October Trail Tails or Tales?

A few days ago we ventured out to my favorite trail. We wanted to see if they've mowed down the weeds. The trail is growing narrower and narrower!

It was still overgrown though. As Ziva and I walked along we saw an orange kitty. Well I saw it. Ziva was tracking it with her nose! She never looked up and actually saw the cat! hahahaha  We also saw a huge jack rabbit with ears as long as its body. Finally, in a flash of white, we saw the tails of two grown deer as they bounded off the trail. TOO COOL!!!

I am not fast enough to get photos of such things. I did manage to take a photo of Ziva and my shadow though. Gads it felt good to be back out there!

Today's weather was also perfect. I was working on a tricky project in the sewing studio and around 2pm I needed a break. We took off for a walk. The first thing we came upon were these pretty purple-y flowers:

I am not sure what they are. The bees were really enjoying them though! I was listening to my podcasts as we walked along. I decided to make a big hike out of the day and went to see if anything had been done to clean up the remote part of the trail since the last time I was out a few days ago.

There sure was something that had been done, and we were not too pleased about it!

Someone had cut a tree down to block the trail! At first I thought perhaps it was the wind we had had about a week ago, but then I saw this:

Mother Nature does not make such clean cuts.

We managed to climb over the branches though and took this parting shot as we left the roadblock:

As we neared the end of the trail, and our turn around point we came upon this:

Yes, another tree down. What the heck! This one wasn't as easy to climb through, but we did. I took another photo from the other side of this downed tree too.

I suppose the owners of the properties near the trail are tired of the shenanigans that go on at night. There are often signs of parties and such things. I still don't think this is right though. I guess I will keep going through these obstacle courses, if I want to keep using the trail.

We ended our walk today by flushing out a young hunter. I think it is illegal to hunt on the trail because it is in city limits. He thought I didn't see him and turned and walked away. When I came around a corner, he had mysteriously lost his rifle! The little chit had ditched it in the brush and was walking towards me with his phone, as if he were out for a stroll. If I had seen the gun I might have been tempted to grab it! Dang little whipper snapper!!!

So how did you spend your Sunday afternoon?
That's all for tonight. I plan to keep walking and hope my dear readers will, as always, walk-on with me!

What has Abby been up to?

Abby has been busy. Late in September you could find her busy in her sewing room, repairing and making new costume pieces!

She likes going to renaissance faires! Do you know what they are? Imagine you have gone back in time to when Queen Elizabeth the 1st was queen. The time would be around the 1600's through the 1700's. (give or take a hundred or so years)

Abby, her husband, and her young son all dress in costumes that could have been found way back then. They all play music! Abby plays a penny whistle, which is similar to a flute. Her son and husband both play many different instruments with strings. When they play music, Abby sets her basket down in front, just in case someone wants to tip them. They have a lot of fun!

Abby has also been struggling, as you all know by now. She can't figure out why her weight is not moving in a more favorable direction.

She's been trying to walk more.

She's been keeping a food journal, although she really hates that!

But her weight would still keep going up and down and up and down, over and over. Since May, she's been around 217-220 pounds. Why?

She is so tired of her muffin top.

Her belly seems to be hanging out even more these days. Why?

Poor Abby. So how has she been approaching all this? She tried going out on her favorite trail but found it was all grown over and hard to walk through.

So she started walking in town more. The weather was nice and that helped. She also looked LONG and HARD at WHY her body and weight was doing what it was doing. She did research and read up on things.

One day, she looked at her belly again:

Ugh. Talk about your spare tire! Why? Her food journal showed she was eating the right amount of calories. What could the problem be?
Then she asked google the question: "Beer, wine, alcohol, bellies". She had heard of beer bellies. Could wine cause the same thing? She always accounted for the calories in the wine she drank. Surely that couldn't be the issue! But no, there it was. . . article after article explained why drinking wine, or beer, or spirits could cause the belly fat issue. Damn!

What she found out was that the body's metabolism will work on metabolizing alcohol first. If you eat  at the same time, or after drinking, or snack during or after drinking, those food calories will go straight to storage. . . in the form of fat! That is the simplified version of the process.

So Abby has decided to cut way back on her wine intake. She took her belly measurements on the 14th and will take them for the next two months to see if just decreasing her wine, will make a difference.

While she's doing that, she still plans to go for walks. She adores this time of year! Stay tuned to see how Abby's experiment works out! And walk-on dear readers!

Grumpy Mornings

I am grumpy this morning. I've been journaling my food and walking more and my weight was up yesterday. I know I shouldn't let this bother me so much, but it does. I really struggle to find the balance between a weight I'd be happy with and the work I have to do to maintain that weight. I used to dream of being 150 pounds. That was about three years ago. Then when I stopped losing around 185 pounds, I thought that 175 would be more realistic. Then my weight went over 200 again, so now I am saying I'd be really happy to just be in one-derland.

Since I am grumpy I will share one pet peeve. I am so tired of skinny women saying they need to lose 10 more pounds. If you look good, have a good body fat percentage, can't you be happy there? I know, we ALL have trouble accepting how we look is really not the pounds on the scale. Does ANYONE out there, actually LIKE how they look?

So what did I do on this grumpy morning? Did I sit at home and eat a bunch of bread? Nope. I went for a walk. I went for a three and a half mile walk. It hurts so much. My left knee has osteoarthritis in it and it can get very painful. But I did it. I am sweaty. I need a shower. I am also not so grumpy now.

So if you're grumpy too, just Walk-On dear readers, Walk-On!