The battle begins

In earnest. And it's two battles, really.

The ongoing battle with my weight is one I'm losing right now. I'd rather report that I'm losing weight, but in two months the loss is negligible.

I'm tired of paleo, but I know that carbs are killing me. As I'm now moving more (I averaged 11,000 steps per day last week), I hope the increased activity will help boost my metabolism. I naturally want to eat lighter when the weather warms up, so I'll work on taking advantage of that – fruit salad instead of pie, right? Heh. The goal is the proverbial move more, eat less, and I'm adding to that to eat less often. If I'm not hungry in the morning, why eat breakfast?

I'd like to think I'm winning the battle with the weeds. The asparagus bed is almost cleaned out, and asparagus is on the menu almost daily. I'm going to put some in omelets tonight. The peony bed is looking good – weeds are mostly gone and the old, dead lavender plants have been replaced by creeping sedum, which is a natural mulch that spreads itself every year. That's my kind of mulch.

I put cardboard down between the asparagus plants and brought a couple loads of mulch from a big pile we have on the side of the field we like to call our "back yard." That pile has been decaying for a couple of years now, and is perfect for weed-suppressing duty. Except for two things.

One of the best garden tool investments
I've ever made. This thing really gets a workout!

As I was working on filling up my large rolling bucket, I thought I was running into the blackberry brambles that have grown up there. (Volunteer blackberries is Thing One.)

When I actually looked to see what was sticking my ankles, I saw Thing Two: ants. Crazy, biting, red ants. Thousands of them. The entire mulch pile is teeming with them. (So gross.) I decided, after two loads of mulch, that it probably isn't the best idea to introduce ants into our living space: The asparagus bed is on the south side of our garage, and only a few feet from our house.

I'm still going to use it – it's a yuge pile, and perfect for spreading around the base of several trees, far away from the house. I'll be wearing tall muck boots, instead of sneakers, to fill the bucket however.

For the asparagus and flower beds, however, I'm heading to town later for bagged mulch. And hoping that having a ready supply will encourage me to keep working on the flower beds.

I have to pace myself (stamina still isn't where I'd like it to be), and I also have to believe that even as little as an hour of weeding a day will eventually result in garden beds worth looking at.

Thank you for your recent kind comments … I appreciate them, and you!

Here we go

Both of you know how much I love, love, love gadgets. While my husband some may see the FitBit as a very expensive pedometer, I see it as a great motivator. I had originally planned to wait until yesterday to create my account and begin tracking, but I actually set it up the day after I bought it. So I've been a FitBitter since December 27.

Will it help? Who knows? I'm still learning how to use it, but I'm already talking myself into doing things NOW, rather than later, to get a little more activity in.

For instance, we have a bench inside our front door where we deposit things – boxes, reusable shopping bags, tools – that need to be returned to the garage. Instead of waiting until there's an armload, I don't even put things on the bench. The more trips to the garage I make, the more steps I take. And yes, that's been true all along, but now I'm counting them. And not just counting the steps, but adding up miles and making this little flower grow.

Yesterday marked the end of my vacation from paleo. This holiday season I've eaten all the things you're not supposed to eat on a paleo plan – sugar, grains, dairy, legumes – and I'm paying for it with increased weight, aches and pains, and much lower energy levels.

If I want to feel well – not just good, but WELL – I need to feed myself well. Simple as that. And paleo works FOR ME. The refrigerator and pantry are stocked with plenty of vegetables and protein and I am ready to rock it. I hope to reach my weight goal by my birthday. In order to get there I need to lose slightly less than two pounds per week. Which seems like a lot, and might not happen, but I did it in 2013.

I want to clean my clothes closet today. I've been pretty good the past year about giving things away that I haven't worn or that don't fit, but I haven't taken everything out of the closet and really assessed what works and what doesn't.

One thing I'm NOT getting rid of, no matter how big and sloppy it looks when I wear it, is my Ohio State University sweatshirt. I was only able to stay awake for the first quarter, which was fairly disappointing. To wake up and learn that the Buckeyes won was quite the happy surprise! I think my old sweatshirt will be a major part of my wardrobe between now and game day (Jan. 12).

Thanks for reading. Thanks for being supportive and thanks for sticking with this narcissistic collection of words, sentences and paragraphs. Both of you know I'm more than how I look or feel. But right now I'm seizing the moment and taking advantage of that whole fresh-start thing.

How about you?

Wow, what a long day

Hah.

I saw so many Facebook posts yesterday humorously referring to the summer solstice, such as "looks like it's gonna be a long day," and "this day goes on and on."

But you know what? It was still just 24 hours, like the one before and like today. I hope you spent yours wisely.

I did not walk. I had a lot of trouble getting motivated to do anything yesterday for some reason. Maybe because the day just stretched e-n-d-l-e-s-s-l-y ahead of me. I finally got outside around noon to work on the perennial beds that line our driveway.

Those large maples in the yard on either side of the driveway drop their leaves, as maples do, and I hadn't yet raked from last fall. I like leaving them there over the winter, offering a bit of protection to the plants. But I gotta be honest, the driveway is the last garden area on my list of beds to tend. Maybe because I don't look at it every day.

At any rate … both sides (about 100 feet from one end to the other, so 200 feet of garden space) are now cleared of leaves. Many wheelbarrows full, dumped along the edge of the "lawn" so that if I need the leaves for compost I can easily retrieve them. Next I need to clear out the weeds to make room for new plants.

The only thing that has survived over the years are day lilies, ornamental grasses and Autumn Joy sedum. When I pulled all those leaves away, I found a tiny hosta with only two leaves and a white astilbe, already flowering. Quelle surprise! I'll probably move both of them to the brick planters in front of the house.

I talked with my friend who owns Groundworks, and we think a combination of grasses, spirea and a low-growing sedum would provide a low-maintenance solution to the problem of now what? I have plenty of creeping sedum around the front yard flower bed and it's spreading like crazy. Free plants! Might as well relocate it from where it doesn't belong, right? Better than just attacking it with a hoe.

At any rate, that was my first-day-of-summer activity. My shoulders and back are a little sore, in a good way, because I don't use those muscles just walking up and down the hills on our road. But I also didn't log any miles. Grrr. I probably could have taken a walk before all that yard work. But I know me, and I know if I had, I wouldn't have done the work. And I was much too tired afterward to walk even one mile.

I did take a walk through the vegetable garden after dinner. The summer squash is beginning to bloom, I picked three more cherry tomatoes and I think the beets have started coming up. They're slow germinators and there are already lots of weeds in that row. I'll have to wait until what I think are beets get a little more mature before I tackle that job. The winter squash is coming along, too, as are the green beans. If I can keep the deer out, this might be a decent garden year.

Have a good, good Sunday. I'm taking a long walk this morning and hope to work on those driveway weeds later today. If I don't … they'll be there tomorrow.

Swing … and a miss

Missed my 35-mile goal by three this week. Yes, I could go out right now, and I thought about it. But I'm really not very awake.

I'll be on the road for much of the day, and there will be no opportunity to work it in later. But it's fine. I'm more than a little compulsive about this, wouldn't you say? Heh.

It's been a good week, all in all, even missing a couple days of walking. Food has been fine, and I'm accomplishing a few little outdoor projects that have been on my list. The garden is completely weeded unless something has popped up overnight.

I started cleaning out the perennial beds lining the driveway yesterday – a HUGE job and one that will take several days to complete. But the nice thing about starting is the gratification I get from looking at the cleaned-out section, and looking forward to seeing all of it done and ready to plant.

I also cut back some kind of shrub that was blocking our view of oncoming traffic as we exited the driveway … wouldn't want to pull out in front of a horse and buggy! I have a grand plan for the whole sloping area to the left of the driveway. It constantly needs to be cut back, so I'd like to put down a cardboard kill mulch this fall and then plant sedum (which I can dig up from other areas of the yard – yay! Free plants!) and let it spread. I have some zebra grasses at the top of the slope which are teeny tiny now, but will be lovely when they mature.

Three areas remain that need lots of attention, and one is the herb bed, which I can barely force myself to look at. It was so pretty when I planted it, and it's such a mess now. The others are a tiny bed of peonies which needs to be weeded and the blackberries need a major cutting back. The old canes are growing every which way and the flowers are on the new growth, so I don't think I'll hurt anything by chopping them.

What I'm finding with all this yard work is that I absolutely CAN do a couple hours' of hard labor AND take a long walk AND do laundry/fix meals/clean the house/go shopping ALL on the same day. That couldn't and didn't happen 46 pounds ago. More incentive to keep doing what I've been doing.

Here's to a good week coming up – for all of us!

Today's the day

I'll be back on track this afternoon, with a date for an outdoor walk. It should be somewhat warmish (low 40s) by 2 p.m., so we're outta here!

I walked around Tiny Kroger yesterday (alas, no other intentional activity), and was kind of astonished at how busy it was. Also? I was kind of glad to be out of the house. That short trip did as much good for my mind as it did for my pantry.

And the vegetable drawer, which now overfloweth! I still have some eating issues with firm foods, but woman cannot live on soup alone. I bought cauliflower to roast and broccoli to steam and a bright red pepper to add to something. I should have bought sweet potatoes; I didn't know the ones I had on hand were well past their prime. I also bought fresh organic spinach for my smoothies and a bunch of fresh cilantro just because. I can afford to throw away 65¢ worth of cilantro if I don't use it, as long as buying it means Tiny Kroger will keep stocking it.

In fact, if they keep stocking it, I might begin referring to them as Medium Kroger.

Somewhere in the meat department I realized Easter is this Sunday. (All the treats I made have been received, so in my mind Easter is done and dusted.) All those people in the grocery were stocking up for Easter. I added a pork tenderloin to my cart in case we decide to have a nicer-than-normal Sunday dinner.

I'm hopeful that today's walk will get me out of my doldrums and over this slump. I'm not doing myself any favors by being so sluggish after that good weigh-in Monday. I'm doing fine with the calories, not so fine with the macronutrient percentages. Carbs are still my major food group, but at least they are mostly vegetable and fruit carbs and not the starchy, sugary kind.

I'm also hopeful that yesterday marked the end of really cold temperatures. Forty is not really cold, just kind of cold. I'm ready for kind of cold. DID YOU HEAR THAT, MOTHER NATURE?