100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 7

Goodness.  A week.

I am better today.  Feeling more sick, but with a greatly improved outlook.  Maybe a better attitude, as well, not sure.  But, more hopeful, at any rate.

Breakfast:  2 eggs, over easy; 3 strips of well-done, although not too crisp, bacon, fat blotted off; tiny bowl of fruit, small cubes of cantaloupe, watermelon, 2 slices of some kind of red apple, not the crispy kind and two red grapes.
Lunch:  Pho, with the works, flank, brisket, tendon and tripe; 3 spring rolls; can of diet coke.
Dinner: The spring rolls leftover from lunch.
Lots of water.

Today was morning coffee with my friends.  It began as coffee and maybe someone would have a roll or a muffing or toast or something like that, but it has morphed into actual breakfast.  So, breakfast was at a restaurant, the second time we have been there.

The group likes to try new places.  Some are worth a return visit, some not.  This place, today, is kind of weird.  The staff runs hot and cold and you would think that you could not tell such a thing from only two visits, but apparently if the staff is just weird enough, you really can tell, even on the first visit.

The first time there, I was the first to arrive.  Another woman and I live way south of everyone else, so we get to drive the longest distance.  We live on opposite sides of the county and cannot ride together, but we are always the first to get wherever we are going.  So, I get there and the hostess welcomes me and asks something like how can she help me and I reply that I will be dining with five friends.  She stares at me.  She looks down at her desk/counter.  She looks back up at me and asks, "Do you mean now?"  I mumbled something like, "Ummm, yes."  However, in my head I was saying, "Nah, I was thinking sometime in August, maybe on a Thursday.  And, maybe you could pick me up, because this is a heck of a long way to drive." 

Anyway, she huffed and puffed and tried to blow my house down, but my house was in another county and she failed, which did nothing to improve her mood.  She did, however, lead me to a table that would accommodate five people and said to let her know if all six of us showed up and she would find another chair for us.

Today was slightly better, but just as amusing.  So, anyway, I had this great, hardly carby breakfast and then went shopping for stuff to do with my mentee and stopped in for fat quarters and some other fabric at a friend's store.

Then, I went for pho.  Oh, man, I love that stuff.  A huge bowl of steaming broth that cooks the meats and the extras, pure and unadulterated bliss.  Comfort food of the highest order.  The noodle shop I visited today (one of three that are my favorites) tosses in a couple of perfectly crafted meatballs, fine textured, strangely spiced.  Ahhhh.  Just one more reason to visit Vietnam.

It was too long a time walking and doing and looking and talking to my friend.  She sent me home with a Michael Cox book; I think it is Glass in Time, but I cannot really remember.  I took the book and myself to bed, got 21 pages read, then the drowsing cat beside me drew me into my own nap.  Waking, I felt much better, still do.

Feeling too ill to do much of anything useful, I checked all the computer stuff and one was a link to the Peace Pilgrim.  I read the article Steps Toward Inner Peace.  You know how things come into life, awareness, just when you need them?  This was one of those occasions for me. 

One area with which I have been struggling is one of the older (than me, even!) women for whom I provide social contact.  Actually, I consider her a friend, but that is how our relationship began, gosh, maybe eight years ago.  Wow.  Anyway, she has her own special personality and I have been feeling drained and weary the past dozen or so times I have taken her out.  She does have another friend, and is close to her family, even though they live far away.  They talk on the on the phone and her sons are always sending her photos via their cellphone.

But, I am the one who takes her for most of her shopping, particularly to the mall.  This mall is a near-hour drive from here and the days we do that are long, often ten or twelve hours.  It is great and we have a good time, but the days are just too long and I am guessing that it is because I have not been feeling well for a long time.  I feel stressed just thinking about how a simple lunch turns into an eight hour ordeal. 

I mean, how selfish can I possibly be?  Yeah, that selfish.  However, reading that article, well, it was like a reinforcement of all of the stuff that is important to me, stuff that I have not been practicing very effectively.  Anyway, I called my friend and had the nicest, and shortest, conversation I think that we have ever had, at least since the early days of our friendship.  I had the opportunity to be exactly what she needed.  Man, that feels nice.  We can go to lunch, walking in the mall and get her some groceries tomorrow without me feeling all ashamed of myself.

I am hungry, so I will have a couple of snap pea pods and go to bed, to read and more dozing with the kitty.

I even felt well enough for more guilty pleasure:

And, what the hell is wrong with the label function?