Today was paleo pancake day – my favorite ;-) (Well, the nut-ola day is pretty close, especially if they make the macadamia milk!) As hubby said though, these are very dense pancakes – two is actually probably “one too many.” Not sure if the recipe will be in the new Recipe Book that we will receive in .PDF form when we leave, but I hope so. As you can see, they serve it with super sweet strawberries, “smashed” blueberry sauce (blueberries whirled in the VitaMix, and then whole blueberries added), and the “food with no brakes” nut butter :-)
These are the cards that I’ve mentioned a few times. They’re from a friend, who FedEx’d them to me to be sure I got them before I left. These have been the best thing ever. I remember when my goddaughter was in a “rehab-esque” facility, I bought a ton of cards, and sent her one every day that she was there (it was like 30 cards). Wow, it makes you feel really really cared for. I admit that I did open two in a row on the day that hubby was in ER, but I am saving the last one until Monday (two days before we leave). Above is a “gallery” of the cards. Although I’m sure that they will be a little tough to read posted this way, if you can click on them to read the “small print” on each, they’re just so funny. They’re from EmilyMcDowell.com and when I get home, I’m buying all of them since these are exactly the cards to have on hand!
A couple of folks have sent “private messages” to me with respect to my workout regime here at Sanoviv. If you’re on Marco Polo with me, I sent you a video showing you my room “gym” including the seafoam green shag carpet for floor work – but here’s a write-up for those of you who are not. In our room, I have a mini-tramp, which I use when I’m supposed to “jog” in the program set up for me by my Crossfit box. (I also have, of course, 7 flights of stairs.) When it says to do, for example, 1 minute at “100%” then followed up with a jog, I jump rope out on the balcony, and then I jump on the mini-tramp. This photo shows you various bands, the TRX (which I’ve been using for ring rows, because pullups aren’t really possible, my hang on the wardrobe photographed a while ago notwithstanding), then the EmPack which has three bladders, each of which weighs, full, about 15 lbs. I have 2 of them filled up and 1 filled to about 5 lbs. There is also the aforementioned small area rug where I do the planks, hollow rocks, etc.
Hubby got a bluetooth speaker called a “MegaBoom” by Ultimate Ears that is by far the best bluetooth speaker we’ve ever had. We’ve had Bose, etc. and this one has a 360 degree sound, plus the base is very good. It’s even waterproof ;-) I luckily downloaded a few of my Spotify playlists to my phone before leaving, because for whatever reason, you can’t get them to download over the WiFi. (Same goes for Audible books, Kindle books, iTunes, etc. I actually did this as an afterthought when we were driving to the airport on the day we left. So thankful that I did!)
I have to say that I’m sick of working out alone ;-) The other day I did their Circuit Training class, which was pretty fun. As I’ve mentioned before, their Fitness center is really set up for folks who aren’t particularly “fit” – as it should be (this is a hospital, after all). In the Circuit Training, we did 1 minute on, 20 seconds off, 2 rounds of: (a) Minitramp jumping jacks, (b) flies with a band (the toughest band in the gym is about the strength of a blue and a red in “Crossfit/Rogue band parlance”), (c) step up on a box (I did box jumps – it was about 9″ tall so I was able to, since my max is 12″ :-) ), (d) banded rows facing the band, (e) step “over” the box” side to side (he had me do a move where I straddled the box, plyo-jumped up to the top, then back down), (f) banded tricep push, (g) squats (everyone used a big Swiss ball that they leaned against a wall and then squatted as far down as they could – I put the biggest “slam ball” they had (12 lbs) on the ground and squatted down to it), (h) banded bicep curls, then (i) plank. For the plank, I did “down-up” plank for a little while, passed a dumbbell under my body side to side, did one leg up then another, etc. I mean, it was only a minute. Then at the end I did 6 pushups before moving back to the mini-tramp. It was fun to be with people again! And, why yes, I was the certified fitness bad @ss of the class. Now that is a different feeling….!
Yesterday hubby actually did part of my printed workout with me in the room. He had to lie down in between some of the sets, and then only did a couple rounds of the last set. It was a farmer’s carry with one hand (30# EmPack) and waiter’s walk (5# EmPack bladder) with the other – supposed to be 50′ then swap hands, but we did the entire hall and back to our door (probably more like 100′) then switched hands and did the hall again. While one of us was doing that, the other did the banded hamstring curls, ring rows, Pallof presses, and then back for the walk again, 3x.
The M-WOD was a dozen each of banded pull-aparts pronated, candlestock rock to seated straddle, banded pull-aparts supinated, the rock, banded overhead pull-aparts, the rock. Hubby had thrown a rib out, but surprisingly the candlestick rock helped get it back in. (He’s seeing the chiropractor anyway today.)
There was another WOD that we traded off (“pullups,” i.e., ring rows, and dumbbell rows), then he was “through” and went to take a shower. The EmPack was awesome for this last part, which was a Tabata plank. I used it with the two 15 lb. bladders and strapped it on “as” a backpack. This was sure easier than when my Crossfit wife and I were trying out all the moves back in the gym, and we were trying to balance a sandbag on our backs!
I was glad I had downloaded a couple of “Tabata songs” I bought years ago onto my cell phone, since for whatever reason, as I said, it won’t connect to iTunes or Spotify here, only downloaded songs.
I had a “prideful moment” doing the planks. Hubby was in the shower and I wanted him to “see me” doing the weighted Tabata planks (and tell me I was a bad @ss (LOL)). So I actually did two sets, figuring that since I’d started at what I thought was almost the end of his shower, he’d be out and see me and comment as I finished.
Um, yeah, NOPE. I was already cleaned up and had put everything away by the time he was out. Shows me for looking for approval/kudos from the outside ;-) Therapy Much? :-)
Our friend Andy (photo in previous post) is originally from Texas, here on the 2 week Lyme protocol. He’s the supply logistics bigwig at Chevron Australia in Perth. I ran into him early this morning, and he looked positively gleeful. He was supposed to leave on Sunday, but told me that he’d swapped out his flight for today, so he was “getting sprung in just a few hours!” It was so funny. As I’ve mentioned before, our friend Arnold (from Paraguay) dubbed Sanoviv “Hotel Baja California,” so of course I said to Andy, “Wait hey now, you sure that you can’t just check out any time you want….?”
He’s flying out of here to SFO. He was asking us about restaurants/etc. down by the airport about a week ago. After we talked it through with him, turns out he’s going to rent a car at the airport, have dinner in San Francisco (we provided him with the latest S.F. Chronicle “100 Best Restaurants” list), then he’s going to actually stay in Marin. His sister lives in Sacramento, and so Sunday and Monday he’s going to see her up in Napa and visit his favorite wineries, have some more good food, then he fly back to Australia Monday night. By staying in Marin, he won’t have to brave the Bridge traffic, and will be basically 1/2 way to Napa (and won’t be paying city hotel rates). We, of course, told him that we hated him ;-) He just giggled. B@stard. :-)
Speaking of wine, one of the funniest Marco Polos on record was one sent to me by a friend and her husband. She was telling me what was going on, and her husband was walking back and forth behind her listening/waving/etc. – carrying a bottle of Napa Cab in one hand and a huge glass full of the wine in the other. Sipping away, walking in and out of the picture. I had a total Pavlovian response. I had to listen to the Marco twice because all I could do was follow the husband back and forth with my eyes, staring at the bottle and the glass. I sent her a Marco back about it, and she sent one this morning laughing, saying that neither of them had even noticed that he was doing this. She “promised me” that her “um…morning caffeinated beverage that shall remain unmentioned” was outside camera range. I just laughed and laughed.
I might have said this before, but hubby had said – actually last Sunday right before he had to go to the hospital! – that he felt pretty good about taking a lot of what we had learned here with respect to eating, etc. and bringing it back to our daily lives. Last night he told me that after now “three weeks going on four,” all that has gone out the window! He said that they probably make the Cancer program three weeks because that’s the perfect “balance” where you are likely to go home and still retain 80% of it in your daily life. However (a bit like Andy, I think) now he’s just planning to dive head first into a bacon blue cheese filet mignon burger on a brioche bun with fries drenched in ketchup, with a nice magnum of Napa Cab. “To start,” sez he. :-)
I have some notes from the Energy Medicine/Meditation class today (our last…) that I’ll put in a separate blog post. Energy Medicine/Meditation is Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This is our last one, as we leave on Wednesday. I want to link some YouTube videos though, because I want to be able to go back and find the Energy Medicine techniques once I’m back home, and right this second YouTube is “wonky” on the WiFi. The class was super dense today – we did 4 different techniques (usually you do maybe 1-2). There were also a few great quotes that I immediately left class and wrote down. Dr. Sandra is great for memorable comments. :-)
So there you go ;-) Next post – Energy Medicine ;-)