Ups and Downs
I wrote last week’s blog late on Sunday night after three days in a car driving from Canada to South Carolina with two dogs and a cat and John. I was exhausted. This is not a good recipe for writing anything let alone a blog that goes out to a lot of people on Monday morning and gets posted on Facebook and Twitter. It is also not a good idea to write it after a couple of well earned glasses of wine! So, the new me is going to make an effort to write the blog a little bit earlier and with a lot more care. The only time I do not use my computer to write is when I am on the road traveling and do not take my computer with me just my iPad. It is very difficult to write on the iPad as I am a typist and much prefer a keyboard over the popup thing on the iPad. I type about as fast as I think which may or may not be a good thing. However, it is also a whole lot easier to proof things on a computer and to see layouts and typeface and how photographs appear.
Have spent some considerable time reading a book called “The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook: A Delicious Alternative for Lifelong Health” written by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. The link will take you to her page on Amazon. The diet itself is a healthy one and it supports heart health which I am very interested in doing. For the last few years I have strived to eat as healthy as possible. I gave up sugar, flour, white potatoes and as many preservatives as I could. I read labels and if I cannot pronounce an item or there are more than five ingredients I don’t eat it. I may buy it for others in my household but I try to avoid anything artificial that I can. Recently I had a cup of decaf coffee, something else that I have given up for over four years now, and had some creamer of some sort in it. The initial taste was that it was sweet but then there was an awful aftertaste. I am now back to herbal tea with lemon in the morning. The coffee thing lasted two days. The other thing I tried was some store bought trail mix. When I tell you that I could smell the chemicals in it and that it tasted like gasoline I am serious. John and I have made trail mix from scratch at home and it never tastes like that unless something goes bad. Back to the diet thing. I started reading the book on “Kindle” and became so overwhelmed that I decided I needed to buy the actual book. Thanks to Christmas shopping I had so many credits on Amazon the book didn’t cost me anything. Yippee.
WebMD says “The Promise: Delicious food that’s stood the test of time and helps keep you healthy for years to come. That’s at the heart of the traditional Mediterranean diet“. Fresh food, fruits and plant based items, beans, nuts and seeds, lots of fish and minimal amounts of animal fat and protein and water to drink. You are allowed a glass of red wine too! So stay tuned as I experiment with this style of eating for the next few months.
What Happened This Week
It was a week that brought some sadness into our house. On Tuesday we had to say goodbye to another fur baby, our beautiful Maine Coon cat Portia. She appeared to not be feeling well as we left Canada for South Carolina but was still eating. By the time we got here she was no longer interested in food and was hiding under the bed. We took her to the vet on Tuesday morning and it was discovered that she had a mass in her abdomen and fluid around her heart. It was a decision made simultaneously by our wonderful vet, Jessica, who was in tears as she told us the news and John. I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that we have lost four fur babies in 10 months. However, they were all older, except for Olivia our gray cat, who was 20 which is really old. The others were 11 1/2 to 12 1/2. However, we still have Miss Q who is 11 1/2 (oops, not an auspicious age) and our beautiful new pup, Winchester who is only four months. I think now it is important to have a younger pet around.
We came home from that devastating, to us, morning and decided to go for a walk to try and get our equilibrium back. As we passed a neighbors driveway we noticed that there was someone on the ground and others were performing CPR. The security and emergency vehicles had not yet arrived. As we know the couple and the man’s wife had just come out the front door as we were passing I went to comfort her and see what I could do. Unfortunately her husband was dead probably before he hit the ground which in its own way was a blessing. There was nothing the emergency personnel could do for him. I was glad to be there for her as it would have been much worse for her to be alone and certainly to have been out there while they worked on her husband. This way I could be a bit of a buffer between the drama in the driveway and her.
I have to say that the walk didn’t do much for our equilibrium but it certainly put things in perspective for us both. RIP to our friend and to our fur baby.
Exercise is High on the List
This was a good week for exercise. We are back in South Carolina where there is no ice on the sidewalks and the weather has been absolutely glorious. I found my Fitbit charger so charged up the Fitbit and got off the couch and out there. We walked the dogs on Oak Island for four mornings and really enjoyed it but on the fourth day as I was walking home from there I noticed a tick on Wyke’s head then…..I noticed about 20 others all over him, legs, back, head and tail. Gross!!!! I guess the extraordinary warm weather for January has brought them out in droves or else he stepped in a nest somehow. Not sure but I am not a big fan of ticks so we are back to walking around the neighborhood. Will wait and see if we get some cold weather back and if so will try again out there. It is a great place to walk and so pretty plus the dogs can be off leash and when other dogs are around they can run and play.
In addition to the walking, John and I are back to golfing on the Restricted Golf Package which means we can play anytime after 1:00pm as often as we like. We had three days of 9 holes each day which was perfect. We both enjoy it and can easily fit 9 holes into our day along with dog walking and everything else that is going on. I added Zumba and Yoga back into my routine and am really happy to have done so. John has added tennis. So we are back to being really active again. However, I must say that we were not slouching in Canada we did get out every day for a walk or a snowshoe and snowshoeing is a really good exercise.
We participated in a 5K Resolution Run for Habitat for Humanity on Saturday morning with both dogs. Over 200 people were there and after the runners and the walkers left, those with dogs headed out. There were 25+ dogs there and they all got along. What a fun sight that was. Our dogs, especially Wyke, loved it. He had never seen so many people in one place at the same time nor had he ever seen so many dogs. He found his buddies pretty easily though and what fun they all had. This was a big week overall for exercise and I was able to post 55.56 points for my contribution to the 2017 Virtual Fitness Challenge.
Recipe of the Week
Sweet Potato Chili
In Canada I have been buying from a local farm stand a homemade vegetarian chili. It has only fresh ingredients and no artificial fillers so I feel pretty much ok about eating it. I decided though that I wanted to make my own vegetarian chili so I did this week. I have eaten it almost every day for lunch. We usually have a salad with dinner at night and I always make too much on purpose so my lunch consists of left over salad and a small cup of the chili. It is very satisfying and filling as well as healthy. Here is the recipe.
[mpprecipe-recipe:68]
Big Congratulations to my brother on the birth of his grand daughter born Sunday, January 15th. All well!
