SomaCow

I am a Geoff. I host a show. It’s an opiate for the masses. You are a mass. A Sessy Mass. Join me, as I talk about my life, and answer the question Do You Want To Die?

I am always looking for new places to walk. As I mentioned, Florida has a pretty extensive parks and trails system. This Saturday, friends have invited us to enjoy some time in the Orlando Wetlands, a water reclamation facility consisting of several hundred acres of neato outdoor paths and animals.

We’ll be taking cameras, so I hope to have some good shots for next week’s entries. I’ve been fiddling with the Instamatic App on my iPhone, which takes regular pictures and injects groovy filters and color enhancement to them. It’s nothing you couldn’t do with GIMP, Photoshop, or a hundred other photo manipulators, but I am enamored with it, nonetheless. ‘Cause I am a Hamster.

Thanks to spb13 for showing it to me! I love photography! I like the moment in time, the fleeting second forced to exist forever. Maybe that is why I take so many pictures now, to try and prove I was here, I lived, I saw things. Sad? Probably. But I think my life is enriched, when I look over the things my family and I did together. So screw you, Native Americans!

Anyway, hopefully I can tinker with the new app. Take some Hipstamatic Heron shots.

Sunday I intend to head down to Lake Eola in the morning and walk around the Fall Fiesta. It’s your typical arts and crafts and chicken on a stick fare, but with 600 booths and supposedly some fall weather on the way, I intend to make use of my legs and catch up on some people watching.

I keep trying to talk my camera and art friends into consigning some of their work to me, and I will rent out a booth and try to sell their wares. So many of the existing artists put up their art for exorbitant prices, I think a booth with some fair to low prices would move stock like gangbusters.

Life is settling nicely. I get up, I have a healthy breakfast, I work, I don’t eat out at lunch, I eat three times during the day, small, balanced mini meals, usually beans, spinach, green stuff, lean meat, and whole grains or nuts. My ring is falling off my pointer finger as I type this. I should be on track to be down 100 pounds by December.

Can you imagine? I am already 90 pounds down. NINETY EFFING POUNDS. I would accept people’s congratulations, but when you lose 90 and realize you need to lose 110 more…

Man, I was a big piece of pork.

Speaking of pork!

I made some awesome pork tenderloin, along with sweet potatoes, beans, and Jen made us a Big Damned Salad. Even with the use of maple syrup and some OJ in a marinade on tonight’s pork, my blood sugar just rang back a 77. The beans, people. Beans are good food. Get yourself some damned beans.

For today, I seem to be managing the diabetes. Makes for a nice day!

My name is Geoff and I’m here to say, I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way! The Bedrock yellow orange purple lime and red, but to get that fruity taste, I gotta trick Fred.

And by Fred, I mean DEATH.

I miss fruit. God, I miss fruit. I miss it like my name was Seth and I just got banished from West Hollywood.

I miss it big time.

Right before I was diagnosed with diabetes, I was drinking fruit juice by the truck load. Fruit juice, it turns out, isn’t really all that good for you. Damn you, Welch’s!

According to what I read online, I should and can eat some fruit, in some ways, but I am terrified to “ruin” my perfect record of kick ass blood sugars. So far, I have only been willing to eat some tomato slices, half a banana, a few raspberries, or a few bites off the fruit bowl at First Watch (Breakfast restaurant, try it some time! I get the lean machine, and for nancy food, it’s pretty great!)

So, help me out. Exactly WHAT can I eat, fruitwise? Or better still, what CAN’T I eat? Apparently watermelon is good, but, jesus, it’s just fructose and water, isn’t it? So much reading.

I love all of your comments, and I love being kept honest, be it by my family, a listener, a friend, or a mix of that. But, I have to be honest here.

I have not been exercising enough. Here is all that I have done this week

Sunday – 5 miles woods/trails walk. Low impact speed, carried Rowan for maybe five minutes, LOTS of strolling, not much heartbeat lifting

Monday – Jack Shit. Fail day.

Tuesday – Walked 1 mile

Wednesday – Walked 1 mile

Thursday – Walked 1 and 1 half miles

Mind you, walking a mile takes about 15 minutes. If walking is to be my exercise, I need to be gunning for 45 minutes, and either corroborating that with a load (carrying baby or weights), or an incline, or faster walking speed.

SO I am doing less than a third what I should be doing, and that is just not cutting it, fatty boom blatty. WTF, Over? DWYTD?

My intention is to kick it up a notch, and be accountable to you, surely, but also myself.

So, a friend suggested I get on this website – http://www.dailymile.com (Thanks, Heather!)

I have done so, my name is Geoffrey Peace on there. Feel free to friend me, watch what I do, whatever. I am going to go familiarize myself with the site, and see what the all is entailed. Hopefully it will help me to remain vigilant, because I am doing great with medication, and I am doing much, much better with diet, but exercise is inconsistent and con right now.

It’s nice to listen to podcasts while you walk. Try ours sometime!

I ate a lot, I have the diabetes gene, I stayed inside too much. Shocker of all shockers, I now am learning to live, or at the very least not die, with diabetes.

It’s amazing, the neighborhood I live in. There are people who spend their whole afternoons bustling in their yards, warshing their cars, watering their begonias, trimming up their crepe myrtles (sadly, not a pancake), and generally just being outside all evening long.

There are all kinds of birds, and dogs, and a snake, and possum families, and a cockatoo, or maybe it was a cockatiel… I am only sure of the cock.

There are buzzards in the sky, and a moon, and various barbecued smells, and spanish rice smells, and burning maple leaf smells.

There are crunchy underfoot leaves, and crunchy underfoot acorns, and crunchy underfoot kitties (ack!). There are hills, and ponds, and cute little yard things that don’t do anything but rust. There are myriad wonders on my streets.

There are stodgy neighbors, and friendly neighbors, and stoic neighbors, and republican and democrat neighbors, but I don’t hold it against either of them. There are hot neighbors, and smelly neighbors, and neighbors that wave back (my favorite kind!)

There are also two wonderful girls, willing to traipse about with me as we lap the neighborhood.

We chat with each other, and squeal with delight at the butterflies and dog poop, and build up a healthy appetite for the dinner (SHARK MEAT!) we will cook together.

This evening, a year ago, would have consisted of eating Popeye’s Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, cole slaw, and biscuits drizzled with honey. In a carbohydrate and salted fat stupor, we’d have drooled ourselves into a doze-coma watching Food TV, or some god-awful reality show, while our child fussed at her lack of stimulation and stayed up, possibly too late, watching her dad slowly kill himself between trips to the bathroom.

Plus, stinky smoke.

I really, really enjoyed tonight.

Not just for the great dinner, conversation, and some light exercise. Not just for the nice weather, friendly neighbors, and happy child.

I enjoyed it because it can be like this all the time, if I merely insist that I try. My wife is supportive, my kid is up for anything; the only person that was holding us back… was me.

It’s like we were on a stagecoach, aimed for the cliff, horses lathered and laboring, wheels fittin’ to bust off, and I kept whipping and whipping and whipping, driving us ever closer.

I am glad I put down the whip.

I am glad I am letting go of the reins.

The horses may lead us to water, or perhaps make us think.

But they don’t want to die.

I have no idea what I am talking about. Man, shark and green beans ROCK!