Ode to a Cold?

(I’m not actually going to compose an ode to my cold, it was just a catchy title!  Sorry for any disappointment that you may not hear an untalented woman with a cold sing a song!)

Toast, pudding, orange juice, tea with honey, soup, hot toddy.  What do all these things have in common?  I wanted them all yesterday at some stage or another while laying on the sofa being miserable.  What else do they have in common?  I didn’t eat any of them.  My whiney-sick-person eats included a Babybel cheese (of which my dog ate the wax and plastic wrapper at some stage when I wasn’t paying attention), a part of a smoked salmon omelette, a Larabar and a pot of ginger coconut tea.  Being sick blows.  Being sick and having a restrictive diet blows very hard!  I realize now that I was in no way actually prepared to be sick.  Ray was asleep all day (he’s on graveyards) so even if I’d been able to dream up something comforting to eat (that I didn’t have to cook), I had no one to send out to get it for me anyway.

Strangely, I saw a recipe for chicken soup on Friday night and thought to myself that I should really get some made and in the freezer in case I ever ended up under the weather.  Then on Sunday I had this overwhelming feeling that I should get on that sooner rather than later.  And, wouldn’t you know it, I came down with something that night.  It’s so surreal to me that when your body is clear and healthy that you can totally hear the signals it’s sending.  I obviously heard the “you’re getting sick” signal on the weekend, just didn’t really know what it meant.

Anyway, I’m at work today.  Unfortunately.  It’s unfortunate, you see, because sick people need sleep and work is a difficult place to achieve that.  I’m also a little bummed that the gym was a no go on Saturday and yesterday and probably tomorrow (so pretty much the whole week) because I have been enjoying it.  However, stressing your body (yep, exercise is stress.  Good stress, but stress nonetheless) when you’re already knocked down is a recipe for adrenal fatigue and no one wants that. 

Since I don’t have much choice but to sit this day out until I can get home, I’m doing it with hot tea, fizzy Vitamin C shots and water.  I have no idea what we’re going to do for dinner tonight, however much like yesterday, I suppose I’ll be cooking it.   My whole being wants to just lay on the couch (floor, landing, entrance, driveway, wherever) when I get home, but if I do that then we’re not going to be eating.  In addition to sick people needing sleep, we also need food.  And since I’m our resident chef, that’s up to me.  Ray is also, inconveniently, on graveyards and that shift never showcases his contributory traits.

Honestly, I can totally see where it would be kind of nice to be sick occasionally, lay around, miss a couple days of work, watch daytime television, drink pots of tea and nap as needed…..if you’re a man or a child and have a wife or mother to look after you.  If you’re the woman who maintains the running of the house, who puts very high value on nutrition quality and content and who is the general care-taker, being sick is a huge pain in the ass, resentment building, exhausting, depressing undertaking.

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168 Hours

“There are not enough hours in the day!”.  How many times do we lament that?  I know that I have long struggled with jamming everything in, trying to live a balanced life, do all the things I need to do and lots of the things I want to do.

 I was perusing one of my daily reads and there was mention of a book called 168 Hours, You Have More Time Than You Think and it got me to wondering, what if I added up just the things that I do every day, how much time do I actually have?  The adding commenced and I have to tell you, it was kind of shocking!  I regularly chastise myself up for not tidying around the house more often, dusting or pushing the vacuum, for not having the garden weeded (or at this time of year, cleaned out), for not tackling “weekend projects”, for not riding my motorcycle more, for not cleaning the bathrooms more often, for not folding the laundry on the same day week it was washed and dried.  There I am chastising myself and in reality, I truly do not have the time. 

Where do your 168 Hours go?

Of my 168 hours, I spend 112.75 hours of it sleeping, showering, commuting or working.  That’s 67% of my week, knocked right out of the running.  Of those hours that remain, I spend 18% of them doing some form of exercise (gym or dog walking) and 14% of them doing something related to food (grocery shopping, food prep, cooking, packing lunches, doing dishes).  So, to keep up with the numbers, that’s 77.8% of my weekly hours that are spoken for already.  Work, sleep, exercise & food take up over ¾ of my week.  Add in the hour every weekday evening that I devote to sitting down (this was required for sanity and resentment-reducing properties), an hour a week of laundry (conservatively) and now 81.3% of my week is toast.  Not on this list is ANYTHING that is a hobby or done purely for enjoyment (unless you include fitness…which I sort of do….sort of) nor is there housework (bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting).  

Starting from the large blue piece on the left, the pie works counter clockwise and the legend along the side starts from the bottom. Don’t ask me why!

So on any given week, I have all of Saturday and 7¾ hours on Sunday to live the rest of my life.  Put that way, why on earth would I spend my 18.7% of “spare” time each week vacuuming my house or washing the windows or mopping the floor?  So the sheets get changed every other week and I look past the hair on the bathroom counter for longer than I should.    And it’s not like the things that I fill my time up with during the week are sedentary, not at all, they all take time and energy (mental, physical or both), save for one hour each day that I try to spend sitting down and recharging. 

 Put this was as well, when I’m doing the things that I want to be doing, the things that make me feel good and strong and healthy, I know I’m using my 168 hours in the best way I possibly can.

 How do you use your 168 hours?  Would you be surprised how much or how little time you have left? 

Fast & Furious

It is blissfully sunny out (finally!) and I am insanely busy at work so have been getting there early to start work…which eats into my blogging time.  😉

An update of things ongoing in point form, shall we?

• Grace is catching on to life with us…in most respects.  It is becoming apparent that she never spent any time outdoors.  She is nervous and insecure about absolutely every little noise, movement, breeze or bug.  It’ll take time but she’s a smart girl, she’ll get used to it.
• We are more careful about keeping her under our control (leash) than we were at first, now that she’s gaining confidence her little firecracker personality is coming out and she has no hesitation about chasing cats in our neighborhood or even chasing a motorcycle down the road at top speed.
• We discovered yesterday during a visit with our adoption co-ordinator that she was not abandoned on the side of the freeway as we first understood.  She and her brother were tossed out of a moving vehicle at freeway speed and the car that was behind her car pulled over and went back for them while the owners just sped off.  I just about puked when I heard that.  And then cried. 
• I rode my motorcycle to work on Friday for the first time!
• Going back a little ways since I haven’t been posting much, our family dinner worked out absolutely beautifully, everyone was on their best behavior and got along well enough that I would not hesitate to do it again (and we may, in September)
• On the exercise front I have walked 40.1 kilometers in the last 7 days.  This is, apparently, enough for me to not only maintain my weight but to help strip off a little more fat in the legs and belly and replace with lean tissue.  Perfect!  Especially since, because the weather is gorgeous, we are certainly drinking more than we do when it’s raining out. 
• There was a cougar reported in our area late last week, freaks me the hell out!
• We went to a dinner party at Ray’s ex wife’s house last night, she was at our house on Saturday with George so they could meet Grace and she is coming to Ray’s mom’s b’day dinner and then to our house for coffee & cake this coming Sunday.  I am definitely struggling at this point, I don’t mind her, she’s a nice person, I love her dog…….but it’s a strain on my good humour and sociability to crank out a happy face when nerves and upset is what I’m feeling inside.  And Ray, per normal, pays absolutely no attention to my discomfort whether I specifically mention it or not.  It’s a problem.

So, that’s what HAS happened, and here’s what’s coming:

• Grace has a vet appt tomorrow.  We thought she had an ouchie foot because of all the walking however it could be because of how she was….um….surrendered.  She needs to get that looked at.
• Tara is coming over for dinner on Wednesday so that we can drink a nice rose in the driveway and so she can meet Grace
• Ray’s mom is turning 75 on Sunday (hence the birthday dinner and get together at our house).  She just took a tumble yesterday and may have broken her wrist…which is not great, she’s not a great exerciser to begin with and has little confidence in walking to begin with and this won’t help.  Plus, she’s going to Israel and Jordan in September so she needs to get up and going.
• Saturday we have a Harley meeting, a chiropractor appt (that Gracie gets to go to…and he offered to take a look at her and see if he can help her at all) and then a memorial service in the afternoon. 

So that’s about it. It’s too beautiful here to spend anytime indoors and I’m too busy at work to do anything but swear and bang my head against the desk.  Three weeks from now we’re going on holidays as well and that is going to be crazy to get ready for, we’re camping just the two of us and our dog and also towing our big boat up there and going to spend at least a week on the water fishing and swimming and hanging out…..at this point I have requested two weeks off and only had one approved so we can’t even determine how long we’ll be gone for….which really blows.