Moving Along

I'm feeling kind of at loose ends at the moment - waiting for things to happen. They start happening next week! But right now, I'm filling time with chores.

The good news is, I've really been feeling a lot more energetic recently. I've motivated myself by scheduling things to happen, and I'm out there doing things to clear the decks so when they do (happen), I'll be able to take advantage. So chores and more chores it is - gardening and house, mostly. But I'm getting things done that have literally sat on a list for years. Trivial things, not major improvements, but things that I notice or that make a little difference in each day. So some feeling of satisfaction from that.

And more satisfaction from the fact I am clearly stronger than a year ago. It's obvious in my weight workouts. It's also showing up in the activity stats my watch collects. So far this year, my average steps are higher than the previous three years. That makes them the highest since my counted steps fell off a cliff at the end of 2022. (Why did they fall off a cliff? I went back and looked - I think I decided to let my knees determine how much I moved overall. The knee operation was in November 2023 - and I spent much of the year waiting for it.)

The less good news includes my knees - both of them - are hurting more than a little. Not so that I can't walk, just enough for me to feel them every time I climb stairs. But I've decided not to allow them to limit me so much. I'm squatting and lunging and stair climbing away. And walking and standing. My doctor has assured me that I will not damage the knees by using them, and I choose to believe him. And really, they usually feel at their worst when I start an activity, and feel no worse, or even better, as I move along.

More less good news is that my weight loss has slowed or stalled. I weigh every day I'm home, and the weight jumps around a lot each day: down .4 pounds, then up .8, then down .3, then down another .1, then up .2 .... Pop quiz: did I lose weight or not? Picking a trend out is not so easy - I have to use averages, step back and squint. Are any of the numbers the lowest I've seen this year? That's a positive sign! But then up 2.4 pounds the very next day! I won't stop the daily stepping on the scale, but I'm only rarely spending any time figuring out what that means for the trend.

I am spending that time right now, because I'm coming up on the time to order my next four weeks of meds. Is it time to increase the dosage? I'm definitely having more food thoughts, a change from a few weeks ago when I was more gliding along. So continuing to look at the weight data is important, but so is assessing how much effort I'm putting into managing my food. I liked when it seemed more easy and natural to make the right choices.

So I'll continue to monitor for the next few days. Unless I have a big whoosh of a loss in the next week (usually heralded by peeing my brains out), I'm going to request the next higher dosage. The good news is, that will give me two weeks to get used to that higher dosage (5.0) before I go away on vacation. The internet has many horror stories of side effects - I don't take them all seriously. But someone pointed out that this first step increase is the only time the dosage is literally doubled. Each additional increase is another 2.5 mg, but  it's a smaller percentage increase. 

To make me feel better, here is the big picture - my weight as an adult:

Each horizontal line is 10 pounds. The red line is where I stabilized before. 
The blue line is my goal weight in previous weight loss efforts.

 

I'm back down to the pre-intuitive-eating weight, before I decided "Fuck It, I'm just eating". Yay! And on this scale, you can't really tell that the slope has tapered off in the last month. So I really like this picture.

 

 

Weirdest Day Ever!

Crazy day, but I got to wear this!

At 5 am today, my dog suggested we go out. I've learned the hard way that means either indigestion or a burglar (I've had both) and so out we went, in the dark more than two hours before sunrise. (It wasn't a burglar this time.) It was 70 degrees out! I made coffee, and the two of us stayed out enjoying the morning. The sky was surprisingly light from all the clouds. The bare tree branches were swaying and jumping in the very strong wind gusts, and there was a roaring overhead that came and went. The birds were at first silent, but were just stirring when we went in, half an hour later. It had dropped to 60 degrees.

At 7, shortly before sunrise and after first breakfast, I hustled down the block to the neighborhood rain gauge (it's a citizen-science project, I'm subbing for the vacationing principal). After posting the minimal last 24 hours rainfall, I continued on through the neighborhood and back through the park to get in a couple of miles of walking. I was rushing, because it was starting to spit rain and was forecast to pour. 

After second breakfast, it was indeed raining hard. I went back to bed (I have started to allow myself naps when I get less than 6 hours sleep)  and when I woke at noon it was blizzarding! I mean, it was sticking to grass and cars, big huge fluffy flakes, I could barely see the houses across the street! As it turns out, I was delighted for the cold and snow, because I could finally wear my new sweater. It's been too warm out and in - this is a thick wooly Norwegian one, made from happy sheep joyfully wandering the mountainsides (so the company literature asserts). I contemplated hot chocolate, to get fully in the mood, but passed.

Other highlights of the day: weekly injection, paperwork, taxes nearly ready to file, watched season finale of Pluribus (want to discuss if you've seen it!), picked up my laundry from the wash-and-fold (my dryer is broken) and my new monthly meat box. The box includes a couple of thick cod fillets, luckily frozen, so I have time to decide when and how to cook them. I like to eat fish, but I hate to cook it. I might make a chowder, since I have time to get ingredients. Also in the box, corned beef (of course), lamb chops, pork loin, and "Irish bangers". I love Irish / Scottish breakfast bangers. I have been looking for some to buy - any time I go to our local Irish bar, I get a takeout order of theirs, but no local grocery source. Until this week - there was a display at the supermarket, next to their corn beef briskets. I was excited to try the supermarket bangers, and sorely disappointed. They are nice enough pork sausages, but more brat than banger. I'm hoping these butchershop ones are more on the mark, catching that distinctive taste I associate with the bangers.

So that's my day. It'll be in the twenties out when I make tomorrow's 7 am rain gauge run, another chance to wear my sweater. And also some precip to report, for sure! 

Full Scandi

I've decided to go Full Scandi(navian) this winter. I've decided to embrace the dark and the cold. And to do that, I'm all in on the warm and cozy clothes and blankets. I want to get out there every day, but dressed so that I can enjoy being out there. This is only partially motivated by my planned trip in January to the far north of Norway, into the polar night. It's also just a way of coping with the inevitable slog through this season. 

For the trip, I've got a new waterproof as well as warm coat, and a new pair of waterproof boots with a great luggy sole, for tromping through uncleared snow drifts. I already had a lot of wool clothes - I ol pants. I've got a couple of polar fleece sweaters, one pair of fleece-lined nylon pants, two pairs of long johns (excuse me, "base layers") and many wool and fleece hats and neck gaiter-scarves. I'm happy for the cold weather and today's snow as a chance to get out there and see what works. 

I went out for a walk at about 7:30 this morning, just as a full-on blizzard was starting. It was enchanting! The boots worked well, easy enough to get on and off, easy to walk in. I'd taken the hood off my coat, and wore just a hat instead. I was wearing a neck gaiter, and it got damp from snow coming down around the edges of my collar. The lined pants stayed dry on the inside. It only took a couple of blocks to realize I would be too warm if I kept going up hills. I circled around the hood, and after about a mile I ran into the neighborhood parents and kids at the elementary school bus stop. I stayed and chatted - the bus was runnng very late, so I was there for 20 minutes, giving the layers a chance to show how well they kept me warm when just standing around. I suspect my trip will have a lot of standing around, looking up at the sky.

Yesterday in contrast was sunny and cold, and Bixby and I took a very brisk walk around the 'hood. I was a fountain of energy around the house, spurred on by the sunshine. It was invigorating! There was a huge full moon last night, and Bixby and I took a few minutes to enjoy it outside. But I was pleased at the prospect of a darker day today, and planned nesting-type chores, slow cooking, and a fire in the late afternoon to keep things cozy. I have no appointments, no-one needing me today.  I filled up my on-hold queue for ebooks and audiobooks at the library this fall, with long-term wait periods - six weeks, 12 weeks, even 20+ weeks. But a whole slew of them have come through at once in the past week or so. I have to hunker down and read for real, not just fritter time on tiktok or bluesky. The audiobook that came through this afternoon turns out to be 32 hours long! I'm not sure I'll be able to pay attention that long! But with a fire in the fireplace to tend, and lego flowers and some coloring books, I can sit and listen a lot.

Every morning starts with stepping outside with my cup of coffee to admire the sky dressed only in PJs while Bixby uses his nose to catch up on overnight vistors to the yard. (I'm channeling my inner Cecilia, an Instagrammer who lives in Svalbard and does the same, in colder weather and with much more spectacular views.) I'm eating my ryecrisp toasts, and smoked salmon, and brown goat cheese. My homemade dishes tend towards cabbage and potatoes and savory lentils with coconut and curry. Hot tea appears in the evenings, sometimes with a slug of whiskey. I would really like to bake, but it doesn't fit with my current eating goals. Still, my girl is coming over tomorrow and there may be cookies in her plans, along with the Christmas decorating.

I'm definitely going for my maximum hygge. 

**TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING**

I have been very lucky in my life. I have not had any trauma specifically affecting me, my body, my direct life. No major injuries, no sudden job loss, only the kind of minor sexual assault every girl experiences (and, apparently, the President of Mexico). A residual fear of crowds and mobs that makes me cautious about going to protests or even festivals. And of course I shared the deep national trauma of 9/11, in a fairly personal way.

But people I love have had unexpected sudden death or catastrophic injuries.  And, while all of those deeply affected me emotionally at the time (and in retrospect), only a few had immediate direct impact on my daily life. Those are the ones that still grab me, hold me, come up unexpectedly and punch me in my nose. 

When  I was in grad school, in 1980, one of my dearest friends was murdered on her doorstep on a Saturday night. Horrible, but it got worse. There appeared to be a serial killer abroad. Or, perhaps it was someone I knew. My roommates and friends and I were interviewed, fingerprinted (for exclusion purposes they said, we had been in her apartment and driven her car), and interviewed again and again. We supported her family, my first personal experience of dealing with the mundane aftermath of death, packing up her things, organizing a memorial service. My grades plummeted. Three out of four semesters in the top 10% of my class, one semester barely getting by.  For the better part of a year, I didn't sleep the whole night through, but existed in a kind of split shift. Bed early, up after midnight for hours doing school work, back to bed as the sun came up. I graduated, left town with no resolution of who done it, and life moved on and into a more normal pattern.

A couple of years later, I was living in Ohio, and sleeping at my boyfriend's house. I was drifting off as he watched the 11 o'clock news in the bedroom. Suddenly, I jerked awake as I heard "authorities say the suspect may have been responsible for a string of murders of women in Michigan and Texas". Just that. I was too late to hear more, but I lay rigidly awake all that night. The next night, I was again drifting off when my boyfriend came into the bedroom. I jerked awake, and all I knew was I wasn't dreaming, there was actually someone there, not my imagination. I screamed! I shrieked enough and so loud that the neighbors all turned on their lights and checked  their yards. I quickly settled, but it was the start of another long spell of sleep disrupted nights. The following day, my phone rang. My old roommate in Ann Arbor said, "Yes, they've got him."

From time to time I've toyed with the idea of writing in more detail about this, and I thought that maybe now, in my old age, it was time. Maybe pushed by finishing a novel that dealt with the aftermath of trauma, I thought about it for a while this morning. Write about my friend and our friendship, and our circle of friends. Recount the immediate events, maybe look at my shelf of journals to find what I wrote at the time, make it clear finally -- not the resolution, there can never be that -- but who killed her and what happened to him. Tell it as a story. Put a bow on it. Be sure others know about her and what happened. Thinking about it, I wondered if there was a picture of my friend on the web. I was curious if I could find details of her family, wondering how they had gotten on. 

I was startled to find a recent (this year) documentary about the killer. I didn't read enough to find out if the whole series was about him, or just the episode. With shaking fingers, I bookmarked the site, and closed the tab so I wouldn't stumble on it accidentally. I was gasping for breath. Panicking. 

I fell back on my mindfulness training: Just breathe. Close your eyes and feel the breath. Let feeling the breath fill your mind. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it? Just sit with it, inhabit it. After a few moments, feeling calmer, try visiting the emotions that drove this panic. Let the emotion come. You are safe. You are in a safe place. Feel what you feel. How does it actually feel? Can you name your feelings? Where do you feel them? Just sit with it. Don't push it away, but let it come. You'll be fine, because you are really safe. If it's too much, return to the breath. You are fine. You are safe. You are sad, but that's ok. You are fine. As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong. Just breathe.

This has been the hardest thing for me, actually allowing myself to feel my feelings. Not just now, but for years. My brief foray into therapy with a mindfulness twist let me finally get there.

The unexpected reminder of trauma is traumatic. Trigger warnings are a real and necessary thing. As "woke" becomes an object of scorn (not among you, my dear readers, I know) so have trigger warnings been subject to derision. But finding a level of detail and images about my friend set me off today, even though I initiated the search. It's taken me three hours to write this, with breaks for walking around and dipping into more breath meditation. I'm pissed at how much I'm blowing my nose, when I thought I was almost done with my head cold of this week. But I felt a need to capture this moment, not to just move on.

I may write more about this. But I'll do it with plenty of warnings for myself in place. It'll be some work, not just the writing of my own thoughts, but having to do research to ground my memories in facts. Something to tackle gradually, not all at once.

But today will be a fine day. I have several projects planned, and a neighborhood get together to cap it off. Excelsior! 

 

Light and Dark

The entrance of a lava tube cave
in Iceland. The light at the end 
of the tunnel!

I'm very attuned to the light. I bought my house for its big windows, and I follow the light from room to room during the day. I wrote extensively about light in this post back in 2019. I still follow the same routine at home, following the sun each day. I'm very aware of seasonal changes, and as dark has come earlier this year, I though about adding more and brighter lights inside, as it has become difficult to read (from anything but a backlit screen) or do anything with details in less than full sunlight.

I decided to have my cataracts out of my eyes, as an alternative to buying more lights! I'm at the midpoint now, a week since I had the first eye done, the second to follow in two weeks. There were several reasons for doing this, but one of the most compelling to me was hearing from my neighbor about his experience. He noted how, during the time after the first eye was done but not the second, he could wink and see a huge difference in how bright the world was. This was very appealing to me! Another reason is that I am getting upgraded lenses, so that I'm likely to be able to avoid wearing glasses in almost all conditions! (At least for a while.)

It's been a mixed experience so far. The jury is still out on results. The actual operation was not a huge deal, despite high anxiety beforehand. In a rare case of collecting on all the chauffering I did in her youth, my girl picked me up at 6:15 am to go off to a surgery center across town. As I lay on my gurney, with an IV port in my hand, I wondered why I thought it was a good idea. But shortly, I was wheeled into the "laser room", where I received an injection near the eye, and then small metal fingers were placed in my eye to hold it open (!!!) and a large machine positioned over my eye made noises while apparently things were done to my eye via laser. It took 3 minutes. I guess it was pre-programmed based on photos of the eyeball taken earlier. Then I was wheeled to a different operating room, where I received an anesthetic via the IV port. I had been warned that while I wasn't going to be unconscious, the anesthesia would cause short term memory loss. Sure enough, the next thing I remember I was in the recovery room and a nurse was placing a perforated plastic patch over the eye (it was mounded, so nothing actually touched my eye, only the skin around the eye socket). In just a few minutes, my girl was escorting me out and driving me home. No pain, except for inserting the IV. 

The patch came off as soon as I got home, per instructions. It goes back on every time I lie down, because it would be easy to accidentally poke my eye or put pressure on it by burying my face in a pillow. That first day, I dozed, ate convenience food, listened to books rather than read or watch anything. I seemed to be seeing fine, and I went to bed early. Still no pain, and none since.

When I woke up before sunrise the next morning and peeled off the eye patch, everything was dark! I winked my alternating eyes, and with the old eye I could see via dim ambient light, but with the new eye I could see nothing! As I peered around in increasing panic, I could faintly make out a single bright LED marking something charging across the room. Everything else was pure black!

I switched on the light and things became more clear. I certainly wasn't blind in the new eye, but it was dim. Very very dim! The opposite of what I had been expecting. I subdued my panic as I went about my morning routine of coffee and the ipad. As I do when very upset, I wrote. Here is an excerpt: "It's as if there were several layers of smoked glass between me and the world." And: "I am terrified! I do not want this! I don't know if it will ever be better." And, finally, "I will not do the other eye if this this is normal. How can I go to Norway's polar night and look at Northern Lights?" Let's all cheer my catastrophizing! Who needs clear thinking in moments of crisis?

I had a nine o'clock check in at the doctor's office, and I drove myself to it. I wore a pair of glasses I found in my broken glasses drawer, already missing the right lens, but with the left lens intact to give me distance vision. As the sun came up (behind thick clouds), I could see decently, but when I pulled into the parking garage, it got very dim. Looking through both eyes was worse than looking through just the old one. 

I was upset! They had given me a list of things to not worry about and those to be concerned about, and it being dark was not on either list! A very brief foray onto the internet did not lead to any stories about darkness, just pain and loss of focus which were not issues for me. But when I saw the technician a few moments later, she said "your pupil isn't dilating, that's normal, of course check with the doctor, but I can see your pupil is tiny". So when I saw the doctor, she said the last thing she did was put in drops to freeze the pupil, so the shape doesn't change the first day while the new lens is settling in. I whined about how that wasn't on the caution sheet. She assured me it would be better by the next morning, Friday. I told her I'd call her if it wasn't. The actual test of visual acuity was an anticlimax - outstanding clarity both near and far! And, as the day wore on and it got lighter, my eye seemed to be settling down.

But then it got dark again! The second night was as bad as the first, but I just went to bed early, counting on it being all better as the doctor had promised. When I woke up the next morning, it was NOT all better! But, it was significantly better. I decided not to call her, knowing that meant not calling until Monday. I would give it the weekend. The day turned out to be shiny and bright, and my new eye seemed to be just fine in the light. It was Halloween, and our neighborhood has a children's parade and party, which started slightly before sunset. I went, and as it got dark, I realized the eye was still a problem. I winked away, comparing the view, and I resolved to cancel the second eye if it wasn't completely better by Monday. Catastrophizing was still in full flame, and I knew I couldn't agree to let myself become handicapped by having no night vision in both eyes!

 Fast forward through the weekend, where by Sunday morning, the eye was FINALLY totally equal to the old eye in (subjective) light transmission. Success! So no call to make on Monday.

Now, after a whole week, I'm pretty happy with how it is. It's supposed to continue getting better. I see the doctor again next week, and the week after that I'm scheduled to have the second eye done. I am mostly leaving off the one-lens glasses, instead relying on my new eye for both distance and close up. Though I wore them yesterday when driving, my driver's license says "corrective lenses". It takes maybe thirty seconds after I put them on or take them off, and several blinks, for my brain to snap to reading the signals clearly. I still wear the eye patch to sleep, put drops in several times a day, and have an exercise ban. I'm not supposed to bend over, nothing that will raise the pressure in my eye, so I've perfected my squat for picking things up off the floor. 

I will be discussing with my eye doctor about how to handle the adjustments in light transmission when I see her before the next eye operation. But, knowing about it, and knowing its temporary, I think I could live with the whole dark experience if necessary. 

Last thing, I may explore cosmetic surgery around the eyes once I'm fully healed. I have some growths on my lids, and my lids droop, especially the left one. If I don't hide my eyes behind glasses any more, I may want them to look better. 

Poor Quality Tears

AI generated image from the prompt
"drawing of poor quality tears"

"Poor quality tears" is a phrase that has been rattling around inside my head, a phrase that can be used as a metaphor in so many ways. My eye doctor diagnosed me with this. When I went to her because I had gummy, sticky, eyes, she diagnosed me with "dry eye" which seemed wrong when my eyes are runny. She explained my tears are very low quality, not lubricating my eyes, and so I over-manufacture them because my brain believes my eyes are dry. I've been crying poor quality tears, full of grief, but not able to articulate exactly why.

My nephew's girlfriend posted this on Bluesky: nothing can possibly prepare oneself for the crumbling sensation of feeling like any and all futures you dreamed of just vanished into thin air. She captured so close to what I've been feeling! Of course, she is young, was on the brink of significant career success, and now in very real danger from our government - it's all come crumbling down for her. I know her tears are the real thing, of very high quality. Her losses are real and significant.

I believe that, for a brief time in the past year, I've been in a golden spot where most things were going well. Kids healthy and on good tracks. Me healthy and wealthy, if not wise. My life was organized, moving along so that I felt I had purpose and pleasure in good proportions. A solid collection of true friends. Living a life full of convenience, comfortable habits that made moving along easy.

Now that has all come tumbling down. The world will not go back to the way it was. I'm mourning the loss, not just of my world of the past year, but also of the trajectory, the future world I imagined was coming. Too much has happened - the future has been changed. Not all of my losses come from the shitstorm that is our political world - the specter of chronic, severe illness is also with us now. I am privileged, mightily. I'm losing convenience and certainty. My life will be fine, though different. But I ache for the young people, for the uncertain future they face, instead of the golden one I imagined for them. I ache for those in real jeopardy, and those whose present has already been blighted. I ache for our world, changing in ways no-one would have believed a few months ago.

I'm angry, and I do what I can to fight. But just for this moment, I'm tired and I'm sad.

———Edited to add a tag from a fired fed in my neighborhood:

“ We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that’s waiting for us. – Joseph Campbell”

Stronger Next Year

My gym! Rowing machine along the back.
I just installed the bar to help with balance exercises.

I did not have a great year physically. It started with recovering from my knee surgery, carried on through a summer of increased migraines and still not up to snuff on my knees, and crashed and burned as a result of my vigorous (but fun!) sailing vacation, where I injured my rotator cuff and generally burned out my whole body.

Through it all I tried to keep moving and working out in my basement gym. (I love my basement gym, and I enjoy working with my personal trainer there.) But there were definitely days on the couch where I hardly left the house. I felt old. I felt feeble. I was fat, and nothing I did seemed to affect that. I woke every morning feeling like the Old Red Woman, bent over, stiff, wobbly, and in pain. I felt frustrated that my body was so frail. I was preparing myself for a new reality of being old and feeble. I told myself that I actually was old, almost seventy years old. Any time there was a news article that another celebrity had died, the first thing I did was check their age. So many of them younger than me!

But by late fall, I felt myself getting better. Stronger. More capable. Actually doing things. Feeling competent and capable. Walking still did not feel good, but I adjusted and spent more time in my home gym working with weights or my rowing machine or on the stationary bike my BIL gave me. I went back to the mental disciplines I had learned over the years of dealing with pain, meditating and observing the pain with kind curiosity. I had some adventures, on the water and on the scoot. I had some actual good days, where I woke up feeling good. Not stiff. Not bent over. Not feeble. Ready to face the day, get out there and do things.

The election results hit me like a gut punch. As I got out of bed the following morning, I was initially fine, but by the time I had walked the length of the house to let the dogs out, my back had tightened into a full fledged spasm. SPROING! I was bent over, leaning on furniture like a toddler doing her first cruise around the house. I pulled out my tool kit, things I know, deep down in my body and mind, to be true. First, mentally: "there is nothing wrong with you. You are safe. You are fine. Yes, the back is clenched, but it's not broken. Yes, the world has gone to shit, but you are safe. Your body is safe." Then I started my series of exercises/ stretches that I know deep down are going to help. I also reached for the tylenol, because comfort is an important part of feeling safe. 

This worked! It took a couple of weeks - the back clenched every morning for a while - but it got fainter, and gradually went away.

Around this same time, my primary care doctor told me that based on my testing, I have great lung capacity and a strong heart, but I have shit endurance. She prescribed aerobic exercise, specific amounts at specific heart rate levels of effort. The next week, my neurologist reinforced this - certain levels of aerobic exercise seem to have a protective effect on migraines.

The view my trainer has from my phone while we video.
I have all the toys! I bought my first weights in 1995,
and I've been adding equipment ever since.

So I'm all in on the cardio now, added to my twice-weekly strength training and daily warm up stretches. I have the devices to keep me going indoors this winter- a rowing machine, a (bottom-of-the-line no bells-or-whistles) stationary bike. I have a mini trampoline in front of my TV. And I dusted off my original, built of wood in Minnesota, Nordic Track ski machine from 1993! Using the NT was the first time in my life I enjoyed indoor cardio, back in the day. It needs refurbishment, but it turns out that while the old ski machines are no longer made, there are enthusiasts and through a sub-reddit I found a guy who sells refurbishment kits with the most common replaceable parts! It's on my list to get it fixed up - probably a few hours work.

I found that walking can't get my heart rate up high enough to meet my PCP's exercise prescription. I try hustling along, but the heart stays stubbornly beating slowly. Only up very steep hills does it go up- and I can't currently sustain that for long enough. This all may change as I get more aerobically fit.

Scotland - The Aftermath

 

Passengers

I had a terrific time sailing in Scotland, but I got home really knackered, as they say over there.

The time during most of the voyage had been a little bit dreamy, time and rhythms cut off from normal life and tied to the working of the ship. Foreign languages and barriers in communication contributed to the sense of out of time. We didn't have cell phone (and thus internet) access all the time, and rarely below in our cabins. On deck when anchored in port there was usually some coverage, so first and last thing in the day. I wanted to know the Vice Presidential candidate selection, so at least once a day I tried to pull up the NY Times app. I was startled one morning when the lead picture on the app on my phone was a graph of the stock market plunging down, down, down. I shared it with my fellow passengers, but my reaction, cut off from any possible actual response, was to shrug and let things just shake out on their own. I actually heard about the VP selection from a group text from friends. I read a little bit about the guy, and the next day enjoyed a brief time on Threads reading a series of "Tim Walz is the guy who..." jokes, stressing how he is the nice guy, the understanding father, the one you can rely on to be kind and come through in a crisis. It was fun to share in the zeitgeist with my friends back home, but most of my attention stayed on the here and now on the ship. None of the jokes or memes could be translated for my fellow passengers, I tried and failed miserably to their puzzled polite smiles.

Our last day on the ship had a "last day" vibe all day, a bit intangible. People were packing, thinking about their next plans, etc. It also was extremely rough, through very strong winds and big irregular waves, for a few hours, so for the first and only time I declined to help with the ship handling, but sat it out indoors in the dining salon until things calmed down. I had all kinds of feelings about that, but I'm sure it was the right choice for me. Sometime the previous day I had pulled a muscle or something in my shoulder, and that was part of my decision.

Party Time with the crew

We had a farewell party and dinner, anchored out in the harbor at Oban. There was a lot of gaiety from the young crew, some of whom were going to be changed out for relief crew the next day. Apparently one of the navigation devices had the date wrong (a software bug, otherwise it worked fine, they said) and thought it was Christmas Eve, so we had Christmas in August as the theme. They decorated the dining salon with lights and greenery and gave each other presents, while the captain and passengers looked on with indulgent smiles.

The next morning was all business - finishing packing, hasty breakfast, (the cook was one of those leaving the ship), and a last bout of pulling on lines to set the ship up for docking at the town dock in Oban. All of us (the passengers) got off. Five of them, the family of four and Swiss Rudi, were taking the same noon train as me to Glasgow, though I was the only one going right on to Edinburgh. We had all of our luggage, and it was the same intermittent drizzle as ever. After a brief burdened stroll through the very interesting and scenic old town, we piled all of our bags under a big umbrella in an open-air eatery close to the train station. Being together meant we could take turns making forays out and about during the couple of hours we spent waiting, to shops, to the take-out seafood place (fresh prawns, yum!), to buy provisions for the journey. 

The town of Oban looked worth
spending more time in

Boarding the train was a scrum, but we all managed to sit more-or-less together. The scenery from Oban to Glasgow was terrific! We went through forests, and through a series of long, narrow, deep lochs, and around minor mountains. At one point, they made all of us get off our train and walk along the platform to another, longer, train for the rest of the trip to Glasgow. Again a scrum, and I got separated from the group, into a different car (but at least seated, not everyone was). I had the day before used WhatsApp to send some pictures to Anna, (my only phone contact in the group) and so I sent her a message letting her know I was on board, and would look for them in Glasgow. Sadly, the train was late into Glasgow and so I had to run for my train. They were all there, and I said hasty goodbyes, but there was no time to exchange contact info (why hadn't we done that?) and off I went.

The train to Edinburgh was modern, but also crowded with standing folks, though I secured a seat. On arrival in Edinburgh, I was astounded at the crowds, as the August festivals were in full swing. I hadn't seen so many people in a while! I hopped right in a cab and went to the airport area hotel. It was elegant, posh, hushed, full of grey-on-grey-accented with black straight lines and minimalist decor. My plan was to head to the adjacent village for a pub dinner (it had been long time since harborside seafood) but after I got to the room I just deflated from the adrenaline that had fueled me so far. I realized every single muscle in my body ached and I was starving and exhausted. I did room service, didn't even finish the beer I had ordered, showered and fell into bed. 

The trip home was uneventful. The flight didn't leave until noon, so I had time for a full Scottish breakfast at the hotel before the airport, egg, sausage, bacon, black pudding, the whole nine yards. On the plane, I watched a movie (All of Us Strangers), read, dozed, napped. I Ubered home, as no family was available to pick me up. Bixby climbed up on the back of a chair and flung himself into my arms! I managed to stay awake until 8:30 pm, and slept through the night.

When I woke in my own bed (at about 4 am) I realized that many of the aches and pains had subsided, but my shoulder was on fire. Now, a few days later, I have sorted out many bruises and twinges, but clearly my shoulder is messed up. I have a PT appointment on Monday, and hopefully they will be able to help. 

I'm settling down now to a time to turn inward, to take care of me. No trips planned, some good family time with our girl in town for the next few weeks, a garden to tend, dogs to walk, farmer's markets to visit, an election to avoid thinking about (except for money). I can still do adventures, but I do need to allow recovery time from them. My weight the morning after I got home was alarming, tied for all time high, and I want to do something about it. At my last physical, my cholesterol was higher than in the past, and I bargained with my doctor I could lower it back down with lifestyle changes, versus going on a drug. My followup appointment, the reckoning, is in October. Fitness is, as always, a primary focus. I can do hard things, but I'm going to opt out of most of them for a while. Such a privilege to be able to do so!

I plan to eat a lot of vegetables.
This is zucchini and peppers from my garden,
with onions and a little minced leftover pork

High Summer

It's about as summery as summer can get around here. We're having a severe drought and a serious heat wave. We have one hot golden day after another, with daylight until nine at night. I'm all in on summer this year. Here are things that are letting me know it's really really peak summertime:

• Watermelon cocktails! 
• Basil in everything, including watermelon cocktails!
• Sailing! This is the first year my boat partner is also retired, meaning weekday sailing!
• Tomatoes! With basil!
  
• Dresses! With flip flops and painted toes! (and slip shorts, thanks Kim!)
  
• Peaches! Some things I only buy at farmer's markets, never ever at the grocery store. Peaches are #1 on that short list.
• Ice cream! New flavors to try! With peaches! With basil! With cocktails!
  
• Corn on the cob! Also on the farmer's market only list (except for the stunted ears I grew myself!) It goes well with basil!
  
• Shrimp on the barby! Wrapped in basil, of course!
• Sprinklers and running through the water! Every single morning watering! Dogs chasing the water! Picking the basil before it goes limp in the heat!
  
• Very early morning exercise, with slanty golden light before it gets too hot!
  
• Opening up the windows every morning, only for a couple of hours! Smelling the basil!
  
• Huddling up to the air conditioner every afternoon! Closing the blinds to keep the sun out!
• Evening happy hour in our cul de sac, with the pavement too hot to set a beer down! Parents comparing notes on the multiple camps and car pools for the kids out of school! Sharing the basil!

 

...And the Livin' is Easy

This is a sago palm, which sat in its
pot for more than year doing absolutely
nothing. Then suddenly, I swear in a
single day, this!

It's not truly summer yet, but it sure feels like it. We're in a bad drought - the spring rains haven't come, and it will hurt us - but we're having one golden day after another. Even when it's not actually hot out, the sun is creating a high summer vibe. My days involve a lot of time outside, whether working on something or just reading. Or watching my plants respond to the spring. I'm busy enough, with projects, gardening, and seeing the neighbors. I've mowed the grass once (even more summer feeling evoked) and planted a few things, but I have to keep cautioning myself not to get ahead of the real cycle - there are still a few cold nights in the forecast.

At the end of the day I feel strongly the longing for a beer, barbecue, and ice cream. One day, I harvested (indoor hydroponic) cherry tomatoes, more than I could ever eat out of hand, and cooked up a fresh tomato sauce by slicing each one in half, tossing with an equal volume of sauteed onions and seasoning with my own hydroponic oregano and basil. I grilled marinated eggplant slices and italian sausages, and it was absolutely perfect!

On another day, the craving for ice cream was so strong I took myself to the store and stocked up. Yum! Sometimes, all it takes is a spoonful of creamy goodness and I can move on. I've also learned that as much as I love a beer after working outside, it is filling me up too quickly right now, and so I'm experimenting with a small growler so I can enjoy one can over two days. For me, one of the things I learned from my fling with IE is to not let myself feel deprived. I don't want to find myself eat things out of habit or impulsively and thoughtlessly, but if I want something, whatever it is, I'm going to have it. And when I do, I'm going to enjoy it. As much as I want of it. But I'm going to constantly check whether I really want it or not. And I still worry about food waste, and portion control because I do love a clean plate.

My girl and I took a trip down to the tip of Southern Maryland, where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. We checked out a school there, and while she was on a tour I took a stroll along the water front, including a stop at a replica old ship - the Dove, that helped bring the first English colonizers to Maryland. The sound of the little wavelets in the bay, and the smell of the wind over the salt water, gave me a bit of a Bellport vibe. But the school is tiny and really isolated - miles from even a 7-11 or fast food joint - and probably not a good fit for my mature city girl. We'll be heading  to the far west of our state in another week to check out another school, that at least has a little town with coffee shops and convenience stores.

On the agenda right now, besides many many gardening chores, are prepping for the Kinetic Sculpture Race (Saturday May 6) and getting my boat ready for sailing season. I couldn't keep my mouth shut about structural issues with one part of our Kinetic Sculpture so now of course it's my responsibility. I built a tent frame out of bamboo harvested from a team member's yard, which a colleague will cover with a canvas tent. Our theme is "Happy Campers" so of course we need a tent. However, our tent will have Baltimore icon Divine peeking out from it. It turns out we are more camp than campers. For my costume, they asked if I wanted a feather boa - not my style - but now I have to come up with something else. 

The living really is easy for me right now. I've got little to be anxious about and much to celebrate. My stupid body keeps tensing up my back or shoulder muscles, going into spasm, and I have to just laugh and tell myself I'm fine, nothing is broken, I'm perfectly safe, and if I can't bend over to pick something up, I'll sit down to get it instead. Not going to stop moving. 

Of course, I'm making hex signs to ward off the evil that follows the hubris of announcing everything is fine, more than fine, it's good. But really, the fish are jumpin' and I've got stuff to do. A banana tree to plant. And a new beer to sample. Catch you later.

Checking In on Intuitive Eating

I'm committed to not focusing on my weight, and instead focusing on being strong, and eating what feels like the right thing in the right amounts. To that end, I've covered up my scale, though I step on it daily. To keep from obsessing about it ("Think about anything except a white bear") I can look at my weight records if I want to. I've made a loose rule that I will look at my weight on weekends if I like, and I've checked in a few times, though often I'm like "never mind". I look at my whole body in the mirror, and I continue to wear clothes that reflect my body size and shape. So I'm not divorced from my weight, though I think about the numbers less and how I feel more. I'm really focused on being strong for my March hiking trip, but there is a nagging worry about making sure my clothes continue to fit for it, because I am for sure gaining weight.

Integral to the IE principles are to consider all food as equal - do not demonize any of it! Also, honoring hunger means to not restrict anything. It's considered critical - because the "snap back" effect is so powerful. These first steps in IE are called the "refeeding" stage. It's assumed, when the rules go away, there is some period of going wild, before your body wisdom kicks in and the emotional components wane, and you settle down into a more sedate pattern of eating. And, if you don't settle down, it's because you have not truly internalized the principles yet. Just eat more, for longer, trust the process. I'm still a skeptic.

Because I never followed other's food plans, I learned to reject conventional diet wisdom back in the last century, and more recently I embraced the concept of only eating things I really like, I assumed I didn't have to deal with jettisoning much in the way of emotions or rules attached to food. It turns out that is not strictly true. While I long ago eschewed lousy diet substitutes and ate no food I didn't like, I have not actually regularly eaten everything I do like. I made spaghetti for myself the other day, and I realized the number of times I've cooked pasta is maybe once a year for several years. It felt...  deliciously naughty is the best phrase I can come up with. I lost much of my original weight on low carb dining, and I blamed previous nightly pasta dishes and excellent bread for my weight gain in my thirties to my top weight ever. I ate a reasonable portion of pasta this time, and I felt good. But I was startled by the frisson of naughtiness that came with it. I wonder if I can work this into my meal lineup, and stay reasonable?

It does seem that I have my hunger cues pretty well covered. I'm eating breakfast a little earlier than before, lunch time is varied depending on many factors, and dinner is early. (Yes, I'm an old person that would appreciate a good Early Bird Special.)  I still over eat at a good evening meal, sometimes nearly to Thanksgiving levels. Something in my body equates "stuffed" with comfort. And I am often driven to grab something and stuff it down heedlessly late at night, again for comfort. These are not sweets, but usually carbs. The other day, the way I stuffed in some crackers while standing at the kitchen counter reminded me of The Very Hungry Labrador who had apparently sworn never to go hungry again. I also will eat from bland boredom, seeking pleasure in my mouth. This is usually sweets, in the evening or night.

Since I know these things, I'm trying to work with them rather than fight them. What are other comforts and entertainments? This is highly personal, and a work in progress, so I don't have any answers to offer here. But I do think awareness is key. Progress, not perfection.

Satisfied

I'll never be satisfied!

I've been embarked on an odyssey of mindful eating attempts. One of the main goals of this is to reach a point where I know not only "what" but "how much" I want to eat, I eat just that, and then I stop. Having just one exquisite but tiny little hand-crafted chocolate, for example, carefully selected from a free display, and then walking on, satisfied. Or, more prosaically, dishing out a small portion of one of my favorite dinners at home and then not even finishing that, because I'm satisfied. I truly do not want more.

As if.

As an experienced dieter, I have encountered various descriptions of this holy grail over the years. All of them are about how to think and act around food, and only go lightly on what to actually eat. No food lists or meal plans. Just paying attention to how much and what you eat.

I think there is a lot to this notion of listening to your body and acting on it. I picked up a book years ago, The Beck Diet Solution, with a Cognitive Based Therapy approach to eating, marketed as "learn to think like a thin person"! (This book was very influential in my starting this blog back in 2010, as one of the tenets was to have a diet buddy. There is still a link to the site over on the right.) There were a lot of useful exercises - self-experiments - to do involving learning how to recognize what we actually feel in our bodies, versus all the layers of thoughts and emotions we overlay on food. For example, she instructs you to skip a meal and check in on hunger at regular intervals, to remind yourself what hunger really feels like, while also discovering that hunger is not an emergency, you won't die, people live for weeks without eating anything. Also, to eat very slowly, setting down the fork between bites, and writing down how you feel before, during, and after. Make a daily plan in advance of all meals, and assess afterwards how you did. I found all of these exercises useful. Ultimately, though, the CBT approach relies on logical self-talk ("I would rather weigh less than eat this cupcake") in a way that requires self-discipline and self-control. After a while, it just gets tiring. It's a never-ending grind. Sigh.

Several years later, I discovered the Summer Tomato, a much more joyful approach to how to eat. Created by The Foodist, the basic approach was to only eat Real Food that tastes awesome (thus fresh tomatoes only in the summer), which requires cooking for yourself. Further, eat mindfully, exercise, and listen to your body. All good stuff, and reading her book several times, reading her blog, and listening to her podcast really did start to change my relationship to food. It wasn't a fight, because if it was a fight, you couldn't win. For me, it was still a struggle to lose or maintain my weight, but I definitely upgraded my food choices and learned to appreciate my food much more. She offered a week-long video course on mindful eating that I subscribed to. The main things I got out of that were to slow way down - fork down between bites - and to chew thoroughly before swallowing. And eliminate distractions while eating - tune in fully to the physical experience of eating and how it makes you feel. She promised the magic state of knowing exactly what and how much to eat I described up top as the result of fully embracing this approach. I never reached nirvana, but I started to make peace with where I was.

Somewhere along the way I started meditating, and I subscribed to the Ten Percent Happier app, where I am still a happy customer. They have a course on Mindful Eating, with Judson Brewer, who is an addiction specialist. I took that course, which goes deeper into the mindfulness approach than the Summer Tomato course. From there, I subscribed to Brewer's own pricey app, Eat Right Now. That had an intense month-long course on mindful eating. Some approaches I've learned from Brewer (that also work for things like anxiety and pain) are breaking the habit loop, RAIN, and disenchantment. Habit loops are something I knew about, but participating in the course helped me specifically note habits and try to modify them. RAIN (recognize, acknowledge, investigate, note) is a meditation technique where you turn in towards an unpleasant sensation (cravings, in the case of mindful eating), and explore what you are feeling with kind curiosity. This is called "surfing the urge", knowing that it won't last. Disenchantment comes from exploring your body after eating whatever, and really feeling in your body whether it feels good. I had some success with these things. I recognize a habit much more readily now, and much more of my eating is a conscious choice, though not always a wise decision. I was sometimes successful at surfing my urges, but often my urge seems to be driven from deep within me and doesn't dissipate after ten minutes or so, as the technique is geared towards. Instead, I might drive to the supermarket to buy ice cream, because I have an idée fixe that just won't go away. That's where disenchantment comes in - after eating, I can explore how my body really feels. As I started to use this technique, imagine my surprise that I can eat an awful lot of ice cream before my body starts to feel bad. But, there is a point where it does actually not feel very good. Hmm...

Then I stumbled on Corinne Crabtree, and her pricey on-line No BS weightloss course. She has taken bits and pieces of all of the approaches above and put it together in a way that really speaks to me. She is profane and down-to-earth. The basic approach is eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied (which is usually less than "full). We are fat because we overeat (eat when we are not hungry or have reached satisfied), and there are three reasons we overeat:

• Lack of body awareness
• Failure to feel our feelings
• Allowing our habit brain to take over

It's all about self-discovery, no shame, only data to explore. I've been through her video course, and some of her supplemental courses (eg, "Binge Better").  I listen to some of her podcasts, participate in her Facebook group, and almost daily use her planning and assessment worksheets which take about 10 minutes to do. There is definitely a cult of personality around Corinne, and I love that she reaches a population that is unlikely to follow my path of CBT and meditation and other approaches on the edge of woo-woo. She teaches habit loops, body awareness, and even how to feel your feelings, to a really wide audience that might not otherwise hear about these things. And I'm not being superior here: the way she talks about them are very useful for me as well.

For the past month, ever since I covered up the numbers on the scale for my daily weigh-in, I've been really tuning in to try to find "satisfied". I've jettisoned any goals around pounds, instead focusing on what and how much I'm eating - but in a loving and investigative way, not in a restrictive way. I've got "hungry" down pretty well, and I feel like I'm making progress towards finding satisfied. Late nights continue to be an issue for me, but it feels like progress towards being what I want to be, someone who eats what she wants, in the amounts she wants, and is at a healthy and attractive weight. 

My meditation app, Ten Percent Happier, is having a weeklong new challenge course that starts tomorrow, on intuitive eating. Short videos and a meditation for seven days. It's all part of the same approach and it's likely to help me be focused. I really liked something that came up in a teaser podcast for this course: "It's not about self-control, it's about self-care".  Yeah, baby! I've learned a lot this year about self love and self care, and I think I may be reaching a real tipping point here in my relationship to eating. I'll let you know how it goes.

Self-Talk, Self-Care, Self-Love

I've been thinking a lot about my interior dialogue. Of course, I have a constant running rumination, but it's really shocking to actually tune in and hear the less-than-kind way I address myself. Word choice matters a lot, not just in the "big things" but also in the little things.

I've been a meditator for a while now, and I've always had a problem with the type of meditation known as "loving kindness". Frankly, it sounds like the woo-woo stuff I've always run far away from. The language and phrasing, invariably delivered in a special meditator's voice that comes across as pretentious to me, are sappy and sometimes downright silly. I doubt the power of positive thoughts to do much for oblivious recipients. And then, to apply that woo-woo stuff to myself...! I can't even. "You are perfect just as you are!"  P-U-L-E-A-S-E spare me! I am so far from perfect I can't even type the phrase without grimacing!

I've had a lot of problems with language around self-care, as well. "Self-indulgence, more like!" I think. I have no shortage of self-indulgences, from impulse shopping to ice cream or TV binges. I don't need more self-care, I need more self-discipline, to go out there and do more things that matter better. There is so far for me to go to live up to my own standards and judgement.

But through my various works at self-improvement, I've heard repeatedly that "self-love" is a necessary precursor for lasting change. At the same time, meditation has given me the ability to actually observe and overhear my inner dialogue, which is a manifestation of my relationship with myself. I definitely have an inner mean girl (and we don't need to delve here into why the voice sounds so much like my mother). So when my meditation app (Ten Percent Happier) said they were doing a New Year's challenge around self-love, I decided to give it a go.  

Well, it turns out that Dan Harris, the self-described "fidgety skeptic" behind the app, shares my distaste for the whole subject, and yet understands its importance for the same reasons I do. Leading up to the meditation challenge, he did several podcasts (also named "Ten Percent Happier") about what is really meant by the practice and approach of self-love, why it is necessary, and how to approach it so that it feels authentic and not forced bullshit. The challenge itself, short video clips followed by a daily meditation, was useful and I was faithful at participating. But it was really the conversations on the podcasts that helped me so much. 

So I don't have to use the loving-kindness vocabulary, and I don't have to jump all the way to pretending I'm perfect. I'm a work in progress, for sure. Self-love may be a bridge too far, but I can get to self-acceptance for sure. I'm a person, and deserve credit just for that. I don't have to look back at my accomplishments to justify my existence. Simply being here is all it takes to be worthy of love. In the language of one of the first meditations I learned, "as long as you are breathing know there is more right with you than not". 

So I've been cutting myself a lot more slack lately. I still have the urge to do more, be more, be better. But I think I'm more tuned to being kind when I don't live up to my own expectations. By listening to the way I talk to myself - turning inchoate feelings into actual words, often on the page, helps me get out useless loops of self-recriminations, accept what really is, and move on. And the "moving on" still involves effort and striving and falling short - but now it has just a little less recrimination.

UPDATE: Re-reading, I see I didn’t circle back to self-indulgence versus self-care. I got this through an analogy of how we treat others. For example, if an employee falls short, you don’t go all “it’s fine, it doesn’t matter, here’s an award so you don’t feel bad”. But you do encourage them, coach them, help them figure out how to do better next time, because it does matter and you want them to succeed. What are the barriers to success? Are there ways to provide assistance?  That same dialogue internally is caring for yourself, instead of a tongue-lashing, even if the tongue-lashing comes with ice cream.

Relief

The Wall - the WH is through the fence

What a roller coaster this past week has been! It feels like the longest week of the year. But at least it's over.

I try to ration my news, and isolate myself from useless nattering. So I didn't pay very much attention to updates during the day on Tuesday - I checked to see if there were reports of widespread election violence (there weren't) and aside from that, I knew there would be no actual election outcomes until later. So I had my quiet day in the lovely weather. After supper, I went down into the basement and sewed, while watching my absolute favorite movie of all time: The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming! It has stood the test of time, still the best ever.

I checked the NY Times and Wash Post websites just before bed. Nothing clear, as expected. My staying up would do nothing to change anything, so night night.

I had set up the coffee pot for the morning, so I got up at my normal 6:30 on Wednesday morning, poured the first cup, and sat down with the ipad. I was horrified. Until I read the headlines, I hadn't realized how much I had allowed myself to buy into the Blue Wave. Things were looking bad - the Post actually forecasting a Trump win, the Times more neutral. Down ballot losses everywhere. An incredibly powerful Facebook live post from a Black episcopal priest I know was full of despair and anger. Even if Biden manages to eke it out, he said, this is the nation we live in. Nearly half of all voters are stupid racists, or else think being a stupid racist is not disqualifying.  I curled into a ball and panicked.

I've discovered spending a few minutes catastrophising a situation is actually helpful to me. I contemplate a worst case scenario, and play it out in my head. So I allowed myself to go there. What does this mean for me and my family and friends? Me, I'll be mostly fine. My family and friends, not so much. For the country, for our institutions, for life as I have known it, a disaster. Having spent just a few minutes there, I put it away for a while.

Black Lives Matter Plaza - my first visit

Compartmentalizing. Shrugging things off until they can't be ignored. I can do that. So I put myself on a schedule of no more often than every two hours to check in on the news. I spent time outside, gardening, but couldn't really get into any projects of any depth. I kept moving, though, not able to settle down into a book or anything else.

Thursday and Friday continued in a similar pattern, but my anxiety about the worst case eased. It seemed it would be a matter of time before it would be widely acknowledged that Biden had a solid enough lead. The weather remained remarkably fine, and I spent a great deal of time outside.

So the news came Saturday, from a text from my friend while I was eating lunch: Clanging pots and bowls in the yard! Knowing what it must mean, I grabbed the ipad and poked the Post and then the Times. Then I pushed my food away and put down my head on the table and wept. Really. Big wracking sobs. Enough to worry the dog, who painfully arose to come over and check on me.

But the feeling is relief, not joy. Relief at dodging the worst case scenario. Immense pleasure at seeing the glass ceiling break for our Vice President. But we squeeked by. I was never a fan of Joe Biden (though he struck a lovely note at his address last night). Going back to the way things used to be is unacceptable. We have to move forward, but we are a nation divided, and not all the haters are old and about to die though they sure are doing their best to put themselves and everyone else in harm's way.

I have a horror of crowds, and so avoid most demonstrations. There are times when my body on the line might make a difference, but for me the barrier is pretty high. So my celebration was at daybreak today, down at the White House. Relief at putting the worst behind us, and more work to do.

Planning, Tracking, and Hunger

"Hunger is NEVER an emergency".

 I first heard that phrase many years ago. At the time, it was the fashion to suggest that many small meals was the "best" way to diet, and that it was important to avoid ever becoming actually hungry, because that would lead to raging hormones that would make a person lose all control. The implication was we are all victims of our biology, and, like the Incredible Hulk, we could not be held accountable for what we did when we were in a berserker mood.  

The context for my first contemplation of hunger as merely a normal expression of impulses (rather than an emergency) was a diet book based on cognitive-behavior therapy approaches, which I read years ago. The idea is to examine thoughts, and change them consciously if they are not serving you well. Clearly, the facts about hunger are that we can live for weeks without food - so for us in America, missing a meal time is not an actual emergency (except for some people with diabetes or other medical conditions). So if we get hungry at an inappropriate or inconvenient time, we can remind ourselves we will survive, and to be patient until it is convenient to eat. It was a liberating thought, and I've used it fairly often to skip snacks or reaching for crap rather than good food.

This approach is very compatible with the coaching group I am currently participating in. The emphasis in my group is to plan and track food, and to be very aware of hunger. We are taught to analyze what we feel in our body, to feel what hunger feels like, what satisfied feels like, and to only eat when we are hungry and to stop when we are full. I'm pretty sure I've got the first notion - what hunger feels like - down pat, but stopping when full is still very difficult for me. One tidbit that caused a lightbulb to go off for me was the notion that how much food it takes to be full does not change based on how hungry I am. A portion is still a portion. 

This came into play for me today. I experimented a while back with "intermittent fasting", a fad that suggests only eating during an eight- or ten-hour window each day has weight loss benefits greater than simply a calorie reduction from less opportunity to eat. I abandoned thinking of this as a useful thing, but overall it has made me more receptive to skipping breakfast. Because I have so much more energy in the morning, and because it often gets oppressively hot in the afternoons, I jump out the door to start my day without having eaten anything first. I have my coffee, and I drink lots of water, but nothing to eat until later.

I was especially conscious of how I was feeling this week, because last week I felt better in every possible way than I have in months. No headaches, no generalized malaise or fatigue, more energy than is my norm. I wish I had taken the time to write about this at the time, because it would be useful to remember better. As my body reverted back this week towards what is sadly my normal baseline, (with a full-blown migraine to mark the transition) I tried to stay tuned in to how my body was behaving.

I got engaged in projects of some sort every morning this week, finally breaking my fast between 11:00 am and 1:30 pm. I found it difficult to stop what I was doing, because my experience has been once I do, I am likely done with productive work for the day. If it's gardening I've been doing, like today, I have to shower as soon as I come inside, to try to ward off the always-present but not always observed poison ivy, which further delays when I finally eat. The day I didn't eat until well after noon was a problem. Hunger had moved from an annoying feeling of stomach growling to a hollow feeling in my chest, and finally a headache. I recognized the headache - not a migraine, but hunger. I eventually ate (very quick salad with just lettuce, meat, and bottled dressing), but for the rest of the day I was feeling the need to "catch up". Let's just say unplanned carbs happened. My coaching group would not allow that - food doesn't just leap into my mouth - at some point, I chose to put it there. My salad, and tylenol, eliminated the headache, but I had strong urges to eat for the rest of the day and I did.

Eating around 11 am, as I did today, seems to work much better for me. I'll be having another meal by 3 or 4 pm, and later I'll have to deal with my evening drive towards sweets- a constant issue, no matter how much I've eaten earlier.

I still think hunger is not an emergency. I don't have to eat. I've got reserves to last me weeks, comes the apocalypse. But my experience this week suggests letting myself get too hungry means I have to exercise a great deal of control to avoid overeating in an over-reaction. It would be more sensible to avoid putting myself into that position in the first place.

(This post was inspired by other's posts about hunger.)

OK, So We're Doing This

Summer at home, that is. With my hopes for this year's exotic adventure gone, it's finally time to buckle down and have a summer. I need projects, and I have many ideas. But in the meantime, "me" is always a good project. I had big regrets about being in such bad shape physically before my now-cancelled trip. Time to go ahead and do something about that. Also, time to get out of the house more.

I was up at 5 am today, by design, and downtown as the sun came up. I have lived and worked in one of the most scenic spots in the world for more than 20 years - it's time to continue to appreciate it. So, just a little walk around the sights, as the crews cleaned up from the totally irresponsible "celebration" held down on the Mall last night. We're in the middle of a stretch of hot and humid weather, and I decided dawn was the time to be cool and also, to be mostly alone.

Morning adventures these days are limited by my bladder. So three miles was the plan, and three miles got done, at a leisurely pace as I enjoyed the views. There were runners and tourists around, but it was easy to keep distance. That is good, because most people were only wearing masks when passing closely was inevitable. Me too. I was reminded how much I like early mornings. 

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and now I feel like my day has not been totally wasted. Walk and chores, both. Maybe I'll do something else, or maybe I'll just binge Star Wars on my girl's new Disney+ subscription.




Also, expect quotes from Hamilton to crop up any place I can possibly use them. Such as this post's title.

Update

Oh, geez, things have been in such turmoil - and yet, almost none of it touches me, directly. Just my family and those I love, and the country I love... Me? I worry, I ruminate, I self-medicate with books, my body declares war on me so the dizziness, migraines, knee pain and digestive distress really multiply, and my nervous system is on high alert for any signs of the virus. But I'm fine.

Things started going south the day I finally went sailing. My brother-in-law (BIL) dropped by to pick up my girl, who had come over to take care of my old dog. As he got to my door and came in, he got a text from his employee, showing her positive Covid-19 test result. Still standing in the doorway, I told him to step outside immediately. We sat down outside, distanced. His assistant - who can't work at the pharmacy alone, only accompanied by BIL or BIL's one other pharmacist - felt ill the day before. BIL sent her home (after 3 hours together, though both masked!) and asked her to get tested. Here was the result. Gah. So worried. We discussed contingency plans, for the family and for the business. It's now been more than two weeks, and both he and his assistant pharmacist are fine. His employee is still out, but at home. From the moment the text arrived till now, neither he nor my girl have come close to me. (My only risk factors are being old and fat, but I'd like to avoid any unpleasantness.)

So then the issues of racial justice and violence against black people blew up. I spiraled out of control, feeling like the country was close to civil war. If it came to it, I would put my life on the line. If I thought it would be useful. As I noted, I decided at this point to give money - enough to feel it - and to re-engage on areas where I could be actually useful. My body makes war on me, so that I couldn't look someone in the face and answer "yes" to "Do you feel well today?". It keeps me from attending even local protests. When the going gets tough, Nan gets sick. It's a pattern that has repeated itself all my life.

My BIL's pharmacy, in the latest gentrifying area of DC, has been hit three times. Not looting, professional thieves. Folks who knew which drugs to take. He boarded up the big windows. He's talking to the landlord about metal grating. His insurance company is not happy with the situation, and they are talking.

My girl decided she had to go into DC. Of course she did. It is the right thing. But it scares me to death. She has not, so far, encountered any violence. She is on fire with zeal, and also has big feet blisters. I cannot see her, except from a distance, as I provide some practical support. She wears a mask, she says. But she is putting herself at risk. It's so different to contemplate this from the parent perspective. I think back to my own activism, traveling across half the country with people I scarcely knew to protest the Vietnam war, narrowly escaping arrest from the vicious Nixon administration. I was never scared, just mad. Or partying. My parents, separated from me by geography in the pre-cell/text era, heard almost none of this. Now, I'm terrified for my girl. But I also get regular updates.

My boys are fine. The middle boy lives in DC with his girlfriend, in a small studio apartment, and they both are working from home on things that require a great deal of tech equipment. For Memorial Day weekend, they went to an AirBnB just a couple of blocks away - a two bedroom with a balcony and a roof deck! My boy believes strongly in the science of virus spread and has not gone to the streets. No protests directly where they are. He has money of his own, however, and is also giving. We talk often.

My big boy seems to have sunk himself in math. He lives in his university town in a big house with six other guys, so he doesn't lack for company while still being isolated. For the past several years, his life has revolved around math and ultimate frisbee. He's lost the latter, and feels disoriented. And he was competing in ultimate at the top levels of the country - both as a professional (literally, but don't quit your day job) and as a nationally ranked amateur. He's not trying now to keep conditioning up, couldn't think of a non-math book he's read recently, and just geeked to the max. His well-educated, liberal, university town has had some well-bred protests which he hasn't attended. So safe and well, relatively speaking, but I long to see him.

So we're fine.