12/14/08

K, so I'm on-track-ish for the Blogging so far... Yay! :)

Farm
It looks like we might have done our last farmers' market for a while, although we might have a bit for Wednesday. We're gonna' try...

We harvested for yesterday's market hoping it'd clear up enough, but it didn't. The bridge was closed so we couldn't do the first one. The storm let up enough to go to the second one, but not many people were going out at that point anyway. There had been a lot of thunder and lightning in addition to the wind and rain and we don't usually get lightning, and even rarer is thunder with it. It started raining again and getting windy, etc. after a bit, so we left with lots of leftovers. Unfortunately we weren't able to preserve them, so they'll be future fertilizer via compost...

Food
Too bad about the salad 'cause I could use some salad right now. Oh well. I'll hafta' make do with something else. Kinda' a bummer to be combined with a shortage of ripe bananas too. My banana guy was away the week before last and it threw off the supply (in addition to the varied whether for ripening) more than I realized.

I got some carrots, broccoli and corn at the farmer's market yesterday - all of which are sort of rare for me. I was feeling like getting other veggies in me as well as the greens. I ate the corn right away - 'cause it's best eaten as soon as possible after it's been picked. I ate the carrots a little while ago and had some of the broccoli leaves as wrappers for wraps with my salad last night. The broccoli was mainly leaves. Maybe I'll dip the rest of the broccoli into some lemon-tahini dip or something tonight after lots and lots of orange juice (since I don't have salad).

I had OJ for breakfast too and a small hand of apple bananas at lunch. Now that I think about it, there's probably no way I'll not overeat the fats today. Oh well. I think I'll have several hands of bananas ready for tomorrow or the next day, so I'll be able to even it out then.

I gathered a bunch of lilikoi (passion fruit), the yellow tangy kind from our yard today & I'll probably have some of them tonight too, just after the OJ and before the dip. Hmmm... it's turning out to be a better dinner than I thought it'd be. :)

Exercise
Not much official exercise... we've been doing loads of stuff at our house with the house and yard so have been getting some that way. We've cleared out room to use my son's home gym thing which is exciting so I'll probably start using that again soon. We've been moving some stuff around that hasn't been accessible for a while and the dust was getting to me so I've been not as energetic due to the sneezing increase that happens with exercise when that's happening. Too bad I wasn't full-on with the elements of health better these days - I probably wouldn't have been as bothered by the dust and all. I know it's worked that way for me in the past with 80-10-10 (where if I'm "on it" with things I don't have much if any allergy issues). Oh well. It is what it is. At least I know why.

Sleep
Sleep? Er, uh.... yeah. Well... We have been getting loads and loads of stuff done that we've meant to for years - but it has also often been late at night so I haven't been getting as good of sleep as I should. I started to catch up a bit today - took a nap, but still need to do a bit more, perhaps tomorrow. We'll see.

Female
I should be well into the green days, but I have been getting to sleep so close to my regular time for taking my temperature and getting up too close to it afterward that I haven't been able to take my temperature lately. I probably could have and it might have been okay, but I like to skip it if I'm in doubt about if the reading would be accurate or not, just in case...

While we wanted more children years ago, our son is 20 now and we're kinda' liking the independence and such. It's still a possibility for the future to have another child, but I'm not wanting to take the chance right now.

Crafts
I think I'm gonna' join Ravelry and blog over there about some of the fiber crafts I do. I have to request an invitation, then I can join. If/when that happens I'll let y'all know so if any of you are interested in more info on that stuff you can go there. I figure I shouldn't take up too much space here on it. I might change my mind and just combine it all into this one blog, still deciding. If you have suggestions, let me know. :)

In the meantime I'll cover some things here... I love knitting and stuff like that 'cause it gives me something to do with my hands instead of figiting when I can't do anything else. I also like being able to make custom things so they're just how I want them. And it's also exciting, sort of addictive to me too... There are little bits of progress to measure and goals to reach along the way and it's so exciting to me to anticipate and reach them. Here's and example of what I mean: I finally decided to go ahead and go for knitting a sock.

I was always intimidated by having to use double-pointed needles - and not just two, but FIVE! I had been afraid I'd end up with messes of dropped stitches by the time I got back around again. LOL So I decided to face my fear and just do it. I'm sooo glad I did too! :) I knitted a nice lacy pair of cotton socks for myself and I was so amazed that I was actually doing it the whole time. It was like, "Wow, these bamboo knitting needles are working just fine, not losing stiches after all." Then, "Hey, look! The toe actually looks like a sock toe, and my toes fit in it!" (I was knitting them toe-up).

Next I was using Five needles instead of two and it was, "How cool this looks and it's not that hard after all." Then I got to the pattern and it was, "That is a nice pattern I do like it. I'm almost to the heel!" Kinda' nifty how that design had the same procedure for the heel as the toe, which really appeals to me from a practical perspective or something like that. So I thought that was way-cool too. When I was done with the heel it was, "Gosh, this really is starting to look like a real sock!" I was showing each of these steps and sharing my excitement with my family and at that point my hubby was excited/impressed too. He said something like, "It looks like a sock now already. I mean you could just end it now and it'd be a sock." (He likes to wear footy types of short socks with his running shoes and all).

I agreed that I could, but was gonna' finish the pattern and make more of a leg on it. I'm glad I did. They came out so much cuter than I thought they would. They're almost like little boots or something. The same look/feel to me as the little boots I used to love to wear in college and when I met my hubby. Sweet! :) I'll hafta' take a picture of 'em and show y'all. I'll try to take pics of the other two projects I've done recently as well - and maybe some older ones too while I'm at it... Maybe I'll have that done for next week's posting.

I was gonna' get back to spinning again today and was all ready to sit down and spin when I realized that my container of unspun de-seeded cotton had been moved during all the stuff we're doing at the house and I have no idea where it is right now. Oh well. Probably a good thing anyway. I might not have gotten to doing this blog on time otherwise.

A lot of the things we're doing around the house and farm are sort of like craft projects on a larger scale. I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but that's what building stuff is really. Not sure why it didn't occur to me before...

Other
Well, I should go now. My hubby's back from the new farm, it's dark and that means it's time to work on the garage some more... It feels so great to finally get these things done! :)

Aloha!

12/10/08 - Updates

About Blogging
K, so you wonder, what happened? Janie was on a roll again...

Yeah, well, um... lots of stuff, actually. Sorry. I haven't been online much most of the time so it's been harder to do the blogging because of that. I'm thinking of doing audio or video blogging instead or in addition, alternating or something. Podcasts of sorts and all. My camera takes short videos fairly well and I might be able to find my son's digital audio recorder - both portable. I could do the blogs in-between stuff informally on the go... Hmmm... I think it has potential.

I think I'll be able to do some of the FAQs with audio or video stuff too. That might get them to happen quicker than they've been happening.

I have been pretty obsessed with knitting lately - been knitting pretty much every bit of spare time I have with my hands. I have also gotten into listening to Podcasts about crafts in addition to news and such as well. I just realized today that my son hasn't been using the digital audio recorder we got him to use for taking notes or making compositions in school. It's one that would interface with voice recognition software and type things out for him, which is a challenge due to his dyslexia. He's gotten fairly proficient with typing and spell check though and doesn't need it for his life right now. So.... I'm hoping he knows where it is still (Mr. Gagethead, he is indeedy) and it's not buried in some pile of electronic stuff somewhere not to be found for years. LOL

I've also decided that rather than try to post daily and feel badly about getting so far behind, I'll try to post weekly instead - either typed, audio or video. We'll see how that works. I'm not sure what day I'll post them, probably over the weekend, but I'll figure it out once our schedules settle again.

The Farm
We were doing quite well with the farm for a while there, had worked up to 7 farmers' markets a week (over 6 days - there were 2 on one of the days), and had other wholesale customers as well. We were lovingly pumping out the organic veggies and loving it. :)

We knew that we'd probably have to move the veggies to another place once the papayas get to a certain age as they'd shade out the veggies and would get so large that the roots would overlap so we wouldn't want to disturb them. So we were able to get a lease on some other land that we planned to move onto when the time came. We planned to overlap things and transition from one to the other fairly seamlessly.

Well, there were complications with that plan - mainly getting the land at the new farm prepared for planting. We had a hard time finding someone who had the equipment and know-how to do what we needed here - and then had a hard time finding time they were available. It took several months to get them out there to begin with, but it worked quite well. Well, sort of... He wouldn't do both parts we wanted to do, claiming that we needed to mow, then wait and mow again before doing the rest. That's how most of them do it here. So try as we did, we could not get him to stay and finish the second part that day. He said he'd be back in a week or two though, so we figured we could wait. Well, wait we did... and we're still waiting! It not only has been over a week or two - it's been over a month or two at this point. Ug!

The problem is, we cannot wait any longer. The time to move is now - for many reasons: we were subleasing through someone else and the landlord changed the locks on the gates but would not issue more than one key for our group (even though there were several subleasing the piece). This is after the security guards had been hassling people who came there to help us farm. It got worse after the key change - they said that only my husband could go there (not even me) and that we had to have the key (which they would not give enough copies of for my hubby to have his own) and that we could not use a hide-a-key and all. It'd become totally unworkable. Evenso, my hubby plodded along and worked out something so that he can bring me in and we have access to the shared key.

The security people got all weird over time and the landlord's office claimed that they were having problems out there (there are many acres of leased land over there beyond the gates and many people leasing various parts of it). We weren't able to get in for a few days when they changed the locks because the security people told us we couldn't go in without the key - but they hadn't issued the new key yet. Doi. We ended up having to miss a few markets and weren't able to go in daily to water, weed, plant and tend to the farm either. In addition to that, there had been a few storms and such that made it more challenging to grow things consistently and some farmer's markets that were completely rained out. It had become questionable about whether the people we were subleasing from actually had a lease for the term we were supposed to have as well as other issues with them that had become apparent. We had been having less and less planting space due to the papayas as well, so we realized the time to relocate had come, ready or not. We've reduced down to two days of farmer's markets a week, have stopped planting and stopped weeding at the old farm in order to get this done.

So we have been working on relocating our farm, even though we are still waiting for the equipment to come and prepare it for us to plant... because we have no other choice at this point. My hubby and I have been trying to figure out ways to get some things planted ASAP without waiting for the equipment as we cannot even raise the guy on the phone these days anymore. (He may be off-island for the holidays and such). Heh, the ironic thing about the security and all over at our old farm is that after we reduced the farmer's markets and stopped going there daily, someone stole some of our tools. We'd never had any theft problems before - and they were supposed to be making things more secure by making it so hard for people who belong there to get in. LOL We weren't able to do anything about it the day we discovered the thefts 'cause we were rushed to get the harvest done and to market, but we moved out everything we could over the next couple of days, leaving things to do harvest with since we'd still need it there for now. We got a storage shed and assembled it and all, after my hubby cleared some of the land with his high wheel weed wacker and regular heavy duty weed wacker.

We need to set up the irrigation and all over at the new place too - but need the land prepped first... We're trying to figure out how to get it done anyway. It'll work out in some manner or another though.

It's nice to not have that long commute daily anymore and I'm looking forward to the short commute in the near future. So it'll be much better once it's done. We'll just end up having a gap in our production it seems, which we'll deal with in some manner or another as well.

Oh yeah, we've also been looking for acreage and at acreage within the price range of the person who's gonna' get land that we'll then be able to use long-term. We've been looking at auctions, listings and word of mouth stuff too. We haven't found anything that will work in that price range yet, but we feel we're getting close! :)

House
Given that we couldn't farm and haven't been able to do things as much in relation to that lately we've been taking the opportunity to get things done around the house that were overdue and needed. It feels so nice to get some of this done - finally. We've been able to get rid of some of the clutter inside much better than ever before and we've started to do some repairs here and there (like the wooden fence that we put up about 10 years ago that needs new supports 'cause we didn't want to use treated lumber at the time and it's rotten now). We've also decided to take out the garden fencing in our yard, figuring that we'll do the trellis gardening at the farm instead. That will give us more room to get to the fruit trees and harvest them when they're producing. We're going to move the plants in the garden area to the new farm. Most of them are Permaculture-ish type of plants that grow on their own here once established, so we can plant them there even before the land is prepped. We decided to not have a compost pile at the house since the new farm is in town and we can bring things there instead, so we're clearing out the compost piles from the yard. Nice.

It feels terrific to make some tangible progress in this area. There's much more we want to accomplish (including new flooring at some point - hopefully soon), so we may not finish it before we get things going at the farm but we're getting loads of it done now. Speaking of the flooring... it's currently what was a white plush carpet (came with the house, unfortunately) that has majorly suffered from little boys trekking in and out of the yard from the pool to my son's room and all, not to mention us coming from the garden in the yard or the farm. We all tried to take off our shoes at the door, but sometimes when in a hurry that fell by the wayside... And then there were the occasional spills and such, and rain coming in from the window when we didn't realize it, stuff leaking under boxes stored there, etc. It's amazing that it doesn't smell. Thank GOODness! :) It's not white anymore, needless to say, heh. And it's needed replacing due to all the stains and such for a while. Now that we've cleared out a lot of the boxes and such that were stored in there it's more of a possibility. Yay! :)

We want to have something that will be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. LOL I suppose almost anything would be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. :) We'd been eyeing bamboo flooring that's surprisingly inexpensive for some time now, but as it got closer I started thinking that tile was better. We'd been eyeing tiles too, but were leaning towards the bamboo previously. I went on the Internet to find out pros and cons of things and discovered that we might want to do a cement stain instead, and then seal it. The foundation is a cement slab and the garage has it bare with just a seal, which works quite well. It looks like the cement stains are quite versatile and can be quite beautiful as well. So that's what I'm leaning towards right now. My hubby's not so sure. Actually he's not so sure about thinking about changing the flooring right now either. We have so much else to deal with right now, it's understandable. Whatever we choose we'd have to take the current carpet out, so I figure that we'll see if cement staining is even an option at that point. (The cement slab has to be in good condition to do it apparently).

So ANYway... lots of stuff going on at the house-front as well, suffice it to say. I'll move on to other stuff now...

Food
I'm still doing all raw, like usual, however not as well as usual for the time being at least. We're budgeting our funds and have not had as many veggies for ourselves to eat or to trade for other things, so things have been a bit scarce at times. This has resulted in me eating a bit too much fat (probably more like 20%-25% ish) and some of my rarely occasionally things more frequently. It's temporary though, so I'm feeling okay about it. Of course I'm noticing the corresponding changes in my vitality but at least I know what's causing it and how to change it to what I want.

Exercise
That's been going really well at times and not so good at other times while I was away. I finally was able to make it to one of the classes at the gym where I work. It was really fun! :) I was going to the gym and rowing every other day and doing some free weights again too for a while there. Then it became obvious that I wasn't able to keep doing the work schedule I'd been doing - and get enough sleep. I was getting too tired and was taking the time to sleep instead of working out 'cause I just wasn't getting enough sleep otherwise. Between getting up at 3 in the morning for the job at the gym and doing harvests and farmer's markets for the rest of the day, sometimes into the night, I was only getting about 3-5 hours of sleep most days. I was having trouble staying awake when driving to the farmer's market that was the farthest from the farm (about an hour and a half) so my hubby had to do that one. Just so I could sleep. He needed to be farming though. It didn't make sense to hire temporary help at the farm to cover my hours either 'cause we pay people more than I was getting paid at the gym. LOL So I told them I couldn't work that day anymore. They said that the other person who was working mornings was going to be switching jobs there and they wanted me to just switch that day for another instead of working one less day. I figured out what day was the least worst day and exchanged it for that one. The thing is, it conflicted with the class I took there. Bummer. I thought that I might be able to take the yoga class that conflicted with my previous shift though, but now I'm realizing that it's probably not gonna' happen. Now that we're moving our farm, we won't be down that way as much so I'll probably not make it.

I'm thinking that I may have to quit that job completely, or at least drop the day I switched for. That day's not gonna' work out very well once we're back to our usual schedule since that night's the night we stay very late harvesting (with headlamps) for the early morning market the "next" day. I will probably not go there much 'cause it's an hour away, and it doesn't make sense to drive that far for the amount of pay I get and a membership I'll probably not be using much if at all... But I'm not gonna' drop things just yet. I will wait and see what happens. I may be able to work out after my shifts and after markets we have in that area if I'm getting enough sleep otherwise. Since we wouldn't have to commute for two hours a day just to get to the farm it's possible that I would get enough sleep anyway... We'll see...

In the meantime I'm doing other exercise here and there. We cleared out enough room in the living room to be able to use some of the exercise things I had in there and have enough floor room to do things in. Yay! My hubby pulled out the two rebounders we have when it was raining and we rebounded together. It was so fun! I just love rebounding! It's so joyful! :) It's also kinda' funny to try to coordinate our bouncing together too. :)

Sleep
Well, I sort of covered that in other areas here - it's been variable, but I was falling quite behind for a while too. I discovered that I needed to temper my knitting obsession too 'cause I was staying up too late doing that as well as the other challenges. So I'm still challenged in that area and working on it... Yeah, tonight it's the blogging, heh. Oh well...

Female
I haven't been taking my temperature as regularly lately 'cause of the irregular sleep, but the BabyComp still works anyway. So cool. I'm soooo glad I got it. I can just take may temperature around ovulation and menstration and that does it.

Other Stuff
My relationship with my hubby's going fabulously well, as is my relationship with my son. I am so grateful for my life with them, every moment.

When we cleared out the living room that also made room for my spinning wheel again. Yay! I haven't gotten back to it yet, mainly 'cause I've been distracted with my knitting obsession, but I'm planning on starting back on it next week.

I was playing the banjo ukulele every day - in my spare time, on the way to/from the farm and all, but then the battery in the tuner I used to keep it tuned ran out... And I took too long to get it replaced. It's been a while now and I've gotten out of practice. I have the batteries now, but haven't started back yet. I'll be starting off close to the beginning. That's okay. It's for fun anyway. The knitting has sort of taken it's place to/from the farm so I'll have to alternate them once I get going again.

The vog has come by once or twice since I last posted I believe. The last one was a few days ago and was getting to me. It lasted a bit longer than the vog though and I realized that it was a bit different afterwards - it turned out that I had another one of those little eyelashes growing astray - and into my eye. It was a bit hard to figure it out 'cause my eyes are often sensitive to wind after the vog exposure even after it's gone and it often feels like something's in it or irritating it. Was nice to have an instant solution to that irritation though - just pluck the eyelash and it's over. Definitely nice.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I only have one guinea pig now. The other one died. She was quite old, for a guinea pig that is, so it wasn't completely unexpected. It looked like she was peaceful and she'd been eating and drinking and acting fine so I think she was happy too. Same thing happened with my dog too - she died peacefully and was old as well. We miss them both daily, and we're grateful to have been able to share our lives with them for as long as we did. :) So now we're sharing our house and lives with only one guinea pig and a cat... along with all the unofficial companions like geckos and other lizards, birds and everything outside and all...

Let's see, what else... hmm... don't know right now. Guess it'll come out eventually as I blog more.

K, gonna' go now. Need to relax and go to sleep... getting up early tomorrow again and stayed up too late last night finishing a shirt I was knitting... (insert embarrassed smiley here).

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! :)

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! :)

Quickie Updates

They've been painting things at the gym so my plan to escape the vog there hasn't been working out very well yet. The vog hasn't been quite as bad when it's been here lately, but it has kept me from being as productive as I'd like -and busy catching up when it's gone. LOL

Technical issues with my Internet connection at the farm have limited my time online too... oh well. Life happens and keeps going, thank goodness! ;)

I've been eating bananas for most of my daytime meals and things from our farm for dinners. I've been making cucumber noodles and various sauces with tomatoes and such as well as lots and lots of salads. Yum! The cucumbers are about pau (Hawaiian for done) and the next ones will not be ready for about a month, so will probably start having gazpacho or something. Mango season is starting up. Yay! Since we've still got some tomatoes going I might start doing some stuff with them together. Lennie made a great mango-tomato soup in Costa Rica that I just might try here too this time. Or maybe not... it's hard to not just eat the mangos straight instead, heh. The tomatoes are terrific straight too and I just forage on them for before dinner meals fairly often when I'm there. Nice. :)

We're looking for additional land to farm on and have several leads that we're exploring here and there as we can. Hopefully we'll find something long term enough that we can grow a variety of fruit trees, would be nice if it's either close to home or close to our current farm too. :)

For exercise it's been farming when the vog's not a problem, and the gym when the paint's not a problem, and light almost-bounce rebounding with my eyes closed during vog (so I don't breath in the vog too much and to protect my eyes from that burning), and pushups, etc. at night or when there's no vog as I can. Luckily the asthma I used to have still hasn't come back even with the vog, but then I've been careful 'cause of my eyes and haven't been exerting myself in the vog much if at all...

We're getting closer to finishing the new site for FoodnSport, so the switch-over will probably happen in June. Yay!

I've also been adding things to the products area on this site as I can for y'all. I wanted to start with the body care products 'cause I get so many questions about that but I couldn't find the products I use when I went to do it. I had found them in the past and made a file of where they are, but can't find that either. Doi. So I did a little in the camping area for now. I'm gonna' give the body care area a try again next time - have some ideas of how to find 'em better or maybe where the file is archived with their info.

I also need to fix up this blog so that when you read older blogs it doesn't tweak as much on the formatting. Sorry about that. I'll work on that soon too.

Oh, and my books... yeah. They're temporarily on hold, but I'm gonna' start back on them and just finish them this time. Part of the problem has been that I get close to finishing them, just need to format and edit, then I need to attend to other things, and then when I come back to it I want to change the approach and need to re-do it. LOL Not gonna' change my mind this time so I get them done and out to y'all. Some of you have been sooo patient, poor things. I'll get them done and if I want to do a different approach later, it will be a different book instead.

The videos are on hold too 'cause my hubby's the filmmaker and is quite busy with the farm for now. We may get someone else to take over to finish them too, but haven't focused on that since all the family emergencies we had not too long ago. I might do some simple single meal videos for download on here myself if we can get the camera set up in our kitchen well enough for me to do it on my own. It'd not be the same quality as what my hubby'd do, but the content would be there for sharing which is really what it's about, right?

I haven't had a chance to get back to spinning the cotton I'd picked or knitting the dress I'm designing... yet. I've been thinking of them more and more though so perhaps I'll be able to figure out a way to fit them in somewhere somehow soon. I wonder if I can spin cotton with my eyes closed during vog days I don't have access to air conditioning? Hmmm....

My guinea pig is one lucky pig indeedy. She gets gourmet baby lettuce, cucumbers and such from our garden daily in addition to the grasses and such I'd been giving her.

K, gotta' go and get back to catching up with everything. The vog's been here the last couple days or so and is just lightening up so I'm gonna' try to make it to the farmer's market in order to help my hubby. I've got a staff meeting at the gym later, and if it's over before dark I will transplant some of the edible flowers into our personal use beds from the flats I started a while ago... and other farm stuff. :)

Aloha!

Monday 2/4/08

Sleep:
woke at 7am? for temp.,
up at 9-ish, but stayed in bed dozing here and there to get more sleep 'till 11-ish
to sleep for night at 9pm

Food:
water from 3 young coconuts

smoothie of 7 or 8 'cooking' bananas, 2 dates, 1 med. chocolate sapote (& filtered water) while stretching after run
another smoothie of 7 'cooking' bananas, 3 dates, 1 med. chocolate sapote after showering (which was after finishing stretching and the other smoothie)

2 cups grapefruit juice after bike ride, followed by 6 surinam cherries off our tree
1 large head of lettuce followed by 5 largish cherry tomatoes
sorry, didn't note the times, separated them when separated by time

Exercise:
Running!
Ran 30 minutes straight for the first time today, and a little over 2.6 miles straight for the first time today as well! :) That makes the average pace a 11 minute, 32 second mile-ish. We hit the 1st mile mark at 10 minutes, 32 seconds though. It was quite challenging today, but I did it! Yay! I think I might continue with the 30 minute running for a while, then move up to the 50 minutes of running.

We were scheduled to run this yesterday, but it was too stormy - thunder and lightning all the night before, through the day and into the night, flash flood warnings and watches, etc. It was still stormy and rainy on the South part of the island today, but was okay up here, just a bit cloudy and windy. Odd. We usually get the rain, but then it is the Winter and the storms usually come from the South then. I almost went out yesterday anyway 'cause it wasn't raining the whole time, but then decided not to risk my life to keep to the schedule. I don't know if that's why it was harder today or not.

Push ups before the second smoothie, forgot to do the pull ups, will do them tomorrow.

Bike Riding!
I rode about 3 miles today in order to tell how far we ran with my new odometer/trip meter dealy I got for my bike. It worked great! I still haven't found any of our air pumps, but decided that I'd go to the next town's gas station with my bike in the truck to pump it up. I'd saved up a few other errands I could do there at the same time so it worked out well.

Riding the same course we walk for warm/up and cool downs and run was quite challenging to me on my bike. LOL I guess it's 'cause I haven't been on the thing in a long time - either that or my smoothies were still digesting or I was tired from the run earlier. Any inclines or hills were certainly more noticeable then when on foot. I didn't feel tired from the run - I think it's just that those bike riding muscles weren't used to it anymore. So it was sort of nifty to get a work-out from that too. It was unexpected, but welcome. I think I'll go out on it again tomorrow and see if I can figure out a route that will give us a 3 mile mark to work towards in the 30 minutes' run we'll be doing. The one we've been doing isn't long enough, we actually overshot it today and ended up walking less afterwards for the cool down as a result. It worked out fine though, but I prefer more of a walking cool down than that - at least 5 minutes.

Detox:
my sweat was salty again & I actually had a bit of salty back of the throat mucus in the morning before getting up, didn't notice anything else

Wait! I did, almost forgot! This morning when making my bed (a rare occurrence BTW) I suddenly found myself thinking about some food I couldn't quite place at first. I knew it was something I'd eaten back in 1979 or '80 and it was a potato dish, but couldn't quite place the taste memory that was coming up. I could almost place the region it was that I got the food from (it was a restaurant or something someone else made) and that I probably had it with my best friend at the time and that I had it fairly regularly, but still couldn't quite figure out what it was. I still don't know. Later on in the day I had another food memory of some cubed hash browns my mom used to make and I made later on when my son was an infant. When I was going to sleep I had a food memory of the cubed hash browns and cactus I had while in Baja Mexico back in the summer of 1996.

Updating this from Tuesday: Overnight I had a sort of french fry nightmare. LOL. I was given a tray of junk food that I thought I'd bring to my hubby or son to see if they wanted: McDonald's french fries, a cheese burger, a strawberry and vanilla shake and something else I can't remember. As I was going down the stairs I absent mindedly ate a french fry (remember this is a dream) and immediately regretted it, felt that rancid cooked/fried oil taste in the back of my throat down low and that sort of acidic feel there. I'd felt that in real life at times back when I was eating them sometimes or later on - got pretty bad right before I started on 80-10-10. Anyway, back to the dream, as soon as I realized that I'd eaten the french fry 'cause of the effects I'd felt I woke up - like a nightmare. LOL. I didn't feel the anxiety like a nightmare though, but it was similar otherwise.

I'm supposing that my body's working on clearing my arteries or other areas that saturated and/or trans-fat has been stored and/or stuck in my body, which is why I'm reminded of it now. Whatever the case it's an interesting phenomena that I haven't had in quite a while. I figure it's coming back now 'cause I'm doing the running, which I'm sure is doing my body good in ways I can't even imagine.

Female:
6am? temp: 96.74 degrees Fahrenheit, day 14 of my cycle, red day, girl kid icon

You know, I think I'm going to contact the Baby-comp company about the boy and girl icons. I think they're switched on mine 'cause the boy ones come up before the girl ones and I think it should be the other way around. Not that it matters for me in a practical sense, it's more of an intellectual mini-almost-peeve at this point. I don't plan on planning the baby's gender if I do decide to plan to birth another baby, but I'm thinking they should know it's switched or I should know why it shows that way. I thought that the boy swimmers were faster but didn't last as long and the girl ones were slower and had better endurance, that would mean that the boy icon should show before the girl one 'cause they are in relation to ovulation. I'll let you know what they tell me once I get an answer.

The Rest:
I've been trying to sleep more to help my running progress and I was doing a great job of it at first, which was reflected in my progress I think. This last week I've had a bit of trouble sleeping, have been a bit distracted with other things going on and have had interruptions to my sleep from things happening to wake me, so I've been in bed a lot longer than I've been getting sleep. At least I've been getting rest. I know I could sleep more 'cause I do actually go to sleep when I get the chance, it's just been interrupted a bunch. I wonder if that's part of the reason I was feeling like I might be overtraining myself with the running and all today and the last time. Overtraining, underrecovering, pretty much the same thing as it's relative.

I thought I might be overtraining 'cause it was a lot harder and I was having trouble finding a pace that felt comfortable like before. I also was not looking forward to it or enjoying it while doing it as much. But then, I haven't felt as comfortable running at the slower pace that I started out with either, so who knows? I do know that it seems like a good idea to maintain at 30 minute runs for now, before continuing on to 50 minutes (via 32, 34, 37, 41, 43, 45 minute runs). I want it to stay fun so I keep doing it. I'll get to 50 minutes eventually, so it's no biggie to have a delay from my plan. When I find that I'm doing well at 30 minutes and feel like more, then I'll add on 2 minutes and see how that goes. I figure my pace will get better in the meantime as a result of sticking to the same length of time running. We'll see...

I'm so excited about the progress we're making at home with all the rearranging of things! We're actually getting close to a noticeable difference and making it more functionally different too! Yay!

Spinning
One of the errands I did today when I went to fill up my bike tires was to get a couple of other springs for my spinning wheel. It turned out that the spring I got to replace the original now rusty one just was too tight. I was having trouble getting the correct tension for spin and uptake. There was too small a margin of adjustment so I ended up going back and forth between no tension to spin, and then put tension on to get it to uptake and wind on the spool. It worked okay enough to get some done, but not as well as it could be. I'm going to mess with the two springs tomorrow to see if either of them work out. I have yet to find the same kind of spring as it came with, so have to work with what I find or can adjust.

Okay, so I'm going to sleep now.

Aloha & Nightie Night! :)

Friday 2/1/08

Sleep:
no temp today
up at 7am
to sleep for night at 10 or 11pm

Food:
smoothie with lots of bananas (sorry, didn't count), 3 dates, water and 1 med. chocolate sapote - drank while stretching after run
water from 3 young cocos
5 large tangerines
8 chocolate sapotes
jicama, 3 tomatoes, part of a small avocado, celery (6 sticks?), & lettuce

Sorry, didn't note the times

I went with a friend to see if we could harvest chocolate sapotes from some trees she knew about today. They weren't quite ready, but there were lots of citrus dropping off the trees. This was great 'cause I still have some chocolate sapotes and was about to run out of citrus since my son and hubby both decided they wanted to drink lots of OJ the day before (when they haven't been having much or any lately). It's a good thing they weren't quite ready 'cause I forgot to bring my picker poles 'cause I needed to leave earlier than I had planned so was in a rush. Oops! Turned out perfect with the citrus though.

I didn't have a chance to post about Thursday, but went overt fat-free then with banana and date smoothies, chocolate sapotes, orange juice and papayas - perhaps some rambutan too, can't remember. (I'm writing this on Saturday evening before going to bed). So good to have bananas again! :)

Exercise:
Running! 25 minutes solid with approximate 5 minute warm up and cool down walks before and after respectively, probably over 2 miles.
Had to cancel running on Thursday as planned 'cause my hubby and I woke too late to fit it in before going to the farm & back too late to do it afterwards. I was determined to run Friday and not skip yet another day, so we went out even though it was cold (for us), very windy and rainy off and on. Luckily it only sprinkled on us a bit during the run, unfortunately it was during our warm-up walk, which was quite brisk due to being cold. We also started the running at a faster pace than I planned simply 'cause we were so cold and wanted to get warm faster, heh. Yeah, we're underdressed, acclimatized wimps. It was probably only in the 60's (Fahrenheit), but that's cold to us, especially when combined with the 30+ MPH winds and moist air and rain. It was a challenging run for me indeedy, but I did it!

We went 12 minutes and then turned around, didn't pass the place where we started so our pace on the way back was quite a bit slower than on the way there, but then I knew that. There's a slight hill that's downhill there and uphill back. It usually doesn't make much of a difference 'cause I'm warmed up on the way back, but the strong wind was blowing against us on the way back which made it even more challenging. We didn't measure out how far we went, but did note that it was 10 minutes, 35 seconds when we passed the mile mark on the way there. We went pretty far past it before turning around at 12 minutes in and kept the same pace that whole time. The pace dropped off fairly soon after turning around and going against the wind though. Once we made it up the hill (towards the end) and turned the corner, the wind was from the side instead and our pace picked up a tad so that we weren't all that far from the point where we started. Whatever. I'm just glad that I went out when the weather made me feel like staying home - and that I still ran for a longer period of time straight than I ever have before, even though it was quite challenging at times.

My hubby was so sweet in motivating me during the run when it got hard. He was coming up with military marching songs and such to sing to my running cadence to keep me going. I don't know if it helped or not, but I appreciated the gesture and effort. He was running with 5 pound weights in his hands instead of the 8 pound ones he usually has been using lately so I guess that's how he could muster the breath for it - or perhaps it's the fact that he has waay more running experience than I do. I joked about him being a show off, but I know it was to help me. I help him run consistently 'cause he goes when I do and he helps me keep going when it's rough. Nice. :)

Harvesting!
Hiking around, picking the fruit & carrying it back, making a couple more trips of the same, carrying the boxes of what I gathered into the house, etc.

Moving!
We're rearranging the stuff in our house and moved some heavy items around today. Yay! So exciting to see the progress.

Push ups and pull ups
I think it was only one set of each.

Detox:
Not as much as I would have thought due to the massive saltiness of those olives I had the other day. My sweat seemed salty, but didn't get the salty mucus down the back of my throat in the morning, in the shower or any time - so far, at least.

I did have some of the lung 'soreness' sensation when taking really deep breaths, but know what that's from - the running. Guess it's the VO2 Max developing.

Female:
6am temp: 96.58 degrees Fahrenheit, day 11 of my cycle, red day, little boy kid icon (FYI had boy & girl icons on the day after this, Sat., day 12 of my cycle)

The Rest:
Bike:
We got an odometer for my bike today! :) I'm going to use it to figure out mile markers and routes for future runs and/or after runs that haven't followed predefined routes.
I still need to get the air in my tires, so it might be a while since I still don't know where the air pump is (think it's in my son's room somewhere).

Yoga:
I took my old yoga mat out and hung it on the clothes line, scrubbed it a bit and sprayed it off with the hose, left it to dry. Unfortunately, it's been stormy since then and not enough sun to dry it as of the writing of this (Saturday evening). If it's not dry by Monday I think I'll start doing the surya namaskara asanas without it. That should be fine 'cause I plan to run 30 minutes on Sunday and I shouldn't need a yoga mat for just them.

Blogging:
I've been using Blogger to do my more recent journals, which had been working fairly well for a while. I just noticed that it's sort of tweaking with the previous posts areas especially in the archived ones so I'll have to fix that at some point. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Spinning Yarn:
I'm having fun with the cotton spinning although I've also been really grateful for the heirloom wool sweater I inherited from my mom when it's raining and windy. It's easy to spin and a natural wicking material. It's not vegan, but if they were treated really well I think it'd be fine. I've thought about raising a sheep or two and treating them like pets, brushing them out and using that to spin, but don't know if they'll do well here or not. I know people have goats here quite often, but haven't seen many sheep. I started to try to figure it out online. I wasn't able to figure out how they'd do here, but did get reminded that people often raise them to eat rather than just for wool. Doi! I had forgotten all about that. So then I started to find out about different breeds good for wool, meat or both and decided to try to get a breed only for wool so I don't support raising them for meat indirectly. I might get one from the humane society though, whatever breed it is just to give it a home, if there is one there. It looks like Merino, Leicester, Lincoln and Rambouillet are potentials as this point. Of course this is all premature 'cause I don't have a place to keep one just yet, but I can work on figuring out if that's an okay idea or not. Still workin' on it, thought I'd share...

Monday 1/28/08

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Detox:
Nothing here.

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

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

Sunday 1/27/08

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lauhala shoe at the beach

Here's a picture of the shoe I made from scrap lauhala (pandanus) the other day. It worked pretty well - needs a toe loop though 'cause the bottom's sort of floppy. Not enough time or good leaves to make another. Took a few pictures of it with a cell phone camera and left it to compost. :)