100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 21

Breakfast:  Eggs, steak, fruit, freaking bran muffin
Lunch:  Lobster, cauliflower, yogurt dip
Dinner:  Cauliflower, yogurt dip

So, anyway, Saturday is coffee and breakfast with my friends.  It used to be just coffee, but we ran out of just plain coffee shops and started going to places where they serve more than muffins and bagels and stuff like that.  I think that I am quitting the group because two of them are so rude to the wait staff and all complainy and generally being pains in the ass. It is uncomfortable all of the time, and downright embarrassing some of the time.  No one will say anything to either of them, and I am no exception, mostly because I do not want anyone else to call me out on any of my crap.  One of them is late for everything.  Really, everything.  Yet, each week she complains to us and sometimes to a waiter about how long it takes for her to get her food.  This one makes me laugh...a lot...because she groused about how it took ten minutes for her to get her pot of tea, even after the waiter shared with her that it was taking a little longer to be prepared.  Yeah, she is mostly amusing; so is the other woman.  I like them so much, but really, the Universe does not revolve around any of us, particularly in a busy restaurant.  Yes?  Aw, more likely I am being too critical, to judgmental, to much of a bitch.  Either way, staying home will be better for everyone.

I guess that will eliminate the muffin issue I faced today.  The place they chose does not have any à la carte items.  You have to order a whole, pre-designed meal.  You can try to ask to not have some of the items, like fried or hashed potatoes, toast, English muffins and regular muffins, but they sometime bring them to the table anyway.  I am guessing that bringing everything eliminates any fuss from their customers about paying for a whole meal and not ordering all of it's components.  So, they give you everything and you get to decide if you want to eat it.

Yeah, great solution to bartering customers, but there is that toast or some kind of muffin sitting there, a little glossy on top, raisins poking out from the branny and delicious smelling goodness.  My goodness.  I offered the muffin to the table, but because all of them got their whole meal, there were no takers, not even to take it home for later.

I ate my eggs and the tiny, rare, tender steak.  I nibbled at the sliced and diced fruit, then ate most of it.  I drank cup after cup of coffee (easy to do as they leave pots of it at the table), hoping to fill myself up so that there would be no room for muffins.  Man.  There was room for muffins.  I ate nearly half of it.  It was wonderful, nice and crumbly because of all the bran, just enough raisins.  But, it also had sugar in it, and some regular flour to hold it all together.  No bliss there.

Even worse than eating half is that I brought the other half home and ate it mid-afternoon, although I am counting it as breakfast.

Why, after three weeks of this do I have such a ridiculously low amount of self control?  I suck.  Really.

Alrighty, then, the lobster.  I have been tossing out too much food that has gone bad waiting for me to cook it.  I could pack those things away in the freezer, but I have only a small, bottom of the fridge freezer and it is already full of food that I never cooked and have socked away in there so that I would not have to throw it in the garbage.  Now, if I would actually thaw some of that crap and cook it, there would be room for more potential garbage, but I do not thaw and cook for the very same reason that all of that stuff ended up in the freezer in the first place.

I run out of energy to do much actual cooking.  For a while, I was buying frozen meals when they were on sale and eating those.  It was great.  They start off in the freezer and they eventually get eaten and there is no waste.  But, then I decided to eat more healthy food and that is why the freezer is at full capacity.

My solution is to shop for just a couple of days at a time.  So far it is working fine.  I have thrown away only some leftovers and some greens that went all wonky.  It means more stops on the way home from work and stuff, but that is not a problem, except when my energy fails and it is too difficult to stop, shop and haul my sorry behind in and out of the store.  For those days, I have filled a small shelf with canned soup, microwave popcorn and crackers.  There is iceberg lettuce, apples and some kind of hardy vegetable in the refrigerator almost all of the time, just to give the healthy food thing some credibility.

Got all my bases covered.

The  larder here was pretty empty.  Condiments, sugar-free syrups (for making plain water more appealing), pre-cooked bacon, and some cilantro is what was in there.  So, I stopped at a market on the way home from coffee this morning.  They were having a sale on lobster.  You paid $10 for one, about a pound each I guess, they cooked it for you in these huge cauldrons in front of the store, chilled them in ice water and you were set to go.

It was really good, that poor dead creature.  It was perfectly cooked and I ate everything edible, including the coral, which I really like.  It was a late lunch, after 3:00, but so filling and satisfying, juicy and, like, perfect.  So, not hungry much at dinner, and more cauliflower and some yogurt with ranch dressing powder was fine.

I have to take one of my ss women to lunch tomorrow, but for the next few days I am all set.  I have individually portioned, frozen beef patties, a couple of smoked port chops, green beans, the rest of the cauliflower (a bit more than half), peaches for breakfast or dinner tomorrow, 2 dozen eggs (some of which I will hard cook), celery, a tomato, asparagus, lemon juice for making rosewater lemonade, plenty of yogurt, blueberries, and the iceberg lettuce.

You know, I do not want to eliminate all sweets and other pleasurable foods from what I eat.  I do not want to make this about sacrifice so severe that I am afraid to enjoy myself and what I eat.  I have several trips scheduled for next month, August and October, and I want to eat the meals they provide and not get all angsty about what I am eating or not eating.

What I am doing now has to be a way of eating that I can comfortably follow for the rest of my life.  That is supposed to be the path to healthful eating that can last a lifetime.  Anything else will not work, and I have decades of proof that drastically changing to only certain foods is an exercise in failure on a grand scale.  I have already lost enough weight to notice it.  My clothes feel slightly looser and there is a reduction in the bulge-age in a certain area.  My bra is too big and some of my big girl panties are in danger of dropping when I least expect or desire them to do so.

So, this is working, and I would like to keep it that way.  I do not want to deprive myself of yummy and delicious alternatives to the junk and carbs that have been the mainstay of my diet for so long.  I am spending more money on groceries, but the quality of food has dramatically increased.  So, it is all good.  No one knows how much longer they will live, I am no exception to that, and I would very much like to spend the remaining time that I have not being fat.  I would like that very, very much.

Maybe every incidence of slippage in the whole will-power failures has been an opportunity to examine what food means to me beyond something that keeps you alive.  Maybe I need to pay closer attention to those incidents.  Not let them discourage or define me.

There are moments when this seems too difficult.  A month ago I would have sworn that I was not a person who ate in response to emotions.  An emotional eater?  Not me.  Now I know that I eat according to how I feel, particularly when I am feeling frightened, threatened and lonely.  That is such a difficult thing to accept.  Yet, if this is going to work this time, I have to find a way to deal with this, understand and resolve it and then get rid of it, once and for all.  Oh, maybe not completely, I know myself fairly well, but I would dearly love to leave most of that baggage behind me, along with the flab.

That would be so lovely.  Finding a way to care about myself enough to make choices that are truly in my own, best self interest.  I help my clients manifest that in their lives, perhaps I can do it for myself, too.  I had no intention to get all serious about this process. I wanted it to be easier than that, more like, well, just easier.  I am avoiding the scale, which has never been my friend.  I am not measuring and weighing portions, allowing my tummy to alert me when it is full, or at least satisfied.  I am still walking without my cane.  I lost count of how many days, but is is more than a week.  I did too much last Tuesday and took it in to work with me, concerned that a twelve-hour day at two locations might prove more than my knees and hip could handle on their own.  I will admit that I am taking more pain medication, but I think that cane made it possible for me to walk with less energy and certainly much less assurance.  By the end of the day my knees are not too bad, but my hips are, only sometimes, an agony.  This, too, will pass, yes?

All of this, the entire process, just seems right.  I am not stressed about it, well, except for my problems with the damn sweets.  I always believed that I was not a fan of sweet stuff.  Given a choice, I would always choose something salty, crunchy, and if you could put sour cream on it, that was even better.  I am simply going to trust that this works out the way it is supposed to and that this weakness for sweet stuff will pass.

I have three new GPs.  This is one of them.  It is named, Karma-O-Whirl:

100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 5 and Day 6

Thursday, May 12
100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 5

Breakfast:  Yogurt and strawberries
Lunch: Another one of those chicken thighs, roasted asparagus.
Dinner: Cheese crackers, three sugar-free chocolates, the little kinds
Lots of water

Only the fifth day and I am wavering.  Oh, my commitment is fine, but my old body is just not up to the task today.  I dragged out the calendar and figured out that I have been unwell for nearly seven months.  There were several bouts of infection that required 2-3 weeks of antibiotics, but I mostly am just tired and sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I am sticking with the healthy eating.  Dammit.  I really am.  I expect that my body will take as long to adjust to the lack of refined carbs and other junky kinds of foods at it needs to take.  This stuff takes time.  It must be like detoxing or something.  You try really hard to stop doing some thing and you feel worse for a while.  I know that happens when I have a really bad infection.  I have to keep reminding myself about this so that I do not lose heart and give up.  Because, you know, I really do not want to, well, you know.

It is only that I wish that I had more energy.  I did not do any of the errands and other household stuff that I needed to accomplish today.  I kept taking to my bed, reading and resting.  The new fiction is titled You Believers.  It is good.  Gritty, but good.  The first part had my heart pounding, honest, and by the looks of things, I am not going to read about the resolution of that part until the end of the book.  Good thing I am not inclined to skip to the end.

I did get a half-hour nap, but that kept me alert only for a couple of hours.  The only reason that I am even writing now is that I have to find a way to stay awake until it is closer to bedtime.  A six-hour nap during the daytime does not do anyone any good, no matter what you may think otherwise.  So, I am trying to stay awake for another two hours, at least.

I have another upper-respiratory something.  Dark clouds in and escaping from my upper sinuses, wheezing, coughing and general malaise.  However, I am not going to the doctor because all that happens there is more meds that only depress my system.  Exactly what that system is, I have no idea, but it is there and it is depressed.  Maybe it needs some chocolate to pump up the endorphins or something.

Patience...where are you?  I just need to get through these first few weeks.  On a brighter note, I did not succumb to the siren call of the maraschino cherries.  Score one for the exhausted, ooey-gooey bod.  Snort...hack...leak.

More guilty pleasure...

O.K., so I made the hope cloud image a few days ago.  Then, early this evening (Friday, which is when Blogger would finally allow new posting) I was reading my latest library book and one of the characters was gazing up at the sky and another character said something like she was looking at the sky as though she could read hope in the clouds, or something like that.   How freaking cool is that!!

Friday, May 13

100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 6

Breakfast: Nothing.  Shame on me.
Lunch:  Half of a Subway roast beef sandwich, no dressing, lots of vegetables, a little Provolone cheese
Dinner: Stir fry, pork, tons of celery, pea pods, mushrooms, onions, 1 big jalapeno.  Pineapple and a cookie for dessert.  Tea.
Lots of water all day. 

Since this began, I have been drinking at least a gallon of water each day, and will be able to have more when I get the water filter going.  I have a Britta pitcher and finally found filters for it.  They have to soak for a while before you can use them, and I keep forgetting.  Our tap water is icky and I know I can drink more when the pitcher is ready.

So.  Breakfast.  Did not have any today.  I felt so icky yesterday and had no energy.  I took a walk around the block, hoping to get something going in my body, but it did not work and I had a short nap.  It sort of helped, but by the time I went to bed, I was at the point of being overtired and not able to sleep.  So, I read until nearly 4:00 a.m., fell asleep and was up at my usual 6:30-ish waking up time. 

I fed the cats and went back to bed.  When I next woke, it was just after 11:00 a.m. and I had a hour to pull everything together and get to the gallery.  I made it, and stopped at the Subway place for a foot-long roast beef and veggie.  I ate half of it on the way to work and then forgot about the rest.  Oh, well, such a waste, though.

I was just hungry enough to eat well at dinner.  After, a friend stopped by with ice cream and I had a scoop of chocolate and a half-scoop of strawberry.  I made him take the rest home with him, so I am safe for the moment.  I should have been able to say 'no' to it, but I did not.  This is only the sixth day and I had better get more effective control over my appetites and my ability to restrain myself, or this hundred days will seem much longer.  I thought about making myself begin over again, at day 1, at each fall-down, but that means that I would likely being finishing the hundred days sometime next decade.  My health cannot wait that long.

I was sitting in the gallery this afternoon and the day was going so slowly, so I had a lot of time to people watch and think.  Whilst that was happening, the detachments in my left/good eye kept bothering me and I had this notion that it may be too late to save my health, and it was so alarming a thought in that moment I felt afraid that I might really just freaking die.  Then I started to worry about having another heart attack thing and I was spiralling all over the place, shame, anger, fear and a sense of loss that took me beyond tears into such a hopeless state.

I have no one to blame for the sorry state of my health but myself.  I alone am responsible for getting to this point.  Only I can do what needs to be done to get back on that path to health, but I am so afraid that it might be too late.  What if I have done irreparable damage to my body? 

I know that people come back from devastating heart damage or crippling strokes (another concern as per my internist) or horrible accidents.  I find no comfort in any of that, because I may have too many critical health issues at one time. 

You know, I was sitting there and those vision issues were what started the whole spiral thing and I thought, well, maybe I will be lucky and will only lost most or all of my sight.  You know, maybe that would not be so bad, at least it is better than dying. 

But, I do not want any of it to happen.  I want to get healthier, lose weight, take care of my heart, not have strokes or lose any toes or end up with seriously compromised vision or anything.  I want to be strong, dedicated and faithful and fix it all.  I am taking all of my medications and walking and eating well, or as well as my stupid human nature will allow.  I am now, finally, doing what I should have been doing, what I knew all along I should have been doing.  I am doing it.  But, what if it is too late?

I do not have the heart for any guilty pleasure today.

Frequencies

It is impossible to avoid finding pleasure in a day.  Sometime I have to look for it, on occasion it is necessary to wrestle it out of the mess that a day can be.  So, I should be writing here more often.

I do not because I am weak and the end of the day finds me too exhausted from all of the things that are not pleasurable.  Still, I should make the effort.

Yesterday found me without any scheduled clients.  In itself, it is a cause for unbounded joy, because it means that I have an entire day to catch up on all of the things that never seem to get finished in a normal day.  So, yeah, that was really great.  I did have two short, impromptu meetings with other staff, but I managed to bring everything up to speed, including the forum site that I created for clients. 

The two previous weeks were full of clients, and they were all, with a single exception, my most favorite type.  They come in, do the work and pull together all of the adjunct work they need to do. 

Ah, my exception.  He is the man who rarely shows up, often sleeps/dozes, and is very resistant to doing his own work.  We have established that he does not have any reading or behavioral deficits, and my best guess is that he really does not embrace forward movement in his life right now.  When he shows up, we work; when he stays home, I am able to take walk-ins and do more catch-up stuff.  My supervisor believes that I should have fired him as a client long ago, but, truth be told, I kind of look forward to what he will do next.  He is also a bit dramatic, and wails that if he forgets his appointments that I will be mad at him.  Frankly, I find him amusing, but if that is what he needs to feel about it, then that is just fine.  He missed his appointment this week.  I am looking forward to the next installment.

What else.  I am still infusing hydration liquids into a cat with kidney failure.  She is doing well and is so sweet about allowing me to poke her with a huge needle and then fill the space above her shoulders with cooler than body temperature liquid.  She tolerates the entire procedure and then takes a step or two away from me, plops down and sits and rests whilst I put all of the equipment away.  Her owner is calming down a bit and the two of them are often the sweetest part of my week.

I received a call this morning from the social service agency for which I sometimes volunteer.  One of my old clients has been diagnosed with cancer and I am taking her to an out of town appointment tomorrow.  I think that I am also going to be designated as her person qualified to accompany her and take notes during her doctor visits.  I am saddened by her illness, but thrilled to be involved with her again.  If she is strong enough, I will offer to take her to lunch before returning her to her home.

The kitties are fine, although C seems to be having trouble with his colon again and is vomiting a fair amount.  Sad for the process of his health, but also because it means that he cannot sleep in my room whenever he likes.  I have no desire to clean up the effluence from either end of that wonderful guy, so he must stay on the wrong side of that door.  It means that both cats cannot go there, and that makes for sadness for all of us.

I am trying to stay upbeat here, but I had an issue with my good, as in decent vision, eye last week.  It has not resolved and there is not explanation of the cause or how to fix or prevent the bastardly issue.  So, I am concentrating on enjoying the vision that I have now and not stressing about something which is unknown and might not fully manifest anyway. 

I am weary of my weight, as in huge body, and am trying to move in the direction of doing something about it.  I have good intentions, really and truly I do.  Moving from intention, desire and need is difficult for me.  It is as though I do not feel deserving of a healthy life.  It is like I deserve to have a sad body to match my sad life.  I cannot control or really even affect the life part, but I could and can do something about my physical aspect.  Why is this so hard and why does it make me weep.  I have to move beyond this barrier.  If I do not, I will die long before I want or need.

Wondering

I have been home a few hours now.  Tonight was the evening version of Saturday Morning Coffee with the Chickies.  My friends.  My pilgrimage buddies and then coffee friends and then hang-on-for-dear-life friends.   We do this each year near Christmas.  It is great and some of us give presents and some of do not and no one ever seems to notice who is giving or not, much less care about it.

It is a nearly perfect of manifestation of what true giving and gifts are about.  No expectations to be dashed, no weirdness about what is received or given or anything.  It is as pure and unselfish an experience as any of us have and one would hope that all such exchanges could be.  It is a pretty fucking amazing thing.  Just amazing.  One friend gave me three...count 'em...Anna Lee mice.  Two kind of Christmasy, and one Halloween little mouse witch with a sweet, tiny broom.  Another friend gave sweet little things and a gift card for a book store.  I gave my ornaments and chocolate gelt, which I adore, not only for the chocolate, but for the whole historical aspect and have been doing so for, gosh, this old babe has been giving gelt for nearly forty years and not a single one of them spent as anything other than the pagan girl that I am, and Christian that I was.  Maybe I was a Hasmonean-wanna-be in a former life.   

Last weekend, or the weekend before that, I simply cannot keep any of this straight anymore, just four of us got together for dinner at the apartment of one of the sisters.  I met both of them, the sisters, on a pilgrimage to Ireland.  One of them, the apartment one, had been warned about me by one of the other travelers, that I was a witch.  I may very well be a witch of the rude, nasty and despicable kind, but she did not understand that the other person was telling her about my spiritual path.  She, the apartment Chickie, much later, told me that it was near the half-way point in the trip that she realized what she had been told and found, much to her surprise, by the way, that she liked me as a person.  Cool.  Groovy.

Anyway, back here in the States, she was part of the original coffee women and over the years, other people have come; some stayed, others left, not finding us to their particular liking, which is fine, truly, because that is the process by which we find the people who are essential parts of our lives.

I have become particularly close the the apartment Chickie.  I like her sister a lot, too.  In fact, we were friends first.  Anyway, the apartment Chickie does not drive, never has, does not want to, and, frankly, she is unsuited to being behind the wheel of several tons of metal and other assorted parts and bits and pieces.  We often go on to do something else with the day after the coffee group breaks up and wanders off to do whatever it is that they do.

So, anyway, at the whenever-weekend dinner, it was, hell, I will just use their initials.  Sheesh.  There we are, at M's apartment, with her sister D and her husband and our other friend S and her husband.  S's husband is recovering from a stunningly serious heart problem, which nearly took his life a couple of months ago.  He is not recovering well, but that is for later.  D is our friend who is dying of ovarian cancer.  She had had a big transfusion on that weekend and was able to stay for a nice, long time and when she left, the rest of us left, too, because it was just so sad to know that that night was likely to be the last time that we would all be together.

D and her husband did not attend this evenings lovely thing with all of us friends because she is too ill to leave her house.  Her sister, M, does not talk about D very much.  She gives the occasional update, but her heart really is not in it, you know?  I worry about both of them, but M does not talk about any of this with anyone and whilst it is her journey and I would never interfere, beyond what I have done to make sure that she knows that I am available to her 'round the clock, it is her journey and she gets to travel it in exactly the way she prefers.  I truly do my best to not worry about this, but it just does not seem like a good plan on her part.  Truly.  Sometimes it is so difficult to keep my thoughts about this to myself.  Seriously.

Anyway, it is time to write how I feel and say my goodbyes, whilst I still can.  Even if I do not make this happen in time, D already knows how much I love her and that all of us will be here for her husband.  A kind of goofy, but altogether lovely man he is, who lost both of his closest relatives in the past year, his mother and his only auntie.  He is the kind of husband that all of us would love to have.  Interesting in a not too painful way, a person with wide and varied interests, and, most importantly, a man who pulled up his big boy panties and was there for his wife in every single way that truly matters.  

And, then we have S's husband (the one with the miserable heart issues), who is not behaving well.  He has always been a joking and intellectually lively person, but two weeks ago found him taking a serious fall in his driveway, from which he is still sporting a black eye.  Tonight it was the worse that I have seen.  He kept repeating himself, over and over and some of it was inappropriate for general conversation and we all tried to make light of it, but it was so disturbing.  S talked about it when he left the room, and one of us is a nurse, the big-hot-shot kind and the two of them discussed what S needs to discuss at this week's visit with her husband's neurologist and cardiologist.

Things here, at the old homestead, are going from bad to more bad and I simply cannot muster any energy to deal with any of it because, in the scheme of things, like in life in general and the issues with which the people around me are struggling, my crap barely registers on any level of importance that anyone could devise.  My stuff is lacking in significance in the face of everything else and I am not able to cope with any of it.

There is great suffering in my town, many people who do not have the means to take care of the basics, much less anything extra.  I see them in my work and whilst I am working my ass off to help where I can and to find additional resources and connect people with them, it is just endless and I wonder how much good I am doing or if it is possible to do good at all.

I still cannot be holiday anything, and this evening's thing is the exception (the one and only, single thing I have done for months), because to not go and do and eat and share would have brought too much attention to myself, the feeling and being apart from everything that everyone else holds dear right now.  Pretending that I am cheerful and happy to be around people is so exhausting.  I am doing lots of volunteering, zoning in on something besides myself and it does fill the time.  I guess that it does do some good in town and I am, gosh, just so grateful that I have the resources to help, but I need this fallow time, some time to try to heal and maybe come back to who I was or who I want to be, yeah, who I want to be.  I am not empty, in any sense, but I am weary and exhausted to the bones, the ones that bedevil me and for which there is not adequate pain relief.

I cannot be the only person who feels adrift in all of this holiday stuff.  It is difficult to hold my tongue when I hear or read about how someone is stressed about not giving the exactly perfect gift or receiving some longed-for ideal present.  Or is distressed because other people do not have the same beliefs about how they feel holidays should be celebrated.  I weary of listening to the sadness someone feels because not everyone else, Christians or not, prefer to wish one another a happy holiday instead of merry Christmas.  I mean, seriously, Christmas is ruined because everyone else is not Christian or refuses to lock-step with their personal beliefs?  And, I just keep struggling with my own judgments about how others judge all those other people.  It is a vicious and pointless exercise and I just feel nauseated about it.  I do not want to be perfect or any such damn thing, but I would so love to not give a crap about how miserably some people are treated or judged.  Just pointless.

Frankly, if I hear or read about one more person bemoaning the commercialization or the Americanization or the Disney-izaion of the holiday I am going to scream or hurt myself.  I swear.  I really do.  If you are doing exactly what you want to do in your life, whether or not is it a holiday, then why do you give a rat's ass about what someone, anyone, else is doing?  If you have that much time in your life, to waste it worrying and fretting and judging other people, there is a possibility that you are not actively doing enough for other people or your neighborhood or your community or working to make your little part of the world a better place for everyone, every group, every creature, every issue.

I think that I must no longer be fit for being around other people.  If I start talking about any of this with other people, it might not even be a personal choice, as those other people might be very happy to kick my sorry ass right out of polite society, which, in itself, is kind of an oxymoron these days.  Crap, there I go judging again.  I am hopeless and best find a cave in which to live.  Posthaste. I am not fit company.

O.K., I thought that I was finished, but I am not.  One thoughtful, tender and well-intentioned thought stream.

Do your own thing.  I will do my own thing.  Leave my thing alone and I will offer and extend the same courtesy to you.  If you do not like my thing, please keep your opinions (to which you are entirely entitled to hold) to yourself.  Please, I am begging you, do not concern yourself or fuss about how I shop, what is in my grocery basket or shopping cart, how, or if, I cook, how many convenience products I use, what cleaning products I use, how I do the laundry, what I drive or do not drive, how I dress, whether or not I make all my own personal crap, how I garden or do not garden, how I educate my children, where I work or how I spend my money.  Please do not worry your pretty, little head about what I read, where I go, how I vacation, how organic my food supply or lifestyle is,  where I live or how many utilities and services I use, what my belief system or spiritual path might be, or how I manifest, or do not, what those beliefs may be.  If I have forgotten anything, please add it to the list of things about me which should not have to bother you.

I will do exactly those things, and more, for you. 

Oh, one more thing.  I have, for as long as I can remember, said Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.  I did this even when I was a serious and dedicated and faithful Christian, because I always recognized that my religion, spiritual practice and faith community was not the only one in the world, and because I did not want to marginalize anyone with whom I came into contact should they have beliefs different from my own.   It always seemed like, plain, simple and ordinary courtesy.  Just saying. 

Besides, the winter holiday season is chock-full of some of the most interesting practices, both spiritual and secular.  Many of them are fun, but all of them are informative to anyone who desires to be a well-rounded, educated and interesting person.  Open your heart and be a part of some of them. 

The more you learn about other people, how they live, what they practice, the less fearful you will be about those who seem to be different than you.  Educate yourself, inform yourself, move beyond only what you have been taught or experienced.  Yeah, just open your heart...if you are brave enough.  Courage, baby.