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....

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