Author: dad

As warm-up before today’s rowing, I cut down three small trees. They were the most likely culprits for an invasion of roots into sewer pipe behind our house.  The stopped- up drainpipe from house to sewer was somewhat of an emergency yesterday evening, which warranted a weekend and nighttime visit by a plumber who specialized in that problem.

The area where the roots invaded was right under three small Palo Verde trees, so they were all three cut down today.

Palo Verde trees are pretty when they bloom, but they are not nice to be physically close to.  They are covered with stiff, needle-sharp thorns.  The three scratches on my arm are three of a few scratches received while cutting and carrying away branches. A few cactus thorns managed to get stuck in my legs also.  Ordinary results, it seems, when working near and among native desert foliage and plants.

Palo Verde trees don’t make good firewood either.  If burned in a fire, the wood burns quickly and the smoke stinks.

As for today’s rowing:  It was more fun than it had been the previous few days.  The reason it was not boring and was fun today is:  I didn’t watch any movies or videos to distract from the experience of rowing.  The rowing was mindful, focused and sufficiently ethereal to be fun and mentally absorbing.  Even though I rowed alone…. online, but alone. Sigh.

Happy rowing to you.

Before writing about what’s mentioned in today’s title, the most important event of the day should be mentioned:  The whole hole was completely dug today and is now ready for the planting of the flowering bush for the hummingbirds.  Photos above, of the finished hole and also a close-up to show that the measuring tape indicates it is about 28 or 29 inches deep, which is supposed to be optimal depth.  After the bush is planted, I’ll try to put a photo of it in a future blog post.

The title of today’s blog post was chosen because I’m wondering whether or not it was a coincidence that yesterday’s heart hiccups (palpitations), which had bothered me all day and all through yesterday’s rowing, were remedied by taking 5 mg of Cetirizine yesterday evening.  Cetirizine is the chemical name for the brand name antihistimine called Zyrtec.

Yesterday evening, I was still bothered with the heart hiccups and its BPM was a lot faster than normal.  In the past, I’ve resorted to 1/2 tablet of Zyrtec some evenings, because though I have no allergies I’ve noticed that it helps me sleep through the night.  Yesterday evening, I thought that if the heart hiccups continued, I’d have a hard time sleeping that night, so I took 1/2 a dose of Zyrtec (about 5 mg of Cetirizine) at about 8:30 or 9:00 pm.  By 10:00 pm, the heart palpitations disappeared and the pulse returned to its normal resting rate.  So I’m wondering if it was a coincidence or if taking the Cetirizine helped stop the palpitations.  I may never know, but if it happens again, I’ll try Cetirizine again and see if the same results happen as promptly.

The above screenshots show yesterday’s recovery after rowing, when my heart barely slowed down even though I’d totally stopped rowing (the graph on the left) and today’s recovery (the graph on the right) when my heart slowed down quite normally. Curious, to say the least.

Today’s HR graph’s are much better looking than the sloppy HR graphs of yesterday, when there were heart hiccups throughout that session.

Happy rowing and hole-digging to you.

Today’s main labor, time-wise, was working at digging a hole to plant a bush.  The bush has flowers that hummingbirds like.  Digging the hole is slow-going, because the soil is very hard and I had to use a pick and a digging bar, more commonly known locally as a “caliche bar,” to break up the earth so it could be scooped out.

I started the job yesterday, with a shovel, like the guy in the photo above this paragraph.  But soon I had to resort to a pick, like one of the guys in the top photo above is holding.  Today, I had to make a trip to the hardware store to get a 16 pound digging bar which is a steel rod about 6 feet long.  It weighs 16 pounds, is pointed at one end and has a chisel-head on the opposite end.  It works well, a few inches at a time.

By the time the hole is complete, it will not be as deep as the impressively deep hole in the above photo.  It will only be a little more than two feet deep, but each inch requires a lot of pounding and scraping. If the thought occurs to me tomorrow, I’ll take a picture of the hole I dug.

For today’s rowing, the main session was 10K online in the company of a rower who was located in Canada.  I mostly rowed a constant pace and he rowed about the same average pace but he did one minute or so sprints, every thousand meters or so.  There was also a 5 minute warmup and warm down before and after.

The heart rate graph is very sloppy because the heart was “hiccuping” today.  But otherwise everything felt normal.

Happy and heart-hiccup-free rowing to you.