Pesky Ponds

Yeah, I'm aware that I've been pretty much missing in action since Monday. (ok, Tuesday because I put that book review up on Tuesday).  What can I say, I've been busy.    Losing weight busy???   Ha, I wish.  

The weight is just sitting still.  It's annoying.  But I'm going to keep trying!   I'm going to aim for better consistency with exercise and yes, eating.  Today was not a stellar day with eating.  Two words.......Zucchini Muffins.  They were/are good.    I'm actually not that far off of my calorie count today but I ate mostly carbs today.  (Breakfast Casserole.. and toast for breakfast...zucchini muffin(s) for lunch and baked ziti and garlic bread for dinner......)

So today I skipped my morning run.  Hey now, I had a reason.  I was WIPED OUT!  I slept poorly. I will get to that.....

I had a vacation day that I used yesterday.  Todd and I got up and got to work.  We started by hauling river stones.....notice I didn't say river pebbles...I said river STONES.  We are using them on the ground by the ponds that we are putting in our back yard/patio area.  A few backpacks of river stones later and we had started laying them down.  We were cognizant of the fact that these packs were HEAVY and we didn't want to blow our backs out so grabbed a few loads each and then called that quits until another day.  We carted them home and spread them out.  We did add some river pebbles to fill int he cracks....but I didn't get a picture after we did that.

We will have quite a few more trips to make to get enough river stones for the whole area, but we are ready...bring it on!

We laid the backpacks down and we were looking at the way things were and we decided to go back into the woods at least once more and pull out a some of the big limestone rocks back there to work on our retaining wall/rocky outbreak which is on the lower end of the ponds. (Our ground slopes quite a bit)   We grabbed the wheelbarrow and headed down to the pile of rocks that have been left there over the years from construction projects and from the farming from years past.   We grabbed a load of rock and headed up.  That wasn't too bad, so we headed down again.  Everything was going grandly until we decided to attempt a large rock.  We tipped the wheelbarrow on it's side and rolled the boulder into the belly of the wheelbarrow.  There was NO way that we were going to lift this puppy.  And in fact rolling is not really the term....pried it with a shovel and used the leverage to get it to shift onto the wheelbarrow.   We both put our muscles into it and we lifted the wheelbarrow upright.  Immediately the wheelbarrow collapsed. Yes, it collapsed.  Structurally the wheelbarrow is no longer sound.  We rigged it and somehow got that boulder up to the pond area.  We turned if on it's side and let the boulder fall.  It took us another 1/2 hour to get the boulder into position.  The other ones were not quite so big ...but the damage was done to the wheelbarrow.  We got some of the stones into place and back filled the area behind the stones. (Once again, this picture was before it was done and backfilled)

It was lunch time by that point.  We had spent over three hours on the stone/boulder project.  I headed in, showered and made lunch.  After lunch we ran a few errands and then ended up in the hot tub.  After getting out of the hot tub we sat on the patio looking at our progress.  We had two ponds in place....but we knew we wanted a third pond...lower still (in essence we have three levels of ponds).  We knew how we were finishing off the south end of the ponds but until we dug and placed the north end pond, we didn't have a clue how we were going to finish off the stones.  We talked about a few ideas and then I just decided to go for broke.  I carted myself to the shovel and started digging.  I dug for an hour and a half...but that third pond is IN PLACE!   (Todd sat and watched while I worked.....half of the time from the warm comfort of the hot tub...who wrong is that???)

I did take about an hour or so break before I headed out to zumba step!  Yes, I still did my hour workout class!!!!!  By the time I hit the class, my right arm was SORE!   Everything felt great.  IN fact before I fell asleep I was talking to a friend an made the comment that "I feel peachy, my right arm is sore but everything else is fantastic!"   Yeah, right.  I got in bed and my body started to stiffen up.  I slept HORRIBLY...simply because every time I moved I felt it!!!!!  

So I took it easy and didn't run this morning...that and I had a ton of things I wanted to get done before work!   After my day, once again the only place I'm sore is my arm (shoulder actually).

I'd say I'd run tomorrow...but I heard mention of a few 'rock' trips back into the woods before work. HMMMMMM