This Means WAR!!!!

I slept well last night. I think God knew I needed the rest to go out and be angry today.

Remember that beautiful garden that I posted about a couple posts ago?

Well, it's not a secret anymore. The birds discovered that I have a green thumb too.

They ate my first--first--first people!!! HUGE (it seriously weighed about a pound it was so juicy) beefsteak tomato. That made me mad. In fact I almost titled this post "Mad as Hell" but my in-laws are such gentle folks, so I'm hiding the title in here where those who only look at pictures will have no idea that that thought even went through my mind.

Let's just say that damage to crops does not get looked at lightly by anyone in my family. My grandma had someone come onto her fenced property and cut down one of her beautiful trees for their Christmas tree. Unfortunately for them it fell as all good trees do into the fence which was electric. My grandparents sat in their Suburban all night with shot guns.

Given that I don't own a shot gun and I live in city limits, I was MAD!!!

It made me start thinking about Noah and how he sent a dove to see if there was dry land. I bet after the dove brought back that twig he shot it. That twig probably had the only ripe berries around and that bird had eaten them for himself.

I know you think I'm blowing this situation out of control a tiny bit, but you'd be mistaken because you see, this morning when I went out to care for my little garden I encountered THIS:

My sons heard me yelling and ranting like a lunatic (I didn't swear--out loud that is) and they came running to my rescue. Sweet boys. I guess they get their sense of honor from their grandparents.

(not related, but super cute)

And because you are all obsessed with my garden I wanted to show you a Ghost Aloe. Don't try and grow one of these at your house. Come visit me and bring poison--bird poison that is.

Not My Sciatic!!!

When I was pregnant for the first time, I would get this terrible shooting pain down my leg. I asked my ob at the time what could possibly be causing me such grief and he said it was probably my sciatic nerve. Just typical for pregnancy he told me. And whether it was or not, after I had my beautiful daughter, the pain went away and I forgot about it.
Here we are eight (8!?!?) years later and pregnant again. Only with this pregnancy I decided that I was going to do it a little differently. You see, when I am not pregnant, I exercise Monday through Friday mornings for about 50 minutes to an hour every day. However, when I've been pregnant in the past, I have found it impossible to breathe past about the second month of every pregnancy. Well, not this time I told myself. You are going to push and push and push yourself past that. Your body is older and your recovery will be worse and you need to endure. So, I have been. At about two months it got really hard again, but I just cut back to four days a week until I got past that little breathing issue. And, I have toned down my exercising to about 35-40 minutes. I was on the right track and I was going to keep my muscle while gaining a HUGE belly. Only my right leg never got the memo.
About two months ago I started getting this terrible shooting pain in my right leg when I would lunge. Then it became painful just to lift that leg the tiniest bit when I was showering--you know to wash my ankle or foot. Putting on my capris became a painful experience and sleeping was a nightmare too as I didn't realize how much I turn my body with my legs. And, then I started having my leg be unreliable. I would walk a couple of steps and the pain would be so intense I would almost fall over. What the heck was happening? My body was NOT supposed to work like this. I am not new to exercise, so why was my body not cooperating?
I talked to my current ob and he said, "It's probably your sciatic nerve" (I think they have a book titled that in med school) and he sent me to a chiropractor. Well, apparently it's easiest for chiropractors to figure out what's wrong with you if you lie on your stomach. That wasn't going to happen, so it has taken a little bit of trial and error, but what is the diagnosis to this long, dull story?
My pain has NOTHING to do with my sciatic nerve (by the way your sciatic nerve is actually three different nerves that come together in your lower back and wrap down around your leg which is why it could possibly be hurting during pregnancy). No, my pain was from two different sets of muscles--the adductor and hamstring muscles. The adductor muscles run alongside the interior of your knee and keep your knee from flopping over when you... say LUNGE forward. Your hamstring muscles I'm sure all of you know about if you've done any stretching at all. The story is that those muscles are always tight and being pregnant and attempting to lunge forward exacerbates that condition to unbearable proportions.
The only solution is to drink lots of Sonic limeades and eat chocolate as soon as the kids go to bed. Not so much, but it may work if I gave it a chance. Really though, now when I am supposed to be lunging in my workouts, I do squats. I do LOTS and LOTS and LOTs of squats now. And, of course, like any problem, my movement issues are not completely typical--meaning, I can do side lunges without any problem and that really shouldn't work out, but it does.
So, next time you find yourself pregnant and your leg hurting, don't start pointing the finger at your sciatic--it could be your adductor or maybe your hamstring or perhaps a completely different muscle that you have never heard of before.
It has been really humbling to have to "take it easy" when I really want to push hard and keep this goal to do what I've always done. I feel like I fail in so many other goals and resolutions and this was one that actually seemed doable. I am grateful for my healthy body though. I'm grateful that I am able to still do almost everything I want to do anyway. Life really is about adaptation whether I want to admit to it or not.

This Desert Life

This is our neighbor's Jacaranda Tree. They only bloom this time of year and are so beautiful.

My grandparents came to visit Easter weekend and my grandma just couldn't believe how everything here is in bloom or so far along in its growth. Our growing season is completely off from most of the US and I guess I've just gotten a bit used to it. We planted our garden in February and now we have HUGE zucchinis and bell peppers and Owen's bean plant (from pre-school) is about to give us some beans. I also thought I had better show a picture of our ONE massive grapefruit that our tree gave us this last year. Anyway, we've loved our little above ground garden and I wish I would've taken photos of all my millions of snapdragons that were blooming the first three weeks of April, but I forgot.

It's hard to tell the length and width of these zucchini from the photo, but they are about as big around as my upper arm and as long as that too! The proud bean grower and his brother! (The kids love the onion blossoms.)

These bells are bigger than my fist by quite a bit.

Everyone who enjoys the garden that I grow.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to wrench this grapefruit from its mother. I didn't want to take away all of her hard work!

To give you an idea of the size of this grapefruit--compare it to Eli's head. You can see how much love (and water) was involved.

There were beautiful deep red snapdragons everywhere! The bush in the back is my new Privet. I'm hoping this corner will finally become something beautiful.