2025-02-19 (Wednesday) — Winter Wonderland 🥰

I was roasty toasty last night. 😊

I think I was up until around 2:00 doing stuff on my phone before crashing, and I finally got my little butt out of bed and going sometime after 10:00, I think.

But I was roasty toasty. 🥳

I’ll see how it goes tonight, but I’m guessing it’ll be just fine. I think it got down to maybe six degrees early this morning just before the dawn,

Forecast for tonight is summer between a low of -2 and a low of -7.

Guess we’ll see!

After getting up, I put on my winter clothes, crawled out of Rover, and took in the pristine setting.

There was probably somewhere between 4 and 7 in of snow, I would guess, and it was just… a beautiful winter wonderland. ❄️

So beautiful.

My first stop of the day was over to my skid steer to make sure the coolant inside was still liquid and not slush or frozen.

Gratefully, all good. 🎉

It was sort of then that I noticed the gorgeousness of the scenery around me, the white blanket of snow covering just about everything.

Standing across the road from Stevie’s house, I thought he might appreciate getting the beautiful picture of his house and yard with all the snow around, so I took a bunch of pictures for him and send them to him.

After doing that, I realized that I hadn’t ever come in at least that I can remember taken pictures like that around the rest of Haven Hill, and I thought that other family members on the hill might appreciate photos taken of their houses and yards with their beautiful white blanket.

Over the course of probably the next hour or two, I went and took photos at stevie’s, jim’s, liz’s, and Jenna’s places.

Then it was down to the front gate to take pictures of the whole property, and then I walked the gate and treeline by the creek taking pictures along the way, taking pictures of the little park that I made down there, taking pictures of the creek itself, pictures of the spring House and pond, and pictures of my little Creek area that I’ve been working on for the last 7+ months.

By the time I was done, my hands are pretty Frozen, so I swung over to Liz’s house to show her the pictures and warm up a bit. I ended up staying for probably an hour to two hours just chatting with Liz and then with Hunter, mostly.

Good stuff.

Then I headed over to Jim and Steph’s place to show them the pictures and to just say hi. Steph had taken the day off with the snow storm, and Landon’s school had a snow day, and Jim was home as well, the roads being pretty bad and the plies having not come in because of the storm.

Ended up hanging out with Jim and Steph and Landon and Eleanor for the rest of the night, looking at the photos that I took, talking about projects on Haven Hill, eating dinner, and then talking a whole bunch more about projects on the hill and making plans.

We scheduled a Time to start trimming the trees around all the tree lines, cutting everything back to the previous fence line so we could reclaim the fields and make it easier to mow what needs to be mowed without the continually encroaching forest.

We ate dinner, Jim cooking steak, which is not very vegan, but I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to do the heavy lifting but it takes to be vegan right now, especially living in a van with out the amenities of the kitchen.

I am going to be eating at least mostly vegan, but, when I go out to eat or at other people’s houses, at this point, I just don’t have the mental power.

Unfortunately, the piece of steak that I chose was full of whatever kinds of meat particles make it so you can’t actually chew up the meat, so I think I got maybe three for four little bites that I could actually chew up and swallow, and all the rest was just sort of chew it up for flavor and then spit it into a napkin. 😅

Apparently that cow wanted me to be a vegan anyway. 🙃

I don’t like not living up to my ideals, but… it’s trade-offs right now.

After dinner, we sat around and talked about a handful of different things, ultimately focusing most of our attention on setting up the greenhouses that I bought last year, actually making real plans toward that effort.

The beginning steps are being taken, and initial commitments have already begun, so… I guess we’ll see how it goes, but it’s promising on multiple accounts–especially with the possibility that Jim might finally get his dream of being able to be a farmer.

🤞

That would make me happy. 🥰

I left their place I think somewhere around 9ish? And I climbed in Rover and decided to drive into pea ridge, and then decided just to drive over to rogers.

I hadn’t been to the gym yet, though I have walked a little over 3 miles today, and I don’t want to break my gym habit, especially with today being leg day. It’s one of my least favorite days anyway just because I hate doing the leg press machine mostly. For some reason that’s my least favorite lift, I think.

But I’m dictating this while in the gym, having already finished the leg press portion of my exercise routine today. 🎉

I also didn’t want to miss today because I’m adding three new exercises, so I don’t want to miss getting those on the board.

I’m not going to do any cardio, since I’ve walked three plus miles today through the snow. I figure that is good enough. 🙃

On a different note entirely, am I the only one who thinks it’s weird that Jim’s provide disinfectant bottles and paper towels all over the freaking place so the people can wipe down the machines after they use them every single freaking time, but there are no disinfectant bottles or paper towels to wipe down a toilet seat? 🙃

😆

🤷

I failed the comfort food challenge today–gummy worms, hot tamales, and jelly filled donuts.

Which might have something to do with my apparently not having lost any weight since starting to go to the gym. 😅

If the scale that I used today is right, and that’s actually a big if, then I’m 191ish pounds.

😅

Granted, it’s a much better 191 lb then it was 2 months ago, as I’m sure I’ve gained a fair bit of muscle and even more water weight with that muscle, but you still kind of want the weight number to go down.

But I can’t complain even a tiny little bit with what I just ate for my second dinner tonight. 😆

I ate so much sugar in one sitting but my stomach is upset with me. 🤢

Because I’m really great with moderation. 🙃

You know, calf raises might be one of my least favorite exercises as well. I can’t even tell if I’ve done a rep all the way.

I think I’ve always struggled feeling like I knew how things were going with my calf raises.

You know… I think the only leg exercise, actually, that I like is the leg extension machine. 😅

One last calf raise set… Here we go…

To the new stuff!!! An ab press machine, and the inner and outer thigh machines.

I’m going to be honest, it’s going to be slightly weird for me to do the inner and outer thigh machines. Until just a few days ago I think I’d only ever seen women on those things, and I always wondered what the heck those machines are good for, other than a woman being able to squeeze the life out of a guy like you see in the movies. 😆

But I guess they do some good for your hips and whatnot, and I’ve got some pretty crappy hip joints, so maybe that’ll help?

🤷

They’re making a list today, so I guess we’ll see.

Gratitude List:

• I’m grateful for a beautiful world
• I’m grateful to have been able to spend meaningful time with several members of my Haven Hill family
• I’m grateful to be loved and wanted by my Haven Hill family.
• I’m grateful that I was able to stay pretty darn warm while walking all over the property in my crappy tennis shoes, only my hands and my nose getting cold.
• I’m grateful that I have such a flexible work situation that allows me to just take time like this and enjoy the beauty around me.
• I’m grateful that there appears to be some progress being made in a significant way on the property. It’s all talk right now, but it looks like there’s some decent buy in.
• I’m grateful that the gym is open 24 hours a day. It’s after midnight, and I am here doing my normal Wednesday leg day.

Success List:

• It was a success for me to want to take pictures for the family here.
• It was a success to push through and go to the gym tonight when I didn’t want to.
• It was a success to follow through an ad the new exercises today, especially on a day that I didn’t want to go to the gym at all.
• It was a success to spend time with family and to reach out to others today

Improvement List:

• Comfort food. Darn that comfort food. 😅 Not eating junk used to be one of the easiest of my self-discipline things. I got to the point where I didn’t want it, didn’t crave it. But these last years… Tough years. That’s the only thing I can really point to as to how I’ve lost so much of myself discipline.

Love to all.

Lift the world.

~ stephen