Walking again…Bread?…

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In Madeira, we encountered several of these pine trees.

With my cough improving daily, I started walking again yesterday. The heart medication I am taking prevents my heart rate from getting high, and it’s a strain on my body to do anything that raises my pulse. Yesterday, I set the timer on my phone to go off once an hour and then head back outside to walk around the building again.

This morning, I started differently. Instead of walking around the building once, I am pushing myself to walk continuously for five minutes six times a day. Right now, a combined total of 30 minutes a day is all I can muster. I was pleased to walk the first five minutes this morning.

I set out my earbuds, and next time I go out at 10:00 am, I will bring my phone and listen to podcasts, hopefully getting my mind on something other than the strain of walking. Today is a beautiful sunny day with only a few clouds in the skies for a chance. The temperature is expected to be a high of 84F, 29C, a perfect day. Rain isn’t expected until Friday.

Yesterday morning, I made all the fixings for taco salads for both of us. I chopped onions, grape tomatoes, celery, olives, romaine lettuce, and grated cheddar cheese. For Tom, I cooked three pounds of ground beef, and for me, two pounds of lean turkey breast. I like spicy food, but Tom doesn’t, so making two batches makes sense.

You’d think five pounds of meat would last several days, but we’ll only get three of four dinners out of it. There isn’t much left once the meat cooks, and we drain it. Once drained, I put each batch of meat back into their respective pans, add one can of sugar-free tomato sauce, and season the beef with keto taco spices from Amazon and other herbs and spices, such as Himalayan salt, garlic and onion powder, and pepper. To add to the Mexican flavor, I add quite a bit of cumin to my meat.

When we had dinner, I made myself a tortilla with all the vegetables, cheese, Wholly guacamole, and Pace Picante sauce. I found the keto coconut flour tortillas on Amazon at this link.

An important point if you buy these is to fill the tortilla with hot meat and vegetables, but do not microwave it after filling it. Otherwise, it falls apart. It holds up well when not heated after filling. Finding a tortilla I can use to make wraps was a delicious treat.

Once the taco meat is gone, I will make shredded chicken wraps for me and grilled chicken breasts for Tom. He won’t eat the keto wrap and has never enjoyed wraps. He prefers plain white bread, which we don’t buy. So, it’s rare for us to make any sandwich. He enjoys burgers with the bun and Reuben sandwiches when eating out.

Often, I long for a sandwich or avocado toast. But I haven’t found any bread that works for my way of eating. I’ve seen a few possibilities, but at $24.99 a loaf, there is no way I’d pay that much. A few years ago, I could buy keto bread in South Africa for one-third of that price. But most keto bread in the US is made with wheat, and I don’t eat any grain, including wheat.

The only other alternative is to make my own keto bread using healthy ingredients. But right now, I don’t feel like baking anything. I don’t have the proper pans and ingredients to make keto bread. Once buying everything needed, the cost can be as prohibitive as the expensive loaves described above.

For now, I’ll be happy with the coconut tortillas. There are two packs of five to get me through ten meals since I’d never eat more than one per meal. Again, I’m looking forward to tonight’s dinner, mainly due to that tasty tortilla.

Right now, Tom is taking a nap. He had a fitful night with little sleep, and hopefully, he’ll feel better soon. He’s still coughing,  along with me, and neither has fully recovered. Hopefully soon.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, June 25, 2014:

This worm was several inches long. It’s a larger version of those we’ve found in our produce when washing it. No pesticides are used in farming on this island, which we like. After trash pickup, we found this worm on Tuesday’s bottom of the outdoor garbage bin. We set it out on the grass to continue its life. For more photos, please click here.

Back to Billy’s Bar and Grill today for a family get together…Getting prescriptions filled…

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Cactus plant in Campanario, Madeira, in 2014.

As mentioned a few days ago, when I couldn’t get my two blood pressure medications filled at CVS Clinic since there were no records or tests for medical care for me in Minnesota’s health records system. I left empty-handed, wondering what to do. As mentioned in that post, I knew if I went to another cardiologist or primary care doctor, they’d put me through a litany of tests, all of which I’ll be having in August when we go to the Cleveland Clinic.

Sure, my Medicare plan and supplement would cover the cost of those tests, but there was no way I wanted Medicare to be billed for tests that would be redundant in a few months. Also, I had a cardiac ultrasound at a cardiologist’s office in Las Vegas on March 27, when I needed to confirm the report from the cardiologist in Ecuador. The results were the same.

I contacted ProgressiveRX, sending them a not-so-clear copy I had of the prescriptions Doc Theo had written for me 13 months ago before we left South Africa. Once ProgressiveRX, located in Singapore, received the copy, they explained it wasn’t clear enough for them to read. Could I get a clearer copy?

This morning after breakfast, I asked the hotel general manager, Wade, whom we’ve come to know quite well based on the number of times we’ve stayed here, if he could produce a clearer copy on his printer. He did a perfect job. A short time later, I received a clearer copy from Wade in my email, which was perfect.

Immediately, I forwarded it to Vimala at ProgressiveRX, receiving a confirmation only moments later that the new clearer copy worked perfectly for their needs. My meds will go out today, and I will receive them in about three weeks. After scouring through the “pill bag,” I stumbled across enough of the two meds to last until I received the new batch. I had put them in a small ziplock bag as an emergency supply. Good thing. Now, I can relax knowing I’ll have enough meds to get me to the CC in 3½ months since ProgressiveRX is sending me 184 pills, plenty for my current needs. Whew! What a relief!

This morning, we headed downstairs (we’re on the 6th floor) for breakfast. There was nothing there I could eat except the hard-boiled eggs. I’ve tried to find the ingredients in those processed scrambled eggs they serve, but the results were all over the place. Thus, I’ve decided not to eat them, knowing full well there would be lots of preservatives.

After breakfast, I went to the fitness center to do the workout on the bike. A few days ago, I started at five minutes; today, I could do 12 minutes for two miles. I will continue at this pace until I get to a full 30 minutes; then, I will increase the difficulty level while maintaining the same period of time.

I check my pulse while biking to avoid getting too high. However, based on the Afib drug I am on, it prevents my heart rate from going too high, but I still need to monitor it throughout the process. Gosh, I am hoping to maintain my current state of being to last the next 3½ months without getting too many new symptoms requiring emergency medical care.

Friday is Happy Hour for Tom’s family, starting at 3:30 at Billy’s Bar & Grill in Anoka, a 45-minute drive from here. We never know who will be there, but most often, it’s four of Tom’s sisters, BIL Eugene, and occasionally some nieces and nephews. Last week, Tom’s daughter Tammy, partner Tracy, and grandson Vincent joined us, which was great. We’ll see who will join today.

That’s it for today, folks. We’ll be back tomorrow with more.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, May 17, 2014:

We love the house in Madeira, Portugal, with granite countertops, a microwave, a dishwasher, a great gas stove and oven, and views of the mountains and the ocean when washing dishes. Once the haze lifts, we’ll include more photos of views inside the house. For more photos, please click here.

My health hacks…

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This door led to our riad, only a short distance from the souk in the Medina in Marrakesh, Morocco, in March 2014.

As most of our readers know, I spend a lot of time researching every interest that comes to my mind. It’s not unusual for me to spend hours each day when something new piques my interest, which is more often than not. At times, I find myself so engrossed in a topic that hours can fly by, to my amazement, when I stop for a break.

Again, one topic in particular, as our regular readers know, is health and well-being. No, I am not a purist. I subscribe to specific modalities to which others may not agree. I am okay with that. It boils down to a few simple realities: sleep, diet, exercise, sufficient water, minimal alcohol, and harmony in my daily life with minimal stress.

I strive for the optimal benefits from these basic principles, but, like many of us, I falter from time to time. However, my next meal, exercise session, and night’s sleep is an opportunity to begin again, never feeling guilty for slipping, knowing I’m one step away from returning to my chosen path.

My recent goals have included improving my heart health, regardless of the outcome of my cardiology appointment tomorrow afternoon and what is to come in the future regarding the condition of my heart valves, which is precarious at this time and cannot be improved by lifestyle enhancements.

However, whatever treatment I may face down the road can only be successful if I continue improving my overall health daily. Over this past year, I have improved several aspects of my health. Although, at times, I went kicking and screaming, all the while knowing what I had to do.

Today, I will share some “hacks” with you that, without a doubt, have helped me substantially:

  1. Sleep – I have never been a sleep-though-the-night kind of person. Invariably, regardless of what I do, I wake up five out of six nights wide awake, anywhere from 2:00 to 3:00 am, feeling alert and unable to go back to sleep. But in the past several months, I’ve adopted a new state of mind when this happens…I don’t worry about it; trying to get back to sleep. I have trained myself to let my mind be free of concern, implanting the knowledge that eventually, I’ll be sleepy again and have sufficient hours of sleep for excellent functioning during the day without feeling sleepy. This state of mind has changed everything. I always fall back to sleep with seven to eight hours of good sleep. Sure, I have to sleep later, which may not work for everyone, but as a retired person, generally, I do not need to get up at 7:00 am or earlier.
  2. Diet – Since November, when we were in Ecuador and I was desperately struggling with Afib around the clock, I’d read repeatedly that losing weight can help reduce the incidences of Afib events. Over the past several years, since I had cardiac surgery in 2019, I’d gained about 25 pounds, creeping up slowly, partly from medications, partly from being less active, and partly from eating portions that were simply too large. Even on a keto diet, one can overeat and gain weight over time. I cut back on portions, and slowly, since November, I’ve lost about 22 pounds with five more to go. In the meanwhile, in November, I went on medication for Afib and have not had an event since then. I try to eat organic when possible, healthy meats, fish, and poultry, along with healthy fats, and every evening, I have a bowl of Fage Greek Yogurt.
  3. Exercise – Although I tried exercising in Ecuador, the Afib was a severe deterrent before taking the medication. Once we arrived in Nevada in mid-December, I committed to working out as much as possible while keeping the Afib in check. Recently, I escalated the program by adding an app called Better Me with guided exercises suitable for me. I am only on day nine of a repeatable 28-day program. Wow! Is this working for me! In this short period, I’ve noticed a considerable improvement in my stamina and flexibility. I’m still walking but have found ways to increase my daily steps, making reaching my 7000 daily goals much more manageable. For example, this morning, when I was folding and putting away the dry clothes from the drying rack in the second bedroom, I folded one item at a time and walked to the drawers or closets where that item was meant to go. By doing this, I added 1000 steps to today’s goal. Soon, we’ll walk to the market in the Village for more steps, and when we return to the condo, I quickly walk around the center island in the kitchen. It takes about 18 times to add 1000 steps. That sounds like a lot, but we usually listen to podcasts that occupy my mind.
  4. Sufficient water – I quit drinking coffee and flavored zero-calorie drinks a month ago. Now I only drink room temperature water, I never liked drinking water. I always reached for flavored drinks with lots of ice. But I am already feeling better and less bloated and have a better sense of when I am thirsty. No, I am not drinking gallons of water since I am not forcing it. Also, I eat a lot of vegetables, most of which have a high water content, and those, too, count toward a daily goal.
  5. Minimal alcohol – If I have wine, I don’t drink more than one average-sized glass (last Friday night was the exception) of a non-sweet wine such as a Cabernet, Merlot, or Pinot Grigio. There are carbs in wine, and I don’t care, or need, to use my daily allotment of 20 to 30 grams by drinking wine, nor is it healthy to drink more. I am having no ill effects from the one glass.
  6. Harmony in my daily life with minimal stress – I avoid stressful situations at all costs. That doesn’t mean I am unwilling to work through a stressful situation. Since Tom and I get along so well, our daily lives are relatively stress-free. We talk, laugh, and have a good time. But sometimes, things happen over which I have little to no control. During those times, I could feel my heart rate increasing and cortisol (the stress hormone) running through me. Those times, I realized how significant stress reduction is to maintain good health.

I don’t have any easy answers on how to live one’s best life. Nor do I rely upon “internet” suggestions on what we “should” be doing. Those suggestions change almost daily, and it’s impossible to decipher what is suitable for each of us. Even medical studies can be misleading when sponsored by companies trying to convey a message to increase sales of their less-than-ideal products. One must be very careful about the modalities they adopt based on skewed studies and opinions not backed by science.

When I say this today, I especially wish every one of you to “Be well.”

Photo from ten years ago today, March 4, 2014:

The sunlight in the open courtyard of our Moroccan riad provides a welcoming warmth as we acclimate to the cooler weather. For more photos, please click here.

Making plans for the next few months…Time in Nevada ending before we know it…

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In February 2016, we stayed in a beautiful house on an 85-acre alpaca farm. with over 100 alpacas. We love these gentle animals and their adorable faces, as shown in this photo.

We’ve started checking out rental cars for our four upcoming road trips, the first from Las Vegas to Apache Junction. Once we leave Arizona, we’ll drive to Los Angeles, then to Milwaukee, and then on to Minneapolis. The cost is higher to pick up and return a rental car to two different cities.

Of course, we’ll try to rent cars for more extended periods to accommodate all of these trips, but it doesn’t always work out financially and with the most convenience. It is no big deal to pick up and drop off vehicles at various airports.

When we head to Apache Junction on April 1, we plan to pick up the car at Las Vegas airport and drop it off at the Mesa, Arizona airport closest to Apache Junction, where we’ll stay for about six weeks. It will all work out.

Today, when I checked the Date to Date Calculator, it indicated we have 44 days until we leave Nevada. This short period will fly by in a blur. In the meantime, we’ll continue to enjoy each day we spend in this lovely condo and location. In a way, I will be disappointed to leave, although we have so much to look forward to as time marches on.

Plus, going on these relatively short road trips will be fun. The only drive requiring us to stay overnight in a hotel will be the trip from Los Angeles, where we’ll visit my sister Julie, and then on to Milwaukee, where we’ll visit Tom’s sister Betty. Once we leave Milwaukee, it’s only a six-hour drive to Minnesota to see our kids, grandkids, Tom’s family, and friends.

It will be the first time in our 11 years of world travel that we’ll embark on so many road trips, especially the long three to four-day drive to Milwaukee. We don’t like driving for more than eight hours in a day. It’s approximately 2057 miles and listed as a 30-hour drive on Maps. If we drive seven or eight hours a day, it’s easy to see how it will take us four days with three nights in hotels.

In any case, we’ll make the trip fun. I plan to download a few audiobooks we can listen to during the long trip. The plan will be to figure out a book we’ll both enjoy since our tastes are very different in reading material. Most likely, it will be a fiction thriller, one that we can find to be most entertaining. Any suggestions would be appreciated, considering for me, the technology must be current to hold my interest.

Soon, our grocery order will be delivered. We have good leftovers, and thus, tonight’s dinner will be easy. All I have to do is make a salad and reheat our food when it’s dinnertime.

I’ve done the laundry this morning and almost half my daily walking. I have picked up the pace to head to the corridor every fifteen minutes, hoping to get done a little earlier today than on other days, walking every 30 minutes.

I wish I could do all the walking at one time, but my legs can’t continue straight through for three miles, which is how much I am accomplishing per day at this time. I don’t see any benefit to walking further than three miles, but I am trying to shorten the time.

That’s it for today, folks. We’ll be back tomorrow for more. Thanks to our many readers who write with such kind and supportive comments.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, February 16, 2014:

Annoyed by our presence, this Cape buffalo and a few other “Retired Generals” moseyed on down the road in Kruger National Park, during our last game drive before leaving South Africa. For more photos, please click here.

Cows in the yard…Today’s the day…Questioning medical science once again

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This appears to be an angry bull who doesn’t want us looking at him.

“Fascinating Fact of the Day About Ireland”
“The story of Dracula is said to have been inspired by the Irish legend of Abhartach. Bram Stoker was Irish born and raised and learned the legend of Abhartach when he was young.”

We’re so excited!  Our friends, Lisa and Barry, will be here in a few hours.  This morning I made a lemon cake, crab salad made with fresh crab brought to us by John, the fish guy, and have everything ready for the Rueben sandwiches we’ll be making for lunch.

We have Irish-made potato chips, dill pickles, carrot slices, and pre-strung (by me) sugar snap peas to go along with the sandwiches. We have plenty of red wine, Pelligrino sparkling water, bottled still water, and soda.  

We don’t have placemats or linen napkins this time, and I forgot to purchase paper napkins. We’ll have to use the solid large-sized paper towels I’ll fold nicely and we’ll be good to go.

As we drive down the shared driveway between us and the owner’s house, we now have cattle on both sides.

Standing on my feet for any length of time preparing food or other tasks is still a challenge. My legs tire easily, although I can walk each day, now up to 8000 or 9000 steps daily. A dear friend and reader sent me an article she spotted regarding my goal of accomplishing 10,000 steps a day. It reads as follows from this site:

“I-Min Lee, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead author of a new study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, began looking into the step rule because she was curious about where it came from. “It turns out the original basis for this 10,000-step guideline was a marketing strategy,” she explains. “In 1965, a Japanese company was selling pedometers, and they gave it a name that, in Japanese, means ‘the 10,000-step meter.'”

Based on conversations she’s had with Japanese researchers, Lee believes that name was chosen for the product because the character for “10,000” looks sort of like a man walking. As far as she knows, the actual health merits of that number have never been validated by research.

Cows are intelligent and curious. “According to research, cows are generally quite intelligent animals who can remember things for a long time. Animal behaviorists have found that they interact in socially complex ways, developing friendships over time and sometimes holding grudges against other cows who mistreat them.”
Scientific or not, this bit of branding ingenuity transmogrified into a pearl of wisdom that traveled around the globe over the next half-century, and eventually found its way onto the wrists and into the pockets of millions of Americans. In her research, Lee put it to the test by observing the step totals and mortality rates of more than 16,000 elderly American women. The study’s results paint a more nuanced picture of the value of physical activity.

“The basic finding was that at 4,400 steps per day, these women had significantly lower mortality rates compared to the least active women,” Lee explains. If they did more, their mortality rates continued to drop until they reached about 7,500 steps, at which point the rates leveled out. Ultimately, increasing daily physical activity by as little as 2,000 steps—less than a mile of walking—was associated with positive health outcomes for elderly women.”

Please click on the link for the balance of this article.
From this site: “If an animal is left on its own in a pasture, it will spend a third of its time gathering food, a third of its time eating, and a third of it sleeping. If they’re lying down, it probably doesn’t signal much beyond the fact that it’s sleeping time.”

I deliberated over this study carefully, wondering if I should lower the number of steps I’m striving to accomplish each day. The reason I chose to continue with the goal of 10,000 steps daily is in regard to the recovery of my heart and arteries after the recent cardiac bypass surgery. But even there, the science isn’t precisely how much exercise protects the heart and arteries from future problems.

The question and answers remain ambiguous, such as: 
  • How much exercise should a cardiac patient do post-surgery? Is it the 10,000 steps?  Are they to be done consecutively, or are small spurts better?  No one seems to know, nor is there consistent evidence on the 10,000 steps shown in the above article. “They,” say 30-minutes a day but is that enough?
  • How much fat in the diet is suggested after bypass surgery?  We know the obvious foods to avoid. Transfats, fried foods, and chemical-laden foods. But as a low-carb dieter, how can I make this fit into my way of eating?  Eating a low carb, low-fat diet is unhealthy, according to several studies. No one, including my four doctors, a cardiologist, a cardiothoracic surgeon, a plastic surgeon, and a family practitioner, has a definitive answer. 
  • Is drinking red wine beneficial? Or, is avoiding alcohol altogether better over the long run? There are no definitive answers here either.
Thus, I trudge along, striving for as many steps a day as I can do.  I consume a high protein diet (recommended by the plastic surgeon particularly while the wounds are still healing), still avoiding excess “carbage,” and eating fish, chicken, seafood, and tons of a variety of colorful fresh organic vegetables each day. Now I am drinking a glass and a half of quality red wine each day. It’s quite a treat.
From this site: “Cattle can experience “Eureka” moments. In research published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, researchers observed cattle given a reward after completing a task and gave the same reward to other cattle which had no control over their rewards. By measuring heart rate, they determined that the cattle who could control their fate got more excited than those rewarded passively. This could be interpreted as cattle having an emotional reaction to finishing a puzzle, not just getting food.”
Each day I prepare the protein smoothie recommended by the plastic surgeon. I add organic unsweetened cocoa powder and a scoop of high-quality protein powder with water and ice for a tasty smoothie drink. (Tom used to make it for me each day, but now I can do this myself.

As for what I can and can’t do at this point…I can walk, but I get extremely tired in the grocery store.  I have trouble bending to the ground to pick something up (due to my chest hurting) and have difficulty getting up from the low-slung sofas and chairs.  

Why do I have trouble getting up from a low sofa or stuffed chair?  Usually, a person uses their legs to provide the traction needed to arise from low furniture. It’s only been two months since I had two separate surgeries on both of my legs. I realized this could take a while to recover.  

Also, my arms are still painful when used to support my body upon arising. This is due to the trauma to my chest and surrounding nerves and muscles. The scar on my chest is still painful, and now the skin is stretching and itchy.  I am doing some arm exercises, using bottles of Pellegrino as weights, and performing some lunges at the kitchen sink every other day.

As for the healing of the severe wound on my left leg, which many have inquired about, it is slowly improving, although it’s still open.  Every other day, Tom removes the compression socks and bandages, cleans the wound with a special antibacterial liquid, covers it with a special cream Dr. Theo provided, and then with “Jelonet,” a sterile moist wound gauze. He then bandages it all once again.  

After this process, he helps me put on a clean pair of compression stockings that are tough to put on while I still wear them day and night.  Again, there was no definitive answer as to how long compression stocking should be modeled after leg surgery and infection. We decided I’d wear them until the wound completely closes, hopefully in the next 60 days.

So there is our story for today, dear readers. Thank you for your love and ongoing support and concern. Not a day goes by that we don’t think of all of you and smile.

We hope you’ll have an enjoyable day!

Photo from one year ago today, June 6, 2018:
This is a Bovine Tuberculosis infected kudu we spotted only the day after being educated on this dreadful disease impacting mainly kudus in Marloth Park. For more photos and information on Bovine TB, please click here.

Exercise and other causes…Why me?…

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Tom spotted this giant snail outside his hotel room in Nelspruit while I was in the hospital.

“Sighting of the Day in the Bush”

This adorable female kudu  is suffering from TB, as indicated by the tumor on the left side of her face,

As I’ve spent several hours each day resting, walking, and napping, I’ve had plenty of time for serious thought as to why I became a candidate for open-heart surgery.

Was it from the recent lack of exercise since we arrived in Marloth Park over a year ago? Was it the low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet I’ve been on since August 2011 or the high carb, the low-fat, moderate-protein diet I diligently followed for most of my adult life?  Science is confused by these questions.

Over the past several years, we’ve been told by the government what we should be eating and avoiding to maintain a level of health and fitness. These dictates didn’t improve the overall health of citizens throughout the world when many countries followed the American way of eating; too much sugar, salt, starch, and carbs, and still numbers were rising on the scales of poor health.

In today’s medical science, it is still unclear what contributing factors play the highest role in the causality of developing clogged arteries, such as my 100% blocked three of four coronary arteries. Many blame dietary fat while others say dietary fat is not the issue…it’s the cholesterol made by our bodies. What did I possibly do wrong?

It’s sad to see that her days are numbered.

The three cardiac physicians working with me during the eight days I spent in the ICU had no suggestions on what I could do going forward to prevent this from happening to me again in 10 years. That wasn’t very comforting. 

I repeatedly asked, “What can I do differently” and the answer was always the same…nothing. They agreed my way of eating, happy, low-stress lifestyle, and level of activity are commensurate with our life of world travel. They decided upon the deceit perpetrated by my good blood test …nothing appeared to be wrong.

So I’m left with one route to go – to follow the exercise program recommended by the three physicians and worldwide heart health professionals. And, it has begun since we returned to Marloth Path, actually in the ICU unit and the hospital during my many days in residence. Walking. 

Plain and simple, walking. No hand weights, no particular pace other than one that increases the heart rate to a level that allows talking during the process. That’s it. This act continued from my 11 days in hospital.

The walking began within 24 hours of the removal of the intubation tube. Simply walking was laborious to a point beyond my expectations, limited by a lack of mobility with all the tubes, drains, and IV’s still attached.  

Mom and Babies were searching for pellets.

By the time we returned to Marloth Park last Saturday, I was able to walk for 10 minutes. Today, as directed by the take-home instructions, I upped the ante to 15 minutes twice a day. This is not much in the realm of things, but it takes everything I have to get through the 10 minutes, let alone the added ten minutes as of today.

Where do I walk?  I use a timer on my phone in the house, ensuring I don’t quit 30 seconds earlier than required. Eventually, I’ll be able to walk on a road. At this point, I don’t trust my wobbly state of being to venture out on the pot-holed, uneven dirt roads near the house. In due time…falling would be a disaster.  

The goal is to walk for 60 minutes per day in two 30-minute sessions. Knowing myself, once I reach such a goal, I will add my old exercise program to further my strength and fitness.  

There’s no health club in Marloth Park, but hopefully, there will be a facility in Ireland near the house we rented in Connemara. The options look good from our online research.

Today we experienced load shedding for only about one hour. Another is expected at 1500 hours, 3:00 pm, and again tonight at 2330 hours, 11:30 pm to last 2.5 hours. We’ll see how it goes.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Photo from one year ago today, March 2, 2018:
A herd of impalas at the river.  For more photos, please click here.