Training for a Half: week 4

No you didn't miss all the other posts about the Half marathon I have signed up for. I've been bad at keeping the commitment to myself of blogging once a week. I think maybe it's the day/time I scheduled always got overtaken by other things. I first had it scheduled for Friday afternoon, when work was winding down and I was not likely to be interrupted, but then someone scheduled a meeting for that time. Then I tried putting it on Saturdays after I got back from Food Not Bombs, but by then I am so motivated to clean the house or do other chores that opening up my computer was the last thing I wanted to do. I'll work on finding the right time.

In our first year here (2014), I signed up for and ran a 5K race alongside the Salt Lake City Marathon. They continue to send reminder emails years later for past participants to sign up for something for the next race. When the reminder came in early January I decided now is the time, I'm finally going to do a half.

I did a 10-day juice fast over Christmas & the New Year and lost 6 pounds. I was lighter than I had been in more than 15 years, I decided I was ready to start training. I have a treadmill too, so I really have no excuse (such as weather) to not run.

I'm a big fan of health and fitness apps. I have a fitbit and check my fitbit app constantly to see where I am in relation to the people I am fitbit friends with. Back in December 2010 I discovered the newly released LoseIt! app and have been charting my ups and downs with that for more than five years now, it's so gratifying! I love my Nike+ Women's training app that combines dumbells and other equipment with cardio segments. When I signed up for this Half, I went to the "coach" section of my Nike+ running app, plugged in the date and length of the race I want to train for, and then 12 weeks of training plan was laid out before me.

The plan includes four days of running - two light (3 miles), two heavy (one longish run, one longer and longer run). It also includes one day of cross-training (so I use the aforementioned Nike+ training app) and two rest days. My main goal is to get through this training and race injury-free, so much the better if I can reach my goal weight while doing it.

A funny thing happens though when you are trying to reach a goal weight and then start an aggressive fitness program. The weight remains the same as you burn fat and start building muscle. I can't get discouraged by the number on the scale (but I sorta do) because the way my clothes hangs is totally different. I have to keep reminding myself that since moving to SLC just over two years ago, I have lost 35 pounds. That's no small feat! And now I am training for a race, a half marathon, something I have always wanted to do. Even if I never do it again, I will be pleased.

I am still juicing every day, sometimes twice a day. After doing that 10-day Reboot, I have a really hard time eating anything that has been fried, processed foods, or bread. It's been really interesting seeing how my body is adapting to this new regime in our house - Dan and I hardly eat meat anymore as we move to a whole-foods plant-based lifestyle. I am now one of those people who buys a 25-pound bag of carrots for juicing.

I digress. The race day is April 16, two weeks before I finish my second Master's degree, and a few weeks after my 42nd birthday. I'm looking forward to my training as it will give me time also to catch up on audio books and podcasts! 

we interrupt this blog post

I know I promised to post the rest of our travel photos "tomorrow" a week ago. And I will, possibly later today. Where does the time go? I'm going to tell you a little bit of news, then I'm going to go outside and shovel snow, then I'm going to decide what we are having for dinner and make a shopping list. I'll walk to the grocery store two blocks away through this blizzard, and then come home and start cooking. Or maybe I'll get another blog post in first.

The news: We have been here for eleven days now. Surely the weather is colder than we are used to and there has been snow on the ground the whole time. I don't mind, it's just one more new experience. Well, not new, I did after all grow up in a place that has real winter. But it's been twenty years since I really lived in a place that has weather like this and that it is a normal thing that will stick around longer than a few days.

We are enjoying our new surroundings and are making new friends. The "street" we live on, the one on our address, is not actually a street, it's a sidewalk off a street. I'm guessing it used to be an alley for horse-drawn carriages? At any rate, it means that all our neighbors are close but we have an amazing amount of privacy. With no cars going by, it is also very quiet, which I love. The place we were in before was noisy and not at all private, and I felt like a caged animal in that house. This house is much nicer than the one we moved out of. It's smaller, and far easier to keep clean. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. Sam is happy too, she has been more affectionate with Dan here than she ever has in her whole life.

So my first bit of news is that I have been requested to write a blog for a private company. It hasn't started yet, as the company isn't quite ready to get going, but when they are that task will fall to me. I'm pretty excited about that, it's a great company.

The second is that I had an interview with the Wasatch Community Gardens on Monday. I had contacted them in December, in applying for one of their intern programs. I am passionate about local food and I wanted to get involved with the local foodshed right away, this seemed the best place to start. After my conversation with the coordinator, we agreed I am a good fit and so will be their 2014 Urban Farming Apprentice, starting in a few weeks. Much of the things they want done are things I have done before, in terms of compost rehabilitation and soil building, and there will be some organizing too (yay! I love organizing).

The biggest news: I have been in touch with a few people from the University of Utah, having met a number of them at the AMIA Symposium back last November. After a meeting yesterday morning that I was hoping would result in a job, ended up resulting in an application to do a second Master's degree. I was kind of deflated at the suggestion ("but I already have and MSc in this field!") but it became clear that there are many more doors open to students. This is not to say there won't be work for me beforehand, and I am making my rounds and meeting all the people. There is a dearth of qualitative researchers here and I am SO EXCITED because I was warned all those years ago that there wouldn't be much work for people like me. There hasn't been. Until now. I am in the right place. So HURRAY! I have sent off my resume to a number of people and some of them have heard of me already. I'll go to the research seminars presented every week (the U is an 11-minute train ride from my station, which is only a block and a half away) and will get deeply reacquainted with what is happening in the field. Turns out there is a lot happening at the University of Utah.

It all happened so fast yesterday that I was still spinning by the end of they day, but it feels right. If I can turn that Master's into a PhD, I may do just that. This is a place I want to stay for a while, I can certainly commit to being in Utah for at least five years. More if things are good for both me and Dan.

Oh there is one other thing - we got fitbits! I heard about fitbits in November when I was at the Symposium and have been thinking about them ever since. Certainly with the stress last year and the difficulty exercising (due to crazy schedules and not feeling safe in our neighborhood), I have regained much of the weight I had lost back in 2011. But I did it once and I will do it again. This time it will be much easier (well, if weight loss can be easy) because it seems like a video game and watching the stats on my iPhone app is a data manager's wet dream. People are obsessed with these things. I hope I don't become like that. I'll let you know.

Still one other thing: Thanks to my Twitter buddy Donna Druchunas, there is a small group of us doing a group course of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I have owned the book since 1998 and have done the program a couple of times on my own, but it is nice to go back to it with a bunch of buddies and see how we do. I may do some blog posts specifically about that - I hope I have time because this kind of work digs up a lot of stuff formerly buried in one's psyche.

Okay that's it, I really have to go shovel snow. I will try to post photos later!

My day working in a sweat shop

I haven't worked for paid employment for most of the last year. I haven't wanted to seek paid employment because I was (hopefully) not going to be around for much longer, my immigration could come through at any moment. I don't want to lie or mislead a potential employer, so I have just avoided the whole thing by not working. Well, money is tight. We're in full-on spring now so I thought I would apply for work at some local greenhouses as temporary work.

In my last post, I was bemoaning the fact that neither of them had called me. Then, about an hour after my last post went live, I got the call from one of them. I went in to work at a greenhouse in View Royal as the "trying it out". There was no interview, just a phone conversation explaining that it's basically a plant factory, it's 8:00-4:30, Monday to Friday. It all sounded pretty straightforward. I went in the next morning. View Royal is about 40km from here, it took me 45 minutes to get there.

I went into the staff lunch room to put my lunch in the fridge. It was dark and dingy, very cave like, and there were some zombies sitting on the couches waiting to start work. Already this did not look very promising. No one said hello or good morning. The room was filthy, as if no one cares if it is kept clean.

At 8:00, everyone assembles on the main floor after they punch in. The supervisor checks to see who showed up for work, then assigns people for certain tasks. It's all very easy and monotonous, as it is a factory, but everyone does something different every day. At first I was put on the assembly line. There were some root-bound marigolds planted in half-inch cubes that needed to be transplanted into two-inch cubes. There was  a guy at the beginning of the line, his task was to put the plastic trays on the conveyor belt. The trays go through a machine that dumps potting material. When it comes out of the machine, two people on each side of the belt do the transplanting. I was only doing this for a minute or two when someone else showed up and I was moved on to the next task.

The next task was putting tags in the plants. The tags that you see in each plant at the box stores - like "geranium, full sun" etc. I was partnered with a woman who had been there only a month, and she was not at all talkative. It was so weird, already I was feeling like there is a culture of disposable employees here, where we are not encouraged to engage with each other for fear the Boss would come and whip us or something. Thousands of tags. The plants were at a good height for me, being tall, but the tables were so wide that I really did have to reach far to get the ones in the back - an ergonomic nightmare - and I wondered if WCB cared about that. Its seemed hypocritical that we were required to wear steel-toed boots but that no other health and safety precaution was taken. The machine I mentioned above kicked up a lot of peat dust, so it would make sense to me that the people working near that machine should be wearing dust masks or ventilators.

We finished putting the tags in the 4" flowers, then we were told to put tags in the tomatoes. The tomatoes were in trays on the floor of another greenhouse, and they were jam-packed in to a space about 12 feet deep - meaning that in order to get them all, the trays had to be pulled out so we could get to them as there were no walking spaces. That is a lot of leaning, squatting, and bending. There were two types of tomatoes that needed these tags, and I suggested to the gal I was working with that we coordinate as a team to make it go faster - as in one of us tag while the other of us moves the trays. Her response was strange: "They don't like that" - as in the Bosses don't like people to work together to make a process more efficient? It started feeling very creepy.

At some point in the morning, I think it was when we were tagging the flowers, the bell rang at 10:00 letting us all know that it was time for coffee break. It rang again at 10:15, time's up. The lunch bell rang at 12:00 and I was really starting to feel like herded sheep in elementary school. Nobody really talked to each other in the lunch room. There was a fridge, a microwave and a kettle but no dishes. I brought lunch but forgot to bring a fork, so I ate my tortellini with my fingers.

The staff bathroom was disgusting too. It takes a lot to gross me out, I have used public toilets and squatted over holes in southeast Asia after all. But the fish plant bathrooms in Uculelet were cleaner than this one. Did no one take pride in this place? The owners lived on the property where the greenhouse is. It was as if to say "you little peons don't deserve to have a clean staff area".  It was really disheartening, especially since I am so unused to being treated poorly as an employee.

Already by mid-day I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around. On the one hand, it's physical work that would build my muscle and help me lose weight, would make time go fast even though I wouldn't make very much money (the low wage coupled with the cost of my commute would mean that I would earn less than $6/hour), and it was only temporary. I like plants. And sometimes when a job doesn't pay very much there are perks (like when I worked at Tim Horton's, I got free coffee and donuts and half price off food). After just a few hours there I got the sense that I would not at all be allowed to take home a tray of lettuce starts. That's profit, after all.

There were three supervisors and about 12-15 workers. There were two owners that I noticed, one of them had his to beautiful but sad dogs following him around (chocolate labs? But they were pale brown. I don't know my dog breeds). Not a smile, no interest in meeting new staff, only interacted with the supervisors in a you're-not-good-enough condescending tone. Another owner was barking at some of the workers for not doing their task fast enough. The workplace culture was absolutely stifling and only one person, the person who called me in, seemed to enjoy her job, as she was the only person who smiled. I felt suffocated.

In the afternoon I was put to a task of cleaning of a recently-emptied table and then restocking it with geraniums. That seemed a bit more interesting. Then I was asked to help one of the supervisors with filling orders. That involves moving these heavy plant carts to different greenhouses, sometimes up hills, sometimes on poor-quality concrete which makes wheely carts difficult to maneuver, and put the trays on them there. We picked through the trays and baskets that looked the best, dead-headed the flowers and pulled off the yellow leaves. I am not a stranger to pushing/pulling heavy carts, sometimes the library trucks would have hundreds of pounds of books on them, but they at least had a good flat surface with no hills to roll on.

When the bell rang at 4:30, I was not able to leave just then because we hadn't finished filling the order we were working on. The truck driver that was waiting for this last order was barking at the supervisor saying that the cilantro is unacceptable and that we don't have time to wait for the baskets, these plants here were supposed to be the 4-packs not the 6-packs. What gave him the right to treat another person so awfully?

Eventually I was let to go at 4:45 and I had, for some reason said "yes" when they asked if I would come back the next day. I took off my boots when I got in my truck, I was already exhausted, and I wondered just what the hell I had gotten myself into. I might have even been in shock. It's a good thing I knew the drive home so well, because I am pretty sure I was on autopilot. My leg muscles had already started screaming from all the reaching, leaning and squatting.

I struggled all evening with whether to continue with this job. Finally I decided no, it was not worth my time to go into that toxic work place. After all, I have spent the past several months healing, I wouldn't want all that effort to go to waste for a throwaway job. I emailed the woman who hired me and simply explained that it was not for me. She emailed back the next day, understanding but disappointed, noting my good work ethic. I thought - okay - I'll be honest. I said it's not the work itself that bothers me but the workplace culture and the negative attitude of the owners to the staff. She replied, was appreciative for this kind of feedback, as it was one of her tasks as manager to make improvements on this level. 

Over the past few months, I had been asking my oracle, my pendulum, several times if I should be seeking paid employment. Pendulum consistently said "NO". I was pushed to desperation, sought work after all, and it was as if the Universe said "fine! You want a job? Here is a job." It only took me that one memorable day to comprehend this message.

It took me two days to recover from this job. I wasn't all that sore physically the next day or day after, but it was recovering from being in a toxic work environment. I am very sensitive, you see, I seem to absorb the nervous and negative energies of a place without wishing it or realizing it. It made me think a lot about work - and I even started making a list of things I would like to have in my dream job. My goal is 200 things, I'm up to 40-something just now (I got busy doing other things). 

So now I know. I will be sure to never buy plant starts from big box stores, knowing the human cost of those plants, and how there is absolutely no love given to them in a factory-like setting. It also convinced me that I will make every effort to buy my seeds from local producers who take pride in their work, and not from commercial outfits. It was a big day of learning indeed.

got my run on

Please forgive the bad grammar in the title. I just couldn't help it.

Last week Dan bought me new running shoes. I think they are the first pair of running shoes actually purchased in a running store, not from a shoe store. Today I broke them in.

I forgot when we were shoe shopping that I wear an orthotic in my running shoe. I don't wear the orthotics in the rest of my shoes, so never thought to bring it with me when we were at the store. I pulled them out of my old shoes and slipped them into the new ones today. The fit was slightly different but not in a bad way.

As luck would have it, I went out for my run before the torrential rains began today. I haven't run in two and a half weeks (between moving, travel, spending time with Dan, and resettling in a temporary location) but instead of doing an easier run, I continued on the plan with the Couch to 10k app on my iPhone.

I don't recall if I have mentioned this program before. I did it years ago (before there was such a thing as iPhones) when I was training for my first 10k race in 1999 or 2000. I'm up to week 6 day 1 today, which after the 5-minute warm-up has me running 3min walking 2min 13 times. I was working my way through this program when I was at my sister's house, on the treadmill. What a difference to be outside!
\
I ran through the Ross Bay Cemetery, then turned around and headed back south on Dallas Road. Near Ogden point I turned in to the streets, ran through James Bay and Beacon Hill Park before heading back. I logged 5.47 miles with my Runmeter app.

I'm seeing Victoria through new eyes. When we left the area (living in East Sooke) a year and a half ago, we were desperate to leave. After living in two quite different rural and remote locations since then, I have a new appreciate for the city. Everything is within walking distance. I can ride my bike. There are still flowers in October. Gourmet and Asian food.

As I ran by the peacock in Beacon Hill Park, I resisted the urge to say hello "haawOOOw!" (I can do a mean peacock impersonation) and it reminded me of Spilly Jane. (Why? I think she mentioned something about peacock coloured nail polish on Twitter sometime this summer).

In slightly unrelated news, yesterday I was invited to and attended a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's family's home. I keep forgetting how different I looked when we moved away. I was 30 pounds heaver and had brown hair. I sure don't get tired of the compliments. :-) However, I have remained at the same weight for about three months now. I've gone up and down a pound or two, but I haven't really been logging with my LoseIt! app (what got my whole weight loss started in the first place). So in one sense, it's good that I haven't gained any weight back. But I still have 20-30 pounds to go until I'm where I want to be.

So I'm training for a marathon. Victoria is a great place to get going on that because there is TONS of support. I have people here I can run with. Kinston, when I get there someday, is also full of runners. I don't know which marathon I'll end up running but I am determined to do it before I turn 39. 

The Rhythm of Life on the Farm

I've been here just over three weeks and I'm starting to settle into life here. My sister has always been one for uber house organization, having worked for Tupperware at one point. In fact, a big joke one Christmas was when I gave her a label-making machine. It was a half-joke because Lori was organized, and this would help her compulsion. She totally got the joke and started to label everything. Then she realized how much she loved the thing and it has been a valued household item ever since.



There was a time when everything in Lori's house was ordered to the extreme. It used to be that all the movies had to be arranged in alphabetical order. Even now the clothes hanging in the closet are arranged in a rainbow of colour.



Lori has her routines around the laundry, dishwasher, and other systems of organization. It is really quite impressive. Having kids forced her to relax her compulsions somewhat, but as the kids are getting older and can now clean up their own messes, the old Lori is ekeing her way back.

Lori is now working full time (which is four days a week), and has child care set up for the kids in town. She is up at 5:45 and is out the door by 7:15, to be at work for 8:00. She is home between 5:00-5:30, depending on any errands she has to do in town before coming home. On the weekends, they have gone camping a few times (as her husband has been working away, comes home with the holiday trailer so they can camp in it). In the ebb & flow of their lives, I have been finding a way to fit myself in so as not to be a disruptive house guest, but a helpful one.

While I'm here, I have taken on the task of preparing dinner for Lori & the kids for when she gets home from work. As some of you know, I do enjoy cooking but since I've been with Dan, I have become quite a slacker in the kitchen because Dan is just so darn amazing. I have gone through most of my single-gal cooking reportoire since being here, being mindful that I am also cooking for children who are probably picky eaters. Oldest child doesn't like tomatoes, for example. Youngest child doesn't like anything green. I am trying to make sure they get a healthy, well-balanced meal out of me, but I admit it is not easy.

Noodles were a big hit. I bought some Asian noodles from Chinatown in Edmonton a few weeks ago: mung bean, rice, buckwheat. As long as I don't put any "sauce" on the noodles, we're good to go. I only wish I could have found some cheater chopsticks for kids, to teach them how to use them properly.

The deal with me cooking dinner (or as they say around here, 'supper') is that Lori cleans up the kitchen afterwards. It's a good arrangement.

What else am I doing with my time? Lori had a big list of things for me to do when I got here. She wanted me to prune her trees, which I have done. We started painting the ceiling in the TV room - I do the rolling.

 Lori does the cutting in. Cutting in? I had never heard that term before now, had always heard to it referred to as 'edging'. I have been going out and weeding the garden here and there.



Lori is not a gardener. They have a huge plot of land devoted to being a garden but only a small fraction of it is used. Lori got out and planted some seeds in May, and hasn't touched the garden since. It was quite overrun with weeds when I got here, so on sunny days I have been donning my rubber boots (for the mud) and getting out there with a hand rake. The plants that have been weeded around have certainly benefited from my ministrations. By the time I make my way through all the rows once, I'll need to get back to the first rows again but the task will be way easier. Here is waht Lori has planted:
onions


lettuce


carrots


dill/cucumber?


pumpkin


corn



Alas, no potatoes. The seed potatoes are languishing in the cellar.


I dug up Lori's bread machine and have decided to start filling their mostly empty deep freeze with bread. I will bake a loaf of bread every day while I'm here, until I wear the machine out (as happened to our first bread machine) or it's time for me to go.

I've been waiting for my own stuff too. My former employer got my forwarding address wrong, so my final cheque should have been to me by now (it was mailed on July 14), but due to rerouting I expect it will be here next week. Still don't have my damage deposit cheque from my former landlord either.  Once these cheques come in, I can buy a canopy for the truck.

The plan: I want to buy a canopy for the truck so I can lock it when my mum & I travel to North Carolina. It also needs to be waterproof. I would like to get a canopy that has a sliding window that meets the cab of the truck, so that Sam can come & go from the litter box in the back to the cab in the front. But I can't do any of that until I have some money coming in.

Something else I have been doing: spending a lot of time with the kitties. So many kitties! I step outside and they come running toward me. Some of them in particular approach me first.
I can always count on the smallest grey cat (Runt) and the middle grey cat (my boyfriend) to arrive first at my feet. Their mom, Tiana, is a good hunter. She'll bring home mice and moles, and
the occasional dead chicken from the chicken barn. I've seen her devour a chicken leg in under a minute. It's gross and fascinating at the same time.

I am also spending some time on Lori's treadmill. It's handy that it is in my space (I'd call it my room but I am staying in the basement which is mostly just one big room). I started out with 40 minutes, am increasing my time on it by 5 minutes every time I use it, and am alternating my way through the programs. I do this and listen to a new-to-me podcast called Marathon Training Academy. It's a fantastic podcast and I am inspired to consider training for at least a half marathon once I arrive in North Carolina, see what kinds of races are around Kinston/Greenville. I'd prefer to run outside but there isn't really much running space on the farm (gumboots in cow pasture not with standing) and with the way I've seen the gravel trucks screaming past,  I'd rather not risk my life on the highway. Treadmill it is. It's good, actually, simple, easy to use, and just what I need. See, Lori's brother-in-law came by the other day and said "Holy crap have you  ever lost a lot of weight". And while I have lost 31 pounds, I still have 18 more to go. It's getting harder, so I have to seriously increase my exercise intensity.

I am happy to report that I have also been able to get a fair amount of knitting done. This morning I finished the Darcy Shawlette, a pattern I was test knitting for my Twitter pal @knitpurlgirl, in Indigo
Moon sock yarn. I was given this sock yarn as a gift and while I love the colour, when I went to block it the colour started leaking out of the water in the sink. Out came the vinegar, so I could set the dye.
I'm so glad I know that trick.

I am about 30 rows away from finishing the Victorian Ruby lace scarf from Victorian Lace Today, which I started sometime in June. It was easy travel knitting when I was doing the middle section, but the ends are charted which has meant I had to be anti-social while knitting them. I'm hoping to get that done & blocked today.

The day after I arrived, my sister had her Yorkie-Shihtzu groomed, Roxy had most of her fur shaved off. Then the weather turned cold and poor Roxy Dog was shivering. Roxy had a few sweaters from
her previous owner, but they weren't up to Lori's esthetic. Lori had never really considered dog clothing and then I told her about Ellie and her dog Juliet, and how Juliet has her own wardrobe complete with summer party dress and Santa costume. And then I offered to knit Roxy a sweater. It's kind of crazy, really, having never knit one before and without a pattern. I knew it had to be machine washible (enter acryilic yarn - shudder) and she wanted it to be black. Black! I hate knitting black! Well, it knit up quickly and now I have only to weave in the ends and decorate it with flowers or 'Roxy' or something. That too will probably get done today.

And then what? What will I knit? I have three Cookie A socks to finish and the long-ago begun Brother Amos (a la Brenda Dayne) socks to finish. Maybe after I finish those UFOs I just might treat myself to some Auricania Multy from Liv With Yarn in Camrose.

movement in the body

This post could be about a lot of things. No, I'm not about to regail you with tales of my gastrointestinal functions. I am celebrating a milestone.

I have lost 30 pounds!

I can't tell you how amazing this is. The first 20 or so seemed a breeze. Then I got sick, then things got a bit hard, then the birthday season came and my sister was here for a visit and the weight loss seemed to slow down a bit, but it's still happening. I'm back at shooting for two pounds a week, but we'll see how it ends up really happening. I'm being less vigilant about tracking my calories because, while I *do* want to be losing weight, I also want to keep healthy and still enjoy myself. I have made tremendous progress so far and I'm 3/5 finished what I set out to accomplish. 

So when I title this post 'movement', I mean that the weight on my body is moving. It is moving off my body. It is also changing the proportions. The weight first started coming off the chest area, something I waxed wistful about in a previous post. But while my arms and back are thinning out, the weight on my lower half was stubborn.  It seemed like it would never go. 

And then it started. I wear scrubs for my job and when I went to buy a second round, I had gone down a size. My 'thin' pants finally started to fit. This was about a month ago now. Now my thin pants are getting loose on me. The wind pants I put on over my tights when I exercise outside are loose on me. I can't actually remember being this thin - it's been a decade since I was here. 

So this is exciting, that my clothes are all draping a lot more. Alas, I have no budget for new clothes at the moment, I'll have to try my hand at alterations to see what I can do to my current wardrobe in the mean time. But the other thing I wanted to talk about here is how I am moving, how I move in my body now. 

I'm having a hard time picturing myself at 30 pounds more than I am now, but when I think about that, I think about having 30 pounds of weights attached to my thighs. I feel lighter now, I am lighter. I am a person who moves quickly to begin with, but with being lighter, my movements are less clumsy and more precise. I am becoming lithe again, my flexibility is returning. I can fold myself and bend in ways while doing yoga that, when there was more fat on my hips, were difficult because the fat would get in the way. It's made me wonder about yoga teachers - are they aware that body fat can be a limiting factor in what positions they can get to? That it's not just about flexibility but that sometimes the body just gets in the way of itself? 

This LoseIt! app for my iPhone has been amazing, and I can't believe I just downloaded it on a whim, that it has completely changed my life. And it was free.

In less than six weeks now, I'll be on the relay team in a marathon race. Our team isn't out to be competitive, but for fun, and it's a good thing. I haven't really been training (better get started soon, right?) I do know that if I end up getting one of the 10k legs, that it will take me about an hour and fifteen minutes, give or take, at my slowest. But I feel confident that I can do better than that, between how light I am getting on my feet as well as all the training I'll put in between now and June 12th. I think this is going to be a really good summer. Did I mention my bikini fits again? When I get rid of that last 20 pounds, even my swimsuits won't fit.

Corned Beef & Cabbage

Ok this might not look very good to you but to me it is something I have been bugging Dan to make for weeks, something I look forward to and get excited about. Corned beef and cabbage. He made this for me for the first time when we were living in East Sooke, and I don't remember liking it that much. Dan may not have figured out how to do it so well at that point, but the couple of times he's made it here in Ucluelet he has absolutely nailed it. I couldn't really tell you how it's prepared, I just know that it needs about three or four hours. Is is boiled? What spices?

What I like about this meal, particularly now that I'm losing weight, is that this meal is only 300 calories. The fat is basically boiled or steamed out of the beef and I think the veggies are boiled or steamed in this same water. It has a vingegar-like astringent taste that I just love. Sometimes Dan makes it with carrots and yams as well as cabbage and potatoes, but it is always full-on flavour. It packs well as leftovers and when I am eating my leftover lunch in the hospital lunch room, my coworkers are all jealous. :-)

Stacey's birthday last year and this year

Here we are last year at Cafe Mexico in Victoria for my birthday dinner with the family. 

 I decided to wear the same to top this year in case it was noticeable how much weight I've lost since then. Maybe not the best image. Bad lighthing, I admit, and we were both pretty tired after having worked all day.

 The Happy Birthday sign makes its rounds above the area of whosever birthday it is. This is my room the CSR.

 This is the pineapple carrot cake with lemon cream cheese icing topped with walnuts that Dan made for me. I was going to make my own birthday cake but that was before I started feeling better again. What a dear. I took it to work, took some to Ellie, shared some with friends K2, had the rest for breakfast. Cake for breakfast!

This is the dinner Dan made. Poached salmon, pasta with a shiitake mushroom cream sauce; fennel and citrus salad; Jerusalem artichoke cubes with a balsamic reduction and slivers of mango. He pulled out all the stops, it was yummy.

turns out, I just need to eat more or, the embarrassment post

Well I am embarrassed.

I saw the doctor on my birthday. Went on about how I got sick and never felt like I recovered, still coughing, sore throat, etc., and oh yeah I've lost 24 pounds in the last three months. She looked at me. BINGO. (She didn't say that. Doctors don't know what bingo is.) She figures the reason my body wasn't letting me get better was because my body wasn't getting enough calories to recover. That certainly explains my high level of fatigue. She also pointed out that I'm probably cold all the time too (why yes!) So there it was, my doctor told me I should eat more cake on my birthday, and that I should slow down my weight loss program (from two pounds a week to a pound and a half or just a pound).

On that note, a couple of pounds ago I came down into the "normal" range of the BMI. That sure feels good. I have a growing stack of pants I can't wear anymore. I told a friend on Skype today that I'm shrinking out of my bras. We commiserated that the breasts are always the first to go when we lose weight. I also have more and more clothes I can fit into.

Here is something else that is a bit embarrassing. When I was doing laundry yesterday (I have energy to do laundry again!), I realized that I have five lime green tops. Five. I knew I liked this colour, and to be fair, two of them were gifts, but gosh it sure still seems like a lot.

LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt LouiseJHunt

Yes, that was a total non sequitur, but LouiseJHunt seems to be mentioning me on every podcast (more embarrassment) so perhaps I should respond in kind by mentioning her in every blog post? Louise's podcast, by the way, is the Caithness Craft Collective Podcast out of northeast Scotland. It doesn't seem to matter what Louise talks about, I just like hearing her talk in the Caithness dialect. Thanks for the birthday wishes Louise! (btw, the word you were looking for was not 'humbleness' but humility, I think) (Okay I am listening to the Sneeze episode as I'm writing this post. Total multi-media junkie am I).

Tomorrow Dan & I will hit the road at 5am to reach French Creek for an 8am offload. Oh yeah, I still work at my fish counting job! There is a fairly large offload they need a hook-and-line validator for, and they need a second person to tag the halibut, so Dan and I will go. It's a long way but we'll be paid for our time and per kilometer (.43/km) as well as the time we are working. Working with My Sweety! A road trip! A trip into Town! Depending on how tired we are, I might be able to convince Dan to stop in at the Port Alberni Hops Festival on the way back (sorry, can't seem to find a website to link to).

Last bit of news: I am on sock #5 - I was shooting for seven before Cookie A comes next weekend but it was just too ambitious a goal. That's okay though, that means I'll have only five partners to knit after the retreat and that means I can move onto other projects. As ever, I have a long queue of things I want to knit!

Something is Seriously Kicking My Butt

Well hey, you all wanted to know about my health, right?

I'm now in my eighth week of work at the hospital. My shift is 8:00-2:30, Monday to Friday. It's a pretty sweet shift, really. I have to drive 41km from Ucluelet to Tofino, which on a good day takes me about 35 minutes. During the past few months, however, the tree service guys have been out holding up traffic while they shear the side off the forest, lest it should get blown into a power pole during one of our winter storms. There have been several crews out, which means no fewer than four sets of flag people with their "SLOW" or "STOP" sign.

So this delay means I have been leaving around 7:15am to get to work, getting home around 3:15pm, give or take. It makes my work an eight hour day. My job is also pretty physical: I'm walking around a lot, up and down stairs, lifting boxes (with correct posture, I might add), moving supplies and equipment. Nothing I can't handle, but it is physically demanding.

Because I hadn't worked in so long, starting a new job and a new routine took some adjusting. I was in my third or fourth week of work when I got sick, had to take two days off work. It was around this time that Ellie asked me (it was before I got sick, I think) if I would be willing to take part in the relay team for the Edge to Edge marathon. Add to this my self-imposed committment to knit as many Cookie A socks as I can before the retreat. Not to mention housework.

The Saturday after I was sick and unable to work, I had a bit of a relapse. I was feeling achy and fatigued, didn't feel like I would be safe to drive much less babysit that night, so I had to cancel.

That was a few weeks ago now and I have to admit I still don't feel like I'm getting healthy. I still have tightness in my sore throat and a productive cough.

I have a history of depression. Not really bad, but I was on quite a cocktail of antidepressants for a few months several years ago. In the spring and summer after we moved here to Ucluelet, I had several depressive episodes, probably springing from our uncertainty about what our options were at the time.

I've been knitting a lot and writing a lot and typing a lot and otherwise using my hands/arms/wrists a lot and I am forced to admit that they hurt. My hands, arms, and wrists hurt. I should be taking it easy and not breaking my neck over some self-imposed challenge of knitting so many socks.

This past weekend Dan & I took a trip to Powell River, to check it out. (That's fodder for another post). We left on Saturday morning around 8:30am, got home around 9:00pm on Sunday. While it was tremendous good fun, it was also exhausting. It meant I didn't get time to rest, rejuvenate, or clean the house like I usually do on the weekend.

I have a number of health issues that have been creeping up on me. I'm not going to go into them here, but I did make an appointment to see a doctor in Tofino. We've lived here a year and I hadn't gotten around to finding a family doctor yet. Well I finally chose one (based on the ones I met while working at the hospital) and I'll see her tomorrow. I'll go in to talk about my sore throat and the fact that I don't feel like I've gotten better from that cold.

Tomorrow I turn 37, and while I don't want to be melodramatic or paranoid, I have real fears I might be admitted to the hospital I work at. I am feeling absolutely depleted, physically and mentally. Doing laundry seems to take the piss out of me. I even like doing laundry. I feel like I can't get anything done and because I have a mountain of things that need to get done, the list grows. Is my immune system giving me trouble? Am I having another depressive episode? Is this the early onset of menopause I was told to expect?  I eat well, I take vitamins, I usually get enough sleep, and if it didn't exhaust me I would be exercising. I'm at my wit's end. I'm used to being physically strong and full of energy; I am a generally happy person and often all I need is a coffee go perk me up. But now... the coffee just kills my appetite and I go to bed hours later with nausea and an empty stomach.

I think about some of my favourite podcasters that have recently had major health issues. Dr. Gemma and Susan Dolph are the ones I am thinking of. We pushpushpush ourselves because we believe that what we are doing is so important and at the end of the day, our energy stores get depleted. I forget sometimes that I need to recharge my battery. The problem is that I don't know what that looks like right now. I still have to go to work, but perhaps I will take the weekend off of everything, laundry and vacuuming be damned. I might even have to take a break from my weight loss program - two pounds a week is agressive and it means that at the moment, I am allowed only 1166 calories per day (not counting any exercise I do, which increases my allowable intake). It's been going so well and I am pleased with the results, but shrinking sick me isn't as good as healthy me.

being sick, being busy

Bleh.

I stayed home sick from work on Monday & Tuesday last week, and went back to discover that there were no casuals called in to take over for me in my absence. Maybe there are no casuals? That means there was four days of work piled up for me to spend the rest of the week catching up on. I was busy. It was fun. I really enjoy my new job. :-)

In other news, I spoke to my father recently. It's unlikely he will ever read this so I'll give you a nutshell version of what's happening. Some time in January he was admitted to the hospital after coughing up blood (this is what he told my sister's husband) and spent four days on IV. No further detail. Some of you may recall me telling you about the spot on his lung that the MRI found a year ago, and a few other lung associated problems which he was calling 'asthma' first (um, asthma wouldn't show up as a spot - it's either cancer or TB) and then an infection. He contracted pneumonia in the fall and took a long time to get over it. When I said something to him about 'at your age it takes a long time...' he really didn't want to talk about the whole aging thing. That was interesting, I didn't know he had end-of-life issues but there you have it. Meanwhile, all this time he's been waiting for his mail-order bride to come from the Ukraine. He spent a month in Europe (well, Ukraine and Russia) last summer searching for the Right Woman and ended up with Tamara, 31, with a 7-year-old daughter. (Note that I am almost 37 and my sister is 34, so our new 'stepmother' would be younger than us. Ew.) Well first he had to wait until she finished her schooling. She is an accountant, a nurse and a dental assistant. (Yeah right). Her schooling finished and she was supposed to be here in October. Then there was a problem with her ex, he didn't want her to take their daughter out of the country. This is starting to sound fishy. Then, most recently, she was about to board the plane when the government official decided she was a 'risk of flight'.

See, here's how I have it figured. They (the organized crime that deals in human trafficking and scams like this) hook a naive guy like my dad into believing that he will soon no longer be lonely, that he will soon have his new wife. Then they string him along according to a formula to get him to keep sending money. He hasn't told me he is sending money but I have no doubt he is. He lives on a disability pension by the way, so who knows where this money is coming from. At any rate, he still believes this woman is coming to be his wife.

I'll believe it when I see it. If she does show up she will have to learn English in a hurry, and soon understand that my dad really just wants someone to clean his house and look after him as his health fails. Ain't that love?

Okay I'm a bit cynical about the whole thing. It's just a bit surreal to know that your father is trying to get a mail-order bride from a poor country. It's hard to have respect for someone who does that.

Dan's youngest sister is at present in Europe studying German in Germany for a year. She has two months off just now, so her parents are there with her and they are touring around western Europe. All I can think about is all the gorgeous European yarn shops they aren't going into. Well, and the cafes. OMG can you imagine the coffee? And the shopping. I would love to go clothes shopping in Europe.

I'm almost at the 20 pounds of weight loss mark. Twenty pounds! How can that even be? I can't even imagine myself with 19 more pounds on me. Well, I've been able to dig out some of the clothes I haven't worn in a while to discover that they fit again. I am retiring some jeans and pants, will wear them only if I have work at the fish job. Today I put on a top that my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday last year, one I haven't been able to wear because it didn't fit. I wore it all day for the first time! It's very powerful and motivating, being able to get into smaller clothes like this. I wonder why I have never attempted weight loss before. It seems to be easy, but I owe it really to a number of things:
1) the LoseIt! app for my iPhone, which keeps track of everything for me
2) the free Nordic Track elliptical trainer I found on Freecycle (which Dan repaired and I use almost daily)
3) Dan, for being mindful of my need to weigh/measure everything I eat so I can log it
4) my compulsion to lose the weight I've been carrying since all my big surgeries a few years ago before my skin loses its elasticity so that I'm not left with 'wings'.

Last week I think I mentioned we zipped out to Courtenay to pick a new laptop for me, since I killed my other one. (me=sad) I'm still getting used to this one, it's smaller but lighter, is quicker in some ways but not as powerful. I haven't been spending much time on it because I've been knitting like a madwoman. I always knit like a madwoman, don't I? Well, I'm working on Cookie A sock #3 and I've put about 10 hours into it since Friday morning. Here it is: 

a wee update on life

O dear. I had such big plans for multiple posts including photos that I was going to get done this weekend.... and then I decided I was going to finish three large-ish knitting projects all in one day, then pull out my entire yarn stash and decide what to give away the next. All good things.

I have a new sense of motivation. I have made some decisions lately regarding my knitting and yarn habits.
1) I will endeavor to have no more yarn than I can reasonably knit in the space of a year
2) I will finish or frog all my WIPs in a timely fashion.
3) I will not acquire yarn for the sake of acquiring yarn - I must have a project in mind when shopping for yarn.
4) In preparation for the Cookie A Sock Retreat in Tofino in April, I am planning to knit half of a pair of seven of her sock patterns. There is seven weeks until the retreat and I figure I can bang out a sock a week, my sock mojo is back! After the retreat I'll go and knit the partners to all the socks. The first socks of each pair will go on display at the yarn shop, so Ellie can show people Cookie A's designs as well as show off what the yarns she carries look like when they're knit up. I am already one chart repeat into Eunice, a pattern from her book Sock Innovation, which I received for Christmas. I'm using Gaia's Colours yarn for this first sock, and have enough of GC yarn in different colours for three more pairs of socks. I have lined up the yarns with the patterns I intend to knit them into. We'll see how it goes!

5) After reducing my stash to less than a full Rubbermaid bin, I might do this same thing with my fabric stash as well. I'm not much of a seamstress and have three fabrics & patterns for garments I wanted to make a year ago or more, despite having received a sewing machine for Christmas 2009, and I just don't use it enough. I know I need more practice but I think I need to bite off smaller pieces and work on simpler projects. Most of the fabric in my stash is stuff I'm not really interested in working with. If Dan wants to keep it, he is welcome to, but I will soon abdicate responsibility for managing that stash too.
6) In the spirit of de-stashing and clutter-busting, I expect to feel a lot lighter, and potentially mobile. All of my music is already in electronic format (and, truth be told, I listen to podcasts way more than I listen to music anyway), so we are considering buying a Kindle when we have a bit of extra money. While we love the feel of books, it is far more practical for us to have an e-reader. Only about 10% of our book collection is currently on display, and the rest of it is in boxes in the crawl space for lack of bookshelves.

It feels like a bit of a watershed moment for me. If I can slough off those things that I have large collections of, then I think I will feel a lot better about myself. I am also sloughing off a lot of weight physically.

Since starting this program eight weeks ago, I have lost 15 pounds. I am, as of today, at the point where my favourite jeans are loose on me and I might have to dig up my less-than-heavy jeans. I don't quite fit into my thin beige cords that I bought in Korea (that's my litmus test), but I'm getting close. Once my weight comes down ten or more pounds, I will have quite a bit of clothing I won't wear anymore too. I will once again be able to fit into lots of the pretty things I wore six or more years ago. Living where I live, it's totally acceptable to go around town in sweatpants or pajamas (not that I would ever do that), so if I don't manage to replace my wardrobe with Thin Clothes promptly, it's not a big deal. I wear a uniform to work (scrubs!) so that's not an issue either. But I will have to consider a clothing budget at some point. I'm really looking forward to that.

Next weekend we have some house guests coming, and I think that will be the beginning of the season of visitors of all the people who said they would come up here 'in the spring'. This is a good opportunity to give the house a thorough spring cleaning, much welcomed by the above mentioned clutter busting. I'm realizing I don't need all the stuff I have; it does not define me. Less stuff means less stuff to clean, organize, manage. It will be easier to clean up the house and get ready for house guests and I'll feel more in control of my life again.

On a final note, the expression 'when it rains, it pours' once again applies. Today I was offered another job, evenings and weekends. If it wasn't for the unpredictability of the hours, I might consider it. But I need to know that I'd be off by 9 so I can get home and get to bed because I have to be up at six the next morning and I know this job doesn't offer that kind of regularity. (I bet she would let me knit at work though!) No, for now, what I have is good. I'm two weeks into my current job and I'm settling into my routine.

In short, life is good.