Skip to main content

Break from Blogging

Over the past few weeks, I've been on a break from blogging. In anticipation of a visit by my best friend (from out of state), I whipped the yard into shape. I weeded, planted, trimmed, and hauled about 10 lawn and leaf bags' worth of trimmings to the alley. It still looks a bit like a "before" picture, but an unusually cold spring has put everything behind, and the yard is designed to explode into blooms in summer.













I've also been painting. The last time I painted the living and dining rooms was almost 15 years ago and it was time for a fresh coat. I didn't finish, but I'm off to a good start.









Since my friend arrived, we've been cycling around Denver, shopping, dancing, clubbing, drinking, and eating gourmet food (her generous description of my cooking, and honest assessment of most of the meals we've eaten at restaurants--from a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place on Federal to a high-end Italian wine bar on Wynkoop). We've even had time to do some online value investing and visit our new acquisition: Gamestop.

I wish I'd had the energy to do all of this in my 20s and 30s. (I'm 42.) I credit the change in my diet (low-carb, high-fat, no grains) and taking a gaggle of minerals every day for my increased energy. That's mostly what I changed in the past year and a half. (Well, that and buying smaller pants.) Not having to spend much time working out helps, too: I have the time and energy to dance and garden instead.

When we visited Gamestop, it struck me that they deal in fantasy: regardless of what your fantasy is, they have a game for you to play it out. Now, I love games--if I had an Xbox or Nintendo or Wii and a few games, I'd be up until 3 a.m. playing them. Not good when you have to be on a bus at 7 a.m. to go to work. But over the past year, I've been able to accomplish things I very much wanted to do--fixing up the house and yard and having good times with my best friend. No Sims, Monopoly or dancing games needed.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...
15 comments
Read more

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Why I've stopped eating fermented foods

I'm finally getting answers about weird health problems that have kept coming and going over the years for no reason I could ever explain: pounding heart, bloating, insomnia, heat intolerance, intolerance of high-fat meals, and getting winded easily even though I'm physically fit. These health problems all came roaring in at once this spring when I did a huge landscape project, pushing through it even while I had a cold. The yard looks fabulous, but I ended up with A three-week cold Post-viral syndrome for another few weeks An ongoing cough  Insomnia (tired but wired late at night) A puffy face, especially in the morning and after eating foods I’d previously tolerated (including SIBO yogurt) 6 pound weight gain TATT (tired all the time) Being easily winded Having a hard time cooling off Being sensitive to sunlight Grok (X’s AI feature) said this could be mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). Mast cells are immune system cells that put out pathogen-fighting and other substances ...
Post a Comment
Read more