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Thanks, athousandwords!  It really is apt, right? I am sorry you had to deal with drought conditions over the winter. That sounds stressful. 

Yay for timely introductions to terrifying monsters!! Yes, I am quite taken with it. I am lucky to have such good friends.    Yes, we did okay in that combat, although I was down to two first level spell slots by the end of the second encounter. Pretty dicey! No, the water restrictions aren’t normal for us. This is very unusual. We have had a lot of rain, too, which is a little bit of insult to the injury. But hopefully it resolves soon. Most of ours are things like that, too, that people really should be able to easily forego, but people are selfish a lot of the time. Wankers.     Thanks, Ever!    Glad to have you, Sal! ❤️      Morning, Friends!   This morning’s card was the Two of Wands out of the Mystical Medleys Tarot Deck. The more I work with this deck the more respect I have for the artist, Gary Hall, for the way that he updated the deck into the classic rubber hose animation style while very carefully cleaving to the Rider Waite symbolism. It’s pretty amazing now that I know what I am looking for. I have never worked with the Rider Waite deck, but I use a website called Biddy Tarot to help me understand the cards and they give a written description of each card and the symbolism it contains. I feel like I am learning a lot and I like the feeling of stretching my brain. Two of Wands is all about future planning, decisions, discovery, and process. Very much a “you know what you want to do, now figure out how to do it” card. I feel like I have committed to further weight loss (the conversation in the previous challenge about maintaining at this weight ongoing has evolved; I think I’d like to work on going farther here and now without a period of maintenance) but I need to work out how I want to go about this and then start actioning it.    The primary thing I think is going to be extra movement because I am still resistant to changing up my eating habits too much right now. I suspect that my work will still be the bulk of my movement in a day, but I am thinking that I am going to add a 20-30 minute walk in there in addition to my usual shift. That can be actually walking to work which takes 20 minutes, or walking on the treadmill before work. I could probably walk after work too if I can’t bring myself to front load the movement, my feet have been good enough that that should be doable. However, I know my motivation to do anything after work is much, much lower than before my shift, so mornings are the better choice for completion. I will probably give myself the weekends off just for that sense of getting time off, although the time commitment isn’t so high that it’s an inconvenience to get on the treadmill for that 20-30 minutes on a day off, either.    As much as I don’t want to laser focus on my food, I do need to rebalance a bit, because this last week has been full of junk food between poutine for supper, pizza yesterday, and game snacks. I am okay with a lax week, especially because I was celebrating, but I am ready to not see that 4-6 lb rebound on the scale when I am eating too far out of normal tolerances. I was almost six pounds up this morning, which I know is water weight, but I don’t want to see the 260s anymore now that I saw 258 that one time. *lol* So time for a gentle recalibration. I have some plants in the fridge and I will make sure I am not being a total goblin. Tiny goblin, yes. Total goblin, no.    Going to keep it simple and see where it takes me. Hopefully firmly into the 250s.    I hope that you are having a good day today and that there is no pet hair clinging to your clothes in a way that makes you self conscious. Thanks for being here. ❤️ 

Congrats on your 50lb victory!!     That teacup is absolutely gorgeous! And I'm so sorry you're on water restrictions. We had drought conditions over the winter (though far less restricted thankfully) and I worry we'll be seeing far more of it with climate change. The comparison to Covid is so apt, unfortunately.   

Ok, I lied. One more post with Week 1's plan:   Monday: No class today! So class reading at lunch, staining after work Tuesday: Workout at lunch, dinner with my sister Wednesday: Hopefully will be picking stuff up at Lowe's on my lunch break, helping my neighbor after work Thursday: Workout at lunch, class in the evening. Friday: Might go do some shopping at lunch, on the endless quest to find cropped pants that don't hit me at the ankle. #shortproblems. Staining after work Saturday: Don't think I have any plans. Finish staining, then maybe just chill in the afternoon.  Sunday: Church, then attending a piano/violin recital, then have a church meeting to finalize details for our 200th anniversary dinner.

Fingers crossed for the clinic! Do you have a post-doctor visit ritual? 

Oh no, I totally missed that update! Glad you got out of the cursed house (even if it was so cute! 😭) and I hope you enjoy having a little break from the house search. Crossing my fingers that the market cools down a bit for y'all!     This is so cute it makes me sick. 10/10 date, adorable.

Giving myself an extra day to even out because Father's Day baseball game & beer wrecked my weigh in this morning... 😬   Also realized I'm not going to have access to a scale for 4 weeks during the challenge so there will be some gaps in my spreadsheet row. Still here to cheer though!

All righty, final post to get this challenge up and running.   This challenge is going to be focused on Fatigue Management. It's something that's been coming up a lot in the training videos I'm watching, because that's essentially what strength training is: you see how much stress you can put your muscles (plus tendons and ligaments and al) under to encourage growth without accumulating too much fatigue. Once fatigue gets too high, you take a deload week to reset everything. Most programs, especially at the intermediate level, since beginners don't have to deload very often) have deloads built in, but as you get more accustomed to lifting, you can tell just by how you feel when it's time for a deload.   And it's suddenly occurred to me that this is not just a training principle, it's a life principle. Fatigue accumulates over time, just from life. And the solution to fatigue is rest, period. That's it. It is incredibly counterproductive to attempt any type of "pushing through," expecting fatigue to just disappear. So it's very fortuitous that at level 5 I get access to Level 3 (ok, when I type it out like that, I realize how incredibly counterintuitive that is to anyone not familiar with D&D) but anyways, Level 3 spells, which includes Feign Death. This is for when I feel like need a rest, and I just play dead until I'm ready to get back up again. Preferably in a hammock, if at all possible.   Other Level 3 spells that may be making an appearance:   Create Food and Water: Cooking Life Transference: Donate Blood (I used to do this regularly, but I've gotten away from it.) Mass Healing Word: Cook for family gathering (The distinction between this and Create Food and Water mostly matters for healing purposes) Protection from Energy: No games on phone outside of work hours Revivify: Picking, probably not going to happen this challenge, but we'll see what the zucchinis do Sending: Call a sibling or friend for a chat Tongues: Language Study (probably not going to do much with this, but you never know) Water Walk: Swim! We'll see about this one. I know my neighbor would let me use her pool, but she'd also probably hover the whole time, which would defeat the whole relaxing purpose.   Those Level 3 spells really help bump this along. Zero Week I got 182 points, plus killing a Shadow, so I go into the challenge proper with 6,896 points. Would like to have 9,000 by the end of this challenge.

Aaaannd now this song is stuck in my head again...