Today's Report: Meh

Today has had its positives and its negatives for sure. 
Mr. Moon is up at Lake Seminole so my time has been my own to do with as I want, and what I wanted to do was to dig up that patch of potatoes I planted from last year's left-over crop sort of as an experiment because they looked pretty lacking in life-force. Glen planted a few chunks of seed potatoes there too when he ran out of room in the row he was planting. 
I got out the beach umbrella and provided myself with shade and while I dug and pulled, I listened to an interview that Linda Sue had sent me the Youtube link for with Ezra Klein and Julia Belluz on the New York Times Opinion podcast on the GLP-1's. I think it's a podcast. Ms. Belluz is a health journalist and book author who has done a great deal of research in this area, as has Ezra Klein. 
Now, I probably will not sit and watch a video of people talking, but I'll sure as hell listen to it while I'm working in my garden and that's what I did today. 
It was a fascinating look at what we know and don't know and are learning and studying about the reported effects of GLP-1's and how they work in the brain and how observing and studying that is changing how we understand appetite and a hell of a lot of other things. 
I'm not going to go into the whole thing by any means. Here's the link for it. 

One of the things that really struck me though was how they are discovering that appetite is not controlled by the stomach and what's in it, but the brain. Which I think most of us sort of realized although how many of us who have struggled with weight all of our lives been told to, "Just eat when you're really hungry"?
Well, some of us have brains that tell us we're hungry all the time. Especially if you put food in front of us and in the world we live in now, food is almost always available and virtually in front of us. We don't even have to leave the comfort of our homes to have access to delicious sugary, fatty, salty foods. We can pull the phone out of our pocket and make a call and before we know it, all of that deliciousness is right at our door. 
Ezra Klein said that he has struggled with his weight since he was a boy and very much still does. He said that if there was a plate of Oreos on the table between him and Ms. Belluz, at least fifty percent of his energy would be spent on contemplating those cookies and fighting the urge to eat them. 
And that sums up exactly what it's like for so many of us. 

But somehow, the GLP-1's change that function in the brain so that unless we are really and truly hungry, we just aren't that concerned or interested in the cookies. What we once could not resist, or at best could resist but only with great effort, is now not a big deal. 

I will never forget going to breakfast with a woman who had once been a very, very good friend of mine. We both ordered and I tried to make my "good choices" as I always did because I was always trying to lose weight or at least not to gain weight, whereas she ordered a regular breakfast and several other side dishes off the menu. 
Now here's the thing- that woman was thin to the point that I often wondered where she kept her internal organs. 
But.
She had always been thin. That was just the way she was. She never had to give a second thought to her weight. 
And so when our food arrived, I ate everything on my plate while she had a few bites of each thing and then put her fork down. We sat there and talked for over an hour and during that time I spent an inordinate amount of energy being focused on what was left on her plate which was at least 80% of what she'd ordered while she never picked up her fork again, as if all of that deliciousness in front of her wasn't there at all. 
And the damn thing is, I know this woman judged me, thinking that all I needed to do was to have a little more self-control and will power when it came to eating. 

And that is how it has been for so, so many of us who have struggled with our weight and so to be able to take a drug that (in my case, at least) almost immediately eliminated that inappropriate focus on food, it was (and is), nothing short of life-altering. 

So that was one take-away I got from the interview. I don't expect a lot of you to listen or watch the entire thing. But if you have questions about the drugs and how they work or how we think they work and what the other benefits from them might be, I'd recommend it. 

So back to the garden. I dug up this many potatoes.

Not a great harvest but there are some fine, larger, firm spuds in there. 

And then I worked on ridding the northwest corner of the garden of the damn cherry laurel sprouts and a few other weeds and then I did a little more mulching. While I was doing all of this I was listening to what had, for some damn reason, come up on my phone after the NYT's interview had finished, which was interviews with my boys. My old boys. Mick and Keith and Ronnie and Charlie too, who had still been alive when a lot of these were recorded. Some of the interviews were part of a documentary of sorts and so music was mixed in. You'd think I'd have had enough of the Rolling Stones for awhile but no, I had not. And hearing their voices- well, that's not the same thing at all as reading a rather dry book on them. 
So I really enjoyed that. One of the interviews was done before the tour they did for their fiftieth anniversary and everyone, including the Stones themselves, were fairly amazed at how they'd lasted that long. 
And that was ten years ago. And now they're doing interviews on what it's like to be recording and releasing new music sixty years on. 

But even with the Stones and even being in the garden, which I love, I just didn't seem to be really feeling one with the universe or whatever that half-assed feeling is when the energy and interest just aren't there. I stomped some more marigold seeds I saved from last year into the dirt but I don't have a lot of hope for them. 

I watered the porch plants, I filled up three ceramic pots with dirt, one of them being a duck and two of them being hens. I'd gorilla glued one of the hens who had cracked after last winter's freeze. I transplanted a few things into them, just for fun. 

Into the laundry room nursery these two went. 

And this one is on the kitchen porch. 

Both hens have Roseland plants in them. 

I also stuck five date pits into little pots to see if they do anything. I'd love to grow a date palm from seed.

Tomorrow I have pottery and I think this may be the first session I've attended without a daughter. Lily came with me one year and one year, I think I may have just not gone while Jessie was in NC. 
I'm not sure. 
But anyway, it'll be different but I know it'll be good for me. I need to get out of the house, out of my yard, out of my routine, out of Lloyd! And I'll get to see Lizzie and Gail and that will be nice. 
Goddam I hope that hibiscus got fired. 

That's a sweet little anole who was on the pineapple plant. He's not in focus. There were reasons. 
The poor little guy did not look good. I know it was a guy because he was displaying his prowess when it comes to puffing out his throat. But I think maybe he did that to scare me off. He was very thin and I believe that dark spot may be a healing wound. 

Bless his little tiny little lizard heart. May he live in peace from here on out. 

I would wish the same for all of us.

I'm going to go heat up some pork chop, lentil, vegetable soup which is actually very good. 

Love...Ms. Moon