Well, the calendar says it is Spring, but my back yard tells me something else. We still have over 2 feet of snow covering the gardens and fields. It is amazing…and awful. By now, last year, we were getting the seedlings ready for summer. I always start them indoors first, so that they are hardy when transplanting them outdoors.
This year, we are longingly waiting for something green to show through a record breaking winter of snow.

This isn’t what I eat every day, but it gives an idea of how I do it. I didn’t put in all the info like carbs, fat, protein, fiber and calories. It is just an example of how one woman beat the odds of becoming a diabetic. Once you have that in your medical record, it can not be erased even if your BS numbers fall below again. I refused to go that route. I did it mostly with diet, because exercise is hard for me due to the fact I suffer from vertigo. I have been “dancing” to get some exercise in. My goal is to be 150 pounds by Augsut. Wish me luck.

Breakfast:
1/2 cup All Bran
1/2 Cup vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup egg mates ( fake eggs)
2 slices Smart Bacon (veggie bacon)

Lunch
3 oz haddock
½ lavash bread
1 salad
¼ cup zucchini
80 g tofu

Dinner
2 oz turkey meatloaf
1 salad
½ sweet potato
¼ cup zucchini
½ cup broccoli
citrucel

Snacks
½ pear
¼ cup yogurt
½ pear
¼ cup yogurt

I wonder if crack cleaning is considered exercise. I just spent 3 hours cleaning out the dirt in the cracks in the floor in our living room. That is addition to 6 hours I spent another day, and they are still not all cleaned out.
Our house is over 175 years old, and I don’t think anyone in that time frame ever took the time to clean the dirt out of the cracks in the floor boards. Our floors consist of 14 inch wide pine boards with slight cracks in between. The problem is that the last person who painted the floor, painted right over the dirt. So, I have spent 9 hours and I am only about half done.
I know I only worked my upper body, but digging out 175 years worth of dirt is hard work.
We knew we would have to do this when we bought the house a year and a half ago, but I didn’t expect it to be so hard. We are doing all this work, of course, to redo the floors. I am not doing it for fun.
Now that I have half a room done, I only have 8 more floors to go…aarrggghhhh.

Being that we have survived life without a furnace for almost two weeks, we have decided not to fix it now. Why bother? It is almost mid March, and we have been doing fine with the arrangement we have. It will be getting warmer all the time (we hope), so why spend the money to have this furnace fixed. The repairs were only going to last a year or two at best. By doing this, we can take the time to research other ways of heating the house.
The only real sacrifice is my precious bath time. Since our water runs off the furnace, we have no hot water. In order to wash dishes, clothes or our body, we heat water on the wood stove. It isn’t much different than the way I grew up anyway. As a kid, we had no hot water. I remember heating giant pots of water on the old gas stove for us to take a bath. It also added nice moist heat to the air.
This reminds me of a BBC show called  The Good Life. It was a British comedy that was on in the 70’s. It was about a couple that gave up the “corporate world” to live a self sustained life. The show is a riot, and it does remind me of us. You can find “The Good Life” on Netflix.

This winter has been an exceptional winter here in the category of snowfall. We have gotten close to 200 inches of snow. The normal snow amount is about 125 or so.
We are wondering if it will ever melt. Will we ever see the gardens again. Will this be a winter like they had in 1816, the year without a summer. (more…)

Here it is Monday, and we are still without a furnace. It actually hasn’t been too bad. We keep the wood stove cranked, and it heats the house pretty well. The average temperature is around 62. Cold for some I know, but all you need is a sweater. Luckily for me, “the change” has left me with hot flashes, and I don’t get that cold. Most of the time you will find me hanging out in a tank top. When I get cold, on goes the sweater. When my inner heat kicks in, the sweater comes off.
Think of how much money we will save.