Day 33

Andrew and I decided after living here for 4 years already, to finally tidy up the backyard so it's usable and not an embarrassment. All we've ever done back there is BBQ, and come back inside; run out to the jacuzzi, soak, and run inside; plant my garden, go out there to water it, and run back inside. We've had a few days we'll take B out there with us and throw a ball around, but he's so big and our weeds are so tall that we always end up taking him to the dog park as our default. Today, we worked.

We have about 20 of those large 2X2.5 concrete slabs that you can put together and make up a little area for a patio or whatever. We ended up moving them around all day; tilling, digging, raking weeds and dirt all over the place. It turns out that B now has a nice little pad to curl up on if he wants--maybe a second place to sunbathe that he so loves to do for hours, and we have a place to walk from the deck stairs. It's far from done as we still have lots of improvements to finish, but it was a huge start and we are very proud of ourselves for taking initiative and actually accomplishing a task on our never-ending to-do list. We were sweating and covered in dirt and whatever else. The jacuzzi was a nice little escape afterwards, and at this point I'm so tired, I don't know how I'm not in bed yet! It was a good day. :)

Not to minimize the stamina and strength of my love, but he was mentioning to me how the work was very difficult and he was slammed. He was requesting to stop. (Sorry honey) I'm only mentioning this because of the impact it had on me. Just a month ago, if you were to ask me to do this same task, I would be fine for an hour, but you could bet that I would start whining, complaining, and start barking orders--not because I'm a hugely mean person, but because when I get tired and fatigued, I get cranky. We worked for 3.5 hours and I was in good spirits the whole time! I'm patting myself on my back right now because I have no doubts in the world that this good attitude (due to having extreme butt loads of energy) is due to my new lifestyle and all the workouts I've been doing. I'm exponentially stronger and I have so much more endurance than I could ever imagine. I was shocked when Andrew wanted to stop, sure that I would be the one to call it quits first. I am amazed at how fast I recovered too because--don't get me wrong--I was getting tired at that point, but we hopped into the jacuzzi within 10 minutes of quits and I was already recovered. This is amazing to me. I don't think I could tell you how far into the 180 I've already done even being so far from my goal. Sorry to gloat, but I was a rock star today!

Meals
3 slices of frozen pizza
2 cups of water

8 cups of water

1 cup of lemonade

1 bite of a slice of l/o pizza
1/2 whole wheat pita
1/8 cup hummus
2 cups of water

1 hot dog bun
1 chicken/turkey/mozzarella/sun dried tomato sausage (Costco brand and totally disgusting)
with ketchup, mustard, relish, and red onion
2 cups of water

1/8 slice of ice cream cake

Exercise
-3.5 hours of digging, raking, bending, pulling, lifting, etc.

Notes:
-I could not pass up the ice cream cake. We hardly ever get it, so I'm taking advantage.
-Although the exercise was not intentional for the sake of exercise, I knew I was going to be doing a lot of yard work today so I opted out of regimented exercise time. I have no regrets. I think if I would have gone to the gym, I would have been so useless doing the amount of work we did today. Plus we never do this so it's not like it was a typical Saturday activity for us and I just missed a gym day or anything.