whew

Ok...so

since Thursday I've been at home for....a lot of stuff. A quick summary has me partying hard for the past 3 nights, and now I'm exhausted.

That needs some explanation.

I went home for my mother's birthday, where there was a rotating set of about 15-20 musicians who just took up instruments in our back yard, and got everyone dancing. The next day my aunt, uncle and cousin show up, and they always bring a party. The following day we all went together to the Barnard Street Dance, which is a big dance where my step dads band plays every year, and everyone dances their respective asses off. Good times.

Anyway, with that said, I'll now break down the pluses and minuses of this trip.

Positives first!
-Food. Everything was fresh. I do mean that. "want a cucumber? GO PICK IT! want some eggs? GO HUNT FOR THEM!" all that fun stuff. Delicious. Now see the overpowering, overflowing life of the garden of which I speak. From these pics you can see Dill, Blueberries, Corn, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Peppers, Green Beans, Carrots, Hops (yey beer) and other stuff I can't remember.


-Dancing. If anyone ever asks me about the most intense aerobic workout I can think of, it's dancing. And I must have put in about 6-10 hours of it over this weekend, and I don't mean just bopping a bit, I'm talkin' full swing blues rock dance band and just letting go. Woo. My whole body is sore in new and interesting ways.

-Seasonal stuff. Pictures are worth a thousand words.















SEE NOW THE GLORIOUSLY DELICIOUS AWSOMENESS OF MY FRUIT SNACKS! MUAHAHA!

ahem.

Ok.

There we have the biggest good PcP portions of this little trip. In addition to that, there is seeing a LOT of family, wonderfulness of weather/terrain, doing awesome fun stuff (mushroom picking!) and a generally terrific air to the entire time.

Now for the less good part, at lest from the PcP standpoint. Namely, the incredible cornucopia of awesome (but salted) food that was laid out before me from the point when I arrived until the moment I left. In the interest of transparency, I admit I partook of the food. I tried to be sparing (very hard to do) and succeeded a little. I didn't go for any of the obvious packaged dips, and aimed more for the home made items, and I really couldn't stop myself from having a glass of Apple Wine that an old friend makes. DEEEELicious. I felt bad about it afterward tho, in spite of the fact that I probably burned more calories than I ate from the dancing.

The only other time I cheated was to have a small glass of champagne and some (quite pricy) caviar that my aunt brought from New York as a sort of goodbye to the weekend. I was honestly not going to refuse an opportunity to eat something so rare and delicious. And, immediately following that we all went and hayed a field, thus probably burning 3 to 4 hundred times the actual calories that we had consumed.

The only REAL problem I had was with salt. Since nobody else was paying attention to this, I lacked my usual array of non-salt spices and interesting taste methods to get around wanting salt, and it was EVERYWHERE... I didn't use any tho. I stayed true. I found a small bottle of horseradish who's ingredients where 3 words long. "Horseradish (of course)." just a bit of that stuff got me thru some dry meals. I didn't realize how big a part of my diet salt was untill I made this trip back to the land I lived in.

Now, the biggest thing that I want to take away from this was people's reactions to seeing me. I got a HUGE number of complements on slimming down and muscling up. The BIGGEST thing tho was the dancing. Allow me to add a little backstory here fer full effect. This dance happens once every 3 years. In past years I have done the same thing I did this weekend, but with less dancing. I cut a rug occasionally, and really pushed myself at the actual dance, but needed breaks and slower songs. This time was different. I stepped up at every song and just shook my booty till there was no more music left. I was dancing at top capacity for about 3 hours a night for 3 nights in a row. Hell Yeah jump ropes giving me crazy ability to jump around like a maniac for a long time! I doubt I'll ever give those things up.

And that concludes my story of simultaneous shame and glory.
g'night.