I Thimk

Painted the siding today. Went around the house in four hours. The trim is where the work is. I haven't bought that paint yet.

About two, maybe three, days before I bought the paint, my lower back had me hobbling. I was in pain. But I felt it was temporary, as I have had similar episodes for at least a decade. I believed, as I still do, that it was largely due to a lack of meaningful exercise. But, triggered by an unnoticed incident. You need strong muscles to hold up a vertebral column surrounded by all that fat and sagging whatever. I believe the painting cured the episode. After I finished, I crept around a store with my wife to pick out gifts for my youngest grandson's birthday. Was I glad to get home and rest. This morning, I popped out of bed, all over the bad back episode. I firmly believe I got better because I got so much exercise.

I read some time ago that strengthening your stomach muscle helps prevent back problems.
http://www.spine-health.com/wellness/exercise/back-exercises-and-abdominal-exercise-recommendations

I work on those stomach muscles three times a day.

Good for you! I know about it, but don't follow my own advise. A few times a year, I might raise my legs while in bed, but that's about it.

I really do try to get exercise. Sometimes it gets too easy to sit at this desk.

We try to walk every day for our exercise. My old body even begins to resist if we try to do the 30 minute walk.

I'm getting more that way all the time. A project like this paint job is what the doctor ordered. I didn't get started with the trim paint until four today. We had a birthday party to go to. My youngest grandson is six. There is a place called Bounce Bounce that has every imaginable form of bouncing apparatus. It was held there. Still I got a pretty good start on the trim. It's my stragedy to use a roller every place possible before breaking out a paint brush, over the whole house. The brush is for filling in the rest and making straight lines.

There comes a time when balance can be an issue. Mine isn't horrible, exactly, but I'm much more wary than I was a year ago. I hold onto columns or walls more. I use an old stick to go to the neighborhood mail box, which to me is surrounded by hazzard in its immediate area. I highly doubt the city will fix the fked up paving. The stick is from from when my neighbor finally trimmed her mulberry tree (heh, illegal here) and stuff landed on my roof, later with Michael, friend of Diane and I and Roger, clearing the roof. Nice mulberry sticks. Re the mailbox nest, I think I'm paying for earlier design sins.

I don't need the stick otherwise, but still am careful. I'm more wary of people speeding around at the grocery store.

They should be wary of me and others for not seeing them. Not to bore all who know me, but I've quite diminished peripheral vision, and as I'm now more flibberty, I think of them as comets. Or dolts, the ones striding with the smartphones.

I used to design and specify handicapped ramps. Now I have to gird my loins re their sharp angles. Not that I remember ever specifying that angle stuff, specs may have changed. I don't know if all that sharp angle situation is nationally routine.

Even as my bestest remodelling and designing self, I was roof avoidant personally. I could specify them though.

I admire you for doing your own maintenance. I used to love working around the house. At my age, I don't trust myself using the ladder.
My wife has a gardener and housekeeper come in to take care of our home now.

I have fond memories of a mulberry bush, in California. My brother and I would save our lunch bags and when we walked home from school, we filled them with ripe red mulberries. Mom made us a cobbler every time we did it.

My friend from my Navy days is one year my senior. He informs me that if he is going to walk very far he takes along a walker. I don't recall what he said his health issues are. My wife's shots in the knees took a whole month to take full effect. She said the other day, "Finally the knees feel good." I don't know how it works when she needs follow up shots. Just have to wait and see.

I bet I've been up and down the ladder fifty times in two days. I have one that adjusts between being a straight ladder for getting on building tops and a step ladder. It has a bar at the bottom to keep it from sliding sideways. Right now I am using it as a step ladder.

I've seen those ladders, but never bought one. I don't remember the last time I climbed on a ladder, but when I did, my wife tried to stabilize it.

Close to thirty years ago, one of my brothers bought my ladder so we could carry it around to make bids on jobs. He moved away and left it with me. So long as I keep the movable parts oiled, it works as good as a new one.

Hi. I remember one of our plant teachers clueing us in, how great mulberrys are, asking us to taste. I take it they are allergy infernoes, don't know if that is true, but it was going on back then.

I also remember the horribly treated mulberry trees in my husbands parents' mobile home park. No kids either. My then little niece was not only a kid, but the wrong color.

We violated that stuff.

I can still do ladders but there is a bit of fear going on.

All I know is, we ate those cobblers with a vengeance. I've known a few white mulberry trees. They are not as tasty and I never got a cobbler from them.

http://www.pollenlibrary.com/Genus/Morus/
Mulberry allergies.

I have never had any food allergies. I have a sister in law who could be killed by peanuts.

My brother-in-laws daughter is allergic to peanuts, but that's the only person I know who has that allergy.