Red is staring at me through the window. I took this sitting down at the casita table with my iphone, because my Nikon with the telephoto is too much for me to handle a few days after surgery.
Life is taking on a new rhythm post surgery last Friday. I feel like I’m in a time of waiting. Now that my pain is less and I have a knee scooter, I am pretty much self-sufficient. Except for going to the grocery store, cooking, doing laundry — all the things that fall under my jobs. Now my husband is taking on those tasks, along with work. To be fair, hubby often does those, but now it’s all on him.
Once I got the knee scooter, which came four days late from Amazon, I was able to do most little things myself. Before that, I had a walker the surgery center sent home with me. I had to hop on my left leg with right leg in the air. Talk about a work out! Also, that left no hands free to pick up or carry anything. I had to rely on my husband for everything, which after a few days, wasn’t easy for either one of us. My handy dandy knee scooter has a basket and I can zip around the house like a free bird.
I’m passing time watching my birds out the window, reading “Writing Down the Bones,” reading blogs and beginning a new manuscript. There are a few TV shows and movies I’m enjoying, too. I’m waiting for the momentous day of my first pre op appointment a week from Friday. Sometime after that, I’ll start PT. It’s a quiet time of waiting, but to be honest — “hey it’s not that bad!”
P.S. “Hey, it’s not that bad,” I’d tell my coach after my Masters swim practices in Palm Springs. My coach joked about what an endorsement that was for his program. He said that we should make t-shirts, which a friend and I did!
How would use spend a stretch of quiet time ahead of you? Keep in mind you couldn’t leave the house or be weight bearing?
It was windy and beginning to rain when I went outside to bring in a towel out by the pool. I didn’t want the towel to end up in the pool, or get wet from rain.
I pulled the towel off the recliner and a bobcat jumped out of the fireplace! We both were surprised. She ran to the fence and crawled through to the wash behind our house. I ran into the house. A few minutes later, she returned to the fireplace. I grabbed my camera with the telephoto lens and took a few pictures from inside our bedroom.
Olive the cat noticed her first bobcat. She got low into stalking mode — but stayed far away from the window as she watched. If it’s a bird, she’s right up against the window whacking at the bird through the glass.
The fireplace makes a cozy cat cave.
House Guests
The last house guest stayed with us for several days to scout a local lake. He’s entering a freshwater spearfishing competition. He arrived at our house with his boat and spent the next three days free diving in the lake from dawn to dusk.
He also brought us some treats from a recent fishing trip to Alaska. The freezer in the casita is filled with salmon, rock cod and black cod. There’s also lobster from his free diving off the coast of Southern California. What a treat! He’s welcome back anytime.
This is Black Cod that I cooked in foil on the barbecue. It’s my favorite fish which I used to get in Seattle’s Chinatown while I was in college. Incredibly delicious!
Things are not going swimmingly!
The past two weeks, I got back into the pool at the YMCA for lap swimming. I had stopped swimming during our wet, cold winter months ago. Then summer came and the weather was hot, which means I don’t like being out in the sun.
I was proud of myself and wanted to be consistent with swimming. Then on my swim day, the weather dropped overnight by 50 degrees! It was windy and rainy. I cancelled swimming. It warms up a bit this week, so I’ll get back to the pool.
One day while driving home from the pool, I heard INTELLIGENCE FOR YOUR LIFE MINUTES by John Tesh on the radio. It was about a Harvard study on ending your daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water.
In the study, people who ended their daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water had less sick days than those who took hot showers. I’ve heard of a trend of cold plunge lately by a number of celebrities. My college roommate’s husband said he takes a cold plunge in an icy stream at their home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
I found this information from UCLA:
What is cold therapy?
Cold therapy, also called cryotherapy, uses exposure to cold temperatures to cool the body’s tissues for therapeutic reasons. There are several ways to apply cold therapy, including:
Cold showers, which involve lowering the water temperature below 60 degrees for two to three minutes at a time
Cold spray, used to numb a small area
Cold water immersion or ice baths, or submerging everything but your head and neck in cold water
Localized ice application to treat injuries or specific muscle groups
Whole-body cryotherapy, which exposes the body to very cold vapors
Why cold showers could be good for you
Cold showers are not the primary treatment for any conditions, and conclusive research about cold therapy is still limited. But a quick blast of cold water can be beneficial when used for symptom relief.
Taking cold showers may:
1. Bolster your immunity to common colds
2. Combat symptoms of depression
3. Improve circulation
4. Increase metabolism
5. Reduce inflammation and prevent muscle soreness
6. Relieve localized pain
Our daughter used to take ice baths at swim meets in our hotel room between prelims and finals. The purpose was to flush out inflammation and increase blood flow to her legs.
Our pool isn’t heated and I could use it as a cold plunge pool this winter. Or, try the 30 second shower method. I’ll tell you how it goes.
What are your thoughts about cold showers or ice baths? Would you give it a try?
Have you tried Black Cod otherwise known as Sablefish?
As I was writing my to do-list today, I felt frustrated. There are a couple things that I never get around to doing. Why do I continue to put them on my list? Instead of helping organize my day, the list is making me feel like a loser.
I have a choice. I either tackle those pesky things that I don’t want to do — or let them go.
My husband and I had a great hike yesterday on the Broken Spoke Trail near our house yesterday. He said he’s getting bored of not doing anything on the weekends. We are at the point that it’s tough being together in COVID isolation almost for a year. While we were out in the desert — I had an idea. It entailed making more lists.
My husband standing next to an amazing saguaro.
One would be a list of places we want to explore in our new state. I want to visit Sedona and the Grand Canton. He wants to see Payson and Puerto Penasco on the Sea of Cortez. All of those places will go on our list.
The other is a to-do list for our new house. On the second list, I’ve decided to spend one hour a day working on the guest room. Sitting on the carpet are 10 boxes that I’ve avoided unpacking consistently for the two months we’ve lived here. It’s probably stuff I should have thrown out, rather than moved. Also, the artwork is leaning against the walls. We have the rest of the house almost put together. We’re just waiting for the living room furniture we ordered in November.
On our Super Bowl Sunday desert hike.
So, I’m not giving up on lists. I just want to figure out how to not let my lists hurt my feelings.
The first few days after moving were filled with the basics — finding all our kitchen things and getting the heart of our home established. After that, we moved onto the bedroom. I was overwhelmed with wardrobe boxes and bins of clothes. Why did I have so many clothes and why did I move it all from California to Arizona? How many swim t-shirts does one need? I’ve already sewn several quilts out of them for my kids. What to do now? I found a home for some and took a bunch of clothes to the local Kiwanis market.
Olive Bear found a safe space inside our closet.
Now that we’ve been in our house for 18 days, I’m down to the nitty gritty. Our guest room still has unopened boxes labeled “photos,” “stuff in frames” and “photo albums.” The plan is to scan in photos I want to keep and throw the rest out.
I’ve filled the dresser in the guest room with stuff I don’t know what to do with. There’s a drawer filled with cords from HMD1 to extension cords and cords of no known use. The same dresser drawer was filled with these cords in my son’s room in California. I think today is the day to make some decisions on cords I need and can use. Or, I can just throw the whole mess out and not waste my time.
The question is why did I move a mess of stuff I have no use for, but cannot part with? And why can’t I? Maybe today is the day.
Morning walk views of saguaro.
Any suggestions on how to get rid of stuff I don’t have a place for is much appreciated.
We started a remodel over a month ago. We told the contractor that we needed the guest room done, finished, completed no later than March 10th.
WELL. It’s March 12th and it’s not done. The guests arrive for spring break mañana.
Not that I’m stressing or anything. YIKES!!!!
The room today with guests on their way.
It was a simple job really, too small I guess for a contractor to take seriously — sprucing up one room with attached bath. They said, “no problem.” They started off with gusto, a handful of workers spending from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. working away.
I believed that the work would be done. I was excited and happy.
Then there was no one showing up. For days on end.
What’s with that? I have guests arriving tomorrow, and we’ve seen neither “hide nor hair” of workers — except for two separate, brief occasions.
One was to paint the gorgeous wood beams, which my husband (who has absolutely no taste whatsoever — except for his taste in women) had determined needed to be a deep chocolate brown rather than left alone in their natural beautiful state.
He didn’t take into account that the French doors and ceiling fans were a natural color — and they all matched perfectly!
The beams in natural glory.
The other occasion we’ve seen a worker was when one came back to undo the chocolate brown and try to return the natural wood to a close resemblance of it’s former self.
