Home Again

Where to begin?

I am (thank you for asking, Ron) back, and more or less in one piece.

First off, my parents' health seems to be, knock wood, pretty good, all things considered. My mom isn't thrilled about the dialysis, but she's never been a complainer and she's never been one to close her eyes to the inevitable, so she's handling it pretty well. I think the nearly immediate improvements to aspects of her health--her ankles aren't swollen any more; her congestive-heart-failure cough is gone--have helped reconcile her to it, but it also has made her more anxious for a new kidney. My dad was going back to have a checkup regarding his bladder cancer today, so I'll call tomorrow and find out about that, but he seems to be doing pretty well, too. His biggest blow, in some ways, has been the death of my mom's friend's husband a couple of months ago. My mom and her friend have been friends for, oh, 68 years?, so it was nice that my dad got along with her husband. They hunted together years ago, they played golf all over the world (which I hadn't realized), the two couples traveled together a lot over the past 20 years (the extent of which I also hadn't realized), and so on, and it really affected my dad a lot.

I had a zen shiatsu session today, and it was quite interesting. The practitioner noted that now that the "surface tension" caused by the bakery job--in the form of the ways it was wrecking me physically--is gone, there's another whole level of stuff. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the meridians that have to do with change, planning, decision-making and the like needed some work today. I am, for better or worse, getting addicted to this form of body work; basically, if I can only afford one kind, this is it--and, of course, if I don't get a job or enough work, then this goes, too.

I've also been spending some time formulating some . . . goals, I guess, or changes of approach might be more accurate. I have realized that I am not particularly in touch with myself, especially my body--my wacky eating habits of the past two years mean that I eat a lot of crap, I don't eat at regular times, I don't connect with hunger, I often don't take the time to eat in a relaxing way, and I don't eat as seasonally as I'd like to do. I know that's not a prescription for long-term (or even short-term) health and happiness, so I want to change that approach. In that spirit, I actually managed to NOT go to crunchy granola restaurant for dinner tonight, much as I wanted to do that. Instead, I cooked. Yes, folks, I made a big pot of stew-like substance (onions, ginger, cumin, coriander, sweet potatos, garbanzos, tomatos, a little peanut butter, and, for the portion I ate, some spinach; I'll use kale with some of the leftovers) and a big pot of brown and wild rice. I'll freeze three containers of the stew-without-spinach part, then just cook that up with some greens when I'm ready to eat it. This effort will also aid in the stretch-out-the-savings part of the program, and possibly in the lose-enough-weight-to-fit-into-my-clothes part of the program.

Tomorrow is the organic schools interview, and I have my raft of questions ready for them. I also have a multitude of errands, including signing up for the gym--another part of the change-my-approach program. Tonight, however, I am looking forward to sleeping naked and in my own bed.