SLOW UNPRODUCTIVITY

It has been ten months since I last worked in the health care system, and I am still being told that I am on the resting stage. It is taking so long and the likelihood of me returning to the work that was my passion for over twenty-five years is extremely unlikely. I am not even sure how a return to work anywhere would be possible, honestly, but I am trying to be patient and find myself wandering around aimlessly which is actually putting my home life back together slowly. Very slowly!

My official leave ends at the end of this month (August 31st, actually, but that was a mistake!) and if I imagine returning to work in less than 3 weeks, I have not done enough. I can panic so easily, and avoid the tasks that most need doing. I see the thankless jobs done at customer service desks in grocery stores and wonder how I would even do that without cracking! 

But as long as I have, and in the moments in between when I have to return to useful work, I will enjoy finishing one thing at a time, as it comes. I will enjoy that I can change tasks so that I can do something else even if it's not the most pressing. I will enjoy dreaming of paint colours and inventing things from the things in my house. I will read books and draw and mend and write. I will be silent alone, and enjoy the company of others. I will reach out when it might be inconvenient and have answers for others that they might not want to hear, but I will be okay with allowing myself to do what I feel is best for me. I will negotiate without imploding in childlike helplessness. I will not accept when others cannot meet me where I want them to be, and I will be for myself what I need anyways. I will be open to the love and care of others and learn to trust and be generous again. I will not keep a record of wrongs or add up in a zero sum way. I will believe in growth that is synergistic and not selfish. I will accept responsibility but not be held liable for things that were not under my human control. I will hope for others to love me, and I will learn to love with more acceptance, and continue to improve the way I recognize and communicate my needs. 

I will be happy to serve others as long as I am meeting my own needs first. I hope I can get to the recovery phase soon, but I am grateful to rest a little longer.

SLEEP HYGIENE WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM JAPAN

The idea of a good sleep is based on the premise that your body can rest best when it feels safe.

Here are a few suggestions:

Ofuro (hot bath) T-1.5 hours

Yoruno Sanpo (10-20 minute walk after dinner)

Yomu Jikan (Read a physical book) even 6 minutes reduces stress significantly

Kansha (gratitude)

Early dinner T-3 hours

Spend the evening preparing for bed

Dim light T-2 hours

Digital sunset T-1 hour

Music

Tea

To put it all together, for a 10:30 pm bedtime:

Finish eating by 7:30

Go for a slow walk afterwards, focusing on the things you are grateful for from the day.

Set alarms and get ready for the next day. 

Play calm music and turn down light, and silence alarms, at least by 9:30

Have a bath and/or have a tea

Read for at least a few minutes, even in bed.

MOVIE REVIEW: THE ODYSSEY

 Although the 70 mm IMAX theatres were sold out for weeks downtown, we had our pick of seats in the suburbs, and went to a regular theater to see the show with my  half-Greek boyfriend and his teen kids. 

It was as epic as I could have hoped, and a little safer than I expected, prepared as I was from the parent guide of IMDB for severe violence that was to be expected in a Greek myth. 

I was not aware that the screenplay had been written by Christopher Nolan, whom I knew had directed the film. Although Odysseus was often narrator, most of the movie was a good balance of show, don’t tell. It felt safer to watch as a female than expected, with Calypso prompting Odysseus to tell his story from the unreliable narrator POV that was created for the movie as opposed, and Penelope mostly protected by a decorative sliding door from the rowdy crowds of greedy suitors being kept next door. 

The movie was gripping, and flowed easily until maybe the last half hour of the 170 minutes. I think the battle scenes and how many suitors tried to string the bow could been cut down by at least 20 minutes to the films benefit.

The Trojan horse was beautiful craftsmanship and the exterior and interior scenes interesting, if not a little contrived. The scene with Hades was a little disappointing but Athena was often present and the results of the gods Poseidon and Zeus where evident, with the ship in weather scenes well done, as was the taking of Troy.

All in all, if the story with all is violence is known, I think it was an excellent movie with appropriately epic proportions.

THE BANALITY OF EVIL

 “Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

REMEDIES TO GLUCOSE INTOLERANCE

Vegetable starter (soup, salad, crudites), before carbs

Walk 10 minutes post prandial

Build a savory breakfast around protein (cortisol rises to wake us with glucose release)

Dress your carbs (with something else)

Only eat sweets as dessert, on a full stomach

Snack on savory

Sleep like your glucose depends on it (sleep deprivation in young health subjects over 6 nights raised glucose intolerance)

Lift something heavy twice week (muscles are a major glucose storage as glycogen)

Treat all sugar is sugar. (There are no healthy sugars) Avoid the "health halo"

HIGH ROI FOR HEALTH

Trade fat for muscle (strength train)

Focus on eating protein throughout the day (30g 4 x per day) 

Move daily (short, frequent, walk after meals, avoid being sedentary)

HITS

Reduce or eliminate ETOH

Prioritize sleep (avoid late ETOH, caffeine, screen time, large/late meal and make bedtime routine and consider mind dump of thoughts

Dr Rachel Felber

RUNNER'S FIVE MUSCLE GROUPS TO STRETCH

Hamstrings

Hip flexors

Quadriceps

Calves

Iliotibial band

-Scott Jurek

SCOTT JUREK'S LENTIL-MUSHROOM BURGERS

1 cup dried green lentils
2 1/4 cups water
1 tsp dried parsley                        
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 garlic minced cloves
1/4 cups finely chopped onion 

3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

2 cups fine bread crumbs
1/2 cup ground flax seed

1 cup finely chopped onion 

2 garlic mince cloves
3 cups (454 g) finely chopped mushrooms
1 1/2 c spinach
2 T cooking oil
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T Dijon mustard
2 T nutritional yeast
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp paprika

In a small pot, bring the lentils, water, parsley, 1 garlic clove, and 1/4 cup onion to a boil. Rduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 35-40 minutes, until the water is absorbed and the lentils are soft.

Combine walnuts, bread crumbs, and flax seed in a bowl. Add the nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and paprika and mix well.

Sauté the remaining onion, remaining garlic (2 cloves), mushrooms, and spinach greens in oil for 8-10 minutes, then set aside. Remove the lentils from heat, add the vinegar and mustard, and mash with a potato masher to a thick paste. 

Combine lentils, sautéed veggies, and bread crumb mixtures, and mix well. Cool in the refrigerator for 15 to 30 minutes more. 

Press into with 1/3 cup to form burger patties and press into pan. Lightly fry in a skillet until lightly browned and crisp, 3-5 minutes on each side. 

Makes 12. 

Combine  From Eat and Run

PERFECT ROYAL ICING

CRAFTSY Stephanie

Wilton icing recipe: 
Powdered sugar - sift
Meringue powder

Whisk together

Add vanilla.

Add water 1 T at a time in mixer. (Don't add too much!)

Use a spatula to make sure the dry bits are incorporated.

Once wet but thick, whip for 4 minutes on high.

Should look dry and stiff when finished.

Use a spray bottle to water down your icing.

5 consistencies

1. Stiff outline - lettering and outlines - can flatten with spoon, but stiff (doesn't relax)

2. Loose outline- outline of cookies

3. Stiff flooding - small areas - relaxes slightly from peak

4. Medium flooding - navigates around the small shapes done with stiff icing - useful for speed

5. Smooth flooding - 
Adjusting consistencies

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ADVICE ON LIFE

 " Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

RULE OF 72

 Divide 72 by your annual interest rate to find the double time in years.

72/7 = 10.3 years

THINGS I WOULD TELL YOU IF YOU HAD THE BANDWIDTH TO LISTEN

Last night I picked up my boyfriend at the train station. It was predictably late, but it gave me the time to shower his dog (that was my shower too, and that was a new adventure!) and wash his collar so that he smelled good again. 

I also found out last night that today was the bulk pickup, and I had my previous oven blocking the corner of my kitchen since I paid for the price of movers and got his dad’s fridge and stove in good used condition. I thought about keeping it in the shed for backup, but realized I didn’t have the space. I dragged it through the house on my own when I realized that I was ready to let it go. It got stuck at the front door with corrugated threshold, and I didn’t have enough strength alone to overcome it, so I called for help, and Princess Pirate helped me get it out of the house on the front step. 

I knew that the conference that BF was working at was going to wipe him out, and that the day before that ended in a late night did not set him up for anything but being tired. When we got home, he saw the stove, and asked, « So we have to deal with that tonight? ». I guess I didn’t make myself clear when I gave both options. Did I say yes, but we could do it before 7 in the morning? I was pretty sure that if I didn't want to do it now, I definitely wouldn't want to do it that early in the morning. I was also sure that I needed it out of my kitchen, because there was no room for it and it had already been blocking cupboards for a few days. 

I might assume that I wasn't brave enough to take the fallout of insisting, but I think it was a very rational choice given that I wanted to do it and he did not, so I would do it alone, so he went off to bed while I wrestled the stove out of the kitchen.

It wasn't too bad getting through the house but getting through the double doors with a small entrance was tough once I hit the metal doorstop. Fortunately, I met PP's boyfriend who was blocked by my endeavor and therefore required to help if he wanted to get in! In short order, he helped me lift it up and out, down the steps. I was able to walk it pretty easily to the curb after that.

By morning it was gone, and when my BF noticed, he asked why I didn't ask him to help. I treated it as a rhetorical question, but I knew that it was what I needed to do to show up for myself. 

RETURN TO THE GASPÉ

During the 2020 pandemic, Princess Pirate and I went on a road trip for three weeks, and part of it was up and around the Gaspé peninsula. Since then, I have always wanted to return to the Park called Forillon, specifically to stay in a spaceship like lodging called the Oasis with the closest view of the pebble beach that you can find in the northern section called des Rosiers.

The design of this accommodation had a few problems, but I was thrilled to be inside one and peek out over the trail where I had seen porcupines graze and found moose footsteps on our walk out to the lighthouse and out on to the beach, to the escarpment that bookmarked the view with an escarpment, and to the expanse of the water that was at the verge of the St. Lawrence seaway 

I love hearing the waves move the flat rocks up the shore into a homogeneous piles that make for a stone skippers endless supply. The next section of rocks were less flat and more heterogenous in colour and form. Then comes the sand and tidal pools that only appear as the tide

AT THE UN-NATIONAL MONUMENT ALONG THE CANADIAN BORDER

 By poet William Stanford

This is the field where the battle did not happen

Where the unknown soldier did not die.

This is the filed where grass joined hands

Where no monument stands

And the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound

Unfolding their wings across the open

No people killed

Or were killed

On this ground

Hallowed by neglect and an air so tame

That people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

GALOIS THEORY WRITTEN UNDER PRESSURE OF DUEL

The Story of Mathematics by Richard Mankiewicz

Romantic enthusiast

From 37,000 year old calendar stick made from notched bone to 20 year old Evarist Galois who spent the night before his death in a duel writing down the essentials of his theory (a key component in modern algebra), occasionally pausing to write in the margins “I have no time!”

MARTHA MARTIN

O Rugged Land of Gold

 1953 Memoir detailing her survival as a pregnant, injured woman abandoned on a remote Alaskan island during winter

THE GREAT ESCAPE

 Book and 1963 movie with Steve McQueen

Inspired by US airman John Dortch Lewis

Flew missions in a FABRIC-COVERED Hawker Hurricane with the RCAF

Wounded over France but crash landed in Britain.

Shot down over North Africa and evaded German troops in the desert for 2 weeks before capture

Caught 3 times before breaking free on the 4th try in a prison camp with a group of allied troops

Died in N. Carolina with pancreatic cancer and emphysema

GATORADE INSPIRATION

 Invented for U of Florida football

“What will you do?

Will you give into it or will you fight through it?

Will you fear it or embrace it?

Will you hold back or will you hold nothing back?

Is it in you?”

SELF-ESTEEM

 Dr. Michael Sheehan (The Self Esteem Game)

”Self esteem is present when there is little discrepancy between a person’s ideal and actual self.”

GAME THEORY?

 Jean Paul Sartre

“Only in games is man free, because only in games does he understand what is going on.”

Joe Morris in The Banker

"Even a rigged game's fun to play."

MARRIAGE

 17th century Bishop Jeremy Taylor

“Marriage has less beauty but more safety than a single life. It’s full of sorrows and full of joy. It lies under more burdens but it is supported by all of the strengths of love, and those burdens are delightful.”

MISO SOUP

2 tsp dashi (bonito powder or other stock concentrate)
3 T miso paste

8 oz tofu

3 green onions, sliced

4 c water

BIRTHDAY DIP DEVOURED

Layer from bottom:

Softened cream cheese (consider whipped with herbs) with Italian seasoning sprinkle on top

Hummus

Chopped cucumber, tomato, red onion, red and green pepper

Crumbed feta

Serve with sturdy cracker (Walmart had Kellogg’s Townhouse Pita all dressed bagel triangles that were perfect)

 Credit: Brittany!