100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 40

Breakfast:  Eggs, bacon, roll...all right, 2 rolls, but they were little
Lunch:  Apple
Dinner:  McDonald's with my baby and her babies

Forty days.  Forty nights, too, I guess.  How biblical.  It seems as though I expected to breeze through this mess of an idea.  And, certainly, by this time I should be as healthy as it is possible to be and perhaps even a little svelte.  Or, at least, a little less bulgy, which I am, but not very much.  I am, however, walking like a champ.  I rarely even think of my cane, although I will be taking it along this weekend and on future trips, no matter how long they are.  It would be foolish to be stuck somewhere and not have anything to help me get around.  In the support of honesty, though, I am taking a whole shitload of pain meds, but I am still managing with the cane.  That has to count for something, yes?

I had this goofy feeling just a few minutes ago.  I spent the day with my daughter and the babies.  We played and made stuff and created stories with cars.  Actually, it was the little baby who made up the stories.  I just played along.  His big brother helped me to knit and was sad that he could not handle the needles, and I was thinking that he might be able to manage one of those round knitting things.  Once I get the yarn set, it should be fairly easy for him to guide the yarns and lift the stitches.  He has really good fine motor control and even managed to crochet a chain this afternoon, so the knitting thing is worth a try.  If it does not work, then I will have that cool device for myself.

Oh, the goofy thought was that it felt fine to walk and that I felt better somehow.  It might be that I am no longer choking and gagging and coughing out my remaining bits of lung, but it had a different quality to all of that tonight.  I felt fluid in a way that I have not for a long time.  I thought that being away from home for over-full days, two days in a row, and away from the crap here, might be contributing to that sense of well-being.  Then, I thought that maybe clearing my schedule so that I can get back into organizing this joint better and finding my way back into the studio might not be what I need right now, the part of that where I will be staying home and in the house more.  Then, I thought, what the hell.  If I want to have a tidy environment and do some messing around with sculpting or painting or some damn thing, that is what I should do, so I quickly dismissed the option of filling my schedule to the gills again and am hoping that I can manage better with avoiding the stuff that saddens me so.  I am going to give it my best shot.  Hope for the best.  Regroup if I have to.  Bitch, moan and complain as needed, but still get through it.  God, I hope I can do that.  If it does not work out as well as I would like, I can always fall back on stabbing myself into unconsciousness.

So, dinner.  The little baby, at two and a half years of age, has never been inside a McDonald's restaurant.  Sure, he has had the occasional burger and fries, I have even bought that stuff on my way to their house for lunch, but today was his first time inside one of them.

My daughter lives in a tiny town, so it was no surprise that the other mom and the dad that showed up in the playroom were toting children that are in my big grandson's preschool.  The boys had a great time, especially when the dad growled and chased them.  My little grandson was completely unfamiliar with the kind of play equipment they have there and it was nearly time to go home before he could bring himself to cross the threshold at the top of the stairs.  I would have been hesitant, too, because he had to leave the steps and step into a bowl.  He finally did it, and I navigated him up to the next level, where he sat, walked around and told me about how he was at the airport, another place he has never been.  They live a quiet, calm life and are just as simple as I am in their daily practices, you know, the day-to-day ones of ordinary life, so this was a big deal for all of us.

As a grandma, it was nice to meet my grandson's friends and their parents.  I hope we get to do more of that sort of thing during this summer at the park.

I am trying to stay hungry, at least most of the time.  I figure that it will help me to not overeat, the theory being that I will greatly reduce my appetite in the process, and to faithfully stick to standard portion sizes.  I am not sure how close I stayed to that at our fast food dinner, but I did have a diet soft drink, a grilled chicken sandwich, no mayo and I ate only half of the bun, but I made up for it with lots of fries.  And, catsup.

Early day tomorrow, so I am not sharing some things that I wanted and they will have to wait for another time.  I am close to running out of GP images, but this one is named "I will stand by you."

100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 31

Breakfast:  Nothing
Lunch #1:  Taco place, medium-sized burrito, water
Lunch #2:  Wendy's BLT salad, half dressing, 4 french fries, diet cola
Lunch #3:  Nachos, big serving, made from real and mostly scratch ingredients, amazing chips, grilled flank steak, queso fresco, avocado, onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, water, diet cola
Dinner:  Nothing yet, but will likely have microwave popcorn and a Snapple or two, the no-sugar ones.  Note:  Added to say that I had a Snapple, did not make popcorn, but did broil a small steak that was about to go bad.  Whew...waste averted.

So, anyway, no breakfast because I knew that there would be at least two lunches today.

Meeting, mentoring, meeting.  All three were between 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.  Yikes!

I was really hungry for lunch #1, so I had a smallish burrito, not the huge ones they sell there.  I was feeling not too bad about it, at least it had beans, lettuce and tomatoes.

Lunch #2 was with my mentee.  Today was our last session of the school year.  She made a card and envelope for her mother's birthday and I gave her a pen, a click-able ball point, and asked her what other gift could come along with a pen.  She guessed paper and a book, and she was correct.  Both of those things were in the scrap-booking box that contained enough art materials to see her through the summer vacation.  She really, really liked it, but she did not like it even half as much as I enjoyed sharing and giving it to her.

The third lunch was with a gallery owner who wants me to exhibit at her place.  I am not doing that any more.  It is a long and boring story, but another gallery fucked me over in February and I do not seem to be making any forward movement in getting over it.  You know, it is difficult for anyone, engaged in any kind of work that is meaningful to them, when it, their work, is not appreciated.

It is a universal human experience.  We do what is important to us.  Yeah, we do it for the money, but if we are lucky, we also get to do it for love of the work, or at the very least, find a way to wrestle some decent experience out of a less fabulous job.

I am not saying, nor do I even believe, that art is any different from other work.  They are all the same.  We do good work, we appreciate being appreciated, we expect a fair wage/payment/fee.  It is as simple as that.  Well, no, it is as complicated at that!

So, when someone who is like, oh, the boss or supervisor or manager or gallery person, when they screw you every way possible and then expect you to thank them for it, it does not matter if you are plucking chickens, selling books or exhibiting your art.

Like I said, I no longer exhibit.  But, I did have those wonderful nachos.  She wanted to meet at her gallery and it was so hot here today, that we went to the mall where she had something fixed at Radio Shack and we ate at one of the food places, run by a family and using their own recipes.  If you want fast food, this is not where you will find it.

And, that is how I came to have three lunches in four hours in one day.

I am going to spend Sunday with my daughter, where we will go to her church, send the boys off to a car show, and then go off to do womanly things together...lunch and a gun show.  They do not let you shoot any, although it is being held in a community center and they could easily set aside a couple of the bowling lanes with targets, just saying.  Anyway, on-site shooting aside, I am looking forward to trying out a wider variety of product than I can find in a shop.  As a child I was a member of the national association, long before Charleston Heston messed them up, although, in the interest of truth, he did not do it alone.  I shot skeet as a young adult, shotguns, 22 rifles and pistols.  I kind of miss it.  I have to share, though, that I have had my eye on an awfully nice Sig Sauer, even though it might be out of my price range.

And, I am watching again, right now, Jane Goodall's When animals talk, and it is at the part where they are showing how giant, pouched rats (about the size of a house cat and very placid) are trained to scent out all the left-over land mines (more than 40 million from decades of conflict) in Africa.  I love rats and had forgotten how endearing this big rats are.  Is it selfish of me to want one?  I mean, I really, really want one.  Sigh.

All in all, a good day.

My daughter said that I sounded close to healthy today, which I am feeling and hope that this keeps moving in that direction.

I had three lunches!

No one tried to mess with me.

I am running out of stockpiled GPs, so here is another angel.  I saw one of those wooden shapes that you can paint or color of tart up any way you like.  I am not buying much these days, save for travel, but I liked the shape and so I drew my own, more suited to July, but here it is: If you feel patriotic and you know it, clap your hands.

Simple thoughts

Today was too busy and too full of complicated issues for a simpleton like me.

I had a despair hangover from last evening at the gallery.  Just because you are creative, and we invite you to exhibit with us, well, that does not give you free rein to be a cranky bitch.  But, you cannot tell someone where they can put their artistic temperament and still run a business that deals exclusively with artsy fartsy types.

I went to a craft fair after this morning's coffee get-together.  It is probably the last nice one before the holidays and whilst I rarely buy anything, preferring to make my own crap, they are great fun.  Seeing how other people, especially old babes like me, manifest their creativity is a glorious and wondrous experience.  I simply cannot get enough of it.  One of my never-to-be-manifested-dreams is to provide a safe and supportive place for all of these women to sell their stuff all year round.  The talent out there is stunning, and they are some of the nicest people on the whole damn planet.  Blessings to them all.

Because my sweet and wonderful daughter and her equally adorable husband left within ten minutes of my arrival at her house today, and then I left a mere five minutes after they arrived back home, there were no adults there to witness and then complain because I do not do everything exactly like the resident adults do things.  It is the first visit in a long time where I did not get in trouble for not being a clone, which probably would not have the capability of doing everything exactly like, well...oh, never mind.

The day ended with a small dinner of four of us coffee chickies and two husbands.  One of us is fully into her third year of treatment for cancer.  She is receiving some kind of hospice care and doing quite well.  Tonight she did exceptionally well because she had a big blood transfusion this afternoon.  Even so, she pooped out shortly after dinner and had to go home. 

But, it was so wonderful seeing her out and about and eating well and having a good time.  She even had a nice bowl of ice cream for dessert.  It is all so bittersweet.  I love seeing her, but it is such a struggle to avoid talking about her health, as she chooses to not have it be a part of our conversations or time together.  Her journey, her choices, her rules.  It is enough.

No one believes that I am really taking a break from life for a while.  You know, I am sorry that this retirement from just about everything is taking place during these fall and winter holidays, but this is the appropriate time to do this.  It feels very surreal.  Everyone thinks that I will be attending all of the parties, open-houses and actual holidays.  Even my lovely daughter's lovely husband asked me this afternoon when we would be getting together for Yule.  My simple reply was that I am taking a break from holidays for a while.  Whilst no one wants to actually discuss this with me, they keep believing that I am kidding or something.  

This is not an avoidance or some kind of rebellion or taking a stand or anything like that.  It is simply me taking a break in order to avoid completely breaking.

Nothing is simple.  What a shame.