
1/2 medium watermelon for breakfast
4 large ears of corn for lunch at the farmer's market after buying them
figs, some blueberries, a few slices of cucumber and lots of watermelon for dinner

Today, so far:
the other 1/2 of the medium watermelon for breakfast
3 green containers of strawberries I got at the farmer's market yesterday for lunch
I plan to have some dates before dinner (there's only about 8 of them) & then some salad mix with either tahini/lemon dressing or avocado & oranges in it for dressing

I haven't been as active as usual lately, been focusing on catching up on my sleep more, so my eating's down a bit. I'm also recovering a bit from some of the less-than-optimal food I'd been eating, so cutting back is a bit from that too.

My dad took me to the grocery store on the way home from picking me up so I could get some food. He took me to Safeway in his little town and I was so surprised to see how much organic food they have now. The Safeway at home has a little, but nowhere as much as that - volume nor variety, and of course, that Safeway in my dad's town didn't have any organic food in it when I lived here (back in the dark ages as my son thinks of it probably). LOL I got bananas, a watermelon, heirloom tomatoes, salad mix, oranges, strawberries, and lemons there, all organic except the watermelon. Sweet.

The bananas weren't gonna' be ripe for a couple of days so I got about 33 of them. They're starting to ripen today so I'll be able to eat some of them tomorrow. I brought the strawberries with me yesterday when we went out, but didn't end up eating them and they went moldy before lunch today so I had to ditch them. Some of the dark figs I got yesterday got moldy overnight too. Bummer. That's why I plan to eat the rest of them before dinner tonight. I had the strawberries from market yesterday for lunch today 'cause I could smell them being extra-ready this morning. Smelled so good! :) Too bad the others had gone bad. Oh well.

Exercise:
Nothing much today. Some pushups and some jump lunges & jump squats and all. Yesterday we walked around a bit at things we went to, but I didn't end up doing any exercise otherwise somehow. I did do some drumming for an hour and learned how to play the ukulele for a few hours, so I guess that's good for neuro and such...

Detox:
The watermelon's helping on this front, yay! I think I'm clearing out the stuff from H&F and afterward now. I had a little BO under my arms at the ukulele party last night and a tad this morning about an hour after my morning shower. BM this morning when almost done with watermelon was a tad cloudy and I could tell was still being influenced by the raw peanuts I'd gotten in Washington 'cause of the smell (P-U). Note to self, again: don't eat raw peanuts 'cause they make me have bad breath and smelly BMs and such. Wonder when I'll just quit them altogether... at least they're very, very, very infrequent.

Female:
day 5 of my cycle, probably a green day (probably the last one 'till a couple of days after ovulation), probably no kid icons (In case you didn't catch it in a previous blog, I don't have my BabyComp with me on this trip - forgot it at home)

The Rest:
I'm at my dad's now. Yesterday we went to a drumming circle at Kaiser that's for health purposes - to reduce stress. Cool. Kaiser's got all sorts of nifty things going on. Nice. ANYway, my dad does this class and one of the other people who does the class too said she wasn't gonna' make it and suggested I go in her place, so I did. :) It was fun, a lot like what goes on at parties on Kauai, heh. There was a bit of leading going on, but they would usually lead into a jamming session where anything goes sort of and nothing's wrong, etc. When the teacher/leader found out that I was from Hawaii she said that she was having a party that evening called the Ukulele Lounge. Funny coincidence. She invited us too, so we went. It was fun! :)

I learned how to play the ukulele a bit there too, even funnier. LOL I have had several experiences where I go away from home and then have Hawaiian experiences while on vacation: got lomi-lomi massage for the first (and only so far) time at H&F Week a few times ago, learned to hula on a ship, and now learned to play ukulele when visiting my dad. Funny. We had fun there. I had been meaning to learn to play the ukulele and had my son's out in my room at home for some time now in preparation for that. I'd thought of taking classes at the community college or adult school, but didn't have enough regularly free time for it yet, so it was way cool. :)

After the drum circle my dad and I went to the farmer's market before it was over and I got some organic produce: orange flesh honeydew, french melons, corn, salad mix, strawberries, apple-pears, 2 little avos and I can't remember what else. There were craft vendors and live music too. It was by a park so there were a lot of people hanging out on the grass by the music. One thing that was nifty was that there were a lot of people being more active and athletic than I remembered them ever being there before. There was a guy with a nylon strap (about 1" wide) around a tree on one side and around a street lamp on the other, walking it like a tightrope. It was a stretchy and bouncy one though so it was more challenging. He was letting people try it too and helping us to try it out easier by sitting on it at first to get up there. I tried it. It was quite challenging and even though I didn't shake around as much as a lot of other people, I didn't stay up as long as some of them either. There were people doing acrobatic sorts of play things like we do at H&F Week and handstands, walkovers and such too.

After that we went to the Berkeley Bowl, a supermarket in Berkeley, and I marveled at the sheer variety of food they had there - even just in the produce section alone. I mean, it was like, "name a food, any food," and it'd be there. Amazing, just amazing. I don't know why we didn't go there more when I lived there. Well, yeah, I do. There were two other grocery stores closer to where we lived in Berkeley that had enough of a huge variety themselves. Oh, and then we belonged to the co-op too, so we'd go there. The Berkeley Bowl wasn't as big back then and didn't have as much organic food as now either. ANYway... if I was to move back to Berkeley I'd go to that store to get food if I wasn't growing it or getting it from the farmer's directly.

So we got a watermelon, something grey was the name (can't remember the first part), and it looked almost like a honeydew, so it was good for carving 'cause the watermelon stripe patterns wouldn't interfere with the carving patterns as much (a solid dark green melon works in that same way too). But then we decided before we bought it that it'd be too messy and time-consuming to carve it at the party & I didn't have my knives with me 'cause we hadn't gone back to my dad's house since the party was in Oakland and all. So, I got green figs, blueberries and toothpicks to do the alien bugs I'd done at H&F Week this year for the party. It worked out well, and people liked them. They liked them so much that they wanted to look at them more than eat them, which worked out well for me 'cause then I ate them. LOL They had all sorts of cooked dishes of course, but two people brought watermelons too and someone had a plate of sliced cucumbers as well so I ate enough for dinner there actually. Nice.

Today I checked out the two health club/gyms in my dad's little town I had been considering for a temporary membership while here. I'd called them and they'd both said they had rowing machines, but it turned out that one of them just had an upright row weight machine that the front desk gal thought was a rowing machine. The other gym was quite spacious and new and had 4-6 of them in the cardio section, more up in the circuit section and another somewhere else I can't remember off-hand. Wow! They're newer machines than the one at home so it'll be interesting to see if they improved the design or messed it up. My dad's wife (married a few years after divorcing my mom when I was an adult) belongs to a health club in the next town and goes there mostly for the pool exercise classes. I called them and another gym in that town that looked promising and both of them said they had rowing machines as well. We'll see. I'm gonna' skip the other one 'cause it's too expensive and check out the one she belongs to tomorrow. We're gonna' see if they can give us a better deal on my temporary membership than they quoted before since she's a member and I'll be using it for 12 days or something like that. They only mentioned an expensive day rate when she had visitors before. If not, then I'm joining that gym I saw today and workin' out there while here.

I just have to say how much I'm lovin' the new laptop cooler pad thingy my friend in Washington gave me. It's sooo cool - in two ways! ;) It's lightweight, the same size as my laptop, and plugs into the USB port of my laptop for power so I'm still mobile. It's got two fans that cool off my laptop amazingly well and it's solid plastic so that I can put the whole thing down on my lap or a soft surface, like covers, couch, pillow or what-have-you and it's fine. Nifty-oh-yeah fo' sure! :) I don't have to worry about blocking the exhaust fans and such anymore, sooo nice!

She also gave me a water bottle that has an activated carbon water filter in it, connected to a straw so that you can put regular water into the bottle and squeeze it through the straw to drink and it filters it as you go. So nice for traveling on a plane and when visiting people's houses that don't filter their water and all. I just emptied the bottle before going through security at the airport, then filled it again on the other side at the water fountain and I had water for the wait at the gate and the plane. Yay!

There were 3 things she gave me, all of which were ultra-nifty and that I've been really enjoying lately. The other one was a little Sandisk zipper pouch, meant for SD cards for your camera. I've been using it to put my cell phone's earphone cord into and it's been just perfect. I'd been meaning to make a little drawstring pouch for it or something, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. This was the perfect size and had a keyring attached so it's easy to put it on a clip in my backpack or just throw into my purse. It's a thick enough case that the cord's protected from all the other junk I have in my purse as well.

So, as I'm typing this I'm looking out at a nice view of mountains and water from the corner of my dad's kitchen. There are some sparrows feasting on the nuts and seeds in the feeder my dad's wife put out there. Cute.

I added a FAQ entry on teeth on this website for y'all, will add more later this week I hope too. :)

Well, I'm gonna' go for now. Type to y'all later! :)

9/10/08

Sleep:
still catchin' up ;)

Food:
Yesterday:

'naners for breakfast & lunch yesterday

4 or 5 small shitake mushrooms when making dinner (forgot that they were another occasional thing I got this week too... not ideal food, but I eat 'em up to a few times a year)

a few julienne cut dried tomatoes when putting them in water to soak for the marinara sauce... not ideal either

dinner of grated zucchini covered with marinara sauce (blended: tomato, red bell pepper, celery, fresh herbs (basil, chives, oregano & touch of thyme), soaked dried tomatoes) and sprinkled with chopped yellow & purple green beans, chopped yellow sunburst squash, red & orange bell pepper, sliced black olives; touch of nutritional yeast put on like Parmesan cheese.

Yeah, so the dinner was another meal that should stay as an occasional thing, still considered raw by most, but not ideal. My body dealt with it fine though - the BM issues were still clearing, actually gone by that time & I haven't had trouble (it's mid-morning the next day now)

I've had bananas so far today, but I'm running out so I might end up eating some of the Essene bread at some point today 'till I can get more fruit. Yeah, it's another occasional thing. So many of 'em right now. I'm looking forward to a long period free of occasional food when I get back home again. I'm gonna' continue to steer clear of the things I think gave me the BM issues though.

Exercise:
I didn't end up going to the gym yesterday, so did calisthenics and such at the house. I'm still easing back into doing new exercise activities. Tonight we're gonna' go to the "heavy bag boxing" class again. My friend said the trainer teaching the last class wasn't the regular one and hopes the regular one's back today 'cause she says that one's really good and fun. I hope so too! :)

The last class was fun. I was a bit apprehensive about doing the boxing with the boxing gloves without wraps or internal gloves, but it worked out fine. I didn't have any problems with the gloves on my hands - well, except for figuring out how to put my hands down for the pushups and all. LOL I don't know how you're supposed to be able to do regular pushups with them on, it wouldn't work for me. I ended up doing knuckle pushups instead. I learned a bit about how to do various punches. I only know the standard martial arts punches, but I was learning hooks, cross overs and jabs. Nifty.

Detox:
The issues I had from H&F Week, traveling and such have resolved by now, thank goodness. Nothing else new right now.
update: mid-afternoon had a tad of cabbage-smelling gas without bloating, right as I discovered that I had started my period; also took shower after that and smelled cilantro coming out of my pores. I guess it's all from H&F Week 'cause I haven't had either cabbage or cilantro since the last day of fancy meals there on Friday.

I'm thinking that I'm gonna' make cilantro a more rare and possibly a never thing for me and see how that goes. I might add arugula to that as well, but am not sure about it yet (as long as it's baby, baby arugula).

Female:
It's a red day still, no period yet, day 27 of my cycle
update: mid-afternoon my period started, so it's now a green day & day 1 of my cycle

The Rest:
Well, it's early in the day so not a lot to report. Dinner turned out well last night, so well in fact that there isn't much left-over for my friend to have as left-overs. Oh well. I made a few simple garnishes for the little bowls of stuff to sprinkle on top with the zucchini and sunburst squash. Gosh, I just realized that I should have taken some pics for y'all. Doi. Have to get back into that habit again... Sorry. I did a couple of zucchini flowers and 4 sunburst squash leaves to go with them. I packed my carving tools in the bag I planned to not have to unpack for simplicity so was keeping it simple 'cause I was using her steak knife to do it with. It worked well enough.

I've been thinking about the form my books will be taking and all, preparing myself to work on them in the next few weeks too. I'm hoping to finish at least one of them to release as an ebook or something before I go home... You'll know as soon as I do.

K, gonna' go and work on catching up on my sleep some more right now. I'll be back later, working on the todo list and such until my friend gets home. Then we'll work on her trailer some more and run off to the boxing class.

Have a terrific day! :)

Aloha!

Website todos

K, so here's my list of things I want to do for this website. I'm posting it here so you'll know what's due to change & so you can let me know if you think I forgot something or if you want me to add anything else by commenting below.

Todo list:

• fix up Blogger interface so it looks right when viewing older blogs too - adjust template I suppose


• add more product reviews, etc


• fix air & water filter products link(s)


• add garnish/ambiance link in products?


• see if can find smaller tool kits with only the tools I use for garnishing


• add "for women" link in products - for fertility awareness, feminine hygience, etc.?


• add any pics I have on my laptop to gallery (I have more on my external HDD at home)


• blog more


• post fruit, food, etc. pics already taken


• take more pics and post


• fix fruits and veggies links on photos area


• update/add FAQs


• add tips, links, fun, bonus content


• In photo history area:
  
  remove link border on Aug 2003 pic in
  
  fix last update pic (has 2 different dates together - refer to progress for dates)


• update kitchen-and-storage page in photos section re: info of how kitchen is done, etc.


• update garden pics


• do more exercise pics and videos


• adjust home page


• fix salad mix page - remove "coming soon" from mesclun mix with arugula

So there it is. I'll be working on these things over the next few weeks. Some of it will have to happen after I get back home 'cause I don't have all my files and such with me.

9/9/08 & general updates

Sleep:
been working on catching up on my sleep, taking naps here and there and such. Getting closer to caught up. Yay!

Had gotten quite behind on my sleep at home due to getting up at 3am 5 days a week to work extra shifts at the gym to cover a co-worker who also opens at the gym and was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. He's covering my shifts while I'm gone so it works out well. I'm gonna' cover his shift again when I get back while he's on vacation so hopefully I'll be well rested enough by then. It wasn't just working at the gym that got me behind on sleep, it was then going to finish harvests, rushing off to the farmer's markets, and all combined with it that did the trick. Long days and short sleeps. I had been catching up on my sleep on days that I couldn't for the few weeks before I left and then I couldn't catch up during H&F Week of course, so there you go...

I'm catching up now though, which is good and I'm sure I'll be able to finish catching up at my dad's before going back home. Then I'm gonna' try to arrange things at home so I don't get behind again.

Food:
Health and Fitness Week was fun and had lots of yummy gourmet style 80-10-10 food which was nice, however a bit much for me to have every single day, back to back. Especially when combined with traveling and how many of the foods I only eat once a year (when at H&F Week and visiting the Mainland). I don't eat things like grapes, plums, nectarines or peaches at home 'cause they don't grow there and my body just isn't used to them anymore so the skins seem to not agree with my bowels. I was able to eat them without problems a bit more this year than last year and I'm supposing it's 'cause it's only been one year since the last time I ate them, rather than two like it was before.

There are a few things we had there I have maybe a couple of times a year at home like Asian apple pears, pears and apples even though they don't grow there simply because sometimes I find myself out somewhere without enough food and those are the only things I can find ripe enough to eat. Other things I eat only occasionally (like once a month or less, perhaps for a couple of days at a time) at home like bell peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, herbs (like basil, cilantro, oregano, chives), and dehydrated tomatoes 'cause they are fine infrequently, but either give me gas, bad breath or other issues if I have them regularly. I love cantaloupe and watermelon, but it's challenging to grow them organically where I live so I've stopped eating them due to their unavailability as organic and I found that I had a bit of trouble with the cantaloupe this year at H&F Week for the first time - guess it's like the grapes and such. This year they also used dehydrators to slightly dehydrate tomatoes, zucchini, cauliflower and such. While they weren't as dehydrated as most people do and were served with other things so the meal wasn't dehydrating, I think they also contributed to my digestive stuff 'cause I haven't really had anything dehydrated for a long time (except the occasional 3 or 4 sun-dried tomatoes in a sauce less than once a month - oh and the 1 time I went to a raw food restaurant this past year).

Also, I started the week on a huge sleep deficit and immediately upon arrival in the afternoon after my red-eye flight that had left the evening the day before. That may have affected my body's ability to handle the "new" and "exotic" foods like grapes and such. ;) LOL They ARE exotic to my body that's used to things like rambutan and all at home.

So I had a bit of digestive issues in the bowels that I don't usually have: gas and noisy tummy from the beginning (from dinner to late morning-ish daily); cloudy BMs; more of a need for water. It wasn't anything disabling though, just something to remind me that this sort of food isn't something for me to have daily (or it could become more of an issue). Even though I enjoyed trying out the various meals, at the end of the week I was definitely looking forward to just eating more basic meals again.

I planned to just eat mono meals for breakfast & lunch, then have a simple lettuce salad with a one or two ingredient dressing or celery in a two ingredient dip for dinner... but then when my friend picked me up she was talking all about how terrific the marinara sauce I'd made last time was and was encouraging me to get supplies for it again. So I started to gather those supplies and realized that I'd have to put off the simpler eating 'till later. I could do more simple eating most of the time and just make the sauce early on, making lots of it so she'd have left-overs to eat while I was there and I could eat other stuff if I wanted. But in the process of gathering those supplies I ended up getting some other "occasional" foods too, darn. I got some Essene bread, black olives in water and raw peanuts - all organic, but not optimum foods for sure. I didn't realize at the time I was getting them that it would delay my digestive recovery 'cause it was in the late afternoon that we were shopping, but I did realize it the day after eating some of those occasional foods. I had some of the peanuts on Sunday night after my salad of lettuce with tahini/lemon dressing and a touch of avocado - yeah, too much fat and too many types. Doi. Yeah, not the best thing to do in general, and certainly not when you're recovering from digestive stuff and have been a bit dehydrated, underslept. Well, learning it again...

I probably still felt better than I used to all the time, but I'm used to feeling terrific now (except for a bit lack of sleep most of the time) so I felt pretty bad for me. It peaked during a workout at the gym last night 'cause we arrived late and I was already thirsty to begin with and forgot to bring water... I left the workout to get a drink of water when my mouth was just so dry and my body was telling me that it didn't want to wait any more, then was able to finish the workout after that and drink more water after class, before showering, after showering and before leaving. I drank 5-7 tall glasses of water when we got home before I went to sleep and skipped dinner due to my bowels feeling "off" in that way and was feeling more normal by the time I went to sleep. I figured I'd be feeling pretty normal by mid-day today. I think that's accurate. It's mid-morning now and I think I'm on-track.

I had another tall glass of water when waking and then quite a few bananas (sorry, didn't count - probably about 11?) for breakfast. So far, so good. Had a cloudy BM but it was more uneventful and seemed to be left over from the one I felt but didn't have last night, so it was good and I think it resolved things. For now, at least... Today's the day I'm due to make the marinara sauce. It's got more than two ingredients and quite a few of them are my occasional foods: bell pepper, dried tomatoes, fresh herbs (basil, oregano, chives, thyme). I think I'll be okay though 'cause it' mostly fresh tomatoes and celery, which I eat fairly regularly. I'm gonna' have it with zucchini which isn't a regular thing, but it's regular enough that I don't have issues with it 'cause I grow it and eat it from time to time at home. I figure I'll take a nap, drink lots of water and make my other meals before and afterward out of mono banana for a bit and I should be okay. We'll see, right?

Exercise:
At H&F Week I was too busy with ambiancing to participate in the classes and such or "go running" or have an official workout so I just maintained and got my exercise through all the trips I made down to the stream and around the property (sometimes jogging or running) and through carrying and moving things around (including the rocks I'd get from the stream when down there) the squatting and such when harvesting and working with things on the ground, etc. It's similar to what I get from farming, although the farming and farmer's market workouts are a bit more intense and rushed.

My friend was able to get me a 5-day pass at her gym here so I can go there to work out. We went there last night and joined in the heavy bag boxing class, which was enough for me to get back into things, especially with the digestive stuff and dehydration going on. It looks like a nice gym, but it doesn't have a rowing machine. :( I love rowing soooo much. I knew it'd be hard to find one though so kinda' expected it. I'd looked up gyms in this area and at my dad's online before I left and it looked like none of the gyms had rowing machines, unfortunately. Oh well. Even though I was thirstier than ever and felt pretty bad from the dehydration afterward 'till I got enough water it was fun and good to be back at official workouts again. It was also terrific to wake up in the morning and feel like I'd used my muscles again. I wasn't sore or stiff, but felt like I'd used my muscles. Perfect. Glad I decided to take it easy and just do the class, glad I left in the middle to get the water when I needed it so I could continue too.

I planned to go today too but then realized that it would be a bit close timing-wise to go there on the bus, workout, shower and get back on the bus before my friend gets back home from work in the mid-afternoon. I'm also going to try to get all the zucchini grated beforehand so that I can make the mess and clean it up on my own. She also needs my help tonight for attaching wood to a trailer she's making for a rafting and camping trip she's going on this weekend, so I should be here when she gets home. If I'm gonna' take a nap and all too in order to resolve the BM issues I think I've gotta' just do stuff at the house instead.

Yesterday I did a few things at the house so I'll do a bit more today too. I'll do some calisthenics and stretching. I'm gonna' go to the gym tomorrow for sure, and probably the next day as well. They're gonna' have underwater bodyfat testing on that day (Thursday) and it seems like a pretty good price ($45). I'm gonna' see if I can do that too. I didn't bring a swimsuit though, so I need to either borrow one from my friend or buy one. I'll let you know if I get the bodyfat testing and what the results are, of course. :D

Detox:
cloudy BMs, need more water, etc. (mentioned above in the food section) during and after H&F Week. No gas left at this point (actually that stopped on Sunday 'cause I wasn't eating the stuff that gives me gas anymore: cabbage, bell peppers, cauliflower). I think the cloudy BMs will end by the end of today too. Although.... I'll probably get gas again 'cause of the bell peppers in the marinara I'm making tonight. Oh well. I'm making that choice this time in order to make the dinner for my friend and her friend tonight.

I had gotten into eating arugula again for a while before I left home 'cause we were growing such excellent baby arugula and I was handling and smelling it several times a day. I think it was giving me B.O. under my arms a bit though and I'd decided to stop doing it and the basil and cilantro I'd had occasionally 'cause I was handling them a lot too. I'm fairly certain it was the arugula under my arms 'cause we had basil and cilantro at H&F Week and the BO went away during the week (even though I had all the gas and BM issues going on).

Doesn't seem like I have any old stuff detoxing at this point, but I did have a few food memories during the week before I left for H&F Week. I couldn't quite place what it was though, just knew it was a familiar food from the past. Oh wait, I remember there was one that I did identify: buttered mashed potatoes and gravy. Guess I was detoxing that at that point. Hadn't been around anyone making or eating it or even seen it for quite some time. It seemed like the kind I had when in college at a certain restaurant actually, so I guess that's what it was. Dunno. Just know it was an interesting "blast from the past."

Female:
I forgot my BabyComp at home, remembered I'd forgotten it half-way to the airport, but no time to go back and get it at that point. Probably best that way anyway. Last time I forgot it at my friend's house (that I'm staying with now) and she had to mail it to me. I don't really need it while I'm gone and it's such a terrific thing that I'll be able to use it fine when I get back as long as I enter when my period starts. I'll let my hubby know when my period starts and tell him how to enter it so I don't have to figure out how to enter it when I get back. It's harder to enter when it's more than 3 days past the date you're entering stuff for.

It was day 15 of my cycle when I left, so that'd make it day 26 of my cycle now. It was a red day then and would still be now. Who knows when my period will start 'cause it gets tweaked a bit when I'm away from my hubby and/or traveling. That's the only thing it'd be nice to have it for now. Nice how I know the day I'm gonna' start my period from my temperature drop that morning. My temperature's usually in the mid-97 degrees Fahrenheit from ovulation up 'till the day my period starts and about a degree less from the day my period starts 'till ovulation.

The Rest:
K, so that's it for now. It's just before 11am right now, so not much else to report for today.

I'll probably do another blog with my website todos list so y'all will know what I'm working on for the website too. :) I'll probably post that later today or tomorrow.

Aloha! :)

Health and Fitness Week was fun!

Yep. I haven't kept up with this as much as I planned, but I'm still working on it. I'm on vacation now, so I'll be able to post more at least for a few weeks...

I'm visiting a friend that lives in the general area that Health and Fitness Week is held right now. H&F Week was last week and I had fun making things pretty and doing fruit and veggie carvings, garnishes, etc. as the ambiance fairy there. Met lots of nifty new people and had a chance to reconnect with friends too. :)

I didn't have a chance to take pictures though :( so I don't have any to show you right now. One of the nifty new people I met was a woman there to take photos though, so I'll be getting pics from her at some point that I'll be able to share with y'all. My camera's gotten quite lonely over the months I haven't been using it. I loaned it to my son who used it for a long time & then never got back into the habit of taking pics again...yet. ;) I brought it with me and I'm gonna' take it out, charge the batteries and start using it again. At least that's the plan...

I also plan to work on my website some more during this time too. Should have brought my external hard drive though; didn't think I'd need it; oh well. I'll have to post the pics I'd taken and not posted in the past later when I'm back. I'm hoping that they'll have figured out a way to get things done at the farm enough while I'm gone that I'll have a bit of time to keep blogging and updating my site when I get back (as well as do things for my fitness goals too).

K, so that's it for this post for now. I'll be back later today to do things on my site and blog again.

Aloha! :)