Another Milestone

This week, I passed another milestone.
My housework and yard work became housework and yard work.

That is, I can now do the lawn and other things in the same day without wearing myself out.

I have done a workout in the morning, followed by cutting the grass, and then went in to shower, followed by doing my other chores, all in the same day.

I am a househusband for those who didn't figure this out before. I do the house work and cooking, and everything else because I am home more often than my wife.

She brings home the main paycheck. We have done this for years, and although she wants me to change that, I am not able to for several reasons that I will tell a shrink and leave you to figure out on your own.

So, right now, I am at the point of finishing everything I started at the beginning of the summer.

• I have to paint the stairwell in the basement, and then move the exercise equipment to where I want it. I can now run all the way around the basement without tripping over boxes, old furniture, and trash. And, I can see because the walls are freshly painted. No more dark corners.
• I have a pile of furniture on the porch that was formerly in the house waiting to be picked up and taken to the dump. I already got rid of the old refrigerator, water heater, and washer as reported in an earlier post.
• My studio is set up after being painted. I am in the process of trying to sell some music equipment in order to downsize my collection. I need a smaller sound system so I don't have to carry the large one.
• The back bedroom is ready for my wife to paint and design as soon as we get out of debt.
• I am working on a debt elimination program which should be ready by next week. Thank you Dave Ramsey. Unless I win the lottery this weekend, he is my last hope before bankruptcy.

When this post is published, things will have changed again, and I hope to have moved forward again. I hope your Labor day holiday is a good one.

BTW, just FYI, and off topic:
Today, I covered 130 miles in my school bus to transport 7 kids to and from school.

Yippie

I am typing this without my glasses, so please excuse any typos.
Yesterday, I went to help my friend move some of his heavier furniture into storage. He is cleaning out his home with plans to sell it.
His stairway is a bit off balance and is hard for me to negotiate, and most of his stuff was upstairs. I got a workout, and worked up a sweat.
We had to maneuver around a few corners too in order to get the bookcases and other things down the stairs, but we managed.
It all took about an hour and a half to load the van. Then we took it to the storage area and dropped it off.
We took a second trip to finish things off.
Then, I came home and asked my wife if she wanted to take a ride on the Helix with me. For the second time in her life, she said yes.
So, we headed for Middle Creek and their visitor's center, which was closed. But, that didn't matter since we wanted to see the butterfly/hummingbird area out front.
The bees were there too, but they were too interested in pollinating the flowers to bother with us.
Got some great pictures, but not of the hummingbirds. They were too small and fast for us to catch. They look like big bees to me.
I did all that yesterday. Wow!

Evolution of the support group meetings.

Last night, I did the "Ham".
I got up in front of everyone at the support group meeting and did a warm up act for the presentation while they were doing food prep.
The new office has a great room with state of the art audio/video equipment, including a number of HD TVs, a sound system with wireless mics, a large projector type screen, and a camera aimed at the professional kitchen.
They were supposed to have a grocery store come in and do a demo about fresh veggies and how to prep them, but they cancelled out at the last minute.

So, while they were scrambling with food prep, I did my thing.

The crowd was just as huge as usual. I keep thinking of how hard it is to get a support group together and here we have over 100 people on a regular basis. I should sell stuff there. I wouldn't have to work!

The meeting went well after I got off the stage. The camera allowed everyone to see what they were doing and the food got passed around for folks to try. Stuff was good. Squash, and some other stuff were sprinkled with toppings and baked. The aroma was worth the price of admission (free?).

I helped out where I could and when we broke into groups I wandered around and talked with lots of people about my experiences so far.

We have a covered dish picnic coming up and hope to see another huge crowd!

In October, we will be dressing up in our fat clothes to show off what we lost. I told them I could give them all a thrill by not wearing anything under them, but they said no for some reason.

Oh well, life is good!

Forced to write, yeah, right!

I am not being forced to write. I like to write. What I am starting to not like is to sit still.
I never thought it would happen, but I really don't like to sit down anymore than I have to. If you haven't experienced this feeling, I hope you do sometime in your journey to lose weight.

I went to my workout today and met the new workout guru. He isn't as pretty as the lady workout guru, but I am not there to oogle the pretty female.

I started out on the treadmill to warm up. Someday, I'll be able to learn how to work the damn thing. I decided to try a hill climb program, so I entered all of my specs as requested, and stated that I didn't want to go above 3.5 mph jogging or a 6% grade. I have to walk fast or jog at 3.1, and have no problem climbing hills now. A 6% grade is steeper than an old locomotive can travel. Most of them won't go over anything more than a 4%. I know this because I walk rail trails here and they are set to no more than 4%.

So, the machine starts out at a very slow pace. I increase the speed to 2.5 which is a slow walk for me. I want to warm up, so I start out slow and work up to faster speeds. Anyway, I do this for about 5 minutes, and the machine beeps to tell me it's going to change. I glance down and the machine tells me it is going to increase my speed to 4.5 mph. I exclaim "holy s***" and plant my left foot on the side rail followed by the right foot.
I then go to shut the machine down and start over. In the meantime, the gurus hear my exclamation and come running to help. How many gyms do you know of that people will run over to help you? Not any that I've been to.
Anyway, I reset the machine and end up doing 30 minutes at speeds from 2.5 to 3.5 at the same grades as listed above. They have an automatic heart rate monitor on the handles, so I watched my rate go up to 147, and I kept it there for most of the workout. I varied things to make sure I kept everything where I wanted it.
After I finished that, I did weight machines. I am working to help the gurus rewrite the papers so I can record my results better. The way it's set up now is not very efficient. This makes it difficult to see improvement.
I next went onto the elliptical and ran that for 10 minutes, again keeping my heart rate up around the 147. Since I had already done a lot, keeping my heart rate up didn't take as much effort.
Oh yeah, after each machine, I walk around a bit. If you haven't felt the effects of re-gaining your footing, you should try the moving machines! I walk around until my legs work again. Until then, I walk very carefully...and funny!
Looking back to last month, I have made much progress. I couldn't do more than 5 minutes on the elliptical, and no more than 10 minutes on the treadmill at much slower speeds.
I feel good!