Day 5

   Things didn't go as well this morning.  I could only get through 3 jogs before I really needed to not do more.  So, I walked until I had a half mile done and then did a mile on the stationary bike.  I am not going to let this get me down.

   Later the girls and I are headed for the pool.  That should more than make up for calories not burned this morning!  LOL

Sadly, (and not sadly) this is NOT what the girls will look like this afternoon at the pool.  This was...2001 probably.  If so, dd17 was age 3 (foreground) and dd16 was age 2 (getting splashed in the background.)

2015 (part B) Resolutions

   The healthy eating and exercise vary.  Starting over for the second half of this year.  Well, things didn't get so bad as to say I am "starting over," but close.  There were a couple of months of illness and family emergencies, etc, that got in the way.  But right now the future looks clear, and I want to live it moving, not sitting in one place.

   I have walked every day this week.  Roughly half a mile Monday and Tuesday.  That is the distance around the block our house is on.  Yesterday I went to the gym to begin an interval training plan.  Week 1 starts with (warm-up walk 5 mins then)  (Jog for 30 seconds, walk for 90 seconds) 7 times.
After the 4th jog I considered stopping.  My breathing was off, and I just felt blah.  I did the 5th anyway.   I decided to not decide to quit until I KNEW I could not keep going.  When the time came for the 6th I could NOT handle jogging.  But,  I decided to keep walking rather than stop altogether.  I was able to jog again when the 7th would have started.  So, I walked 3:30 between 5 and 6.  That helped a lot.  I intended to do the same thing for the 7th, but ended up getting confused and jogged after only walking 3 mins.  No big deal.

Went home, relaxed, had some lunch, went back to the gym to walk in the pool for a few hours.

I LOVE walking in the pool.  First, there is the general fun that being at a poll always is.  Second, the water takes so much of the pressure off my knees that it is unreal.  6 years ago I needed a cane to walk across my living room, my arthritis was so bad.  But I could walk with no trouble in the pool.  That's how I got this exercise thing started (though it took a while to really get rolling.)

We stayed at the pool for 3 hours and I walked back and forth in the 25 meter lap pool for 3.5 kilometers.  I felt fine (physically) afterwards.  I felt AMAZING emotionally.  After the pool I had to drive 40 minutes to pick JD up from work and then 40 minutes back.  That had my muscles aching.  It didn't really get much better before bedtime and I had trouble getting comfortable enough to sleep.

This morning after I dropped him off I went to the gym.  My plan was to get a few miles on the elliptical bike, since that is low impact on my knees.  But they were both in use.  I hopped on  a treadmill for a slow walk workout (No jogging allowed, or even walking too fast!)  I figured I'd do a mile and then go.  I got to .8 miles when a bike became available.  I considered finishing my mile, but I was worried about losing the bike.  I went to the bike, got 2 miles in, then, before I left, hopped back on the treadmill and picked up the .2 miles I was short of my goal.

All in all I feel good today, the walking/biking helped with the left-over soreness from yesterday.  My only complaint is that I am tired, since I had trouble sleeping.  I will probably take a nap after lunch.

I may even get back in the pool after that.

His and Mine - I know which ones will wear out first.

Resolution 1 down

So much for posting to my blog every day.  If one of the resolutions is going to be scrapped, this one is better than the exercise and healthy eating.  AND (this is big for me) missing one day doesn't mean I have to quit.

I might back off some if all I have to post is talking about the weather.

Don't get me wrong, the occasional "It was lovely today." or "Brrr, I hate the cold!" is still going to show up, and THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.  But I promise to try to be more interesting than glancing out the window or checking the weather online.

Daily walking report - Still going on day 6
Daily photo report - Still going, although, some days are better than others.
Daily eating report - Getting healthier as time goes by.

And, I hope you weren't fooled by the word "daily."  None of those topics makes for exciting blogs posts.

What would? 
Humor?  Sure, but my life is pretty mundane.  I don't really live in a comedy.
Philosophy?  Sometimes I might dabble, but it's nothing to warrant a whole blog over, just a post now and then.
Cooking?  Movies reviews?  Religion? (tried that, got bored)

Honestly, I will write whatever strikes me that day. 

I don't know why I am haranguing you over this.  Really, I guess I am typing my own thoughts to myself. 

But, this blog really isn't much more than that.

Actually, I am kind of bored and only posted here as something to do.  I think I'll go play some sudoku.

For your viewing pleasure - a bad picture of the Mississippi River taken as we drove across the bridge from Mississippi into Arkansas.

Colder today

I already went for my walk today.  If I had known what the weather was going to be like, I would not have complained about what it was like a few days ago.  Those damp, wet clouds were holding in what heat we had.  The shy id clear today and lovely, and we will barely spend just a few hours above freezing.  (Yes, I know that seems pathetic when most of North America is snowy, but I was not built for cold!)

I did not want to walk in the park today.  I went around the block behind our house instead.  It wasn't as far as I had thought and I am slightly disappointed.  I am not sure in what though.  Myself for not walking farther?  The block for not being bigger?  The weather for being cold?  Yeah, I have the feeling that is it.

In normal winters (At least since I became an adult, and definitely since I became a stay at home mom) I stay indoors and ignore the cold. Now that I am trying to walk every day and just get out of the house more in general, the cold won't be ignored.  Even if I went to the gym to walk on the treadmill I would still have to be out in the cold for the voyage there and back.

Maybe I should make all of my New Years Resolutions for the Springtime.

I didn't take any interesting pictures either.  Or I wasn't in the right mood to see them.

Looks warm, eh?  No!  It was COLD!

 I really can't wait for things to warm up.  There is so much around Plano and Dallas (and beyond) that I want to photograph, but that I don't want to go out in the cold for.

Procrastination

I should go for my walk.  The weather is nicer than it has been for the last few days.  It is about 5 degrees warmer.  All in all it will be more pleasant.  (Though, I won't be able to take a picture of raindrop ripples.)  But I am putting it off.

Why?  Laziness mainly.  I just don't want to get up and going.  I should figure out where my energy has gone.  It is probably waiting for me to get off my butt.  Stupid energy.

Also, I checked the weather report for today on my phone and it says that it will warm up a little more in the next hour and get sunnier. I can afford to wait another hour before going out.

As if 48 will be so much better than 46.

Darn!

Well, not really, but that is the only sock related pun I could think of in short notice.

I am not darning socks, I am knitting them.  This isn't my first try to knit socks, just the first one that has not yet been abandoned in frustration.  We'll see how this goes.

Dd 17 (That's the oldest.) knit me a pair of socks for Christmas.  They are lovely.  They fill my with warm feelings for how well she did and her thoughtfulness.  They also fill me with thoughts of inadequacy about my own skills and how I gave up knitting socks a couple of years ago and never got anything out of the yarn I bought (except for a quick and easy Christmas gift for her this year that I had paid for a long time ago.)  (Not the yarn she used to knit my socks.  She took that out of the same stash, though.)

In honor of my 42 things I want to do while I am 42, I have picked back up the double-pointed needles and will give this crazy idea another try.

In other news, I was very tempted to skip my walk today.  It is cold and wet and I didn't want to also be cold and wet.  But I still went.  More for the photography than the exercise.  I was willing to skip the exercise, but I am trying to take photos every day this year and did not want to just click a snapshot of the junk on my desk.  Do you think the calories I burned know that I wasn't there for them?  Anything that gets me moving is good, so I'll take it.  This Photo365 project might be a better wonder than just practice looking through the view-finder.  (I am not actually looking through a view finder anyway, since it is a digital camera.)

Yesterday and today were both walks around the park across the street.  Both days have been overcast and rainy.  I went both days around noon.  You really cannot tell much difference in the photos from today and those of yesterday.  Plus, the only interesting thing out there was birds.  Yesterday I got a nice picture of a blue heron (I think) and today I focused on ducks.  I am going to get very tired of damp waterfowl if things don't change.  Maybe I should go to the mall.

One of the shots today was of the waterfall at the spillway on the other end of the pond.  I didn't notice until I was looking over the pics after the walk how interesting the raindrop ripples were.  (The waterfall was not all that interesting.)  Tomorrow, if I am lucky enough that it is raining again, (sigh) I will try to get shots focusing on ripples.  Or at least something that is not a bird.

What have I learned so far?  Apertures are tricky.  Cloudy lighting is good for lighting, but gloomy.  And I need a tripod.

I usually post pics unrelated to the blog entry, but...

for your enjoyment, an uninteresting waterfall.

Cheers!

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Happy New Year!

A lot has happened in 2014. 
We have moved from Mississippi to Texas, that's the big one. 
I have lost 30 pounds.  But, you cannot really tell yet.  I am still wearing the same clothes; they just fit differently. 
Dd 14 (that's the youngest, if you can't keep the ages straight (and who can?)) got her braces off last month and seems to be doing well with her retainer. 

I turned 42 and tried to make a list of 42 things I want to do this year.

1. Quilt - I have "quilted" before.  I know the general process.  but I have never made anything bigger than a baby blanket.  It would be nice to make a full, bed-size quilt.

2. Paint - I have always felt like I was not qualified to paint a painting.  Like only "real" artists get to do that.  Well, screw that thinking.  I am going to paint something!

3. Exercise - I have already been doing this recently, but I want to keep at it, so might as well put it on the list.

4. Eat healthy - Ditto.  Although, this has not been as easy as the exercising.

5. Garden - Not our yard, can't till the soil, but think I might like to have some pots with flowers on the back patio or front walk.

6. Organize - Even after paring down our belongings for the move this place is crazy.  it won't get any less so unless I do something about it.

7. Knit - I already knit, but I have put that hobby on the back burner for a while.  I think I'd like to pick it back up again, maybe learn a new technique.

8. Graphic Art - Art doesn't have to be paint or clay.  I think I'd like to make something impressive on my computer.

9. Explore our new city - We have been here almost a year.  The areas we travel often are familiar now, but there are huge tracts of city we have never seen.

10. Meet People - My hermetic tendencies have not abated.  I need to force myself to get out and meet people.

11. Write a Novel - I have stories in my head.  Time to get them into my computer.

12. Write a Comic - Some of those stories are more image based.

13. Teach - I think we will look into local homeschool groups, meet some new people.  Also, we need to be more in-depth with some of our lessons.  And branch out into new subjects.

14. Walk - Seems a waste to live across the street from a cute little park and never use it.  I want to get out there every day, if possible. 

15. Collect Dirt - I will have to travel farther from home to get more states for my World Collection. 

16. Travel - I would want to do this even if I wasn't wanting to collect dirt.  I'd love to do more than just drive to the state line, but there are no plans...yet.

17. Keep to the Budget - I have bad spending habits, even though I KNOW better.  This year I want to do better.

18. Write Letters - Many of the people I want to keep in touch with are not online.  So, this year, let's keep in touch!

19. Give to Charity - I have in the past, I want to do so in the future.

20. Be Kind - I wish everyone would try harder at this.  I need to try harder at this.

21. Photography - Let's take some pictures!

22. Fold 1000 origami cranes - Japanese legend says a wish will be granted if you do this.  Ok.  Let's see.  If I fold a crane every time i eat healthy rather than junk, and every time I work out, etc I might get my wish of losing weight.  I am willing to give it another try.

23. Go to the Zoo - A lot of good walking can get done between the kangaroos and the gorillas.

24. Learn to make stained glass designs - I don't suppose I NEED a new hobby, but...I would LOVE to be able to do this.  How do I learn how?

25. Learn to make lace - Ditto

26. Crochet - I already know hoe to crochet.  But, as with the knitting, I have let it fall for a while.  Let's make something lovely!

27. Finish my doll house - I really need to stop buying stuff for the doll house if I am not going to use it.  And I love working with the miniatures, so...let's actually get something done!

28.  Walk at least 1 5k race - This past Thanksgiving (November 27, 2014) my family and I walking in our first 5k.  This was a feat of athleticism I would not have been able to achieve only a few months earlier.  (I am still amazed that I did this!)  Sometime this year I want to do it again!

29. Art quilt - This is a different style of quilt making than what people normally think of.  The quilt is smaller and meant to hang on the wall as art rather than keep a bed warm.  I'd love to do something like this.

30.
31.
32.Finish my 42 Things List !!!!
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42.

I can't come up with 42 things I want to do while I am 42.  I am sure things will occur to me as time goes by.

Have you ever seen a more beautiful day for late November?  It was 70 degreesF and the sky was a lovely blue.  This picture is of the finish line.  After walking 5k it was a wonderful site.