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REXTINE1's Recent Blog Entries
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Friday, January 21, 2011
I walked the dogs today, after it seemed to have quit raining. We had about 0.7 inches last night, and it was a little foggy and dark this morning. I started out at 9:30, and when we were nearly a mile from home it started raining again. It wasn't much to start - just fine drops, but I took out my hearing aids and put them in a doggie bag. Fortunately I had picked up after both dogs and left the triple wrapped loads in a toter I passed. I started home, but by the time we got there the dogs were pretty wet. The drops had gotten bigger and bigger, and soon after we got home the thunderstorm hit again. When it finished we got a total of 1.1 inches since last night. I went out to the garage and turned the sprinklers off again - we don't need more water tomorrow.
When I put the hearing aids back in neither one of them worked, and I thought the fine rain had sneaked in the microphone wind filter and killed them, but it turned out that the right one had a dead battery and the left one had no battery at all. It wasn't anywhere, and I assume it fell out when I opened the door to turn it off. Once I put in new batteries they both worked again. No two thousand error this time. I used to leave them at home on threatening days, but I guess I just got too relaxed.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
I walked over to the bank to make a deposit today, then to Sweetbay to get a sweet onion and a couple of boxes of baking soda for the BW. That was 2.7 miles, and I wore a t-shirt and long sleeved shirt and jeans. It was 56 when I started out and my hands got cold on the way to the bank. On the way home I was warm, and rolled up my sleeves to try to cool off a little. I left at 9:30, and it was just nice in the sun and a little cool in the shade. When I got home at 10:30 the thermometer read 63 degrees, and I was too warm.
I had intended to take the dogs for a walk, but instead I took them with me to Nelson's so I could inventory the Kiwanis' supplies. Then I recorded the deposit and brought all the Kiwanis' books up to date. The BW had some cleaning up and putting away chores for me, and then she wanted a tractor scooter with bucket seat (so she could sit on something and roll it around while working outside). It has fairly large tires, is steerable, a rotating seat that adjusts from 16 to 19 inches high, and a platform to carry a 5 gallon bucket or other collections containers. We took the cheap shipping method, and it should be here in 6 to 10 days.
Now for TOPS and the big event.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Danny wants to know how I am doing on eating, exercising, and losing, so I can say that my real goal weight is 185, and my leeway is 178 to 188 with my street clothes on. With my pockets full, I add about 6.5 pounds to my body weight, and Dr. Falla didn't say naked, so I assume he meant clothed when he gave me a prescription note for TOPS. At my weigh in last week I weighed 185.5, and the week before I was at 185.0, which is exactly my goal weight.
The date when I signed the papers and became a KOPS (keep off pounds sensibly) I was 8/14/2008, so I have been in that range for two years and five months. I almost fell out of the bottom early on, but was actually out high twice, both times during the first few months of the experience.
Annie and Jerzy's visit, along with the cold weather, got me out of the habit of long walks, but I do walk the dogs almost every day. I took them for a 1.66 mile walk starting at noon today, and later I walked 1.33 miles when I went to the local bank to cash a check. With the dogs I averaged 24 minutes per mile, but I stopped to pick up dog prints a couple of times, and had to wait for traffic. I got the distances from a pedometer, which gave me the same measurements as Mapquest when I walked routes I had measured on the internet. The distances were very close – within 2 or 3 hundredths of a mile out of three mile walks.
The eating isn’t so good. The BW wanted beef, and buys her own from time to time, and I did make chili using beef, and am eating most of it. I also have some regular cheese from time to time because she buys it and serves it on things at supper time. I started cooking my own food originally because she didn’t like the idea of Pritikin limits, and I didn’t like the idea of rendering the fat from a rib roast, so we got nutritionally divorced about 11 years ago. Now she has mellowed quite a bit (and lost a fair amount of weight) and I have eased back some after reaching my goal weight.
Other than that, we have a Meyers lemon tree that the BW doesn’t like, because the lemons are too sweet to suit her. She has been talking about it, and today we went to the Palm Harbor Nursery and bought a Eureka lemon tree, which is what you get in the grocery. The Meyers are the size of an orange and the shape of an orange, and not as acid as the Eureka.
I planted the tree in the back yard, following the directions to shave off the small roots on the outside of the soil ball, which is supposed to be very important. I don’t know why – I never did that before and the trees always did well, but maybe this on will do better. This was a five gallon pot, with a tree about 4 ½ feet tall, and it only cost $40. For $75 we could have gotten one six feet tall in a giant container, and they would have planted it, and I don’t know which would be the right one. I do think we can live with the Meyer lemons until the Eureka starts to bear. It puts out a very large number of lemons when it gets up to speed. The lime tree we have is a poor second to the lemon tree.
Then I went to a Kiwanis meeting at Dockside tonight, and sat on the inside of the table so I could watch the water while we ate and drank (two Yunlings).
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Yesterday started with 4.2 inches of rain, but in the late afternoon the sun came out and it dried out some. I planted the four grape vines, with a stake beside each one so I won't mow them off because I'm asleep while I cut the grass. At this point I want to see if they grow before putting up a grape arbor. They are bare root stock, and the instructions are to dig a hole, put the vine in, and then cover the roots. Somehow it seems as if there ought to be a little more than that - you need to keep the trunk junction just above ground level for a tree, and there are a lot of considerations for each species when you're planting a garden. We'll see what happens.
Today the BW has been complaining about some yews that are too prickly to suit her, so I have to dig them out. They have been there about six years, so they're likely to have fair sized roots. Fortunately I have leather gloves and a mattock, which I will sharpen to start things off today. In a pinch I can always drag out the chain saw again.
PS - it wasn't that big a deal. I got six prickly bushes out with just a long handled shovel and a little patience. The I cut the grass, sprayed three tanks of weed killer, and helped the BW pick up the leavings from the hedge she trimmed.
I returned two books to the library - it took me ten days to finish three novels, partly because we tend to watch at least 90 minutes of television now, and partly because the Julia Child cookbook distracted me. The Roku is a neat thing, but I have 70 movies and TV service in the Instant Queue now, and a lot of them are TV series that take a long time to get through. I just found the "Murder She Wrote" series for 12 years, and each year has about 22 episodes - some more. Each story is 47 0r 48 minutes long, so it would take about 190 hours to watch them all. I thought it was a marathon to watch all the Doc Martin shows while Annie and Jerzy was here, but that was only about 45 hours. They were going through four shows some nights, and they were hour long shows.
Tomorrow I'll dig out another grocery bag of sand burrs to keep me out of trouble.
Monday, January 17, 2011
I had an onion sandwich and a bowl of turkey soup for lunch. When I cut out enough soup to fill the bowl the hole stayed right where the soup I took was. I remember the chicken soup I made worked the same way - it jells nice and solid, but melts into a nice rich soup. I make thick bean soup, but the noodle soups always have plenty of liquid the way the BW likes them. She always grates some nutmeg because that was the way her mother did chicken soup, and it's good with fresh nutmeg too. Or it's good with whatever spices you prefer.
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