Time keeps on slippin'

Those of you of a certain age will recognize the subject line as the beginning of a song by the Steve Miller Band from, oh, (can it possibly be?) 30 years ago.

My, my, my, how time does fly.

Was I thinking about the passage of time as I listened to those lyrics half my life ago? I guarantee you I was not. Because when you're in your 20s and 30s, time is immaterial. If I don't get it done today, there's always tomorrow or next week or next month or next year. Or the year after that.

But when you're in your 50s and staring down 60, you begin to realize that, well, time keeps on slippin'.

I suppose these thoughts are spinning through my brain because my husband had a birthday yesterday. Last year was the big 6-5, and that was something to celebrate: Medicare! Hurrah! Now he can get sick and we don't have to worry about how to pay for it. For the record, he's actually gotten healthier, maintaining his 35-pound drop in weight when he retired (the first time) almost two years ago.

This year? Ho, hum, 66, no big deal. I fixed him a nice dinner (including his favorite soup) and gave him a blaze-orange hat to wear when he walks. It's hunting season here in the Middle of Nowhere and unless deer suddenly start sporting blaze-orange hats, I think he'll be safe walking outdoors. He requested an apple pie instead of a cake, so he got that, too.

None of us gets any younger, and time is limited. And fleeting. And precious. If I'm ever going to wear the too-small clothes in the spare-bedroom closet or run a marathon, I'd better get busy. Well, busiER, because I feel like I've been trying for-freaking-EVER!

I want my healthful meals and almost-daily walks to produce some weight-loss results. Apparently my healthful meals need to be more healthful and my almost-daily walks aren't enough. I'm taking this week to figure out yet another plan (I apologize to both of you whom I know are oh-so-tired of reading about yet another of Debbi's plans). I'll be traveling and won't be doing my own cooking, so this is a good week for planning rather than doing.

I need a big goal and some interim goals. I already have the deadline, which I'll write about later. I just need for time to stop slippin'.

The perfect pumpkins …

because they have no squishy guts! Heh.

Finished the pumpkin trick-or-treat bags over the weekend. These were knit with wool and then felted (fulled is the technically correct term) in the washing machine to shrink them into submission.

BEFORE
floppy, sloppy, wimpy

AFTER

sturdy, look like pumpkins

The "before" versions would probably hold more loot, but the "after" versions are cuter, doncha think?

To recap, the pattern is called 12:01, was developed by Nathania Apple and is available on Ravelry. If you're a knitter and you're not a Ravelry member, sign up now! It's free and fun and inspirational and a real time-suck. I'm not making that up. Heh.

P.S. My Ravelry ID is shrinkingknitter.

Friday Quote Day

"My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope."
~ Ovid

Once again, no formatting, as I have to send this post via e-mail due
to the CRAP internet connection here at Chez Dial-Up.

Before I say anything else, though, have you heard the news? President
Obama has been awarded the Noble Peace Prize! Quelle surprise!

The President staked his political future on hope during the campaign.
Hope and Change walked hand-in-hand throughout the primaries and right
up to election night.

Hope and Change moved in with me a long time ago, cheering me on to
fitness and good health. Despite my lack of weight-loss, they're still
hanging around, urging me to keep trying and to not give up. That's
their job, I guess. I'm tired of trying, but that doesn't mean I'll be
quitting any time soon.

You see, here's the thing: When I eat moderate portions of healthy,
home-cooked food, I feel good. It's not just a feel-good-physically
thing, either. I'm all about eating locally and cooking from scratch.
The local-ness of my pantry is a recent phenomenon, but I've been an
enthusiastic cook nearly all my life. So I feel good emotionally and
mentally and creatively and altruistically. When I cook food I've
grown myself or something I've bought from the farmer's market, I'm
not only saving money, I'm helping the earth, the farmer and myself.

The times when I've eaten the most processed and pre-packaged foods
were, unfortunately, when I was at my lowest weight. I say
"unfortunately" because if frozen low-cal dinners equal weight loss, I
might be tempted. Seriously, though, I wouldn't go back to those for
anything. Whatever they have to put in there to make them last as long
as they do *can't* be good for you.

Yesterday was a hard workout day, what with all the shoveling and
unloading and spreading of horse crap. Next week, after the final
tilling and smoothing, I can plant garlic and winter onions. My
mileage is way down this week, but that's kind of the way it's been
lately. A week of few miles follows a fantastic one. It all evens out,
I guess. If I could string a few high-mileage weeks together, I would
*hope* to see some *change.*

Down the home stretch

KNITTING
I'm nearly done with the fourth pumpkin trick-or-treat bag. Having four small grandchildren, three of whom are triplets, makes knitting just a bit more challenging. I'm guessing most of you knitters have experienced SSS* at some time or another during your knitting career. I'm having FSS with this project.

But I'm almost finished and then I can start something new. It really does feel like my knitting mojo is back; maybe the cooler weather had something to do with it.

GARDENING
Cool weather is a good thing this week. I've completely replanted (with lots of help) the flower bed at the entrance to our driveway. That was a hot and dirty job. Yesterday I had to water it and even two lengths of garden hose didn't reach all the way down the driveway, so I had to fill a bucket many times – I lost count – and dump water on each new plant. Not sure if that's better or worse than just standing there sprinkling from the hose, but it surely was better for my exercise plan du jour.

EXERCISE
I ran/walked yesterday morning, on my hilly road, and averaged 15-minute miles. The first mile is uphill all the way and usually takes between 18 and 19 minutes; the third mile is nearly as gruesome. Of course, that means the last mile (since I go out and back 2.5 miles) is pretty easy. I did it in 12 minutes yesterday, and that included a little walking at the end.

No running this morning, though. I have a date with a neighbor at 9 a.m. to shovel horse manure into the back of his truck and deposit it on my garden. After I spread that around, I have to spread about 100 pounds of organic fertilizer on it and then my other neighbor will be coming with his tiller to work it all in and smooth it all out.

That's about it for today. Hope yours is a good one!

*SSS = Second Sock (Sleeve) Syndrome

Pix

Extreme Edamame

Last week I spent about an hour picking the pods
from the edamame plants in my garden. Then I spent
about three hours shelling and blanching and
freezing, oh my. It's actually quite astonishing
how very small the harvest was, when compared
to the lushness of the plants in the ground.

Extreme Garden

The upper picture was taken at about 10:30 a.m. yesterday.
That's my neighbor on his little combination tiller/frontloader.
The lower picture was taken at 1 p.m.
The garden is now slightly wider and twice as long.
I'm a farmer! Heh.

Fall has fallen

Check out this week's forecast:

What a great week it should be for outdoor activities, starting with putting the garden to bed, which is supposed to happen this morning.

There are three pepper plants left, and the peppers are immature, so I think I'll have to sacrifice them to the deer. Something – I'm not sure what – chomped into one (not the biggest, which I immediately plucked from the plant and am hoping will eventually turn red), and perhaps that same something stripped all the leaves from one of the plants. I guess my little twine fence was doing some good after all. (I took it down last week.)

Last week was pretty busy. My Mac G5 has been cranky and slow, so I've been spending the time I would have been surfing the internet (heh) on purging stuff from my hard drive. So far I have recovered more than 10GB of space. Ran a couple system utilities until I was able to connect to the internet smoothly, then downloaded and ran a few more.

One of my biggest issues has been the inability to send an attachment with an e-mail message. While it still takes a long time (a 40MB message took seven minutes to send yesterday), at least I can now accomplish that task. Most of the time.

And speaking of sending, I took the bold move of deleting the entire "Sent" folder in my mail application. More than 3000 messages (including one called "If Spiderman were gay," which was hilarious in 2003) gone! Whoosh!

I walked a total of 36.6 miles last week, burned more than 3600 calories, ate moderate amounts of healthful, home-cooked food and gained 1.5 pounds. Oh, well. I would feel so much better running if I weighed less, and I'd probably weigh less if I could start running again. It's a problem I've been trying to solve for a couple of years now. I guess one of my virtues is patience, although it's beginning to wear thin. Heh.

I'm nearly done knitting the third of four pumpkin trick-or-treat bags. One is for my younger granddaughter and the other three are for the triplet grandsons. I have a short list of projects that should take me through fall: a Doddy, three Christmas stockings and a Big Bad Baby Blanket. Maybe then I can finish my periwinkle blue cardigan.

Did you imagine you'd get away from here without a bit of politics? I don't think so. The health care debate goes on and on and on, when the simplest solution is still HR676. There's too much money in politics, and that's the truth.

And speaking of money, my husband and I went to see Capitalism: A Love Story yesterday. This may be Michael Moore's best film yet. The trouble is he's preaching to the choir. The theatre was packed, and no one was disagreeing with anything they saw or heard. And the applause at the end was spontaneous and robust. Moore might change the minds and hearts of some right-wing conservatives if they would only listen to what he has to say.

Maybe when it goes to DVD, he should package it in a Chuck Norris box.

Missing in Action

You know how you get into the habit of doing something one way, and
any other way of doing that thing feels uncomfortable? Well that's the
way it is with blogging for me.

I usually log into my blogger account, choose "Create Post" and say
what I want to say.

My computer has been having temper tantrums all week long. I've been
cleaning, tossing, purging and generally spiffing it up (by making it
leaner and meaner) but I STILL can't get my Blogger account to load.

It might be the computer but it more likely is the phone line I use to
connect to the internet.

I still can't send e-mails with attachments, either.

It's all very frustrating and I wish it would all just fix itself,
kind of like that cyst on my ankle did. Not likely to happen.

Anyway, I just wanted to check in and I hope I can get someone from
the phone company to come out next week to see if there's a problem
with the line. The bigger problem is they don't guarantee service for
data transfer. The biggest problem is there's no high-speed option
here in the Middle of Nowhere.