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Charting one woman's journey March 3, 2005 I hate when Goddess gets all pushy and froggy and bossy. Harrumph. Yesterday, I dutifully went on my walk. I did the usual visualization of seeing myself walking back into my house exactly one half hour after leaving. I figure 30 minutes is enough for now, especially considering how out of shape I am. I don't think it would do any of us any good (least of all, the poor soul who finds me) if I have a heart attack and flail into a ditch from overdoing it. I have to face the facts that there is some kind of line between needing desperately to work out sufficiently and killing myself. So I started on my way. I pretty much went the same way as yesterday (hence, not many new pictures) because it wasn't horrible. It's that sad when the best thing you can say about your exercise time is that it "wasn't horrible?" Well, of course I can say that the air was crisp and clean, the smells were glorious, it wasn't raining, etc. The usual nice things about living here. I got a bit of a surprise because one of the roads on which I normally turn didn't look familiar to me for some reason, so I kept walking, thinking I wasn't supposed to turn there. Soon, I came to a road I recognized and turned, only to find the pictures I took the day before in reverse. : P Evidently, that road is shorter than I thought and joins onto both the road I didn't recognize (which was the right road) and the one I take home (which is the one I start on anyway, the other was just a short cut). I was almost home! It still took about 30 minutes, but the hills were a bit steeper on that end. In case you think I'm exaggerating on the hills, let's check together and see if the photos I took accurately reflect how damned steep this stuff is:
This is looking UP the hill. Fairly innocent, right?
This is looking down the hill from the top and NO it in no way reflects the panting and dying and mental alphabetizing of my spices that I have to do to get up this damned thing. Again, it just shows that 7 years of retirement-to-be-a-stay-at-home-mom-who-doesn't-exercise has kicked my ass. Yep, exercise or die, I guess. I'm not ready to die (but I sure feel like it on these hills).
Ha! Evidently, the FH I see everywhere does NOT stand for "Fucking Hell, why did I do this" as I suspected. I noticed a predominance of Fire Hydrants by these signposts, so I might be onto something, especially in a town that has burned to the ground three time since it was created in the Gold Rush days. Fire Hydrant. Who knew? (Eric and he laughed at me for it. Insert stern frown here.) So I got home, knowing I had an appointment at the school with Dylan's speech therapist. Got finished with that, stopped by the post office to check for packages (I get a lot of them since I do book reviews and my mail comes after the post office closes most days) and when I got back out to the truck, the thing would not start. >:< After jangling all I knew to jangle, I ended up having to walk back to the house, leaving the injured vehicle behind. By the time I got home, Goddess was laughing and my legs were singing (and not Glory Hallelujah). All afternoon, my legs were sore and I made all kinds of promises to myself that because I was hoodwinked by The Universe, I wouldn't have to walk today. But I will. I'm a sucker. If I'm going to do this (and I am), I am going to do this right. Speaking of doing this right, part of me doing this right is to try out nearly every diet supplement known to humankind. I've been doing very well on Relacore and it is a marvelous stabilizer for stress, which was its primary intention when it was created. They then found out that the people on whom they were trying to control stress with the drug were also losing weight, so it became marketed as a weight-loss supplement with the stress control as secondary. Hey, whatever works. Regardless, it aced the residual stress I was feeling for no reason at all (even though I no longer needed to be stressed, I was, sort of like the smell of burnt toast staying in a room after the toast is removed) and overall, I don't get the munchies as much as I used to. I take B-12 for energy, which helps enormously. I can really feel when I miss one. I take Remifemin for the myriad of peri-menopause symptoms (and REALLY feel when I miss one of those) and Ultracarb3000 to help regulate my sugar and insulin levels. I feel like an old lady with my handful of pills every day. :) I am almost out of Relacore and it's pretty expensive normally. I caught it on sale for less than $20 at WalMart, but it's usually well above and that's pretty well out of my price range. I think it really helped me get through the transition from being stressed (when I didn't even realize I was stressed) to not being stressed. At this point, I am stressed because I am at my highest weight ever. Not good. The next step is Hoodia. I can remember the name because I think of George Thorogood. The name of one of the articles (the first one) I read about it was, "Hoodia Love" and I thought it was tremendously clever. That article is here. So I have to first remember that the word sounds like "hoochie," then think of George, then I get "Hoodia." It sounds wonderful and right up my alley. I'll let you know about the Hoodia. It's being mailed out this week. For now, hmmm. Guess I should start that walk before I talk myself out of it. I'm pretty much a pushover for being talked out of it and if I have even a 10% motivation, I have to pimp it to the extreme. Right now, I'm at about 12% and falling rapidly, so I should scoot. Take care, all, March 1, 2005 I am SO much better this week! After a week on low carb, Insulin Resistance Diet, I feel so much healthier. Carbs and I just do not get along. I went out for my walk today. I even did that weird arm thing where you wiggle your butt and piston your arms back and forth, bent at the elbows. Well, I did that until I was going uphill, then I did the weird arm thing where you use fingernails and a grappling hook to get to the top. Of course, I took pictures for you:
Love this house number holder.
Yep, log cabins still exist. They just have satellite dishes in front of them now.
If you look closely, you'll see the Katrina Rasbold fan club that came out to cheer me on.
We have a lot of this up here. God Bless America and the yellow ribbons (right next to the "no trespassing sign). It warms my heart. I was an Air Force wife for a total of about 22 years and whether or not a person agrees with the war, I am glad that there are so many people out there who at least support our troops overseas. It made me very sad the other day when I was reading a friends Live Journal and saw where someone wrote, "I'll support our troops... in their cause to lick my asshole." Nice. >:< I am so bummed that there are people who are that shitty to the people in our armed forces, who are actually putting their lives on the line so these folks have the right to say shitty things about them. I love America and even if I don't agree with a good bit of the decisions made by our executives, it's still the greatest place on earth to live and I'm thankful for it every day. My vote is that anyone who thinks differently can chose the country of their choice and get the fuck out rather than greedily taking the good things this country has to offer and bitching bitterly about its problems. Grow up and shut up or get your passport stamped.
Coolest gate ever. :)
A not very good picture of a statue of two cuddly bears.
Another log cabin. It's common up here, but most of the logs are machined now.
Victims of the snow plows.
Our most common wood up here, manzanita.
And a baby manzanita. One day and one walk at a time, right? The difference is that this time, I only did 30 minutes, so I wasn't dying when I got back, but could feel I had walked. I was taking a route through the roads behind my house that I had not explored before. I was glad that, as I suspected, there was a cut through road that took me right to the road next to my house. I was almost to 30 minutes, looked at my watch and thought I'd go over my 30 minute limit I'd set. Right about then, I looked up and saw a nice boundary of manzanita, cedar and pine trees and thought, "Hmm, I wish *I* had a concealing tree boundary like that." Then I looked again and saw the tip of my house over the trees. I was practically in my own back yard. : P Take care, February 24, 2005 Two weeks later... As soon as I started the photojournal walks, we were attacked by rainstorms and it has rained almost every day for the past two weeks. This week, I was going through an intestinal mess that caused me to not want to be far from a bathroom and to have almost zero energy. It did teach me that I have no business being on SlimFast. I thought it would be a good idea. I'd started grazing a lot and what normally helps to break that cycle for me is to have a day long fast. Since I was getting ready to start my period, I knew living on juice would not work, so I figured SlimFast bars and shakes would be the next best thing, especially since the SlimFast Optima has lower carbs than the old stuff. I did it for a few days and got the worst case of diarrhea, heavy fatigue, migraines, heavy, hard cravings that were beyond out of control, plus my blood sugar went through the roof. I guess now the kids have a few boxes of candy bars and a couple canisters of shakes. It's just not for me. I also gained a bit of weight, although I have not yet been on the scale. I'm still recovering today. This is my first day of very low carb, having finally figured out last night what was making me so sick. As soon as I started eating more protein and stopped the shakes, the illness stopped. Now I'm just very tired. No cravings at all. No migraines. I'm just really, really tired from my body adjusting. After I've shifted back to Insulin Resistance Diet, I know I'll feel much better and be able to attack the exercising again. For now, recovery. Love, |
