Saving Chickadee

This is a picture of a non-injured Chickadee—our little friend was too sad to take pictures of.

In between Crossfit and our ill-fated bike ride this morning, Marc discovered a badly injured Chickadee beneath our plum tree. There is a large hole in the trunk of the tree where some of the chickadees have their nest. They love to sit in the tree and talk to each other and to the chickens, whose house is just below it. Our sad wounded friend was not quite a grown-up bird yet, still between babyhood and adult with soft downy feathers. At first, we thought the only problem was her foot was caught in a mass of string and hair which was stuck to a bit of a plant—likely nest making material. But once we carefully cut her free from the tangle we saw the situation was far worse. Her neck or spine was broken so that she could not hold her head upright, and if perched on a branch was looking at the world upside down. Every time she would try and straighten out, she would just end up spinning upside down and struggling to right herself, all the while cheeping pitifully. We initially took turns carrying her around the yard, which helped because she was more secure with something to perch on than just spinning around. Eventually we put her in a box under her nest to see if the other birds would come for her. They did come to visit and talk to her, but there was nothing they, or we, could do for her. I went online and looked up the closest wildlife rescue and called PAWS in Lynnwood (which also does wildlife rescue), who told me they would be happy to take her. The woman at the desk said it was likely she had crashed into a window or something similar. This seems improbable to me since she was at the far end of our yard, well away from any houses, and she was not at all able to fly or walk. I don’t know if they will be able to help her (the woman told me sometimes they can help this kind of injury, but I was skeptical), but if they can’t at least they will be able to put her out of her misery in a humane way. Sad little birdy!

Crossfit Fundamentals: Day 3-- how to over do it

This morning was my third and final fundamentals session with Jesse. Next week I start the Crossfit group classes. Every time I go there I am nervous beforehand, which is actually helpful because it helps propel me out of bed at 6am. This morning we were learning about deadlifts (after the requisite 30 squats, push ups, pull-ups and situps and 500m on the rower to "warm up"). I started with a PVC pipe again and quickly graduated to a 20? pound medicine ball. Naturally, I had to repeat these deadlift to a shrug and clean series over and over for abut a half hour. Once my legs were jelly-- then the workout began! I did seven of those, followed by seven "burpees" (possibly the most evil exercise ever) and then repeated. I was sweating, my face was purple, and I was barely functioning by the end. At the end of the second set of burpees I turned to Jesse and said, "who knew that push-ups would be the easiest part of my day?"

When I got home and I spent some time out in the yard with the chickens, had some breakfast and was feeling pretty good-- not as exhausted as earlier this week post-crossfit.

Marc and I had been planning all week to go on my favorite bike ride-- about 12 miles along the Burke Gilman Trail, along the Sammamish River. It's very flat, incredibly beautiful and just fun. However, when we got to the start of our ride, within 5 minutes I knew I was in trouble. Turns out this morning's workout already exhausted the muscles used for propelling a bike forward. By the end of the first mile I was dying. My legs just had no force left-- I kept trying to ride at a lower gear, but that just meant I had to pedal faster, so the pain stayed the same. I was riding so slowly I was passed by elderly people on tandem bicycles, a little girl on a pink bike with shiny streamers, and a couple joggers. We had to stop every mile until we got to about three miles and we finally had to turn around. There was no way I was going to make it twelve miles! By mile four I was stopping to rest or stretch every half mile. (Marc joked we had to stop every other blade of grass). I practically crawled up the stairs when we got home. Overdid it? yes.

I did pack a pretty awesome lunch for our bike ride. The picture above is of my kale-turkey roll ups. I bought multi-color kale last weekend, which I never have seen before. It is very flat, though you could make this work with lacinato kale as well. To each leaf I added a slice of deli turkey (nitrate free please), a little mayonnaise and mustard and an olive, which I wrapped the turkey and kale around. I secured each roll on a wooden skewer. It was quite delicious!

Seasonality vs. Sugar-free

I admit I'm breaking my own rule about buying things in season. Eating fruit really helps with sugar cravings and this time of year there isn't much in the way of local seasonal fruit. The apples are kind of mushy and everything else comes from California. So I've been buying grapes, strawberries and raspberries from California (that is the one thing I miss about living down there-- there is local produce available so much more of the year!)

Here's the thing: it's not as good. And I knew it when I bought them. My parents grew up in rural Oregon where in the summers they had jobs picking strawberries from the fields. As a result my dad is a total strawberry snob-- as long as I can remember he has waited patiently for the local strawberries to be available and turned his nose up at the giant, usually under-ripe California variety that are available much of the year. He is right of course-- but it's either fruit or cookies at this point so for now I choose fruit-- local or otherwise. In another month I will get to eat "real" strawberries, grown locally and twice as tasty. For now, I'm eating the not so great California version. Try not to judge me :)

Crossfit Fundamentals: Day 2

If last time was a squat (and run) apalooza, today was all about turning my arms and shoulders into jello. Today we warmed up by doing a repeat of my intro session, doing two? three? I forget, rounds of 10 each squats, situps, pushups and pullups (since I can't do a pull-up I get to jump up to it each time so it's cardio too).

After all of that we moved onto learning some powerlifting skills. I practiced military presses (pressing barbell straight overhead), squat presses (I forget what they are actually called but it's where you do a baby squat and then use the force of coming out of the squat to get the barbell over your head) and jerks (where you do the same as in the squat thrust but you do a little hop into a squat for more power) over and over and over (probably for half an hour) with a PVC pipe instead of a weight until I got my form right. Then I did three of each with a 30 pound barbell. THEN the workout began! It went like this:

7 military presses
7 squat presses
7 jerks
(all with a 20 pound barbell)
21 pull-ups

THEN I did that all again twice more, except the second time I did 5 of the weighted things and 15 pull-ups, then the third time it was 3 of all of those and 9 pull-ups.

Needless to say my arms and shoulders burned! I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to brush my teeth tonight!

After Monday's workout I had sore quadriceps, but mainly I was just exhausted. I slept 10 hours that night and 8 last night and both days really wanted a nap!

As for food: I've noticed since upping my protein and eating lots more fruit I don't really get sugar cravings-- at least not the physical kind.

Inside Chickens

Since the chickens moved outside a couple of weeks ago, they mostly were in their house at night. They spent all day digging in the dirt in their fenced run, or around the yard when we let them out to play. On Sunday afternoon Marc installed windows on either side of their house and they LOVE it. In the evening we go to the window in the back of the house and they are all lined up with their beaks an inch from the glass looking. They are so mellow then that I can open the back door and pet them without protest. Since the windows were installed they come outside to eat and then go right back into their house. Yesterday we finally opened up the front of their house (the whole wall comes off for easy cleaning) and coaxed them into the yard to play. They never cease to amuse me!

Sad Energy

I was at a Naturopathic appointment at the Bastyr Center today and one of the student clinicians told me I have a “sad energy” about me and wondered what that was about. I told her I wasn’t sure, but the truth is that I just didn’t feel like talking about it. I am a little sad—I’m sad that my internship is going to force me to only see my husband on weekends for 9 months. I’m sad that so many of my very good friends from school are leaving Seattle in the next couple of months. I’m also exhausted from doing graduate school full-tilt while working several jobs for two straight years. And to some degree I’m still sad I didn’t get into the Bastyr internship. Are any of these horrific traumas in my life? No, and for the most part I go into each day with gratitude and have many happy moments. I don’t spend a lot of time sitting around wallowing in it, but there is in fact, a low level of “sad energy” that seems to follow me around lately. I would imagine some summer sun and finally getting an academic break would help a great deal.

Crossfit Fundamentals: Day 1

This morning I headed back to Crossfit for my first fundamentals training-- three sessions of one on one work with Jesse, my trainer, to both teach me proper form for the basics and to show Jesse where my weak spots are (there are many!)

First: after a little warm up on the rowing machine, I did countless squats while Jesse tweaked my form. I have a real tendency to turn my knees in and to favor my right leg, so we worked on trying to correct this before adding a dowel (basically a broom handle with no broom) for me to hold and attempt to hold properly without choking myself and still maintaining good form in my legs. By the time we finished that part my legs and hips were tired and we hadn't even started working out yet!

Second: Today's workout consisted of 15 of those perfect form squats with the dowel over my head followed by a quarter-mile run, which we repeated four times. Many of my friends are runners and probably could have sprint all of that easily and been bored out of their minds. NOT ME. I haven't run in at least four years due to ongoing knee issues and even before that I was never much of a runner. So today's cumulative mile was killer and I did end up having to walk some of it (not to mention those fun squats every quarter mile!)

I can tell I'm going to be sore tomorrow-- I'm already walking a bit gingerly.

As for food, I decided to clean up my act a bit. The national cross-fit org promotes a zone diet/paleo-diet type thing which is mainly a lot of fruits and veggies, good fats and lean, organic meat. I'm doing my own spin on that (true paleo shuns beans for some reason, and doesn't use starchy veggies which I'm not buying into). Above is my lunch today: Salmon salad with a little mayo, mustard and dill, olives, olive oil and vinegar and carrots with a side of berries. It was very filling-- I couldn't eat it all.

One day down-- who knows how many to go until I find my abs again. I took "before" pictures yesterday too , but I will not be sharing those until there is an "after" to compare it to!