HUNGRY FOR WHAT

I opened up the editor side of this website and looked around like it was brand new territory. This was not unlike the feelings I had when I walked into the microscopy room at work Tuesday morning. In fact, after taking all of the objective lenses off of one system and cleaning each one, I set them next to the microscope and walked away to do something else. It was about twenty minutes later when I remembered that I never actually put those lenses back on the microscope. I have been away from work (and here) for a week and two days. I let my emails fester in my inbox for nine days before finally giving in and clearing things out. I barely took or posted any photos. After returning home from Oklahoma and furiously cleaning my house, I was down right lazy, not leaving the couch unless it was absolutely necessary. Do I have regrets?

Just one. I don’t feel as though I ate as much cheese as I could have eaten in the last eleven days.

Well before the holidays, I was feeling a constant gnawing hunger twinge in my guts. I wanted to eat all of the things and none of the things. I wanted to fill my body up with something, a lot of different things and not necessarily food. I was hungry for changes. My social media ads went into overdrive, filling up my feed with food prep services, fancy ramen noodles, weight loss programs, face yoga and shape wear. For the most part, I ignored those ads, but every once in a while one would sneak its way into my brain. I’d click on the link and search for price tags. Then I’d come to my senses, shake my head and turn it off. Being so well organized for Christmas allowed for some reflection time and I sat down and wrote out a detailed list/flow chart for what I want in 2024. There is nothing unreasonable on that list, except maybe the part about seeing a moose, but I woke up on January first feeling a little bit guilty for not getting right to work. Instead of getting up and getting on my mat or playing my seven minute exercise app, I snuggled back under the covers and watched three episodes of The Diplomat.

When I finally did that seven minute workout on Tuesday morning, I thought “Damn, why is this so hard?!?” while I coughed between squats and mountain climbers. That head cold I had the week before Christmas turned into a cough that still hasn’t gone away. It has at least changed from sounding like masses amounts of wet cotton is about to explode from my body. The cough has been reduced to an irritant and a wish for a zero gag reflex (yes, place all of your dirty thoughts here) so that I can scrub my esophagus with a bottle brush. Half of the people I follow on Instagram posted pictures of New Year’s Eve plans that included cold medicines and tissues. I don’t feel alone in thinking that a mere seven minutes of exercise right now feels like two hours of torture exercise.

On Christmas Day, Michael and I went over to our Jenn and Wade’s house to have Christmas dinner with them and their family. Upon walking into their home, every visitor was handed a card that contained some kind of conversation starter and then everyone in the room would take a turn at answering what ever question was on the card. One of the questions that came up was “What’s a lie you tell yourself?” Look, there’s a number of lies I tell myself on a daily basis, but the one I was willing to speak out loud to the group was this. I tell myself that I am not a healthy person, that I do not take care of myself. Some of that stems from a month of sporadic yoga practices and a pause in dog walks because of the weather. Some that stems from allowing someone in my life to speak to me on a daily basis in a way that is not healthy and letting it go on because I just didn’t care enough to stand up for myself. But also, if I don’t speak kindly to myself, how can I expect others to speak to me in a positive way?

This is something I’ve been working on before the new year, not just being kinder to myself but demanding kinder and more thoughtful speech from others. So by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I wasn’t as hungry for change as I was in late November. Just the act of writing down the things I want for this year, filled up some of that empty gut feeling. So many things on my list are not resolutions of self improvement, maybe only two or three items. Everything else is all true wants: camping, joyful movement like roller skating, bike rides. I treated my resolutions like they would be part of my Life List, filling the year up with activities of joy and spacing those activities throughout the year like tapas plates of snacks. I’m walking into this year with a little trepidation (the world is very much a dumpster fire and it’s an election year), but mostly I’m walking into this year feeling peckish and excited about snacks.

I’m going to treat this year like Rick Steve spends an evening tapas bar hopping in Madrid.

I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES ABOUT HOW MUCH I WEIGH

For many of you, this is back-to-school time. You move back into a routine of getting the kids out the door and onto the bus in the mornings. Your schedules shift to accommodate after-school pickups and activities. That happens a little bit with me too because of Michael, but for the most part it’s not a big change. This time of year for me means annual health check-ups. In the last three weeks, I have been probed by my gynecologist, had two vials of blood taken from arm, and consulted with my general practitioner about the results of that blood work and preventive screenings that I need to consider for my current age.

I dread this time of year just as much as every kid going back to school.

I go to these annual check-ups expecting to hear the worst like abnormal cells, crazy glucose levels, and high cholesterol. High blood pressure is now something I get to the add to the list of hereditary conditions along with diabetes and brain disorders. Every visit, I wonder if this the year that the doctors decide to add a new medication that I must then adjust my life around. Aging is a glorious yet, medically lucrative, process. It’s great. I highly recommend it. This year, all of my tests came back looking good and healthy. My blood pressure was excellent and almost perfect. My cholesterol levels are holding at a moderately okay level. Overall, both doctors were pleased with how I am doing and neither one of them said anything about my weight. In fact, when I brought up the subject with my primary care physician, she brushed it off and said “You’ve been on vacation. It’s probably all water weight.”

WHY AM I THE THE ONLY ONE CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT THE NUMBER ON THE SCALE SAYS?!!?

In the last three months I have not been as physically active as I was this time last year. I just wrote that sentence and started to write about the things I am doing, when it struck me that I am as physically active as I was this time last year. What the actually fuck, Cindy!?!?! I get almost 12,000 steps a day. I do a twenty to thirty minute strength training class Monday through Friday and I get on my yoga mat almost every day for about an hour. I stand half the day at work and often have dance parties at my desk. I’m eating ridiculously healthy meals and less of it because I set a timer for twenty minutes and force myself to slow down and chew my food. I am a moderately healthy individual.

So why am I so obsessed with what the scale says?!?!

I have no memory of a time in my life where I wasn’t thinking about my size.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Thursday

Just about a block down the street, there used to be this large overgrown patch of land that was often a dumping ground for garbage. It’s where people left old mattresses and broken chairs, tires, anything easily tossed from an open window. Then one day the city came in and cleared the whole lot. They replaced the overgrown unofficial garbage dump with a park. The did this in a few areas of my neighborhood. The parks are part of a pilot water drainage system designed to take the stress off of the street gutters and funnel that water into useful irrigation. The one they built to the south of me is bigger, includes a playground and a new metal art structure. All of the parks are filled with native plants that require little maintenance and have nice walking paths that meander around and through. The parks have been a wonderful addition to this neighborhood.

Two or three times a week, my walk with Josephine takes us through the neighborhood and includes a walk through the park at the end of my street. We see rabbits and snails and birds. Yesterday there were muddy deer tracks crossing the sidewalks. This week, Josephine and I have arrived at the park around the same time as a group of black women. This group of women range between the ages of thirty something to sixty and they come dressed for working out. Which is what they proceed to do. Someone sets a timer on their phone and the women start walking the loop of the whole park, round and round until the timer beeps. Some carry small hand weights. They all have masks and wear them. Every time I see these women, I smile and say “good morning!” and they respond cheerfully with their own chorus of ‘hellos and good mornings’. Josephine and I move on and leave the park to them, but on the inside I am high-fiving and cheering these women on.

According to the U.S. Department of Health, four out of five African American women are overweight or obese, which leads to higher probabilities of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. There are many factors, mostly socioeconomic, but a lot of it has to do with having access to affordable healthy options. Keep in mind what I said before. These parks are a pilot program. They didn’t start it in the expensive neighborhoods like Brookside or the Country Club. They started this program in the poorer communities. The city saw the value of investing in healthy spaces in poorer communities because when we create healthy spaces for communities, we create an environment for healthy living. Regardless of race. This group of women is proof of that. Every time I walk or drive by one of these parks, I see people walking the paths. These people are proof of that.

I feel very fortunate to live in this neighborhood.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Heart

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We bought a new blender because I broke my old blender. I mean I buhroke it. About a year ago, I went on a cleaning bender and collected all of the kitchen appliances that only get used when every other planet aligns and carted them to the basement. My arms were full of appliances, including the blender, and I took one step down the basement stairs when the blender pitcher toppled off the base. It bounced all the way down the stairs and shattered on the basement floor. At the time, I just sort of shrugged it off. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had used that thing. I don’t like margaritas.

Just before the dumpster fire that is the current state of affairs, Micheal and I started intermittent fasting during the week and we just stuck with it. It means skipping breakfast and having a snack around 10:30 am. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, my snack has been some cottage cheese with some fruit. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it’s avocado toast with a boiled egg. (Shut up. I know I am lulu crazy pants.) Then, I started to get a craving for a smoothie. Not just any smoothie. I wanted a really green smoothie. One with kale and spinach and maybe a bit of celery, a squeeze of lemon. The more I thought about it, the greater my craving became until I finally decided that we needed to buy a new blender. So I told Michael that I was going to buy a new blender and he said “Wait a minute. Don’t you think I have a say in this?” Then he went down a rabbit hole of research into blenders. By the time I woke up the following morning, he had ordered one and as soon as the delivery person set it down on our front porch, I grabbed it up. I pulled it from the box and then immediately sliced open my finger on the blade while I was washing it. Appliances work better after they have been given a blood sacrifice.

That was two weeks ago. Now, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I put half of a banana, a stalk of celery, a handful of kale, a handful of spinach, a dollop of plain yogurt, and some ice into one of the individual blender cups that came with our blender. I squeeze half of a lemon into it and then blend it all up. Michael thinks it tastes like a pasture, but I love it. I drink it up, relishing the gritty kale bits, while watching a tutorial on electron microscopy or Numpy coding crap. Then I go do about an hour and a half of yoga before lunch. I just realized as I re-read those last two sentences that it sounds like I have fully gone granola hippy chic. Don’t worry. I’m still shaving my armpits and using deodorant that is not made of crystals, but I am one pound away from just barely being in the ‘healthy weight’ section of the BMI chart.

And I know that all of this sounds like a really lame thing for a gratitude post, but this week has not been easy. The dumpster fire has gotten worse. People are not wearing masks and social distancing. The lack of effort makes me think the worst of them, that they are either so selfish or too ignorant to separate science from politics. I had a phone call with my mother that had us both crying and neither one of us handle tears in an effective manner. I have been short and snappish with others. I have been disappointed with myself for not handling things better or doing more or walking more steps or just more everything. Many times a day have been a practice in containing the rage that threatens to boil up and out of this body and exploding over the smallest incident like the inability to put recyclables in the recycle bin (the kitchen counter is not the recycle bin). I know we are all feeling the strain and stress and frustration. Our lives are different and change is hard, but some of the most rewarding transformations come from the hardest changes.

The other evening, I held a firefly tightly in my fist. I watched its tail light blinking through the cracks between my fingers. When I finally opened my fist, the firefly crawled out to the tip of my index finger. It sat there, flashing yellow-green light, for two or three breaths and then it floated up and away. That is how I am approaching the feelings of this week. I’m going to take a moment to squeeze them in my fist and then I am going to gently release them. I am going to find gratitude in green pasture smoothies that bring me joy. I’ve never been a part of the ‘healthy weight’ section of anything. So I’m going to take a moment to celebrate that.

I am going to take today to see gratitude in tiny victories.