Back in the Saddle Again

Well, howdy do there! Talk about not keeping up with my blogging! I guess I just don't have a lot to say these days, or possibly just not the time to do it. Maybe just a bit of both. The good news is that I'm feeling sooooo much better. I've lost weight, I'm back to martial arts, I'm clearer headed, I'm cooking up a storm with my pressure cooker..I've got a rock'in vegetable garden... and, get this.... I'm cleaning my house like crazy!!

I know.. it's insane! I will spontaneously clean a closet for NO GOOD REASON!!! This has all come about because the doctor says I'm getting more blood to my brain... I guess you need that, huh?! Isn't that crazy? You never think that you have to worry about things like that... that your body just puts the blood where it's supposed to go, right?.. well, apparently not. I've got a kink in my blood supply around my shoulders and with the help of my wonderful Physical Therapist, Elisa, she's freeing up the blockage(she really is a doll... and I've been to others and I know she knows her stuff...but she's tough as nails too!).

It's a lot of hard work. I'm always doing these exercises to keep my shoulders back, squeezing my muscles and they are sore constantly. I have to put my neck in the right position although it doesn't feel like the right position.. she calls the wrong position "turtle neck".. but the right position gives me too many double chins! But I guess it's right over my shoulders. Anyway, it's difficult for me to always "feel" when I'm corrected, but I'm learning. Elisa says that I've improved very quickly since my doctor has said that it would take 8 months to a year to see any change and it's only been a few months for me. The next work we are doing in on my abdominals... OY!! These are difficult because 1) I have always been lazy in this area, and 2) this is where I was cut during surgery 13 years ago and these muscles haven't been used since I learned to work around them.. especially the obliques...now to engage them, they are like spoiled children and they don't want to play. But I will beat them into submission!! Eh, comrade ladies!! LOL!

I have planted my vegetable garden for the season. It is beautiful. We had a small patch of lawn in the back of our house. Very small and not used much and it was turned brown from all of the fires that we have had here in Santa Barbara... also from me not paying a lot of attention to it! At one time I had a huge garden at another home and grew almost all of my own food and food for a lot of my friends. I loved doing it and I wanted to feel that love again so we had two raised beds built and now we are back in the food business again on a smaller scale. My husband is excited about the tomatoes and really wants to grow corn, but our space doesn't allow for us to grow things as high as an Elephants eye (i.e., Oklahoma!)... I told him that we'd leave that for the local growers.... he was sad, but he'll be happy when he sees the bumper crop of fresh tomatoes and zucchini... (zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, stuffed zucchini, zucchini ala king, etc....) :)

With my new found energy like I said I am now cleaning! For years I just felt like crap. It wasn't that I didn't want to do anything, I thought about everything that I wanted to do, I made lists, I drew pictures, I made plans... I just never had the energy to actually DO IT! Now, with the whole blood to the brain and other parts of my body....very much helps.... I'm actually getting these LONG needed things done! We took a trip to Burbank yesterday and visited Ikea... OMG! I LOVE that store. If we didn't have to be back in Ventura by 5:30 to have dinner I would have stayed there until closing. We had to just go in, figure out how the whole Ikea experience worked, look at the beds/mattresses, do the measuring...then find the item and leave.. but I could have stayed and outfitted my whole house... and let me tell you, it certainly needs it! In retrospect, maybe it was better that we had to leave right away since I may have had to mortgage my house to pay for everything that I wanted. Gotta love those Swedes though, everything was so eficient... not all to my taste, but I just like decorating and the storage stuff, WOW.. when you live in a house with very little storage... you REALLY like the storage stuff!!

There is probably more going on.. but that's enough for now.. I'll try to post more often... if anyone is still reading.. if not, that's OK.. it's just good to get it all out there.