100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 37

Breakfast:  Fresh corn
Lunch:  Crackers and, later, chocolate
Dinner:  Meat

So, I wonder if it is true that things fall apart so that other things can fall together.  I hope so, because that old interpersonal stuff is crumbling like the proverbial cookie.  You know, I am trying to minimize the stressors here and I am also wondering about that.  Maybe making nice and always defusing stuff is not the best way to handle that person.  I just do not know.

What I do know is that someone who is not me is trying to mess with some of my projects, most especially a couple of the travel ones.  Someone who is not me refuses to come along on any of these tiny trips, even if I pay for everything, and even though someone who is not me has more resources than any six people could ever use.  Just shakin' my noggin about all of the crap that went down today.

I am not much for praying, although I believe it to be a worthy endeavour.  Still, given the dynamics around here lately, I was totally enchanted by this poster I saw on Pinterest tonight.  And, clearly, I am incapable of leaving something worthy alone and changed the obvious parts.  Still works, though.

I pray

...for my someone-who-is-not-me to have a relationship with a higher power.
...that blessings would shower on my someone-who-is-not-me.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to be a strong and ethical leader for our family.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to love me deeply, but really, I would settle for even a bit less dislike.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to have a heart for our children and their children.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to make wise (and did I mention ethical) choices.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to experience wonderful physical, emotional and mental health.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to prosper at everything desired, work, play, everything.
...for my someone-who-is-not-me to manifest ethical interpersonal relationships.
...that I will always feel and express respect, grace, kindness and flat-out love for someone-who-is-not-me, always and most especially when none of that is offered to me, yeah, most especially then.

Anyway, not too badly of the whole eating thing today, although there seems to be a serious lack of vegetables lately, and, seriously, corn does not qualify as a healthy vegetable.  Really.   I guess it has to count for at least eating breakfast, though, yes?

I am planning on concentrating on the remote possibility that some new things will fall into something useful.  Not holding my breath, but still holding the hope.  I am holding and grateful to the Universe that I have my work and friends and stuff, because I am sorely tested here at home and as unsuccessful at making this work that it is possible to be.  Back on the better track tomorrow and the next day and...

GP.  One of my most favorite so far.  Softly.

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.

100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 4

Day 4.  Wow, four whole days without any of the usual suspects in my usual dietary universe.

Breakfast:  Plain yogurt over blackberries.
Lunch:  More greens, medium tomato, the other half of that avocado, some vinaigrette.  Half an apple.  A chicken thigh, no skin.  Five or six of those green pea cracker things. 
Dinner:  Stir fry, with lots of celery (love, love, love celery), white onions, mushrooms, jalapeno peppers (like two whole ones), about a quarter cup each of pork and shrimp.  Steamed/fried in the pan, no sauce, only a little freshly ground pepper and some chili paste.  Diet cola, I am so weak.  About a cup of pineapple.  Three maraschino cherries (they are almost gone and will soon stop tempting me).

Alrighty, then.  Breakfast was nice and filling and absolutely delicious.  Packages of blackberries were a buck at the market the other day.  They are now all gone, but they were lovely whilst they lasted.  So yummy.  However, I was really, really hungry by 10:30 a.m., and it was all I could do to not eat my pencil before lunch.  I might have to add a bit of steel cut oats, steamed in almond milk or something.  I mean, I was really hungry.  Distressingly so.  It kind of makes me laugh right now because I am such a baby.  Yep.

Also, by the time 7:00 p.m. rolled around, I felt tired and hungry.  I cooked only what I wanted to eat, volume-wise, so was not tempted to finish any leftovers.  Now, I am thinking that doing that, cooking just the amount of food that I should properly be eating might help me to rein in my portion sizes, even though I am not paying attention to those, or calories, or the freaking scale.  Although, I have to admit that I am going to quickly become disenchanted with cooking or preparing every single meal with just the ingredients appropriate for each meal.  There is a compromise between preparing just enough for a single meal and making recipes or whatever that can feed me for days and days without all that freaking preparation.

I brushed my teeth right after dinner, in the pathetic hope that it will prevent me from eating any more of anything before bed.  I am not hungry, but I do experience hunger after I settle in for the night, as I read for an hour or so before falling asleep.  I go to sleep hungry and it has not killed me or anything, but my growling stomach is not the tiniest bit placated by my assurances that none of us is going to starve overnight.  My flab has assured my gut that it will keep the energy going until breakfast, but, honestly, no one is very happy about this.  I know that time, probably not more than a week or so, will take care of the extreme hunger pangs, but try to tell that to your tummy.  Really.   See how far you get. 

Besides, if you do not eat dinner until somewhere around 7-8 p.m., there is absolutely no reason to feel any measure of hunger before you go to sleep.  I suspect that the disconnect is in my brain, or my recent habits.  It is a stretch, even I admit that, but perhaps there is a way to blame this on one of the political parties.  You know, like they and their messages are poluting the energy on the planet and that is what is making it so hard for people to lose weight; like our flab is the only thing left on to which we can cling for comfort in an unsettled and wonky world.

Work today was as amazing as always.  I think that my clients are wonderful to trust me and go through the process the way that they do.  I am asking them to think of their lives in a way they have never before considered.  Many of them have few resources, which makes their willingness to take this journey with me all the more remarkable.  They, as a whole, totally, freaking rock. 

The ones who do not rock, well, they will continue to walk their darker paths for as long as it serves them to do so.  There is some quality of or need for suffering that is essential to how they are living.  From my outsiders perspective, it seems to be some kind of martyr complex, as though their suffering makes them better or holier or more sensitive or some damn thing, as opposed to us lesser mortals.  It is a very snobbish, superior self-view; they seem to relish sharing the details of how miserable they are, especially if it is in response to someone else in their lives who is not supportive of them.

Now, please do not misunderstand.  I have been where they are.  It is how I recognize it in them.  And, even with my experiences in moving beyond that ego-driven state, I cannot, do not discuss these aspects with them.  Frankly, it is not any of my business, but even if it were, they have to keep doing that stuff until the payoff in suffering reaches some limit beyond which they can move on to being more productive in their relationships.  And, you know, there is another quality to doing that.  It is that you become addicted or sensitized to the drama.  It is like a feel-good drug to be suffering so.  Pshaw all you like.  If you have been there you know exactly what I am talking about. 

So, tomorrow will be some cooking for the freezer.  Maybe a soup in the slow-cooker.  I have lots of frozen vegetables and a whole chicken that would take beautifully to that.  All those delicious containers of soupy goodness will be perfect for work lunches.  I have to begin making bread again, too.  Got to have healthy carbs to sop up the broth, you know.

A new book, fresh from the publisher, to read tonight.  Fiction.  It looks like a mystery, but with creepy stuff in it, as well.  It also looks like it may take only a week of bedtime reading to finish it.  Oh, and I got that Stephen Somebody's Rodale book about the new American diet.  Something about how we are missing micronutrients in some of the food we eat, ummmm, and bad stuff that gets in the food supply from poluted runoff or some damn thing.  I think he calls that stuff obesogens.  Huh.  Anyway, I tried to read it at lunchtime, but one of the security guards wanted to wax philosophic and it was difficult to read and murmur back at him. 

Off to bed, to read, to sleep, to dream of a body that moves through the world with more grace, more confidence and less stress on my joints.

My new guilty pleasure.

Simple thoughts

McDonald's will not serve you water.  They have water, they just will not let you have any.

The robins thought it was safe enough to come back north.  I am guessing that the past 2 1/2 days of snow and freezing temperatures were not on this year's schedule.  I know that it was not on the rhubarb's schedule.

Yesterday was A's birthday.  His friend, M, from school, was cute, funny and a handful.  His parents are sure to age prematurely.  I hope they have factored that into their life plan.  I really do.  My C was a handful and I never thought to plan ahead.

I am weary of sitting here at McDonald's, and my soon to be accomplished return to the car repair place seem to be almost more than I can handle.  Last night, when my sore throat, sore glands, sore sinuses and sore head were making sleep impossible, I begged to not be sick again.  Please, I implore you, body, do not be sick.  I do not have time to be sick.  More importantly, I do not have the heart to keep getting sick.  I accept a crappy immune system and seriously impaired mucus membranes.  I do.

Last night, the prospect of being ill again, so soon, only since the end of January, for cryingoutloud, was discouraging enough to have me thinking about an overdose of something.  That I do not have anything capable of producing an overdose seemed to not be an obstacle last night.  Today, the daylight, gloomy as it is, allows me to see the flaws in that plan.

I mean, you can no longer overdose on acetaminophen any more.  At best, you will just lose a leg and the final shreds of respect that your family holds for you.  If you have any doubts, just ask S.

When you are visiting your daughter and her family for three months, just following Christmas, it is not in your best interest to precede your departure to her house with a week's worth of fighting. 

If you do, on the two days when you have your catarracts removed, your daughter will refuse to hire someone to come in and be with you whilst everyone else in the household is at work or school, and she will leave you to spend the remainder of each surgery day in a restaurant.

You will have money for lunch and coffee and, maybe, cake, but you will not be able to see well enough to find your way to the restroom.  You and your ancient bladder will have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help you pee.  This one is not about me.

It is important, if not actually essential, to avoid laughing out loud when two men in very expensive suits walk into the McDonald's (where you are waiting whilst your car is being repaired next door) and one of them asks the counter clerk, "So, what's good today?" and then stands there and stares at her until she begins to recite the menu, which is posted on the wall behind her.

Especially when that man orders for the other man, and they end up with fries, one Big Mac (which they split), two soft drinks and a dipped cone.  Lordy.

Especially when he turns and you see that it is your old boss.  I mean, you heard his voice every day, for years.  Failing to recognize him sooner must be your heart, trying to protect your psyche from those memories.

This simple girl is taking her prescription cough medicine, her antihistamines, her nose goo, her pain meds, her mentholated chest rub, her snugly blankie, her book, a couple of cats, her simple thoughts and going to bed.

Remembering

So, anyway, I am sitting here tonight, watching a DVD and noodling around on the computer.  My daughter and her wonderful husband and brilliant sons are on their way to Outer Middle-of-Nowhere where his parents live.  They go every year for Christmas and stay for the better part of two weeks.  We celebrated Yule on Monday and it was wonderful.

Tonight's fillum was Prince of Persia.  Not too bad, but there was an aspect of being able to...oh, if you have not yet seen this and want to, stop reading, or I will ruin something for you.  Seriously.  So, anyway, this aspect is about doing something that everyone has wished that they could do.  Go back in time, even if for a minute, and re-do something, or avoid doing something or stop something from happening.

And, once that plot device was introduced, I am not sure how much of the rest of the movie I watched.  I could not help but think about that.  About the things that could be changed, should such a thing be possible.

I have always felt, and said, that if it were possible to go back in time and change something, that I absolutely would not do it.  That I believe that every experience I have had is/was essential to becoming the person I am now.  I would keep them all, even the ones that were horrible, miserable or just generally fucked up.  Not even the couple of times that I nearly died.  Nothing little, nothing huge and nothing in between.

I meant it all of the times I said or thought it and I mean it now.

Except, now I know about another person who had a childhood and adulthood, built on abuse, similar to mine.  I can intellectualize about this with the best...done it.  But, I know her, and that makes it different somehow.  Up to this time, practically this moment, I have never met anyone who was either seriously abused or willing to share it.  It makes a difference, this knowing.  Please do not misunderstand.  I am not quantifying abuse or neglect or anything of the sort.  There is no comparing.  Each person's experience is just as terrible for them as another's experience was/is for him or her.  It is not even apples and oranges, because you simply cannot compare or measure suffering.  It is too specific to the person, too individual.

So, I spent a lot of years in therapy.  I spent a few, cumulatively speaking, mood altering with wine.  A childhood of experience in that realm formed and informed me about not going down or settling onto that path, but I dabbled every once in a while.  When I needed to.  When the pain was too great.  When I had no other resources.  I never got stuck there, not even for a few months, but I did have the occasional few days, maybe a week here and there, that were significantly more wet than dry.

I read.  I used to watch television.  I know that legions of children suffered much the way that I and my siblings did.  I know all of that.  But, now someone else is sharing a significant milestone in her journey to healing from her childhood.  She lives too far away for us to talk, but I am trying to let her know that there is survival to be found.

So, I am sitting here, movie over, very early in the morning and thinking.  No one gets out of here alive.  But, some people manage to go through their life without more than the ordinary, stream-of-life bumps.

Not everyone is tortured as a child.
Not everyone wallows in alcoholism or other substance abuse.
Not everyone suffers from the lack of basic resources.
Not everyone has significant or chronic health issues.

Yeah.  I get that.

And, I get that there is not one, single thing that any child ever did to deserve any difficulty or obstacle or challenge that his or her life presents.

We are all innocent until something takes that away.  If we are lucky, we find a way to reclaim that.

Like I did.