Skip to main content

Hot!

It was great day of having fun and getting things done: I mowed the lawn, trimmed the collards, cleaned the basement, and went to the festival across the street. I'm tired and a little sore--but what a difference from last year when a few hours' worked rehabbing the garage left me feeling like I'd been run over. Three weeks' chiropractic care, yoga and B. coagulans turned things around. I also started sitting ankle-on-knee more, something I read at Sal Di Stefano's site. He's a personal trainer that Dr. Davis had on the Zoom meeting this week. It seems to help. 

Since it's too hot and humid now to sleep well, and I'm too environmentally conscious (read: cheap) to set the air conditioner lower, I sleep in the basement. After five years' living here, the basement accumulated enough crud and clutter to need a good cleaning. I'd put it off for weeks because cleaning and decluttering distresses me more than surgery or a root canal. My mother (a hoarder) used to get mad at me if I tried to clean up and get mad at me if I didn't. Plus, all the paint cans reminded me of my mad, stressful dash to move here, and trying to deal with the paint cans that couldn't simply be thrown out. 

So I took my laptop downstairs, created a document on my Google drive, and listed all the paint colors, brands, finishes and rooms they went with so I'll have the information after I take the old paint to Tox Drop in a few weeks. I tossed some stuff and reorganized the rest. Then I vacuumed--even the walls had to be vacuumed to get rid of the sawdust from my garage rehab project. I moved the bed frame, dragged the mattress downstairs, took the papasan chair and my dog's bed down, set up my tactical nightstand, and called it a day. 

Festival in 2019.

I was hungry and there was a festival across the street. I figured getting some nachos (which I do about once a year) would be good positive reinforcement for taking on the basement. It felt strange to go somewhere without a mask. (The festival was all outdoors and there's no outdoor mask mandate here.) Oddly, the dozen or so people with masks all looked like minors or very young adults. A few people past that age were wearing masks under their chin. Did I mention it's hot and humid here--and it's barely June? None of the grown-ups pulled up their mask at any point as far as I could tell--it was just too hot even at dinner time. Same thing at McDonald's when I got a sundae (hey, it was hot and I was still hungry). The kitchen employees had their masks down. I've worked in a restaurant kitchen: they're hot. 

Not that people are big on masking outdoors when it isn't hot--fans at the Indy 500 last weekend were mostly barefaced. But summer will probably force the few holdouts to unmask outdoors. We can look at Marion County coronavirus stats next week, but I doubt they'll show any effect, just as Thanksgiving and Christmas didn't. 

Things are getting back to normal around here. I'm puttering around the house and yard like my old self. I enjoyed live music today. Job opportunities are so hot that the unemployed no longer receive federal benefits and have to prove they're looking for work to collect state benefits. Virus variants? Over half the samples tested have a variant, mostly the one from Kent. None of the known variants is spread easily outside. So get outside--"it's important for mental health, it's important for physical health, it's important at just about every level possible." 


It's also easier to put up with heat when you're outside--and right now, it's...

Labels:

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…
Here in the UK our Covid restrictions are being eased a little, which is good.
I agree it is so nice to be outside, we should make the most of it!
I like your Ella Fitzgerald choice:)

All the best Jan
June 06, 2021
Lori Miller said…
That song reminds me of dancing at the Denver Turnverein before they had air conditioning.

Hope you get back to normal soon.
June 06, 2021
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more