This morning I gave my husband his Father's Day gift from me. It was one of those car wash wand things from Walgreen's. He was rinsing off his vehicle getting ready to go to a job so I stopped milking, left my girl on the stand eating grain and gave the wand to him so he could try it out.

I went back to milking and while sitting there, I decided I would try out the car wash wand myself once I was done milking.

Ends up I washed my son's car, and then I washed my car. I used a sponge with hot soapy water in a bucket, and towel dried both vehicles so they wouldn't have water spots. Okay, that in itself is something which has been known to put me down for a two hour nap.

Then I cleaned my carpet cleaner which has been sitting on the front porch since the last time I tried to clean carpets in my house. I guess that has been a few months.

I was so wiped out after the last time I cleaned just the dining room carpet that I didn't have the energy to put the cleaner away, and it's a big honkin' professional style ugly beast of a thing. My husband moved it onto the porch and there it has stayed all these weeks/months.

Then I set about tackling my bedroom carpet, which was a disastrous nightmare since my husband feeds one of our dogs in the house. Raw bones. They make a greasy mess on the carpet and we live in the desert.

And the carpet is beige. Not a good combination at all. It makes for big ugly brown greasy dirty spots all over the carpet which I have not had the energy to even care about.

But now that I have my beautiful bedding, I wanted the carpet to be clean.

I knew the carpet cleaner, which is great at spraying water and sucking it out, would not do the job so I was going to have to put a lot of elbow grease into the job.

My body is sore from the exertion, but I did it.

I also hope I didn't poison myself too badly with the soap that I used – I decided to use Fels Naptha. Here is the procedure that I followed:

1. Use the carpet cleaner to liberally spray water onto a section of the carpet (approximately 1′ width and 2′ length)
2. Turn off the machine except for the pump (which sprays the water)
3. Getting down on hands and knees, use the bar of Fels Naptha directly on the carpet, rubbing it around the area sprayed with water until suds form
4. Grab the wand and lightly spray again (while still on hands and knees)
5. Scrub the area with a scrub brush
6. Stand up and turn on the suction pumps, grab wand and suck up the soap
7. Spray with water and suck up more soap
8. Do that three or four times on each stroke
9. Bend over and feel the carpet to see if it feels clean, or slick (remaining soap)
10. Spray and suck again until carpet feels squeaky clean
11. Start over again on a new section of carpet
12. Every third or fourth section of carpet, the cleaner was out of water so I had to…
13. Dump the dirty water down the commode
14. Refill the bucket and dump into the cleaner
15. Also the cleaner leaks slightly where the dirty water is released so I had to keep a bucket under the thing at all times.

The electrical breaker flipped on me twice, so I had to move the electrical cord to another room so it wouldn't overload and turn everything off.

When I was done, I asked my younger son to help me take the carpet cleaner outside to where it belonged.

At that time I showed him his shiny car and told him his momma did it for him.

Okay, here are some before and after photos. I told you the carpet was awful!

Now THIS is the kind of energy I wish I had all the time.

Having energy sparks my motivation and desire to get things done. Otherwise, I don't feel like doing anything. I think, if I had more energy, I would be able to stay on top of all the household chores and it wouldn't be a terrible effort.

Even while I was washing the cars, I was thinking how in the past just the thought of trying to locate the bucket and sponge were too much effort.

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On the list, they mention Bee sometimes. I remember looking at Bee's website a long time ago and leaving in a big hurry. It just scared me, all that deprivation – or at least that's all I could see at that time in my life.

Today I visited again and was just browsing through and checking out the various topics. I clicked on Lose Weight and eventually came to this page on how to Calculate Protein, Fat & Carb Ratios.

I was curious to see what my ratios would be. I was astounded to see how much fat I'm allowed to have:

• 63 grams protein
• 157 to 220 grams fat <!!>
• 32 grams carbs (50 if I weren't overweight)

I am tempted to start calculating everything, but I think I'll pass.

Let's get through June The Month With No Fruit first.

Speaking of fruit, I had ten blueberries today. So that makes 1 banana and 10 blueberries this month. That's practically no fruit, right? 🙂

Did I also mention yesterday that I spent two hours working in my garden?

We'll see if I crash and burn tomorrow.

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I've been doing an experiment, trying to eat only vegetables for breakfast and lunch, at least on the days that I'm home. The reason I was trying it is because the Fiber Menace guy says protein is hard to digest so we should only eat it once a day. I thought I would just try and see if my energy level would go up if I weren't eating protein.

I had an avocado for breakfast, then went out and milked and washed the cars, and washed my carpet cleaner. I was hungry after that but my son was going to cook so I decided to just get started on the carpet cleaning. I ended up getting cranky because I got too hungry, and finally I ate what my son had prepared, which was a hunk of steak and the “delicacy” which he calls “cauterized” cabbage, all with about a tablespoon of butter, and sea salt [affiliate link].

I worked some more and when I was done (I guess it took me about three hours to clean the carpet) I had some steamed vegetables: red bell pepper, zucchini squash (peeled) and eggplant (peeled and deseeded).

Dinner was steak and a salad which contained iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomato, carrots, green onions [affiliate link] and an olive oil with coconut vinegar dressing (with one crushed clove of garlic).

I'm tired. I'm going to take a quick shower and snuggle into my beautiful bed.

I am so grateful I found and decided to embark on my GAPS journey.