Jungle Janie's Raw Vegan Blogspot

Food For Week-ish II: Dec 14th w/Jack and Darrel

2011-12-19T17:55:00.000-10:00

I just finished editing another Food For The Week-ish video we filmed after the farmer's market on Wednesday with Zack and Darrel (who was filming).

Enjoy! :)

Oh, and the apple bananas and longans were for Darrel, so he's the "you" I'm referring to there. He was filming and had the camera on a tripod base that had issues, hehe. He also had some of the oranges and citrus with me.

I think I'm getting the hang of the new video editing application I'm using now, so I should have more videos coming in the next few weeks. :)

Overt Fat-Free Me! :)

2011-07-17T21:24:00.001-10:00

Okay, so I've been considering this off and on for a while now. I've decided to go overt-fat free as my "regular" status rather than a "sometimes" thing. I don't know if I'll have enough of a steady supply of things to be able to go overt fat-free forever, but I'm a-gonna' try.

I've noticed repeatedly that I feel better and seem to be doing better without the overt fats IF I get enough calories with fruit otherwise, that is. That has been a challenge with some of the banana famine situations and such, but I think I've got it figured out either way now. I may resort to partial dehydrating and/or freezing things and raisins at times if needed, but I think I'll do better with that than with the overt fats.

If I do have overt fats it will be in smaller amounts as well. No more eating too much overt fats then doing none for a while to balance it out. I'm gonna' keep the total fats to 10% or lower every day, not just as an average. Well, that's the plan at least. We'll see how that goes.

So far it's been going fairly well.

Today I ate:

watermelon
bananas
papayas

The day before I think it was:

watermelon
papayas
mango
something else I can't remember now, hehe

The day before that it was:

papayas
longan
mango
lettuce
tomatoes

I don't remember the day before that, but it was overt fat-free too, and a few days before that I believe as well. :) I think that may be the day I splurged on organic cherries (which don't grow here so they were $8/lb eek!) - tasty though. :) I've been having a lot of pineapple too, but not the past few days 'cause of all the watermelon and papaya and mango, hehe. Oh, and I made a cauliflower tabouli the other day too... Lately though, I've been more into just eating the food straight-up like it grows pretty much. Makes sorta' boring pics, hehe, which is part of the reason I haven't been taking them...

I'll try to start taking pics of it again for ya' anyway.

Aloha!

Food today

2011-07-03T12:28:00.005-10:00

So I think I'll be able to at least record most of the food I eat, which is something a lot of people ask about...

Here's what I've eaten today:

small pineapple and 2 medium mango chopped and mixed together
2 fuji apples and 9 medjool dates
green grapes
5 large tangerines
cucumber juice, cucumber noodles, tomato-celery-red bell pepper sauce

Again, it's all locally grown except the apples, grapes, celery, red bell pepper & dates, which were all organic. Hehe, I suppose that's most of what I ate today. Yeah, I didn't have ripe bananas or papayas today, and didn't have enough ripe mango ... so ate a sort of hodge-podge of stuff.

back again! :)

2011-07-02T15:31:00.004-10:00

Yeah, so my site's been sorta' neglected here for a while. Sorry. Poor cobbler's kids you are ...

I've been working on the FoodnSport site makeover recently and expect that I'll be able to start a makeover for this site too ... in a few months. I'm doing some preliminary things here and there as well, so there will be new life here in the not too distant future. :)

In the meantime, I'm going to try to blog here as I can.

As a start, here's what I ate yesterday and today:

Yesterday I had:

mangoes
bananas (lady finger & apple types)
jicima "rice" with tomato-celery-red bell pepper sauce
about a cup of kalamansi juice

All is locally grown, except the celery and bell pepper

Today I had:

one small-ish pineapple
papayas (didn't eat the two small ones in the back-left corner)
bananas (large lady finger, small-ish apple banana types)
3 large tangerines
Forgot to take a pic of the rest: white mushrooms and tomatoes dipped into tahini-kalamansi dip

All is locally grown except the mushrooms and tahini. The papaya is from our farm.

Sorry no more time right now. I'll try to check in more often! :)

videos for FAQ via FoodnSport YouTube channel

2010-11-28T13:41:00.000-10:00

People often ask me questions about fasting and I usually tell them that the only kind of fasting I recommend is supervised Natural Hygienic fasting, where you consume only water while supervised by a qualified health professional. There are only two people I know of that are qualified enough for me to recommend for supervising a fast of any kind, one of whom is not supervising fasts ATM. The other is Dr. Doug Graham from FoodnSport.com. He holds a fast or two a year in Costa Rica around the end/beginning of the calendar year, and did a short one in Washington this past September.

The next opportunity to fast with Dr. Graham is coming soon: Dec 31st-Feb 5th 2011. You can get more info. and register at http://foodnsport.com/events/fasting.html

I've started to do some slide show videos of various events for FoodnSport and just did one about the fast in Costa Rica. Here it is from FoodnSport's YouTube channel:

But don't stop there, at least I wouldn't. There are lots of other videos on the FoodnSport channel of Dr. Graham and Prof. Rozalind Guben Graham speaking on a variety of Natural Hygienic (science of health) topics at http://www.youtube.com/user/FoodnSport

These will surely answer many of your questions, and possibly raise more. It's a great resource for free self-education.

Enjoy & Aloha! :)

Back from FoodnSport Events now :) and more...

2010-09-26T16:19:00.002-10:00

I had a great time creating and sharing and meeting up with everyone and all at the FoodnSport events this month. It's always such fun to spend time together... such terrific people and activities and food and fun and everything! :)

I got more involved with the kitchen and recipes and stuff this year. I had started to do a little bit with the recipes last year, but not much. I was mainly doing carvings and decoration rather than recipes. This time I worked with Simon a lot, especially at first, to do some cultural themes and translate iconic sorts of recipes and such. It was fun to share and use my culinary, artistic and creative skills in the kitchen to further create the ambiance experience as well. We had so many ideas and were crazy enough to try to do all the ones we had enough to do a whole theme with. LOL It worked out, we spent a lot of time at first (during the Culinary events mostly) experimenting and translating recipes, then deciding which dishes to do and planning the execution and timing of it all and such. We had a few special consultant connections too... I called upon my son's knowledge of Japan for pronunciation, ambiance and protocol and Simon called upon his girlfriend's knowledge of Poland for recipes, ambiance and tradition. And, yes, the Internet was a big help, and Darrel helped find information for me when our Internet connection was too slow to use.

Simon and I worked on things secretly and did top secret experiments of our ideas late at night when people weren't around, or when we thought people wouldn't notice or know just what the end-product was going to be. Even though we were sleepy, we had fun creating and joking around and such, enjoying the process. It was fun to surprise even the people who were helping us with things too. Once Health and Fitness Week was going full-steam we needed to let others "in" on it in order to get it accomplished and that was fun too, as they added their own touches to things as well. I ended up using a few of the recipes from some of my unfinished books, creating new ones, enjoying creating things with Simon, and getting to experience the ones Simon came up with as well. It was a terrific synergistic experience that I hope to continue.

Simon and I decided to write a book with the recipes and are working on that now. I'm hoping that working with someone else will help me actually finish a book, for once. LOL I have SO many unfinished ones... I'm hoping that the momentum will allow me to finish all the stuff I've wanted to share with all of y'all - or at least some of it too.

I've had strong votes that I should finish the book about how to translate recipes into 80-10-10 acceptable recipes first, so I'll be trying to get that one done at the same time as the one with Simon. It's become quiet apparent that the combination of cooking, painting, sculpture and other experiences I've had helps me to have the knowledge of tastes, textures, colors, etc. that helps one translate recipes that isn't as apparent to others. I definitely think it can be learned. So that book in particular has stood out as what's needed from me most in particular to share with the world. It was fun to share it at this past event and fun to experience the results. It will be great to experience what recipes other people translate and create as a result of that additional knowledge too.

But I also have another thing I might pop in before that 'cause it might get completed quicker... "101 Napkin Folds and Designs". If you're familiar with my blog or know me, you're probably saying to yourself, "but what about those other books?".. yeah, I haven't forgotten about them, or the video series... they're in the pile of unfinished things, heh. I'm more motivated than ever now to get at least some of it all done this year. Wish me luck! :)

I'll post some of my pics from this year's event on my Flickr and Facebook pages sometime within the next week. Some of them I'll be using for the book, so those won't be posted 'till the book is done. I'm also working on a few short video slide shows with music of the culturally inspired meals we did and will let y'all know when they're done, probably embedding them here as well.

It was great to see my dad and step-mom again this year, even if my dad wasn't feeling 100% and all at the time. I also finally was able to meet up with some of my friends from High School that still live in that area, which was fun too. We met up at the park in the center of town and met up with some other people who went to our High School. It was like a little class reunion... but from several different classes, heh. I noticed pine needles on the ground there and decided to try to make a pine needle basket with them.. had wanted to try that at some point. I took the opportunity and it came out pretty well. I gave it to my step-mom. Here's a pic from my Flickr site:

It started to get cold in the evening so we went to the "old pizza hangout" and had dinner - they have a really good salad bar there too, which is cool, so it was perfect. :) There was no problem finding food there or when visiting at my dad's, right in my dad's town, even though I was eating overt fat-free and banana-free at the time. There's a great gym in that town too, which I used when there before, but forgot that I'd need closed toe athletic shoes for a gym when packing. I figured I didn't need them since I was gonna' go barefoot or use the "Invisible Shoe" thingies I planned to make while there... Oh well, had my homemade exercise bands and a jump rope and lotsa' floor and ground to do stuff instead. Honestly though, a lot of the time I had for working out was spent simply catching up on my sleep. Well needed, well spent. My natural rhythms were a bit off too since my dad is a night owl of sorts and doesn't get together until after 2pm in general, more like 6 or 7pm when he's not 100%.. so I ended up staying up late to spend time with him. Well needed, well spent. ;)

I did get the sandals done, right before leaving my dad's and got to break 'em in when I visited Stef. After my visit at my dad's I did a quick visit with my friend Stef. She's got a blog too, if you're not familiar with it check it out: MangoGirl.net We met when she attended her first Health and Fitness Week a few years back and hit it off right away. It was so good to see her again and spend time together. She treated me so well.. the murphy bed was terrific, love what she's done with the place, the food was perfect, meeting some of her friends and the little dinner party was fun, and the walks were great! :) Her waking rhythms are more like mine so it gave me a bit of readjusting back to a more natural waking schedule for myself as well, which was a perfect transition into the FoodnSport events too. Just what I needed. Thanks Stef! :)

It's funny how most people say I'm a really easy house guest 'cause they don't have to cook or make meals for me and at the same time I think I'm in such luxury. LOL It's so nice to be able to travel and visit people and eat the way I like at the same time. My dad and step-mom don't eat like me, but give me space to do what I want and get the food I want. Stef eats like me so she knows what I like and already had it. Nice.

That reminds me of how nice it was to be picked up from the shuttle on the way to the FoodnSport events and be handed a bag of grapes once I sat in the FoodnSport rental van. Perfect! Just what I needed after a flight. Thanks Grant &/or whomever's idea it was to do that! :)

K, so since I seem to be onto the travel food topic... I had a great time enjoying all sorts of foods I don't have practical access to at home. Exotic foods for me such as: strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupe & similar melons, stone fruits and other fruits of deciduous plants and/or those needing a cold season. :) At my dad's I was having melons for breakfast, stone fruits and/or apples/pears with dates for lunch, and a dinner salad of baby spinach, heirloom tomatoes, celery and occasionally other veggies (including Spring Mix, cabbage, red bell pepper) with chopped strawberries and lemon juice. I'd often eat a bunch of berries before the salad as well. Yum! :) I have a pic of one of those salads on the last blog entry.

It's been harder and harder to figure out what to take on the plane with me to/from Hawaii as there are restrictions on fresh produce. I used to be able to just make a gallon of smoothie or something and take that, but since the Sept. 11 attack and the ensuing security dance at the airports now I can't take that or any dressings or anything liquid, paste or jell-like either. The main things I've been able to figure out are dates, raisins (or other dried fruit) and celery, so I had dates and celery for the trip home and it worked out just right. I took bananas to the airport and ate 'em after checking in during that extra 2 hours you have to be there early for before the flight. I ate all the dates on the plane and almost all of the celery too. I also travel with a water bottle with an activated carbon filter built into a straw so that I can empty it before security and then refill at a water fountain after security and before boarding the flight. It works well for a lot of traveling situations, but not for camping as it only filters municipal water sorts of stuff. K, so back to my trip...

I had a few bananas at Stef's after not having any for quite some time (a few months? I'm not sure how long) just to see if I needed to let people at FNS know I was doing banana-free or not. They worked fine so I figured I'd not be banana-free there. I also figured that it there were overt fat dishes, the overt fats would be so minimal that I'd be fine in that way too, so didn't give any special instructions. It worked out fine for me, there were only two dishes I avoided: one student dish had a lot of avocado so I only had one taste 'cause I didn't want to do that much overts then (and ate the other dishes which worked well); and the other thing I avoided was durian, as it burns my mouth and I can't eat it. So I had other things that lunch, no biggie.

I usually don't do any dehydrated foods, and not very many herbs, but we did quite a few meals this time with partially dehydrated ingredients and fresh herbs creatively for the cultural meals. They were party food, special occasion gourmet stuff, but still low fat raw vegan, just not the most ideal (as the most ideal is mono-eating things freshly picked in the form that they grow in.. fruits and tender greens). That worked for me as well. Time well spent, well enjoyed. It was fun to experience the sense of traveling with food that is acceptably 80-10-10 as well. I'm glad we did it. We'll probably do more...

I've heard rumors that next year's Health and Fitness Week will be a Yoga related one. This year it was ultra endurance related. They always cover what's needed to succeed in the lifestyle for everyone, no matter how athletic (or unathletic) you are, or what your athletic focus is but there is sometimes an extra focus on a certain thing. That's what the Ultra was about this year and what the Yoga may be about next... It'll be fun either way. :) Hope to see you there next year. :)

I'll stop this post now as it's gotten rather large again. Time to go work on the pics and books and such, right? ;)

Have a great one & aloha!

-Janie :)

Gettin' Ready for FoodnSport events @ Cedar Springs! :) - and general update

2010-08-24T13:59:00.004-10:00

So, yeah, I've sucked at keeping up with this blog. Sorry folks. Life happened.. and death.. long story, lotsa' details, will spare ya'...

I'm on the Mainland already, visiting relatives, and will be doing ambiance at FoodnSport's Culinary Workshop I all the way through Ultra Health and Fitness Week. It's gonna' be fun! :) Great to see everyone I haven't seen in a while and meet new terrific people as well! :)

Food

So, people often email me and ask me, "What'cha eatin' lately?" or something like that. So... here's a bit of what's on my palate lately.

I've been going overt fat free for the last few months (except for about 3 times, most recently some olives on the plane...) and basically banana free as well. After almost 8 years of bananas being my main fallback staple food, and some troubles with the banana crops on-island causing the supply to be less than ideal, my body said it had enough of the HI apple bananas, and sometimes the other ones too. So I was getting imported bananas for a bit, but couldn't get organic ones here and they just didn't have much to 'em. I also would get other bananas when available at the farmer's markets, but that was fairly infrequent. So, I'm doing it banana-free, have sorta' gotten used to it now and am not trying to find ripe bananas while visiting as a result. A little simpler this way...

At first it was a bit of a challenge getting enough calories without both bananas and overt fats, but I got the hang of it after a while. The fact that our papaya trees started to produce really helped a LOT, as they sorta' replaced bananas for me. They were certainly affordable since we're growing them and I had enough and love the kind we grow, so yay! I have been eating other stuff too, in order to not have my body get "over it" with the papayas, but they have been key.

Before I left I was having the water from two young coconuts in the morning, and papayas later in the day, then sometimes other fruit I got at market that I either couldn't find enough for a meal, or afford enough for a meal (like lychee, longan, rolinia, etc.) as well. At dinner I'd have some orange wedges and then a salad with lemon juice and tomatoes or cucumber noodles with tomatoes and basil (& sometimes chives). Every once in a while I'd make a sauce for the cuke noodles in the blender with tomatoes, celery, red bell pepper and fresh herbs from our garden (basil, oregano, chives, rosemary). We have celery growing at our farm so I'd use that. We don't have tomatoes or bell peppers producing right now so I'd have to buy them, and the cukes... for now. We have these things planted and they should be producing soon after I get back. Yum! :)

Here on the Mainland I've been eating all sorts of exotic things like grapes, berries, apples and the like. LOL So lately I've been having melon for breakfast, berries for either before dinner salad or in the salad or as an afternoon meal or part of it, apples and dates for lunch or pears or peaches or nectarines, and then for dinner I'd have heirloom tomatoes, red bell pepper, strawberries, celery and baby spinach with lemon juice for my salad. So awesome to get 3 of those little baskets of berries for only $5 from organic farmers at market! Sweet! You couldn't even get half of one of those baskets of organic berries at home for that price... as they don't grow there since they need a cold season. There are a bit of blackberries in a part of the island very far away from where I live, and you can get some strawberries here and there, at times, and there are thimble berries which grow wild in some areas at certain times of the year which are sorta' like raspberries but otherwise you just don't get berries at home, certainly not in enough volume for a meal...

Here's a pic of my dinner tonight:

I can't eat salads very well from a plate, but it makes a good pic... so I dumped it in a bowl with some more baby spinach and ate it that way. :)

Exercise

I had been getting into barefoot running and it still is my favorite kind of running, makes it more fun and interesting to me once I get past a mile... haven't been consistent with it though. My life's been a bit unpredictable, to put it mildly, over the last year, so since it's my weak area, it has gotten dropped and restarted quite a few times. I'm gearing up to restart it again soon. Since I've been so irregular I haven't built up the skin on my feet for it very well, so I'm going to make the shoes at invisibleshoe.com to use this time around to see how that works for me. I'm still planning on building up my foot skin to do completely barefoot, but I'll have them to suppliment with. I love the design, so simple and I did some with cardboard soles to experiment with and found them to be quite comfy. Cool! I've been trying to come up with sandal designs when making soles with my crochet projects too, so this might be just the ticket. :)

I have also finally started to learn how to use the aerial fabric I've had for years... so much fun! I love it! I love looking at it and doing it too! Pretty good workout as well, inspires me to work on my flexibility and other areas as well in order to do more tricks, better. I had been doing it for several months, but haven't been for the last couple of months and have been missing it LOTS. I've brought it with me so that I can hopefully set it up at Cedar Springs and have some more practice time on it. Not sure if that's unrealistic as I'm usually quite busy while there, but I'm gonna' find out.

I got into hooping a bit too. It's way nifty and fun, but I don't know very many tricks that I can accomplish successfully yet. Lotsa' room for advancement there. Gonna' be fun to explore. :)

For a while I was into doing lots and lots of pushups, jump lunges, and jump squats a day in parts of 10 or 15 at a time. Was also doing some pull-up/chin-ups and knee ups then too, but not as many as the others. That was great, felt great. Got involved with the aerial fabric and stopped it though as I was focusing on the aerial fabric instead. I didn't pick it back up in the gap though, until recently. I'm building back up again now, think I started back at it yesterday, now that I'm fairly caught up on my sleep at this point and all.

The Rest

Well, I've run out of time for now for this, so I'll have to update y'all on the rest later, in another post. Remember that I sometimes post to Facebook and Flickr and Ravelry as well. I'm on the other sites I have links to here, but have found that I don't tend to post to them as much, at least lately...

Aloha! :)

Joined a crafting site... Ravelry

2009-12-30T19:33:00.000-10:00

I've added it to the links below this blog if you're viewing this on my site, junglejanie.com. I've been hanging out there a bit lately 'cause I've been spinning cotton a lot lately, again.

We just transplanted my naturally colored cotton plants into the ground the other day & I'm soooo excited! I've got pictures of them on my Flickr site, and have added a link to my page on Flickr below this blog as well...

Gotta' go for now... am planning on updating y'all about more of my going's on lately tomorrow or the next day...

Aloha!

-Janie :)

Happy Thanksgiving! :)

2009-11-26T20:08:00.000-10:00

Sleep:
slept in, it was nice.. it rained this morning so we stayed in bed longer 'cause we could

I'm thinking that I'm gonna' drop some of my shifts at the gym so I can get better sleep. I was thinking that it was helping me with my training 'cause I was getting in a lot of the pushups, etc. in-between things there early in the day... but I was also not getting enough sleep over time. The lack of sleep has affected my training and the rest of my life, so I don't think it's worth it. I've tried various ways of making it work, but nothing really has. We'll see if cutting back on my shifts is enough to make it work, otherwise I might have to quit completely. Too bad, 'cause I like that job, like the people and all...

Food:
lunch: lotsa bananas
dinner: hodge-podge of stuff at Thanksgiving living food potluck, probably too many ingredients to list, heh, oh well, it's once a year

Here are some pictures (click 'em to enlarge):
This is the turkey I carved, heh:

Here is a picture of the potluck. My turkey's in there and there are two stainless steel bowls of our salad with sprouts and tangerines and chopped winged beans at either end of the table:

Exercise:
pushups, jump lunges, jump squats, etc. - forgot to keep track, oops... guess I was still in 'day off' mode..

I finally got back to the barefoot running training yesterday though. Nice.
I'm gonna' have to build back up again, but I didn't fall all the way back to my starting distance so that's good. I felt like I could run again today, but I'm making sure not to overdo it, so am holding off 'till tomorrow. It's easy to squeeze in the distance I'm doing now 'cause it doesn't take up that much time. LOL I think it's gonna' be better in the long run this way though 'cause I want to do it complete bare footed.

I found out that a store on-island actually carries the Vibram Five Fingers shoes that people sometimes wear when they say they are barefoot running, which is confusing to me 'cause they've got shoes on... hafta' ask people which type of barefoot running they're doing now to clarify... ANYway... I've been thinking of getting some so I can wear 'em at the gym and run on the treadmill there as close to barefoot as I'd be allowed there. So I grabbed my toesie socks (that I got at the local Claire's store 'cause that's the only place I can get toe socks here - they're rainbowy, which is fine, I like rainbow stuff for rainbow reasons). I digress...

K, so I went in with my toe socks in hand to try on and look at the different styles to see which one I liked, and would buy some of the toe socks used in the Vibrams if they had 'em. They didn't have the toe socks, and only had the Classic in a size that would work with toe socks. They didn't work with my toe socks though, or at least it seemed that way. I tried 'em with the socks first and couldn't get my toes in the toe areas, but then when I took the socks off I had trouble getting my toes in the toe areas as well. LOL Had to educate my toes and self in how to get them on 'cause my middle and what would be ring finger of a toe both won't stay straight and stiff at the ends when trying to pull the things on, heh. They were all limp and noodley, and wouldn't stuff into there that way. They'll stay stiff if I press with them though, so had to do a little pulling upwards against those toes when pulling the shoes on in order to get the toes in there.

So I discovered that I don't like the Classic, which I had actually suspected, 'cause they have to be tight against the achilles tendon in order to stay on and I don't like that. They didn't have my size in the KSO or Sprint, only what was probably one size too small for my feet without socks. :( He said he'd call me when they get my size in, but they don't come in regularly or predictably, so he has no idea when they'll have 'em. He didn't have the socks either. I'm thinking that I probably could have gotten the Classic on with my toe socks after I'd educated my toes and self on how to get the toes on my toes, but I didn't bother 'cause I don't like the Classic anyway. Good to know. I'm not sure if I'd like the Sprint either 'cause it has something in back there too, a tab in order to pull them on I suppose. It was uncomfortable on the ones I tried, but then that could have been 'cause they were too small too... Sigh..

ANYway... I decided that I'll just hafta' wait to see about the shoes and was glad I'd already started back on my bare barefoot training again.

Female:
3am temp: 97.75 degrees Fahrenheit, day 25 of my cycle, amber day, no kid icons
Finally got enough regular sleep in order to take my temperature, which is probably why it's only an 'amber' day instead of a 'green' day today: haven't taken my temperature in a while now

The Rest:
It was a nice day. Darrel and I slept in today and layed around in bed 'cause it was raining and we had time. Nice. Then we got up, got ourselves ready, I experimented with an idea I had for an orange turkey, and went to the farm, harvested some stuff for the potluck and arranged it all and went to the potluck.

It was nice to see everyone again. Some people we met we hadn't seen for years. Some of them had been off-island for quite some time and all. Several of them remembered us from when we were farming in the early 90's and selling our salad mix back then. LOL If we hadn't told them they might have thought we were doing it the whole time. We'll be doing it that long in the future now that we've got a long term place though so it's not unreasonable to think.

I am thankful for so many things in my life right now, as well as my life itself, it's hard to choose anything in particular...
I am thankful for the time I was able to spend laying around in bed not in a rush or anything this morning.
I am thankful for the time I get to spend with Darrel, my love.
I am thankful for all my wonderful friends and family.
I am thankful for the farm and our long term situation.
And many, many more things...

I am also thankful that our papaya trees are about to pass me in height. See!

Not much longer 'till they start flowering, then fruiting, then yum-my! :)

Hope your Thanksgiving is and was terrific too! Aloha! :)

Raw Food Thanksgivings of recent past...

2009-11-18T10:15:00.010-10:00

Someone asked me on Facebook about what my Thanksgiving menu looks like these days and I looked up the pics and posts about my past Thanksgivings to answer...

I figure they should be all in one place for any of y'all that are looking for that too, so I added some targets in my old journals to get directly to those posts and have compiled this list for you of them for easier reference. I also created a new blogging label for "holiday food" for those of you who search for things that way. Here are the Thanksgivings so far:

Thanksgiving 2002 - posts about it actually start a couple of days before (on Tues.), so you might want to scroll up for that too...
Thanksgiving 2003
Thanksgiving 2004 - oops, missing for now (if I find it, I'll add it to the logs & come back to this post and edit it to link to it...
Thanksgiving 2005
Thanksgiving 2006
Thanksgiving 2007 - Um.. I think that one's not gonna' be found or recalled. I don't think I took pics that year. Went to a raw potluck again, but don't remember what I brought. It was sorta' a rough time around then...
Thanksgiving 2008

Okay so that's all of 'em I have so far... well, at least the ones since 2002, that is. I don't remember what I did the other time I was raw years before & I doubt I took pictures back then of it all either.

I'm not sure what we're doing this year. Darrel's raw now too, so that's cool, although it'd be basically the same as other years if we go to a raw potluck again. I'm planning on getting some eggfruit at the farmers market today if I can find any that will ripen for next week though. We usually don't know what we're doing 'till the last minute for Thanksgiving...

I'll take pictures and let y'all know what we end up doing though.

Aloha & Enjoy your holiday! :)

11-14-09 Happy to be alive! :) Food/produce video too...

2009-11-14T15:38:00.000-10:00

Sleep:
almost caught up now! Yay! :)

Food:
breakfast: the rest of the melon we got Wed. (see video)
brunch: equivalent of 12 or 13 bananas (was more, but eating around bad spots and all)
lunch: about the same as lunch in bananas again...

the rest is TBD... probably have the last 2 bags of garbanzo sprouts as snack w/son when watching SGU with him, then salad and/or tat tsai with avocado and lemon juice dressing or dip

We took a video of the food we got this week and put it on my Facebook account. I'm embedding it here (below) too for y'all. :)

Exercise:
5 sets so far of:
   15 reps. each of pushups
   10 reps. each of jump lunges
   10 reps. each of jump squat foot clap thingies
2 sets of:
   30 reps. each on Leg Magic
   10 reps. each of knee-up with a little shoulder lift
4 sets of:
   1 rep. of assisted chin-ups

I plan to do 5 more sets of the first group (pushups, etc.) and one more chin-up throughout the day. I'm done with the middle group as far as my goal for today is concerned. I may also do some handstands against the wall, holding them for at least 30 seconds to count... later.

I'm hoping to get back to the barefoot running (or running at all, actually) tomorrow. That's been on hold for a bit, so I've fallen behind on my progress there. My callouses are falling off too. :( Now I have to build up the toughness on the skin on the bottom of my feet again... that means I won't be running as long or far for a while again. Oh well. Jumping back on that horse can require a bit of backtracking to get going again... better to be going at all though, eh?

Female:
didn't take my temp. today, sorry..., day 13 of my cycle, red day, girl kid icon

The Rest:
Well, my hubby hurt his back (has sciatica) a while back and I needed to take care of the farm more than before. He's doing the farming full-time and I'm only part-time in general 'cause I also work at the gym and other things. ANYway... so I needed to do minimal stuff to keep things going 'till he could again and it threw off my sleeping and exercise schedules, thus the break in progress for barefoot running. After he was able to take over again it was voggy and I'm sensitive to it, so just did things I could do in the air-conditioning in my room and at the gym (the air-conditioning really helps me deal with the vog somehow). Unfortunately you can't run on the treadmills at the gym barefoot, so I didn't do running. I kept up with my pushups, etc. throughout the day though... until... we had a deadline for turning in a grant application for the farm and were cramming what time we could to get it done... and I fell behind on my sleep, which affects my exercising abilities gradually, such that I fell a bit behind on the other exercises too. I was still getting in at least 100 pushups, 50 jump lunges & jump squats each day - sometimes the other things too, and sometimes more... until... the callous on one of my toes started to come off and was only painful when I did the jump lunges, so I had to quit them for several days 'till it had resolved... That's all over now though and I've started catching up on my sleep and building my exercise back up over the last couple of days. I'm eager to get back to it all, felt off without it...

I've been posting more on Facebook & the social networking sites than here, sorry. It's shorter and easier to just write something quick and all... You're welcome to read things over there too. :)

There have been quite a few storms here lately and I've been feeling like doing crafts and such. Not only is colder, rainy weather good for snuggling up and catching up on sleep, it's also good for spinning yarn, knitting, and such. :) Did I mention that I finally planted the naturally colored cotton seeds I've had for ages? They're still good too 'cause they've sprouted! Yay! I've got two shades of green, a couple of browns (look basically same color as each other), and a couple of rust-browns (that look similar too - one is called Ma'o and is touted as 'Hawaiian cotton'... seems just like the one from the US South from the 1800's to me though). I have a couple of kinds of white cotton seeds too, but haven't planted them yet... sorta' misplaced them temporarily, heh.

I bought myself some toe socks for my birthday and am enjoying them now. I think I just might be able to deal with the Five Fingers shoes after all... and the toe socks I got with monkeys on them would look so cute in 'em too... I could run on the treadmill at the gym in the Five Finger shoes I bet... would be a good alternative on voggy days... hmmm....

K, I'm gonna' post the video we made of the food we got this week for those of you who ask about what I'm eating these days and then go. Before I do, I just want to say how glad I am that I was born, happy I am to be and feel alive, and eager I am to keep living and enjoying this wonderful journey of life! I always make a point of thinking about these things on my birthday as my tradition. I'm glad you were born too!

Aloha!

10-4-09 Baby Guinea Pig born yesterday! :)

2009-10-04T19:20:00.000-10:00

Sleep:
up at about 7:30am,
to sleep for night before at about 9pm (was sleepy)
to sleep for night tonight at about 8pm (will get up at 3am tomorrow)

Food:
breakfast: bananas
lunch: bananas
dinner: tahini-lemon-tomato juice dip for tomatoes, celery, cuke rounds

Exercise:
before breakfast: ~ 18 minutes of barefoot running on treadmill, including warm-up/cool-down walking - ran about 1.1 miles this time (still training my skin for barefoot running) and it's going well! :) Only slight hint of possible blister forming, but didn't. I stopped before it got questionable 'cause I'd already gone farther than I had planned. Nice.

I also did 20 minutes of the almost bounce sort of thing on the rebounder after that. I watched the guinea pigs and rabbit the whole time walking, running, walking and bouncing. So cute! :)

before lunch: a little over an hour of beginner Ashtanga yoga with a Richard Freedman video I have: Introduction to Ashtanga, Complete Practice Session. It worked out well 'cause we didn't do any of the headstands and stuff that we're not supposed to do when menstrating. I figured that I could skip stretching out after the running and such since I was gonna' do the yoga later. That worked out well. :)

before dinner: I did the daily calestenics I've been trying to keep up with (but haven't done every day quite yet, just some days so far). I did all of 'em except the handstands 'cause that's inverted and since you're not supposed to do them in yoga I figure I could skip 'em a few days otherwise too, just in case. So I did 60 reps on the Leg Magic, 20 pushups (full), 5 chin-ups (assisting myself - getting closer on the first one to not needing assistance though - yay!), 20 jump lunges, 20 knee-ups, and 20 jump squats.

Detox:
I had some chives the other night, think it was Friday - and had a little gas with chive smell... yep, that's part of what happens with 'em... also makes my underarms a little smelly at times too.

Female:
didn't take my temperature today, day 2 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
We were going to take a break from the farm today 'cause it was raining & my hubby needed a break, so it was a good time since the rain would water things for us. But we couldn't stay away. LOL We ended up going to water things later in the day ('cause it had stopped raining in the late morning) and I transplanted about 50 or so tomato seedlings into larger pots. We'll be able to plant 'em out not too long from now. Gotta' get that bed ready...

It was a good thing we went out 'cause we also discovered that there was a pinhole leak in one of the radiator hoses and were able to get another hose for it while out. Sooo many things going on with our car for the last several months or so. It's not all that old either... oh well, this one's not too bad, except now that we're back home it's raining again & my poor hubby has to mess with it in the rain and dark 'cause I have to use it in the morning to go to my shift at the gym...

ANYway... yesterday I had such a surprise when I was watching the guinea pigs and rabbits all of a sudden a baby pops out of the tube they like to hang out in! No wonder it's mom has been so hungry lately. LOL We knew it might happen sometime but I've been away and didn't notice she was pregnant somehow. I've never let a companion animal have babies before - always had them spayed/neutered or only same sex or only one, etc. Was doing population control and all. I had trouble finding any guinea pigs for a few years though, and they're still hard to come by here, so I figure it's okay to let them have babies a bit... they are heard animals after all...

I love to look at them while I'm running on the treadmill when I run on the treadmill at the house. So it was extra special to do my barefoot run on the treadmill this morning while watching them AND the new baby just born yesterday! :) Soooo cute! :)

Guinea pigs and rabbits make great companions for 80-10-10 people IMO. They like to eat the same sorts of things, but often different parts (especially the guinea pigs). They are small and furry and cute. Bunnies are quiet and litter trainable, but need more room than guinea pigs. Guinea pigs are sometimes litter trainable, not quiet though. LOL Cute bizarre sounds though. Both guinea pigs and bunnies like to have cages and places to hide in their cages, so it's not like keeping a bird in a cage or anything. They feel more secure in there and are happier with a cage, as long as they have enough room to move around and get out for exploring every once in a while (with access to their cage if they get frightened while out that is).

When we are able to stay at the farm we're gonna' move the guinea pigs and rabbit there with us. We're gonna' have a big fenced in compound for them with the hutches (cages) all around the outside and then we can open up the doors to their hutches most of the day and let them come and go as they please. We'll only have about 1/4 of the compound accessible at a time though, so that we can let the grass, carrots and whatnot that I grow for them in there grow up and recover from their trompling and grazing. :)

I posted some pics of them on my "30 Bananas A Day" and "Give It To Me Raw" pages. I'll have two video's up in "Facebook" once the last one finishes uploading. It's about 3 minutes long and is taking quite some time uploading... hope it makes it before I need to go to sleep!

Here's the video with a picture at the end, so you don't have to look for 'em over there:

Here's the other picture I put up:

And here's the last one...

Has music 'cause all you could hear were the neighbors anyway on this one.
Watch out - bunny comin' through! LOL I can leap 2 guinea pigs in one bound! :)
Pesky fly! Leave 'em alone! It left after I finished the video...

K, gotta' go now - dinner's awaiting! :)

Aloha!

9/27/09 Great day at the farm yesterday! :)

2009-09-27T06:45:00.000-10:00

I'll tell y'all about the farm in "The Rest" section later. First, gotta' do the stats for those that are tracking things. :) These stats are from yesterday, unless otherwise noted:

Sleep:
woke at 6am to get back to running before we had to leave for the day

Food:
pineapple, possibly the last of the season
bananas
jakfruit*
salad: tahini-lemon dressing with heirloom tomatoes on baby spinach, yum! :)

*I had planned to have jakfruit for dinner, and maybe a little bit of baby spinach after, but there were only a couple of pods ripe :(, so I ended up having salad later.

Exercise:
I got back to running again after a month's away I believe it's been. I didn't have much time for the runs I'd been doing before I left, but figured it'd be good to ease back into it since I was practically a beginner when I left. It went well. I wanted to run at least a mile and had run out of enough time to do so at the pace I'd been doing for the longer runs, so ran faster for the mile. It felt good. :) I probably could have done 2 miles at that pace, possibly longer... not sure about the full 5K I'd been doing before at that pace though. Eventually I'll be running the 5K and farther at that pace and faster, but not for now. Will build up to it to make sure I don't overdo...

The rest of my exercise for the day involved farmwork. Oh, I also did some calestenics and the Leg Magic a tad...

The night before I'd done 20 pushups, 5 chin-ups (assisted), 10 handstands (against a wall, only counting the kick-ups that worked), 20 lunges each leg, 20 jump lunges, 20 jump squats, and 20 knee ups... I'd do as many as I could to failure, take a rest like in weights and then do more... 'till I got all of 'em done, sometimes switching to another exercise in-between. I chose to do this many of things 'cause I found some old business card sized cards I'd made for myself and my son back when I was in charge of his P.E. when homeschooling him. They have a column for exercise goals, a column for the amounts accomplished that day (it was the wider column so you can put tally marks during the day) and a place at the top to put what day it was. It was something to help make sure we got at least that much done every day, in addition to any other exercise we did. It worked pretty well for me if I remember correctly, so I think I'll do it again, but am gonna' add a few more things and more reps too, once I'm back to my full work schedule again and have adjusted back into my workouts and all.. For now I'll do 'em at least every other day. :)

Detox:
I was having a bit of acne recently, since I've come home, not sure why. Perhaps it's from being off my exercise schedule, or perhaps it's 'cause it's warmer and more humid here (had been in places that get hotter, but everyone had air conditioning there), or perhaps it's from molds or mildew or something... was having a bit of trouble with it before I left, but it cleared when I was gone... strange. I was thinking that perhaps it's from the towel I like to use... it always smells bad to me when it's just been washed and after a bit it smells better. I've decided to give up on that towel and use another one as my favorite. I like ones that are small enough to fit on my towel bar without having to bunch up, and are not the plush thick kind - both criteria are so that the towel dries out well and doesn't get mold or mildew. I'd been looking for some like that at the stores, as I'd love to find a brown one like that, but haven't been able to find anything but the thick ones for some time now. My hubby found a blue one in our things last night, not sure where it came from, but it was washed recently and didn't smell, so yay! I've also got a backup white one, just in case. LOL I was using the hand towel in the meantime. Last night I noticed that my acne is clearing up noticably already and it still looks better this morning, so yay! Could 'a been the towel, the cardio, or... ? Guess I'll see over time.

Female:
3am temp today: 97.41 degrees fahrenheit, day 20 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
K, so onto the farm stuff! :)

It was an exciting day for my hubby and I at the farm today simply 'cause we finally started planting lots of fruit in ways that sunk in that we've finally got a long-term farming situation and are working on our dreams, right now! :)

I "potted on" papayas into 101 pots, which is the point that we count as plants. When they're seedlings we don't really count them since there's more that can go wrong with 'em at that age. There were 3-5 plants in each pot I made, most of 'em had 3. We'll be thinning them to just one at some point, probably after they're in the ground, so it's like 101 trees.

We planted out 6 large coconut trees and 12 papaya trees-worth (3 plants per trees-worth, that will eventually be one per trees-worth) into the ground, where they'll be for a long, long time. Well, the papayas won't be there all that long for trees, but they'll be there for a while... We're gonna' plant more papayas near there as well, along with other longer-term trees so that the papayas will provide a nursery effect for the other trees and as the papayas are losing their productivity the longer-term ones will be starting up theirs. :)

We also planted 13 jakfruit pods, but we don't know how well they'll do since not all the pods were ripe. They're from a tree with the best jakfruit we've had. It makes consistently smaller fruits than most jakfruit (which makes it easier for one person to finish in one meal), and the pods are very evident inside, more than other jakfruit we've had. It has a better flavor to us as well. We're not completely sure if it is just a certain kind of jakfruit or a different fruit that's related to jakfruit... but we're gonna' grow it if we can. If these seeds don't take, we'll get some more and can possibly get seedlings that have sprouted from fallen ones if there are any.

My friends who have the sprout business that we get the sprout discards from also gave us a mango seedling, a dragon-fruit transplant and a green fig seedling that we'll plant out soon. :)

Let's see, what else? I know there was more... oh yeah! The banana patch! It has grown so much in the month I was gone! Most of them have doubled their height. Wow! And the first one I planted has a keiki (new shoot) of it's own! That's a good sign that it's doing well. Yay! :)

We also put some of the barely sprouted coconuts into pots to plant out later when they're older and/or we have the places for them prepped and ready. We had figured at one point that a good minimum amount of coconuts to plant would be 10/person. We now have 7 in the ground there and 6 in pots, several more still working on sprouting, so we're gettin' there! :)

The red lilikoi, jaboticaba and other seedlings are doing well too. Yay! :)

K, gotta' go now... time to go and water all those seedlings! :) I'm gonna' drop my hubby off at the farm and then go help get someone's networking set up with their new computer and router (and other computers they already had that I'd set up before). Then I'm back to the farm. Yay! :)

I'll try to take pics and/or video so you can see things too! :)

Aloha!

Social Networking Sites I've joined recently

2009-09-23T18:34:00.000-10:00

Well, I've recently joined a few social networking sites that friends of mine are on, so you can see stuff there about me and my goings on as well...

Facebook (already mentioned in my last post here)
Give It To Me Raw
30 Bananas A Day
Raw Natural Hygiene

I'm gonna' try to post here at least once a week, and keep up with people at the others as well. We'll see how it goes! :)

Aloha! :)

Health & Fitness Week 2009

2009-09-19T09:20:00.000-10:00

I had a great time being the Ambiance Fairy at FoodnSport's Health & Fitness Week 2009! :) This year I also did ambiance for FoodnSport's first Culinary Workshop, held just before H&F Week. Fun Times! :)

Lots of the people there are on Facebook, so I've joined again... joined when Facebook was new, but didn't use it much 'cause hardly anyone there & then forgot the email address I used and password, etc. So you can find me on Facebook now too. I've posted lots of pictures from the events there as well as a few short videos.

I've embedded the videos here...

Lunch out on the deck

This was the waiting area where people had drinks and hors d'oeuvres. I didn't get the "bar" area in the video unfortunately, but you can see it in some of people's pictures behind them.

We had finished the ambiance & plating before everyone went into the upper area for drinks and hors d'oeuvres. The food here was covered until just before I took this video. The door between the upper and lower areas was opened shortly after this to reveal the "surprise" of this area.

Prakash demonstrating how to feed enough grapes to Grant...

I'll post some videos and pics of our farm sometime in the near future too!

Food: Oh, and for those that want to know what I've been eating lately, you can look at the pics from H&F Week for that time period. I've been visiting my dad while on the Mainland and will return home next week. Let's see... what did I eat yesterday....

Think I ate a cantelope and a galia melon for breakfast; dates and apples for lunch; tahini-lemon-tomato dressing with touch of fresh chives and fresh oregano on baby spinach for dinner. Everything was organic, all of it was purchased at the farmer's market except the spinach and tahini which I got at the Berkeley Bowl. I'd been having fresh corn on the cob before salads for the couple of days before that, but didn't have any last night. This morning I had a small watermelon for breakfast & will have either bananas or more apples and dates for lunch. I plan on having zuke noodles with tomato sauce for dinner tonight too, perhaps on a bed of baby spinach. :)

Exercise: My routine always gets disrupted a bit when I travel, so I didn't do much official exercise during H&F Week since I was doing the ambiance and all. I've been easing back into it at my dad's. My dad's having a lot of health issues to deal with, so we didn't get around to getting a temporary health club membership for me this time. I have my homemade exercise band in my luggage though and do pushups, squats, lunges, headstands, etc. before meals as I can.

I look forward to getting back to the running again in order to see how long I can run after being away from it for so long. I'll have been away from it for almost a month, eek. I did try out running on the treadmill at my friend's gym in Seattle when visiting her before the Culinary Workshop. I'm spoiled with the running though - used to either running outside at home on dirt in the tradewinds or on my son's treadmill at home with a fan blowing on me. I didn't last as long as I'd been going before leaving. I had gotten up to running 5K in about 34 minutes before I left & only ran for about 25 minutes at her gym, not sure how far that was... Whatever I end up running when I get home, I'll just build back up from there. :)

A lot of the people from H&F Week this year are going to do a little challenge between themselves and I'm gonna' do it too. I want to work more on my fitness this next year than I have been this past year, so it works well for that. Gotta' get a scale that measures bodyfat too though - wish I could find one that doesn't factor in age as that always skews thing weird... I'll post more on that thing later, once I have my beginning stats and all.

K, that's it for now.

Aloha! :)

8/15/09 - with videos! :)

2009-08-15T16:16:00.000-10:00

Sleep:
woke at 3am for temp., but didn't take it, up at ~7:45am
to sleep for night at 10:30pm again... good thing I can sleep in again on Sunday - gotta' get to sleep earlier Sunday though 'cause there's no sleeping in on Monday...

Food:
breakfast: 1 medium-large pineapple (no burn today, nice)
lunch: small bag lychee (~20?), 4 smallish-medium dragon fruit
before dinner/after run: 15 small-ish medium apple bananas
dinner (1 1/2 hrs after bananas): shredded cabbage & carrots with tahini-lemon/lime dressing & 1/2 avocado

Yeah, a bit too much overt fats for 10% today, but I've been doing the overt fats light to none lately so it's okay I think - will find out Sunday I suppose...

Here's a video of lunch remnants and about dragonfruit I took at the farm. It might take a bit to load 'cause it's the limit of what size Blogger will take. I'll look into other video uploading options another time:

Exercise:
Pedometer wasn't working quite right for part of the day - probably about 1/4-1/3 of the walking time I'd say... so I'm not quite sure how much regular walking I did. It says 5,548 steps, which is 2.189 miles, but I'd estimate it was more like 6,935-7,398 steps or 2.736-2.919 miles. Still, it's nowhere near as much as I walk when I work at the gym. I don't wear the pedometer when formally working out, so the other stuff is extra.

I was able to get back to my running schedule today, yay! :) My foot didn't hurt this time at all. Yay! Not exactly sure why it hurt the other day, but I'm not taking chances on getting hurt, listening to my body, and that day my foot didn't want me running. Good thing it was okay with me walking fast though. I held myself back to the scheduled increase, again, in order to take it easy. I've felt cardiovascularly like I could do 30 minutes or more straight through at the slower speed I'm running/jogging, but don't want to increase things too fast so my muscles, tendons, ligaments and such have time to adjust. But I couldn't help myself go a tad longer... I was supposed to do 25 minutes, but did 27 1/2 minutes instead. That way I can get to the 30 minute goal the next run, rather than taking two runs to get there.

I did a shorter warm-up walk too, but it felt right. Instead of the 3 miles I usually do in the process of warm-up, run & cool-down, I did a bit more: 3.36 miles instead, as I was almost to 3 miles when I was done with the run even though I'm still running slow in order to get to the 30-40 minutes solid running going solid. I walk at 3.5 - 4 mph for warm-up and cool-down, and run at 5.5 - 6.2 mph, mostly 5.5 right now. To run at an 8 minute mile pace I need to run at 7.4 mph-ish, so there's a bit to go in that department. All in due time, all in due time. ;) Oh, and I also do an extra cool-down of about 1/2 minute at 3mph, followed by ~ 1 min. @ 2mph & ~1 min. @ 1 mph, then off to ~ 1 min. easy bounch on the rebounder, just so that I don't get that trippy room rushing past me sensation when getting off the treadmill and walking. LOL I start rehydrating during the 3.5-4 mph walking cool-down and stick with it 'till after my shower or when I've taken in enough to weigh what I started. I follow the running sessions with some stretching, which lasts about 20-30 minutes. Then I'm off to the shower. Ahh... nice.

Hmm... I'm finishing this post on Sunday evening & I can't remember if I did other exercise or not... thought I'd remember for sure. Oh well. Gotta' write that stuff down.

Detox:
The sty thing's going away, so I suppose things are evening out. Still sweating buckets when running, however it's also been super humid and muggy here lately so it makes sense.

Female:
3am temp: ?? degrees Fahrenheit - didn't take it again but I know it was 96.something degrees 'cause of the time of month it is, day 4 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I'm starting to add videos in here and there as I can. Let me know what ya' think. :)

Went to a guy's place to check out some fencing that we were going to remove and take for free - on both sides. It was on Craig's list. We thought it'd be no problem with the heavy duty jack we usually use as a post puller, but our jack had been jacked (pun intended - yeah, stolen in other words) from our farm a while back. We went to the place we got it from only to discover that not only did they not have 'em anymore, but the employees there didn't remember ever having them. LOL It was a year at most that we got it. How soon they forget... guess we're not gonna' get that free fencing. Don't wanna' use the tractor for it & don't have anywhere else to get a heavy duty jack like that here either. Oh well.

I wanted to go there anyway 'cause we're running low on the timothy hay I give to the guinea pig(s & rabbit now too!) as food and they use it for bedding too. Yes, we live with 4 guinea pigs and a bunny now. :) They're all so cute! The feed store apparently stopped carrying timothy hay recently as well, saying they didn't have enough sales to keep carrying it. Darn. Part of living on a small island and all I suppose. I don't know of anywhere else on island to get bales of timothy hay & the guinea pigs shouldn't have alfalfa. Guess that's another thing we'll hafta' grow ourselves - sooner than later it seems. I wanted to grow it eventually, but looks like we may have to push that up a bit. They eat all fresh food otherwise, but it seems they need a bit of dry stuff too, thus the timothy. I think we'll change the approach to the hutches and not use it for bedding so much anymore. We'll make hay dispenser dealies to go on the wall and let them use the fresh stuff for bedding if they want. We plan to move 'em out to the farm sometime in the nearish future too anyway and when we do we're going to have a compound for them to go out and eat the stuff growing directly.

We're thinking of setting up a worm composting system below their hutches so that the droppings and such go directly in there, and not having things in there for bedding. The bunny will have a shelf to hang out on to get away from the guinea pigs and mesh flooring if she wants and the guinea pigs have tubes they can go in for those purposes as well (but would be getting away from the bunny if they want instead of the guinea pigs). We can have the hay feeder on the side of the hutches and put their veggies and fruit in trays that clip there too. The compound would be fenced in and have 4 sections. There'd be a sort of entry hall of sorts at the base of their hutches where there'd be 4 doors, one to each section of the compound. We'd let them out into one section at a time, letting the other 3 grow back from all the grazing. I could plant carrots and other root crops in there too for the bunny to dig up and eat. She loves to dig. :) There'd be enough space for them to go in and run and munch around and visit with us if they like. I could go in there and knit, crochet and/or spin cotton while they explore and eat. :)

We'd open up the hutches and the door to the current section of the compound and let them decide when or if to come out. We'd shepherd them back in before the day's over. We were thinking that the compound wouldn't need a roof 'cause they'd only be out in the daytime when we're there too, but I might end up having a shade cloth or some other sort of moveable roof in order to let them hang out there when I'm not in there too (but still in the area). I'm fairly certain a bird wouldn't swoop down to get them when I'm sitting there with them, but it might if I leave the compound to do other farmwork... I planned to have some things for them to play in and on in the compound too, so they'll also have them to hide in if necessary. I'll be able to clean out the cages without having to grab 'em and take 'em out of there this way too. Less cleaning needed if we do it all this way too, so it'll be nicer for all of us. There are so many things to do for the farm though, I'm not sure when we'll get all of this done.

While we were at the feed store we got a hay fork, so nice to have an actual hay fork that works. Yay! We've been using our digging fork like one 'cause all we could find elsewhere were forks with way too many tines for hay. Nothing like having the right tool for the right job. Moving hay is sooo much easier now. Ahh... a pleasure actually.

We also found some clips they use for horse stuff which look like solid brass and are the right size for the homemade custom exercise resistance bands we want to make. So we got 'em. Now we have everything we need we think, except for the guava wood. We'll go hiking to an overgrown guava forest and get some sometime soon, possibly Wednesday. We would have gone this weekend, but my hubby's trying to finish a grant proposal so we'll do it another time. I think I'm really, really gonna' like these resistance bands when we finish 'em. So nifty and pretty too! :)

We're still setting up things at the farm in order to plant things. We've planted some bananas already and a mammey sapote in the rich soil in the rotted out center of an albezia tree stump, but that's all that's in the ground right now. Well, we do have some pineapples in the mud by the stream, but that's not their final place, it's just like a nursery for them 'till we can plant them along the fence. Here's a short video of our pineapple nursery area. My hubby made a nifty stepping stone path down to the stream with rocks that came out of the gardening area:

And here's the mammey sapote and bananas we have planted so far:

There were really tall albezia trees along the stream that the owners had cut down after they got the land. They're beautiful trees, but they're also quite dangerous since they grow so fast and are sort of leggy in that way, tending to break off in the wind and/or just fall down at times. One fell over on a neighbor's property when we were there a while back. It sounded like a bunch of firecrackers going off. Huge tree trunk and tree, just broke off in the middle and fell down - just beyond the property beyond the tilled area you see in the video. Didn't look dead or rotting on the outside and it wasn't even windy that day. We used the leaves in the compost and are using the logs for various things here and there - like how my hubby made the edges and steps down to the banana patch you can see in the video. The stumps will sprout back, but that's good 'cause we can coppice them and use the nitrogen rich leaves as mulch and/or compost Permaculture-style. :)

We've been planting some seeds from fruit we eat in flats and pots in the meantime too. We're expecting the rock dust and shell and other organic amendments we ordered to arrive sometime in the next week or two, so we'll work them into the soil and then will be ready to start planting. Yay! We did soil testing and analysis in order to find out the condition of the soil, what it needs to get back to what it should be from where it's been. That's why we're waiting for the amendments, so we can make sure the soil has everything it should in order to give the plants every chance to have everything they should, so that we have every chance to get everything we need from them. :) We'll probably maintain the fertility primarily with compost after this initial amending, lots and lots of compost. :)

We've been getting sprout discards from some friends of mine who run a commercial sprouting operation not far from our farm. It makes terrific compost along with the grass clippings from the land - and our own compost from eating of course. We'll probably get compost from other people as well once we start doing markets again. Compost is definitely the health food for soil and we plan to give it plenty. :) We get the sprouts in trash cans and sometimes they make castles like sand castles at the beach when we dump 'em. Nifty! :) Here's what I mean:

It's so nice to be planting fruit seeds, knowing that we'll be able to grow and take care of them through their fruiting years. :) I'm also gonna' be able to finally plant cotton there too, once we get things going on the edibles. I've got seeds not only from locally grown organic white cotton, but also heirloom cotton varieties from the Mainland that yeild naturally colored cotton: brown, rust & green are the colors I have right now. So I'm soooo looking forward to planting, harvesting, and spinning them in order to make clothes and things truly from scratch, naturally and organically. :)

We've been quite entertained by our pool-pond which is an above ground pool that we're using for ag water storage. It's got fish and plants and is basically a pond in a pool. The water gravity feeds into it from the stream, we have a filter on the intake so we don't suck up any fish from the stream. We have another filter on the intake for the pump so we don't suck up any fish from the pool-pond to water the farm as well. There are two filters in-between there to filter water before it goes through the pump as well. We don't have to use the pump for lots of things down lower as they work gravity fed. We'll be using the pump to run the sprinklers for the veggies and such at certain times of the day though. We gathered fish, clams, prawn and plants from the stream, nearby pond and local rivers to put in our pool-pond to help keep it healthy.

We also got some fish and plants from the pet store and put 'em in there for biodiversity. We weren't sure at first if we were doing the pet store fish a disservice by putting them in a pond after they've probably lived their lives (possibly generations of them have lived their lives) in sheltered aquariums. We weren't sure if they'd be able to adjust to a more natural and wild-ish sort of life. Now we're sure we made the right choice as they've all taken to it very well. We don't see them all of the time as the pool-pond is deeper than we can see and there are all the plants and things in there as well, but when we do see them they look very happy, natural and well-fed. It's fun to watch all the fish we can see and other things in the pond at the end of the day with my hubby. :)

Dragonflies like the pool pond too. I've been trying to film them for a while now. Finally I caught one just sitting on the end of a water hyacinth stem, a pretty red one. I took a few videos of it, but don't have time to upload them now, maybe I'll upload it another time. It's getting late. Here's a picture of it for now. It's wings are down:

There's so many other things to tell y'all about to catch up, but I don't have time right now to tell you it all, so we'll have to catch up more later.

Aloha for now! :)

8/14/09 - Hi'ya! Yep. Still here...

2009-08-14T20:30:00.000-10:00

Well, I've decided to stop apologizing about not being as consistent with these posts anymore as I used to be. So here's a bit of an update post...

First, here's the usual stuff about today:

Sleep:
woke at 3am for temp. & work, skipped temperature 'cause I'd gotten up to drink water & go pee too soon before... and didn't have time to sleep in more after alarm, since I needed to get ready for working at the gym

napped a bit at the farm this afternoon (~1-3pm-ish, off and on)

looks like I'll get to sleep for the night tonight at about 9 or 9:30

update: nope, was about 10:30 by the time I got to sleep, oh well...

Food:

~4am: on the way to the gym, had half of a large pineapple (~6 cups I'd say)
~10:45am: 4 medium sized dragon fruit while hubby drove us around on some errands
~12:30pm: ~4 or 5 medium apple bananas at the farm that I'd forgotten there from yesterday
~3pm: 1/2 of what was left of the pineapple from the morning (~3 cups)
~7pm: cucumber "noodles" (3 large cucumbers) with tomato (1 large), 1 tsp. olive oil, 1 tsp. mixed Italian herbs, 1 Tbsp. nutritional yeast

We were low on ripe bananas today, but had some dragonfruit so it worked out just fine. I also didn't have any salad or celery available, but did have some yummy organic cucumbers I got at market this week. I splurged a bit and had the olive oil & spices (nutritional yeast is a spice for me - substitute for Parmesan cheese on 'pasta'). It was yummy, not ideal, but still good enough for me, tonight at least. Perhaps I underate on the calories, but will know tomorrow when I'm more hungry (or not).

I've been having pineapple every day while it's still pineapple season. I cut it up and store what I can't eat (due to the burn starting) in the morning for later in the day - either I finish it all or I share the left overs with my hubby.

Yesterday if I remember correctly I had pineapple for breakfast, lychee followed by bananas for lunch, pineapple before dinner & salad with the tahini/lemon dressing for dinner.

Exercise:
I just got a new toy this week: a pedometer. I'd been reading about people wanting to do 10,000 steps and such, using pedometers and I've been curious for some time now how much I actually walk in a day, so.... I finally got one (and have been playing with it since). LOL

Today, according to the pedometer, I walked over 3 1/2 miles, almost 9,000 steps (if I remember correctly) by the end of my work at the gym. You can measure your stride length so it'll estimate your mileage from the amount of steps it reads. It doesn't read all of my steps all the time & sometimes I take it off (like when I was napping) and forget to put it on for a bit. I figure that evens out with the extra steps it registers when I pull my pants down (& up) when changing clothes or going to the bathroom. So far it says I've walked 15,001 steps today, which is 5.918 miles at the stride length I have. I figure I'll get to 6 miles by the end of the day...

It's interesting 'cause I'd read that it's hard for people to get the 10,000 steps, so I was really surprised about how many I do without thinking about it. I don't even consider myself very active right now either. I wonder how many I do when our farm's up and going full speed... hmm... guess I'll find that out later on. :)

Let's see, what else did I do besides the walking around during the day? I did 100 squats as fast as I could followed by 20 jump plie squats and some stretching before eating after my nap. I did some inner thigh leg raises just before my nap - think it was either 50 or 100 on each side, can't remember anymore (was sleepy and all). Guess I should have written it down... I was gonna' do some stuff with an exercise band at the gym when things were slow at work, but got the wrong one so skipped it.

I'll probably do about 16 or so pushups before going to sleep, perhaps some other stuff. I feel like running on my treadmill (yeah, we got a treadmill, well my son got one, inherited it actually), but I'm trying to take it easy for now. I had a bit of foot pain on the top of one of my feet the last time I was running on there so had to cut that session short for the running portion. I still finished 3 miles, but most of it was fast walking instead. It seems to be a pulled muscle or something - think it's from driving with the seat pushed back too far - the reaching forward and such. Not sure, but I figured I should take it easy for a couple of days and then try it again. I'm gonna' try it tomorrow morning! :) Wish me luck! :)

I'd kinda' gotten a bit out of shape fitness-wise for a while - had gotten out of the swing of formal exercise since I was getting more than enough from the farming and markets before. Then we moved our farm and found that new place was not suitable and stopped farming for quite some time. I didn't get back into the swing of exercising apart from my lifestyle again until fairly recently. So, I'm working back up to the levels of things I used to do when doing that sort of stuff again.

I'm up to 25 minutes of solid running (with 5-10 minute warm up and cool down brisk walking), although my running's not all that fast right now when going that long. I'm gonna' work up to 30-44 minutes solid, then work on the speed more. My goal is to make at least 3 miles a day from either walking or running or a combo. of the two. I've found that the distance goal actually helps motivate me to run more than simply going for a duration of running. I'm sort of doing both: following the plan I did to get up to 30 minutes of solid running the first time around (which involved duration and not distance) and combining it with the 3 mile distance goal. I tend to want to run more again in what would have been the middle of my cool down walking period in order to get to the 3 mile distance goal sooner. Then of course I need to cool down again, but I get to the 3 miles quicker that way. :) I actually end up doing more than 3 miles that way now, which is fine. The 3 miles a day thing is based on a goal of covering at least 20 miles a week, as I've read studies that have shown that there's a significant difference in the health of people who do 20 miles or more a week as opposed to those who do less. That works for me - needed some sort of parameter goal anyway. Might as well be 20 miles a week. I also have a goal of running 30-45 minutes solid again, which I'm getting close to accomplishing. Yay! Another goal in relation to running/jogging is to be able to average at an 8-minute mile pace for the running I do. I figure once I'm up to that speed I can run about 40 minutes a day, as little as 4 times a week and still meet the 20 miles a week goal. Cool. That will allow me to add in other cardio stuff on the other days - cross training and such. I'm thinking bike riding and/or rowing... I love rowing...

I've been using the weight machines at the gym after my shifts here and there as I have time and been doing bodyweight things when I don't have time for the machines. I have also been using my son's Bowflex and the free weights a bit, but not so much recently. I've been more into bodyweight stuff and bands. I used to not be into the bands before, but now I've discovered how to use them in a way that actually does challenge my muscles well enough - and some movements on them that I can't really get otherwise. My hubby and I are working on a little craft project of making some custom bands. Once we figure it out I hope to do a little podcast sort of short film thingy of how to make your own custom exercise bands. I'll post it on this blog when/if I do, so you'll know. :)

I want to work Ashtanga yoga into my schedule at some point too, but am waiting a bit until I get more regular with the rest first. I do some light non-yoga stretching after every cardio workout, but I want to do the yoga for more than just the stretching. Ashtanga's a power yoga so it works on strength, endurance, and so much more... miss it still. I've got the video series my instructor told me about so I'm planning on using that when I get back into it again.

Oh yeah, I've also got a Leg Magic machine, finally. I'd been wanting one for a while, but put it off thinking I didn't really need it. Found one locally on sale, so no shipping, which saves a lot too. So, got it. It's a good workout for the inner thigh muscles, so I'm glad I got it. It's not so easy to get those muscles at home otherwise, even with the Bowflex and such. I do about 60 or so of the inner thigh squeeze dealies almost every day, minimum, now too. Sometimes I'll do the other leg exercises they have on the CD as well, but usually don't do it that way. I'm not so into circuit training right now for some reason, perhaps it's 'cause I'm working on my running and all. Who knows...

My exercise (stability) ball is pau (Hawaiian for done, finished, spent, etc.) and I haven't gotten a new one. So I haven't gotten back to doing things with it since I've been back at the formal exercise stuff. I'll get one again sometime in the next few months. They're fun. :)

I use my in-door pull-up/chin-up bar from time to time, but haven't gotten consistent with it enough to get my chin-up back. Perhaps later.

I also discovered that I can work out at another gym that's closer to my house for free since I'm an employee of the gym where I work. They've got a mutual agreement for employees. So I've gone there a few times as well. Their place isn't as well-stocked with equipment or space as the one I work at, so I haven't been as into going there lately. Not since I've been more into the exercise bands and bodyweight stuff at least, and been more focused on the running goals lately as well.

I figure that the more exercise options I have access to at all times, the more opportunities I can and will take to get back into it. I love it, just get caught up in other things, and am still getting used to the early morning schedule and afternoon napping. So it's good to have a variety of things available. Oh, yeah, on that note I also got a kid's jumprope (for a buck) and was using it fairly regularly at the farm for a while too. Fun! I keep it in my bag (like a backpack, but shoulder bag instead). I decided to take it easy on that for a bit too 'cause of the foot thing and all. I use a kid's one 'cause I'm small and they work better for me.

Well, that's all the stuff I've been doing exercise-wise recently that I can think of right now. I guess I'll cover anything I forgot to mention as it comes up when doing it again in another post...

Detox:
I've been sweating buckets while running - completely soaking my workout clothes and dripping on top of it, so I think that helps move things out a bit. I've gotta' drink more water to make up for it though, but not as much as I'd think. I weigh myself naked before working out and after in order to know how much water to drink - naked 'cause my clothes will have the weight of the sweat in them if I weigh myself with them on after my workout. I rehydrate an ounce of water per ounce of weight lost - or one pint of water per pound of weight lost. It's usually about a half pound or so.

I've had a bit of trouble with a sty that keeps wanting to form on one of my eyes - along with eyelashes that grow in a way that sticks in my eye. It seems that one condition will cause and/or irritate the other so it's hard to tell which is happening ('cause it's often both, but I don't know at first). This happens to me when I step up my cardio so it's not unusual. I've also learned that I need to keep up with the exercise and not skip days and such in order to keep the sty in check. I figure it's some sort of detox going on and keeping the circulation going will help it not clog up. The sty does seem to get worse if I skip a day or two, and better if I don't. It was almost gone the other day, then I got another one of those eyelash things and had a hard time finding it. My hubby had to get magnifying eyeglasses and a magnifying glass to find it. They're sometimes really skinny hairs and little so they can be hard to find. Now that I'm taking it easy from the running for a couple of days my sty's a bit more challenged, but it's still keeping in check since we've gotten the latest eyelash thing out of there... Hopefully the running will go well tomorrow and the sty will clear out once and for all (well, at least for this round of stepping up).

Female:
Didn't take my temperature today, but did a couple of days ago. Here's that info:
3am temp: 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit, that was day 1 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
It's sooo exciting to be setting up our new farm now that we've got a long-term farming situation! :) We'll actually be there to benefit from all the things we do for the soil fertility that allow things to get easier and more fertile over time. We are also able to plant fruit trees and longer term things now too! Yay! Finally! :)

I'll post more on the rest of all this stuff in my next post, which hopefully will be fairly soon. I'm gonna' go now and get ready for sleep.

Nightie Night Everyone! :)

Aloha!

12/27/08

2008-12-27T13:15:00.000-10:00

K, guess I didn't make it online last weekend. My hubby's computer went down and he's been using mine a lot. With two of us using the same one when we used to just use our own I got off-schedule. We usually do the computer things at the same time as each other. He's taking the cord apart and fixing it and such as I type. (We can't just go to the store and get another here, have to find one online and it takes forever and lots 'o bucks to get one here).

Sleep
We haven't been able to farm, still, due to all the rains here and how our new farm has been flooded for the last few weeks. So we've been working on things around the house and it's been great, however we've also gotten off-schedule with our sleeping. I think it's affecting our quality of sleep too. We're both starting to realize it and will be trying to ease back into something more regular again.

Female
I'm on day 8 of my cycle, there's a little boy icon on there. I haven't been willing to take my temperature for a while though since the sleep is so irregular and I've been either going to sleep or getting up too near the times I can take my temperature lately. I have been putting in when my period starts, so I suppose that's where it's getting the info from. I'm thinking of changing the time I take my temperature to a different time since our schedule's all different now. That might help.

I felt a bit of PMS before this last period: sore breasts, a little headache and some constipation/bloating. I felt a little hormone emotional for a few hours as well. I haven't felt that stuff in years. It all was really slight and minor, but I noticed them 'cause I don't usually have those symptoms anymore. A sign that I need to get things more in order towards the ideal again. I think the main thing that will help my health more noticeably than the other things is getting regular aerobic exercise, so I'm gonna' work getting that back into my life again (along with the other things).

Farm
We've run out of things at the old farm and can't plant more there so we're not doing farmer's markets anymore. Well, actually there are a few older things we've been harvesting for ourselves as we make trips back and forth for moving everything. It's not the quality we'd sell, but it works for personal use, for now at least. We're about out of that too... I'm thinking of planting some things at our house to bridge the gap, perhaps in pots so that they don't get flooded as well.

Food
So that means I've started to buy things for my evening meals again. At first I figured I might as well get stuff I'd buy occasionally if I had to buy stuff. It's hard to buy things we usually grow - get so spoiled when you're a farmer and all... The problem with getting the things I was getting is that it's not ideal fare, not too bad in terms of that sort of thing, but not the best either. I was had some dried tomatoes that were in olive oil (and the olive oil) on some non-organic cucumber noodles a few times. I also had some Essene bread, which is considered raw (like dehydrated) but is still grains and such. Both delicious, but not ideal, oh well. Actually, the Essene bread wasn't so delicious, so I'll probably skip that kind at least in the future. I do okay with the olive oil occasionally on our fresh grown organic cukes, but I this was a bit more than occasionally since I had it 3 or 4 nights in a row...

What else am I eating these days? I'm having coconut water or OJ for breakfast and bananas for lunch. I'm eating either apple bananas, ladyfinger bananas, "cooking" bananas (raw & ripe of course), or Cavendish bananas these days. The Cavendish aren't locally grown but the rest are. I sometimes end up having to get them at the store when there aren't enough ripe local bananas. The storms have affected the banana supply here as well as slowing the ripening speed of what I find. I'm drinking more water lately - probably 'cause of the non-ideal dinner foods. I think it's mainly the incidental salt I'm getting from them that's making me more thirsty. Did I say that I wrapped some of the older stuff from the farm in dried Nori sheets a few times too? Yeah, not too great either. Not the worst, of course, but I've done better for myself and will again! :)

I keep thinking that I should just skip the dinner stuff for now and just have fruit instead, but I haven't been into having bananas or oranges for dinner right now, and haven't been getting the more expensive fruits 'cause we're budgeting everything 'till we're farming again. So I'm more on a survival raw diet than a thrival one. It's going well considering the situation and all.

Stress
Speaking of going well considering the situation and all... I haven't been stressed out much at all about the lack of income thing or the farm being flooded and more storms coming thing either. We might end up doing other work in the meantime until the land dries up enough to plant or we find another place to farm, but I feel fine. Nice. It feels like it's all gonna' work out well, so I'm "going with it." :)

Exercise
I'm also not getting as much exercise as usual since we're not farming. We're doing things around the house, moving things from the old farm to the new one and within the house, but it doesn't feel as good physically. Perhaps it's 'cause we're not outside all day anymore or something...

Overall
Anyway, I am still doing raw vegan and getting exercise and sleep, but it's "off" a bit compared to how it usually is, so I'm not as vital as I know I can be. I really want to get these things done around the house though, so I'm willing to deal with it. I'll just have to adjust to the changes and get into the swing of getting regular quality sleep, exercise and more ideal food again the way things are right now. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Happy Holidays!

Aloha!

12/14/08

2008-12-14T18:55:00.000-10:00

K, so I'm on-track-ish for the Blogging so far... Yay! :)

Farm
It looks like we might have done our last farmers' market for a while, although we might have a bit for Wednesday. We're gonna' try...

We harvested for yesterday's market hoping it'd clear up enough, but it didn't. The bridge was closed so we couldn't do the first one. The storm let up enough to go to the second one, but not many people were going out at that point anyway. There had been a lot of thunder and lightning in addition to the wind and rain and we don't usually get lightning, and even rarer is thunder with it. It started raining again and getting windy, etc. after a bit, so we left with lots of leftovers. Unfortunately we weren't able to preserve them, so they'll be future fertilizer via compost...

Food
Too bad about the salad 'cause I could use some salad right now. Oh well. I'll hafta' make do with something else. Kinda' a bummer to be combined with a shortage of ripe bananas too. My banana guy was away the week before last and it threw off the supply (in addition to the varied whether for ripening) more than I realized.

I got some carrots, broccoli and corn at the farmer's market yesterday - all of which are sort of rare for me. I was feeling like getting other veggies in me as well as the greens. I ate the corn right away - 'cause it's best eaten as soon as possible after it's been picked. I ate the carrots a little while ago and had some of the broccoli leaves as wrappers for wraps with my salad last night. The broccoli was mainly leaves. Maybe I'll dip the rest of the broccoli into some lemon-tahini dip or something tonight after lots and lots of orange juice (since I don't have salad).

I had OJ for breakfast too and a small hand of apple bananas at lunch. Now that I think about it, there's probably no way I'll not overeat the fats today. Oh well. I think I'll have several hands of bananas ready for tomorrow or the next day, so I'll be able to even it out then.

I gathered a bunch of lilikoi (passion fruit), the yellow tangy kind from our yard today & I'll probably have some of them tonight too, just after the OJ and before the dip. Hmmm... it's turning out to be a better dinner than I thought it'd be. :)

Exercise
Not much official exercise... we've been doing loads of stuff at our house with the house and yard so have been getting some that way. We've cleared out room to use my son's home gym thing which is exciting so I'll probably start using that again soon. We've been moving some stuff around that hasn't been accessible for a while and the dust was getting to me so I've been not as energetic due to the sneezing increase that happens with exercise when that's happening. Too bad I wasn't full-on with the elements of health better these days - I probably wouldn't have been as bothered by the dust and all. I know it's worked that way for me in the past with 80-10-10 (where if I'm "on it" with things I don't have much if any allergy issues). Oh well. It is what it is. At least I know why.

Sleep
Sleep? Er, uh.... yeah. Well... We have been getting loads and loads of stuff done that we've meant to for years - but it has also often been late at night so I haven't been getting as good of sleep as I should. I started to catch up a bit today - took a nap, but still need to do a bit more, perhaps tomorrow. We'll see.

Female
I should be well into the green days, but I have been getting to sleep so close to my regular time for taking my temperature and getting up too close to it afterward that I haven't been able to take my temperature lately. I probably could have and it might have been okay, but I like to skip it if I'm in doubt about if the reading would be accurate or not, just in case...

While we wanted more children years ago, our son is 20 now and we're kinda' liking the independence and such. It's still a possibility for the future to have another child, but I'm not wanting to take the chance right now.

Crafts
I think I'm gonna' join Ravelry and blog over there about some of the fiber crafts I do. I have to request an invitation, then I can join. If/when that happens I'll let y'all know so if any of you are interested in more info on that stuff you can go there. I figure I shouldn't take up too much space here on it. I might change my mind and just combine it all into this one blog, still deciding. If you have suggestions, let me know. :)

In the meantime I'll cover some things here... I love knitting and stuff like that 'cause it gives me something to do with my hands instead of figiting when I can't do anything else. I also like being able to make custom things so they're just how I want them. And it's also exciting, sort of addictive to me too... There are little bits of progress to measure and goals to reach along the way and it's so exciting to me to anticipate and reach them. Here's and example of what I mean: I finally decided to go ahead and go for knitting a sock.

I was always intimidated by having to use double-pointed needles - and not just two, but FIVE! I had been afraid I'd end up with messes of dropped stitches by the time I got back around again. LOL So I decided to face my fear and just do it. I'm sooo glad I did too! :) I knitted a nice lacy pair of cotton socks for myself and I was so amazed that I was actually doing it the whole time. It was like, "Wow, these bamboo knitting needles are working just fine, not losing stiches after all." Then, "Hey, look! The toe actually looks like a sock toe, and my toes fit in it!" (I was knitting them toe-up).

Next I was using Five needles instead of two and it was, "How cool this looks and it's not that hard after all." Then I got to the pattern and it was, "That is a nice pattern I do like it. I'm almost to the heel!" Kinda' nifty how that design had the same procedure for the heel as the toe, which really appeals to me from a practical perspective or something like that. So I thought that was way-cool too. When I was done with the heel it was, "Gosh, this really is starting to look like a real sock!" I was showing each of these steps and sharing my excitement with my family and at that point my hubby was excited/impressed too. He said something like, "It looks like a sock now already. I mean you could just end it now and it'd be a sock." (He likes to wear footy types of short socks with his running shoes and all).

I agreed that I could, but was gonna' finish the pattern and make more of a leg on it. I'm glad I did. They came out so much cuter than I thought they would. They're almost like little boots or something. The same look/feel to me as the little boots I used to love to wear in college and when I met my hubby. Sweet! :) I'll hafta' take a picture of 'em and show y'all. I'll try to take pics of the other two projects I've done recently as well - and maybe some older ones too while I'm at it... Maybe I'll have that done for next week's posting.

I was gonna' get back to spinning again today and was all ready to sit down and spin when I realized that my container of unspun de-seeded cotton had been moved during all the stuff we're doing at the house and I have no idea where it is right now. Oh well. Probably a good thing anyway. I might not have gotten to doing this blog on time otherwise.

A lot of the things we're doing around the house and farm are sort of like craft projects on a larger scale. I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but that's what building stuff is really. Not sure why it didn't occur to me before...

Other
Well, I should go now. My hubby's back from the new farm, it's dark and that means it's time to work on the garage some more... It feels so great to finally get these things done! :)

Aloha!

12/10/08 - Updates

2008-12-10T21:30:00.000-10:00

About Blogging
K, so you wonder, what happened? Janie was on a roll again...

Yeah, well, um... lots of stuff, actually. Sorry. I haven't been online much most of the time so it's been harder to do the blogging because of that. I'm thinking of doing audio or video blogging instead or in addition, alternating or something. Podcasts of sorts and all. My camera takes short videos fairly well and I might be able to find my son's digital audio recorder - both portable. I could do the blogs in-between stuff informally on the go... Hmmm... I think it has potential.

I think I'll be able to do some of the FAQs with audio or video stuff too. That might get them to happen quicker than they've been happening.

I have been pretty obsessed with knitting lately - been knitting pretty much every bit of spare time I have with my hands. I have also gotten into listening to Podcasts about crafts in addition to news and such as well. I just realized today that my son hasn't been using the digital audio recorder we got him to use for taking notes or making compositions in school. It's one that would interface with voice recognition software and type things out for him, which is a challenge due to his dyslexia. He's gotten fairly proficient with typing and spell check though and doesn't need it for his life right now. So.... I'm hoping he knows where it is still (Mr. Gagethead, he is indeedy) and it's not buried in some pile of electronic stuff somewhere not to be found for years. LOL

I've also decided that rather than try to post daily and feel badly about getting so far behind, I'll try to post weekly instead - either typed, audio or video. We'll see how that works. I'm not sure what day I'll post them, probably over the weekend, but I'll figure it out once our schedules settle again.

The Farm
We were doing quite well with the farm for a while there, had worked up to 7 farmers' markets a week (over 6 days - there were 2 on one of the days), and had other wholesale customers as well. We were lovingly pumping out the organic veggies and loving it. :)

We knew that we'd probably have to move the veggies to another place once the papayas get to a certain age as they'd shade out the veggies and would get so large that the roots would overlap so we wouldn't want to disturb them. So we were able to get a lease on some other land that we planned to move onto when the time came. We planned to overlap things and transition from one to the other fairly seamlessly.

Well, there were complications with that plan - mainly getting the land at the new farm prepared for planting. We had a hard time finding someone who had the equipment and know-how to do what we needed here - and then had a hard time finding time they were available. It took several months to get them out there to begin with, but it worked quite well. Well, sort of... He wouldn't do both parts we wanted to do, claiming that we needed to mow, then wait and mow again before doing the rest. That's how most of them do it here. So try as we did, we could not get him to stay and finish the second part that day. He said he'd be back in a week or two though, so we figured we could wait. Well, wait we did... and we're still waiting! It not only has been over a week or two - it's been over a month or two at this point. Ug!

The problem is, we cannot wait any longer. The time to move is now - for many reasons: we were subleasing through someone else and the landlord changed the locks on the gates but would not issue more than one key for our group (even though there were several subleasing the piece). This is after the security guards had been hassling people who came there to help us farm. It got worse after the key change - they said that only my husband could go there (not even me) and that we had to have the key (which they would not give enough copies of for my hubby to have his own) and that we could not use a hide-a-key and all. It'd become totally unworkable. Evenso, my hubby plodded along and worked out something so that he can bring me in and we have access to the shared key.

The security people got all weird over time and the landlord's office claimed that they were having problems out there (there are many acres of leased land over there beyond the gates and many people leasing various parts of it). We weren't able to get in for a few days when they changed the locks because the security people told us we couldn't go in without the key - but they hadn't issued the new key yet. Doi. We ended up having to miss a few markets and weren't able to go in daily to water, weed, plant and tend to the farm either. In addition to that, there had been a few storms and such that made it more challenging to grow things consistently and some farmer's markets that were completely rained out. It had become questionable about whether the people we were subleasing from actually had a lease for the term we were supposed to have as well as other issues with them that had become apparent. We had been having less and less planting space due to the papayas as well, so we realized the time to relocate had come, ready or not. We've reduced down to two days of farmer's markets a week, have stopped planting and stopped weeding at the old farm in order to get this done.

So we have been working on relocating our farm, even though we are still waiting for the equipment to come and prepare it for us to plant... because we have no other choice at this point. My hubby and I have been trying to figure out ways to get some things planted ASAP without waiting for the equipment as we cannot even raise the guy on the phone these days anymore. (He may be off-island for the holidays and such). Heh, the ironic thing about the security and all over at our old farm is that after we reduced the farmer's markets and stopped going there daily, someone stole some of our tools. We'd never had any theft problems before - and they were supposed to be making things more secure by making it so hard for people who belong there to get in. LOL We weren't able to do anything about it the day we discovered the thefts 'cause we were rushed to get the harvest done and to market, but we moved out everything we could over the next couple of days, leaving things to do harvest with since we'd still need it there for now. We got a storage shed and assembled it and all, after my hubby cleared some of the land with his high wheel weed wacker and regular heavy duty weed wacker.

We need to set up the irrigation and all over at the new place too - but need the land prepped first... We're trying to figure out how to get it done anyway. It'll work out in some manner or another though.

It's nice to not have that long commute daily anymore and I'm looking forward to the short commute in the near future. So it'll be much better once it's done. We'll just end up having a gap in our production it seems, which we'll deal with in some manner or another as well.

Oh yeah, we've also been looking for acreage and at acreage within the price range of the person who's gonna' get land that we'll then be able to use long-term. We've been looking at auctions, listings and word of mouth stuff too. We haven't found anything that will work in that price range yet, but we feel we're getting close! :)

House
Given that we couldn't farm and haven't been able to do things as much in relation to that lately we've been taking the opportunity to get things done around the house that were overdue and needed. It feels so nice to get some of this done - finally. We've been able to get rid of some of the clutter inside much better than ever before and we've started to do some repairs here and there (like the wooden fence that we put up about 10 years ago that needs new supports 'cause we didn't want to use treated lumber at the time and it's rotten now). We've also decided to take out the garden fencing in our yard, figuring that we'll do the trellis gardening at the farm instead. That will give us more room to get to the fruit trees and harvest them when they're producing. We're going to move the plants in the garden area to the new farm. Most of them are Permaculture-ish type of plants that grow on their own here once established, so we can plant them there even before the land is prepped. We decided to not have a compost pile at the house since the new farm is in town and we can bring things there instead, so we're clearing out the compost piles from the yard. Nice.

It feels terrific to make some tangible progress in this area. There's much more we want to accomplish (including new flooring at some point - hopefully soon), so we may not finish it before we get things going at the farm but we're getting loads of it done now. Speaking of the flooring... it's currently what was a white plush carpet (came with the house, unfortunately) that has majorly suffered from little boys trekking in and out of the yard from the pool to my son's room and all, not to mention us coming from the garden in the yard or the farm. We all tried to take off our shoes at the door, but sometimes when in a hurry that fell by the wayside... And then there were the occasional spills and such, and rain coming in from the window when we didn't realize it, stuff leaking under boxes stored there, etc. It's amazing that it doesn't smell. Thank GOODness! :) It's not white anymore, needless to say, heh. And it's needed replacing due to all the stains and such for a while. Now that we've cleared out a lot of the boxes and such that were stored in there it's more of a possibility. Yay! :)

We want to have something that will be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. LOL I suppose almost anything would be more well suited to our lifestyle than a white carpet. :) We'd been eyeing bamboo flooring that's surprisingly inexpensive for some time now, but as it got closer I started thinking that tile was better. We'd been eyeing tiles too, but were leaning towards the bamboo previously. I went on the Internet to find out pros and cons of things and discovered that we might want to do a cement stain instead, and then seal it. The foundation is a cement slab and the garage has it bare with just a seal, which works quite well. It looks like the cement stains are quite versatile and can be quite beautiful as well. So that's what I'm leaning towards right now. My hubby's not so sure. Actually he's not so sure about thinking about changing the flooring right now either. We have so much else to deal with right now, it's understandable. Whatever we choose we'd have to take the current carpet out, so I figure that we'll see if cement staining is even an option at that point. (The cement slab has to be in good condition to do it apparently).

So ANYway... lots of stuff going on at the house-front as well, suffice it to say. I'll move on to other stuff now...

Food
I'm still doing all raw, like usual, however not as well as usual for the time being at least. We're budgeting our funds and have not had as many veggies for ourselves to eat or to trade for other things, so things have been a bit scarce at times. This has resulted in me eating a bit too much fat (probably more like 20%-25% ish) and some of my rarely occasionally things more frequently. It's temporary though, so I'm feeling okay about it. Of course I'm noticing the corresponding changes in my vitality but at least I know what's causing it and how to change it to what I want.

Exercise
That's been going really well at times and not so good at other times while I was away. I finally was able to make it to one of the classes at the gym where I work. It was really fun! :) I was going to the gym and rowing every other day and doing some free weights again too for a while there. Then it became obvious that I wasn't able to keep doing the work schedule I'd been doing - and get enough sleep. I was getting too tired and was taking the time to sleep instead of working out 'cause I just wasn't getting enough sleep otherwise. Between getting up at 3 in the morning for the job at the gym and doing harvests and farmer's markets for the rest of the day, sometimes into the night, I was only getting about 3-5 hours of sleep most days. I was having trouble staying awake when driving to the farmer's market that was the farthest from the farm (about an hour and a half) so my hubby had to do that one. Just so I could sleep. He needed to be farming though. It didn't make sense to hire temporary help at the farm to cover my hours either 'cause we pay people more than I was getting paid at the gym. LOL So I told them I couldn't work that day anymore. They said that the other person who was working mornings was going to be switching jobs there and they wanted me to just switch that day for another instead of working one less day. I figured out what day was the least worst day and exchanged it for that one. The thing is, it conflicted with the class I took there. Bummer. I thought that I might be able to take the yoga class that conflicted with my previous shift though, but now I'm realizing that it's probably not gonna' happen. Now that we're moving our farm, we won't be down that way as much so I'll probably not make it.

I'm thinking that I may have to quit that job completely, or at least drop the day I switched for. That day's not gonna' work out very well once we're back to our usual schedule since that night's the night we stay very late harvesting (with headlamps) for the early morning market the "next" day. I will probably not go there much 'cause it's an hour away, and it doesn't make sense to drive that far for the amount of pay I get and a membership I'll probably not be using much if at all... But I'm not gonna' drop things just yet. I will wait and see what happens. I may be able to work out after my shifts and after markets we have in that area if I'm getting enough sleep otherwise. Since we wouldn't have to commute for two hours a day just to get to the farm it's possible that I would get enough sleep anyway... We'll see...

In the meantime I'm doing other exercise here and there. We cleared out enough room in the living room to be able to use some of the exercise things I had in there and have enough floor room to do things in. Yay! My hubby pulled out the two rebounders we have when it was raining and we rebounded together. It was so fun! I just love rebounding! It's so joyful! :) It's also kinda' funny to try to coordinate our bouncing together too. :)

Sleep
Well, I sort of covered that in other areas here - it's been variable, but I was falling quite behind for a while too. I discovered that I needed to temper my knitting obsession too 'cause I was staying up too late doing that as well as the other challenges. So I'm still challenged in that area and working on it... Yeah, tonight it's the blogging, heh. Oh well...

Female
I haven't been taking my temperature as regularly lately 'cause of the irregular sleep, but the BabyComp still works anyway. So cool. I'm soooo glad I got it. I can just take may temperature around ovulation and menstration and that does it.

Other Stuff
My relationship with my hubby's going fabulously well, as is my relationship with my son. I am so grateful for my life with them, every moment.

When we cleared out the living room that also made room for my spinning wheel again. Yay! I haven't gotten back to it yet, mainly 'cause I've been distracted with my knitting obsession, but I'm planning on starting back on it next week.

I was playing the banjo ukulele every day - in my spare time, on the way to/from the farm and all, but then the battery in the tuner I used to keep it tuned ran out... And I took too long to get it replaced. It's been a while now and I've gotten out of practice. I have the batteries now, but haven't started back yet. I'll be starting off close to the beginning. That's okay. It's for fun anyway. The knitting has sort of taken it's place to/from the farm so I'll have to alternate them once I get going again.

The vog has come by once or twice since I last posted I believe. The last one was a few days ago and was getting to me. It lasted a bit longer than the vog though and I realized that it was a bit different afterwards - it turned out that I had another one of those little eyelashes growing astray - and into my eye. It was a bit hard to figure it out 'cause my eyes are often sensitive to wind after the vog exposure even after it's gone and it often feels like something's in it or irritating it. Was nice to have an instant solution to that irritation though - just pluck the eyelash and it's over. Definitely nice.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I only have one guinea pig now. The other one died. She was quite old, for a guinea pig that is, so it wasn't completely unexpected. It looked like she was peaceful and she'd been eating and drinking and acting fine so I think she was happy too. Same thing happened with my dog too - she died peacefully and was old as well. We miss them both daily, and we're grateful to have been able to share our lives with them for as long as we did. :) So now we're sharing our house and lives with only one guinea pig and a cat... along with all the unofficial companions like geckos and other lizards, birds and everything outside and all...

Let's see, what else... hmm... don't know right now. Guess it'll come out eventually as I blog more.

K, gonna' go now. Need to relax and go to sleep... getting up early tomorrow again and stayed up too late last night finishing a shirt I was knitting... (insert embarrassed smiley here).

Thanksgiving 2008

2008-11-27T14:59:00.005-10:00

I'm trying to catch up on posting pictures I took but hadn't posted, adding info. as I can... I'm posting this in 2009, and it's almost Thanksgiving 2009 now... so forgive me if I don't remember all that much about this. The pictures help, so I remember things around the pictures...

I went to a "raw" potluck again... sorta' become a tradition over here on our small island and all...

This time I was going to make the eggfruit-banana thing, was going to make an open-topped creme pie with date crust. Simple. But... the eggfruit wasn't cooperating again and I didn't have enough ripe. So... I made layered pudding cups instead. They have a layer of thick banana smoothie (pudding), another layer of eggfruit-banana creme (bananas and eggfruits blended in food process with S blade, water if needed for smoothness), and another layer of thick green smoothie (ripe cooking bananas, tat tsai, water in blender). That green smoothie sets up like pudding, so I put it on top. It also allowed more contrast for the decorative drops of things on top...

The eggfruit layer didn't show so well 'cause they weren't really orange-ish eggfruits and I didn't have much of them so that layer was mostly banana as well... Perhaps another time I can get a nice intense orange color for that layer. Would look really nice that way with that intense green, eh? :)

They went over well again and I pretty much stuck to eating just them that time, instead of all the other potluck food. I think I had some salad as well...

10-12-08

2008-10-12T07:34:00.000-10:00

Sleep:
up at 7am-ish

Food:
orange juice for breakfast, yellow dragon fruit a bit afterward
the rest is TBD..

We're going to a potluck today that is encouraging people to bring home-grown produce so hopefully that'll mean lotsa' fruit! :) We're actually not gonna' be bringing fruit though 'cause none of our fruit trees are bearing at the moment, well except the lemon tree. We're bringing three salads ('cause there are three of us): one that's two of our farm's 5-lettuce blend bags' worth and perhaps some rose petals; one that's two of our farm's salad mix bags' worth with some edible herb flowers; one that's cubed chayote squash, lemon, katuk leaves & flowers, tomatoes and perhaps some rose petals - all from our yard, except the tomatoes are from our farm. I'll make two dressings for people to pour on separately: avocado-lemon and avocado-lemon-basil-chives. I'll blend the avocado and lemon to dressing consistency, perhaps adding water if needed, pour out some of it into one container and then make the other dressing by adding the chopped herbs into the blender and barely blending it just for mixing. I'll try to take some pics of them for y'all. Since the thing starts at 10am and lunch is at noon, I figure that's when the potluck'll be so we're gonna' take things in a cooler and assemble them into the bowls when it's time.

update:
So I didn't end up having the OJ for breakfast after all. I discovered that we only had 2 oranges left LOL, so I had bananas instead. I ate 'em while making the dressing and chayote thing for the potluck. My hubby was gonna' get a pot for me to plant seeds from the yellow dragon fruit into so I didn't have them yet this morning either.

I ended up putting the juice of the 2 oranges into the dressings for the potluck too, in order to have more liquid 'cause the avocado made it thicker than I had lemons for and didn't want to add too much water... It tasted nice so it worked out fine. We were all running late for the workshop so I forgot to take the pictures I intended of the food. Oops - outta' practice again... had my camera and everything too.

The salads and dressings went over really well at the potluck. There were pasta dishes, chips, crackers, other salads and such too. Good thing my hubby over harvested. LOL We refilled the large salad bowls several times and it was all eaten, even though the crackers and some other things weren't. I was surprised how quickly the chayote and katuk dish went with that diverse crowd. Nice. There were some bananas there, but they were pretty bruised up so I had our salads all mixed together with the dressing. Then a friend of mine told me that they'd brought some longan from their yard. I hadn't seen it before so went and got some. Not the best to eat it after the salad dressing (overt fat from the avocado), but it was a potluck and I knew I might be mis-combining...

A farmer friend of mine gave me a chip she'd made from dehydrating greens and I can't remember what else - perhaps only Bragg's, not sure. It was tasty. I'm now wondering what else was in there 'cause if it was only greens and Bragg's I could do some without the Bragg's at some point for my hubby and it'd be a better choice for chips I think... I'll hafta' ask her sometime.

I had more bananas for dinner. I've got a lot of them ripening now so I'll be eating them a lot for a while...

Exercise:
Not a lot of official exercise today. It's the only day we don't harvest for the farmer's markets, but I am harvesting from our yard for a potluck today and my hubby's harvesting a tiny amount from the farm for it as well. I'll probably do some weights and/or dance video game with my son later.

Detox:
A bit dehydrated lately, not sure why. Drinking more water, but haven't had anything noticeable detox-wise to report - yet.

Female:
I skipped the temperature today 'cause my sleep was irregular (my hubby likes to sleep on an air mattress & it sprung a slow leak that partially deflated it during the night) and I thought it wouldn't be accurate, day 8 of my cycle, red day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I planned to catch up on my posts - or at least with the pics I took a while back today, but I'm not sure if that's gonna' happen after all. My hubby found out about a workshop/class that we all (my hubby, son and I) want to take today. It takes up most of the day, so I may not have time after all. Sorry. If I don't do it today, it'll probably wait 'till next weekend 'cause I'm still filling in for the guy who filled in for me at the gym and it makes me a bit short on sleep and time... Yesterday I decided to take a nap after the farmers markets, thought it'd be an hour or two.. I ended up sleeping three hours and could have still slept more if my hubby hadn't come home then. I wanted to get up and spend some time with him for a while before going back to sleep for the night. He was sleepy too so we went to sleep early. This morning I feel fairly well-rested (considering the deflated bed situation overnight LOL). Guess we'll hafta' patch the airbed or something. I was definitely wanting my hammock after a while, but stuck around 'cause I wanted to be with my hubby more...

The class we're going to is nifty - supposed to help you build your own wind and/or solar power system. We've all read books on this sort of thing and set up little solar power systems in the past, so hopefully it will cover things in more detail than just an overview or what's-possible-and-hire-someone sort of deal. It'd be cool if they got so detailed as to tell you how to make solar cells and such, but I kinda' think not, think it's a buy this and buy that sort of thing...

K, well that's it for now. I'll be back here posting for y'all when I can! :)

update: the workshop was pretty good, not just this is what's possible, went into more specifics and it helped update us with some of the newer batteries, controllers and such since we were off the grid the last time. Nice. K, gotta' go to sleep!!!

I'll try to take pics of my food better again...

Aloha! :)

Quick update

2008-10-08T21:38:00.000-10:00

I took pictures of my food for a few more days and stopped after a while since I wasn't getting a chance to blog about them as much right now.

I'm working at the gym 5 days a week for this week and next week, filling in for someone on vacation who filled in for me when I was on mine. That means I have less time for everything, and that I'm taking most of what time I have to just sleep. Sorry.

I'll try to catch up on the older posts that go with my pics this weekend. Then I'll be back posting more regularly in about two weeks, when my schedule's back to usual.

I had a great time on vacation, and it's also good to be back home. This is home for me. Get out those ruby slippers 'cause I'm gonna' say, "there's no place like home, there's no place like home..." :D So true...

I'm having a blast getting back into my regular life again and have so many exciting developments with building the life I want that it's hard to contain myself sometimes. I love my life as it is and it's just gonna' get better and better as we head more towards my dreams. Yay! :)

Hope all is well with y'all too!

Aloha! (and nightie-night) :)

9/29/08

2008-09-29T19:48:00.000-10:00

This was posted two weeks later and dated as if it was posted on the 29th, so the day of the week will show correctly and it keeps things in chronological order...

Sleep:
up at 3am to get ready for my shift at the gym - will be doing so all week...

Food:
~7am: I found 3 mangosteen in the kitchen and my hubby said that I could have 'em. Yum! :)

Then I had the rest of the starfruit from the day before:

~8:45am: When we got to the farm I had the water from two of the coconuts we got from our yard the night before:

I had lunch a couple of times 'cause I was too busy to eat it all at once. It was all bananas from our yard:

I can't remember what I had the rest of the day anymore and lost the pics later in the day so I don't have the pics to remind me. I think it was salad from our farm though.

Exercise:
Harvesting and light calisthenics as I had time, stairs and such at my shift at the gym... so not much, but I was still taking it easy with the jet lag and all.

Detox:
Yeah, I'm sure. Can't remember specifics though...

Female:
I think this was the first day I took my temperature again for a long time. I think it was day 5 of my cycle, but can't remember specifically at this point... It was a green day though, I remember that. :)

The Rest:
It was my first day back at the gym for work. It was nice to see everyone again too. I did the farmer's market with my hubby since he'd been doing it while I was gone. We went and got the freezer after market.

I took a few pics of a chameleon at the farm when drinking my coconuts and lost all the pics on my camera card that I hadn't copied over yet when deleting the ones I didn't want. Even though only a few were highlighted and I hit the delete key on my computer and it asked if I wanted to delete that many pics, it somehow deleted all of the pics on my card in that folder. :( Bummer. I had taken some pics of ukuleles I saw at Costco that I thought my dad might be interested in that I lost too. Now I'll hafta' figure out how to get in there again to do it again. I don't have a membership, but he does... I do have the web optimized pic I did for y'all of the chameleon though. Here it is:

K, I've only got one more day's pics from two weeks ago (the 30th), but will hafta' post 'em another time. It's getting too late tonight (the 12th) as I'm getting up at 3am again tomorrow...

Aloha! :)

9/28/08

2008-09-28T18:33:00.000-10:00

I'm posting this two weeks later, so I don't remember much at this point. I'm gonna' override the posting date so it shows up as if I posted it on the 28th though.

It was my first day back, so I was short on food still and still jet lagged...

Food:
Breakfast was stuff I found around the house...
~10:15am: Star fruit - the first pic's what I started with and the 2nd is what was left when I was 'done' with the star fruit...

~10:30am: Then I decided to have some of the corn in the fridge 'cause even though I was done with star fruit, it wasn't enough calories. I find it hard to eat enough star fruit at times due to the waxiness of it. I realized that the corn wasn't fresh and I wouldn't usually eat it beyond the first day from harvest, but I was foraging so-to-speak, so I ate one to see how it sat with me. It did fine, so I ate another. The pic's of the second one and one like the first...

~12:15pm: My son told me that there were some longan around for me (gift from other farmers at market) so I searched around some more and found them. There weren't many so I ate 'em on the way into the farm...

~1:15pm: I got to the farm and looked around at what was still growing in the personal section I took care of before I left. The cucumbers were pretty much all done by then, there were still some tomatoes and basil, the peas were long gone and there were a few long beans still though. So I ate what long beans I could find. Here's a pic of 'em growing, followed by a pic of me with some of 'em. :) I was wearing the lei my hubby gave me at the airport when he picked me up 'cause it was still good...

~3pm: It was time for more serious calories, the foraging wasn't doing it for me anymore. So we went to the grocery store that usually has ripe bananas, but they didn't have any ripe right then. :( So I decided to get dates and eat 'em with apples to clean my teeth and lessen the sweetness. Yep. Home in the tropics and stuck eating imported stuff still. LOL I'll be able to go to the farmer's market soon and get things going again. No worries. :) My hubby got stuff from their deli and we ate at the mall. Here's my stuff in the re-usable bag that stuffs into a smaller attached one for storage:

When we got home (at about 6pm) we discovered that the rack of bananas in our yard that my hubby was so excited about ('cause it was sooo large and his favorite kind) had ripened while I was gone and some of them were already eaten by the birds. He was so busy doing everything, leaving in the dark and arriving back in the dark that he hadn't noticed... He harvested it and we harvested some coconuts for me to have in the morning too. I got lemons from our tree and noticed that there were roses ready for eating as well. (I eat the petals in salads). No papayas ready just yet). I gathered some yellow lilikoi (passion fruit) too. :) No more avocados left at this point. Oh well. Here's a pic of the coconuts from our tree after I put them in the back of our truck to take to the farm the next day:

~7pm: Dinner was cucumber noodles with cukes from our farm that I harvested before we left, topped with some julienne sun dried tomatoes from a jar that were soaking in olive oil. Eeek! Yeah, olive oil... Oh well. It was yummy at least. :)

I also sprinkled basil flowers on the 'pasta' that I'd gathered at our farm earlier too. Here's a pic I took of the basil flowers in the field...

Exercise:
Not too much today, just harvesting and stuff...

Detox:
Can't remember at this point (2 weeks later) - I figure there was something though as I'd been not eating all that optimally... I can see my skin and hair weren't up to par in the pic. That's sort of a usual thing for me after flying as well.

Female:
I didn't take my temperature this morning yet 'cause my sleeping was still messed up from jet lag and all..

The Rest:
It was really nice to be home. There was a strange smell the night before that we couldn't place. It smelled like something burning or something else, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from or what it was... In the morning we still smelled it and it was worse so we tried to figure it out even more. I finally decided that it was coming from the back or underneath the fridge. My hubby wasn't convinced and thought it was coming from a different area. Then we sort of converged to a similar area and I thought it was coming from the back of the fridge where a little fan was and he thought it was underneath the fridge. It was hard to locate 'cause the smell would sort of come and go in it's intensity. I thought it was related to the fridge's operation 'cause the smell would be more noticeable when the fridge was powering on and less when it was not. At a certain point late in the morning we discovered that it was indeed the fridge 'cause when my hubby was cleaning out the floor behind the fridge it started sparking when it powered on. He promptly unplugged it and we realized that we needed to get a new fridge. LOL Good thing we kept at it and didn't just go off to the farm. It made us rather late to get to the farm for watering, but it saved our house from burning down... My hubby cut the cord so our son wouldn't come and plug it back in when we were gone ('cause he wasn't there at the time and didn't know what was up).

So after going to the farm and watering and foraging we went to the mall and any other place we could think of with refrigerators to see our options. They were much more expensive than we thought they'd be and not all of them on display were available right away. We decided on one at Sears and were going to go back the next day to buy it and get it delivered. They said that if we got it delivered it wouldn't happen 'till Wednesday so there was no rush. The delivery would be free - we pay it upfront and get a rebate that will refund us. Hard to pass that up, especially since they had the best one in our opinion.

Since I'm writing this 2 weeks later I'll keep going with this thread... I went in the next day and saw the same sales guy to buy it. Then it turned out that the stainless steel one we were looking at wasn't the price it said on it and that we'd discussed. That price was apparently for the white model. Ug! We'd talked all about how it was the same as the white model beside it and that must be the difference in price - the sales guys had participated in that discussion too. Doi. There was another sales gal there on Monday who explained the difference in the price between the white models of the stainless steel one we wanted and the white one beside it was that the shelves inside had a slight lip on the sides of the shelves rather than just glass at the sides of the shelves. Quite minor. ANYway... the stainless model was $200 more than we thought and I wasn't prepared to pay for that. I'd gone in alone and didn't have the money for it with me or my hubby to discuss it with. At this point the other white one seemed like a better deal 'cause of the $200 difference. The thing was, they didn't even have the stainless steel one in stock either! Ug! So I went back to the farm and told my hubby about it and he agreed that perhaps we shouldn't get either of them.

We thought about just getting a freezer that opens at the top in order to freeze the water bottles for the farmer's market and leave it at that. Our son could use the little 3/4 fridge we had but weren't using and we didn't really need refrigeration for most things. We used it for left overs from market, but nothing else much. Those freezers are more efficient and cheaper to run, better on the environment... So that's what we did. We got it and brought it home that night. We got one that was the right size to fit where the fridge was, but didn't put it in there 'cause we still had the fridge and didn't have time to move it first.

We were able to plug in the freezer in the middle of the night and had the bottles of water in there to freeze for the farmer's markets. We were buying bags of ice to use for markets in the meantime. The freezer turned out to be not so great for this. It wasn't freezing the water as quickly and solidly as the refrigerator had - and hadn't even frozen one solid after 2 days... We then re-examined the owner's manual and noticed that it said that it was designed to store frozen foods.. so perhaps it didn't get cold enough to freeze things, only cold enough to keep things frozen that were already frozen?!? Ug! We gave it more time and my hubby noticed that it seemed to do better when we had more things in there and theorized that it needed less open space to freeze things. So we've been working on increasing the amount of bottles in there and it's been working better for us. It still takes about a day and a half or two days to freeze the bottles (whereas the fridge would take only overnight or one day), but we haven't been able to fill it up enough quite yet either. It'd be nice to have it full though so we'd always have plenty of the refreeze containers for the larger markets and the day we have two markets and all. So we're keeping it.

On a different note. I pulled out my son's ukulele and used the tuner my dad got me to tune it up. The pegs were a bit rusty so it was a bit more difficult to tune, but it tuned up nicely and I like the sound. So does my hubby. Yay! :) I started to practice the cords I knew and experiment with things with them and trying to find other notes or chords that sound good w/'em. I also looked at another string instrument we had around the same size. It was a banjo thing I guess my mom had and looking at it again I noticed that it had four strings. A banjo uke! Cool! I always liked the way that thing looked, now perhaps I'll know how to tune and play it too! Sweet! :) There were only 3 strings on it and it was very dusty and dirty so I took the strings off and cleaned it up some. I figured I'd bring it into a music store and ask them how best to clean it up further and get it restrung.

I wasn't able to go in right away to get it looked at, and when I did I found that I had to go back another day when the guy who did repairs would be there. That was Friday (the 10th) and he said that it was missing it's bridge, but he could order one fairly inexpensively. He told me a bit about it and will help me string and tune it when the bridge arrives. It should be here at the end of next week. Cool! :) He said it wasn't a top of the line sort of thing even in it's time 'cause it didn't have tension adjustments on the sides and all, but it could still have a nice sound. I like the design of it so I want to find out what it sounds like, so I'm going for it.

In the meantime I've been practicing and playing on my son's uke, which has been fun. I found that I needed to tune it almost every time though and figured it was partly 'cause of the rust on the pegs and more likely 'cause it didn't have a case and was getting untuned in transit. I found a nifty camo case and got it on the spot. Yay! I'm lovin' that case, yeah.

I haven't been playing the harmonica since I got back... want to find the book I have on how to play it here first...

K, enough on this day and updates on that stuff since...