I have decided that housework does not count as intense physical exercise. We have been getting our house ready for sale. I've been washing windows, moving furniture, and packing boxes. Though it is physical enough that I often work up a sweat, it is not the kind of exercise that reduces stress and energizes me. When I'm finished, I'm just tired.

Yard work on the other hand in good Type O exercise. Today I mowed for the first time this year, and got a good work out.

Though I have been busy, I have been very diligent about what I eat. I am very much aware that I am under pressure at the new house and at the old house, not to mention that yearbook deadline season has started. No matter how busy the schedule gets, I make time to cook beneficial vegetables and meat. Avoids have been extremely rare.

I went to a birthday party tonight for a friend who has just turned 50. The party was at a well known Mexican restaurant. I knew the food would be tasty, and I knew that the BTD choices would be difficult.

First they brought out tacos. Even from across the room, I could tell that they were loaded with cheese. What do I do? I asked myself. When the waiter put my taco in front of me there was no cheese! Someone in the kitchen had made a mistake, but it worked out for my benefit.

The main course was one enchilada, one tamale, rice, and beans. The corn in the enchilada and tamale were avoid, of course. However corn does not give me the obvious trouble that wheat does, so I decided to eat my dinner and enjoy it.

Temptation was waiting in the form of a beautiful tres leches cake. Tres leches means three milks, and as the name suggests it contains the two biggest avoids for Type Os. Nonetheless, I confess I was considering whether to splurge on my friend's birthday and have a piece of cake.

I took lots of pictures at the party, and I wanted a shot of the ladies who were serving the cake. I got into position, and watched through the viewfinder for the right moment. The lady cutting the cake used her fingers to scoot the cake onto the plate. I didn't have a problem with that - I would probably have done the same. Then she licked the icing off her fingers. That I would NEVER have done. As I watched, she served three pieces of cake, then licked her fingers again. She was in a rhythm, serving and licking. I completely lost my appetite for cake - it was no longer a temptation.

I headed across the room to take more pictures, stopping briefly at my place. "No cake for me tonight," I whispered to the person sitting next to me.

Our Strong Son is back at college. Spring Break is over. He had been invited to go to the beach with one group of friends and to go hunting with another. He wound up staying at home, and as it turned out, that was the best thing for him.

He had been battling a cold for weeks. The week before Spring Break he called to say that his cough was worse, and he was coughing up a little blood. "Get to the doctor," I said. A chest x-ray ruled out TB and pneumonia. He just had a deeply imbedded cough.

I fed him lots of vegetables while he was home. I didn't forbid him to eat grain. (You don't exactly forbid a 22 year old to do things. I trained him right when he was little, and pray for him now that he is own his own) I just didn't fix many things with grain, even beneficial grains for the As.

SS has always been a night owl. He was in bed soon after midnight most of the nights he was home, and I let him sleep in every morning. Nine to ten hours of sleep worked wonders.

The night before he left, I asked about the cough and was delighted to hear that it was almost gone. "I just needed fresh food and lots of sleep," SS said. Isn't that the truth for all of us!

My Honorable Husband has decided to retire when our Darling Daughter graduates from high school. We have always wanted to live near a river or a lake in retirement, so we've bought an acre of land 5 minutes from a river and 20 minutes from a lake. Working on finding the land and planning the new house has kept me from blogging as regularly in recent months.

This week is spring break for both of our kids, so our Strong Son is home from college. Yesterday the kids and I went up to the property. There was an ice storm in January that broke four big limbs in a grove of oak trees. Two of them were on the ground, but two were caught up in the tree branches.

The three of us went to work with saws. Type A DD quickly tired of the strenuous work. She reminded us of her spring break reading assignments and went to the car to study. SS and I, both Type Os, kept at it. He climbed up into the tree and got the broken branches down. I cut them into movable pieces so we could get them away from the rest of the trees and stack them. It was hard work. We were dirty and sweaty. But we both loved it. We worked several hours, stopping only at sunset.

The experience again reminded me of the built in differences between As and Os. It's not just what we eat - it's how our bodies respond to work and stress. SS and I found a deep pleasure in the physically demanding outdoor work, which DD could not understand. If HH had been with us, he would have been hanging around the wood pile asking if we were ready to call it quits yet.

In this two blood type family, I must remind myself that I need strenuous physical activity. When the As don't want to participate, I may have to go on alone. At the same time, I mustn't be critical of them. Strenuous work doesn't benefit them the way it does me. They need exercise, but not the same kind. We must remember to respect each other's different physical needs the same way we respect each other's different food lists.

When we were out of town, my husband picked up a stomach virus. He promptly gave it to me. I didn't eat much of anything for two days. The next two days were a BTD version of the BRAT diet - Bananas, Rice, applesauce, and Toast (Ezekiel bread in my case).

The BRAT diet was useful for getting my digestive tract to slow down. However I woke this morning knowing that I didn't want another day dominated by fruit and grain. I was ready for vegetables and light meats - nothing too heavy or hard to digest though.

For lunch I had salmon, turnip greens, and cooked carrots. For supper I had thin sliced roast beef with black eyed peas and apple slices. It's a start back towards normal.

Tonight I'm tired. We had planned a garage sale for this weekend long before the stomach virus, and I carried on with it. I could go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the BTD, but I don't understand how garage sale aficionados think. We sold a broken bed frame, a broken clock, and old make up, but no one was seriously interested in the state of the art Norwalk juicer.

We took our Darling Daughter on a college campus visit over the weekend. The choices in the dorm cafeteria seemed better for Type A than they were for Type O. The salad bar was excellent with plenty of choices. The cooked vegetables were green beans and potatoes. We all steered clear of the potatoes, but the green beans were good. The problem was with the entrees. Our choices were lasagna, chicken fried steak, hamburgers, or sliced turkey. My husband, avoiding my eye, took the lasagna. DD went with a large salad. I took the chicken fried steak - no gravy. It's probably been two years since I've had chicken fried steak, and I let myself enjoy it.

On the way home Sunday, we stopped at a fast food restaurant. They had chicken fried chicken livers. In my pre-BTD days I loved them. Now, I saute chicken livers or grill them with onions. I don't know how long it's been since I've had them fried. One of the side orders was fried okra. This was another former favorite. A beneficial, I told myself, in spite of the flour coating. They were indeed delicious.

Of course, I paid for the wheat this morning with two pounds of water weight. Fortunately I can say no to chicken fried steak if there are other choices. Chicken fried chicken livers would be harder to turn down, but there is not a restaurant where I live that serves them. So, I'm safe until I'm traveling again.