The Food Geek is slowly gathering up their brain cells from the many places they were scattered over the course of a year of working nights. The Food Geek has tired of being so geeky and has come to the conclusion that a better name would be Dances With Calculator. If only my calculator was not broken it would be so much more interesting to calculate the most intense rate of metabolic activity that might occur over the period of one dance party.
Dances with Calculator has generated some numbers for January. What kind of numbers might these numbers be? These numbers would be totals, averages and projections. So far I have not eaten so much that I require the use of scientific notation but I just might by the end of the year. There are some negative numbers that might come into play, like the negative number that is my net worth but so far the focus is on the positive. I have a lot of accumulated knowledge that might deposit another fine layer of number rubbish this fine year of 2018.
It's really exciting to have been able to capture a year of eating and be able to use it as a guide to reach my final destination. My final destination this year is 888,120 calories. That number comes from calculating a daily average of 2,442 calories consumed per day, multiplying it by 360 days and then adding nine thousand calories for three mountain climbing expeditions. If you hadn't noticed that is quite a change from last year when I expected to use up to 2,800 calories per day. With only working part time in a physically demanding job and working the rest of the week at home my calorie consumption will fall by about sixty thousand this year. That will save me a grand total of two hundred dollars. My cat has already claimed that amount for the purchase of organic cat food. There's a brand of cat food called Gather that he wants to try so I agreed as it will no doubt make him so healthy that nothing could kill him except a skilled veterinarian.
This year I would have to say my outlook on food in general has relaxed. I don't really see the point of walking into a grocery store with a fixed dollar amount in mind as I am a living biological organism that burns anywhere from zero to seven thousand calories depending on what I am doing each day. No two days in a human body are alike from what I have observed. Each day varies by at least a thousand calories from the day before. The longer variation in the diet is denied the more it will assert itself later. Each day the body is performing a slightly different set of repairs which require a slightly different set of tools. Maybe one month it will be great to go along eating rice, chickpeas and granola and then the next month might be dominated by meat and dairy. I feel a lot more comfortable having an ultimate yearly list to refer to. It's very reassuring to know that I tried absolutely everything and took discipline to an insane level and still came out spending $325 a month on groceries. I feel like it's possible to be responsible walking into a store, noticing something is on sale, and buying more of it because I know I went through that much last year.
So far January has seen an expense of $750 in regards to groceries. That was really quite an interesting amount of food purchased considering there was already enough on hand. I ate $393 worth of groceries, there's $144 of it left which means two hundred and thirteen dollars vanished into the Twilight Zone. I can't blame it on family since they contribute more than they use when they visit. Some of that might be due to the fact that my brain was still half asleep so in between sleep walking sessions I might have been eating yogurt in my sleep. I'm pretty sure that my brain has enough steam to think in a straight line from this day forward, although with my style I might need all that extra energy to think in circles, or in zig zag patterns.
The gummy bear experiment cost me $32 for a kilogram of Surf Sweet gummy bears and it came as no surprise that having those naughty little bears on hand resulted in a timely transportation of the bears from cupboard to stomach within days of purchase. What this means is that it is pointless to have a large supply of gummy bears on hand even if they are on sale. There is no way that a person could pass their time at home without their concentration becoming completely monopolized by those tasty squishy little bears. The only way it could be done is if you were to lock them up and then have a friend program a dispenser to release two packages per month. Hopefully that wouldn't result in a broken friendship, broken bones or exhaustion of the local law enforcement.
My projections determined that January would close at 75,702 calories when in fact it closed at 70,030 calories. This makes sense because there was a lot of extra time spent relaxing on vacation. There was an average of 2,259 calories eaten per day and an average of $12 spent per day. Lets see what sort of year this will be now that I am spending with a clear purpose.
My Food Goals This Year
1.) Buy groceries I can't really afford and pay for it with my retirement fund.
2.) Eat organic dairy, flour, chickpeas, olive oil, sugar, chocolate, pasta, chia seeds, hemp seeds, cacao nibs, coconut oil, coffee, fruit juices, and tea.
3.) Refer to my yearly amounts consumed as reminders before shopping trips.
4.) Impress myself by buying things on sale even though I can't really afford it.
5.) Monitor my consumption to find out if anything magical happens like I discover a way of meditating that causes my body to utilize fuel in a way that makes it burn longer.
6.) Keep an eye out for the dish soap fairy especially on two for one fairy nights.
7.) Enjoy food when it's there to enjoy and the rest of the time eat to sustain life.
8.) Support fair trade coffee growers.
9.) Keep making granola, pudding, cake, soup, casseroles, and butter pizza.
10.) Pray that there will still be money in my retirement fund to use if food costs go up even more when minimum wage goes up.
11.) Continue to offer my cat organic food choices which he jumps on in seconds like Gather. He will not eat dairy unless it's organic. His intuition is flawless.
12.) Continue to snub corn, canola oil and soy as a way of declaring my power over corporations.
13.) Eat meat labeled as vegetable and grain fed cause it beats them being fed ground up carcasses.
14.) Plant at least one carrot seed and watch it grow into a beautiful carrot.
15.) Begin imagining how happy all those donkeys would be if they really could lead the "Donkey Dart Express" and find their purpose again.
16.) Continue to eat probiotics like organic yogurt to keep my gut bacteria going so they can help my body make serotonin and melatonin. Then I will be happy and well rested.
17.) Keep hitting as high as possible on all the nutrition targets and supplement completely on the basis of intuition. In other words take supplements when it feels appropriate to do so.
18.) As a result of eating foods that are mostly organic and nutritious, I plan to feel well every day.
19.) Have a confident attitude about keeping favorite foods on hand.
This year I made a change to my spending when it comes to organic cheese. I now go where the organic cheese is the most affordable and then buy a kilogram. The surprising thing is that I'm not in a rush to get through it and it does a really good job of slowing down my hunger when I go for a fifty gram snack. It also has the bonus of bringing the cost of my homemade pizzas down so if I really wanted to I could eat a pizza per day and still end the month within my budget range. In addition to throwing open the door to organic cheese I allowed my interest in organic strawberry kefir to become a full blown addiction. It has gone over very well with others who have tried it and now they have me to thank for their addiction. Strawberry kefir happens to go incredibly well with granola and even by itself it makes a delicious drink with only a slightly weird after taste.
The month of February saw a total of 76,519 calories crushed, with an average of 2,732 calories consumed per day ringing in at $12.70 per day. The main recipes were granola, homemade pizza, chocolate cake, and casseroles. You could say I "fell off the wagon" and ate out at A&W but the wagon was not injured in the process and in fact I'm still trucking. Those days are just reminders to me that I should buy more of those grass fed burgers.
The other reality of being alive always seems to be that there is a nagging craving for chocolate. I would have to say that making chocolate cake with an addition of either 1 cup of cacao nibs or 1 cup of Camino chocolate chips definitely has that craving covered. Unsuspecting men who have tried this cake seem to be stricken with a demonic chocolate monster and don't stop until it's half gone. I think these men were probably short on iron and good chocolate is high in iron. Cronometer says that a homemade chocolate cake can give you seventy six percent of your nutritional targets. With the chocolate chips and cacao nibs it's over eighty percent of your nutrition but also over two days worth of calories.
The Chocolate Cake
mix together in a big bowl:
2 cups organic all purpose flour
2 cups organic golden sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup Camino cocoa powder sifted
1 pinch salt
In a saucepan boil water and melt in butter.
2 cups boiling water
2/3 cup organic unsalted butter
Stir into wet-dry mix:
2 organic eggs beaten
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup Camino chocolate chips or cacao nibs
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13" pan, cover the bottom with wax paper.
2. Stir up the dry ingredients, then boil the water and add the butter so it can melt.
3. Mix the wet and dry then stir in the beaten egg, vanilla, then stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Cook for 30 minutes. Let the cake cool for half an hour then turn it upside down into a cooling rack covered with wax paper so it doesn't break up. You could also just turn it upside down onto a cookie sheet covered in wax paper so the bottom has a chance to cool.
This whole cake provides 4,568 calories at a cost of $14.85. If you cut it into twelve pieces then each piece will be 380 cal costing $1.23.
If you like an even sweeter cake with a glaze then try this:
1. Create a double boiler with a saucepan half full of boiling water and a metal bowl sitting on top of it.
2. Melt together half a cup honey and half a cup organic coconut oil.
3. After about ten minutes sprinkle a half a cup of cacao nibs over the cake once it is cool.
4. Pour the honey coconut oil mixture over the cake.
With the addition of the extra nibs and the glaze the cake goes up by 2,156 calories bringing it to a grand total of 6,724 calories and $24.15. That's a cake! I never actually ventured to try the double chocolate slam of one cup of chocolate chips and the cacao topping. That might just be cruel to expose people to that extreme. Eat half of that and you're good for the day.
Dances with Geeks had to face some facts this month of March. The fact that didn't change is I still need to eat twenty seven hundred calories per day despite the decrease in physical demand. On the bright side if my weight is headed up it's only headed up a third of a pound a month. If I wanted to be so exact that I almost split a hair I could say that I need to eat thirty seven less calories per day. In the overall scheme of things it barely seems worth it to keep track of something that small. What it means is eating half an egg for a snack or half a tablespoon of butter instead of a whole tablespoon or cut once piece of bacon in half. It might almost be worth it to take this finding into consideration except that for all I know I gained five pounds of muscle this last year in which case that muscle would be helping my metabolism not hurting it. To deal with a thirty seven calorie excess with exercise would just mean walking a mile a day which I do anyway unless the rain puts a damper on things which it has lately. Dryer weather almost always means it's more attractive to go outside.
It would be nice to tell you that a year of finding food facts has saved me all kinds of money. My newly enlightened understanding of groceries has resulted in a nice light $494 expenditure. Nothing has gone wrong in the financial department yet as a result of these luxurious grocery trips because I tickled a GIC out of hiding and had a nice income tax return. Once all the good luck evaporates I might be back to stretching the banana peels to see if I can make them grow another foot. If I keep my health in good standing then I can work more often and make up for the short falls. I can say that what I have the most of is determination whether or not that pays off. I am making a daily effort to live within my means and protect myself from an increase in debt load. At this point in my life a bigger debt load would mean feeding the bank money instead of using it for food, shelter and transportation. It's unthinkable to have any less money to spend than I have now which is why I'm working so hard to figure out where every last dollar goes before it goes there.
If my debt load had a mouth I'd be feeding it for the next hundred and twenty years! My credit cards will still be hungry long after I'm dead although it's nice to dream of the day my credit cards will shrink down to the size of a tiny little dot and disappear. It might happen as part of this pain staking reform process. It all started with one seemingly innocent trip to the store with a credit card when I was in school. I was on my way to big paychecks so I spent big. I spent like debt was the biggest joke on the planet. I had a once in a lifetime chance to clean up some debt when my father passed and every dollar that his death cleared gave me determination to make sure it didn't happen again. I was able to reduce my debt by over fifty percent and the gift I received as a result was a second chance at following a budget. It's hard to take a budget seriously until the day it becomes painfully obvious that anything more than a dollar on credit is nearly impossible to pay off.
Much to my chagrin one of my banks that gave me zero percent for nine months did not appear to be making any more offers for the continuation of the deal. I wrongly assumed they'd continue to offer me this deal as did another bank I was with. It was a good reminder that my budget is a rare and precarious phenomenon. I cannot feed the bank more than I feed myself so it became apparent that I would have to use the remainder of my retirement fund to pay off the credit card. There I was all set to trash my retirement fund when I saw the bank had decided to renew the zero percent rate after all. Now that I had this little wake up call I might decide to pay off the credit card anyway to make sure this same mistake doesn't happen in the future.
In the midst of wondering if my budget was under fire again I went ahead and set myself to the task of figuring out what a person would eat if they only had $150 to spend on food in a month. it came out to $160 but for the sake of the exercise I'd say it's good enough considering a person could only stand so much of it anyway before adding something else they are craving. I tried to include as many attractive food items as I could without losing out on nutrition.
The Under Fire Food Budget
4 kg peanuts ($36 provides 22,680 calories)
2 kg oats ($10 provides 7,780 calories)
1.2 kg chipits ($13 provides 5,760 calories)
5 bunch bananas ($8.50 provides 3,000 calories)
3 kg (vegetable fed free from antibiotics) bacon ($36 provides 16,230 calories)
800 grams organic cheese ($18 provides 3,200 calories)
1 kg organic butter ($18 provides 7,168 calories)
5 kg flour ($14 provides 18,200 calories)
1 kg sunflower seeds ($6 provides 5,840 calories)
This is enough for one person to eat for one month. The exact calorie amount I got for the products I chose was 83,108. Internet searches described this amount of food as being closer to 89,858 calories. For this a person would pay $159.50. This is overkill you might say but over is better than under. Ten years ago I knew people who considered it standard for one person to eat for $400 a month. Ten years ago I thought my friends who could eat for $400 a month were doing something really amazing.
I drew up the corresponding daily diet which is as follows:
120 grams of peanuts
33 grams sunflower seeds
1 banana
40 grams chipits
26 grams cheese
84 grams bacon
66 grams oats
166 grams flour
2 tbsp butter
As far as cooking goes there wouldn't be that much. Take a cup and a half of flour and make some flat bread with the butter mixed in. Boil the oats and fry some bacon. The rest is finger food.
A person would achieve 2694 calories.
Cronometer shows this diet as hitting 86% nutritional targets. Here's what's on the low side:
B12 37%
Vitamin A 50%
Vitamin D 6%
Vitamin C 14%
Calcium 52 %
Potassium 55 %
Omega 3 43%
Vitamin K 9%
You could wack away at the deficiencies and supplement. It's cheaper to take fifty cents worth of supplements per day in most cases. In a month that's $15 worth of supplementation and we will compare that to using food to cut the deficiencies.
125 g of organic cheese will seal off the calcium deficiency costing $2.80
A sardine will seal off the B12 deficiency and most of the omega 3 deficiency costing $0.50
2 tbsp of yam will seal off the vitamin A deficiency costing $0.10.
six more bananas would seal off the potassium deficiency costing $2
One orange will almost seal off the vitamin C deficiency costing $0.60
Half a can of salmon will seal off the vitamin D deficiency costing $1.25.
A tbsp of chia seed will seal off the vitamin K deficiency costing $0.30
You could seal off the deficiencies using food for $7.55 extra per day. Oops. Now your month of eating costs $386.50. I'm getting a sense that I've done this before and gotten the same result. Deja vu.
Here is a shopping list that meets 99% of daily nutritional needs however a person will have to add 100 IU of vitamin D every day.
1 kg sunflower seeds ($6 provides 5,840 calories and a lot of vitamin E)
180 bananas or 36 bunches bananas ($61 provides 18,900 calories and potassium and half your vitamin C and many other nutrients.)
2.5 kg organic oats ($12.5 provides 9,725 calories and manganese.)
3.75 kg organic flour ($10.50 provides 13,650 calories, protein, B vitamins and much more.)
1 kg organic butter ($18 provides 7,168 calories)
60 L tap water (free provides hydration)
90 grams sea salt ($1.44 provides sodium)
450 grams chia seeds ($13.50 provides 2160 calories and vitamin K and omega 3)
480 grams of yam ($1.40 provides 566 calories and vitamin A)
4 kg oranges (30 oranges) ($14 provides 1,880 calories and vitamin C)
15 Liters of organic milk ($16 provides provides 6,530 calories and B12, B2 calcium, vitamin D vitamin A and a lot of protein.)
6 kg bacon ($90 provides 32,460 calories, protein, B vitamins and much more.)
Total monthly expenditure for balanced nutrition: $244.34
$8.15/day.
Total calories provided: 98,879
Daily available: 3,295
To save money you can substitute the bacon for 3 kg of peanuts.
3 kg peanuts ($27 provides 17,010 calories, proteins, B vitamins and much more)
If you go with peanuts instead of bacon you will pay $181.34 per month to achieve 99% nutritional targets and end up with 83,429 calories which is more than enough.
If you skip peanuts and go with the 3 kg of chickpeas that you have on hand since you're such a smart chickpea then your monthly needs would only cost you $154.34.
Put sprouted chickpeas in the food canon and fire with it through the next few months. Chickpeas can replace peanuts for nutrition and B vitamins and only bring the nutrition down by one percent. Good call. :) There's still tons in the cupboards! Humus has such a rich taste and texture you could almost believe that hard times were good times. Munches with Geeks looked into the matter of the food processor and decided that a hand mixer makes more sense. Why pay $160 for a food processor to use up $60 worth of chickpeas? It makes more sense to buy a $15 hand mixer and be done with it.
:)
Take care and happy eating!
On a gardening note, if all you grow is parsley you could knock the oranges and the yams off your list. A half a cup of parsley a day would give you 53% of your vitamin C but the other half of the vitamin C was coming from the bananas which you need for potassium. Parsley gives 100% of your need for vitamin A and 547% vitamin K. However we still need the chia seed for omega 3. For less than $2 you could grow as much parsley as you could eat in one summer and save yourself from buying oranges and yams.
If you grow parsley then you could potentially fill your monthly needs for $138.94 and then you could start counting the seconds before being utterly and completely overtaken by an immense craving for chocolate. When this list is compared to the yearly list it's pretty obvious it doesn't work but it's always worth another try.
The 99% Nutritional Pledge
1.) When I get cravings for chocolate the cravings go away if I take a few deep breaths.
2.) When I walk past the cheese section that's when I realize I'm really tired of eating cheese.
3.) Granola tastes a lot better without honey or almonds.
4.) I think it's fun to eat six bananas per day.
5.) Milk doesn't go bad that fast. I don't need sugar to turn it into pudding anyway.
6.) Eggs for breakfast is all a myth.
7.) Those gummy bears are just a bunch of trouble makers. Who wants them around anyway.
8.) Beer is not a woman's best friend.
9.) Cheesies aren't much better than eating gravel.
10.) Chocolate has a habit of showing up on the door step when you least expect it.
11.) Condiments were invented to confuse people with colorful jars.
12.) I do not live to drink coffee.
13.) There is no place in my heart for hemp hearts.
14.) Fish is pretty fishy if you ask me.
15.) Fast food gets better the faster you drive past it!
16.) Whoever invented juice was too lazy to eat a piece of fruit!
17.) I have no such addiction to things that are green and leafy.
18.) What did watermelon ever do other than save time in the shower.
19.) I don't need probiotics because my gut bacteria are dividing like crazy!
20.) I'm going to really cry if I don't have a chance to cut an onion.
21.) My desire for squash is easy to squish.
22.) Whoever is eating cheesecake is completely missing out on eating bread.
23.) When I have guests over I entertain them with water and they don't just like it they love it!
24.) The panda bears can only make so much licorice anyway before they go extinct.
25.) Maple syrup is all a conspiracy to harvest the souls of trees and make them bleed for life!
26.) Who needs to spend $5 on a handful of berries when there are plenty to pick with only a little guess work as to which ones are poisonous. A little poison berry just perks up the immune system.
This month I am going with recipes for french bread, hummus, and granola. The daily diet I am piloting will look like this:
1.5 cups organic homemade granola (990 cal costing $3.36)
1.5 cups organic 2% milk (195 cal costing $0.85)
1 cup homemade hummus 50% organic (400 cal costing $3.00/cup)
5 organic banana (525 cal costing $2)
loaf homemade organic french bread (600 cal costing $1.43)
Total cal: 2,710
total cost: $10.64
Hello? How exactly did all that work pay off again? We're back to over $300 a month. Just great. The cost of flour and butter went up. I'm going to have to take half the ingredients out of the granola. Once the granola has shed the raisins, honey, almonds, cacao, hemp hearts, honey and molasses then it will only cost $1.17 a cup. Without counting the cost of the chickpeas then hummus drops down to $2.28/cup. If you already paid for it it may as well be free. At least you don't have to pay for the groceries twice, once at the store and once at home. That must mean everything in the cupboards is free! Freeeeeee! What better way to lose your mind then to think about food costs.
It's starting to seem like it's cheaper to buy everything at the store than to make it at home but we all know that's not true. In the case of my hummus the store bought is cheaper than my homemade because I use organic olive oil and organic chickpeas. My homemade hummus is definitely cheaper than the store bought ORGANIC hummus though by fifty cents per hundred grams. My organic granola is twice as cheap as store bought organic granola even without revamping it. My organic bread can beat store bought organic bread by twenty cents per serving.
I will try to revamp the granola recipe so it's a better vehicle for delivering the food items that are cheapest to buy:
Granola Revamped (AKA Glue Cereal)
6 cups organic oats (1896 cal costing $2.40)
5 cup organic flour (2,100 cal costing $2.25)
1 cup organic butter (2,250 cal costing $5)
1/2 c organic sugar (225 cal costing $0.40)
Mix and bake at 325 degrees in a turkey roasting pan for an hour stirring every fifteen minutes. Stir every ten minutes towards the end.
Once it's cool add:
2 cup sunflower seeds (1,608 cal costing $2.50)
2 cups chia seeds (368 cal costing $5.00)
Total calories: 8447
Total cost $17.55
Makes 15 cups.
Each cup will provide 563 cal for $1.17
I have absolutely no idea how this granola will turn out. Will I have to add water? Will it burn? How will it taste? Let me make it today and find out.....Okay so maybe five cups of flour is a dumb idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watchKlunatic
New Daily Diet with Revamped Granola:
2 cups organic homemade granola (provides 1,126 cal for $2.34)
2 cups organic milk (provides 260 cal for $1.14)
5 organic bananas (provides 525 cal for $2)
1/2 cup homemade hummus (provides 200 cal for $1.50)
loaf homemade organic french bread (provides 600 cal for $1.43)
Total cal: 2,711
Total cost: $8.41
Cost per month $252.30
Nutrition Targets: 98%
This diet delivers 36 % of needed B12
This diet delivers 76% of needed vitamin A
Chia Crackers
6 cups organic oats (1896 cal costing $2.40)
5 cup organic flour (2,100 cal costing $2.25)
1 cup organic butter (2,250 cal costing $5)
1/2 c organic sugar (225 cal costing $0.40)
2 cup sunflower seeds (1,608 cal costing $2.50)
2 cups chia seeds (368 cal costing $5.00)
Melt the butter and mix this all together. It's easiest to work with if you separate the mixture into two bowls after. Add a cup of water to one bowl and mix it all up by hand. Turn it out on the counter and knead it until it's starting to stick together. Add a few more tablespoons of water if you need to. Mash it as flat as you can into a greased cookie sheet. Salt to taste. Bake 350 for half an hour. Do the same for the other bowl of mixture. Let it sit for five minutes then score it with a knife so when it cools it will break along those lines. Can make three cookie sheets worth of crackers.
This is way better than glue cereal. It tastes good and you can savor it as long as you want.
April marked an attempt to get back into budget eating. I say it was an attempt because that is all it will ever be is an attempt. I went out and bought according to the list that would get me ninety nine percent of my needed calories and nutrition for $200. On the first of April I was overstocked by 45,000 calories. You'd think that would be enough to get through a month without making more stops for food. I marched on bravely for the first week eating my homemade bread and my homemade hummus. I drank milk, ate bananas and free apples from work. By half way through the month the gloss was starting to peel off the determination, and replacing the gloss was that nagging craving for just about anything sweet or fattening or better yet both. Enter the Cliff bar cream cheese sandwiches soon to be followed by goat cheese and potato chips.
It was a friend's birthday so why not make them a cheesecake and keep one at home just to be sure it tasted good? A professional always tastes their work. A few more days passed and by the twentieth of the month it was pretty rare to see me leaving work without a pile of junk food although
to be fair I at least threw in a container of organic yogurt to go with the Shot Bloks, Probars and Newman's cookies. With the last ten days of the month stretching out in front of me I seemed to find myself in the line at the A&W drive through more times than I can remember in this life time. The later at night the better. I think I must have tried every burger on the menu. It took all my will power to pass up the Bavarian donuts at the store and instead go home with some coconut water. Through it all Annie was there waiting for me to boil up another pot of water and dump her in and mix her up with that delightful cheese sauce.
It was with a fair bit of wrestling that I turned my eyeballs back to the oatmeal. To be fair I interspersed the oatmeal with a nice piece of chocolate fudge cake. The nice thing about chocolate fudge cake is that it goes well with strawberry cheesecake. This whole month reminds me of last spring when I was convinced I must be trying to grow my other half. This year I really believe it. I don't think even bears eat this much when they're getting ready for hibernation. I was completely psyched out last year and this year is no different. May as well accept that spring tends to spring loose the appetite to levels that would even impress a competitive eater.
Number wise I am slightly embarrassed to say my average for this month was 3,200 calories per day. I seem to have set a record in my eating history. On the bright side this record breaking month only cost me $280 in groceries and restaurant bills. I even managed to ring in at a dollar less spent per day than last month even though I was eating twenty percent more. The indicators this month are telling me to put burgers back on the shopping list and make sure I eat at least twenty cups of chickpea soup. What better plan than to use up the chickpeas and add bacon for fat and flavor. For May I am adjusting my attack on the caloric requirements by buying beef burgers to go with the bacon, peanuts, milk, pasta, bananas and butter. Those will be the foods I ensure that I have on hand so I can always fall back on a food supply at home. It will cost me about $200 this time to achieve about 85% of my caloric goals.
The diet I am carrying forward into May will look like this:
28 grams oats cooked
to the oats add 2 tbsp tahini 2 tbsp maple syrup 2 tbsp chia seeds
1/2 cooked burger
1 cup chickpea soup with 4 pcs bacon
2 bananas
1/2 pckg Annie's mac n cheese
33 grams butter added to mac n cheese
1 cup milk
100 grams peanuts
As usual I ran it past Cronometer and it came as no surprise that it only showed as hitting 93% of my daily need for nutrition. The nutrition in EMP is definitely enough to blow the deficiencies away. I should probably be taking two capsules per day. What's left is that ever present potassium deficiency. Adding a potato can definitely trim most of the potassium deficiency down. Add another half a potato and another day is done like diner.
May it be another month of carefully planned mayhem. The month of May is nearing a close.
As usual with the last ten days in sight I was trying really hard to enjoy what was on hand. I'd cook up the lamb bones and vegetable scraps to make soup. I'd make some rice with the soup broth and fry up garlic and ginger so it packed a really spicy punch. I made cookies with the left over cacao nibs that didn't go into granola because the granola was "too expensive." I converted the chia crackers back into cereal by pouring milk on them and adding raisins, nuts, and crumbled up cookies. I turned the milk into pudding before it went bad. The harder I tried the more expensive it got when my appetite became a desperate force. The calories getting crushed this month matched the mayhem of last month. Once again I'm starting to wonder if I should just go and hang out with a bunch of competitive eaters. For inspiration there was always that sweet intuitive voice inside saying, "I am warning you! You'd better get some chocolate in here quick or I will make sure everything you eat for the rest of your life is coated in chocolate sauce!"
The first trip to the drive thru was a sign things were not going quite right. I could make burgers at home for half the cost so I threw the "smart budget" to the wind and just shopped the heck out of the grocery store. A 5,286 calorie day cost $27.27 fueled by store bought delights. A 4,130 calorie day fueled partly by a drive thru cost $32.44. There is no doubting you can fuel yourself more efficiently if you shop at the grocery store. So far the groceries purchased this month of May totaled $432. The daily average was $13.62 and once again the caloric average per day was a whopping 3,281 calories. That is $1.66 more expensive than last month for every day. With the metabolism acting like a crazed beast there doesn't seem to be much hope for nipping the food budget in the bud. If anything this is just one more indication that I need to restructure my spending.
Gas prices are reaching a frightening high in BC. The money I spent on gas this month was about two hundred and eighty percent more than I budgeted for. The money I spent on groceries was about two hundred and sixteen percent more than I budgeted for. My appetite was about eighteen percent crazier than I planned on and my food choices were a hundred percent pickier than I really planned on. I will soon be moving closer to work and the relocation is none too soon. Everywhere I look the trend is that prices are increasing. Even the bank wants to take interest rates up on credit cards. Vehicle insurance is going up. Everything seems to be going up except my income.
I went ahead and forecast my budget after the move to walking distance from work. Obviously the budget gets much better if I remove the vehicle from it completely. In that case I would have a couple hundred dollars worth of breathing room without a vehicle. That is if I can breath the air in this new place. That is yet to be discovered. You wouldn't think that breathing would cause so many problems but needing to breath clean air is a constant challenge. If the air is breathable then oddly enough I tend to stick around. If it's not breathable I have to leave. What if the air is not breathable at night? Will I go sleep on the street or just walk around in circles?
These are all challenges that are unique to a person with unique sensitivities. Someone else might celebrate and breath deeper if the air smells like cocaine, perfume, pot, body odor, hair spray, Pinesol, varnish, garbage, mold, shit and cat piss. I find it really hard to celebrate any of these smells. I bet it's even harder for my cat to celebrate these smells. It would explain why he bolts for the outdoors the minute I come home. With a budget like the one I have breathing is about the only thing I have to do a lot of the time. When each breath is worse than the last it sort of ruins my quality of life. I need to live somewhere I can breath without feeling like taking a breath is going to result in suffocation. I will be really thankful if we can make it into an easy breathing zone. To be fair I'd say a lot of the stench comes from grow ops that have been popping up.Last month it only smelled like a skunk sprayed. This month the neighborhood is smelling like a skunk sprayed and then had diarrhea. Maybe next month if we're really lucky the skunk will just fucking die and we can all find out early what it's like to work in a skunk mortuary.
The smell gets even nicer when the farmers start laying the manure on their fields and the cheese makers step up for heavy production. If it's spawning season for salmon they sure do smell nice when they throw themselves on the rocks and die. Thank God that all the pollen in the air doesn't bother me. It would save a lot on gas not to have to drive around looking for a parking space every night while I camp out in my van. Once the strategy started it sort of stuck. I've kind of trained myself to become extremely relaxed inside a parked vehicle. It's a separate space that helps me tune the world out. That van sure has saved my ass more times than I can count. Too bad it's looking like curtains for the gas budget. It will take a little time to try and reverse this habit of seeking out clean air whatever the cost. Time will tell if the habit can be reversed.
It seems like the minute I have one challenge under control another one comes along. My food budget is good until I become possessed by Furious Pete. My gas bill is okay until the neighbors get antsy with me parking close by and then I end up parking across town just to find some peace and quiet and the gas companies start pumping up the cost at the gas pump. My budget is really nice until the bank decides that zero percent is being way too nice and now they want two percent. It would be no small wonder if any of us find a way to make it through the shit storm without having to dip into credit. What's next? All we can do is try everything possible to save money and pray that when something else goes wrong it won't be too expensive to fix it. The solution is enjoy one day at a time and enjoy each choice however bizarre it might seem to other people.
I suppose you could say I'm not doing too bad if the worst of my worries is a two percent kick in the rear. There might be a way to get accepted for a zero percent rate at another bank. There is always a chance to turn the game around and that's the important thing to keep in mind. I will try to take advantage of a new offer. They are out there. I will find them. This time I will give the principle a run for its money. That was just bad enough to warrant an eye roll. I will throw money into the debt void like I've never thrown before! I will waltz this debt to the edge of the world and let it teeter there for a while and delight in the fear in its little plastic eyes. I will stare it down until it falls into the sea and becomes a little raft for a tired little bug. Then it will sink down into the water and really piss off that little bug that really believed the card might have been worth something. Then it will be swallowed by a giant whale and get shit out in a giant whale poop, finally realizing its full potential.
https://creditcardgenius.ca/blog/best-balance-transfer-credit-cards/
Munches with Geeks has entered a month full of rewards.
There was a move made to a single family home and it's been an absolute smash
success. Non smoking was required in the lease and much to this geek's wonder
breathing at home has become like second nature. Her Geekness can take a breath
and then repeat if necessary. For the
entire month Her Geekness has been able to breath clean air except for the
night when the next door neighbors were trying to make all the skunks in the
neighborhood jealous. They definitely succeeded. I bet those skunks are still
trying to figure out who stole their stinky throne.
To continue with the smashing nature of this month someone
smashed into my rear bumper in a parking lot resulting in a complete write off
situation. Previously I kept dancing up to the idea of selling my van and then
backing down and then all in the space of a month I ended up making a surprise
sale to ICBC. It would have been unthinkable in May to part with my van but as
luck would have it there is no van parked in the driveway. In such a short
period of time something impossible like relying on public transportation
became possible. I am in line with the major bus routes so everything has
fallen into place. All of a sudden saving money is as easy as cheesecake.
Eating cheesecake is as easy as pie. Eating pie is as easy as cheesecake.
Her Geekness is celebrating the fattest month ever! Now that
the van is gone I can spend $400 a month on food and still have money left
over! My body has been demanding enough food to make it up and down three
mountains a month. So far the only mountain I can see is the mountain of money
I spent on groceries. In fact the real mountains just got a lot further away.
June saw an all time fat record of 102,418 calories crunched! Gobbled,
masticated, destroyed! Sure is a good thing there were five pay checks this
month!
To be fair in the months of May and June I had a heck of a
lot to do above and beyond the usual activities. I was packing, taring down,
setting up, cleaning, hauling boxes by hand and working every day of the move.
I was doing an hour of taiji every day because it gave me a way to stay sane in
the park while I admired the air quality of the outdoors. On my days off it was
just more moving. On top of that I was testing my legs as a pedestrian hauling
my own ass everywhere I needed to go. There were a couple days at work I wasn't
sure if my legs were going to hold me up for another second. For a good three
weeks after the move I felt like my energy was about as fresh as a crippled
porcupine.
As usual this month I sat down and preplanned a very
efficient grocery trip. I took into account the reality that my appetite was
twenty five percent higher than usual. The list was mostly organic and full of
nutrition. The list was so precise it was enough to make me sick just thinking
about how each of those meals was going to taste. Being a good little food geek
I also made a point of figuring out what that list was going to cost. Seeing
the price tag on that grocery trip made me want to call the whole thing off. I
had what must have been an anxiety attack and then scaled it down to just five
items. No matter what I did I couldn't seem to just go to the store and buy
food like a normal person. If I was waiting to feel good about spending three
hundred dollars on food it was going to take all year. Not having a vehicle
didn't really help facilitate the shopping process. I kept fighting with myself
about whether it was more suitable to take my groceries home by bus or by cab.
Was it better to take a few things home or just use some dimes and nickels to
buy organic crackers? The price I paid for resisting a three hundred dollar
shopping trip was over seven hundred dollars.
Oh shopping list.
I should resist thee.
Though art so extravagant.
How can I stroll down the isle
and pick you all up
all twenty eight of you
and pay hundreds as if
nothing even happened.
Better yet to wait
Steel my will against such a
wonton display
and just walk with a single item maybe two
or three at most.
I should wrap myself in pennies worth of rice
throw it over my head like confetti
I didn't fall short on discipline.
These items were selected for their nutrition
Their thrift
their resilience in the face of hunger!
Truly they are not extravagant at all.
I can enjoy the meaning of practicality.
Why not enjoy the inevitable satiation?
No! I can go without anything!
What is wrong with planning to satiate hunger?
It will cost three times more not to plan.
Oh shopping list.
How cruel are thee.
I will stroll with thee in private when even I am blind
blind to my own actions.
Truly your only dignity is to survive,
no demand,
one more day of neglect.
Oh shopping list
I neglect thee.
There is a clear pattern of my food consumption increasing
in four thousand calorie increments each month for the last six months. If this
continues then by the end of the year I'll be trying to figure out how to
purchase 127,917 calories for $400. Is it a sign our food quality is degrading
and that it's taking twenty five percent more to achieve basic nutrition? I
will try to increase my supplementation by twenty five percent and see if that
helps.
After stepping on the scale it seems pretty obvious that the
next step is to load up on vegetables. I gained exactly as much as expected venturing
so far over my maintenance of 2,700 calories a day. Now that I can afford to
eat vegetables it would also be a great time to lose about twenty pounds. I
sympathize with my muscles and tendons having to withstand a lot of weight
already without adding to it. My goal in weight loss is to make sure it's easy
for my body to get around without breaking under its own weight. First I will
eat up the three homemade organic cheesecakes I made then after the maniacal
laughter subsides then it will be back to something more practical.
A full on diet would be way too drastic considering all the
other changes that have taken place. I just got access to a bigger food budget
so something a little more moderate would be in order. What I will do
instead is let my body eat whatever it wants up to 2,500 calories every day in
July then if I want to eat anything above that I will limit myself to
vegetables. I will find out how that feels first without resorting to
starvation and weight loss drinks. July will be my transition month, prepping
my system for an August diet. Shhhh. Don't say it so loud. The cheesecake will
hear you.
Now that everything is set up for maximum enjoyment and
efficiency I am looking forward to making steady payments on my debts. If I can
continue to follow a fixed budget then in three years I will be debt free.
Being debt free would be rewarding for so many reasons. I'd be free of the
bank's clutches. I could start generating my own savings. I could wander off to
a ghost town for a year and not be any worse off financially. I could start
building some security and if I tried really hard I could have enough money to
at least eat when I retire. I might be
living in a cardboard box but at least I could eat. I could just lay there and
write a shopping list on the inside of the box. Then I could have an anxiety
attack just to help pass the time. Then I could go do some tai chi.
My cat has taken the move quite well. Once I had one room cleaned out he began to mope so badly that I thought he was dying. He lay on his death bed yet again and I patted his little paw reassuring him he would get through this. It's possible that he had been eaten and barfed back up by some wild animal or possibly attacked and so he presumed it might be a good time to play dead. There he lay, just about dead but within a day or so he got up and became the walking dead. He limped, tail dragging on the ground like it had just been broken in half along with his heart. He looked at me with these horror stricken eyes like I had just bought him a one way ticket to a fur coat company. After the initial shock of the sky falling down he pretty much chilled out and handled the rest pretty well. He didn't even make a single protest when I loaded him in his carrier and drove to the new place. I didn't even have to tackle him to get him in the carrier. I kept him inside for a week then gradually let him get used to the backyard.
Now and again he would get caught off guard by the new
setting and he'd growl in frustration because I had played a trick on him. One
morning I switched out the whole backyard with a concrete slab and he couldn't
have been more upset with me. Overall Caliber has shown some very happy
behavior. He is extremely playful and will nearly skip from room to room and
alternate attacking both of his scratching posts. He'll tare around the back
yard and kick up his heels like a total fool making sure to scratch his back
on the concrete between charging in zig-zag patterns. When he is getting close to feline nirvana he throws himself on
his back, makes a very goofy face, and then licks his front paws as if he just walked into a five star restaurant and then walked right back out again. I haven't seen
him so happy in years.
There have been some rough patches. Just when I thought Caliber was confident going outside he would charge back in through the window growling and then drive me crazy scratching the door to go back out. As it turns out the neighborhood comes complete with another cat who looks so much like Caliber he could be his evil twin. Caliber is just a little uptight about meeting his evil twin. He will seem okay for a while then he will blow a fuse and scream and run inside growling. Some nights it seems like he is at war with his evil twin. The nights he is at war he will fidget the whole night, go outside, scream, and then come back in and practice making screeching noises with his claws. The whole thing has inspired a little night time song that goes like this “how much is that shotgun in the window….the one with the shiniest barrel….”
On my most forgiving nights I was starting to picture how
cute his fuzzy little face would look next to the add “Annoying cat free to
good home.” I think my cat might need to see a psychologist or at least go on
stress leave. There must be some place that provides a vacation style
experience for cats whose owners would like to kill them. There's a possibility I might be able to
muster up a little patience and give the cat a bit more time to adjust.
Eventually it will come down to buying a roll of fabric and covering the lower
portion of the wall so there is not a single surface on which for him to make
screeching noises.
Caliber has been enjoying Gather, an organic brand of cat
food I started him on in January. Free feeding him Gather turned out to be the
right decision. I thought Performatrin was a high quality cat food and he went
through thirteen pounds of it every two months costing seventy dollars. He ate
an eight pound bag of Gather over three months and that cost fifty eight
dollars. His coat is looking absolutely beautiful and his demeanor is a little
more relaxed. My hope is that he will start building high quality tendons so
next time he goes rampaging around the neighborhood at night he won't rip his
back tendon again. He's been in a few fights and his leg is holding up so it
might finally be healed. Now he can be the health and safety officer and
supervise my adventures as I battle this crazy hunger bug.
Her Geekness is pleased to report that the calorie mayhem of June has put itself to an end. There wasn’t really much coaxing needed to call the metabolism down off its eating high. This month is running at a fifty thousand calorie total so far or roughly 2,113 calories eaten per day. That’s half of last month and it didn’t take much for my body to catch on to the salad routine. As stated in last month’s entry my goal was to make this the pre diet month. I followed the only rule, that once I hit 2,500 calories I’d eat only salad. It surprised me how quickly my appetite dropped off. Last month I’d go flying over four thousand calories in a day like it was mostly a snack. The weight is starting to make its way down back to earth.
Financially this month rang in at exactly the same cost per day. How did that happen? I bought a very large gift certificate for a local restaurant and was going to send it to the guy who admitted to running into my van as a way of saying “thanks for your honesty”. He never called to claim it. I figured he was frightened I’d come to his house with eggs and toilet paper. If he calls now, there’s still a little bit left on the gift card but not much. I had a chance to treat other people to diner so that was pretty sweet. I hardly ever eat out more than once every two months as a general rule.
My energy has definitely recovered from the move. While there were many days last month just walking to work was a chore, this month is much more active. My days hanging out at home decreased significantly over the course of July. A big thrust to get out of the house was that certain people decided it was okay to smoke and/or vape in a non smoking building. Once they decided it was okay all of a sudden I felt like I was living next to a THC factory. It was inevitable as my experience has shown me. My complaints were met with the usual response, that response being, it's not actually happening. Then out of courtesy certain people started vaping instead which hid the odor and eliminated the carcinogens but only released more THC. THC has a signature effect on my body so I can always tell when it's in the air. I'd be thrilled if the property manager wanted to submit everyone to a drug test to help separate the honest tenants from the liars but he may not be legally allowed to do that.
Safe to say I've been out in the sun every available minute. I am at heart a nature lover and so I feel like I'm more like myself when I'm exploring another facet of the natural world. Soon I will know what it's like to walk around all the lakes even if it takes three hours. I want to find out which parks lend themselves to a taiji enthusiast , hiker and photographer. I want to know where all the safe places are to take a nap by a stream or in a grove. There are some cities around here that have a really good interface between public transit and the nature trails. All it would take to make the adventures completely awesome would be a pair of roller blades. I’ve been dreaming about roller blading because I’ll never forget how free I felt when I used to roller blade around Edmonton. Roller blading and biking would feel like more of a reward at this point rather than punishment. (This from someone who is desperate to only see the positive at the moment.)
Going without a vehicle has been a little bit unnerving. Having more money around certainly didn't hurt at all.I was able to afford a nice new water filter system, more EMP, more curcumin, Kalaya, Nature’s Aid, and some very expensive organic oils that were meant to shield my body from THC. As reality has recently confirmed, nobody is about to stop smoking marijuana just because of some pesky non smoking rule and my body isn't about to start handling it. It’s going to haunt me everywhere I go. People who are hypersensitive to THC will not be able to handle having THC in their breathing air. For whatever reason some people’s chemistry goes haywire when they breath in THC. When I breath in THC in the air I feel fucked on every level. Vaping is no solution because vaping results in even higher ratios of THC being released from the marijuana.
People have a misconception that you can use a vaporizer without releasing any chemicals into the environment. If it was true that a vaporizer only released vapor then the invention would be COMPLETELY USELESS AND NOBODY WOULD USE IT! The vaporizer is releasing the drug you put inside of it so you can suck those drugs into your body. Unless you plan on taking one breath and then dying chances are you are probably going to breath out and breath out all those drugs along with your breath.
My doctor supported my decision to try CBD oil. It’s the yin of the marijuana while the THC is the yang. As I read these days producers and consumers are biased towards really high levels of THC and really low levels of CBD. A friend told me that after the THC reaches a certain level in the marijuana plants they don't even produce CBD anymore. To stay balanced, hypersensitive people exposed to marijuana need to add their own CBD to their bodies to dim the psycho active effects. It’s very clear that alcohol was a factor in one of my worst episodes related to breathing air saturated with THC. To validate my experience I read that indeed alcohol rapidly increases the level of THC in a person’s body. The day I chose to drink five shots of rum spaced out over the course of one day I ended the day plastered on the bed unable to move at all for two hours. It was as close as I ever got to passing out and I know I can handle way more alcohol than that. It’s not like me to get knocked out by 225 ml of spirits. The next day when there was still THC in the air I was a sleepless skunk fucked bawling mess. My world was no longer my world but a pile of hopeless crap. That was before I was using pure CBD. That experience propelled me to get serious about pure CBD oil and to stop messing around with CBD rich cannabis sativa oil because they couldn’t even tell me how much CBD was in the oil. They weren’t even supposed to have it on the shelf.
I located all the marijuana dispensaries in the area and was on my way to investigate when what did I see but a big giant cannabis store on the corner. I walked in and explained how dire my situation was. It didn't take too long for the nice lady to understand that I was completely fucked so she gave me the membership form to fill out and later sold me some CBD oil under the counter. For me at that moment it was the answer to a desperate need. That same night I started it I slept through the night despite the massive odor of pot in the air. I still get agitated in the morning faster than the oil can calm me down. I dearly hope that given a few more weeks it will work its way into my system a little more thoroughly and then I will have 24-7 immunity to THC. I’m going to need it! (Her Geekness is writing from a library computer because it's easier to breath at the library.)
Taking an extra .5 ml of the CBD in the afternoon seemed like a good idea until agitation paired up with a massive black cloud of doom. Killing people with my eyes is not something I want to do to impress my fellow man. After that learning experience I decided it might be a good idea to fill in over the course of the day with Ibuprofin, black pepper and the left over cannabis sativa oil because it helped my body to absorb the curcumin I was also taking. Maybe by the end of the month I won’t be grasping at straws to patch the THC shield. Or maybe I might be. Maybe my body still will need a whole sixteen hours to process out the THC I breath in at night while I’m sleeping. I've noted that when the THC builds up to a certain level in my body I am prone to such severe agitation that I'm more likely to want to punch holes in the walls than enjoy my surroundings. It's far more productive for me to avoid the levels from getting to that point where I'm going off a chemical deep end. It's entirely possible I will never be comfortable spending more than eight hours in the house which means I’m back to square one.
The roller coaster of hopes and disappointments has resulted in one final decision. I am going back on the night shift so when I buy a vehicle I can afford the gasoline it's going to take drive to wherever I need to go to be shaded and safe parking and sleeping. That way I will be out of the house all night and all day. My home will be nothing more than a supply station, a pit stop, and a nice little crash pad for my cat. It's the inconvenient solution I've had to live with for years.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/no-pot-party-for-canada-s-landlords-who-want-to-limit-drug-s-use-1.995882
 |
Click here to Reply or Forward
|
Life can be such a funny thing. Just when you think you have initiated a plan that will work something else comes along and all of a sudden it's all you can do to keep even one aspect of life solid and organized. I know some people who have been derailed and sometimes I feel like I'm staying on the track with two wheels up in the air and two down. It's a pretty precarious stunt this whole business of being alive.
I am pretty excited about going back on the night shift. I have a new vehicle waiting to save my sanity if I feel like I need more space, more quiet and more clean air than I am getting at home. It was a heck of a deal but what sounded like a little rattle turned out to be a pretty expensive problem. The seller swore up and down the vehicle was safe and still under warranty but once a mechanic got under the van they saw that the exhaust pipe had been dented so badly the whole thing would need to be replaced. So much for a quick fix. The cost of the repair is almost half the cost of the van. So much for getting out of debt. The three year mark to get out of debt just became four. The repair cost fits almost exactly with the repair bill I got stuck with last time I bought a used van. At least this one is rust free, it's a slightly newer model, and the brakes don't chatter nearly as much as the brakes on my last van. In fact my last van wasn't very much of a chatter box at the end of its driving career. When it was braking it sounded more like an owl that just got in a fight with a bull inside a very small wooden crate. I bet driving it into a ditch really didn't help matters either.
I never really would have pegged myself as someone who was healthy enough to stay on the night shift. The fact that I can stay on it so long tells me that my health is better than it once was. I can't really think of any minute of the day I don't spend taking good care of myself. It was one beautiful day today waking up to great scenery, doing some taiji exercises and then going right back out for a long hike around the lake after making a few veggie and cheese sandwiches. After I had stumbled back to the van all full of blackberries and coated in dust I was truly a picture of health reclining in the backseat of such a fine van with nothing but water for the rest of the day. I had dutifully cut myself off of any more food once I hit my maintenance level and I felt somewhat responsible for having done so. The black berries were free and full of antioxidants. So I might have eaten enough blackberries to fill a jar of jam but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that I had to work really hard to pick those berries.
Lately I feel like the least I can do is to prepare food with an eye towards eating what I need not just eating what I want. My appetite is definitely behaving itself and I really don't feel like it's necessary to enforce a calorie deficit. I already lost most of the weight that I gained in June so there is no need to expect myself to starve down to a thinner version of myself. A spare tire has its use although sometimes it seems like it would lighten things up to just get rid of it. If anything a diet would just make me cranky on top of turning my sleep schedule upside down and I really don't want to make an enemy of my body at a time when I need it the most. My monthly food budget has already been transformed into groceries and I can tell you right now I don't have too many vegetables to bail myself out with. I tried to save myself from agonizing and just put together a list of foods I was enjoying having around and made sure to cross check it against last year's food consumption and make sure it was going to at least get me to my maintenance level. The vegetables gave way to make room for Annie's mac and cheese. Mmmm. Don't forget the chocolate. Say, did you say chocolate? Great idea!
Today I enjoyed the easy part of the night shift discipline. I was working pretty hard to lull myself to sleep at five o clock in the afternoon with every molecule of concentration fixed on how that the air really was cooler when I breathed it in than when I breathed it out. It was quite a bit cooler when I breathed it in, definitely not hotter than the air I was breathing out. Wait how hot was the air I was breathing out? Was there some reason I was behaving more like a furnace on such a cool day? Wasn't twenty degrees cool enough? Was I closer to combustion than a nap? My efforts were rewarded with a brief loss of consciousness. Applause goes here.
For a nice contrast at the end of the day I stopped in for one of those drive thru burgers I'd been craving and couldn't even finish what was in the bag. My body was lighting up like I just drank lighter fluid and swallowed a match. Everything hurt from my heart to my lungs, my mouth, my glands, well pretty much everything including my teeth. My teeth still hurt. My day was just so healthy I had to spoil it somehow and that sure was a good way to do it. I can't recall ever feeling so crappy after a couple of burgers which I take to mean that eating out just lost even more appeal. I should have known that eating at a drive thru is only marginally better for me than getting run over by the food truck.
As I am about to tune out of the rest of the world for the most part I am taking the opportunity to tune into this blog a little more than usual. This blog helps me to feel like I'm working on a project and staying in touch with the people who read it. I know somewhere out there people who read this blog must feel like they know me and that helps me to feel connected. The next two weeks is going to be pretty rough especially with trying to sleep in thirty degree heat. I will not worry if day time sleep doesn't happen when I want it to. I will just focus on doing a good job and enjoy the process of taring open boxes so I can stock the shelves. Soon the rains will come and rain is so soothing on a metal roof. If the winter is as mild as last year I won't even have to scrape the inside of the windows. The only thing I will need in the winter is paper towels to wipe the condensation off the windows if I'm lucky.
It's easy to melt into the background at provincial parks in the day time. There's no penalty to park unless it's overnight then the park wardens start knocking on the windows to remind you not to park in the parking lot at night. A lot of parks close at 10pm which would give me more than enough time to get in eight hours of sleep. Her Geekness will be writing even more frequently with the most geeky numbers she can find to keep us all laughing about what it's really like to eat on a budget.
I am pretty excited about going back on the night shift. I have a new vehicle waiting to save my sanity if I feel like I need more space, more quiet and more clean air than I am getting at home. It was a heck of a deal but what sounded like a little rattle turned out to be a pretty expensive problem. The seller swore up and down the vehicle was safe and still under warranty but once a mechanic got under the van they saw that the exhaust pipe had been dented so badly the whole thing would need to be replaced. So much for a quick fix. The cost of the repair is almost half the cost of the van. So much for getting out of debt. The three year mark to get out of debt just became four. The repair cost fits almost exactly with the repair bill I got stuck with last time I bought a used van. At least this one is rust free, it's a slightly newer model, and the brakes don't chatter nearly as much as the brakes on my last van. In fact my last van wasn't very much of a chatter box at the end of its driving career. When it was braking it sounded more like an owl that just got in a fight with a bull inside a very small wooden crate. I bet driving it into a ditch really didn't help matters either.
I never really would have pegged myself as someone who was healthy enough to stay on the night shift. The fact that I can stay on it so long tells me that my health is better than it once was. I can't really think of any minute of the day I don't spend taking good care of myself. It was one beautiful day today waking up to great scenery, doing some taiji exercises and then going right back out for a long hike around the lake after making a few veggie and cheese sandwiches. After I had stumbled back to the van all full of blackberries and coated in dust I was truly a picture of health reclining in the backseat of such a fine van with nothing but water for the rest of the day. I had dutifully cut myself off of any more food once I hit my maintenance level and I felt somewhat responsible for having done so. The black berries were free and full of antioxidants. So I might have eaten enough blackberries to fill a jar of jam but that doesn't matter. The important thing is that I had to work really hard to pick those berries.
Lately I feel like the least I can do is to prepare food with an eye towards eating what I need not just eating what I want. My appetite is definitely behaving itself and I really don't feel like it's necessary to enforce a calorie deficit. I already lost most of the weight that I gained in June so there is no need to expect myself to starve down to a thinner version of myself. A spare tire has its use although sometimes it seems like it would lighten things up to just get rid of it. If anything a diet would just make me cranky on top of turning my sleep schedule upside down and I really don't want to make an enemy of my body at a time when I need it the most. My monthly food budget has already been transformed into groceries and I can tell you right now I don't have too many vegetables to bail myself out with. I tried to save myself from agonizing and just put together a list of foods I was enjoying having around and made sure to cross check it against last year's food consumption and make sure it was going to at least get me to my maintenance level. The vegetables gave way to make room for Annie's mac and cheese. Mmmm. Don't forget the chocolate. Say, did you say chocolate? Great idea!
Today I enjoyed the easy part of the night shift discipline. I was working pretty hard to lull myself to sleep at five o clock in the afternoon with every molecule of concentration fixed on how that the air really was cooler when I breathed it in than when I breathed it out. It was quite a bit cooler when I breathed it in, definitely not hotter than the air I was breathing out. Wait how hot was the air I was breathing out? Was there some reason I was behaving more like a furnace on such a cool day? Wasn't twenty degrees cool enough? Was I closer to combustion than a nap? My efforts were rewarded with a brief loss of consciousness. Applause goes here.
For a nice contrast at the end of the day I stopped in for one of those drive thru burgers I'd been craving and couldn't even finish what was in the bag. My body was lighting up like I just drank lighter fluid and swallowed a match. Everything hurt from my heart to my lungs, my mouth, my glands, well pretty much everything including my teeth. My teeth still hurt. My day was just so healthy I had to spoil it somehow and that sure was a good way to do it. I can't recall ever feeling so crappy after a couple of burgers which I take to mean that eating out just lost even more appeal. I should have known that eating at a drive thru is only marginally better for me than getting run over by the food truck.
As I am about to tune out of the rest of the world for the most part I am taking the opportunity to tune into this blog a little more than usual. This blog helps me to feel like I'm working on a project and staying in touch with the people who read it. I know somewhere out there people who read this blog must feel like they know me and that helps me to feel connected. The next two weeks is going to be pretty rough especially with trying to sleep in thirty degree heat. I will not worry if day time sleep doesn't happen when I want it to. I will just focus on doing a good job and enjoy the process of taring open boxes so I can stock the shelves. Soon the rains will come and rain is so soothing on a metal roof. If the winter is as mild as last year I won't even have to scrape the inside of the windows. The only thing I will need in the winter is paper towels to wipe the condensation off the windows if I'm lucky.
It's easy to melt into the background at provincial parks in the day time. There's no penalty to park unless it's overnight then the park wardens start knocking on the windows to remind you not to park in the parking lot at night. A lot of parks close at 10pm which would give me more than enough time to get in eight hours of sleep. Her Geekness will be writing even more frequently with the most geeky numbers she can find to keep us all laughing about what it's really like to eat on a budget.
The month of August is nearing a close and I can't say I am sad to see the heat go. I've had to improvise all kinds of ways of staying cool while sleeping in the day time and at one point I almost launched a noodle raft underneath a boat dock. The key word there is almost. The next best thing was to wander over to a lake and after what seemed like a ridiculous amount of preparation threw myself in it to reduce my body temperature. Luckily I was not so tired that I fell asleep while swimming. It was far too cold to fall asleep and I found that the best thing to do after swimming was stay damp until I felt a chill and found myself thinking the strangest thing, "It would be really nice if I was just a little warmer." I found a nice little napping spot on a slab of rock overlooking the lake and initially thought it was highly unlikely anyone else out there was really down about not being able to take a nap on a rock in the middle of the day. As it turns out that was the official spot where boys gathered so they could leap ten feet into the lake. I wasn't too bent out of shape about losing my spot because there was an even bigger slab of rock at the top of the hill which became my partner in napping crime. It's amazing how much sleep a person can get in an area clear of mosquitoes. I will not complain at all that it just so happens I could fall asleep there and not become a human sacrifice.
Elsewhere in the woods I was not so lucky. Ten kilometers away from this peaceful bug free lake I had attempted to rig a survival hammock to test out the viability of sleeping in the woods in the day time. I made the hammock out of a hundred feet of paracord like I had seen on a video and nearly made it so high that I couldn't leap in. After I leaped into it finally I thanked my lucky stars I had brought mosquito netting and a mosquito jacket. With those in place I almost got comfortable enough to enjoy the feeling of the rope digging into my back gently cutting off my circulation. I was almost about to tune out the sound of the mosquitoes except that there was so many they started to sound like a bug powered engine. There was hundreds of them surrounding me and each one of them was getting ready to eat me through three layers of netting. I didn't think it was possible to get eaten alive by mosuitos through three layers of mosquito netting but in fact those mosquitoes proved me wrong.
Disheartened I took down my hammock and headed home with about thirty bites and some burst blood vessels. It's the sort of thing that is simply sweet to walk away from knowing the departure vehicle is fairly close by. On my way off the trail I counted the trees I went by so I had a little better idea when I was close to the trail again. I'm glad I did because it was pretty dark and even though I brought a head lamp it was a little unnerving. It helped me stay calm to have something to focus on. I'd never been so happy to see that trail in my life. All the way back I was convinced there was a wild animal following me when really the only life on the trail at that time was a snail. I'm sure all that snapping and crashing in the bushes was just a big slug or possibly a lost dog. I'm just glad I will never know what animal it was or where it was headed.
August was a month with five pay days and so there was a chance to shop for some extra supplies. Some people might go wild if they had hundreds of extra dollars but everything I bought was in line with necessities. The cat had to have his Gather, his new cat door, and even with a new vehicle sitting in the driveway those dishes would still have to get washed. I just never figured out a way to use my vehicle to wash dishes but maybe that could be my next goal in life. I had to spend about triple the amount of money that was actually coming in this month but that's where it comes in handy to have that line of credit. The balance on my credit card was just too good to be true last month. Of course something had to be coming down the pipe like a giant gash on the underside of the vehicle. This month of August has been the most expensive month in the last five years of my life. Technically the cost of the vehicle doesn't really count because I was paid out for the old one so if I wanted to make myself feel better I could say something like, don't worry you got a better vehicle for only a couple thousand dollars. Be happy and stop worrying about money.
As usual my strength this month was being able to gather food on the fly as I headed out the door. I was trying to anchor my food intake at a relatively low amount like eighteen hundred calories. It seemed pretty fair as most of the time was spent incapacitated by the heat. Occasionally I had to find a new lake and find out how long it took to walk around it. Walking for three hours in thirty degree weather seemed like a dumb idea however there were plenty of joggers who didn't think it was a dumb idea to run around the lake in thirty degree weather.
The food budget was pretty much unaffected by all the rest of the financial activity this month. Expensive month or not it was a great time to bring back the egg drop soup. It seems to fit really well with the night shift routine because the main ingredients are simple like potato, squash, and eggs. Nothing seems to make the body happier than eating plain and simple food when the night shift is in progress. Chickpeas and rice are a no fail meal because they are also plain and simple not to mention cheap. This month averaged at around 2,500 calories eaten per day despite trying to anchor my intake at a lower level. The average cost was fourteen dollars per day. I have been enjoying going out to diner a couple times a week and since there is so much visiting in progress this week the cost will still jump up and down a little bit, well mostly up. Her Geekness is setting a record in another department this month, that being the friendship department.
Her Geekness is driving a "new" van and there's so much driving under way between parks and naps that the gas bill is ringing in at about $290 a month. This is about a hundred and seventy dollars higher than what I budgeted for in the last few years. I didn't want to have to mark off that much money for gasoline but I'm going to have to. At first I was in despair then I realized I could still be out of debt in seven years. That of course is on the premise that I will be able to stay on the night shift indefinitely when that may not be plausible. That is also on the premise that my vehicle will not require any more repairs. If I include the historical average of $930 spent on vehicle repairs every year then I will be out of debt in eight and a half years.
http://www.membershipmatters.com/your-money/10-simple-ways-to-improve-your-financial-outlook
Do you ever have one of those months where you feel like it's pointless to keep score because nobody is winning? Sometimes it seems like it's pointless to keep track of anything because who wants to be aware of the fact that all their efforts are only putting about $200 in the piggy bank every month. The money isn't even technically available because it has to go towards paying down debts. What a rush to experience this financial dream of watching a debt blister shrink at a rate of eleven percent a year. Who really wants to be aware of their spending when every trip to the store ends with "uh oh better pay that credit card off when I get paid." I'm not technically supposed to have extra money in my account but sometimes Her Geekness has to stay sane by acting like the bank's credit is really her credit. It's a guilty pleasure to see borrowed money pile up in the account at least temporarily. The guilt doesn't take long to pile up either when I get around to feeling sorry that I didn't subject myself to hardship in order to prevent further debt accumulation. Women are especially prone to feeling guilty about spending money on food but when there is so little to enjoy about life why not enjoy eating? The best remedy for financial guilt is to remember that money is not a person. I have a bigger responsibility to live in a way that is pleasing. Hating every second of my life wouldn't do myself or anyone a favor.
It seems pretty pointless to even worry about dollars and cents because life just keeps venturing forward regardless of cost. No moment of my life takes place without a cost. When I am desperate to explain this situation to myself I always come back to the same answer. It's worth it to put forth all this effort and planning because it's important for me to be the one who is taking care of myself. Even if it amounts to nothing I can move forward with that one single pride that I have kept my life in order and I have continued to move forward with activities that work for me. I may not be getting ahead but at least I'm not falling behind. It may take eight years to get to the point where I can spend money just for the heck of it and not constantly spend "extra money" on necessities like dish soap, laundry detergent and toothpaste.
I guess I would be erring on the side of ignorant if I didn't take time to appreciate all the blessings in my life. I have freedom to explore beautiful places, a safe vehicle to get to those places, a cozy place to nap, good health, a steady job, money for what I need and a cat who acts like a fan gone wild when I come home for a break after work. I have family members who care about me and friends who never stop caring no matter how skiddish I might get. I have no shortage of inspiration in my life and if all goes as planned it will get easier and easier to share my inspirations and experiences with more and more people. There's always the option of treating myself with CBD oil every day and then celebrate a "live in the house week" every month since that's about all I could handle for now. Maybe one day soon I could be a THC gladiator but that is highly unlikely. I am thankful that I'm at this point in my life where I feel really nourished by inhaling deep breaths of really clean air and that I really enjoy breathing even if I have to live in a van for fourteen hours a day.
I tested out these Evil Squares on trails with at least half an hour of steep incline and wondered if I should go easy and sleep at the top of the mountain thus avoiding the long trek back down the same day. I wondered to myself if maybe smart athletes just eat a lot leading up to the day they want their best performance and then use a fat burner on the day of their event to lighten their load. I couldn't find anything on the subject on the internet and one morning I missed my turn for the easy walk and just kept right on going to the trail head for the mountain. I'd already eaten five thousand calories for the last two days so I doubted my metabolism would even blink if I packed along twenty four hundred calories and asked it to burn an extra four thousand. With an agenda of tip toeing at a steady rate was training even necessary for this climb? Probably not. It seemed that my life was getting to be a variety of venues involving taking giant lung fulls of clean air. I declared myself ready on account of having three really tasty sandwiches in my bag, an Evil Square, a rain jacket, and a liter of water. I was ready to laugh in the face of caution and reserve some dry space on my handkerchief just in case I needed to cry. It was raining so nobody would really be able to tell anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watchclimbeverymountain
The first hour was pure hell and then as the lake came into view my exertion was replaced with total quiet and complete calm. I felt like I had just walked into a meditation retreat only there was nobody there to give me rude looks if I farted. The only other hiker was skipping his way down already with an agenda to climb every mountain. He wasn't singing and he didn't look like the type to laugh even if a whole troop of comedians followed him around on his one man marathon. I wondered how far away he was before he was out of ear shot as I mumbled "that's pretty extreme isn't it there buddy!"
I was content to tip toe along in my own little zone and I started to enjoy the periods of harmony as my body caught on to what I was asking it to do. This time I hiked with an open mind and wasn't afraid to try things that might seem like a waste of time. When I was getting overcome with fatigue I'd march on the spot bringing my knees up high so there was no time for my energy to get flat and die off. I learned something new about matching my breath and my pace. On the really steep sections I would enforce the technique of "one breath one step". If I took more than one step per breath that was more performance than my body could handle. I'd feel like I was "over stepping my breath." It's kind of like the rule "don't overdrive your headlights" which is a handy rule to use for driving at night. If your breath can only provide so much to your body it's unwise to ask for more performance than your chemistry can physically provide. There's nothing to say you can't stop and stretch your legs or do runner's exercises, clap your hands or improvise your own mountain climbing ritual.
I reached the top of the 1,200 meters on a 12 km trail in two hours and fifty minutes. I was a little shocked because last time it had taken me five hours. To take such deliberately slow steps and then get to the top in half the time is not something I expected to happen. I had a sandwich and some Evil and then after taking all kinds of pictures headed back down. I remembered that last time my problem on the way down was too much adrenaline. The trail is so steep that having gravity lending a helping hand behind you really isn't the greatest feeling. All you can see is how far you'd go if you slipped and that just keeps nudging the adrenaline further and further out of control. Rather than fix the problem with donuts like cops do, I decided to make it my goal to create the same feeling of calm on the way down as I had on the way up. The only way to do that was to stop every three steps, close my eyes, take a deep breath with my palms facing me and then slowly let the breath out and turn my palms away again. It seemed like a Qigong exercise I saw my mom doing once but whatever it was it helped a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watchleeholden
https://www.youtube.com/watchqigong
There wasn't anything too eventful on the way down other than a whole lot of stopping and a whole lot of breathing and then I noticed I was out of water. It was raining but I wasn't really up to speed on using a scavenger sponge and I wasn't even sure if that was sanitary. My thoughts became monopolized by Gatorade. I sang about Gatorade and pictured a scenario where someone had decided to set up a random Gatorade stand half way up the mountain. If they were out there somewhere I would have paid twenty five dollars for a bottle right at that moment. The closest I saw to orange Gatorade was a guy wrapped in an orange tarp in his hammock somewhere off in the distance. I wondered what he thought of my Gatorade song and if he'd heard me yelling "It's a nice day to fart again!" off the top of the mountain. Hopefully he was sleeping mind you that got me thinking about my niece and I had to correct my mental prejudice because she was quite fond of mountains and sleeping in trees. Maybe it was a blond in a bikini under that orange tarp. Nobody would ever know.
Nobody would ever know either that due to a soaked t shirt I wasn't wearing anything under my rain jacket. I didn't even know I was getting hypothermia until three hours later once I was finally done stopping at every park entrance to check for a water fountain. I could have sworn that I'd seen one days ago but I couldn't find it. Finally, still halfway drenched, I went shopping for some electrolytes. I settled on the Vega hydration formula to make sure I was giving my body the equivalent of hydration heaven. Finally with the dehydration under control I settled down to rest under some covers, dry for the first time in seven hours. I thought the pain was just from over exertion then I threw the covers off to answer the call of nature. Almost immediately I started shivering like crazy and noted it was really difficult just to shift my eyes from left to right. My brain was all confused. About five hours later I could throw the covers off without shivering and I sure was glad because I had to go to work. I think I had caught the loss of body heat just in time thus sparing myself a trip to the hospital. I hadn't wanted to carry my sweater along thinking I'd be plenty warm with a hat and a rain jacket.
https://www.youtube.com/watchclothing
https://myvega.ca/collections/hydration-powders
The unexpected success of this mountain hike left me wondering if maybe, just maybe I could make it up a slightly taller mountain. The last ten minutes had been pretty iffy but this other mountain had only an extra five hundred meters height with a twenty four kilometer trail. My niece made it to the top three times mind you she's tougher than any teenager I know. I would take a wild guess that the longer trail means that the incline is more winding and less taxing on the legs. It's possible I might be able to do it. Last year I wouldn't have seen myself as a candidate for climbing to the top of it but this year I think might be in luck. These last couple days I felt like I'd be more likely to fly than to be able to get up off the ground without screaming but I'm sure in a couple more days it will be like nothing happened. I'm sure my legs might start to conspire how to become independent body parts but until then I'm sure it will all go just fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watchpack4Everest
Surprisingly enough a night of hard work left me feeling better if not completely fine. There was no soreness in my neck and no pain at all on Monday morning. The weather was absolutely beautiful and with a certainty that baffled me I packed for a day hike and drove to the mountains. I had no way to explain what I was doing other than I was doing what felt right. If it had felt right to go to the chiropractor's office I would have gone that way but I didn't. That had never happened before in two years. This excursion I did a couple things different bringing the Vega hydration mix along with a lot of extra water and some Motrin. The inflammation may have been my body's hard wired response to strenuous exertion. I wondered if I could put the inflammation in check early maybe I would feel even better about this climb.
Along the way there were plenty of opportunities for humor. While on the other mountain water was scarce at the middle, this one seemed to have a stream overlapping the trail every kilometer. Imagine being surrounding by so much running water, and struggling to carry an extra seven pounds as you put all your concentration into stepping against gravity. A Lifestraw would have allowed me to travel so much lighter. I just puffed up my chest and kept walking as if it was a test of strength to be doing a weighted walk. That's it I had planned it that way.
There was only one other hiker and he was the same athlete type who passed me and probably read the paper and had a nap in the time it took me to catch up to him. It's like it physically hurt the man to stand still and chat for ten seconds. It was all I could do to drag a little small talk out of him before he excused himself to go run for beer. It must be the "in" thing around these parts to run around on a mountain until you become a blur barely visible to the eye and then go crashing down in search of beer. Either that or it was one of those Russian jokes that went completely over my head. I suppose it could be rather funny if I came back with "While you're running to the store I'll just put my feet up and watch tv." Personally I'd prefer not to move that fast and I'd just as soon not get drunk on a mountain watching the Flintstones.
Without rain there was very little to put a damper on my enjoyment of the day. I had done this hike last year but last year I had to recuperate for two whole weeks between climbs. Last year I had followed one over exertion with over lifting and that's when I first heard the term "muscle spasms". That neck of mine was not happy. Sometimes it was hard to tell if a flu was the root of the pain or simply adding to it. An extra adjustment at the chiro's office would eliminate the pain so that made me wonder about the relationship between blood flow and viruses. Obviously blood sends protection and reinforcement to areas of the body under attack by a virus. If my neck was out obviously less blood would be able to flow upwards to my facial orifices where the virus was attempting to infiltrate. Fighting a virus would no doubt mean more inflammation which would just amplify the problem.
This latest climb took me nine hours in total to travel 20 kms with over a thousand meters of elevation gain. I am not sure what I was tapping into but I had to get to the top this time. Last time all I did was have a look at the peak. It was so frustrating to get to what I thought was the top only to round the corner and see the top still teasing me in the distance. This mountain does a great deal of teasing. At least three or four times you will think you are all the way to the top, then you go around another corner and there's still more. After the second false summit I took a couple Motrin, dared the mountain to fuck around with my head and then kept going. I was so excited when I saw how amazing the view was from the top I had to remind the whole city that it was a nice day to fart again. Then I found a piece of fossilized damn. People must have been swearing so long from the top of this mountain that there were fossilized swears everywhere you looked! There were even more fossils on top of the real peak right behind me.
Food was hardly on my mind as I traversed this mountain. The Vega hydration pretty much took care of me so I felt like a handful of dried fruit was just a bonus. This time I can't think of anything I was lacking except some lip balm. There was no coffee cravings, no Gatorade cravings, no over production of adrenaline, no hypothermia, and I could still walk down the stairs when I got home just before I had to go to work again. We'll see if this all holds for another week. If it does that will be a strong indication that the correct position of my C2 vertebrae is becoming more natural and less inclined to migrate.
Having the rope braids to hold definitely kept me calm in fact without them I would have gone into a panic and called things off after the first three hours. Walking straight through a creek as it gushes towards you from hundreds of meters up is extremely unnerving. It must be hardwired into human beings that having a grip on something means you're going to be okay. It doesn't matter if the rope is attached to me or a tree it's just extremely comforting to have a handhold. It helped me relax and pull the weight forward a bit.
On this mountain the rain was a constant reminder that hypothermia could be my next issue of the day. If I was on a ceremonial walk then death was my trail companion. It didn't take more than one crossing where the stream was running with great ferocity to come to that conclusion again and again. There was going to be snow at the top and everything including my footwear was drenched. After the enchanted forest gave way to a gushing stream I could see I was not about to get any dryer any time soon. The ribbons indicated that the trail continued up this gushing stream. I decided to keep going and when I hit the snow I would at least change to dry socks and put on my sweater. Death might not be immanent but perhaps slower and more agonizing.
I went up three wooden staircases also gushing with water and then finally dared to check the time. I felt like I had been up there six hours but it had only been three. It was my first feeling of triumph all day to note that I'd come so far in a fairly short period of time. I had no idea where I was in the scheme of things but I pressed on determined to at least make it to the emergency shelter. I wondered if I would be too exhausted to do anything but fall asleep there. At least it was a goal.
The climb to the peak was consuming and perplexing. On the way up the rock was not the least bit slippery despite the water gushing down it and many times I enjoyed moving across it with only a foot hold and a hand hold to keep steady. It obviously was not the same peak as I had seen in the pictures. Or was it? Was this peak an imposture or had I climbed the wrong mountain? I had brought along directions but my mind had been replaced with something else entirely. I was a creature moving up a mountain and a set of directions was not something I could process at that time. All I could think was "where they heck is the shelter?"
When I got to a peak like spot it was still pouring rain and it was so cloudy I couldn't see how much further there was to go. I was literally surrounded by a pleasant fog that allowed me to think I had made it. I had in fact arrived at the spot where there was a hidden ladder that I could have used to climb down to complete the last five kilometers. Moving towards the edge of the rock to go looking around for more adventure was not something I had in me at that time. I was blind as a bat due to the fog. I felt like my usual mountain top scream wasn't going to get me anywhere today. I think by the time people get to this point they are so grateful to be alive they would realize it was a nice day for just about anything. It wouldn't matter if it was hiking, farting, eating, or stream chasing as long as they were headed back down pretty soon.
I reached the seven kilometer mark four and a half hours after departure. It's for the best that I missed out on the last segment because I needed to be back down in my vehicle before darkness closed. My vehicle was set up as a kind of first aid station and I suspected that I would require a warm shelter before the day was out unless I wanted to die of hypothermia.
On the way back down I had fun playing around with my mountain top song until it was more like a thrash metal tune. "It's a nice day to die again!" It was a completely morbid hike from the half way point to the moments after. The hike back down took more time than the hike up. It's really strange to feel so awkward practically doing the crab crawl down spots that seemed so easy on the way up. A lot of the gracefulness was replaced with very slow incremental movements. I believe that is why there wasn't a big issue with adrenaline over production on the way down. It was such rough landscape that I really couldn't go faster than a slow crawl so that in itself kept me calm.
On the bright side I did not catch a chill despite the heavy rain and being soaked from head to toe. It could have been that the wool layer really insulated even though it was wet. It seemed futile to have on three layers of soaked clothing but maybe it wasn't futile after all. I took about four Motrin to keep the inflammation down and so far it's just my legs that are warning me that I did too much. Once again I felt like the Vega hydration crystals had me covered and I didn't need more than the buttery bread that I brought along. The extra cookies didn't hurt. Even in better weather the peak would be a stretch for a day hiker. If the emergency shelter was full of other day hikers there would be no choice but to go back down. Perhaps that's where the head lamp would come in handy.
There is only ninety three more days to go this year counting today which is the last day of September 2018. This month was quite the tight fit when it came to the budget. I almost missed the internet bill in the fray of things which ended up being almost a hundred dollars by the time I caught it. Utility bills were popping up and extra interest costs were popping up on my credit cards. I spent about a hundred and forty dollars more than planned on food but I spent a hundred and ten dollars less than I planned on gas so in a way it worked out.
This month I followed through and paid homage to the mountain range here in BC. It was really more than I could handle to go up three mountains in a row and I ended up driving my neck alignment into the ground. It's sort of a question of what can I do that doesn't drive my neck alignment into the ground. The answer is not much. Am I getting my neck fixed so I can cut open boxes of spaghetti or am I getting it fixed so I can enjoy hiking up a few mountains once a year? I suppose I would like to both keep my job and keep my interest in nature alive. My morbid appetite for mountain adventures set my progress back quite a bit but if it takes another two years to heal then I can wait.
I couldn't help but notice on the bottle of Vega Sport Hydration that it was sort of the mid phase in a three phase process for heavy physical activity. I had to ask myself after enduring so much pain in the recovery phase why didn't I buy the whole set? The Vega Accelerator had some really helpful ingredients like glucosamine hydrochloride and some other ingredients to bring down inflammation and enhance the immune system. With my knees acting like they just donated all their cartilage to the mountain climbers foundation I figured I had better get my hands on this stuff. On a whim I brought home almost two hundred dollars worth of Vega mixes and bars. The next day it was bugging me that I had gone and done something impulsive like this but I didn't really want to take it back. I figured out exactly how many calories my impulsive shopping trip added up to and figured out exactly what I'd need to buy to get me the last fifty thousand calories I'd need for October using the last $140 of my food budget. I was encouraged to see that I had not ruined a month of meals.
This whole year I have increasingly gotten the sense that I have been eating more than last year or at least spending more money on food. Yesterday I set about trying to figure out how this year was different than last year. It didn't take too long to notice how my habits had changed. I was leaving behind economical foods like flour, milk, peanuts, chickpeas, and rice. I had cut out about 63 kg of economical food compared to last year and cut out 17 L worth of milk. In place of these highly economical foods I had been eating more cheese and more energy bars. I definitely was helping Annie's mac and cheese to stay in business that's for sure. Half my diet came from dairy, meat, and sweet foods like energy bars. The other half came from carbs, nuts and fruit, and veggies.
It seemed like during the sweltering summer heat I couldn't drink enough coconut juice. During the summer I drank about thirty liters of coconut juice which cost about $160. Beverages came in just under the second highest category which was sweeteners and sweet stuff. I imagine anyone selling beverages of any kind this summer would have made a killing. People were dying to put fluids back in their bodies after the sun was busy baking them out. Dairy took the cake at a running total of $1,150. Show me a piece of cheese and I will show you a wrapper. I guess I've always been kind of cheese crazy.
In only nine months I spent $4,719 on food. The food budget is obviously bulging out of its margins but luckily the gas budget seems to be behaving itself now. If it's not one thing it's another as they say. I'm making a guess that by the time this year is up I will have eaten over a million calories. The amount I am eating is not that much higher than last year only about seven percent higher. The part that is hard to swallow is that the cost of eating per month has climbed by about two hundred dollars a month. I will admit I did spend almost four hundred dollars eating out earlier this year and the gummy bear section was rarely ever safe from me. Once I heard that chocolate bars had iron that was it I was bringing them home as fast as I could. Those aren't all that cheap either when you're buying organic.
That seems to be the year so far. Looking ahead things look pretty good. I should have everything balanced out in no time and before long it will just be a matter of picking which credit card gets paid down. Things aren't so bad give or take a gummy bear here and a chocolate bar there. When things seem like they are getting out of control I still enjoy going back to my food journal and at least trying to keep one day in order. That's about all I can do for now. See ya later folks! Have a good day!
A glimpse at nine months of eating from most expensive to least expensive categories:
Organic dairy including eggs provided 189,740 calories ($1,150)
Sweeteners, licorice, Surf Sweets, organic chocolate, shot bloks and organic energy bars provided 160,906 calories ($882.40)
Organic juice, organic coffee and Vega powders provided 16,292 calories ($624.55)
Rice, organic flour, organic pasta, organic bread and organic crackers provided 197, 638 calories ($397.81)
Eating out for sushi $364.30
Fish, beef, pork and lamb provided 16 523 calories ($362.76)
Fresh fruits and vegetables provided 45,516 calories ($299.20)
Condiments and organic oils provided 48,158 calories ($251.20)
Dried nuts and fruit provided 91,087 calories ($222.34)
As a point of interest it's sort of jaw dropping to see the figures for these items:
7.5 kg organic coffee cost $172
30 L coconut juice cost $159
Annie's mac n cheese says "thanks for the $185."
You spent $270 on chocolate? Wow!
Cliff says "thanks for buying $123 worth of Shot Bloks."
https://www.thekitchn.com/5-ways-your-freezer-can-save-you-money-grocery-intelligence-211042
https://www.narcity.com/ca/on/11-odd-animals
https://www.youtube.com/watchghostrats
https://www.youtube.com/watchratsawesome
October has just about completed its course. The leaves are turning and at times it can be a little chilly. The idea of using Vega powders to help the body recover from mountain climbing adventures seems to have added yet another variable to the eating puzzle. One of the Vega powders contained green tea extract which may have contributed to the drop in appetite. The green tea may have been a factor in the smaller appetite as well as the cold that has been ransacking people's health lately. It's possible that the more the cold set in the more my body needed to conserve energy. Perhaps the body uses so much energy fighting a virus that it tapers off the appetite on purpose. At my sickest point I was only eating a thousand calories per day and not hungry for more than that.
Last month cruised along closer to the three thousand calorie mark and this month is definitely cruising closer to two thousand calories. As an average this month has dropped down to around 2,405 calories eaten per day rather than last month's average of 2,954 calories per day. This month I spent $529 on food which is higher than I budgeted for and $240 on gas which is higher than I budgeted for. My cat had to receive veterinary attention costing $322 so it's a good thing I already bought all my yearly supplies. The cat is carrying on as if he never was sick which is a good thing although his blood work shows a low white blood cell count. One doctor suggested more vaccinations and more blood tests but I do not support vaccinations for humans so why would I support them for my pet? The cat got his basic vaccinations five years ago and had one updated shot two years ago. The last time he was vaccinated he seemed really weak afterwards and I had to wonder why I had supported it. Why not let nature take its course? If my cat's immune system collapses due to a contagious virus then he will die. If he becomes stronger as a result of the exposure then more the power to him. Most likely he will live long enough to give me a really dirty look for having taken such good care of him because the longer an animal lives the more pain they have to endure as more of their body fails.
https://wagwalking.com/cat/condition/low-white-blood-cell-count
To help my cat stay comfortable while he was sick I dug out the space heater and plugged it into the wall. I have no heat control from downstairs so I have to rely on a space heater. I pay thirty percent of the electric bill and thirty percent of the natural gas bill even though there are eleven people living upstairs and I am only one person who is rarely ever home. This unit is half of the usual rental rate which makes everything fair that seems unfair. Right? This is where I'm supposed to nod and say right. While I was out in the boonies trying to get some sleep the thermostat registered a low temperature, the heat came on and a breaker blew. A string of outlets upstairs and downstairs went off. All the electrical outlets in the whole house all run to one breaker box downstairs in my unit and trust me I did not want to start messing around trying to figure out which one was on and which one was off. One was loose but I didn't turn it far enough to the off position before pressing it on.
I notified the property manager who said he'd send someone to have a look. The next day I had seven hours to wait before the electrician was set to get here. I noticed that morning that the fridge and freezer had been knocked out as well. A month worth of groceries was sitting in there getting warmer by the second. The meat in the freezer felt like it was about how cold as meat would feel sitting in the fridge. I decided to cook it as fast as I could. While the bacon was cooking in the oven I called the property manager again and he guided me through resetting the breaker. I felt better knowing he was on the phone in case something went wrong. Luckily everything came back on but the wiring for the fridge light was still screwed so I'd have no way of knowing if the power went out in the fridge again. I asked the property manager if he could get someone to fix the wiring for the light but no response. I took a risk and continued to use the groceries in the fridge.
Last month Her Geekness claimed almost four thousand meters worth of elevation over the course of 48 km worth of trails. This month Her Geekness claimed about 96 hours worth of sleep. The key to achieving sleep was to stop eating and go to a quiet place in the park taking the van and only a liter of water. The eye mask was often useful to block bright light and when missing sleep was unthinkable I would use the ear plugs. Often what would happen is I would fall asleep for three hours and wake up. More sleep would not be possible until it was dark even with the eye mask.
Before going to sleep I would force myself to go for a small walk which was usually met with intense disapproval from body. On a good day I could blast through a three hour walk like it was nothing but other days just walking for twenty meters felt like a difficult task. Each day I would ask myself to do a little taiji which was so pathetic in my weak body that I felt the need to hide from anybody's view. Gradually over the course of the month the cold went away and my strength returned and I felt like I had enough strength that I could do some taiji form without my legs shaking like a baby horse.
As usual there were some oddities that went with being a van snoozer. On the bright side I went the whole month without being woken up by a police officer. In place of the police officer were some tourists that I suspect were planted by park officials. The "tourists" parked on either side of me and then seemed to disappear down the trail mumbling something about a water fall. The minute I climbed into the front seat the "tourists" came leaping out of the bushes with giant cameras and blocked me from pulling out of my spot. One knocked on my window and asked "can you tell me where to find the water fall?" I refused to roll down the window but yelled at him through the window where he could go to see the water fall. He kept holding up the camera and asking me to roll down the window. I refused and eventually he backed down.
I had already had one bad experience with a local resident who had taken it upon himself to come out of his house and strike the window repeatedly with his fists and yell obscenities until I drove away. All I was trying to do was sleep but he kept yelling "why don't you go fuck in your own neighborhood!" I wasn't going to take a chance that these guys might be harboring some sort of aggression. When I left the park both of them followed me. In a matter of minutes I went from confused to amused and there I was driving out of the park roaring with laughter asking no one in particular "who are these guys?" If the park wanted a way to deter van dwellers this had to be one of them. In-your-face-tourists leaping out of the bushed and trying to get pictures of van dwellers. It made sense. It scared me out of the park for a while. When I went back things got worse before they got better. Even when I parked my van at the regular neighborhood parks, patrol vans started parking next to me. I was getting the sense I was getting noticed and people were far from thrilled with having a long term guest in their park. If only I could tell them it was okay, they didn't have to worry, I was harmless.
To try and appease the wrath of the Park Gods I started parking at a bigger parking lot. I hoped if I wasn't depriving anyone of their parking space it would somehow make things better. I was trying to relax enough to fall asleep when it seemed like the parking lot turned into a kennel. Cars pulled up, doors opened and all I could hear were dogs barking. They barked like it had been ten years since anyone had taken them for a walk. I'm sure that wasn't a security stunt but then on top of the barking there came an hourly horn honking. On top of the barking and the honking then cars began to drive by with insanely loud engines and they would just park and rev their engines for ten minutes. I was using all my might to convince myself this wasn't personal when the park warden himself drove by, honked his horn five times and then screamed "the park is closed!" before slamming a note on my window which read "the park is closed." To say the least I snapped. Last year I would have left the park but this year I couldn't take anymore of this. All I was trying to do was sleep. I wasn't hurting anyone at least not yet. I grabbed the note off the window, leaped into the front seat and took off further into the park in the direction the park warden had gone. I was thinking crazy. I don't know what I would have done if I had found that guy. I drove around the camp sites and noted that there were at least forty people camping at the moment. If the park was closed then what were all these people doing here?
Back at the park entrance the gate was closed and locked. There was a sign taped to the gate that read "the park attendant will be back later." It was only six o clock in the evening. A hiker went by with his dog and he expressed his condolences that I had missed the closing time. The park hours had changed that day from a closing time of 11pm to a closing time of 5:30pm. I dug deep for a reason to be positive and then settled on the first thing that came to mind, now I had plenty of time to do some taiji. I got out and did my part to stay in shape by finishing four sets of 81 form. When I was done I got back in the van and couldn't shake the feeling that I had somehow ended up on the set for Phantom of the Mountain. Naturally I started singing Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again to the park attendant who had vanished into thin air. Eventually I decided it would be best to call the park office and play nice with whoever answered the phone. They told me the park attendant was on their way. I didn't believe them. In half an hour I would have to start walking home if I wanted to be able to get ready for work and make it there on time. I called the office again and explained that the park attendant didn't seem all that happy with me and that maybe it was because he was trying to deter people from taking a nap in the park. The lady understood and sent someone else who was on call. The next attendant who showed up drove in from outside the park. He asked if I was okay and then let me out so I could go home. Here was someone who actually cared and I thanked him dearly for his time. If only this guy ruled the world we'd all be living so much better.
The next day I didn't have it in me to drive into the park so I parked in the gravel turnaround two minutes outside the park. That was the same place where I had witnessed an explosion the year before but I never had figured out if someone set it or if it was a fuse that blew under the hood of my van. I decided to give humanity the benefit of the doubt and parked there to sleep. Big mistake. Once it started getting dark I figured I was ready to get in a bit of shut eye. Even with the ear plugs in I could make out the sound of an engine revving. Seconds later an unknown driver out in the turnaround slammed on their brakes and slammed the accelerator down at the same time spewing a torrent of gravel straight at the left side of my van. I knew exactly what they had just done to the paint job and I was furious but what could I do? It was too dark to see their plate and they were gone before I could even sit up. I couldn't afford to fix that kind of damage but at least I was still okay.
Once again I was exposed to what may have been a radical deterrent and I had absolutely no way to prove that anyone had done any damage. All I could do was add a new rule to my parking routine to always move the van to a paved area before dark. I've been trying to take all this in stride and put it all into perspective but I can't help but wonder what is next? It's possible the guy who wrecked the paint job on the left side of my van didn't even know I was there but that is highly doubtful. It's possible the neighborhood patrol van was parked next to me for no reason and the guys with cameras were just trying to get a picture of a water fall. I'm sure it's all natural for people with Corvettes to just randomly park in parking lots revving their engines for ten minutes and the park warden always slams "park closed" signs on people's windows in between honking and shouting.
All I can say is thank God for the places where I have been able to get my rest without being harassed. I would sleep at the house except that then I would feel like my being there trying to sleep in the day time would be cramping everyone else's style. I would sleep at the house but nine times out of ten I start feeling like I'm closer to suffocating than I am to breathing. Chemical smells put me on edge and then I become convinced that the air is carrying air born drugs. I don't trust other people to keep the air clean because most people I have lived next to have made a daily habit of sticking their head into a big cloud of cocaine, marijuana or crystal meth. At any given moment who is going to give me a guarantee that I am breathing clean air? I can clean my water with a water filter, I can eat clean food, but every second my lungs expand and I breath and who knows where the air has been and what has been done to it.
The only way I can guarantee myself clean air is to seek it out. Then I get where the air is clean and all hell breaks loose. The whole set up is working although it's safe to say it's barely working. If it was up to me I wouldn't put my stamp of approval on a day like the type of days I go through but these are my choices. Other people make their choices so I have to make my own. By nature I'm a peace keeper so I make big sacrifices just to be able to turn the key on my rental unit and walk in and not feel like a total asshole for an hour. I value every second of peace in my life and if seventy percent of my day is sacrifice and only thirty percent is peace I can share with others then so be it. I'll keep it that way. Here's to another month. Thank God I have some vacation coming at me in November. I have a hunch I'm going to need it.
https://www.youtube.com/listen2004phantom
Another month of meals is just about over. To date this month of November there was a total of 78,768 calories eaten costing an average of $12 a day. For the most part rice was at the forefront of the eating action followed by a serving of bacon or lamb. Deserts were a constant presence in the form of homemade organic pudding or cookies. There seemed to be the usual encroachment of junk food like Stingers, Panda licorice, energy bars, gummy bears and chocolate. For the first time in six months the granola reappeared and even followed me on a trip to visit family. I must have bonded with it. My immediate family is not really into carbs so I pretty much had to look after that granola myself. The granola didn't seem to mind. After all it doesn't have feelings as far as I know.
Something about going on that trip initiated an insatiable craving for Dueling Noodle Soup. The soup was a chicken stock with two types of noodles boiled in it since I couldn't made up my mind which one I wanted more, udon or Mr Noodles. After the noodles took up their dueling postures in the chicken broth some spinach was added as well as chilies and cilantro. The noodles were not organic but I have learned to make allowances when the cravings get strong enough otherwise I will start feeling deprived for whatever strange reason. Sometimes I crave foods that I'm pretty sure end up leeching nutrients out of my body and causing havoc in my guts but that doesn't stop me from craving them.
The Mountain Pouncer stopped in and made a dazzling lemon meringue pie. She was kind enough to show us how stiff the meringue was by holding it upside down over our heads. I had an opportunity to try her chocolate ganache cake with handmade chocolate butterflies. I had never eaten a butterfly before so I consider myself lucky to now know officially what if feels like to have a butterfly in my stomach. A big thanks to the Mountain Pouncer who pounced on carrots while we pigged out on saag paneer, salad, salmon, potato noodles, and English muffins. The feast was definitely fit for a Food Geek.
Her Geekness has almost made it to a million. So far this year I consumed 902, 364 calories. Victory is in sight. All I have to do now is eat 2,958 calories per day for the rest of the year and I will have realized my one and only dream of eating one million calories. I can almost taste the success it's so close. The upcoming shopping trip will bring home 66,849 calories for $326. At home there are 30,163 calories waiting in the wings for their chance to be part of the final crowning moments of glory. Leading the caloric charge we have four kilograms of Australian lamb, one kilogram of bacon, butter, yogurt, chocolate chips, eggs, and the usual carbs. I might have to put gummy bears on the list or they might be really mad that I left them out of the equation. They might come back to haunt my dreams and monopolize my every thought with their enticing and skillful dance moves. That would be the price I would pay for ignoring the wrath of the gummy bears. Adults don't stand a chance of bypassing their supreme power. Just one little tummy wiggle and that's it. They know they've got us all where they want us.
How much did her Geekness gain this year? Three pounds. That's right. A million calories later and only a three pound weight gain. How hard are we working again? When I was in school they taught us that the average woman needs to eat about twenty three hundred calories per day. Police officers and nurses eat closer to 2,700 calories a day. A million calories divided by 365 days is 2,738 calories per day. That is pretty much my maintenance. Cheers to everyone out there who has eaten a million calories this year and they don't even know it. Good for you! You must be working really hard! Our planet celebrates you! Have a blessed day!
The night seemed to wear on and on with nothing but one minute taking an hour to get to the next minute. I tried to just focus on the one thing that I treasured most, breathing. My neck was putting up a fuss but it wasn't so much pain that I couldn't handle it comfortably. I kept thinking back to the circle graph showing my yearly food consumption at $6,000. With my rent going through an official rental company that would bring up my credit score but with food being my second highest expenditure why couldn't I use that to boost my credit score too? I had always abhorred the use of credit cards even though the occasional friend told me they paid their rent with a credit card because every paid bill improved their score. I decided from now on I will pay for my groceries with a credit card so that this hefty cost will register somewhere and leverage my credit rating even more. Every month I paid the balance down it would register more points in my favor.
Finally the store opened and I tried my best to make it to the door with one leg fast asleep. If I was in a competition for grace and poise I would have flunked at that moment but this wasn't a beauty pageant it was a grocery trip. As long as I could push a cart nobody would care if I was hobbling around like a crippled hag. It's a good thing I had that trip so carefully planned because as I neared my first item I became extremely confused. The whole store had changed. Nothing was where I thought it would be. I felt like I was cast into a maze of food labels and I'd be left there wandering around deaf and dumb until some time after Christmas. I had to pass a hundred items before I found the one I wanted. If I hadn't had a list I could see myself goofing up big time trying to look like I had it together.
Aside from the grocery maze I only had a slight disappointment that the price of lamb had gone through the roof. The bacon price was pretty average but the price of burgers had gone down and the turkeys were extremely cheap. I had a hunch that since turkeys were mass produced this time of year they were probably being fed really cheap feed to make them so affordable so I didn't want them. I decided to go with duck since it was on for $8.40 a kilogram. It was three dollars more than turkey but I was willing to bet the ducks were probably being raised in more humane conditions and fed grain rather than corn. I looked up the duck farm and sure enough I was right. I might be out to lunch thinking grain is sprayed with less herbicide than corn but I figured I'd try something new.
I was also a little frustrated that the organic Vega sport bars I had bought last month had vanished into thin air. I changed my mind three times about which ones I should buy. Round and round I went picking up a box of bars then putting them back. I kept thinking, I could just make chocolate chip cookies instead for so much cheaper and I could make sure the ingredients were organic. None of them say organic, just Non GMO. What a laugh that is. As an ingenious friend pointed out whoever started that project didn't even know the difference between the words modified and engineered. They do not mean the same thing. Two hundred years ago a farmer could modify a crop by simply choosing what traits he wanted to see in his plants and being selective what seeds he planted. What we are fighting against is the engineering not the modifications. They may as well call it the Useless Terminology Project. I just laughed at all the labels and then went with the Cliff bars because at least they come out and tell you exactly which ingredients are organic. It wasn't the greatest sale price I'd ever seen but at least I knew what I was bringing home.
When I was all done shopping I looked at the heap of groceries laid out on the conveyor belt. I couldn't help but laugh at the pile of bacon, burgers, ducks, yogurt, sweets, eggs, energy bars, builder shakes and baking supplies. If someone had told me ten years ago I'd be eating like this I'd just laugh at them. It looked like a feast for someone with a monstrous metabolism. The cashier probably thought I was there to buy food for a competitive weight lifter. All that for four hundred dollars and it would be my very last shopping trip of the year. That's what they always say.
I might not always have as much time as I think I might have in the kitchen because in a matter of minutes the house can go from a cozy laid back place to a brain launching station. I never know what I'm going to get when I walk in the door so having some ready to eat foods on hand is really helpful. Quite often I have to wait for a window of opportunity to cook things that take longer than rice. I can open the door and sit in the doorway and that sort of helps. I can go out to the van and wait for things to come out of the oven but what a nutty scene that is running back in after the bread has risen, throwing it in the oven, running back out, running back in twenty minutes later, running home once it's cooled off. Times like that I wonder if I may as well call it quits and live on the street but interacting with a home base is part of my routine. It's surprising how much I can get done in two hours when I put my mind to it. I can shower, make meals, do laundry, get dressing, clean up and stay organized all in a very short period of time. Right at this moment everything is fine. A big part of that could be that I'm the only one awake right now. For Christmas perhaps I can find a book on alternative methods to launch brains into space and keep it on hand if I need a gift to give. Gee I wonder who just woke up and put on their astronaut suite. Time to cook and dash!
It's not too early to think about my goals for next year so I compiled a basic list:
1.) Continue to get neck treatments for the next two years.
2.) Continue to eat well as my brain wakes up.
3.) Find someone who is renting a trailer for $900.
4.) Eat a million calories.
5.) Keep the budget balanced.
6.) Saturate body with CBD oil if an affordable trailer cannot be found.
7.) Consider homelessness as an option.
