Workout

Good Tuesday morning!  I’ve been trying to blog on Mondays and yet I completely forgot yesterday!  Mind you, for the next two Mondays I won’t be home, so I’ll try to get back to Sundays.  Not that anyone is waiting with breath held until it arrives.  I do hope that folks do find something interesting in them, though.

Today, I thought I should get back to a health update, mostly focussed on my workout.  I’m focussing on that because I’m afraid that I haven’t been strictly paleo for the last couple of weeks.  Not that I have gone crazy with eating, but I have had some things that are not on the paleo list, like the peanuts, the popcorn and some cheese. I’m not talking gallons of any of those things, just in moderation, but I have had them.

So, on to the topic at hand!  Each morning now, I am doing the oil pull with coconut oil. You can look that up on the internet--it’s supposed to be good for all kinds of things, pulling the toxins out of the body, whiting teeth, etc. I’m not seeing any real changes, but I’m going to stick with it for a while.  After I spit the oil out and rinse with salt water, I drink my concoction.  The concoction consists of a cup of water, two tablespoons of lemon juice, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of honey.  This is also supposed to get toxins out of the body, as well as jump starting the metabolism. It does make me more regular and cuts down on the bloating.

After all that stuff, that I do while responding to email in the morning, the workout begins!  I start with 12 minutes on the T-Zone vibration machine.  This is my warmup and I don’t know if it does much for me, but it does take my heart rate from about 72 to 94.  Not what you would call an aerobic workout, but for someone with the inability to really work out my legs and get the heartrate up, it’s not bad.

Next, I either do an upper body workout on the Bowflex, or with the free weights.  On the Bowflex, I use 60 lbs. On each side, but with the free weights I just use 10 lbs.  With the Bowflex, I work out my belly, arms and legs.  With the free weights, it’s just my arms that get the workout.

Then, I stretch out on the parallel bars.  These were build for my mother-in-law, but I use them for balance.  After the stretch, I put on four pound ankle weights and do leg raises using the bars to keep me from falling--front, side and back--36 for each leg and then bent knee raises to the front and back.

The fourth ‘station’ is the kettlebell.  I do a workout with a 10 lb. kettlebell that includes my squats, that I was doing in my cool down.  This set is when I actually sweat!

The fifth and final ‘station’ is my cool down when I do arm circles (50 in each direction), shoulder rolls and side stretches.  This concludes my workout and it takes about 40 minutes from beginning to end.  I’m trying to get up the gumption to add in a routine of plank exercises, but I have yet to get the ambition.  I know that once I get started, I’ll keep it up.  I just need to get started!

So, you are thinking:  is this doing any good?  I must first confess two things:  one, that I don’t really look forward to the workout, but I feel really good when I’m done and two, my workout included at one time, a workout on the elliptical, but it really affected my MS, so I work to what I can do.  I will also say that my belly is actually shrinking, I am getting ‘lady guns,’ and my legs are looking much better.  Conclusion?  Keep going!  I’ll add more weights as I think I can--I did get new ankle weights with two pound pockets, so I can go up to 10 pounds!

Well folks, that’s my morning!  Cavan then makes us a smoothy and, after my shower, I’m set for the day!

I pray that everyone enjoys their week!  God bless!

The Job Hunt

Happy Monday!  We have a beautiful sunny and warm day here in Cobourg, but I see my friends in Texas are having some major flood challenges.  Sometimes, I think Mother Nature is angry with us.  There seem to be so many weather and earth disasters, these last few years.  Please take a moment to pray for those in Ecuador, who lost their lives as a result of an earthquake and those remaining who have much work to do.

So, here I am about to blog on about job hunting, which seems to very trivial in light of so many issues in the world.  I don’t mean to imply that anything I blog about is a major issue.  I know that despite the challenges in my life, and they are quite minor compared to so many, I know that I am very blessed.  Truthfully, most of ‘my’ issues are not even mine, they are issues of my children that I as their only parent (at least the only one that keeps them in their life) will always be there to help them out.  At least as long as there is breath in my body.

In order to save my kids any student debt, I paid for their education and accommodations, while they were obtaining it.  My youngest has finished her last class and once she has written her final exams this week, she will be on her own.  At least almost.  I had a chat with her as to whether or not she could take over her rent, when she is done.  Unfortunately, this scared her, but we came to an agreement that I would contribute about one third of the rent and we would see how it goes.

During this conversation, she asked if I would resent her because I still had to help her out.  I was only concerned with continued assistance because I wasn’t sure how much she needed and if I had to supplement my pension to help her out.  Truthfully, Enbridge spoiled me by letting me work to my abilities and I know I’ll never find such a sweet arrangement.  That, of course, meant that I know that I cannot manage to work full time.

I don’t know about other parents, but for me, if I had to work full time and burn through all of my savings to help my kids out, I would never resent them.  It’s because I know that they are trying to manage on their own.

So, that brings me to the actual topic of job hunting.  I have decided for me, that I would like to work part time, if the right job came along and since I wander through the job hunting websites, I offered to help Kaitlyn with her job hunt.  She has been working retail while attending school and really hopes to find something at least remotely related to her field of study.  Interestingly enough, there seem to at least be a few jobs out there.  The challenge is that she doesn’t have much experience yet.  We just need to be persistent.

I have already sent her about 25 different jobs.  Her restriction is that she wants to stay in Toronto and more specifically, within subway range, meaning that Mississauga and Brampton are out.

We’ll see how the job hunt goes.  I’m not in the least bit of a hurry for me, but the sooner we get Kaitlyn on her career journey, the happier she will be.

Please send us job hunting energy!  I know there is something out there that can use her skills.  Any company would be delighted to have her.  She is so detail oriented, that she can tell you exactly why things aren’t selling in her market, and what should be done about it.  She is wise beyond her years because she is an old soul.  Let’s hope that something comes up before she loses the wind in her job hunting sails!

I pray that everyone manages to get through their challenges!  God bless!

Shameless Flogging

Happy Saturday everyone. It’s a lovely sunny day, although it seems like April is the one that came in like a lion. My flowers are coming up, but mother nature seems to keep bringing in the cold weather!  On a side note, my MS has decided that my fine motor skills should challenge me, so this may be a short blog if my frustration is stronger than my will to blog!

It has been some time since I have shamelessly flogged my books.  I must confess that the lack of significant sales has kind of taken the wind out of my sails for my books, although I haven’t totally given up hope.  Last year, I invested in three things for my second book: ‘Animals of the New Testament.’  I chose to invest in having a hardcover edition, I invested in the ‘Booksellers Return Program’ and I advertised the book in a Christmas supplement.

The Booksellers Return Program allows bookstores to purchase copies of the book, but return whatever they do not sell for a refund.  I, however, keep my paltry royalty.  The combination of the advertising and the return program, prompted 3 hardcover and 4 softcover purchases in October and 5 hardcover and 3 softcover purchases in November.  So, not exactly flying off the shelves, but progress none-the-less.  Keep in mind that I only get $2.18 per softcover and $2.70 per hardcover.  Mind you, that is in US$, so I earned about $50 CDN late last year.

So, I chose to invest in having the other three books set up for hardcover and the book return program put in place for those three as well.  I’ll decide later this year whether or not to invest in the advertising.  The difference between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar does not work in my favor on the investment side, of course.

For those of you interested in supporting this author, my books are on all of the Amazon sites.  In Canada, you can find them here:  https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=janet+k+warren

In the US, you will find them here:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=janet+k+warren&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ajanet+k+warren

For those of you who don’t know, each of the four books have six stories and each story is a Bible story told from an animal’s point of view.  They are intended to help small children remember the Bible stories.  Children from ages 3 to 6 would benefit from them the most.

Okay, enough of the shameless flogging for now.  My fingers are tired and it’s time to switch laundry loads!

I pray that everyone has a great week and that spring will find us and decide to stay.  God bless!