Fitness

First of all, Cliff and I are still coping with being anywhere from two to four pounds over our goal weight.  I know what I need to do:  If I would just cut back 200 more calories a day on our meal plan, we'd lose it.  Obviously, I must not want to do that.  I've been spending twenty to thirty minutes a day doing ab exercises and a few upper-body exercises with a set of five-pound weights, so I told Cliff, "I know why I'm having trouble losing the weight!  Muscle weighs more than fat, and my fifteen minutes of exercise every day is making muscles."  
I wasn't serious.  It's sort of an inside joke around here, because we've heard so many people use this excuse (mostly from people who never lose weight anyway).  Of course there is a small kernel of truth in the statement, but I'm pretty sure you'd have to be a lot more serious about weight-lifting that I am for it to work.  

I have really missed my daily walks, but a half-hour or more of walking for exercise was putting me in some serious pain for the rest of the day.  Cliff still goes faithfully.  I'm proud of him for that; I was afraid if I stopped, he would too.  This morning I logged onto Sparkpeople.com, which I use mainly for calorie-counting, and saw on my start page a message that I've been ignoring:  "Click here if you have done ten minutes of exercise today."  That got me wondering if I could get by with ten minutes of walking with Cliff.  It would get me out in the sunshine, keep me in touch with our land, and give me some bonding time with my husband.  So today that's just what I did, and I plan to keep it up if I can.  
I can walk all day around the garden, to the chicken house, to the barn, and so forth.  It just isn't the same as the kind of walking you do when you're doing it for exercise.      

The people from whom I buy my baby calves are going to be acquiring a lot of babies soon.  I'm thinking about buying one bull calf to raise, just in case we need meat in a year or so.  If we don't need meat, I can always sell him.  Cora is at a stage now where she's easy to leave with Cliff if I want to get out and mess with livestock, so I could raise a bottle calf.  You can put her on a blanket in the floor and put toys around her and she'll play for a long time.  She'll spend the better part of an hour bouncing in her swing, too.  We haven't had her a lot, because Adam's construction job hasn't been keeping him busy this winter.  When he's off for several days, he brings her over for a few hours every once in awhile just so we can enjoy her (no charge; in fact, we'd probably pay him).  We're looking forward to springtime, when we can take her outside and do things with her.  

After I took my abbreviated walk this morning, I got a rubber currycomb and used it on Grace and Penny.  They love being brushed, and when I stop doing it, they follow me around until I do it some more.  Penny thought if she butted me, I'd start grooming her again.  She got soundly smacked with the brush.  You can't allow cattle to head-butt people.  It's dangerous.  

My hens were set to lay all winter until the below-zero weather several days ago.  That ended my wintertime egg supply.  Oh well, they'll start up again in March.