Well the pain part is easy. I did a session of crossfit today and oh boy was it a doozy. For those don’t know crossfit is a high intensity short burst work out. A couple of these sessions a week will keep you sore and fit. It is a good exercise for those like me time poor but wanting to stay in shape.

The pleasure part is food and my problem is I love both my food and I love my kids. The food makes me put on weight but realising that I will be 60 the same year my daughter is 21 reminds me that I need to look after myself and keep the weight off. It is dilemma that we in the west are lucky enough to have.

When I climbed in Nepal it used to amaze the locals that the westerners would go for a run before breakfast to burn off calories. For the poor in that country the idea of burning of perfectly good food that could feed your kids was ludicrous. It also leads to a large amount of the issues we see in the world today both from a poverty and environmental point of view.

I do try. I eat vegetarian when I can but the call of the home cured bacon is sometimes TO STRONG…

So what to do. We I try to compromise a thing again me in the west are not really good at. I eat what I can locally eat the best I can and then yes I burn off the extra that is really just deliciousness rather than subsistence.

At the end of the day it is all you can do. Which reminds me that tonight’s dinner was tomato soup with fried croutons of A. sourdough bread in extra virgin olive oil (makes the best croutons ever) and some bacon… ok so I need to book another session of crossfit this week but man it was worth it.

Now I am going to limp off and have a bath so I can walk tomorrow.

So A. went to a family do this afternoon. She can be very kind to me realising I needed some time in the garden by myself rather than being surrounded by her lovely but crazy and full on Croatian family.

I had been a seminar all morning on D.I.Y. double glazing and had gotten home with the car just before A. and the kids headed off. I had not had time to get breakfast in the morning so once they were gone decided to get in a good lunch prior to the gardening I had planned.

Soft boiled some of the eggs from our chicken. Sliced some home cured bacon. Some feta. Organic pears quartered. The last of A.’s sourdough bread. All dumped in a frying  pan with a little olive oil.

It all fried up beautify. Added some nasturtium leaves to make me feel better having a healthy touch.

The combination of sweet caramelised pears and crispy salty bacon was amazing. A good cup of coffee on the side and I was set for the afternoon.

After it all I had a good afternoon of gardening but that is a tale for another day.

So I was supposed to get up and go to crossfit today, asthma is under control, kids and A. sorted, time sorted , alarm clock on, everything else is sorted no excuses! Except I didn’t… Couldn’t get up, couldn’t get focused, couldn’t be bothered.

Some days are like that. In the past prior to our lives being run by the clock I would have just chilled out and tomorrow would have been better. But now I am working for the man (and the man is a clock).

I have written how some days I struggle with my job. I have a good job, relatively interesting pays well and has good flexibility.  A. and I are in the upper bracket of earners in a rich country, relatively small mortgage great family and friends. Good life together. We having nothing to complain about.

So what is wrong?  Am I just an ingrate? Maybe. Did I live to well prior to the family? Probably. What can I do about it? Bugger all. Except to live.

Basically A. and I try to live as cheaply as we can. I have earned a lot less before both in my travels and Australia and I am aware of the fickle nature of the economy. My belief system is that the only way to escape the system is to rely on it as little as you can. Don’t get me wrong I have absolutely no issue with paying my tax’s (I think they should go up actually). I like vaccines, I like antibiotics, I like having asthma medication I have no desire to return to a pre industrial age and watch my wife die in childbirth, children of diseases and be a truly old man at 41. So I am more realistic than most in regards to this. Certainly more than many who live online and yearn for that simple life, with internet and running toilets thrown in of course!

What I do believe is the every dollar you earn is a little bit of you and you need to think about how it is you are spending that part of your life.

 We live frugally rather than cheaply we would rather spend $40 on books as present rather than $20 on cheap plastic crap. We take lunch to work and try to avoid waste but buy organic veg and meat. Use one car and buy second hand or wisely and scrape together what we can.

So onto falling off that wagon. I also wasted money at the canteen (I am a sucker for fried chicken). Then a chocolate bar. For most this is not a biggie but I can be hard on myself with this stuff. I used to live by $1 saved a day eqauls $365 a year and I can do lot more with that amount than the dollar a day.

Then home and plans. But kids, life and a snooze fixed that up as well. No plants planted no more of the retaining wall dug out nada, nix, nothing…

So what to do when you fall off your particular wagon. Be it weight, alcohol, drugs, life or the universe.

Don’t get angry or upset just get back onto it as soon as you can is the answer. For me it is heading off to a home double glazing course and then getting some stuff done over the weekend. Next week I will get into the projects again and keep on the move with life.

But for now the little man in our life is not settling for sleep so time to help out A.

Get back on that wagon people!

It is short post tonight I need to get some sleep before being tortured at cross fit at 6:00am tomorrow morning

But a short post on a big thing for me. IDEAS. I have lot of them and they drive my wife mad. At present I have dozens I would like done. From simple stuff like bottle planter to complex items like retaining walls and reclading the house.

While they drive poor A. mad they keep me alive and sane. Often it only the plans and thoughts of another plan that gets me through another day at the office. Generally I like my ideas to be of sustainable and preferably cheap kind. Using stuff already created stuff I can find, stuff other people think is rubbish. The fourth of the five R’s I try to follow. But that is a story for another post.

At the end of the day we should all be making stuff ourselves part of the problem is that we have outsourced ourselves and what we want to others. I am sure that for many sitting on the paved area under the shade cloth would be good enough. For me it will be sweeter when I have laid the bricks, sunk the posts and rigged the sale myself. And maybe just maybe I will sit on pallet seat and drink homemade beer and enjoy the view… while of course planning my next project.

20 Project in no particular order

1. Bluestone retaining wall
2. Shed move
3. Paving at back
4. Shade sail
5. Hot house (built of plastic bottles and reused glass panes)
6. Bottle planter
7. Homemade wine bottle torches
8. Pallet cellar for shed
9. Garden beds
10. Aquaponics system
11. Self cleaning duck pond
12. Self watering chicken feeder (tried a few and a few more to try)
13. Pallet seat
14. Home made mead and ginger beer
15. Compost from harvesting the reserve across the road.
16. Trees planted in holes int he side concrete
17. Solar dehydrator
18. Install of wood burning stove
19. Reclading and Insulating house (get rid of asbestos)
20. Retrofitting homemade double glaze windows.

So I cut the bacon tonight. It smelled very good for unsmoked bacon, texture was good and it had that nice pink colour that you get with good bacon. The thing I really noticed cutting it was that the firmness of the meat. It is not tough quite the contrary it cuts very easily and smoothly but had a nice denseness to it.

This could have been create by the fact that it was made from pork form a heritage Berkshire pig and the times we have roasted this type of meat it has had a different texture and flavour to it.

The bacon had a nice saltiness without being to salty and the mix of herbs had a nice flavour to.

It fried up a treat nice and did not shrink away like commercial bacon. Nice and crispy but I had to be careful as it seems to have lower burn point than commercial bacon.

Basically this is the bacon that my grandparents would have eaten a hundred years ago and it tastes as with so many items made by hand very different and I believe much better.

For a first attempt I am pretty happy to be honest. So happy in fact that I am going to have another go but next time I am going to get the smoker built first.