I saw one of my college classmates post this on Facebook earlier today:
Rainy days and pandemics always get me down.
Which, funny enough* was something I’d been thinking to myself even earlier in my morning.
Chalk it up to another generational marker. Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard:
We’re up at the lake house for our last getaway of the summer — spending some time in the water, some time hanging out with the fam, watching the Red Sox on TV, and doing a fair amount of reading.
Yesterday was somewhat rich with errands — Mr. Mezzo has a quick trip for family business today and tomorrow, so we were trying to get a full weekend’s amount of usefulness crammed into the single day. Then in the evening, I went into the final, most intense steps for the gall bladder flush, which consist of a couple of doses of Epsom salts to help “clear out” the system (as it were), and then a grapefruit juice/olive oil cocktail to encourage the gall bladder to release any accumulated stones in there.*
I had a fair amount of discomfort during the overnight hours, and thus far, there hasn’t been much in the way of internal “movement,” if you get my drift. (I had kinda hoped this particular issue would complete itself once I finished the damn HCG shots, but oh well.) So that’s been my excuse to take it kind of easy today.
There’s certainly things I could (should) be doing. I have a retreat weekend coming up starting early morning Thursday, and supposed appointments Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so I could very well be packing and getting organized. Alternately, I could be doing some UNpacking down in the basement, since I’ve lost some momentum there with last weekend’s concert and next weekend’s out-of-townness. And then there’s always the usual rounds of grocery shopping, cleaning and decluttering, checkbook-balancing, and so on and so forth.
I dare say those laundry lists of things are remaining undone. After all, if at 7 PM the most ambitious things you’ve managed with your day is to take a shower and start a load of laundry, there’s not a whole lot else that can happen at this point.**
I’ve had wasted days like this before. More than I’d like to admit. But tonight, rather than sliding into my usual funk of self-flagellation, I’m trying to be more at peace with my inaction. My choices at the moment seem to be either (1) stew in guilt and self-castigation for the next few hours, making my evening pretty darn miserable and undoing whatever self-care has been accomplished by such a relaxing day; OR (2) show myself some self-acceptance, trust in the rightness of my system needing/wanting rest today, and enjoying what few hours of awake time I have remaining for my Sunday.
So, as a change of pace, I’m going to try for Door #2. Perhaps I’ll get a little bit more done. Perhaps — probably — I won’t. Either way, that’s going to be okay.
(There’s also a whole side conversation that could be had about the types of hard work I am doing these days — between the HCG journey and this gall-stones cleanse, I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into detoxing and that level of growth. Never mind the preparations going on for this upcoming retreat weekend. Perhaps it’s okay that some more “traditional” modes of self-care are being underplayed while I put my energy towards some things that are less readily observed but nonetheless crucially important.)
* No, it wasn’t quite as disgusting as you’d imagine. Close, but not quite.
** Especially if one is a Game of Thrones watcher and needs to be ready for that come 9’o’clock.
Well, the wheels kinda fell off the cart today. I had all sorts of ambitions — laundry, unpacking, Coursera, neatening up & getting organized, Epsom bath, and lots of precooking for the week ahead. And some of that got accomplished, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped.
After however-many days of self-neglect, I did decide to put the Epsom bath first on the priority list, and the bath segued into a nap — which is part of why my schedule got so off-course. After all of that, I did manage some unpacking and it will be easy-peasy to do a load of laundry tonight. So: partial success.
What concerns me most is that I haven’t done any cooking with all the food and spices I bought yesterday.
The challenge of taking the HCG regimen through the work week was greatly aided by all the food I’d been able to prepare with my coaches over the weekend. It only made sense to set myself similarly up for success during the coming week with a similar cooking spree, but I have completely dropped the ball.
And the funny thing is that this week, pre-cooking and pre-planning are even more important than they were last week. Because this week, I’m heading out of the familiar spaces of home and office.
I have two different AM networking/training events during the work week, and then Mr. Mezzo and I have concert tickets for Saturday night. Of course, there’s going to be “forbidden” food and drink at all these locales: I’m sure both networking breakfast buffets are going to be all about the bagels and Danishes currently off my list of allowables, and I think the concert venue is one of those “two drink minimum” kinds of places.*
So it would very much behoove me to make some preparations to help me get through these events. Instead, I’m having to look at the question of why, knowing this, I let my lazy child run the show and create a circumstance where I’ve stressed myself out in this fashion.
At least there’s a little more time left in the evening, so I guess I’m going to go do at least some cooking, so I can partially dig myself out of this hole.
* For the record, the tickets were bought many months ago, before I knew I’d be making the commitment to the HCG program. I’m not that much of a masochist.
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Image credit: https://theplastichippo.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/preparing-for-oblivion/
Self-Love: It's Just Another Lifestyle Change 