Smile

My Hair

The day I did it

Like many people, my hair hasn’t seen professional treatment since early March. I’ve always wanted purple hair, and this seemed like the time if ever there was one.

But I was frustrated! I had never colored my own hair, but watching the process by my girl since her middle school days had not made me think it was going to be easy. Ads for Overtone followed me around the internet, and by their ads they had a single, conditioner-based process that was easy and that washed out eventually. As I’m always afraid of commitment it seemed the way to go, but they were sold out of deep, dark, purple. The last thing I wanted was a light, pastel, lavender or pink - not my style. In fact, I’m not very pink at all, and I was afraid any purple might turn pink.

So I ended up with orange. The label said “ginger”, and it’s not a totally unbelievable color for hair to be. I did it two weeks ago now, and it’s already faded to a fairly realistic color.

Before

It was, as advertised, fairly easy. I remembered at the last minute to take a “before” picture, and I took a “during” picture for my own amusement. I managed to contain the mess and I don’t think I stained anything very noticeable.

During

Now, just two weeks later, it’s fading and roots are again visible. I don’t think they are what has grown in just two weeks, but as the color fades the underlying hair color shows through, so my totally white roots show lighter.  I have enough for another round. I’m going to hold off, though, to see when the county decides to open up the salons.

Today, two weeks after

Trying to Regain Control of my Eating

One of the techniques I’ve been using on-and-off since January is planning my food. Not just tracking after the fact, but writing down in the morning what I plan to eat that day. Right down to how many cookies or squares of chocolate I’m going to have. The next morning, I review how closely I followed the plan before making the next plan. This has been a real eye-opener for me. I'm finding making the plan - and being accountable to myself on how it went - to be a really powerful tool. It requires more conscious decisions than simply tracking after the fact.

Since I only have myself to please in the kitchen, and my schedule is even more my own now than when I first retired, it seemed there was no need to plan any of my food. I’d just follow my body’s wisdom, eating what I felt like when I felt like it. (Before Covid times, that included running to the store or for takeout several times a week.) That unplanned and unscheduled way of eating has not worked out very well for me. I often didn’t stop what I was doing until I was really hungry and then it would take too long to cook from scratch, so instead I grabbed something easy rather than healthy. This also led to letting fresh vegetables go bad too often, as vegetables often take more thought and time and are generally what go left out when I was in a hurry. Now, with planning, I’m more likely to think through what else I have planned for the day, and set a time to stop and cook. Doing the morning plan also helps me stay on top of the perishable inventory and waste less food. And, without a good reason, I try hard to stick to the plan and not just make a substitution on a whim. After all, there isn’t any food in the house that I didn’t buy, so I should like it all, yes?

I’ve gotten much better at feeling in my body when I’m hungry and when I’m not. I am working hard on feeling in my body when I’m just full enough, and then try to stop eating even if there is food still on my plate. I like to have my stomach full, and I was raised to clean my plate, so I’m using portion control as I make up my plate, easier than leaving food on the plate. I try to pause and think before going for seconds. But my biggest struggle is with the role of taste and pleasure, especially in the evenings. I know I’m not hungry. But I’m not uncomfortably full, either. I want some ice cream in my mouth, for feel and for taste. I want to let a square of chocolate melt in my mouth.

This wouldn’t be a problem if just a bit was what I consumed. But I like what I taste and feel, and I want more. I’m writing down in my plan ahead of time how much of what treat I’ll have. I don’t write down “none” almost ever - because I believe the key to the planning process helping control my eating is to make the plan realistic, not aspirational. The theory is, the more I follow the plan, the more I will follow the plan in the future. This is apparently based on psychological studies, and it makes sense to me. So to start with, just own everything I'm going to eat, even if it's an embarrassing amount. If I am grabbing chocolate at 4 pm every day, put it on the plan. Acknowledge that's what I'm doing. Get everything I'm eating into my conscious mind. Only after wrapping my mind around everything I am actually really eating will I start trying harder to change what I eat. Of course, the mere fact of writing down what I eat - before or after - does change what I eat.

And sometimes it turns into a real binge. I end up uncomfortably full. I try to own that as well, really feeling it through my whole body. But that "what the hell" attitude is really hard to defeat.


I'm not doing this completely on my own. I paid to join an internet video, podcast, and Facebook private member-based weight loss group. ("Phit N Phat", or "PNP Tribe"). There are worksheets, many worksheets, monthly, weekly, and daily planning worksheets. There are goal worksheets, discovery worksheets, analysis worksheets, worksheets about your thoughts and feelings, and one worksheet labeled "Extremely tedious worksheet for overeating" where every bite of a binge is felt, analyzed, and described. There are hours of video courses, 5-20 minutes at a stretch, talking about how to take ownership of your eating. There are several weekly podcasts and Facebook lives and zoom coaching calls. I did a sequence of the videos in January, and now I mostly rely on a few of the worksheets - especially the daily planning one. Some times I listen to the podcasts.


The overall course combines a bunch of different approaches I've learned about during my life as a dieter. The basics seem to be there is no good or bad food. All food should be a conscious choice. If you want to eat ice cream, go ahead. But own it. And feel it, be mindful. If you really want to lose weight, you will eat less ice cream. There is a fair amount of conscious work tying goals to actions but no guilt or shame - only learning. Food doesn't jump into your mouth, you put it there. So what were you thinking? What were you feeling? What could you do differently?


The founder and queen of PnP is a life coach, and she is the third life coach podcaster I've run across who is using something called "the thought model". It's a process to separate circumstances (ie objective facts) from thoughts from feelings, and then consciously change your thoughts to change your feelings and actions. Example: I ate a pint of ice cream (this is a fact). I am a horrible weak-willed fat person (this is a thought, NOT A FACT). The thought drives feelings (guilt, shame) and then actions and results (in this case, more of the same). Starting with the same fact (that pint of ice cream) there could be the thought: "Next time I really really want ice cream, I could eat a few spoonfuls of ice cream and then put the top back on and put it back in the freezer. I should pause and visualize that before grabbing the pint next time." That in turn could drive feelings of confidence, and different actions and results could flow.


It's a simple model, but I find it especially useful to take a moment to separate a fact from a thought about that fact. Of course, our thoughts and feelings are complex, and simply choosing to think something different doesn't always work to change my feelings. The thought has to be fairly authentic, not just pollyanna. It can't be a matter of just thinking, "never mind, I'll do better next time" without making a plan of how to get there. But trying the technique pulls the processing out of my non-verbal subconscious and into the conscious, where I have a chance to affect it.

Days I feel like shit I don't do any of this, but I could. Usually, it's "I feel like shit, just let me get some pleasure somewhere in my body". Somedays, that might be ok. But it shouldn't be my default. And genuine stomach upset needs to be handled, but I shouldn't act as if the laws of physics and nutrition have been suspended. I should own what I'm doing on the conscious level. And not along the lines of "fuck it, I'm doing this" but more soberly, "I am going to eat this. I am willing to take the consequences, because weight loss is not what matters right now."

I can coach myself pretty well, especially when writing it down, but consistent action over a period of time will be what can make a difference.

Food

My food intake (and thus my weight) have really gone the wrong way lately. I primarily blame the Whirligig, because it hasn’t entirely settled down and it keeps a constant low level of nausea just below the surface. Fewer trips to the grocery store and other isolation measures mean I’m thrown back on my own resources for putting together meals, which often requires me to cook.

I have white board material on the fridge
and keep a rough inventory as a reminder

I don’t hate cooking, I just don’t want to spend the time every day to do it. And while I have a few dishes I do well, I’m not a fabulous every day chef. I do continue to improve. I took an internet month-long class in it once, and that helped. I love reading cookbooks, but rarely do I actually use one to make a dish. Most likely when I have visitors, ie not now. More often, I use the cookbooks as inspiration, techniques and seasoning approaches. I’m in a kind of routine, and I often make big portions so I can just reheat quickly. I’m good eating the same thing for 2-3 days before I get sick of it, but I’m getting better at freezing extra portions right away, so it doesn’t get bad and I have quick food sitting in the freezer.

Way back in March, when were all preparing to hunker down, we didn’t know exactly what to prepare for. I assumed there was a good chance I’d get sick, and I’d be physically on my own during the illness because I wouldn’t just run to the hospital. So much of my early shopping was for quick and easy convenience foods for the cupboard and the freezer - shelf stable soups, frozen dinners, popcorn, granola, cereals, energy bars, apple sauce. Things I could either eat raw or pop in the microwave. This came in handy at the peak of the vertigo, once I was ready to try to keep food in me. At the outset, I also shopped for WTSHTF (prepper term, google it). Heavy on beans and brown rice and big shelf stable boxes of broth and tomatoes, which went down into the basement. I filled the freezer with bags of frozen veggies and fruit. I bought fresh veggies which were likely to keep a while, squash and cabbage and lemons and limes.

I started out well, keeping an eye on the inventory and usually cooking the next thing that might go bad. I was determined not to waste any food. I ended up using vegetables that in happier times I likely would have pitched right out. Tossed into rice and lentils cooked in the Instant Pot, and frozen into portions to provide quick, microwaveable food. I made two trips to the supermarket in April, and one so far this month, focused on fresh foods, but also replenishing any shelf stable things I used. That turns out to be about every two weeks. My girl (who goes more often to the grocery) has picked up a few extra items for me, and I got a smallish delivery from Costco, focused on big bags of coffee and some bulk organic meat for freezing. I’ve done takeout about every ten days, and I buy enough one time to last 2-3 meals. And at the height of my vertigo I ordered several pound of Gin-gins to be delivered.

But my evenings have been a continuous problem. And they wouldn’t be such a problem if I didn’t bring the treats into the house in the first place. When I buy chocolate or ice cream treats, I try to remember to ask myself, “What is my intention in buying this?” I have two themes playing out in my mind. My conscious mind is saying “No food has power over me.” Good thought. “No food is “bad”. Another good thought. “I can have just a tiny bit and stop”. NOT TRUE, at least this is not how things usually unfold. My conscious mind is an adorable optimist!

The other theme playing is simply a constant but mostly unconscious refrain, “Everything is awful so I’m going to give myself pleasure by eating this.”

When I got vertigo last month, that second theme just rose up and took over.

In my own defense, I had severe nausea, and my digestive system went wonky from top to bottom. I needed to eat what I rarely eat - white carbs in the form of white rice, pasta, toast. Microwaveable chicken soup. And, sadly, sugar also sat well. No fiber - no beans, no cabbage family, no crusty whole grains. I grazed gin-gins freely (they really work well for nausea, I use them on the boat), and squares of chocolate seemed to smooth things over.

While the nausea isn’t completely gone, my overall digestive system is much better. But I’ve got to get a handle back on my eating, aiming at the vegetables and whole grains and controlling my evenings. I have some ideas - stay tuned.

Inputs

As I float along in my bubble, not only am I careful about physical inputs, but my mental inputs have also changed a lot. I'm spending even more time alone than I used to. Generally I enjoy being alone, but I do need something other than my own thoughts to engage me.

News

I have never been a fan of TV news, dating at least back to college days when Star Trek reruns were on opposite Walter Cronkite. I used to be an NPR junkie. Until I started carting adolescents around in the car, only two buttons on the radio were set, to the two local NPR stations. I have a radio in every room in the house. When I worked, I woke to NPR on the clock radio. Often, I would end up with three spins through the whole Morning Edition cycle, though towards the end of my working life the morning drive would be podcasts from the phone. And of course, All Things Considered on the drive home.

Now, I use the Amazon Echo, because I can say "Computer, play NPR everywhere" and it happens throughout my house. But I actually listen to NPR much less often than I used to. This started in 2017, when I realized I just couldn't stand to listen to certain voices on the radio. This has continued, and I'll turn it off with a crisp "Computer, STOP!" when certain annoying whining voices appear. At 9 am, the local station switches to world news from the BBC, and I've discovered I find many of their hosts also very annoying. It's a style thing. They seem to have a certain supercilious "I know better than you" tone to most people they interview. A common phrasing seems to be, "But isn't it really .... ". So mostly I turn them off, even though intellectually I'd like an independent and more global perspective. If I decide to tune in to radio too late to catch Morning Edition, I sub instead the NPR daily morning podcast, Up First. Again, a verbal command gets it going. They generally pick two top stories and provide a little bit of depth, rather than simply one sentence each on the whole landscape of the day's news. I like hearing the voices in my quiet house. I feel I know these people, they are here so much.

I am a digital subscriber to several newspapers and some magazines. I am happy to pay for full digital access to what I always expected to pay for in hard copy. I pay for the Washington Post and New York Times, which I scan daily in the morning, some times more often during the day. I recently added the Baltimore Sun, because they provide better coverage of Maryland state issues than the Post. I also pay for the Guardian, the New Yorker, and Medium, but I don't look at them daily.  Without paying, Vox is another frequent source. I'll turn to them either for specific articles, or when I'm at loose ends in the afternoon or evening, jonesing for something interesting or stimulating or entertaining.

Blogs and Email Newsletters

I read several types of blogs. Daily, faithfully, I check in directly with my real life friends and their blogs, generally first thing after pouring a cup of coffee. I have a blog reader, Feedly, where a wide variety of entertaining and informative blogs are collected and displayed by my topics: Amusement, Bloggers, Local, Policy, Health, Fitness, Style, Tech, Dogs, Gardening, Sailing. When I run across an interesting blog when surfing, I'll often just go ahead and add it to the reader. If I find there are a huge number of posts I like (TLo, you are fabulous and opinionated, but you could dominate the feed!) or I really want to be sure not to miss something, I'll set up an icon on the ipad screen to jump to it directly. The reader and the direct links work well together - often, formatting and especially pictures don't come through well on the reader on the ipad so I end up going directly anyway.

Some sites or organizations provide email newsletters rather than blogs. I prefer a blog I can go look at on the timing of my choice rather than a push into my email box. In gmail, I filter these newsletters as they come and send them to their own tab, but on the native email app for the iphone and ipad, they are mixed into the feed. So I'm fairly selective in which ones I sign up for.

One blog I'm following a lot right now is Marginal Revolution. Posts are from two libertarian economic professors at George Mason University. I believe in reading things I'm likely to disagree with, to sharpen my own perspectives, as long as they are smart and thoughtful. This is much easier than listening to extraordinarily annoying voices in oversimplified sound bites on broadcast media. And I do disagree with these guys. They are also very thoughtful, though their world-view premises are very different from mine, and  commenters on their posts include a number of racist, misogynist idiots. One of the authors is extraordinarily wide-ranging in his interests (and is generally considered to be a genius, not least by himself). He posts "miscellaneous links" daily, and many of them have nothing to do with policy and are amusing. He led me to a TV show to be listed below.

One of my other favorite blogs is Whatever, by John Scalzi. He sometimes will say something very thoughtful, and always clearly and well expressed, on current events. The rest of the time, it's cats and trivia from his life. He is a science fiction writer, and he provides a platform for other writers with new books to explain the big idea behind the book. This has been an excellent book referral source for me.

I also have a separate email and blog reader set up from my working days, collecting aviation, transportation, and government policy news. I check those out every few days.

Podcasts

My podcasts generally are the same categories as the blogs. They are all one-person commentary style (sometimes with co-hosts, often interviewing someone). No true crime or fiction for me, though I do enjoy podcasts discussing contemporary culture - I was totally wrapped up in three podcasts during the last season of Game of Thrones, and an episode wasn't complete for me until I knew what others were saying. I am pleased Brene Brown has started a podcast - other favorites include Larry Wilmore's Black on the Air and Gretchen Rubin's Happier. When I'm ok with going serious for a bit, I like On the Media, and Ezra Klein (of Vox).

Television

My television viewing is fairly limited. Except for rare binge events that can last six or more hours, it's almost never more than an hour or two, often while eating dinner. Pretty much the only TV I watch real time as it is distributed over cable are home improvement shows. Everything else is streamed. I record The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, Full Frontal, (I love joke TV news) and a couple of network or cable drama shows. I pay for HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, CBS digital. I got Apple TV when I bought a new ipad this year. I will be adding DisneyPlus by July, when Hamilton will be screened. My actual TV is from 2013, and it facilitates HBO, Netflix, and Amazon, but its built-in software doesn't allow the others. I recently figured out I already had an iphone-to-HDMI adapter, so I only needed a new HDMI cable to stream anything from the phone to the TV. This was after investigating chromecast, firestick, AppleTV, and other adapters. The bonus is I can use my Bose headphones with the iphone instead of relying on the TV sound system - it especially helps with accents. (I am moderately hearing impaired and rarely wearing my hearing aids these days.)

On the streaming services, I finished Grace and Frankie, so now my half hour amusements come from Schitt's Creek and Brooklyn 99. With Grey's Anatomy wrapped up, drama is mostly Doctor Who and Star Trek (Picard and Discovery). But my absolute current favorite is Beforeigners from Norway via HBO. The premise is amusing: people from ancient times start to appear in present-day Norway in sufficient numbers over sufficient years to present an immigration issue that challenges the culture. It's neo-nordic-noir; our heroes are a present day troubled and cynical detective and his rookie Viking shieldmaiden partner. There are also some naked men. There are only the six episodes from Season 1 available, but (I hear over the webs) there are many setups for a confounding Season 2 still to come. Highly recommended!

Books

Escapism is the order of the day for my reading. My books come in three forms: hardcopy, e-books, and audio. Until recently, there were fairly clear distinctions between which format I would choose for which types of books. Generally, I limit myself in physical books to big beautiful coffee table or reference books. I have been reading vegetable cookbooks, gardening books, and books on bird behavior, dipping in and out, generally methodically from front to back but sometimes darting around following my current interests. I got a gift subscription to Book of the Month Club for Christmas, and that has brought some hardcover novels into my life.

Mostly I read on the kindle. My library system has a pretty good collection of ebooks and audio books, and that is always where I check first when looking for a book. They have a pretty good hold system there, so if they own a book I want, I'll put in a hold and just wait. Most book choices for me come from referrals - friends, friends on GoodReads, blogs from authors I trust. When I find an author I like, I might read through the whole canon. Usually, I'll set aside some time, late afternoon and evening, to plunge into a good novel. I have the luxury of hours at a time, staying up late to finish if I want.

I take in information differently when listening to an audio book. And generally I listen to books while doing something else - driving, walking, gardening, housework. So I'm my own captive audience while busy, and when the activity stops, I turn off the book no matter what is happening in the book at the time. That steered my listening towards narrative non-fiction and more challenging literary fiction, away from thrillers and exciting fiction where I want to get to a good stopping point. But recently, it turns out some books I want from the library are more readily available in audio format, so I've taken up more purely entertaining reads. With my vertigo and current migrainey period, audio books are way easier to consume. It's also about three times as long to get through a recorded book as reading it myself.

I log all my books on GoodReads, because I like keeping track of things and because I enjoy referrals from my friends there, I figure they might enjoy mine as well. I am a harder grader these days, with a standard three stars requiring something extra to get to four. I only give five stars to something that will stay with me, or for books written by authors that are friends of mine. (Yes, I can be dishonest in their favor.) There is a "roll" from GoodReads of my books on the side of this blog, if you are looking at it on the computer full web interface.

From the library, I've read and listened to a bunch of light fantasy and science fiction by Terry Pratchett and Lois McMaster Bujold. But I'm currently in a mystery mode. The absolute best author I've come across in years is Louise Penny, who has written (so far) sixteen mystery novels set in Quebec. I'm listening to them as they become available from the library, which is out of order. As the story and characters do progress from one book to the next, it's a little odd out of order, so I sat down with Wikipedia and have been keeping track of what happens where. From the same friend that turned me on to Penny, I've got several other authors I'm following. Ann Cleeves has not one, but two, series that have been made into British tv series - Vera Stanhope and Shetland. I may go for the TV shows when I'm done with the many books.

Social Media

There is a reason this is last. It really isn't my thing, currently. Here I lump Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Each of them gives that little reward, "OOOHH! Something new!" when I touch the icon on the screen, but I've discovered their ability to entertain me is less than the time I have available to be entertained. I find myself checking them, and being disappointed.

Not many friends post personally meaningful things on Facebook these days, but just enough do that I check it a couple of times of day. Most posts in my feed come from groups I have joined. I do stay close to a couple of the groups and I have found them useful and supportive when I've posted there. For example, there was some very useful and practical vertigo advice. When I worked, I was not Facebook friends with a single person who worked where I did. I now am friends with those from my work I actually like and want to be in touch with. This has caused many more people to send friend requests to me - a whole different set of people. These come in two camps: those I barely knew at work, who I suspect are wanting professional connections, and those I knew and liked, though casually. The first set I just turn down, with no regrets. We could connect on LinkedIn. The second set, people I knew only casually but liked, sometimes I leave the requests sitting out there, not sure if I'm going to respond.

On Instagram, I follow a fair number of celebrities and fun sites. (BagDogs is a favorite - pictures of dogs in bags on the NY subways, except they have decided to stay home right now.) I also have some friends who post on the 'Gram way more than Facebook. A bunch of the folks I met on my two retreats in Utah are "influencers" so they are posting Instagram stories pretty often. I enjoy Instagram quite a bit, but the content is worth about thirty minutes a day, my devices tell me.

Of these social media, I am least often on twitter - I go days without looking. But when I do, I fall into a hole. There is always something new on twitter, and clicking through to follow threads and replies can be entertaining. But it is not very rewarding. I rarely, rarely, reply. And I'm not sure I've ever done an actual, original tweet.

So there you have it. I'm using my IOS devices to track my use of them, with a goal to spending more time on things other than constantly refreshing looking for something that will give me the thrill of actual entertainment. I'm not bored, you're bored! Or you wouldn't have read this far!

Recreational Sailing Allowed in Maryland!

Read Aloud:

On a day

when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.

Today is such a day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises:

the promise of life

that it always

keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,

both caress the earth with great

tenderness.

There is a breeze that can enter the soul.

This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;

who can contain their self before my beauty?

. . .

On a day when the wind is perfect,

the sail just needs to open

and the love starts.

Today is such

a day.

— Rumi