Tag: adulting

Laboring away

Today, I woke up around ten, giving me almost 11 hours of good sleep – a first in a long time. I took care of myself with relaxation for about an hour and a half after that, then I hopped to it.

I went to Costco for gasoline and Michael’s for eyelets for our outfits. Then, I came home and got to work on our outfits for RenFest. I updated my cloak and finished creating his. Then we had dinner with his dad and stepmom. Then I showered at their house, because they have warm water and we don’t.

When I got home, I finished the phone satchel for him and edits on my own. I updated my outfit with the eyelets, instead of just having leather chord pulled through knife cuts in the leather skirt and top. Once he was home, I measured and put holes and eyelets in his loincloth piece, and I adjusted the lengths of the chords and toggles for his cloak. I gathered together everything for tomorrow while he took a shallow bath of water he’d heated with the electric kettle over about half an hour’s time. I asked him about shoes, only to discover that he only had tennis shoes to wear with our brown leather and fur cave-people outfits… That’s a facepalm if ever…

Oh, well… you can’t win them all. And they are, at least, low-profile and dark-colored, so they won’t stand out terribly… aside from the fact that they don’t match the outfit one iota… Meh… too tired to worry anymore. It is what it is, and that’s perfect for this year.

Thank you, God, for the blessings of this day, including that he passed his test – Woohoo!!! In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Helpless

Sometimes, I think it is important that we feel the experience of being helpless. Because, sometimes, there is no other way to make the lesson stick than for us to end up in a scenario where we feel utterly helpless, and at our own hands.

Thank you, God, for this opportunity. Please, help me to grow beautifully from it. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Thanksgiving Day, right?

1. The Turkey Trot was awesome. It was cool and misting the whole time to varying degrees, I ran my second-fastest 5k despite the crazy elevation changes throughout the trail run, I got fifth in my age group (25-50!) and tenth in women and 38th overall, my man got fourth in his age group and 20th in men and 24th overall, and my mom got eighth in her age group (50+) and 72nd in women and 157th overall (she did a walk-run for the whole thing, whereas we ran for times).

Oddly, at the finish, they had bananas and granola bars and waters… and homemade spring rolls. 😛

2. My mom made us a tasty ad warm brunch afterward.

3. We had a good time saying bye to my Grandma. She was very good at charming the dog this week, as you can see…

4. We finally get home tonight, and I’ve been waiting for a nice and hot shower before bed in my comfy and cozy bed with my awesome new pillow… and the gas line has a leak in the backyard… meaning we have no heat in the house, no hot water, and no stove to make hot water. Fortunately, I had an electric kettle, so I pulled it out and heated two pitchers, poured them into a big pot, and took the pot and a coffee mug to the shower with me. I cried most of the shower, but scooping out some hot water with the mug, then adding cold water from the shower to it and pouring it over parts of my body helped me wash myself better. And I filled the whole pot with extra cold water at the end, and I dumped the whole thing over my head (and, therefore, body) after turning off the freezing shower head. So, it was rough, in a ridiculous way, but it ended decently. My feet have almost stopped hurting from all the cold.

Anyway, bedtime has long since passed. Goodnight!

Post-a-day 2022

Giving Thanks

My body has finally relaxed enough for me not to be somewhat miserable anymore this evening. Thank you, God. And thank you for the family with whom I have been blessed to spend time this week, both during my physical pains and afterward. Please, keep us safe at our Turkey Trot 5k run tomorrow morning, as well as on our drives home. Help us always to pursue your will and to be your love. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Challenges

Perhaps the Universe is just always ready with the next challenge, demanding and standing for our own improvement, our own development into the people we not only can be but were made to be.

…….

Well, we made it. And it was rough when we first arrived… That’s for sure. It took a lot for my man and me to stay present to what was needed versus what was freaking us out and stressing us and all the negative and not-helpful stuff of the situation. We’re staying in an AirBnB, and, put simply, it was not clean when we arrived. And it kept getting worse, the more we ventured into more of the house. As a reminder, I have OCD, making dirty particularly difficult for me. Separately, I care about justice and integrity – charging $405 a night (which also happens to be $100 more than most dates for this place) for a man older place with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a loft seems to me to be a price that would include cleanliness of the space. Period. So, we had a lot with which we had to deal for all of that. My man had to miss the lunch for my grandma’s birthday, but he still came and said hi to her at the start, before going back to the place to meet the cleaner. (Suffice it to say that the place has now been cleaned, and there was just a massive failure on the owner/manager’s part of not verifying that it was ever cleaned, despite having hired someone to do so.)

All that to say that life really does demand we become better versions of ourselves, whether we like it or not. Today has been one of those days for me. And, unfortunately, I’m also feeling sick in the throat… :/

Dear God, please, heal me with this rest I am allowing for myself tonight (in bed before nine!). Grant me beautiful health and well-being this week, that I might spend the week lovingly with my beloved family, your blessings to me. In your name and with gratitude, I pray. Amen.

P.S. Oh, and, to top it all off, I started menstruating almost a week earlier than expected today. Talk about having to gtf over it and make it work. This has been a day, for sure!

Post-a-day 2022

Travel

Apparently we both bring out one another’s procrastination qualities quite effectively when we’re together, my man and I. We’re leaving at five in the morning tomorrow (today, technically). I’m about to go to bed, finally, as I’ve finished all the packing except the food in the fridge and freezer – this is for Thanksgiving with my family at an AirBnB, after all – and am finishing my bedtime routine things now. He’s loading the car and doing only Goodness knows what fifty million other things before he goes to sleep. Likely, he’ll only sleep an hour or two. Actually, that’s false. I’ll sleep just under two and a half hours. He’ll sleep even less tonight. But he wants to be there before the workday starts, and we have a roughly- three-hour drive, so 5am departure it is.

But, golly, could we, please, do better about packing sooner in the future for trips? Tonight was just too much. Just ridiculous, even for us.

Deer God, please, grant us safety in all of our travels and adventures. Thank you for our beautiful, love-filled lives. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Ouch, but yay!

Well, I still feel a bit like I have the incomings of a cold, and my muscles are still achey all over, but we got our shopping all handled this afternoon and I passed my test with flying colors this morning. We started at eight and finished almost exactly at noon. Some stuff was a touch harder than I’d anticipated, just for my tiredness and soreness here and there differently so than usual, and other things went much more smoothly than I’d anticipated. For my katas, our instructed regularly shared how she “doesn’t give twenties” on the scoring of them (points are between five, ten, fifteen, and twenty, and she always writes in an eighteen of you do a really good job, which I usually do for my katas). And yet, somehow, today, I got not one but three twenties out of my six katas (the other three were 18s, as usual, of course). Now that was cool and unexpected. Thank you, God, for my effective performance there this morning.

Post-a-day 2022

Body

Still not feeling great tonight. I slept around eight and a half hours last night, before the squirrels woke me*. I awoke feeling much improved, but it still wasn’t enough. I had soup today, and other healthy food, with only a few bites of not-super-healthy stuff. I exercised at midday, then attempted my 1.5-mile run for the karate test this Saturday, which I failed. It had to be under 13 minutes, and I did it in 13:15, and felt like I might actually throw up the cheese stick I’d just eaten. It was so cold when I started, I felt I’d get such without and outer layer of good warmth. That flannel shirt and scarf and gloves proved to be my downfall (on top of the cheese, that is), making me too hot with it on normally, and then being heavy and still-hot when I’d taken them off and just tied them around my waist. I was also still tired as a whole, but extra worn down from the workout at midday (which, by the way, was practically the Murph workout, with a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another mile run. We only did 800m runs, instead of the mile on each end, but we added a 400m in the middle, and split the three movements in half on either side of it, doing 50 pull-ups, 100 push-ups, and 150 air squats twice, once on either side of the 400m run. Not an easy workout, even with modifications.). So, it makes sense. I’ll just do it again tomorrow, but normally and much better than today’s run. I don’t typically feel like vomiting when I run, yet I felt that way most of the run this afternoon, and I just felt heavy.

And, tonight, I still feel a bit sick. I was coughing up the occasional bits of icky bogey-like saliva earlier, which supports the ill feelings. So, at that, I go to sleep now. Thank you, and goodnight.

* You see, we have this wooden picnic table squirrel feeder that my man keeps moving around. The past couple days, it has happened to be atop this metal shelf thing outside. So, of course, as the squirrels climb the thing, the bars all jiggle against one another, making the sound of metal pipes bumping each other. Then, once the guys are on top, they then messily spill corn etc. all onto the metal shelf thing, and the lands not just the once on top, but regularly tumbles down to the bottom level or the ground, tinkling all the way on the metal… over and over and over again. Not the greatest to have next to one’s window at six in the morning, I tell you.

Soup

I made a paleo/Whole30 chilli on Sunday evening, and then ate it yesterday and today. (I froze the majority of it, as my man is still on his juice cleanse he wanted, and he even stops day away from me, so he could have two three-day cleanses, instead of one five-day. [Recall that he wanted carbs for the 10k Sunday morning, so we ate food Saturday night and on Sunday, then he resumed the juice cleanse Monday.]) And, golly, is it good! I had never made chilli before, and was totally nervous I would make a pot of mediocre soupy stuff that I can’t stand for more than a few bites. Instead, I ended up with a vat of one of the best chillis I’ve ever had. Gratitude, God! Yay! Thank you, Heavems, for giving me a good recipe and for helping me actually do well in a super complex recipe. The more steps and ingredients they have, usually, the more likely I am to make it turn meh. So, this was a wonderful surprise.

The not-wonderful surprise was the massive trail of ants that attacked the cornbread when I’d left it (covered) on the counter yesterday for a couple hours. It was kind of terrible. Plus, we lost the cornbread… and I only get Jiffy cornbread when we want that down-home southern feeling, which we did for this meal. With its being so cold and wintery right now, that was exactly the feeling we’d wanted. And I’d left out the cornbread so that I could pack it up and freeze it after I’d had lunch. So much for that idea… :/ Anyway, the chilli is now frozen and waiting patiently for my man, and that’s a positive.

Oh, and I’ve had soup yesterday and today both. I think I’ve been fighting off a virus or cold, as I’ve been absolutely exhausted – couldn’t even do almost anything Monday. This evening, I started getting a headache after I’d napped, and then started getting progressively colder at karate class. I ended up going home after we realized that everyone else found it on the warmer side there, and they were actually sweating. Likely that I was building a bit of a fever there. They told me to go home and eat some soup. Little did they know that I’ve basically been doing that the past two days already. 😛

Nonetheless, I need to be ready for the cold, outdoor test Saturday morning, so I need to heal up and eat well (in addition to preparing for the actual test, which includes performing a weapon kata that I haven’t quite yet created…). At that, I bid you a good and blessed and rest-filled night!

Post-a-day 2022