Plant Sex

No one guessed what the pictures in the previous post were...plant porn. Electron microscope photos of pollen enhanced with color. Once giftmas (oops christmas) is history-I will break out my old paints and see if they are all dried up or still usable! It's been years.

A helpful radio announcer reminded me that there is only 20 days until gift..christmas, I better order gifts for the girls. They have been circling and cutting out pictures from the catalogs we receive for months! Everyone else is covered, I think.

I have been working out 3-4 days per week. I feel great. The scale is not moving much (5#) but my blue jeans are much looser-as in I can pull them off without unbuttoning. Its something, I'll take it 5# at a time.

The land contract on our 20 acres is going forward. We will buy outright 4 acres plus the 33x800ft driveway, and write a contract with Mr Nice Farmer for the rest. The surveying will happen next week -to the tune of $1,000 ouch! The builder we will use is available for next summer. We will get together with him sometime in january to go over our scribbled plans.

I need to work on a post for tomorrow's Homemakers Who Work. I think I will talk about my personal hero the FlyLady...interested...come visit us there.

*WARNING_GRATUITOUS KID PICTURES*
(i don't think I posted these from this summer)


Erin before her first class--she's crazy nervous but it doesn't show


Lizzy on Beljit with trainer Liz Rice-Beula

Setbacks

Setbacks-plural-as in more than one!

Setback number one: call from nice bank lady, the appraised value of the 20 acres is $40,000. Nice farmer wants no less than $3,000 per acre. If we want to proceed we will have to come up with the difference. Instead of the $7,500 down payment we were anticipating, we would have to cough up $27,500. Yikes. We have it, but it would not leave us much for a house. I am fairly certain nice farmer will not bring his price down, he has said this before. I am fairly certain we will not spend the lion's share of our hoarded savings on land down payment. Delaying the move into a more sustainable home/lifestyle is not something I am willing to do. I am anxious enough as it is about waiting until spring to build/sell our house. I continue to wonder when this house of cards we call an economy will come down around us. I worry about inflation and interest rates. I just plain worry. Time to think outside the box.

Setback number two: actually not a setback but a not moving forward. Less than 1 lb loss last week. I swam 4 times last week, but didn't keep track of food intake. My little shortcut was not helpful and I have learned a lesson. Write it ALL down and have a plan the night before. I was/am pissed for faltering but in a good-strengthening resolve kind of way. Lifting weights yesterday helped alot. I forgot how much I loved lifting, not I just need to find my old Powerman5000 and Metallica cassettes to put in my Walkman- ha, ha.

A New Week

What a great morning! I am feeling very energized and optimistic. I just retruned from the YMCA -I swam for 30 minutes. I used their 'swim flippers' and felt like I got a much better work-out-more resistance for my leg muscles (plus going fast is much more fun). Once my endurance is better I will look into adult swimming lessons so I can be a 'real' swimmer :)

I have found myself sort of 'wandering' on my days off. When I am not working I don't really know what to do with myself. Garden is done, food storage is done, there are no 'fires' to put out. Not that my checkbook is balanced and the house is clean, etc but there is no emergency demanding my attention so I sort mess around here and fool around with that, not really accomplishing anything.

My solution is the start my FlyLady routines again. It you are a hopelessly disorganized, easily sidetracked kind of person (like me) adding these little routines to your days/weeks will help! I need to know what I have scheduled myself to do so I don't spend half the morning making lists and priorizing , etc, etc instead of just doing them (15 minutes at a time -you can do anything for 15 minutes !)

Another postive note. I have found my brain again! It has been at least 3 weeks since I have 'lost' my wallet (or keys, or fill-in-the-blank-here). This is a good thing I was worrying that I was an early Alzheimers candidate, but it was really just too much stress.

First Things First

Before heading to work today I stopped to get some new athletic shoes. I have been walking more and my old shoes... are pretty old. My feet had been getting progressively more painful, to the point where I don't go stocking-footed anymore. I spend most of my day on my feet and the work shoes weren't helping much either, those chunky soled leather shoes are completely flat inside-no support to be found. The new shoes are New Balance (made in the USA) and pretty utilitarian- but function above form any day! I also threw away all the extra Halloween candy. This was hard- I am having extreme sugar craving. But I wanted to start off on an honest and accurate accounting so there was no 'just one taste'. It all got dumped.
Tomorrow AM I will walk. Wednesday AM is a WW meeting. Baby steps.

I almost forgot-Saturday we butchered our buns- they were 14 weeks old. It was much smoother this time. DH used his 22 and I did the rest. I now have three beautiful very thick fur pelts to tan. I believe I will try to make myself a Christmas present (instead of giving my best stuff away!) I am picturing rabbit fur lined mitts. We'll see.

A Six Bag Limit

Apparently I have a six bag limit, bags of leaves that is. We missed our village's curb-side leaf pick up last week. That's okay because I would rather see those leaves improving that clay garden soil, but we still have to bag them up and drive them out. Today the weather was cooperative and I set out with alot of enthusiasm. Running the mower with bag attached and dumping the shredded green and brown into large plastic bags. A neighbor works at KRAFT and gets us these ?60- 90? gallon clear plastic bags, which would otherwise be waste.

I could only fill up 6 of these bags before I was pooped. My feet hurt and I was just tired. This is a problem. I have never really felt limited by my physical strength or endurance. Perhaps this is because I have realistic expectations of what my 39 year old body could do. But today I couldn't even fulfill my reasonable expectations. By spring I will need so much more out of my body; it's time for a change.

I am 40 - 50 lbs overweight, have crunchy knees(not painful but loud!), carpal tunnel, and now I think plantar fasciitis. What am I waiting for -diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease? It stops now. I don't have the work excuse -I'm only at 25-30 hours per week. The girls are old enough to be very independent. I am in charge of most of the food coming out of the kitchen as well as the grocery shopping. My excuses are running out.

My subconscious is afraid-what if I try-really try and I can't do it? I've turned over a new leaf :) more times than I can count. How will this be different? I have some ideas. First, my goals will not be scale related but behavior related, as in meeting my goals of veggies, fruit and whole grains and number of minutes of physical activity rather than 2 lbs a week. I can control my behavior and the behavior will affect the scale. Second, I am going to re-join the YMCA- I need to get back to swimming to take things easy on my joints until my weight gets to a healthier place. Third, I am going to develop a kick-ass support network by blogging about my goals and progress along with joining Weight Watchers.

The tone of the posts will change somewhat -but it's my blog, so there!! All you lurkers out there-speak up! I'd love to know you are out there keeping me honest.