Pretty Intense in Everyday Ramblings

Many years ago, in the mid to late 80’s, my sister Kes was living in Normal Illinois and working as a nurse while her husband at the time finished his doctorate in English and taught. Things didn’t go well between them and they decided to divorce. It was a hard time for my sister and so we made a pact to spend Christmas together and live out all our unfulfilled Christmas fantasies.

I flew into Chicago during one of the coldest winters imaginable and took a bus to Bloomington Normal. We had a wonderful Christmas but it was so cold the attendant at the Christmas tree place had abandoned his post and we had to string extension cords from her house and use a hair dryer to unfreeze the tree we selected from the back of her car.

She met her current husband then, our beloved Most Honorable, at a party her boss threw that I was at too.

While the two of us were eating our delicious traditional Christmas dinner we laughingly decided that the following year we would spend Christmas together on a beautiful beach somewhere and relax.

And we did. :) We went to an adults only Club Med on the Caribbean island of Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos chain. It was amazing. She did miss her now husband by then.

Neither of us had ever been on an all inclusive vacation and the food was abundant and very good. The first four days or so we ate way too much, intoxicated by the variety and ease and luxury of it all. But then we both realized we would feel better if we cut back, were prudent and ate more modestly, still enjoying what we wanted but in moderation.

I feel like that now.

I have been stress eating, and eating treats and comfort foods for about 10 days. I know I would feel better if I stopped this and focused on healthy modest meals. I am getting my cardio in, some weight training, yoga of course and getting out and walking every day but I need to rein in my impulse eating and focus on what feels good and builds energy.

And then maybe bake and freeze some brownies for when it gets bad.

Not only in nine months do I think we might have a pandemic baby boom, we will all probably be working hard at getting the extra weight off by then too.

I still have my Imperfect box of fruits and veggies coming every two weeks and I signed up for InstaCart. I placed an order yesterday morning and my delivery time is next Thursday! A lot of the stuff (i.e. frozen blueberries) were not available.

Kes and Most Honorable and I have been practicing with Zoom chats every day for the last few days and it helps with the isolation in a way that texting doesn’t quite. Feeling emboldened I offered a check in and a chair yoga class via Zoom for my students on Monday at the regular class time.

My former coordinator at the church, whom I adore now that she is no longer my coordinator at the church, says she wants to participate in the online get together, and asked last night if I could put together an audio only practice of about 15 minutes for her day retreat at home participants next Wednesday. The theme is equanimity.

Trying new things makes me irritable but darn it all I am going to try these things. If it works out I will let you know and if you private note me your email address I can send you the audio file as well.

Wish me luck!

I wish us all luck. It is getting pretty intense out there.

Last updated March 22, 2020