New Beginnings

Yes, I am still alive and kicking. I'm amazed that I still have 'followers' after such a long absence from this space.

Basically, over the last nine months, I poured everything I had into a job, but even so, it apparently wasn't enough as I was fired last month-for the first time in my life. I've always been the star, the go-to person, and now, I am experiencing the other end of that spectrum. The only thing I can do is to move on and to learn from my failings, career and social. I've never been good at playing politics, sucking up to people. My emotions are always on my sleeve, which makes me easy to manipulate. Plus, I tend to think the best about people, even those who act like assholes and jerks. I make excuses for them in my mind, and try to block their influence and in doing that, I allow myself to be blindsided. They win influence, I don't. It is the story of losers everywhere, I suppose, that the victor's side of the story is the one recorded in the books. C'est la vie.

So in my quest of self improvement, I've decided to try to lose some weight and become more fit. This process began two and a half years ago when I stopped smoking after 27 years. I gained 30 pounds from that, and I lost that over the following 18 months, but now I am back on my pre-quitting plateau. I vowed to lose 50 pounds in 2010, and I have lost about 10 pounds with half the year gone. My BMI is close to 27, in the overweight range, but luckily under the obese marker. I just pulled out the Wii and weighed to make sure. I just weighed 199.5 pounds with a BMI of 27.8, up from last month by three pounds. That is where feeding your failure leads! Wii Fit states that my ideal weight should be about 157 pounds, which is where I would be if I lost the 50 pounds I intended with my New Year's Resolution. I have 43 pounds to lose in 6 months, 7 pounds a month, 1.75 pounds a week. That should be a safe loss rate and something I should be able to manage with diet and exercise. I've already given up soft drinks this year, and I am working on swapping out saturated fats for unsaturated fats. I don't believe in 'going on a diet', but I do want to make lifestyle changes. I've used a couple of calculators and figured that my Basal Metabolic Rate is about 2200 calories a day. I haven't been counting calories as to what I am consuming, but I will keep a journal for a week or so just to get an idea. If I can keep my intake between 2200 and 2500 calories, I should be able to exercise and burn off at least 1000 calories a day. One mountain bike ride around the 7 mile 'block' burns just over 700 calories and takes about 45 minutes, so I think with some stretching and a few additional minutes, I should be able to hit that 1000 burned goal. In addition, it is summer, and that means gardening-more calories burned. In a few weeks, I'll need to start splitting wood for the winter-more calories gone. So doing the math, If I consume 2500 calories and burn 1000 from exercise and 1000 from seasonal work, then my net caloric intake is 500, which is 1700 less than my BMR. If I ride my bike or exercise 5 times a week and spend 3 hours a day working, that is 8500 calories a week, equaling about 2.5 pounds a week. Of course, that will be the short term weekly goal that I strive for, not a given.

I want to pass along a few websites that I have found refreshingly useful.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/

From this link you can sign up for daily newsletters concerning topics that interest you. I've been receiving the Diet and Nutrition newsletter and it has a lot of informative articles (like choosing cooking oils) as well as a lot of simple, everyday recipes.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/

Nutrition data is just that, but I like this site because it gives you enough information to make balanced choices about food. They feature an Inflammation Factor chart which is helpful if you suffer from allergies or auto-immune disease. Also, there is a glycemic load chart for those who deal with blood sugar issues like diabetes. If you have a few minutes to check this site out, it will be well worth your time.

This N That

Monday I went to the doc to have my bandage changed, and while I had hoped to convince him to remove the sutures in my foot, I will have to wait another week. Note to self, work on powers of manipulation, cast magic manipulation spells, and perhaps sex up requests using the word 'please'. Yeah, that's the ticket.

While in Rome, we checked out the new Cycle Therapy bike store. They've moved to the center of town and are sponsoring a local Sprint Triathlon, the second annual Navigator Triathlon to support Cancer patients in our area . Kate and Jon have decided to attempt the triathalon in September, so it should be a lot of fun to watch. Skyguy might even try it. I can't because my foot won't be well enough to train in time for the event. This is an abbreviated competition consisting of a 500 meter swim, a 12 mile bike ride, and a 3.1 mile run.

http://www.navigatortriathlon.com/

It's being held at a nearby state park. We are already riding 12 miles over hilly terrain, so that would be the 'easy' part for us. Running would be the hardest leg, and these races are almost always won on the run. A good runner can make up for being a mediocre swimmer. Skyguy and I decided it would be a lot of fun to complete one of these things, but we would have to take it slow and train well, making sure not to overtrain and risk injury. Neither of us deals well with high impact activity like running, so it would be a risky venture, but don't you think it would be a cool thing for a couple of geezers like us to do? I do! Anyway, we went to the bike store to look at road bike tires and I noticed that they had all of their womens apparel half off. I'd been looking for a pair of riding shorts since before we went on vacation. They are padded, and wick moisture away from the body. The tight fit compresses muscles, reducing recovery time and bruising. I'd been looking at the various styles of riding shorts, but finding them in my size is daunting. I'm still overweight, and in case you had not noticed, most serious cyclists are rail thin. Usually I see Small and X-Small, maybe a Medium, but nothing designed by Omar the Tentmaker. However, I suppose it was my lucky day at Cycle Therapy as I found a skort in an XL that will be great for riding. (I'm 5'11 and 190#) It is a Shebeest Cycloskort like the one on this page:

http://www.bikesomewhere.com/bikesomewhere.cfm/product/391/3743/31592

Don't freak on the price...no way I could afford that, and I paid less than half of that price. Anyway, for a woman of my age and shape, I think this was a good choice in shorts. If I had to, I could swim in it as well. But for now, I can't ride or swim or run. I can do tai chi though. The doc said I could ride a stationary bike on Monday. Woot!

Tuesday, in addition to my David Carradine Tai Chi tape exercise 'workout', I clipped more herbs from the herb garden and hung them to dry. I harvested some more oregano and marjoram, as well as lemon balm and horehound. I also tore up and jarred up some mullein that was dry. After washing and hanging the clippings, I decided to make a cough syrup from the fresh horehound. I stripped the leaves and buds from the stems and put it in the food processor to chop it and bruise the leaves. I probably had 2 cups of crushed horehound leaves and 1/2 c of mullein leaves. Both are expectorants. Then, I added it to about a cup of lemon juice and a bit of water. I brought the concoction to a boil, then allowed it to steep for a few minutes. I separated the plant matter out by straining it, and then added 2 cups of locally produced honey to the 'tea'. When the time comes to use it, I'll probably doctor it up with cayenne pepper and garlic, too, depending on how I feel. Adding some dried lemon balm might make it taste better, too. Horehound is good for making cough drops, too, but I don't have a candy thermometer at present and I did not feel like standing at the stove all day. Mullein is a great herb that grows wild almost everywhere. Not only is is a good expectorant, but it is good for the respiratory system in general. It can be smoked in a pipe to counter asthma or pneumonia. Some companies use it in their herbal cigarettes, replacing tobacco.Its tall yellow flower spikes and fuzzy leaves make it easily visible on roadsides for wild collecting. These pages have a lot of good info on mullein, but they are by no means complete:

http://www.herbcraft.org/mullein.html
http://www.prodigalgardens.info/march%20weblog.htm

While I am no expert, I do consider myself somewhat of an herbalist. Additionally, while I would not characterize myself as a person of faith, I do believe that there is great wisdom in the Bible. I found this quote from Psalms: "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man" Psalms 104:14a Pretty cool. I really like the Psalms. Another of my favorites is: "The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display His marvelous workmanship." (Ps. 19:1,2)

Yesterday, my friend Ava and I picked the last of the blackberries from Patch #1 on the mountain, and we both ended up getting chiggers for our trouble. New bites, and I still have sores from the last time I picked berries before my surgery. I did get enough berries for a cobbler or pie, but there is yet another patch, my Secret Patch, of blackberries to pick, and hopefully I can get another quart or two. It has been so dry lately that the yellow jackets are sucking the juice from the berries. I'll need to start picking blueberries soon before the wasps suck them dry, too.

Speaking of berries, I got about a quart of strawberries from my plants yesterday as well, and we enjoyed them mixed with some sugar and a few blueberries over angel food cake last night. Berry good!

Inspirational stuff

http://www.afrigadget.com/

I was mesmerized by this site, alternating between extreme heartache over the living conditions of the people, and profound admiration for not only their intelligence and ingenuity, but for their determination to find a way to make something work. I could spend hours reading this site and exploring the various related links. This is homesteading in it's purest form, making do with what you have, innovation showing no bounds. I've fallen in love with this work ethic motto from the site:

"Never expect magic from no where"

Be sure and click on the categories at the right margin. The 'gadget' category is a good place to start. Some stories crossover into multiple category tags.

In the same vein, I found a few other sites which are also worth your time to look at for ideas and ways to improve your homestead or live in a more sustainable way.

http://www.downsizer.net/

This page from that site discussed scythe ownership, something a few of us discussed recently:

http://tinyurl.com/lbecz6

http://kickstart.org/home/index.html

http://www.tfsr.org/

This site even has a manual for rebuilding and refurbishing Singer sewing machines like the one I have-the one I love:

http://tinyurl.com/2lmo6r

http://makezine.com/ http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/

http://www.farmingsolutions.org/

It seems strange that our culture here in the US only gives lipservice to sustainable living. The wealthy and supposedly educated simply are not interested in finding earth friendly solutions or reducing their carbon footprint by reducing our need to energy and conserving resources. Anyone who is truly interested in a more simple lifestyle has to look to the poor, developing countries in Africa, India, or Southeast Asia for innovative ideas. It is an insane world.

Call Me Bones

I went to a podiatrist yesterday and found out that I have a nice sized fracture in my right foot. The fuzzy white blob on the x-ray, the hard callus, was almost quarter sized on the second metatarsal, it's about a month old and almost healed now, but the blob was so large that it almost appeared to touch the third metatarsal. I had wondered why my foot was so swollen. Duuuhhh! Yeah, it hurt, and I mentioned it to both my rheumatologist who thought the swelling was from joint inflammation, and my primary care physician, who thought it might be an insect bite, back at the end of April. Neither doc x-rayed it. I don't remember any kind of 'break' or injury, and I have a good deal of generalized foot pain as background noise, so it just never occurred to me that something might be broken. The break occurred in an area known for stress fractures, but I think I vaguely remember dropping something on my foot. I can't be sure, though, and it really doesn't matter since it is almost healed. I've been hiking, biking, and walking on the beach. I tilled the garden a couple of times, planted trees, and have generally spent a lot of time on my feet. If it is a stress fracture, it probably happened from biking. The image at the right shows the location of the break. I'm kind of amazed that it has healed in the correct plane.

The reason I got a referral to a podiatrist was not for the swelling in my right foot, but the pain in my left from my tailor's bunion. It is bothering me a lot these days and I can't keep a lidocaine patch on it 24/7 indefinitely. I thought that the podiatrist would prescribe orthotics, which he did, but for different reasons, yet, to my surprise, suggested surgery to shave off the bone cysts-you can see them on the x-ray-looks like I have caviar topping the joint-LOL-and reshape the bone to relieve the pressure on the nerves and tendons. If I have this minor surgery now, I can hopefully avoid major bunion surgery with pins and wires and artificial joints later. They will just deaden my foot, and I will be fully awake and able to watch. I'm not sure I will actually want to watch him chisel away the bone, but we'll see. It is scheduled for the first of July. After everything heals up, later in the summer, I'll have a casting appointment and get custom orthotics made to stabilize the bones in my feet.

I was born with a fairly common condition known as accessory navicular bones. When I was a kid, the extra navicular bone on my right foot was larger than my ankle and it would hit the other foot and cause me to fall when I tried to run. I was a slow base runner, and the kids laughed at my awkward stride to keep bone off bone. As I grew, the bone grew, and it put a lot of pressure on various tendons that caused pain. When I was in the 7th grade, I had surgery to remove the extra bone and they rerouted my tendons to build in an arch as I was flatfooted. I recall being on crutches for over 3 months, and that surgery exempted me from most PE courses throughout high school. I think that was a bit of overprotectiveness, so I made up for it by becoming a long distance runner, softball player, tennis player, volleyball player, and soccer goalie in college. :) The bone in my left foot was never large(about the size of the one in the image at right) and has never caused any trouble or pain, thankfully, but in 1993, I had another foot surgery to remove scar tissue from the original surgical site on my right foot. As it turns out, over time, the tendons and ligaments have loosened and that allows some instability. Add in my rheumatoid arthritis and you get the ingredients for all kinds of foot injuries,
including fractures and sprains. The custom orthotics will fit in my shoes and support the architecture of my foot to prevent further injuries. In addition, it might have the side benefit of reducing my sciatic nerve pain. If your stride is right and your posture is good, you reduce pressure on your spine and the nerve doesn't get pinched as much. There's no guarantee that it will help my back, but I'm hopeful. Insurance doesn't cover the orthotic inserts, but since they can last for several decades, and they can prevent injury and reduce pain, the $300 price tag seems like cheap insurance. By the end of the summer, I should be set for even more strenuous exercise, all in the mindset of taking care of these small issues and getting healthier to live longer.

Vacation Post #1: Activities and Sights

We left Saturday for a quick vacation. We haven’t been anywhere in several years, and after Skyguy’s cancer diagnosis, we promised ourselves that we would start taking vacations as soon as the hospital bills were paid. You gotta live life and not work ALL the time. We’ve spent the last 4 days soaking up South Carolina’s Lowcountry culture and riding bikes. We camped at a KOA to keep costs down, and we took a lot of our own food. We did eat out once a day though, after all, it is vacation! We spent a day at Hunting Island (biked around the island-15.5 miles) a 'natural', island with a pretty lighthouse, a day in Bluffton (10.5 mile residential ride) and Port Royal, a day in Charleston(Patriot’s Point and Ft. Sumter-photo of USS Yorktown and the tour boat to the Fort) , and one day we just rode bikes near the campground (9 miles). We fished some, and Skyguy skunked me by catching a nice sized catfish. I wish I could have fished more, but the mosquitoes and ticks were horrific. At night, we relaxed in the campground’s hot tub and went to bed early.

We saw quite a few animals that we don’t see at home. On the first day, while riding our bikes along the lakeside(in the picture-the lake is actually much, much larger than the image suggests), we spooked a small 4 foot alligator as he sunned on the bank and he made a huge splash as he lept for the safety of the water. Fishing in a lake with alligators is always more exciting than fishing in a lake where there are only turtles for reptilian representation. On the boat ride to Ft. Sumter, we saw quite a few dolphins coming in the feed at high tide and one was positively huge-maybe 10 or 11 feet long. He/She came within 15 feet of the boat so I was able to get a good, however brief, look at him. Later that day while dining in a restaurant on the intracoastal waterway, we saw a family group with a young 3 foot long dolphin racing around at play. It reminded me of the way kids run ahead of their parents at an amusement park, then Mom reins them in, then they run ahead again, etc. It was fun to watch-great food and great entertainment. In Beaufort, we saw an osprey nest, and she was rearing young. We stopped on the roadside, took some pictures(click on the image for a better view), and I could hear the chicks calling, much in the same way that our resident red shouldered hawk chicks chatter. While on the fishing pier at Hunting Island, an old woman caught a small shark, and that got everyone excited, especially the kids on the pier. In Bluffton, while riding bikes along the roadside, I was fighting the wind in the lead position. I had my head down concentrating on a cadence to maintain speed. A nearby noise startled me(I later learned from Skyguy that it was a Canada Goose) and I looked up to see a positively huge snake at the edge of the road just ahead of me. I swerved, but words failed me. Luckily, he saw the snake, too. It was a dead king snake, but it had to have just eaten the largest eastern diamondback on the coast because that was the largest king snake I've ever seen. I did not even know that they got that large, and even though I clearly saw the yellow markings on the snake, my brain just would not register that it was a king snake due to its size. I swear it was the size of my arm, but Skyguy says it wasn’t quite that large. Of course, we saw gulls, Brown Pelicans and other shore birds, too. I never realized this until we got home and I looked it up, but we don’t have Black Vultures here, only Turkey Vultures.

Assorted Homestead Stuff

Saturday Skyguy and I worked to repair the fence that surrounds the garden. We'd been using deer netting for the top half of the 8 foot height, and it works great, but over time, ultraviolet radiation weakens the plastic and the weight of honeysuckle vines just rips it apart. So, we pulled all the netting off and since we don't have any more nor can we afford to buy more, we used some old scavenged field fencing for the job. It will keep out the deer just as well, and it will be easier to maintain in the never-ending war with the honeysuckle vines. After that job was finished, we pulled out the chipper shredder and cleaned up some saplings and yard trimmings, adding to and turning the compost bin as we worked. At the end of the day, we went for a 7 mile ride around the loop, the first time this year. We had not worked up for this distance and we were concerned that it might be a bit too much, but as it turned out, we were just fine on the ride, so I suppose that speaks well for our overall conditioning. It is a huge improvement over last year at any rate since it took us a month to be in good enough shape to make it around the loop. There are quite a few hills to pull, and we averaged right at 10 miles per hour, not too shabby for a couple of near-geezers on mountain bikes. I really hope that we will be able to ride for 30 and 40 miles by the end of the summer.

We were going to ride today, just to get in at least one ride this week before the rains set in, but UPS delivered the new fence charger so Skyguy connected the charger, walked the fence line, and made the final adjustments to the lightning arrestors. It is a Cyclops Brute charger, which we think is the best. We had one before, but it did not survive a direct lightning strike. It has an 8 Joule output. Anyway, we both were tired and had aching feet, so we decided not to ride.