Friday, October 27, 2023

Two little lessons

I’ve decided that the recitation of my little workouts is super-boring, even to me—and the list since I last posted would have been QUITE long. But I will say I have been faithfully doing 15 minutes of yoga every morning, along with one headstand on my bench, all of which feels great and seems to be making me stronger. I suppose the lesson is that consistency is good, even if it’s a pretty tiny thing you’re being consistent about.

Another lesson I have learned (in the “Month of Achilles Healing”) is that my Achilles really aren’t going to heal in the face of a poor diet. Earlier in the month we were eating out a lot, and I was making myself gluten-free pizzas for dinner almost every night, and my Achilles were just getting worse and worse despite everything else I was doing for them. Now I’ve gotten all the grains out of my diet again, and it definitely makes a difference. Annoying but true.

Sunday, October 8, 2023

More on the art show

Sunday: Yoga 15 minutes, weights 20 minutes, walk 1.2 miles

I forgot to post the picture of my art show table:


I feel so much better today; I slept a normal amount and woke up a normal human. I’m going to assume yesterday’s exhaustion was mostly about the stress of getting this all together and then spending so many hours talking to people.

And I REALLY want to do this again. I’m going to try to figure out how to be a little more professional—like how to finish and frame things so that people can actually hang them up. (The few that are framed were ones where I ripped out ancient family photos and replaced them with painted paper.) Everything you see here was propped up with bookends and/or rocks, so honestly my first task is to buy some display easels. M.H. needs them for his book-selling events anyway.

Saturday, October 7, 2023

Art show!

Tuesday: Yoga 15 minutes, walk 1.2 miles
Wednesday: Yoga 15 minutes, walk 1 mile
Thursday: Yoga 15 minutes, walk ??
Friday: Yoga 15 minutes, walk ??
Saturday: Yoga 15 minutes, walk 1.2 miles

Yesterday was Art Walk, where I had a table among about 20 other artists with a bunch of my abstract acrylic paintings. I was thrilled; I sold two of them for actual money and traded one to another artist for something cool. But I am also EXHAUSTED—I don’t know if it was from the stress of getting everything ready and named and set up, the physical exertion of doing all that, or just the fact of having to spend four hours straight talking to people.

At any rate I was in bed by 9 and slept until almost 8 a.m., and still I’m tired to a degree that I wonder if I’m coming down with something or maybe just have reached an age of irreversible decline and infirmity.

Being part of the “art community” in town has been really rewarding, and I learned a lot yesterday. For one thing, I found out that there are a few other annual shows that I could participate in if I wanted. To do that I think it would be good to improve my presentation somewhat and be a lot more deliberate in trying to make quality pieces. On the other hand, there’s really nothing stopping me from just continuing to slap paint around on things and then trying to sell them.

Monday, October 2, 2023

October’s challenge

Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Walk 1 mile
Monday: Yoga 15 minutes, walk 1.2 miles

Welcome to the Month of Achilles Healing! (It’s October 2, but I just decided.) My plan resolution challenge is that every day for the next 30 days, I will:

  • Use the Thumper on my Achilles
  • Go for a short walk
  • Stretch
  • Use infrared light on my Achilles
  • Stretch with the brace my sister sent me

Equinus Brace
(It looks like this.)

I’m still chasing the high of that glorious day several weeks ago when my feet just didn’t hurt. 

Friday, September 29, 2023

Some temporary chaos

Saturday: So much yardwork
Sunday: Yoga 30 minutes, so much yardwork
Monday: So much yardwork
Tuesday: So much yardwork
Wednesday: So much yardwork
Thursday: So much yardwork
Friday: Yoga 20 minutes

I am happy our landscaping project has started, but right now it’s messing up my life a bit.

Mud.

It’s so stressful to have loud noises and constant beeping coming from the back yard, I don’t know how to oversee what’s going on and make sure it’s all OK without making a nuisance of myself, I’m putting in a lot of time “helping” with the cleanup and waste disposal but not actually seeming to achieve all that much, I’m worried about throwing out my back from picking so much stuff up off the ground, and I’ve been skipping most of my other exercise. Oh, and I put “free rock” on Facebook Marketplace, which means I’ve also been juggling dozens of daily interruptions from people messaging me and ringing the doorbell. (Yet the rock never seems to totally go away.)

My Achilles have been particularly painful lately, and I don’t know if it’s from not taking my short morning walks, not stretching as much, eating a bit worse than usual, or some combination of that. Actually I’ve been surprised at how much regular walking seemed to make things better and not worse—that should probably be the priority. I just keep spending my entire morning in the yard and then forgetting to ever go outside again.

Friday, September 22, 2023

Landscaping shenanigans

Wednesday: Yoga 30 minutes, so much yardwork
Thursday: Yoga 25 minutes, so much yardwork
Friday: Yoga 25 minutes, so much yardwork

(Yardwork totally counts as exercise—it is much more strenuous than anything else I’m doing and involves plenty of walking for me and my fussy Achilles.) 

We have major landscaping happening in our back yard. It is going to be awesome eventually, but right now we’re at the “oh no oh no what have we done everything is mud and chaos” phase. We’re helping as much as we can with the labor because our landscaper (Stuart) makes more hourly than either of us—although when you consider that I’m not really all that effective at said labor, it does probably make financial sense for me to sit here and focus on my nice desk job.

But anyway. I’m going to spend the next several weeks moving dirt and rocks around, and it’s honestly a nice change of pace.

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Interruptus

Friday: Walk 1.2 miles
Saturday: Yoga 35 minutes, walk 2.1 miles
Sunday: Weights 20 minutes
Monday: Yoga 35 minutes
Tuesday: Walk 1.5 miles

I just decided to write out a to-do list for today, and when I grabbed my scratch paper, there sat yesterday’s list with NOTHING crossed off. So that will also do for today. Sigh.

The problem is that I am trying to give away the TONS of river rocks in my back yard in preparation for landscaping. This entails having Facebook open almost constantly and managing literally dozens of people messaging me, plus random people knocking on the front door. It’s going to save us quite a bit of money in the end because the rocks won’t have to be hauled to the dump, so it is worth it. 

But on the other hand, I am so very easily distracted. Every ding and interruption derails me for 5 to 60 minutes, which you can imagine is not conducive to working at my desk. Adding “Don’t get sidetracked” to the list as we speak.