Letting go

[honeybera]

Wednesday:
WHEW! DID IT AGAIN!! Not just talked about it. DID IT! This is a big deal for me! I even got DS out there pulling up the "impossible-for-me" weeds! One BIG trash bin has already been dumped in the green can (recyclables: cardboard boxes and old weeds, etc.) and I refilled it and now there are two BIG trash bins waiting to be dumped into the H-U-G-E green can tomorrow! YAY!!! And then I'll refill them again as time goes by and I ready my beds and pots for Spring.

I also need to figure out how to "ready"/prune the trees, which range from just bare root sticks that survived ME (poor things!) and the summer heat without much water to my Fuji apple and the Eureka lemon, which are both sky high and need to be pruned WAY down!! As for the former bare root trees in the half buckets (apples, pears, and apple-pears), I need to prep their new permanent homes over in the dog's yard (dig holes and enrich those holes). In addition, I have another (but FREE!) bare root coming in the mail (another apple-pear to enable cross pollination)!

I need to get LOTS of straw, too, so these darned weeds do NOT come back! It is truly back breaking work!! However, everywhere I put a tiny bit of straw in the last couple of years WAY fewer weeds have come back!!! So I'm really going to lay it on thick this year, maybe 5-6" or so!! But those bales of straw are HEAVY! So maybe buy two or three at a time and haul them into the backyard in my large Worx wagon, dropping them where necessary and spreading them around as I go. But first I need to weedeat everything down to a grassy lawn type look and then pile on the straw. All over in the tree basins/berms, too, for later water conservation, and all underneath the SmartPots as well for weed control.

To work out there is a blessing in so many ways! I promise you, I will sleep well tonight! And I'm noticing that my large insulin resistant stomach is finally lessening, so maybe I just needed to ALSO get out and do some exercise, too, instead of just watching TV or being at the computer. It's said that one does not have to exercise on this WOE, but I think that they forgot to say, "...too much." It seems to me that at least SOME movement is necessary, and I can't think of a more enjoyable way to do it than gardening and fixing up my house and garage! What a lovely payoff there is in this activity!

===========================(Thursday)

I think I am creating a habit! I got outside today "to look for T" (a common occurrence now because she gets tangled up in the whippy weeds or just gets into a corner and can't figure out how to get back out of it due to confusion). But while out there, I ended up doing some of those "promise to do tomorrow" chores, including hefting those 2 soaked-in-the-rain 3 cu. ft. sacks of potting soil into my Worx wagon and lugging and tugging them across the entire yard to my raised beds. That was a true accomplishment! I am ticking these "ancient tasks" off my list only one at a time, but at least they're getting done somehow.

One week left in the month now. My seed starting mix is COLD now (which is fine), but I still have not sown anything since about a week ago or so. Not good! So I commit here to let you know what I've done today - or this evening - as it pertains to getting plants sown and raised for my garden. 'Nuff said!

===============================(8:00 pm)

Time for bed. Did a lot of cooking instead of the planting right now, but my goal is to get up and get into the hobby room early in the morning, even before I can get out into the too-cold-until-noon garden area. It's actually fairly easy from here to begin my seedlings, but I need to get 'er done!

I wonder if I can kneel down (yes, get down on my knees) so that I can pull the rest of the mallows. I only have about a 4'x4' square left to do and I have a folding kneeler in the garage. And I'd like to, once the mallows are done, get the potting soil and enhancements (fertilizer, egg shells, Epsom salts, and so on) that I already have on hand into the raised beds + removing that stubborn bamboo poking its unwelcome heads up here and there around my raised beds, too. There's not much bamboo left, but it is stubborn to get rid of. I just need to pace myself. Like I said, it's getting to be a habit to be more active around here.

I did get lots done today though. So much that now I'm tired and ready for bed.

Honeybera

[dancingfish]

Look at you go, honeybera! Hoorah! :D I'm so glad you've been able to do the things you wanted to do, and are recognising how much of an achievement you've managed for yourself! These things can take time, but your unending efforts are getting you there. :)

(Thank you for commenting on my recipe too, by the way! I've since tried a cocoa version with HWC on and can confirm it was very, very good!)

Reading along, as ever, and hope you've been able to find ways you can move more each day. :) Best wishes to you!

[honeybera]

Hey dancingfish! I'm so glad you stopped by and said hello to me!

Look at you go, honeybera! Hoorah! I'm so glad you've been able to do the things you wanted to do, and are recognising how much of an achievement you've managed for yourself! These things can take time, but your unending efforts are getting you there.

I agree! HOORAH!! I just ACCOMPLISHED another TASK that was CONSISTENTLY being put to the side: I PLANTED MY PARISIENNE CARROTS!!! I had a planter bed (3'Lx18"W) on 3'H stilts (if you can imagine - easier on my back, got 5 of them in use right now, 4 of which are filled with my strawberries, all nicely snug up against the outer house wall with wonderful morning only sun, ie. not too hot in the summertime). I tidied up the one empty one, filled it up and destroyed the weeds, and planted my first carrots since 1974 at my Grandma's house for her. But these are not the run-of-the-mill Danvers I planted for my Grandma nor the super long Imperator type carrot, no! These are like the ROUND little carrots so popular in France, hence the name Parisienne. I can't wait for them to come up! I needed to get these little round gems in particular because that planter BED is only about 6-7" deep and a longer carrot would "twist" and deform as it grew and hit the bottom.

I really wanted to get these ready to go today because it's supposed to rain tonight. I ran out of daylight today and will need to do my weedeating tomorrow in the backyard (dog's yard and garden area) since it's supposed to be sunny after the light overnight rain. But as of Friday the skies will open up and flood us for about 5 days straight, so it's now or never for being outside. But during that time, I'm going to be working on finishing my room and closet areas, and the front room, etc., so no time in the garden means more time to work indoors. I'm beginning to see just how important it is to KEEP MOVING! My blood sugars are down so much already that my doctor has agreed to reduce my T2D meds! I'm getting reading of 112-117 (down from WAY over 200 several months ago). Normal is 100 fasting. God knows, I've got the fasting down to a science! Oh, and I seem to be losing weight, too. At least it looks that way. So MOVING around apparently is the last key in the lock! YAY!!!!!!!!

Today I also pulled weeds AND BAMBOO and prepped my 3 raised beds, gathered a TON of lemons off my tree, and did a lot of little chores/tasks, like beginning pruning (just with my pruners, so around 1" branches, no more). I need to have ALL my trees re-staked properly, too, (with steel fence poles b/c wood just rots away - literally!) and some of them (the bare rooted ones) need to be just plain planted in a permanent spot. But one day at a time. I know one thing: there are plenty of tasks to keep me busy out there!! If I fall too far behind, I think I can (WITHOUT GUILT/SHAME!!!) hire some help to do these bigger, but one-time-only, jobs out there. I don't have to plant and re-plant trees like I do my veggies.

And speaking of my veggies! My tomato plants (especially the SunGolds!) have OVERWINTERED out there!!!!!!! AMAZING!!! So have my Salvias (in all of their many different and vibrant hummingbird-drawing colors, in reds, purples, blues and blacks)!! There are no little flowers on anything (yet, except the strawberries), but there are little leaves coming up on the main stems of both the tomatoes and the salvia, so I have decided (as I always do when something shows such a desire to survive and LIVE through something like several light winter frosts!) to trim the dead parts back and see how it goes. I have a new seedling for the SunGold on my kitchen window sill already, but I had planned for 2 plants of SunGold anyway. All of the Salvias are showing life, so I'm just going to see how this rolls this year. And my mint plant that once looked like it was finally going to die off (remember: I did NOT water much at all last summer in the 100-110ºF heat due to depression!), has now come roaring back and FILLS its 10 gallon pot completely! I am so happy to see this!

Now...about that hot chocolate/cocoa!

(Thank you for commenting on my recipe too, by the way! I've since tried a cocoa version with HWC on and can confirm it was very, very good!)

I just figured that one out, too. After doing strict keto AND intermittent fasting for over a year now, I can safely say that I am "fat adapted", and I NEVER EVER EVER eat any SUGAR (glucose) or "whole grains" or starches of any kind, so I feel safe whenever I have my heavily HWC-laced "Bulletproof coffee" - or at least what I call Bulletproof coffee. In my recipe, I blatantly use Torani or DaVinci SUGAR FREE syrups to sweeten/flavor it (some Keto aficionados FROWN mightily on doing that, but it affects neither me nor my DS, and it makes life bearable). My DS is getting to be a regular barista with all the different flavors and we have a special area where we make our teas and coffees. I believe that we have every flavor of syrup available, plus some flavored oils (by Capella or LouAnn Oils; I use Netrition dot com to get most of them).

One thing that I came to realize through my extensive research during the past year or so is that the absolute worst thing one can do is to combine a partial ketogenic diet and "cheat" with the Standard American Diet (or SAD). Just living on the SAD diet is one thing, but the combination is the most chaotic and devastating thing to do to one's body. Better McDonald's all the time rather than "trying to do keto" and/or intermittent fasting while having "cheat days". It tears the body up. And it's a very fattening way to go. A regular hamburger is a study in this principal: a bun of any kind (whole wheat or otherwise) + a beef patty (of questionable raising/feeding/antibiotic inoculations of various kinds) + mayo/condiments (usually made with soybean oil and sugars - check the labels) + veggies (carb sources) = a metabolic disaster once eaten together. Add some fries and a sugary drink or milkshake and look out Nellie!!

And the worst part is that hunger comes roaring back a couple of hours later. I just plain don't get hungry. I'm not hungry now and I haven't eaten in the last 7 hrs. and won't eat again until tomorrow afternoon or evening sometime. Not a problem for me, and with my new exercise program (gardening/housework) I'm also losing weight! Plus I have no more arthritis (and I sure used to have it, sometimes so badly in my shoulders, back, and knees that I could not walk without a cane, and sometimes I could not walk at all: EXCRUCIATING PAIN). Plus this WOE helps with mood. For me, it's taken a long time just to get to this point, but I was so far gone when I first started. I had ALL the beginning symptoms of heart failure, including shortness of breath and could barely get down my hallway from my room to the kitchen without stopping to catch my breath a time or two. It also gets rid of "non-alcoholic fatty liver disease" (NAFLD and NASH and possibly even cirrhosis), but I'm afraid that I was pretty far gone, so it's taken a bit more time and effort for me to get my liver in better shape. Today I worked in the yard for about 2 hrs. Nothing strenuous really, but a LOT of hauling and bending and harvesting and removing old crop skeletons from last year. I have SO much more energy! And I'm finally REALLY letting go of all the old pain and confusion and hatred kept BY ME in my heart re: MD. You're right, dancingfish, these things do take time, but I am getting there! HUZZAH!!!

I go see my old doctor on Friday to see what he has to say re: the tests taken in Oct. (and the results not given!) He'll probably blame me for not getting an MRI, but I'm getting a CT scan instead ordered by my current doctor just as soon as they schedule me. I just want to know what the old doctor tells me Friday HE sees on the October ultrasound that made him say I have liver damage and refer me for the MRI (which I can't have due to HUGE phobias of being in a place I cannot escape from) and the place I scheduled for an "open MRI" ended up lying to me that it was "open". "Well, it's SORT OF 'open'." (????) But now my current doctor has ordered a CT scan which I can tolerate. But what is wrong with my liver anyway?? And I can't get a straight answer. Or ANY answer for that matter! Hopefully my new/current doctor will be able to give me a definitive answer with the results of the CT scan. The waiting is killing me though!

I have a lot to do tomorrow. Lots of weed eating and yard cleanup + I'd like to get more straw and potting soil to fill my never-used-yet and unfilled Smart Pots Big Bag Bed Fabric Raised Bed (Original size; round 12" high and 12' across) that I bought from Amazon clear back in March 2015 and now I can plant my carrots and onions and parsley in there. I want to place it on top of weeded and mulched (with 4-6" of straw) ground over by the air conditioner. Perfect spot for it! My chives, marjoram, and English thyme are in some of those stilted planters by my window (WOW), and the chives are just peeking up. I understand that chives will grow back, year after year, so fingers crossed. One Borage plant (a companion plant for many other plants, but especially strawberries) reseeded itself. The two kinds of Rosemary (Creeping and upright) are THRIVING in the same pot! I'm having fun out there!

I need to conk out now though. VERY tired right now. I've been up since 10 am (now it's 2am the following day) and only got about 5 hrs. of sleep last night. Decided to stay up, but now it's late again. I have a hard time sleeping when DS is working. But nighty night anyway.

Honeybera

[honeybera]

I finally got some action in the right direction from my current doctor! My CT scan is scheduled for Tuesday! YAY!! Plus I go see "the other doctor" tomorrow at 3pm to see what he has to say about my "liver damage" that he supposedly saw on the October ultrasound. So at least I'll know what's really going on with me. Plus I'm going to get my permanent crown on my molar put in on Monday since my temporary crown fell off last Tuesday night.

Today I DID DO my weedeating (and even a little bit more of it than I'd planned to do). I still have more tomorrow to do (before the heavy rains and winds show up over the weekend) and maybe I'll even get over to the nursery for more potting soil and the straw place for a couple of bales, too. The rains begin tomorrow at 4 pm and I still need to fix up the Big Bag Bed (FINALLY!) for carrots, onions, and parsley. I'll be able to grow the longer carrots in there. If I run out of time, I'll have to wait until these storms pass, but I'd like to start on the garage then instead, maybe some of those "mystery boxes" that I have not looked into in the last 18 yrs.!! It's all coming together.

Time for bed! I want to get up early for my yard work and maybe a quick run for the potting soil and straw. We'll see...

Honeybera

[Fleur]

Yaaaay honeybera.... Well done for all you completed, whether inside or outside your home

May you have accurate health reports from doctors

Wishing you best care for teeth

May you and son have finished all you planned before the rain arrived


Much caring

[honeybera]

Hey Fleur!

Yaaaay honeybera.... Well done for all you completed, whether inside or outside your home

Thank you, Fleur! I want you to know that when you praised me before and I told you that most of my talking about doing things was more just talk and no go and more of a goal, things changed for me! And in saying feeling a need to say that to you, I realized just how true it was! In the past couple of weeks or so, I kind of figured out just how sedentary my life had become, and I resolved to change that!

And guess what? I'm now losing weight...or at least I think I am. I sure look like I have been! I was (and still am) an "apple" shaped person, but now I can really see a difference. So thanks for being there! You seem to keep me honest with myself. (No pressure on you; this is my game, but it helps to know that you're there along with the other friends I have on here.) ♥ ♥ ♥

I lifted up my belly today and it actually FEELS lighter, too! It used to hang down nearly to my knees, but no longer. Why the pounds weren't coming off like I thought they would is really two-fold: 1) I think for the last 14 months I was merely "putting on the brakes" on my Insulin Resistance (no small feat, believe me!) and now I'm beginning to reverse my IR and T2D, and 2) I was just too inactive and sedentary! It is said that one doesn't have to exercise at all to lose weight while following keto, but considering how far gone I was (morbidly obese, 72 yr. old, T2D, arthritis, heart failure, gout, etc. etc.), I am seeing that MOVEMENT around in the yard as my exercise is a real positive way for me to trudge the long way back to good health and weight control. Oh well - gardening is fun anyway! Even housework has its definite rewards, too. I just need to get out of my own way and get them done! And I have been!

And sure enough, I'm beginning to lose weight, in my legs, in my stomach area, and my rolls of fat across my back are smaller, too. All those mallow weeds are gone from my backyard and the "grass" (read: a variety of weed species) have been mowed FLAT! YAY!! It looks like a nice, mowed, grassy yard again! I've planted some Parisienne carrots last week and some Oregon "snap" peas on Friday (PLUS I have several plants indoors, too). I just get out there in the backyard and putter around, resting whenever necessary, getting ideas as to what to do next, and then I putter some more! I never did this before. I would only think about it, consider it, and then do nothing. But all those big ideas need to be put into ACTION! I've even decided tonight to paint my fence and two gates in the dog's yard with Thompson's Water Sealer! And I have a Meyer Lemon that has "greasy spot disease" on it and I need to spray it with copper spray and then with some Neem oil a few days after the copper. And I'm FINALLY able to SEE where it is that I need to prune my trees...AND there are already tiny little buds on all my trees about to burst! So LOTS of things to keep me occupied! And those "mystery boxes" in the garage seem to be calling to me to gently take them down, one by one, and see what is in them. No rush, but a good DAILY steady pace. I CAN DO THIS!

I am still holding back on the pruning, though. I believe that this reticence to "shape" a tree goes back to my childhood. I have so little confidence in my ability to "play God".

========================

OK, so tonight I tried hard to learn more about pruning. O-M-G!!!!!!!!!!!!! "It's more an art form than a science!" *chop, chop, snip!* "Just open it up like this!" *whack, saw, crunch!* "DON'T WORRY! It'll grow back!" I loved it when the guy blithely states, "Just open it up! Make it so you could throw a cat through it!!" Say what???! Not very helpful! Some kinds of trees need a central leader and some prefer an open center. I think it's apples and pears that need a central leader and peaches, apricots, and plums (and my Aprium) need that open center, at least I think that's what they said.

I also know that I need to do SOMETHING to and for them. That Fuji apple is sky high now and taking over the backyard. It's never been pruned! NEVER! And it really looks like it, too, all tangled up, branches twisting here and there. So do I start with that one? Or do I begin with something easier, like the apricot or the Aprium? This takes some pondering and some real consideration. Oh, and they told me to NOT use a lopper! How will I cut the bigger branches?? I remember one lady was saying that her mom decided to just cut down her apple tree, and in preparation, she just hacked away at this doomed tree. Then the mom decided against it at some point, but the tree was just hacked terribly already, so she left it to do what it could and the darned tree THRIVED after the destructive "pruning" attack! So how much worse will/could I do? I guess just get out there and start deciding (not my strong suit, but it's so necessary!) and using my loppers anyways (that's what loppers are for, after all!) and my reticulating saw on the biggest branches. Wish me luck!

I didn't end up going to the "other doctor". I'm getting my tooth (crown) cemented in tomorrow afternoon and my CT scan on Tuesday. T on Wed. Sometime in the middle there I'm planning to pick up my straw and potting soil (2 different places) plus spray my lemon trees for leaf miner eradication and greasy spots with a couple of organic sprays for such problems. I'll have to do it between rain drops, but there are plenty of other things to do in the meantime inside the house.

But now it's off to bed for me! Only 12 hours before I go get my crown in! YAY! FINALLY!

Honeybera

[honeybera]

Crown is in!! And I can't feel anything at all! Just like my old tooth was there! YIPPEE!!

And my Cubanelle pepper is just peeking up. I also went grocery shopping until I could literally walk no more, so until I have a bit of a sit-down and a big bowl of Cream of Turkey soup with spinach and broccoli in it (SUPER YUM!) and allow these aspirins to work, I'm not even putting any of it away. Tomorrow is my CT scan, my foot x-ray, and a whole lot of blood work! But for tonight, I'm settling for groceries being put away and doing all the dishes that DS has brought out of his room (in the dishwasher, of course), and there are a lot of them.

Honeybera

[Fleur]

Hello honeybera


Great to know that you are moving more, getting things done, in garden, garage, home

You'll be able to move easier with a smaller body size too - think that made the biggest difference for me to become more active

Pruning is challenging for me - the plants took so long to grow and now I'm trimming them? Some species do grow much better for the cutting back and fruit trees, as you mention, are fairly forgiving

My word - has your son reverted to old style with dishes? I had hoped he'd have been gradually tidier, including around food items

May all your appointments go well, including your plans for purchasing gardening materials


Much caring

[honeybera]

Crumb!! My entire post got lost somehow. Allow me to try, try again...

Great to know that you are moving more, getting things done, in garden, garage, home

Hey Fleur! I really am! Little by little, it's getting done. Although, in looking at that statement, I'm not sure that it EVER gets "all done", but at least a bit more organized is my goal. It should look very nice by then.

You'll be able to move easier with a smaller body size too - think that made the biggest difference for me to become more active

Were you ever heavyset?! Sounds like it was a thing of the past for you, so GOOD! No one deserves the punishment of being fat! Being heavyset can make a person an outcast, social and otherwise, that's for sure!

My biggest fear is that I've been doing this "miracle" Keto/Intermittent Fasting WOE for over a year now, and although the POUNDS seem to not be falling off as rapidly as happens with other folks, I can really SEE a difference in my girth and weight distribution (if not in the numbers on the scale) AND a significant difference in my health as well. My blood sugars keep dropping, no UTIs in forever, and my arthritis is just plain GONE! (CT scan results will be shared with me on next Tues. ) So I plan to keep it up...along with increasing my MOVEMENT. (Last night, I knelt down on my garden kneeler and was able to get myself right back up to standing with minimal effort! YAY!) If I keep being as sedentary and reclusive as I've been in the past, I may end up in a wheelchair, unable to garden or clean or cook or anything, and that will NEVER DO! So I plan to keep doing my keto/IF just because I FEEL so much better the longer that I'm doing it. It's really tasty and enjoyable, too, the longer that I practice the alternative ways of cooking involved. So much of it is homemade and "from scratch", ideas that went out in the 1950s with Betty Crocker cake mixes in the box and "convenience foods" and the beginnings of the fast food industries. I can remember my parents telling me that IF I was a "good girl" that they'd take me to get Foster Freeze (an early fast food joint) for a "HOT FUDGE SUNDAE WITH NUTS"!! Oh god, were they SO DELICIOUS! I also remember going with them to get a big bag of McDonald's burgers when they were 15¢ apiece! Good Lord, I'm so OLD!

The only problem with "getting me a treat if I was good" was that they would have gone to get "whatever" to eat anyway. Both my father and MD LOVED their sweets, and I do mean LOVED! I was very supernumerary (a bit player in their play of life) and was just a "there" sort of person. They even told me that verbatim. "We are the ones that matter. You're only there as a tie breaker when we ask you for an opinion if we don't agree." I was an only child until I was ten. I got to choose whether we had burgers, shakes, and fries or Chinese food. Things like that. And my bedtime was at 6pm so that they could have some time together. My hair was combed for me. My clothing was ALWAYS purchased by MD personally (without even need of my opinion or knowledge). MD daily chose what I would be wearing and then it was laid out for me to wear since otherwise I would "not look right" and then she dressed me as well (until I was 12!). I was NOT allowed to even TOUCH my French Provincial bedroom furniture nor look at what was in the drawers or else I'd get such a beating. It all had to be absolutely PERFECT and without flaw!! That's why she slammed my head into the kitchen wall over and over until I began to drop to the floor: it was due to a grease smudge on my new skirt gotten on a hitched bike ride home from school on the rear fender. Yep, MD was a low rent Joan Crawford alright!

Pruning is challenging for me - the plants took so long to grow and now I'm trimming them? Some species do grow much better for the cutting back and fruit trees, as you mention, are fairly forgiving

Very true! And last night I SLOWLY took the time to "HANDS ON" familiarize myself with my dangerous and POWERFUL Reciprocating Saw (with pruning blades - and every other kind of blade imaginable! ) through some very informative YouTube videos, letting go of some fears that happened when I saw DS, equally a novice with this thing, trying to just figure it out without reading directions. This thing is a MONSTER! The blade (not put in correctly) and with the trigger suddenly jerked WAY back to maximum POWER, this thing, ROARING with vibrations and with the blade wobbling wildly, scared the living bejeezus out of me! I asked him (in a shaky voice) to please stop and just put it away. That was about 2 yrs. ago, and I'm just now getting it back out again...timidly and with a lot more respect.

But in getting to know this potentially diabolical tool, I came to realize that it has a variable speed trigger on it. Nice! So I don't have to pull back hard on the trigger; softly will do just as well for a slower and more controlled cut on the tree. Hey now! That I can DO! Soft pull = slow speed. Harder pull = faster speed. GOT IT! They also demonstrated how to LOAD the blade so it doesn't wobble around and is firmly in there; it is very simple to do.

However, now that I'm finally all ready to get out there and prune, prune, prune, Mother Nature has decided to RAIN, RAIN, RAIN!! FOR WEEKS!! But there should be a break in the action at some point, and when that happens, I'm grabbing my handy-dandy reciprocating saw with Pruning blade attached and head over to my Eureka Lemon tree, determined to hack off all the NOW HUGE shoots off the root stock that currently are making up about half of the tree, cut 'em up, and put them in the recycling garbage can!!! These towering 12 ft. high "suckers" have HUGE 2-3" SHARP thorns all over them and aren't part of the main tree at all! So they are my first tree to get trimmed up. Next after that: my poor neglected Weeping Santa Rosa Plum tree. Same problem there: half the tree gives the sweetest and juiciest dark red-purple plums imaginable, and the other half is some sort of crappy peach root stock with lousy peaches! Yeah, it's going, too! I have some major work to do out there! And that reciprocating saw should make relatively short work of it...well, that and my handheld Felco pruners for the small stuff.

My word - has your son reverted to old style with dishes? I had hoped he'd have been gradually tidier, including around food items

Oh my. What can I say? His room. No, even he admits, the true hoarder in this house is him. He is improving...somewhat. But I still cannot walk into his room. There is too much stuff piled knee high blocking my way. And when the dishes and knives and forks and glasses (and even pots and pans) go into his room, they may or may not come back out to the kitchen sink to be washed by me for months at a time. A couple of months ago he piled up his dirty clothes in the hobby room to be washed (he does his own laundry by his request), and they're still there, blocking some of the lower storage cabinet doors which I now cannot access. In the past, in exasperation, I have done his laundry for him, dried it, boxed it, and placed it in his room. Then something odd happens: it begins to "crawl" out of the box slowly, almost imperceptibly, and back into the mess of debris that is his room, re-soiling the freshly washed clothes. I give up!

Now credit where credit is due: he is getting better about putting the dishes away from the dishwasher, and from time to time he will bring me a HUGE collection of dishes from his room (complete with ants and hair all over them), but still leaves a few dishes and especially utensils behind (for decoration??). He then piles them up in my sink, unannounced, old food stuck on them, and I am to clean them. Sometimes there are so many that it takes several soaks (to soften up the rock-hard food) and 2-3 FULL cycles of the dishwasher to complete the job. Then I'll see no returned dishes to the kitchen for a couple more months (or more) before the next onslaught. He is seeing a T. Perhaps I should ask him to bring it up to his T next time he sees him since he does admit that his messy room bothers him, too.

May all your appointments go well, including your plans for purchasing gardening materials

From your mouth to God's ear! The last big appointment is Feb. 12th (at 9:00 AM!! ) to get the results of the CT scan. Fingers crossed! Best news would be that I have some fatty liver and/or pancreas, but that neither has any permanent damage which means that I can reverse it and just need to be patient. Same for weight loss.

As for the purchasing of the gardening materials (straw, potting soil, and so on), they'll have to wait for this rain to clear, but the pruning can be done "between the raindrops". Where I live, we do get rain, but we get periods of rain, that is, with breaks in between. I can scoot out there during those times and do my pruning. AND PLANTING TREES! I just got my New Century bare root apple pear that is pollinated with the Hosui apple pear that I already have, still as bare root. I also got my Bushel and Berry™ Raspberry Shortcake™ raspberry bare root plants today. So all that is sitting in the garage (where it's cooler than in the house) waiting to be planted. Luckily, I still have a spot for the raspberries already, but have to re-dig holes for all the trees. I'm going to have an actual "family orchard" out there! I wonder if DS will water and care for it when I'm gone. Hmm. Maybe encourage him to get a gardener and an automatic watering system? He doesn't even like to eat fruit or veggies either, but it does make the property worth more.

Getting late. Time to sleep. HUGE rains tomorrow, but we're almost out of (keto) muffins and the kitchen floor needs a good mopping, as does the garage, so I'll find plenty to do, including starting another batch of veggie seedlings to plant outside after the last frost date here, the end of February. And I'm also wanting to make those creamy egg & bacon things you get at Starbuck's ("Starbucks Sous Vide Egg Bites (Instant Pot)"). I have everything I need to make them now in my Instant Pot. (LOTS of five star KETO recipes for them on Google!) YUM!!

I am so grateful to this group for your support!! Thank God for you, for us, to be there for the survivors as survivors.

Honeybera

[Fleur]

Hmmmm .... Lost post .... Take two, smile


Hello honeybera


Wishing you very well for all your upcoming appointments

Think son discussing issues around his room with his T could be useful, if that's what he'd like to work upon

You've got lots of plans for your garden, home, garage ... May each idea gradually come to fruition

I agree, "perfection" is unnecessary. General cleanliness, organised chaos, is plenty good enough. Owning home is lifelong project that is probably ongoing, never totally completed, but when you are happy with results, perhaps then you can say major aspects are finished?

Wishing you and your son a lovely weekend


Kind regards