CHALLENGES

A group of my girlfriends have a challenge going: do something each month that stretches and scares them.

Since this is a group of athletes, the challenges are pretty much athletic in nature: hit a new PR for a distance, do a triathlon, cycle a time trial, do a different kind of race.

Me with my Achilles tendons, my challenge for this month is to clean out my closet and cupboards. Definitely a stretch and scary..... we have so little space in the RV, it's all at a premium, and I tend to accumulate stuff, and what will I do with the stuff I clean out of the storage space???

I got the closet done; cupboards are next. The closet only took 2 hours. I had to store my hiking backpack and all its contents in the backseat of the car, which we rarely use, to make room in the closet, which I do use.

I think my scariest and most difficult challenge, though, is sitting out this Achilles issue. I'm afraid losing my cardiovascular fitness. Running, walking, and even biking are out. Swimming.... well, I don't swim strongly or fast enough for it to count as aerobic. It's more like stretching. I asked the PT about pool-running and she was afraid of that much resistance causing dorsiflexion and extension of my feet, so that's out.

I'm getting stronger with my pushups and PT, but I am going to need to build my aerobic base back up when this resolves. I'll probably be out for another month at least. Then I need to rebuild slowly, being extremely careful of my tendons and guarding against too much too soon, to walking 8-10 miles at a time, to be ready to start the AT in the spring over mountains with a 30-pound backpack on.

I find this very scary.

HOES

Where we're workcamping, most of our work is, essentially, gardening: a lot of hole-digging and shrub-planting. Six senior-citizen couples.

So one day we were getting together to start, and in the tool shed I saw half a dozen new garden hoes. I picked them all up, took them outside, and said to the older fella who was standing outside,

"Hey, Dave.... did someone go out and get you guys a bunch of hoes?"

Poor old Dave didn't get it. "Yeah, they work better than those shovels for some of the work," he answered, with a totally straight, honest face. Nope, he didn't get it.

As opposed to one of the other fellas, who saw me heading toward the planting site with a hoe and yelled,

"Hey Ellie.... you goin' ho'in'?"

MY DAY (and it's not over yet....)

You'd think, with that title, it would be something amazing.

It wasn't.

I got a bee in my bonnet to take one good (or passable) photo a day and post it. A Photo A Day. Took this, of everyday life in our RV:



Then we decided to go to an RV show in nearby Leesburg, VA (or thereabouts.) Excited about more photos, I took my camera.

So excited was I that, while we waited in line at the McDonald's drive-thru, I jumped out of the truck to "shoot" a car's rear-view mirror reflecting the face of the pit bull who sat in the driver's seat. When I looked up from my camera, I saw Steve just pulling away from the order-speaker. I jumped back in: "Did you get me anything?" Poor Steve: "No, I didn't know what you'd want, and when you got out, I figured you didn't want anything." Poor me: At the pay window we added a Diet Coke for me. I wasn't hungry anyway. I looked at the pit-bull pic in my camera. Blank screen displaying, "No CF Card." Damn! It was still in my computer from downloading Journey and my husband's feet!! So much for cool photos of an expo full of RV's.

Home, next project: rearrange cupboards to make better use of space in our RV. Put things nearer the point of use, yeah, that's the ticket. Things we microwave, go near the microwave. Things we drink, go near the sink. Glasses are already near the sink because that's where we use them. Plates also are near the sink, because that's where we put them when they come out of the sink.

There is only so much space near the sink in an RV.

But I put the microwavable things nearer the microwave, which is under the glasses and plates and beside the sink. Actually, the cupboard where I put the microwave things, used to house the microwave. But the microwave gave out, and when we pulled it out to replace it, WOW!!!! THAT'S A BIG STORAGE SPACE!! So we bought a smaller microwave and put it on a little wire fake-shelf thingie on the counter, so I still have counter space underneath it, where my mini-food-processor goes.

The counter is now full of stuff we drink, which I took out of the microwave cupboard. (Crystal Light, milk-flavoring powders, Diet Pepsi, Gatorade, sugar for tea...) The sofa is full of cans from the cupboard. I haven't decided which new place to put each category of stuff yet.

But, moving stuff around from one cupboard to another gives me the illusion that I'm organizing stuff and reclaiming some control of my life.

In another attempt at said reclamation of control, I have joined an email group of "De-Clutterers." Maybe I'll learn how to control my stuff.... after I learn to find it. Maybe they work on cluttered-up time, too. Like, just what I need for that is, another email group to keep up with....

Just like the little shelf units and stacking baskets I keep buying to organize my clutter, which wind up just being more clutter....

Training today:
Nope. Rest day. Plus, 20mph wind gusting to 36mph... yuck.