Grandma Paula cookies can't be resisted...

Sunday, October 23, 2011
I went outside to rake leaves pleased to find that it hadn’t rained in like…30 hours.  I spent the next two hours raking leaves into piles and onto a tarp about the size of my back yard, then trying to drag them to the tree lawn…which is quite a thigh workout.  I was sweating profusely (when don’t I?) by the time I completed the raking, but I still had yard work. 

We have this crazy ornamental grasses growing all over the yard and they have to be cut down each year.  I’d decided that I’d take some of them down while they were still green this year thinking they would be easier to handle.  I knew it would be easier to bundle them if I tied them up before cutting, so I cut some twine and with it in hand, wrapped my arms around the grasses, pulled them together and tied them off.  It was then that I learned these things have offensive weapons and don’t like being cut down.  My arms and neck were sliced to ribbons and I looked like I had some kind of crazy rash, which burned with intensity.  I went inside to show Holly the damage they had done, but she had no sympathy.  “I get those things every time I work around them.  They hurt…but what’s the big deal?” she said.  She’s just a girl and she didn’t really understand.  “Look a little closer, Holly.  These aren’t the little paper cuts you get…I look like my arms got caught in a paper shredder, for God’s sake.  What I’m going through would kill a normal person,” I said.  She stared at me for a moment…and walked away.

I put the pain out of my mind and suited up for a bike ride.  I had less than two hours before I needed to be at the eye doctor’s for him to check out my recurring eye infection and wanted to get every minute on the bike that I could.  It was a cool but sunny and perfect day for riding.  Had I not needed to see the doc, I could have easily spent 3 hours on the bike.

I returned home to sweet smells from the kitchen.  Holly’s Kitchenaid was mashing some stuff that would turn into cookie dough…and then cookies.  “What kind of cookies are you making?” I asked.  “Grandma Paula chocolate chips,” she answered.  “What are you trying to do to me?  You know I can’t resist those things!”  She mentioned something about how there were other people living in the house and that we were having company and I should show some will power.  Blah…blah…blah.  Yeah…I should have will power, but not when Grandma Paula chocolate chip cookies are involved.  They’re absolutely my favorite dessert…always have been…and there’s a law somewhere that says I have to eat them with cold milk…until I’m sick.  So…Holly’s evil…you can see it…can’t you?

Bike workout:  One hour and 35 minutes.  Leaf raking: 2 hours.

Training Heart Rate: 130 bpm riding, maybe 80 raking.
Calories burned during workout:  1,300 biking and 600 for yard work.