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Well, they are just seeds at this point. Not even in the ground yet, although I might be able to do something about that today if it doesn't rain as predicted. ----------------   I went to aikido for two hours on Friday. One hour of weapons and one hour of open hand practice. I was wiped out by the end. I was relieved when sensei called for kokyu dosa (a seated technique) for the last 10 minutes of class. Even that got hard by the end. I started out just flinging my partner back and forth. I had to really concentrate to coordinate my movements after five minutes. My aerobic endurance is crap.   Saturday I took as a work-on-things at home day. I had breakfast with Dumbledore, then he went off to spend the weekend with friends a few hours away. I could have gone with, but I desperately wanted time to catch up.   I spent an hour and 45 minutes working in the garden (I set a timer). That was enough time to clean out the raised bed and empty the compost bin side that was full. Bending over to dig weeds was a lot more work than normal. I'm comparing to two weeks ago, when I transplanted hostas. It was just bending over and standing up. The weeds in the raised bed are easy to pull because the soil is not compacted at all. However, it is still full of tree roots. I don't think I can do anything about that.   I spent the evening with my BFF. We compared notes on how tired we have been. I am blaming long Covid, since it happens even when I get plenty of sleep. I'm just going to keep working on exercising and getting plenty of rest.   Sunday aikido class went okay. I was pleasantly surprised when sensei finished class after an hour. I was expecting 1.5 hours. Fine by me. I stopped by the grocery store to get more salad ingredients and went home and took a nap.   After buying salad kits for a month, I decided to try making my own salad mixes this week. I have already been supplementing the salad kits. It is not a big step to put together my own lettuce mix, grab a bottle of dressing and a bag of crunchy bits. I am going to try doing batch prep on the parts so I can just take sets to work for lunches. Here is my plan: lettuce mix with spinach added chopped chicken breast or hard-boiled egg cherry tomatoes, marinated cucumber slices and/or avocado nuts or dried fruit or croutons dressing (take a bottle to work and leave it there) I always feel like I am wasting dressing with the salad kits. Hopefully this plan will let me eat more greens and less dressing with my salads. I made marinated cucumber slices yesterday. I am planning on chopping up the chicken for the week today.   Sunday chores - cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the upstairs toilet, cooked lentils and quinoa, washed two loads laundry, swept the laundry room. Did not get any more yard work done. Knit several rows on the scarf.   I was feeling frustrated about working steadily but not getting very far on my list. Dumbledore encouraged me to take a break and play Manor Lords, even though it was already 8:30pm. That deep sixed my go-to-bed-on-time plan, but it did make me much happier. No regrets.  

Seems reasonable.

Maybe doodle for game prep?   You look great in that dress!

We went through similar things with Dumbledore's mom for a couple years before she passed away. She did not trust most of the doctors, so she would not take her pills. Then things would get bad. She would get scared and she would call Dumbledore or his brother to come rescue her. They would make her go to the heart clinic, where she would argue with the doctors for several days. Eventually she would agree to treatment. Her blood chemistry would improve and she would be a reasonable human again, at least until the paranoia kicked in again. It was super frustrating.   She lived by herself and both her sons live halfway across the country. It was a expensive plane flight or a 19 hour drive to get there. I'm sure she could have lived several more years if she had just been willing to take care of herself or accept help from people. She was happier living on her own terms.

Monday May 13th [Bronx, by Immar Art]   Time Traveling Habits Dead Tree Time 🔲🔲🔲 Creative Time 🔲🔲🔲 Trad Time 🔲 Bed Time ✅🔲🔲 HIIT Time ✅🔲🔲 Early Bird Time ✅🔲🔲 Treat'O Time 🔲 [A dog gargoyle at the Cathedral of Saint-Just and Saint-Pasteur in Narbonne, France. Photo by Anne Giovas]   Life Updates Mothers day came and went, congrats to all the mothers here for enduring burnt breakfasts. UK mums, y'all had your day earlier in the spring? Spending a bit of time on the HomeByMe website, playing the sims with the architectural layouts on the Polonia house.  Shifting my habitual playing space on the banjo farther north, farther from the bridge to wring more resonance out of the sound. If baby's first banjo and I have at least 4-6 more months of life together, I wanna make sure she has as much voice as possible.   Mental health symptoms flaring up with all the changes lately. These are all joyfully chosen transitions we're doing right now, but my brain tries to protect me from more difficult life changes that happened in the past, so I've been leaning on caffeine and meditation and lots of self-talk. Slowly but surely I suppose.   [A pigeon in the Bronx, by Purple Goldfish]

Starting weight 261.4 W1 3/25: 261.2 (-0.2) W2 4/1: 258.0 (-3.2) W3 4/8: 256.4 (-1.6) W4 4/15: 255.6 (-0.8) W5 4/22: 255.0 (-0.6) W6 4/29: 253.4 (-1.6) W7 5/7: 253.5 (+1.3) W8 5/13: 253.1 (-0.4)   A little bit of a recovery from the week before but this week has had its own challenges keeping me a little stuck.  And it's food truck season again.  Had dinner out at a game Wednesday and had a BBQ pulled pork sammich and fries from a food truck.  Mother's day was spent a festival with shops and food trucks so lunch was from a food truck again (Irish Nachos and ice cream but shared both).  The weekend was overall very busy with graduation for DDGs youngest so we had to pull together meals at odd times and attended a number of dinners and luncheons.   All in all, I'm pleased with the small loss.  Hoping to make up for it this week.  It's the final week before Hawaii trip so I was hoping to drop as much as possible.  It'll be a busy week but batch cooking is sorted.  

Do you have a new knitting project?

Hello Lovelies!   I was a bit tired and sore going into the workout this morning but it ended up being a good one. Despite a rough start, I was able to get comfortable with the barbell back squat which I started incorporating last Monday. Last week I felt a little iffy on it but this week I felt stronger and more stable which is great! I cannot wait to continue building on that going forward. The Man is headed home from the surgeon's. He's got a partial tear in his shoulder so he went to see about treatment. The was talk about avoiding surgery and doing injections with therapy since partial tears can be healed without surgery if done right. We will see if the surgeon is limiting his workouts at all or, if he got an injection today, if he's up to working out tomorrow at all.   Meals are prepped for lunch for Monday-Friday. Dinner is prepped for us Monday-Thursday with a tentative plan for Fish Friday since my meal prep only made 4 days (and doubled to include the Man). I didn't have the mental capacity or desire to bother with calculating another day of food for each of us. Breakfasts are set up with Kodiak Power Cups (I linked one flavor but I have a mix of the Flapjack flavors for something slightly different each day). My macros didn't change since we were seeing good progress but I've been doing so well at meeting my macros all week (I only went over fat one day because we ate out) and I've been going above and beyond with my steps most days. However, since I am doing so well and macros haven't changed, we are adding a new layer: increasing fiber. This change came after I ate my protein cup this morning so I'm improvising a bit for the day to hit 20-25g fiber (to work my way up to 35g). Starting tomorrow, I'll incorporate some extra fiber into the power cup before I microwave to add some fiber first thing. I already did my grocery shopping so adding higher fiber staples will have to wait until next week but I think I can manage with what I have on hand in the house for this week.    All good budget-wise. So long as no unexpected charges hit my account, I will have enough to nearly pay off the credit card I used to pay for coaching which is exciting. I'll wait to do that until closer to the end of the week since my next paycheck doesn't arrive until Friday and I'd rather play it safe. Once that one is paid off, I can focus on the card I used for the overseas trip in October (to get points) which we have a tentative plan to pay off by June anyway.   I've been slacking on my daily Rune and Oracle but I did knock out a meditative walk and Greet the Day this morning as well as my weekly Tarot. Tarot was the Eight of Swords which is very suiting given my work situation. The walk was early as there are forecasted storms. I just heard thunder in the distance a bit ago so glad I got that knocked out early.   This week starts the Man's second "semester" of classes. Fingers crossed these next 10 weeks go smoothly considering we will have the kids and vacation to content with while attempting to balance school work and regular work.   Alright, back to work I go! I hope something today makes you feel powerful and confident.

260 points when down sick most of the week is really impressive. Hope you're feeling much better and can kick the pants out of your 500 point goal this week!

Bummer about your shoulder, Ever. I hope it smooths out soon. ❤️   That's a satisfying haul of plants!