Month: May 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

It is quite hot today! I’m glad, but I’m just saying…

We got the garden out at the property disked yesterday, so I went down on the scooter this morning and worked on tilling it and smoothing it out with the garden rake. It is hard work, but I probably got a 20 by 30 foot section done. There are a lot of rocks and clumps of grass and roots to pick out and throw to the side. The soil seems really nice – not too much clay, but definitely not sandy. I plan to transplant the cabbages out there right away, probably this evening, as well as some of the squash, leaving room for beans in between. I have to buy my seeds for the rest of the stuff yet, but I should get it all planted before the weekend is over. I’m excited!

I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful it is to be working in a garden in that particular spot. It is at the highest point around, so when I take a break and look around, the view is just spectacular, but no one is anywhere near close enough to see if I am all sweaty and covered in dirt! And there is always a bit of a breeze up on the hill, so it is sort of cool, even on a hot day. I would have stayed all day, but I had things to do for Don, like talk to the banker and the guy that is interested in buying The Garage. (Did we mention that?)

We looked at a building in Chetek that we are seriously thinking of buying. It would house my music studio and my fitness studio, for when we move to New Auburn, so we can totally rent out 123, without having to keep the music studio there, and I can get my classes out of the senior center and, hopefully, get some younger people (or some different people, at any rate). There will also be a small living space, so we can live there and save up money for building next year. It is the old Erspamer Law Office building, which was then the school district administration building for a couple years, then Video Hut for a few years until it closed. It is on Knapp Street in the first block, right between Mary’s Cafe and Bar and the Chetek Beauty Shoppe. It has been vacant for a while and the guy is interested in getting it sold. He’s asking $44,900, and we are hoping to get it for less than that. If we do, the payments will be around $350/ month, including taxes and insurance. Can’t hardly go wrong with that, even if it is next to a bar!  (I know what you are thinking – we are addicted to buying properties.)

Tonight is the middle school concert and when it is over, I am done for another year. Yea! It has been a great year, actually. The kids in middle school choir are all pretty well behaved and fun to work with.  The high school was really good again this year. We had an awesome year at solo-ensemble. Tonight they perform such contemporary favorites as “What Makes you Beautiful,” “Breakaway,” “Livin’ on a Prayer,” Deep in the Meadow” (from Hunger Games), “Hallelujah” (from Shrek),  “Roar,” and “Happy,” all of which were new to me!

I don’t mean to rain on Amy’s parade and I think it is great that she is excited about this new exercise program she has found. There are lots and lots and lots of fun exercise programs out there, many of which will do a great job of getting you into better shape. This particular program she has chosen, however,  is fraught with problems.

1) Fitness professionals have long maintained that sit-ups are NOT a safe exercise. There is a point in the movement where all except those with incredible ab strength use the hip flexor muscles rather than the abs to lift the upper body. It is just as good for your abs to get to that point where they can’t move your body any more on their own, then return to the floor. This is call the crunch and is a far safer exercise, particularly if your lower back is already prone to injury.

2) Burpees may be fine for high school students with young knees, but anyone past the age of 30 should be very careful to strengthen the knees with other exercises before attempting repeated burpees. They involve a greater bend in the knees than is generally regarded as safe for most people.

3) For many people, push ups can be very irritating on the shoulder joint. There are many exercises that involve lifting a lighter weight than your body weight that should be done to build shoulder strength before attempting repeated push ups. This is particularly true if you are more than 30 pounds overweight, as a push up would be equivalent to bench pressing maybe 50 or 60 pounds, which I don’t think you would attempt the first time out to the gym.

4) It is generally accepted in the fitness community that the most effective way to do strengthening exercises is slowly. Once you put speed into the equation, you begin using alternative, stronger muscles, to complete the exercise, rather than carefully exercising the muscles the exercise was designed to target. And moving slowly is even more important if you are carrying more than 30 pounds of excess weight, because your joints are already under a lot of strain just doing the exercise, even without attempting to move quickly.

5) This exercise routine is a stamina building routine. Building stamina is quite a ways down the continuum of getting into shape. First you want to make sure you have the core strength to move your body in a safe and effective way. Then you want to build a base of overall body strength. Once you have this base built, you work on increasing the strength and endurance of all the muscles. Finally you are at a point to begin working on power and stamina. That whole process could take years and some may never reach the end phase of stamina and power training.

And this is in addition to building aerobic endurance, which you do through your walking, running, biking, swimming, etc.

Please, all of you, remember that just because a workout felt like a “killer workout” does not mean it was a safe workout or a workout that is appropriate for you.

I know a couple I’ve posted before, but they are so cute!!

Happy birthday, Mae Christine!!

Every time over the weekend that Dad would suggest we stop somewhere to look at something or do something else, I would say “Focus, focus.” Our weekend was about getting the porch on 126 fixed and shingled. And we almost got done. The project took WAY longer than we expected. We started out right away Saturday morning taking the shingles off and ran into our first surprise. There wasn’t just one layer like it looked. There were three or four layers – finishing off with cedar shake shingles on the bottom. And it was very wet and very rotten. We weren’t surprised there was some damage, because the reason for doing it was that it was leaking. But the extent of the damage was a surprise. So that meant Dad taking a lot of time to figure out what could be salvaged and what needed to be replaced with new wood. And then we had to do a lumber run, once we saw what we were going to need. We went to the lumber yard in Bloomer and just bought enough stuff for the first half, because we could see that was all we would get done on Saturday.

Dad had to work at The Garage at 6:00, so we had to stop after we had the first side repaired, new roof surface (plywood) on, the style D roof edging and the weather stripping on and the whole thing covered with the tar paper.It wasn’t done, but it was a lot more weatherproof than it had been when we started.

Yesterday we couldn’t start until after lunch, because of church. Plus Dad had to run to Menards and get the rest of the lumber for the second side. We got there at about 1:30 to find the roof VERY HOT. But the good thing was that the shingles were softer and easier to get off that second side. Our tenant (Victor) was helping and he and I got that side totally stripped and all the nails out and ready for plywood by 3:00.

At that time it seemed we would easily get done, but things started to go slowly because of all the fussy work with the two valleys and all the edges and what-not. Long story short – we were there until 9:15, when we couldn’t see anything. We almost finished – all that is left is a couple shingles at the peak of the middle section and putting on the Boston ridge. But we covered it with tarp in case we have a really wicked storm. Otherwise it would be fine even if it rains.

I don’t remember ever being as exhausted as I was by the time we left. If I’d had my own car, I’d have left around 6, because my body was already so tired and sore. So that is why I’m not going to roof with Gary today as was previously planned. Dad is off to help him, but I’m staying home to get some work done, since I was out of the house the entire weekend.

I got these chairs and a table with no top at a garage sale today for $15. I thought that was good. The chairs are super sturdy. The table basically was free, because the chairs were marked separately at $4 each. Anyway, I’m thinking of painting them each a different “sherbet” color, like raspberry, orange, lime green and I’m not sure what else. What do y0u savvy decorators think? As you can see, my deck is pretty boring.

And what do you think I can do with the table?  I love the curly-cues, so I hate to hide them under a solid top.  My old table needs paint, too, but I don’t want to get rid of the umbrella function, because we use that a lot. We just need to figure out a way to stabilize the umbrella.

And for all you organizing buffs, here are some pictures of my newly organized and cleaned food cupboards.

Weight Loss Post

If you can pinpoint your biggest challenges to success when you try to eat more appropriately, you can begin to work on conquering them. If you don’t know what they are,  it is much harder to make the necessary changes.

I actually sat down and analyzed what it is that causes me to not lose weight. Basically, for me, it breaks down into two things – things I eat that I don’t count in my daily total, because they seem insignificant (but are not), and things that I don’t count because the day was too awful to even think about, so I just forget it and assume it didn’t matter. But it did – what I ate caused me to gain or at least not lose weight.

Then I wrote down all of these things and actually estimated how many calories each of them added to my intake on a weekly basis. It was staggering. But the good thing is that conquering these things will make a big difference in my weight loss.

Let me just mention a few to get you started on your own personal list:

Not measuring things like pasta and yogurt. It is so easy to be eating twice what you are counting as having eaten. Total: as much as 800 calories a week, because I have yogurt every day.

Not stopping at just one cookie, but having two or three (or eight or nine). Each one contains the same number of calories, whether I want to accept that or not, so three is three times as many calories as one would have been. Total: Anywhere from 300 to 1200 each incidence – I won’t even say what that might be on a bad week! (Which is why cookies are now banned from my house!)

Eating “routines” such as having several sandwich cookies in the lobby at church while I’m listening to the sermon for the second time on Sunday, or having a McDonald’s cone after every Thursday choir practice.  Total: could be over 1800 per week, if I’m at church a couple times and up for choir as well.

Adding things to dishes and underestimating their impact – this could be granola on my yogurt or nuts and raisins in my oatmeal.  Total: Probably about 400 calories on an average week.

If I’m going to go to Culvers or Dairy Queen (and I AM going to go, eventually), having a big treat with all sorts of toppings, rather than just having a simple small sundae or cone or even just a small dish of the flavor of the day. I really don’t get that much more enjoyment out of the big treat, so why eat it? Total: Of course, I don’t go every week, but the times I do, it could save 300 or more calories.

My list goes on and on, and yours probably will, too. What I am doing now is trying to conquer a few of these things each week. I started with the very easiest and am leaving the really hard things, like my evening eating for the end, when I am feeling empowered by success in other areas. That is another dumb thing I tend to do – going after the worst things first. Sure it would be great to conquer the worst thing, but it simply isn’t going to happen until I’ve practiced conquering smaller things.

As of now, I’ve just about totally eliminated snacking on handfuls of nuts and sunflower seeds. And I’m working this week on measuring every bit of yogurt that I eat, as well as not having ice cream around the house at all, for now.

Next week – the cookies at church!

I’ve been watching What Not to Wear again, so when I tried on clothes today to see what in my wardrobe went with what, I tried belting the waist over top of the blouse with a skinny belt, like they recommend. With the right bottoms (waist band at the waist and not lower), it really does dress up an outfit and make me look taller. Taller is good. I came up with about a dozen dressy outfits with just a pencil skirt and my cuffed crop pants. I think they all look good on me, and it is important to me when I’m trying to lose weight that I have clothes that I can wear NOW that I feel I look good in. You might think it would make me not care whether I lose weight or not, but actually it makes me feel that it is possible that I could look REALLY good, so I am willing to try harder.

Anybody else feel that same way!

How are you other gals doing on your food control and exercise? Still motivated to make this the summer we all do it? Wouldn’t it be cool if, by the time we meet in August, we lose an entire person (in weight, of course). It might be a small person, say 60 or 70 pounds, but we should see if we can do that together. I hope to contribute 20 pounds lost and Dad will contribute at least as much. He is really motivated to lose now, too.

The banker that is on the board of the youth center did our paperwork for a loan and it is his opinion that we should wait a year to build. We took quite a loss on our rental business in 2013 because the Georgia house sat empty part of the year and 117, of course, was empty all year. Plus, because I quit my job, he can’t count that income into last year’s income, but he can only count last year’s music income and not the higher amount I’m projecting for this year. So our loss is too great and our income too small on paper.

I would have thought I would have been a basket case getting this news, but I know God is in it, so I’m just looking at it as God not letting us do something stupid. So our summer is quite a bit less busy than we’d thought it would be. We are going to finish 117, then move on to some things that need doing at 126 in New Auburn, then list that one for sale, because if we sell it this year, we don’t have to pay taxes on what we make, since we’ve lived in it over 2 of the past 5 years. Then we’ll work on getting Ladysmith in better shape. And we’ll keep saving money. If things go as predicted, we’ll have a fully funded emergency fund by the end of October. And I’ll try to figure out how to actually earn money doing personal training.

Joyce Mohr is having breast cancer surgery on Thursday and she and Gary would certainly appreciate your prayers. This has got to be a very tough time for both of them.  I’m not sure what time on Thursday, but God knows.