The Raven's Roost

It's been a busy time for us recently, so I haven't been checking in here as much. Nothing bad is happening, just busy, yanno?

I made a trip down to Palm Coast to consult with a gastro about my liver enzymes, and he thinks my GP is overdoing it by asking for a liver biopsy. So this is good news for me, because I didn't want to get a liver biopsy, either. New doc recommended stopping vitamin D supplements, and said I may have a genetic predisposition to fatty liver. I must have looked at him weirdly because he explained that my dietary and exercise habits are likely to be holding worse problems at bay, since fatty liver often occurs with other lifestyle diseases as "metabolic syndrome," none of which I have. I did explain the reason I am still on blood pressure meds is that my body seems to have become dependent on them and I get massive rebound hypertension when I try to quit. Anyway, he's ordered a set of blood tests specifically looking at liver stuff, along with an imaging procedure to look for damaged tissue. I hate this.

Fox's physical therapy has finally started, and she wants him to do strengthening exercises. LOL I've been telling him that, too, but I'm also not going to rub it in. I am going to encourage him to keep up on it, and will let him know when I'm doing my lifting workouts so that hopefully it prompts him to do the stuff she's prescribed. I also need to take some video of his running for her so she can look more at his running gait. I think she did some gait analysis already but not a really deep dive or anything.

Today we're going to try to get more yard work done. I need to mow and trim again, and Fox is going to put the brush hog on the tractor and cut our walking trails in the Wayback again. I also have more garden plants to set out, though the colder weather at night right now is making me wonder if I'm too much ahead of myself, but I think they'll be okay. The potatoes are thriving for now, and I looked up when to start mounding dirt around them. Garlic is going to take a longer time. Some tomatoes are good to be planted, some aren't really sprouting, and I bought a bell pepper plant. I'm also going to get my soil tested soon, maybe run the samples over to UF and schedule that metabolic test while I'm there.

I never had a ton of social media accounts in the first place, but I'm considering deleting Facebook. I already tried deleting Instagram, which for some reason won't happen until the end of next month. I guess they need to send a tech into the server to hand-delete the data, and he's got to ride over to the office on a pack mule leaving out of Wichita with the next wagon train. Anyway that's obviously no big loss, and FB won't be either. My initial reason for having it was keeping up with some family members, but for the most part they have stopped posting, and they rarely, if ever, interacted with me when they were on. I don't know why I even bothered in the first place, they don't care, I don't either. The only social I'm thinking of keeping is Reddit and I'm honestly not sure why.

Once it gets into the 50s here I'm going to head out and run, then try to get my yard work done by around lunchtime. I don't want to be out there all day and burn myself out, so I plan to split things up between today and tomorrow.

I'm not sure I should actually be proud of this month's journal spread. XD



Anyway!

This past week has been busy. I've spent most of my days outside working on the yard, and this weekend we put in a lot of time getting the shed for the camper built. It's almost done, we just ran out of the small boards we're attaching the sheet metal roof to. But we put in a couple of seven hour days on that this weekend and I'm kind of tired, LOL. But it will be nice to have a place to keep the camper out of the weather - mostly the sun. Sun damage will age it faster than anything. We tried putting a tarp over it, but the tarp got a distressing amount of water underneath it, and that's also not good.

I'm back to running mostly. I've been reading on the Garmin Reddit about how people seem to like the suggested workouts as a base-building plan, so I'm going to try running its suggested workouts this week and see how it goes. Today it wants me to run ... a twelve minute mile. Well, I do run my "easy" workouts far too fast and hard, so maybe forcing myself to slow down might be helpful. Otherwise today I'm just catching up on household stuff left undone from the weekend and all my usual Monday things.

 After finishing up the deck projects, there was one other really major yard thing I wanted to tackle, and we got 90% of it done today. Along the road-facing side of the garage is where Fox stows the larger tractor implements, and the things he doesn't use as often had some major weeds growing up around them, and then along that same side of the driveway was getting junky. We cleared all that out and ran the mower, tore up the weed-trees (still don't know what they are, so weed trees for now) and dumped the old wood on the burn pile, and took the cement blocks, old pavers, and chunks of rock into the Wayback to fill in some holes. It looks SO much better, I'm really pleased with us. Next up I'd like to repair the garden fence, but that can be done next month.

The bao I made yesterday were excellent, and there was enough left over that we just warmed everything up and finished them off tonight. The buns themselves could probably have gone in the steamer to warm, as their texture suffered a little in the fridge. And the tofu nuggets always warm up better in the toaster oven, but when you're tired and hungry, nuking works just as well. 

I recently "finished" B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga, by which I mean I read the intro and his commentary in the front. The majority of the book is  descriptions and guides for the various asanas. One of the appendices is his suggested course of practice, which I've decided I'm going to work through. I don't exactly consider myself a high-level yogi, but I'm no beginner, and these "easy" poses kicked my ass. I had no idea my leg muscles were that comparatively weak. It's high time I went back to strength training. I'm also making it a flexibility goal to be able to touch my head to my knees, so I'm working more on forward bends. I've also stuck to my routine of doing the Five Tibetans in the mornings, missing only on average once a week.

I'd sort of like to go practice now, except I have cats snoozing on me and I hate to disturb them. They have absolutely no problems disturbing me when I'm asleep, so maybe I should pay them back in kind. I think they're also staking out spots for tonight, as it's supposed to get cold again - as in building a fire when I get up cold.