{"id":799,"date":"2021-06-15T14:16:23","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T19:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/?p=799"},"modified":"2021-06-15T14:16:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T19:16:23","slug":"scorpions-in-the-dark-calories-in-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/06\/15\/scorpions-in-the-dark-calories-in-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Scorpions In The Dark: Calories In The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no real joy in knowing there’s a scorpion in the room at 2:45 am. You can hear it scuffling through papers.\u00a0 You know it’s a\u00a0 scorp, because it doesn’t sound like a cockroach (another unwanted night visitor) but when it’s not in the papers, you have no idea where it is, or how many there are.\u00a0 I have a UV flashlight as well as LED headlamps, but when you first wake up, wakened by the faint noise because you’re set to alarm on it, that doesn’t help.\u00a0 You locate the sound…it’s…there.\u00a0 <\/em>The UV flashlight isn’t; it’s on the other side of the bed, in the basket of lights.\u00a0\u00a0 All you can find by feel is the headlamp, so you take that, and sure enough, a large scorp is making progress from A to B, B being something you aren’t going to turn over in the middle of the night in case there are multiple scorps in it.\u00a0 Cautiously, you light up your heavy slippers, the ones safest for scorp stomping, barring rubber boots.\u00a0\u00a0 You’re just awakened and alarmed, and so you need the bathroom.\u00a0 There’s a light in there.\u00a0 When you’re done you go back to bed and swing your feet up, with the slippers (now you know there are no scorps inside still on your feet.\u00a0 It will come out again.\u00a0 They always do.\u00a0 Now you find the UV flashlight and tuck it under the pillow.\u00a0 And wait.\u00a0 And wait.\u00a0 And then, the stealthy sound of scorp exiting the hiding pile.\u00a0 You turn on the UV light, scanning the floor…and there it is, a pale green shape on a pale gray carpet, moving…and then it stops.\u00a0 You slide to the edge of the bed, keeping the light on the scorpion.\u00a0 It moves an inch.\u00a0 One slippered foot quietly on the floor.\u00a0 It’s heading for the bed.\u00a0 Two slippered feet quietly on the floor–easy when it’s moving this slowly.\u00a0 Stand up, then crouch a little; the scorp stops again.\u00a0 Sure of the target and its position….STOMP, hard.\u00a0 They’re harder to kill on carpet.\u00a0 Slide the foot firmly.\u00a0 And then look.\u00a0 The “tail” twitches once, twice.\u00a0 Then it’s uncoiled and no other part moves.\u00a0 Cautiously, to the bathroom, to take the BBQ tongs off the towel rail beside the toilet.\u00a0 Back to the dead scorp.\u00a0 Picking it up carefully with the tongs and holding it away from your bare legs, you carry it to the toilet, drop it in, and flush.\u00a0 Another one gone.<\/p>\n

Calories in the day are fewer than they used to be, and I’m losing at a respectable rate.\u00a0 Will be for some time.\u00a0\u00a0 What’s changed is age, which–according to medical sources–demands more of some micronutrients when you’re over 70.\u00a0 Calcium and protein needs both go up quite a lot and place constraints on the diet that may be hard to fit into the desired caloric intake.\u00a0\u00a0 When talking about diets for the elderly, much of the discussion is on getting enough, and ignores caloric restriction because of course *their* patients are skinny old folks.\u00a0 I am not.\u00a0 Old but not skinny.\u00a0 So I’m having to spend time calculating and measuring and muttering, that kind of finicky thing drives me bonkers.\u00a0\u00a0 Also if I really can’t get enough protein and calcium on 1000c\/day, I’ll raise it a little.\u00a0 Keeping bones and muscles happy matters more than how fast I lose.\u00a0 However…thanks to the water loss of the first week, I’ve dropped 10 pounds in 28 days.\u00a0\u00a0 (The other weeks were 1.6,1.6, and 1.4.)\u00a0\u00a0 Exercise is also happening, mostly for muscle retention and building strength this time, since I can’t ride the bike anymore. )\u00a0\u00a0 Many more to go, but I fit into slightly smaller clothes already.<\/p>\n

R- saw wild turkeys yesterday and today both–we used to see them, some 20 years ago when we bought the 80 acres, smallish flocks in the fall and winter harvesting acorns from the live oaks.\u00a0 But mostly now we don’t, because the acreage west of us is being cleared and built in, and dogs roam there a lot.\u00a0 However, he got a picture of a hen today; yesterday he saw the hen and a young poult about half her size.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0 Turkey hen looks very plain at this season, soft gray-browns.\u00a0 Can wild turkeys fly?\u00a0 Yes, they can.\u00a0 They can fly up steeply as that ladder behind her, or even steeper, to roost in a tree overnight.\u00a0 They do make a lot of racket.\u00a0 So far as we know, right now she and her poult are the only ones on the place, but in the interest of attracting more, we aren’t seriously trying to find them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here she is farther west; she wants to get into the line of brush, but R-‘s there so she’s moving quietly and steadily through the grass.\u00a0 Because I looked at this on the whole screen, I was able to see more of her, and her tail extends beyond the little tree.\u00a0 RSM took both these shots.\u00a0 He’s right up against the south fenceline.\u00a0\u00a0 I’d like to convince her to hang around, but definitely don’t want to habituate her to staying close to the fenceline as hunters will spot her.\u00a0\u00a0 I hope she’s got others in the flock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no real joy in knowing there’s a scorpion in the room at 2:45 am. You can hear it scuffling through papers.\u00a0 You know it’s a\u00a0 scorp, because it doesn’t sound like a cockroach (another unwanted night visitor) but when it’s not in the papers, you have no idea where it is, or how Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}