The yard at our new house is not fenced, and our very active dog is not happy being inside or being tied up outside. I've been on the phone and internet looking at fence options. Wednesday morning I decided to take the dog for a run and see what some of the neighbors have done.

When I run I like to get going at a steady pace and keep going. When the dog walks, he likes to stop frequently and sniff all of the new smells. This run was a compromise that didn't fully satisfy either of us. However we did see a lot of fences!

This was my first run in my new neighborhood and I could tell immediately that it is going to be very different here. The terrain is very hilly. I'm either panting as I run up hill or relaxing as I run down.

Yesterday I got my Type O exercise in another way. The grass at the back of our property is thigh high. That is a real nuisance for the contractors who have come to give me fence estimates. I put on boots and cranked up the lawnmower. Two hours later I have a path around the perimeter of the property. It's wide enough for two people to walk side by side.

I mowed over a lot of prickly pear cactus. At some point I remembered that it is a neutral fruit. Perhaps I should harvest it instead of destroying it.

I need to go back and update a June blog. Unfortunately, I didn't conquer the urinary tract infection. Though the symptoms were better, they were still there going into the weekend. The next week I was traveling to my parents' house to take both of them to doctor appointments. I didn't want to get caught with a painful infection on a weekend or when I was out of town. In addition I felt like the continued infection was dragging me down. Antibiotics took care of it very quickly.

Though I gave in again, I was really encouraged that I fought it as long as I did. It's the first success I've ever had. I have hope that if I started treatment earlier I might have beat it. If I didn't have such a busy schedule and could have rested more, I'm sure that would have helped too.

Several of you wrote with advice about UTIs. I really appreciated all of the suggestions. Two of you wrote about cranberry capsules. I have bought some and am taking them every day. This seems like the best preventative measure I can take.

I'm going to summarize the other ideas that were sent, just in case some of you are also trying to fight off an infection.

"What helped me besides the antibiotics was a long soak in a warm tub with plain old white vinegar. That really helped the discomfort."

"Remember to use cranberry juice without sugar."

"Soothe the tissues with marshmallow root powder or tea. I find it very soothing and helps me tremendously when my bladder gets irritable. Also licorice root tea."

"Have you tried Uva-Ursi for your UTI? I'm a blood type O and I think it works great!"

"Have you tried drinking parsley water? It will help you to eliminate more water and to take bacteria out of the urine. I usually boil 1 bunch in a stock pot of water for about five minutes. I drink it warm or cold."

"I changed my underwear to pure cotton that helped a lot. I learned to just gently cover myself with toilette paper when doing a bowel movement because the fine almost unnoticeable "splash" of the toilette water carried microbes to the wrong places. That made a huge difference as stupid as that sounds. I sometimes just wash with an iodine solution to cleanse the area if need be."

I am always amazed by the amount of experience the people on this website have. I hope it will be a long time before my next UTI. When it comes I'll be ready to fight again.

There is going to be all kinds of strenuous exercise in our new neighborhood. For starters, it is a 1.2 mile round trip to the mailbox! This is quite a change for someone who has had home delivery all her life. We have decided that unless the weather is really bad, after dinner we will walk the dog to the mailbox.

My husband or my daughter watch out for the dog. I carry hand weights to make the trip a little more rigorous. One night the dog took off after a deer. He nearly pulled the leash out of my daughter's hands.

If we eat dinner early, we get to watch the sunset as we walk. If we eat dinner late, we get to watch the stars come out.

Good news today. We closed on the sale of our old house. We are very thankful.

I have been a bit nervous about my ability to find BTD food in a small town. I've been in lots of small town grocery stores, and there wasn't much variety. The first grocery store I went to here, was just what I had expected. Standard produce selections - apples, bananas, carrots, lettuce, etc; but nothing exciting like Swiss chard or kohlrabi. Lots of prepared frozen food - most of it with MSG. It was depressing.

I tried another grocery store on my second shopping trip. Oh my! It was like going to a BTD smorgasbord. They had all sorts of fresh greens in their huge produce section. They even had kohlrabi, and it was fresh. They had soy milk and soy cheese. They had hormone free chicken and fresh fish. They had 100% rye flour and Ezekiel bread. They had grass fed ground beef. This will be a delightful place to shop.

I unpacked the last kitchen box today. I've gradually started cooking more fresh food. My husband and daughter are ready for me to resume baking.

Now that I'm in my new house I can grill onions to my heart's content. No more worries about whether the house smells good to someone coming through on an unexpected showing. Tonight I grilled sweet onions and portabella mushrooms. They were delicious.

I also grilled chicken breasts. For my Type A husband and daughter I fixed tortillas and a salad of fresh spinach, carrot sticks, and cucumbers. My husband ate his mushrooms raw. My daughter does not like the idea of eating fungus, though many types of mushrooms would be beneficial for her.

For myself I fixed a large spinach salad with chopped carrots. I cubed my chicken breast and added it to the salad. I topped it with the grilled onions and mushrooms and some extra virgin olive oil.

What a feast. And personally, I think the house smells a lot better than it would if I used one of those store bought, plug in, sickeningly sweet, air fresheners.

We are in our new house. The boxes aren't all unpacked, and things are far from organized, but the beds are made, the computer is on line, the TV is functional, and the kitchen is operational

An interesting thing happened a few weeks before we moved. I went into my health food market that I've written about so many times, and they were rearranging the shelves. A number of the items I buy on a regular basis were gone. Bladderwack capsules, fava beans, and rice bran were just three of the items no longer on the shelves. I was told that they wouldn't be stocking them any more. Not only that, but the prices were higher.

I mentioned my disappointment that night, and my husband said he had read that the store was being bought out by Whole Foods. Now I know some of you love Whole Foods, but having had a choice for years between Whole Foods, and a local chain, the local market consistently had better quality and lower prices. The next time I was there I asked, and my husband's information was correct. Whole Foods was buying out their competition. I knew it was time to move.

Our old house was in a big city. Our new house is out in the country, six miles from a small town. I wondered whether I would be able to buy supplements locally, or whether I would have to start ordering on the internet. My first visit to the health food store assuaged all my fears. Everything I was used to buying was on the shelves. I was so excited. I immediately felt at home.