Baking the daily bread.

I was so busy with calves and duckies this week that I didn't have time to make bread for the weekend so I dropped by the grocery on my way home from the city on Friday night and picked up a loaf to make it through the weekend. Look what I got!
Okay...I'm kidding. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Just when I thought I had conquered it all!

Things have been going swimmingly. I've been too busy to eat junk food and to run to town for fast food. I am still struggling with my Pepsi addiction though. I am still holding out hope that there is a support group for Pepsi addicts somewhere near my mountain. Other than the Pepsi, I have been walking more, still not smoking, not eating fake chocolate donuts, and have been cooking breakfast every morning. I really thought that I had conquered my pseudo plan. I am not a fanatically organized person. I know in my little brain that some things must be done, each day and usually by a certain time that day. Most days I have no problem adjusting myself in order to get the days chores done. Alas, today's linear plan has now become a squiggled mess. The horrid smell of poo is to blame. While choring at Phoenix ranch, which is mostly dogs, my stomach had a talk with my brain and breakfast made a repeat appearance. YUK! I thought that things here at Rolling Thunder wouldn't be so bad but I was mistaken. We had a bit of a storm this last weekend, to which I am grateful for the moisture. The wind, I am not so grateful for. After the snow had melted I found that several pieces of roofing tin had come loose from several different shelters. So along with throwing feed and mineral to animals this morning, I had to contend with moving big, long, awkward to carry, sharp on the edges tin pieces. Since my partner is off at school today I have no one left to help me. I set out to move them, at least to a pile until I could get help reattaching them to the buildings from which them came. It just didn't work out, the wind was too much and I got tossed around more than expected. So I quit. Even though I'm flexible with schedules, I don't like quitting something I started, especially things on the ranch. Things pile up here and soon it's just not pretty. As I was beating myself up about not moving the tin pieces I keep having flashbacks to the HBO movie, "Grey Gardens." It premiered this weekend and I've been thinking about it ever since. I keep seeing, "Little Edie" standing in her house with piles and piles of cans and YUCK! ("Grey Gardens" is about Edith Bouvier Beale Sr. and her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale Jr.) I know that my unfinished task of moving tin is not going to lead me down the path of "Little Edie" but to me it was just another thing that I was not going to be able to get done today. After completing all the other ranch chores I headed the house for lunch. After returning several phone calls, emails, and opening mail I went on a search for something tasty to eat. It's getting toward the end of the month and so a few shelves in the pantry are less than full. I really couldn't find anything that appealed to me. Since I'd been having "Grey Garden" thoughts I opted to leave the tuna in the can and find something else. I just couldn't find a thing that I would be content with. I headed downstairs to check on the bunnies and feed the cats when the phone rang. It was my partner needing me to look something up. As I'm jetting around cyber space I glance at an ad that had a Ferris Wheel in it. I have no idea what the ad was for. My mind went on vacation....Ferris Wheel=Carnival=Fun=Funnel Cake! BAD...BAD....BAD....TERRIBLE. Who thinks like that? Instead of eating tuna on a healthy cracker....I went out of my way and made FUNNEL CAKE! I need psychological help!

Raw Milk

As some of you know, I have a few animals roaming around. I have a small tribe of goat, mostly boys after this season's kidding but I do have a couple of senior does that I milk each year. I haven't always had goats, in fact they are relatively new to me. A couple of years ago, a friend of ours asked if we had room for some new critters. Asking my partner if she would like a new critter is like asking Hound Dog if she smells anything. SO...we adopted a tribe of six goats. We didn't know a thing about them. We assumed that they would make great weed eaters so we stuck them over at the mother-in-law's house and sort of forgot about them for a couple of months. Then the mother-in-law called and insisted that we come get them as they had eaten her trees. I thought she was nuts but they did in fact eat her trees, as far up as their lips could reach. So we hauled them home, (it's only across the street) and put them in a nice pasture with a big bale of hay. In two months they hadn't touched the bale and all of the bushes in the pasture were gone. Goats aren't really weed eaters, they aren't grazers like sheep. They are browsers, they like bushes and trees better than grasses. We also didn't think about reproduction. We knew that only one male was intact, the other was a wether (fixed male.) We didn't know gestation periods, breeding periods, birthing positions....nothing, we knew nothing. I did notice that the buck was getting rather stinky and had this odd behavior of peeing on his face. As it turns out goats, like most animals have babies if you don't do something to stop it. My partner came in after feeding one day and asked me what a pregnant goat looked like. I was guessing that they would look fat. Well the next day we ended with two babies on the ground and does in milk. It was an unexpected rush into the world of raw milk.

Never in my life did I think that I would be trekking down to the barn twice a day to milk goats. Here I am though, the milking queen. I have always been a milk drinker. I like it more than Pepsi. Since making the decision to milk my girls I have become a quiet advocate for raw milk. I tell my friends and family what wonderful stuff raw milk is. Some of them tell me that I'm becoming too pushy on the subject and that pasteurization was started for a reason. I agree with them on both points. I am pushy but just because someone sees that aspect of my character doesn't mean that I should change. And....pasteurization was started for a reason, it is still used for good reason however, sometimes those reasons are not good for everyone. I also believe that I should have the right to choose between pasteurized milk and raw milk. Here in Colorado it is not that clear cut. I can not go to the grocery and buy raw milk. In fact the goat's milk that I find in the store is nothing like what comes out of my goats. It is illegal to sell raw milk in Colorado, instead many ranchers have to sell "shares" of their herd to provide others with raw milk. I find it disturbing that I can buy heroin here in my county easier than raw milk. Several years ago the kiddo's father and I noticed that whenever she ate ice cream or had more than one glass of milk with a meal, she always ended up "not feeling good." Ever since using raw milk she has been feeling great! Maybe raw milk is not for everyone, but it is for me an my family. Each year I wait in eager anticipation for my does to kid so I can again enjoy the benefits of milk on my own ranch. Here is a link to a website that lists the benefits of raw milk, http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/raw_milk_health_benefits.html. Maybe one of you will be a quiet advocate with me! Actually I just wanted all of you to know about RAW MILK! Come by the ranch anytime, we can make cheese!

Sick week

One benefit of having regularly scheduled work out times is that when you're feeling under the weather, you can just sleep instead of work out--which is what I did for several days this week. I think it helped. This is my first cold in almost year, and hasn't been nearly the doozy that I was anticipating after such a long hiatus from my last cold (I usually come down with something every 6 months or so).

Anyway, my long days at work finally caught up with me, so I did some extra sleeping this week.

Got back in the workout saddle yesterday with some weights and short bike/run. Today, after helping my brother pack up for his move to Kansas, I went for a lovely swim. I normally spend about 70-75 minutes in the water swimming a 3000 yard workout. Today, I decided to take fewer breaks and swim a steady pace to see if I could swim the same yardage in less time. I did 6x500's (some freestyle, some stroke, one kick, one IM) and finished in less than an hour. That felt pretty good.

Oh, I also tried to increase my protein by fixing some chili (in a crockpot!! Thanks for the idea, Laura). I didn't have all the right ingredients, so I slopped together some beans, onion, and ground turkey. It kept me going all week.

Tonight I made brushetta for the first time. Yummy!

I hope you're all having a good week. Oh, Honor, a spinning class is just a stationary bicycle class basically. :) And, Dawn, good job with the no smoking and no chocolate donuts. BRAVO!!!

Nighty night, friends.

Working vs. Working Out

This was another long week at work. 10-12 hour days all week, plus I went in today (Saturday!!) for 8 hours to catch up on grading and lesson planning. Sheesh! It was a good week though. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we hosted our annual children's and young adult literature conference, which we'd been planning for most of the year. It's a big stressor, but it's also really exciting to have these incredible authors on campus and to bring our students and metro-area teachers together for professional development.

Of course, the longer work week prohibited me from sticking to my normal workout routine; it also threw off my nutritious eating a little bit. Booo.

I'm planning to get back on the horse this week, starting tomorrow at the gym. Sadly, I just learned that I'm losing my biking buddy (Andy), as he moves back to KC to work at Baron BMW. There aren't many safe places to ride alone around here, so I'm going to have to go to spinning classes to get my legs ready for my triathlon. I hate riding a bike in one spot. There's something very wrong about that.

Oh well, I'm looking forward to more normal work hours this week and a rejuvenating workout routine.

Hey, Dawn! How's your pseudo plan going?

Oh, and Laura, you mentioned wanting to get some ideas for abdominal exercises ... here's some good stuff from about.com. I've been trying out this routine for the past couple of weeks to get my little gut in check (of course, it might help if I got back on the nutrition bandwagon again, but what can I say -- I eat like crap when I'm stressed out sometimes):

Hmm, that's awesome. I'm trying to copy and paste the link, but stupid blogger.com won't let me paste. Grrrrr.

Okay, just go to About.com, and search "Design and Effective Abdominal Exercise Routine." Good luck!