Paint pouring

 

I was offered this Aureuo paint pouring kit (affiliate link) free to review. Wanted to try paint pouring, so of course I snatched it right up.

The kit came with 4 colors of pre-mixed paints, silicone, stirring sticks, gloves, a disposable drop cloth, and one canvas.  As I am typing this, it costs about $20 at Amazon.

I was pretty sure there was enough paint for more than one canvas, so we also used a canvas we already had to turn it into our at home paint night / date night project.

I am kind of amazed at how fast and easy the basic “we’re newbies” first pours went.  I love our usual paint nights but drawing is not my strong suit, so I also get frustrated a lot. This was easy, fast, and I didn’t get frustrated once. There was even some leftover paint and silicone.

The only cons for this specific kit: you’ll need to provide your own cups and varnish.

We’re already buying more paint pouring supplies including another one of these kits specifically.

Our fave part was taking a photo of our results to take into the Procreate app to turn them into digital painting backgrounds. Here’s mine:

Fitness update.

Remember when this was going to be my fitness journey blog?  Ahh life.

I replaced my Fitbit with an Amazfit Bip S (affiliate link) instead.  It was about half the price of the new Charge 4.  The software isn’t maybe as refined as Fitbit’s but it does the job.  It’s a plastic body but since these things seem to get updated and replaced every few years, I am okay with that, especially given the price difference.  I enjoy how light it is considering it looks more like a smart watch than a sleek tracker. Good battery life if you don’t want all of the extra notifications on.  The screen is always on, but not really readable in the dark without turning it on because it is reflective.   Also I am a sucker for being able to replace the bands and it uses a standard watch band instead of a proprietary one.

Also we stopped walking.  It is summer in California.  MS in the heat is annoying enough. Adding a 1-2 hour walk in a mask every day was okay in the 70s, but a no go in the 80s-100s.  I didn’t want to lose progress though, so we swapped the walks for actual 30 minute workouts inside.  We are using the Body Project videos on YouTube.  Mainly because they are low impact and we can actually do the whole videos without needed to stop.  Right now we are doing 3 days a week but I feel like I will add a 4th alone because I noticed that if I am working out one day and  resting the next I am fine, but miss more than a day and the MS tingles show up very angry and make getting back on track difficult.  Mostly taking it day by day.  If one of us feels up to it and the other doesn’t, they we can do one alone or we try to find a yoga to deal with whatever needs to be stretched most at least.

Both the hubs and I have lost quite a bit from our highest.  He is down about 25 lbs.  I am down about 50 lbs.  Still overweight but at my highest I was nearly 250 pounds.  I am now under 200.  How much fluctuates so I just kind of leave it under 200 and know that is a huge improvement.   Cannot give the Team Body project videos themselves all of the credit,  because they are a newer addition but we’re both losing and/or maintaining still, so they definitely help.  Kind of at a plateau now, but still working on it.

Also we just mostly eat veggies, rice, potatoes, and the like at home.  Usually low calorie sauces.  Limited plant based meats, etc.  Twice a week we splurge for dinner, usually from our local vegan Thai place or from Fatburger (impossible for me, regular burger for the hubs).  Sounds a lot harder than it is.  You kind of lose your taste for most junk when you just aren’t eating it.

Picture this...

As an adult have you ever realized that something you experienced for your whole life was not how most others would experience the same thing? I am coming to that realization about myself now.

When people ask you to picture something, can you actually see that thing in your mind?  Because I cannot.  I didn’t know that when people count sheep, they can visually see sheep in their minds.  I thought flashback scenes in tv shows and movies were idealized versions of how we would like to see things from our past and a tool for the audiences, not that people could actually replay scenes in their minds that way. When you think of someone, you see their face in your mind?  Because I do not. I feel the memories and can describe them somewhat but obviously not as clearly as people who are seeing these things.  For me, it is more like narration.

I found this, new to me, truth on accident.  I recently took up meditation and I was finding that some just didn’t work well for me even though I liked them and the style felt comfortable to me.  So I was trying to figure out why I was struggling with them.  And that is when I realized that some guided meditations have you picturing this and that and then this again.  Cool for people who are actually seeing those scenes in their mind.  Because my mind’s eye is, I guess, blind(?)  I need more time to picture that. If you suggest that  I close my eyes and “picture” a beach, I would not see a beach. I would see darkness and maybe hints of a blob of color.  I would still be imagining the beach.  But instead of a picture I would be thinking something like “Sand, playground, water, birds, rocks, shells, kids playing....”  That takes much longer than seeing a picture in your mind I suppose.  I was still relaxed through most of my meditation sessions, but some had me not able to really enjoy the practice because it was moving too fast for how I “picture” something.  To me “picture this” is a figure of speech.  Imagine? Yes!  Picture it?  Not even a little bit.

Realizing that most people’s imaginations and memories are a completely different style from yours is a very weird experience.

I have been thinking of it on and off since I realized all of this last night. Having an internal monologue with myself.  I guess in some ways I am missing something.  It would surely make trying to art or craft easier if I could picture what I want to do.  Then again, I feel like this way I have to think when I was to “see” something.  I guess there is an advantage to that.

This apparently has a name: Aphantasia.  They don’t know a lot about it.  Some are born with it, some are this way due to trauma, some people on the Autism spectrum have it. I do have MS, so maybe that plays a role, but I really don’t remember even seeing pictures like that, not even before the MS, so probably not.  Whatever the cause, it doesn’t affect my life as it is just how I have always been.  I can see dreams sometimes, but even most of those are more like an audiobook than a movie.  Also apparently many who experience this do not like reading fiction.  I love reading fiction *shrug*. I guess some feel like they are missing something, not me, I didn’t know any of you were truly picturing a movie in your mind as you read.

It’s been awhile

Not sure why I am posting again, other than it makes it easy for me to find all of these things. I think everyone I know gets updates from me directly or on social media. Still I realized I stopped posting here completely last year. So here’s my step stats for all of last year + so far this year.  My total step count for 2019 was 2,866,256,   Floor count for 2019 was 134.  That all comes out to 1,269.2 miles.  863,320 calories burned in 2019.  2020 started much like the end of 2019, but is starting to improve finally.

Right after my last post I started feeling pretty yucky. I won’t go into details but I ended up in urgent care twice, the ER once, and then had to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. Never had a colonoscopy before but had endoscopy procedures twice before and hated them. This one was much smoother as I told them about my prior experiences and they made sure not to start until I was totally out of it. From those procedures they diagnosed me with Collagenous Colitis. I don’t recommend it.

 It was really bad from September until mid-January. They put me on a round of Budesonide and I am now starting to feel human again + the main symptoms are almost fully in remission. 

The hubs suggested we start doing walks together. So this month I’m working my way back to trying to hit my official FitBit goal of 7k steps and hoping to work back up to 10k days. I hit 10k yesterday for the first time since September.

I will say the giving up meat and limited dairy + the walks = I have lost about 45-50 lbs in the past two years.  There was some concern that being sick would cause weight loss in a less than ideal way, but since my weight fluctuates normally by about 5-10 lbs, I didn’t really notice much during that time.  At most I lost 4 lbs being sick.  I’m still not at my ideal weight.  I set my goal weight for something I think is achievable that would still be in overweight by about 10 lbs.  If I hit that weight, I may or may not set it for lower, today thought my goal is about 175.  I’m currently under 200.  At my highest I was almost 250.  So I’m already happy with the progress made.  Whether or not I can make 175 anytime depends on many things, but I am definitely trying.

August Step Count

I keep wondering why I am holding onto my blog since I did the reset awhile ago.  I need to art again soon or something.  For now, I’m finally getting around to checking out August’s step count.  Not as bad as I thought it’d be considering the heat and humidity were worse than usual so I was mostly a lump in my chair those days.

July Step count

I have been super lazy about posting because I’m mostly journaling the old school way / for myself.  And also no one I know is really on here anymore.  That said, here's my July step count.  Not as bad as I expected for Summer. 

June FitBit step counts

Okay so there’s been enough going on that clearly I cannot keep up with weekly right now.  Here’s all of June’s step counts.  That really low step count day was when I was sick. My official goal on FitBit is set to 7k.  My unofficial goal is to hit that magic 10k number.  I expect it to be nearly impossible to hit 10k during the summer because Heat + MS = miserable me.  But we’ll see how it goes, maybe I’m wrong.  I do try to get at least 5k at night before bed, after midnight.  Makes hitting 7k much easier in hotter days.  Also because of that most of my total steps are taken in walks that FitBit counts as exercise.  That’s my only form of exercise until we set up the yoga mat area of the living room.