Light day

Yesterday, I did some rather extensive hoeing with a hoe and pickax, then raked well in the greenhouse. Was expecting to work, so stopped to take a nap in the afternoon. Got called off from work again. So, I decided to go ahead and dig out some of the remaining bamboo roots in the yard. When I moved in there was a lot of running bamboo, with evidence that bamboo once covered as much as one third of the back yard. 

I dug up roughly 100 lbs of bamboo roots, which is hard work and a lot of bamboo root. Ask anyone who has ever tried this. Bamboo is rhizomatous, so the root (singular) grows forever and must be chopped apart with a pickax to remove it piece by piece. It also grows on multiple levels, one over another, so you can get through one layer to find another beneath that. In my yard, I've found as many as three layers I could identify. Still not done but made considerable progress. 

Along the way, I pulled my lower back. Walking like an old man today and writing with a heating pad on the chair behind me. I also found my hands were swollen and visibly bruised. That's an odd thing, as I do not bruise with major trauma. 

I had been taking a protein drink lately because I have gluten intolerance and therefore higher protein needs than most. Maybe I was taking too much? Did my research. No, not too much protein, I was taking too little protein! 

Some possible effects of not having enough protein in your diet can be: Fatigue, depression, anxiety, lowered immune response, bruising easily (capillaries become more fragile), long healing time, anemia and muscle wasting (short list). I knew some of this but not all. May have known at one time and forgot. 

Now, my protein intake is probably sufficient for normal activity but I have been doing some hard physical labor on and off for some weeks. Then had some digestive problems this weekend from something I ate at work. So the end result was that my blood thinned out and capillaries became weakened. (Also kept wondering why I was getting tired so easily while working.) So, I had a protein-heavy dinner. Going to take it easy today, let my body catch up.