I first woke up around 6:30. I should have just gotten up then, but I tried to get a little more sleep in. My body wasn’t having it. It wanted food and it wanted food now. I had the other half of the corned beef hash can and yogurt mixed with granny smith apple and cinnamon for breakfast. I wanted to get a lot of protein to help recover from yesterday and prepare for today’s exertions. Because today was the day to start mowing the lawn.
I use the word lawn quite loosely. Ambrose and I decided to try and keep mown an area going out about 100 feet around the house. This is for fire safety. Some parts of that “lawn” are relatively lawn-like. Flat and relatively rock free. But farther out the ground is a rock-strewn, rutted mess, with lots of sloping. The mower itself is pretty heavy, and sometimes it will get stuck in a rut or on a rock, making it difficult to maneuver. It was hard enough keeping the lawn mown with two people working the mower, and now I’ve got to somehow do it on my own. I guess I’m going to get really fit.
I should have gotten started on the mowing right after breakfast, but I dilly-dallied and then it was almost time for family zoom, so I didn’t end up doing any mowing before that. Instead, I found this weird bump/line on my left nostril and did a pore clearing strip to see if I could get rid of it. The strip definitely lifted some kind of gunk line out, but I’m not sure if it simply took a top layer or if it’s fixed.
Family zoom was good. My dad is in excellent health overall, according to his latest checkup, though the doctor does want his cholesterol to come down so he’s been told to stop the keto diet. He’ll be eating fruits and grains again, which I think is good. My brother needs some good luck to come his way. I’m going to be sending him good energy and praying for intercession for him.
After that, I got ready to mow. The first thing I needed to do was put new strings in. That was an exercise in patience and thumb strength. I have to cut the tips at an angle so they’ll slide into the holes, but they’ll only slide in grudgingly. And then, they seem to break so quickly! I’ve got some from last year that I left in, but they’re very short, so once the new ones break I’m limited to a very small swathe for each pass. It’s frustrating. I just want those strings to stay long for one full tank! Once I got the first set of strings placed, I tried to start it up. I thought I’d left gas in it, but if I had, it had all evaporated, as I found when it wouldn’t start. Once I filled the tank, it started right up.
I decided to use the mapmyrun app to record how long I was mowing, and get a distance. The maps are super funny to look at, because it’s like I’m trying to color in an area. After my first tank, I put the mower in the shade to cool down and went inside to make myself some lunch and drink down a good amount of water. I had a turkey and cheese sandwich with grapes on the side. After letting my food settle a bit, I went back out and did a second tank.
That second one was harder, not only because the mufflers I wear to protect my hearing were starting to hurt my ears and head, but because I had a hell of a time getting new strings in before I started. I actually had a bit of a cry when the blue string wouldn’t go in the hole, but I knew that Ambrose would tell me to figure it out. So, I just didn’t use that string, and switched over to the maroon one, which went in, though not without a fight. I tried to give myself a bit of a break, doing some of the sections near the house while also doing some hard, rocky bits farther out. I still have so much more to go, but after that second one, I was done.
It was past 5, and I needed to get moving if I wanted to make a dinner that I could eat on all week. I had some ground beef thawing in the fridge, and I’d bought pasta sauce when shopping yesterday, so I had a plan. After I showered, I focused on cooking. I cut up two onions and some garlic to go with the beef and sauce, and I ended up putting some butter in when I was cooking down the onions. As I was boiling up some of the spinach and cheese stuffed tortellini, I remembered I should taste the sauce. It was far too sweet, so I added some Peruvian yellow pepper paste, and a bit of curry powder, which gave the sauce some needed depth.
Maybe it was from the exertions of the last two days, but that pasta and sauce was absolutely delicious. I feel very happy with what I made, and I’m glad I get to eat on it all week. I’ve got some protein pasta I can cook up, and some parmesan to top if choose.
After I ate, I got to work on my Move U exercises for today. I did the first day of the second week of Shoulders & Arms level 2. The new moves for this week are tough – made tougher by the arm workout the mowing gave me. Controlling that mower works my forearms pretty hard. But overall, the exercises felt good. I decided not to staff spin tonight because I simply ran out of time. I’ve got to get to bed.
