I had such an intense dream last night that when I woke from it with a full bladder begging to be emptied, I thought I must have slept through the night. I try not to look at the time too often in the night because I can get a bit hung up and make it harder on myself to fall asleep, but I checked this time. It was before midnight. I had more time for more dreams.
My body felt sore in the morning, so I gave myself a bit of a break and did what I call the “high mile” instead of my regular mile. I still have to walk up some hills, but I avoid the really big hill. And my time was still over 21 minutes. I put a birthday card in the mail for my niece. I figured I could put it in at lunch, but this would probably be the one day that the mail started getting picked up at the normal time again.
The other day on zoom, I showed off my overnight oats prep. My dad said that he made his oats every morning, and that it only took five minutes. I didn’t know at the time how to articulate to him why I couldn’t do that. I tried that, back when I first got back to Idaho after Ambrose died. And I couldn’t do it. After giving it some thought, I realized that I need a breakfast solution that does not require me to do dishes in order to make the next breakfast.
I’ve been getting better about doing dishes. I’m running my dishwasher regularly, and I’m not letting stuff pile up in and around the sink. But I’m not at the point where I can make breakfast oats in a pot, and then wash that pot, all before work. I have to do what works for me.
There’s this big thing for Survivor 50 where there are clues in every state. Idaho’s was released today and I’m so disappointed. I understand where the clue is directing us, but I can’t take that day off work to chase after it. That’s a day and time when I already have meetings that I can’t really miss or reschedule. Plus, I’m donating blood that evening. I would have liked to have participated.
It was hard, again, to keep my focus on work. I’m getting things done, but I’m just so distracted. I felt pretty tired today, but I wasn’t tempted to consume any caffeine. I think I’m going to be able to stick with avoiding it until my business trip in March.
I did my Move U exercises during my release time and lunch hour. I think I’m starting to feel a difference in my left shoulder. I’m just going to keep plugging away at it. It’s nice to have a focus. Then I ate lunch, and then walked to check the mail. I’m glad I got the card in this morning, because they did indeed pick up before I did my post-lunch walk.
After work, I ate my leftover dinner. It was just as delicious today. I’m kind of sad I only have one more serving of it. But Thursday I’ll get to have tacos or pizza after giving blood, and Friday will be crab. Yum.
I intended to walk a mile on my post-dinner walk. But when I got to the turnaround point, I decided to keep walking. It felt good to be out there. The high temps are in the 50s this week. I’m admonishing my lilac not to grow yet every day. But it felt good on that walk. I ended up doing two miles, each of them sub-20 minutes. I was expecting a fast time on the descent, but to have an even faster time on the way back was a surprise.
I was initially quite warm when I got back, but after sitting a while, I found myself feeling very cold. I probably sweated a bit too much with my fast walking. I ended up taking a hot shower and drinking some beef broth, and now I’m feeling cozy.
I’m leaning towards making an ox tail stew on Saturday. I’ve got the ingredients I’ll need on the shopping list. Hm, I’ll have to decide where to shop this weekend. Hike on Saturday, then shopping, then cooking. I’ll need to pull the ox tails out to defrost Friday or first thing Saturday morning.
I don’t know how I’m doing this. Just living life while he’s gone. One breath at a time, I suppose. One project at a time. I need to finish my Snowslide Lake trip write up and start on the ICT section. I have so much to write.
