well, he didn’t win first place in the fencing tournament on sunday, but kevin came in 3rd out of 28 or so people, which is very very good. it was a fun day and at the end of it i was exhausted even though i didn’t actually do anything all day except watch and cheer him on and bounce up and down nervously as he fenced. also to keep warm because it was mighty chilly at the fencing place in peoria.
the other people from our fencing club did pretty well, too. the others finished about in the middle of the pack, which was good, especially because many of the other fencers fence a lot more every week. there was a large group of people there from a college, except they all looked like they were in high school.
cold cold cold, that’s how the week has been. i haven’t written all week because i keep meaning to but instead i end up sitting on the couch with a cup of hot tea, trying to stay warm. perhaps it will get over 32 degrees NEXT saturday. hopefully i won’t be totally frozen by then.
i worked out yesterday morning and decided to get in the sauna for a treat. i was lying there quietly, enjoying all that heat, for about five minutes, and then a woman came in and it was aileen, who had been in the water aerobics class, and she was followed by more women from the water aerobics class and pretty soon it was like a party atmosphere but it’s not a very big sauna, so i had to leave. but at least i was truly warm all over for a few minutes.
i went to a heart luncheon yesterday afternoon, which was informative and enjoyable. a woman who is a cardiologist at st. john’s hospital gave a talk about heart disease and she was also inf & enj. it made me call the doctor to see what my cholesterol results were; they’d called me last week after i went for a checkup and left a message that it was all good, but that was a little vague.
my overall cholesterol is fine, under 200 where it’s supposed to be, but the LDL (bad) cholesterol is supposed to be less than 100, and it’s 107. the hdl (good) cholesterol is good, 69, but that bad cholesterol need to be lower. so now i feel much more motivated to EAT LESS CHEESE. and ice cream. and fatty food in general. more vegetables! we keep trying to have five servings of fruits and vegetables in a day, and i can’t believe how bad at it i am. in the booklet they gave out at the heart luncheon, it said that maybe five servings aren’t even enough. LOTS AND LOTS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, that’s what everybody needs to be eating, all the time, like rabbits.
that’s kind of a sobering thought for a thursday morning.
but important.
the cardiologist talked all about the risk factors for heart disease and of course she emphasized the need for being the correct weight and eating right and exercising, but she needed to lose at least 50 pounds. which is the key problem with all that health talk; many people know what to do, but we don’t do it.
and plus it’s so cold outside that who wants to eat f&v, gimme some thick soups and lots of bread and butter and cheese and a warm chocolate dessert.
but NO, f&v, lots and lots of them.
let’s think about something happier for a minute. hawaii. here’s a photo of me hiking a trail at Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai.
we hiked and hiked and it was all quite pretty but then we got to this place where it was kind of steep going down. kevin documented it.
maybe it doesn’t look so steep in this photo, but trust me, it was.
but maybe it really wasn’t THAT steep, but i have been known to get freaked out about trying to get down something steep and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that steep. especially if there’s no vegetation or anything to cling to as i try to scrabble my way down.
so instead we turned around which turned out very well because pretty soon it started to rain. it rained and it rained and rained and of course we hadn’t brought any rain stuff, it was all in the car, and the rain wasn’t so bad except it would have if we’d hiked down that steep part and then had to scrape our way up because it’d have been very muddy.
the sun came out eventually and we got fairly dry and we went back to the car and continue up the waimea road. we stopped at this great place for lunch, it’s the only restaurant there in the canyon, and it’s next to cabins that you could rent. i think i actually already wrote about this place, where they had delicious homemade pie and i had a piece of chocolate macadamia nut pie because i wasn’t going to have any but figured that i probably wouldn’t be getting back there soon and it was my one chance for such delicious pie.
you see the reason my bad cholesterol is bad. the cardiologist described it as little balls of butter floating around in your blood, which is a good visual and i’m trying to think about that when i want to eat some butter.
anyway, after lunch we drove to the farthest tip of the canyon, but the absolute farthest point was closed because they were re-paving the road. so we got out at the next to last place and the view was spectacular, but then we started walking up the unpaved road and eventually came across the road paving guys and we thought we had to turn around because they were actually spreading the pavement down, but the guy said we could keep walking, so pretty soon we were walking on freshly poured blacktop and it was kind of warm on the soles of our feet. we walked and walked and it wouldn’t have been much of a drive, but it was quite a walk and we hadn’t brought a lot of water with us because we hadn’t planned on walking very much.
kevin had a small bottle of perrier with him, and we got to the end of the road where there was a new trail, and somebody had left some water there and we filled the perrier bottle and started hiking. the view along this trail were truly incredible, and here’s one of them.
at this point we were actually all the way at the north side of the island, and this is the na pali coast, the place where we’d taken the boat cruise.
this hike ended up being pretty long and got a little harrowing for some of us, but that’s all the time i have right now. more next time.
think spring.
ok then,
grace.