That old, non-stop comeback trail...

One of the really demoralizing things about fibromyalgia is that you are always beginning again. 

I finally decided that I simply could NOT make much progress with two large dogs on a leash, so I have been giving them exercise in the back yard, but I go on my trotting/walking/crawling routine alone, and already I have gotten a bit better.  I have also forced myself to trot only three days a week and do some kind of weight work on two days, resting over the weekend.

However, there are flies in this ointment.  Soon I will post a picture of my square-foot garden, set up on my front entrance because it is the only place I have enough hours of sunlight.  This is an interesting system that requires mixing peat moss, vermiculite, and compost in equal parts, and supposedly you can practically feed a nation on the produce.

My day of working with some kind of weights (I figured a shovel and wheelbarrow qualified as "weights") was mixing day, and let me tell ya, folks, it was so hard I had to do it during two days and I can't guarantee the quality of the mix.  I spread a huge plastic sheet in my garage and had at it.  Horrible beyond words!!  The peat moss came pressure-packed and I had to break the pieces up by hand, the compost plus humus and the vermiculate somehow didn't want to integrate, and the whole thing gave me terminal allergy.  Plus, my sun filter sweated into my eyes and I did most of the work practically blind, trying to see out of slitted eyelids to keep the burning down to a minimum.

By the time I had put together the wooden frames and filled them with the mixture (you must moisten each layer as you go about it, so there was that too), every muscle I owned, and some which may have belonged to other people, ached,  It was not a fibro ache, either, it was from sheer muscular overwork. 

I took pictures today--the "before"--and I can only pray there is an "after" where all my crops are flourishing.  There will be, I hope, cilantro, dill, tomato (only a miracle will produce a tomato, frankly, I've never produced a single one), two kinds of lettuce, squash, Italian parsley, and marjoram.  If the system works, hot damn!  This mixing nightmare only occurs once; each year you just add a bit of new compost to the plot and you are all set.

Ah yes, compost, a subject dear to my heart!  It is taking place now in four stages: kitchen bowl for chopped organic leftovers, plastic bin outdoors for accumulating the leftovers, an urban composter that can be added to each day, and a simpler composter that layers the goodies until it is full.  I found a guy here who produces humus, too, and sells 70-pound bags for about 13 dollars. 

Meanwhile, life goes on.  Went to the quinta and came back after two days because it is tick season--they are coming out in numbers too terrible to contemplate.  Couldn't let the dogs or myself stay outside very long, but even then I found one on my back.  I fared worse than the dogs, they didn't get any!

Tomorrow is weight training day.  What a relief!