No Surgery Required!

Happy day! Rise and shine! I think 10 hours of sleep is adequate. What do you guys think? We are on Mighty Man Camp, our annual boys adventure where we have fun together, get away, and talk about what it means to be a man. Jonah, what's the difference between a man and a boy? A boy takes and a man gives. Oh, I like it! Mr. Meeks taught us that. Late Mr. Meeks. Today We're gonna pack it up. Do you guys wanna go home before my appointment? Yes. I've got my shoulder appointment with the surgeon. They scheduled with the surgeon. My doctor wasn't very hopeful that I'd be doing this. For me, that appointment with the surgeon was a goal to in one month get to where I could move my shoulder enough to say, we don't need this. Let's see if that's the case today. But first, we gotta pack up camp. And if you guys want to go home, probably pack up camp within an hour-ish. That wood stove, guys, good call on bringing the wood stove. That was clutch. And you guys were right, you brought plenty of wood. I guess it wasn't as good. You wanted more than that. I thought we needed more. You guys were right about a couple of things. You guys were right about a couple of things. You guys were right Bringing this wood stove, bringing that amount of wood, going home to get some supplies, resupplies. Don't know if you were right about leaving the trail before we found those boulders. I'm obsessed. I think I thought of it this morning where it is. I gotta look at a map. What will you remember about this Mighty Man Camp? Hmm, what will you remember? Anything? Without falling on the trail, who would fall the least? Is that what you're gonna remember? Yeah, that was fun. A walking competition. Now wait, nobody should have fell on the roof. I felt 3 times. Oh really?

I felt 5 times.

All right, Josiah, what will you remember? You liked it? Yeah. You like hiking better than mountain biking? Yeah. Why? I don't know. I think we should get into it, hiking. That's something the whole family can do. What do you guys think? I mean, maybe not every week, but maybe every other week. But if you think about it, guys, Every other week, it's just 24 excursions in a year. I guess that's, that's a lot. If you only went once a month, that's 12. That's probably not enough. What do you think? Or they're extra special. Anyway, it's hard to get into the woods, but it's always good to get in the woods. What's that Zen proverb? You should spend 20 minutes a day in the woods, and if you're busy, spend an hour. Don't roll over on your banana. Don't roll over on your banana. Okay, get you guys' blood sugars up. Papa's got a pail. I want it all cleaned up by the time I get back. That should have took longer. Y'all didn't do nothing. Get in. You gotta get dressed. Make him get out right now. Get in. Get out, please. All right, fold that blanket. Please get in and put it in there. We packed it out. We're taking notes for group camp. Join us on group camp. Hope we got spots left. We only had 10 spots last time I checked. We had 4 spots, but I've been mentioning it in the last couple. So got our own private group camp, and you have to get in through a gate, so it's a mile back. It's super private, open field. There are bathrooms. There are no running water. Uh, there's a climbing rock right by there. There's cold plunges. There's hikes to waterfalls. We're gonna go hiking up Looking Glass Falls, which is the classic. People come from all over the world to go to that hike. It's a classic Pisgah. Men and however many boys you want to bring with you that are 5 and older. Okay, you think this will all stay in here? 7:30. Is that all it is? Really packed up in 30 minutes. Wow, you guys packed up fast. I guess we're all still cold, huh? Yeah, everybody got their jackets on? Got cold exposure this morning, about to get our sun in the eyes. Look here, we're home. They must be done, Austin's putting up the net. Hey, you're up and at 'em this morning.

Are you cold?

He was cold.

You guys, what happened?

Just a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction. It did good. Still had to get up and pack though. We had some really yummy food. We had beans and rice and chicken and steak. It was so good. He carved it up last night. 3 different kinds of bread. Oh, he did. He jumped up and down this morning. Gonna see Mama. Of course he wanted you last night about 2 AM.

Oh, you wanted me.

Do I smell turkey divine?

No, not yet. I'm gonna make it this afternoon. I'm kind of busy.

All right, well, we're gonna have it tonight.

What happened?

Heck yeah.

Was I— I forgot to look to see if we had cheese. And then I said to Lily when we were getting it up, we were trying to make it last night after my acupuncture appointment.

We didn't have cheese.

And we didn't have cheese, and so I said, all right. I said in the video, I was like, well, you know, some things happen, you know. To be continued.

This is what happens.

It'll be tomorrow.

And they won't matter because tomorrow happens again in one blink of an eye. Right.

Well, I said in the video too, I was like, I could just film this tomorrow and not show anything that I filmed today. And act like it was all really easy and pretty and all that stuff.

Yeah, that's good.

It's just not. Life is not easy and pretty, and I think that doing that and not showing those little hardships and like forgetting and like I burned a pan and like all these things makes people feel bad because they don't see other people doing it, and I hope that I can ease some people's—

Definitely. And now that means we get to eat.

I know, and then you guys get to eat.

I'm not complaining.

We miss you all.

Did you guys already eat breakfast?

We did.

We just did. Did Lily go out? Because Austin's out there.

She did.

So you guys will eat dinner for breakfast, won't you? If it's rice and beans and chicken. Little camp food left over. Doing a little hodgepodge breakfast. I got a little over an hour until we leave. I'm gonna put things away. I want to get the kitchen cleaned up for the ladies. As much as they ate, our eyes were still too big for our bellies. There's two— not just two pounds of ground beef steak and burgers. Getting up with— catching up with your chats?

Yeah.

Look at these teenagers. What'd y'all miss? Nothing too much. We kind of— well, we just decided that day at 10 AM that we were going that afternoon, so you kind of have some tie-ups and loose social ends, huh? Yeah, Jonah's becoming quite the social— what do you call it— social butterfly. We just went on a trip. Let's be a blessing, not a burden. Come back in, guns blaring. Let's get this up for him. See you, buddy. All right, wish me well on my shoulder checkup. We'll say, hey surgeon, no thank you. No thank you, sir.

What time will you be back?

Everybody give hugs. I don't know, um, Mom's got a lot of errands to do. I guess I'll touch base with you. You might have to get Big Daddy to take you. How do you think I'm gonna do, Beck?

Oh, I think he's gonna do fabulous.

What's funny is this is gonna be a surgeon consult. What are we gonna say? By the way, I've Maybe.

Well, we're just gonna show—

he's gonna—

we're gonna show it.

Yeah, say yes or no, because I'm gonna say pump the brakes.

Can I have my purse?

Yeah. Is it gonna be the doctor I've seen or somebody else?

It's gonna be another doctor.

He's gonna say, why did he refer you? Yes, that's what we want. These are the tests right here, right? These are the tests you'll make me do.

It's almost there. Okay, and, and this is Fun. Oh yeah, it's so funny.

You just have such a concentration. Yeah, well, that was different. Wrong location. Okay, they said they can still get us in. Um, I want you guys to see this though. Parking attendant. This place is slammed. Barbara O'Neill. Anybody a fan? Big name in health. We're gonna have her on the podcast tomorrow. Barbara O'Neill on our podcast. What do we want to learn from Barbara O'Neill, honey? She's been around.

Yeah, I think I just want to— I want— I don't want health, being healthy, to be so hard. It feels like it's very difficult. So I kind of want to talk to her because she was healthy way back when it was even harder.

She was healthy before it was cool.

Yeah, like she's— I guess I want to ask her like her beginning story. Mary, and like, why did she come to this? Did she have some health challenge?

Did—

she, you know what I mean? Like, just curious about that.

Yeah. She's OG, and I think— I've been feeling stressed or anxious lately, and so maybe— I haven't seen much from her, at least in the book Sustain Me, on mental health.

She does talk about that.

So, good. So let's dig into that then.

Yeah.

You know, it's coming into the Christmas and New Year's. And, you know, people tend to get more stressed out around that time. You remember dead loved ones, you tend to eat more sugar, and that's so bad for your body.

But no, I think what you're saying is true. Yeah, just the grief. Yeah, grief coming with the holidays.

And she's older too, so— right, she's older. Well, she's older than us.

She's much older than that.

Much older. She says she probably has kids our age, so she's going to be a wealth of information for us young bucks.

Yeah, a mentor, so to speak.

Let's do it. All right, this time. We're at the right place. It's actually where my doctor is, so maybe you can ring the doctor and say, what the heck, this guy's fine.

We've been seeing—

this guy's fine. He's going to be all right. Oh my God, I was getting this news. I don't know that I'd take it this well.

You said he was all right?

Yes, he's lost his left hand, so he's going to be all right. And it's over, it's over. No surgery for me. He wasn't even— no, he was like, not even up. He doesn't even entertain it.

Doing what?

He said start adding weights. He said he encouraged me to start my training back, just with light weights.

Mm-hmm.

So, simple and sinister, here we come. Kettlebells, here we come. Whatever you do, another thing, perk the skin up.

He said 3 pounds.

Yeah, don't worry about it. I'll do that.

So, and Brianna, um, acupuncture's thought, maybe coming once a month for a little bit just to do some maintenance, just to keep the progress.

Yeah. Well, you got errands. You feel free to drive. Yeah, we'll drive and talk. Um, I cannot believe it. It's been, what, 4 months? 4 months. I— we stopped mountain biking after the 100 miles, and then I injured myself 4 months ago, so I haven't been doing my kettlebell training. And then I didn't eat for a month, so I've lost quite a bit of muscle, and I'm looking forward to getting it back because I'm an athletic guy. It's part of my It might be why I'm so anxious. I remember when I used to run and I didn't.

You would be very anxious.

I would, I would get— I remember that. I would get anxious.

Like when we traveled and you couldn't run or whatever, you would be like, I'm gonna— I remember the one place we went to, they had stairs like up to the flagpole.

Yeah.

You're like, I'm gonna run those stairs. I was like, you're not gonna do that. Now I'm looking back going, I should have just let you do that.

Yeah, you should have went with me.

I know, right?

Third day of traveling. We're different. We are different. She was strange yesterday.

We are different. We're different than we used to be.

Every day in every way we're getting better, but I'm very happy about that. We are. I'm sorry for the time it's taken up in our lives, just me hurrying and rushing down the stairs. Here we are.

I think it's a good reminder of like, being intentional, being slow.

Yeah. Good reminder. Slow is sometimes faster.

Yes, because yeah, we would have not had to do all of this if you had just gone a little slower.

That's all right. Take your deep breaths.

Put your hand on your heart. Dr. Tony told you to do that.

Yeah, deep breaths. Be thankful.

Gratefulness. I'm really excited to talk to Barbara O'Neill too tomorrow about that because she's— there's a lot of like gratefulness and like thanking your— gratefulness for your body, everything that it's done, thanking it, loving it, caring paying for it.

Yeah, we are back. Doesn't it feel— I don't know if it's a time change or this time of year, it just feels like it's so late. It feels late afternoon, but it's only 2 o'clock. Sure, can you take this phone to her? Hey, you okay? I don't know, were we supposed to go to Lowe's? Yes, you win. I don't think we did. Why didn't we go to Lowe's? Oh, I don't know, I was too busy working. No, I was on the phone, which was working. Okay, let's check out this cabin. Sanded floor in here. Look at this.

Hey!

Looks good, looks good. I'm talking about the mirror, y'all, because I haven't showered in 2 days. Apparently I look like I've been camping for 2 days according to Miss Thing.

It looks so nice. Oh wow, look at how good that looks. Look at that. Dang, you wouldn't even know. You would never know, would you? He's got to put this up still. We've got to get a bar to go across.

Are we at the year mark on this?

Um, yes, I think.

Can you believe this? We started— we remodeled our house, we went through the hurricane, we lost your mom, and then we started another remodel. Are we bats? Okay, so no, we may not have started. Wait a minute, what is this? You made these? First try? Yep. Look at that. I could use a real long one for my chicken stirring feed. That'd be amazing. What's this?

It's an herb puller. You put it through there and you pull it.

Oh, it strips off the herbs. Nice, I like it. Mom's making cornbread tonight. I haven't been here in a couple days, so I'm gonna do the hard work, babe. I'm gonna find you all the ingredients.

Are you?

And then let you do your magic. That's half the battle. In this house, it's more than half the battle. We're trying to get organized. Well, those hints— it took me 20 minutes to find this book. Cornmeal for the turkey divine later. What else? I'll help you do the annoying stuff and then I'm gonna get out of your way. 4 eggs. Do you know if Austin put the eggs downstairs? Anybody? Anybody? He had to wash them. I doubt Rebecca and Lily ate much, so we might actually be in an egg surplus. I mean, see, apron-wearing permaculture chicken tending master can't find the eggs. And what is you looking for?

I'm looking for cream.

This is crazy. How do people organize their kitchens to where it's actually where it's supposed to be?

I know that, Ruthie.

Zimmerman. Tell me all the tricks.

No, no, she's calling her children's school saying, okay, can you ask whichever child, do they know where whatever thing she can't find in the kitchen?

So this time it's our adopted college dropout. Hey, man, where are the, uh, clean eggs? They are at the fridge of the pantry. Detour to find— they didn't tell us when they ran out of baking powder, so she's gonna make some more baking soda, cream of tartar, etc. Austin said these eggs were in here. There they are. There was a snake, they would have bitten. And now this. How did you do that? I just glued it all together. I mean, it's not perfect. Wow. So you have no instructions, you just went out there and did it? Yeah. Got your ingredients. I'm your caddy. I'm your cooking caddy. Sun is going down. We got supper. You're making us turkey divine. We're excited. Okay, it's a, it's, it's, it's a special meal.

It was more of just a struggle. We were on the struggle bus.

Fine and everything. How is it, Henry? We'll get your water.

How is it?

Jonah, pass the salt around. Who needs those stinking lights? We don't need no stinking lights. We have a candlelit dinner every night if it's dark like this.

Well, we're running late.

Yeah, well then it's a special occasion. And with that, happy day.