Five for Friday

1. I am very grateful to the people who confirmed that toxins being swished around the body can lead to malaise, because 1) I've been a little worried about how I've been feeling and 2) it makes me feel better about spending March Break reading and walking and sleeping a lot. My husband has had executives in town and has been going out for work dinners and coming home late. He mentioned that he felt bad he hadn't taken a day off so we could do something during the break and I said "oh, but...then I'd have to do stuff." One night I texted him to ask if he was going out for dinner again. He said 'yes, is that okay?' I said 'of course, just wondering how much I can half-ass dinner'. He texted back 'full half-ass!' which was good, albeit a little mathematically confusing. 

2. After physio on Tuesday I went to the bookstore to look for a book by a favourite author that I had gotten as a library ebook and then decided I wanted to buy a copy and read the paper book. I didn't have sky-high hopes they would have the one copy the website said they did, but it was on the way home. I looked at the new books shelf on the way in and picked up a book that looked cool and sounded interesting and was slightly discounted. Then I checked the relevant shelf for the book I wanted. Not there. I found a computer. Entered the title. Computer went into spinning wheel mode, so I walked away and looked around some more. Came back to computer, and it said "are you still there or should we start a new search". Tried again, computer went bananas again. I was annoyed, and looked at the book in my hand and realized there was no earthly reason to buy this book when I have dozens of unread books at home not even counting the library books. Walked out without buying anything which is very unusual for me. (But still ordered the original book I wanted when I got home, so the growth is minimal. Still -- growth.)

3. I have a thing with exercise where if I'm going to do it, I prefer it to be the first thing I do. There is a silly thing here where exercise is still coupled with hard and unpleasant work in my mind, even though I mostly walk and do yoga and for the most part I LIKE these things. I miss doing weights, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get the gym back into my routine since lockdown. But I still feel exercise looming in my brain causing anxiety when I'm doing the other stuff I do in the day. I'm trying to change this. Sometimes I think "I'm just going to read today", and of course usually I do a whole bunch of other things. When I DO try to just read, I will exercise then do some kind of task on my list and then go up to my reading chair in my bedroom in the afternoon to read, and..... often this causes me to fall asleep. This is infuriating to me because if I read a book at night, I can start at ten and sail right through until 4 a.m. without a yawn. 

Today I woke up and decided to read first and then go for a walk or do yoga later. I spent a lovely hour in my chair and then did some other stuff, read a bit more and then did yoga. Then I showered and read a little more (last weekday of March Break, milking it) and now I have spent a lovely day reading and doing exercise and didn't fall asleep and everything felt like it was happening at the right time.

Not to say there weren't challenges...

I found a workable solution, but I wouldn't say all parties were totally satisfied.

It's good sometimes to figure out that I'm not too old to change. A little. Sometimes.

4. Sometimes I forget about hard-boiled eggs. Yesterday I remembered about hard-boiled eggs and made a half-dozen in the instant pot and today I had one for breakfast and it was perfect. Also, I tried again to make Jeffrey Eisner's instant pot peanut noodles because last time I tried it came out terrible which seemed weird because generally I find his recipes to be foolproof. Then I looked at the bottle of sesame oil I had used and thought, am I entirely sure I didn't buy this bottle of sesame oil TWO living spaces ago, which would make it very old indeed. I bought a new bottle of sesame oil (once every two decades whether we need it or not) and yesterday they turned out brilliantly. Except it's hard to eat them without them hitting my face, and I have a horror of food touching my face. The ways in which I am weird are numerous and varied.

5. I haven't heard from Angus in a bit. How strange that I have this whole entire person that came out of me and is out living an independent life in the world, completely separate from me. Going to text him now and complain about that a bit.