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).

9/28/08

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...

9/24/08

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!

9/20/08 & 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....