busy day and bone health

*I'm keeping this up for a while to make sure everyone who checks in now and then sees it. I assume those who already get email notices will continue to get them up until July when the 'follow by email' stops functioning. I've reinstalled the blogger 'follow me' widget.

I did manage to download the subscriber list with over 1,000 spam 'subscribers' all from outlook.com and all within a couple of months after I first put the widget on my sidebar. I ended up with 23 legit subscribers. So, starting in July, my intention is to email links to the group when I publish a new post. If you are in this group but do not wish to continue receiving notices of new posts, just reply with 'remove'.

Still can't figure out why my pictures won't open full size when you click on them. Most my images are 10” in the longest dimension, sometimes 12”, sometimes 8”. There must be a setting somewhere but I can't find it. I usually drag my images from the desktop to the post body but this time I'll use the 'add image' function to see if that makes a difference.

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Thursday was a busy day. Spent my morning at SHARE, then after lunch I used the trimmer to cut the ditch in front of Pam's house (two gas tanks worth of time) including the large patch of poison ivy (that I've poisoned TWICE) that had started growing and while I was wearing a hat, sunglasses, long pants, and boots, I did have on a short sleeved shirt so when I finished that I peeled off the long pants full of poison ivy juice and jumped in the car (yes, I did put on other pants) and went to the feed store for the poison ivy soap they sell and another container of brush/stump killer to treat the poison ivy with again when it puts on more new growth. Then I scrubbed the exposed skin on my arms and neck with the soap and so far so good.

Next was walking the dog, then washing the dishes of which I only got the plates done because I was also fixing the roasted cauliflower recipe that Ms Moon sent me (and it is really good). I figured I would have time to wash the utensils during one of the two 15 minute roasting times but alas that did not happen. I had asked my sister to pick me up a small jar of green olives when she went to the store which she did saying it was the only small jar they had and I didn't realize they weren't pitted until the cauliflower was in the oven and I was ready to make the dressing. With chopped up green olives. Turns out you can't just pit a green olive like you can a cherry. I had to pare as much of the olive off the seed as I could until I had 1/3 cup. So there went my utensil washing time. Also, the recipe called for pancetta or bacon, no pancetta, I'll just use bacon but it wasn't until I was making it that I realized they must have meant canadian bacon because I was supposed to cut it up into 1/8” cubes. No way was I going to cut up four slices of raw bacon into 1/8” cubes so I fried it and crumbled it and just sprinkled it on after the cauliflower had finished roasting.

If you're not interested in my bone health you can skip the next paragraph.

Yesterday I had a follow up appointment with my primary care doc to discuss the results of my bone scan. They scan two areas, the femur and the lumbar spine and there are two scores for each, the T score which is a healthy woman of childbearing age and the Z score which is the average norm for post-menopausal women. Women tend to lose bone density as the estrogen levels decline. My previous scan was five years ago so in five years, my femur went from a Tscore of -2.2 to -2.6 and a Zscore of -0.6 to -0.9 so a slight decrease. The lumbar spine went from a Tscore of -2.5 to -3.1 and a Zscore of -0.5 to -1.0 so a larger decrease in bone density there. Five years ago my chance of a bone fracture was 12.5% within 10 years. My doc calculated my current risk of fracture with the new data and that has increased to 13.something% now. Still pretty good odds. She didn't recommend the medication because she knows I won't take it (heinous side effects and not that effective) and because of my general health and activity levels. She did recommend exercises to strengthen core muscles (which I do some already) to help protect my lumbar spine. I really like my doctor, she's an osteopath so open to proactive health measures like diet and exercise and supplements as opposed insisting on meds for every condition though she will prescribe them if/when needed.

It rained off and on all day yesterday which we really needed and I spent the rest of the day doing nothing including not washing the utensils.

Since I need an image or two to test the whole embiggin thing here's a picture of my sister, brother and me taken the night before he left. Pam is the oldest, then me (on the left), the rebellious middle child, then John, the baby. Not a great picture of me but whatcha gonna do?

And this of two carpenter bees on the rocket larkspur.

Edit: yay! The images embiggin!