Wellness Wednesday – Cultivate a Life You Love

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Thistle

Please note: this post was pre-drafted before my grandmother’s health declined. I’m still allowing it to post, but I will be very slow to respond to comments.

***
Back in the fall, an article on personal happiness popped up in my Facebook news feed that struck home. I didn’t actually read the article in question, because the headline and accompanying blurb were already powerful enough that I felt a bit wretched. I can’t remember the exact words, but essentially the paraphrase is: “Self-care is not about bubble baths and wine. It’s about creating a life that you don’t constantly need to escape.” Having spent my fair number of nights escaping into bubble baths or wine, this kinda hit me right in the heart and gut.

The thing is, I once had a life that I didn’t constantly feel the need to escape from. When I did need escape – often in the evenings after Jason got home from work, since my job as a stay at home mom is 24/7 – it wasn’t an escape from life but a retreat to some alone time for my own sanity. While I’ve never been particularly fond of the SAHM job, it’s important to me, and so I keep it up and make the best of the situation. I figured out ways to be in the world through book clubs, writing groups, NaNoWriMo, book blogs, a bit of travel, and eventually in my health and fitness journey. At home, I exercised and wrote and blogged and read books and took care of the house and my kids. There were good times and bad times, of course, but essentially life felt right.

(Thanksgiving 2012)

That rightness started to crack in July 2013, but I managed to keep cultivating good things until May 2014 when life kicked me into the gutter so hard that I’m just barely starting to fully recover. Everything in my life fell apart. It was at this point that I started to attempt to escape my world rather than self-care. I stress-ate, drank too much, exercised so hard that I’d be crippled for days. I dove into a series of mindless books that distracted me but that I didn’t even record reading. I binge-watched TV shows that I’d already seen, watching over and over just to keep my brain off the wretchedness of my world. Therapy and medication could only help a tiny bit, because the source of all the wretchedness was ever-present and unending. For the first time since my boys were infants/toddlers, I began taking vacations alone purely to get away from home. Then I’d get home after the vacation, during which I’d been happy, and just cry.

Four cross-country moves and a lot of therapy later, I’ve gotten a lot better about many of these things. I’ve started to find things that I enjoy again, rather than mindless escapes. This is a slow process and I’m not always the best at it. That particular article headline/blurb hit me so hard last fall because I realized that despite everything, I still wasn’t happy with my life. So many things were still frail and fractured and painful. It’s hard to know how to build a life you love when so many of the things you cherish were taken from you and can never return. I just had to keep trying.

In November, when I read Oathbringer, I was struck by a quote: “The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.” In a way, this isn’t much different from what that article stated. The real difference is that one points out a fallacy, and one suggests an action point. For me, one focused on the things I had once and lost, the other focuses on what I need to do to build again. That tiny shift in mindset makes all the difference. I chose the world Cultivate as my one-word in 2018 particularly for this purpose: to cultivate a life of happiness, to cultivate a life I love, to cultivate a life I don’t constantly need to escape from.

(Yes, he’s wearing “ports” – he did it himself)

And I think I’m making progress. Earlier this week, I watched as Jason and my youngest son did yoga together in the evening. Laurence as usual was fussing and complaining the whole time, yelling at Adriene for asking him to do “impossible” things, while simultaneously listening to rap on his headphones. In one pose, he started dancing instead of paying attention, and I asked him if he was listening to music instead of to Adriene. He looked at me and said, “Yeah, of course!” Then he pointed to the video, while Adriene did a couple finger-snaps for whatever reason, and said, “See? She’s listening to rap, too! That was perfectly on the beat!” Then he went back to the yoga, and I had a moment of involuntary thought: Man I love my life. It was the first time in nearly four years that I’ve thought anything close to that.

I don’t expect everything to be perfect or for the rest of this cultivation to be easy. Most days, however, I spend more time working on the things I want to do and less time escaping my life and environment, and that seems a step in the right direction.

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The Girl on the Velvet Swing, by Simon Baatz (audio)

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Thistle

Subtitled: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Trigger warning: sexual violence
Spoiler warning: These are actual events, so I will discuss details.

In the early 1900s, Evelyn Nesbit was raped by architect Stanford White, who was then supporting her family. Several years later, after Nesbit married a young rich man named Harry Thaw, Thaw murdered White in retribution. The trial that followed was a national sensation. This book is the account of the events leading up to the murder and trial, and the fallout afterwards, including all the contradictory evidence brought forward from multiple sources over many years.

There is a lot of contradictory evidence. Both White and Thaw were accused of sexual and physical violence toward young girls, accusations coupled with varying claims of sadism, drug use, and blackmail. Nesbit changed her stance and testimony about both White and Thaw several times. The book’s afterword said that the truth was never fully uncovered and it’s difficult to tell what the actual story was in places. After listening through the whole audiobook and then reading some additional materials, my conclusions are these:

Thaw was obviously a very nasty man. Whether or not one believes the stories of him threatening his wife after his trials, or that his lawyers tricked Nesbit into lying on the stand, or that he had a right to kill White for his wife’s honor, these two facts stand out. First, he murdered someone in public, possibly taking the law into his own hands, and possibly using Nesbit’s rape as an excuse to get rid of someone who had made his life difficult. Second, long after this particular affair was over and Thaw was eventually a free man again, he attacked and whipped a young man in the same manner he’d been accused of doing to young girls before the trial.

White was also obviously a very nasty man. He was a known serial “seducer” of young girls. It doesn’t matter whether or not he drugged Nesbit and raped her while she was unconscious (one claim she made) or he “seduced” her into losing her virginity (another claim she made). Either way, a man in his late 40s “seducing” a girl of 16 (or younger) is rape. Flat out.

As for Evelyn Nesbit, I hardly know what to think of her, except to feel sorry for her. She was manipulated by the men in her life, and then torn apart by the press for being beautiful and making her way in life via photography and stage acts. People have cast her as a seductress that manipulated those around her, but I’m sorry, she’s was frickin’ 16 years old! Maybe even younger, since there’s some evidence her mother lied about her age and that she was actually 14. I think that, as usual, the woman got blamed when it was the two men who had harmed and used her. It’s hard to know what to think of her only because the records that still exist all show the media’s skewing of her true self to sell a story.

The book was well-written and a good, balanced account – from what I can tell – of the events. I struggled a bit with the parts that don’t add up, and appreciated the afterword where Baatz addresses this. The prose was engaging, and I was interested in reading more about the events when the book was over. Moreover, the audio performance by Christine Lakin was very good and helped to keep me engaged.

Posted in 2018, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Sunday Coffee – On Saying Goodbye

Posted on February 4, 2018 by Thistle

Thursday morning, I got word that my grandmother’s health was in rapid decline. She’d been in poor health for a few weeks with pneumonia, but now the hospice nurse said her body was shutting down. I went straight over to her house to spend the day with my aunts and to say my goodbyes.

She looked rough. I last saw my grandma in the fall, and she was doing so well. Laughing, singing, dancing, telling stories from when her seven kids were young. We talked to her over the phone for Christmas – her health prevents much in the way of visits over the colder months – and she was strong and doing well then, too. It was a shock to see how much she had changed. She struggled to speak, but she told me that she was ready, that she was going to be with my grandpa again, and she asked me to remember that love was the most important thing, the most enduring thing. When I left a few hours later, she told me to tell my boys goodbye for her. We got a message the next afternoon that she said she was ready and had asked for morphine. A couple hours later, she passed away.

(2012 – 78th birthday party)

My grandmother is the fifth member of my family that I’ve said goodbye to (that I was old enough to remember, anyway), and one of the hardest goodbyes for me. I was particularly close to her. My sister and I used to stay at her house in the summer for a few weeks while our parents and younger siblings went back to South Carolina where we lived. She taught us to knit, let us build “houses” out of couch pillows, gave us Flintstones vitamins every night before bed. When I was around 11 or 12 years old, she gave up a pack-a-day smoking habit cold turkey, one of the hardest things I’ve ever seen anyone do. She was just so strong and so sharp. Even after her body began to fail her and she couldn’t walk anymore, her mind was so sharp. She could remember the tiniest details and tell stories like no one else I’ve ever known.

(~1993/1994, early high school, with my dad and grandparents)

I have so many memories. My grandma always led the songs and cheering during birthday parties with specific intros. She made the best spaghetti, and she forced me to eat peaches even when I didn’t like them (ha!). Her entire dining room was covered from floor to vaulted ceiling with framed photos, hundreds of them, until the last few years when she could no longer keep up with the dusting. She was from Britain and had the best accent, with a touch of Bronx from my grandpa mixed in over the years. My sister and I used to hug fire hydrants when we were five-ish, calling them “grandma” because we missed her when we lived in South Carolina and she was in Texas.

(2014, 80th birthday party, with the boys – sadly I caught her blinking!)

Grief has always been a bit unpredictable for me. The last few days, I’ve had moments when I feel put together and moments when I start having panic attacks and moments where I start sobbing out of nowhere. I don’t know exactly how the next few weeks will go. Sometimes while grieving, I tend to throw myself into writing, and I might start drafting blog posts for the next few weeks. Sometimes I withdraw into my in-real-life support system and disappear from the online world altogether. I don’t know how it will be for me now. I have one post pre-drafted for the week already, before I got the news, and that will still post, but otherwise I don’t have any plans and I might be sporadic for a time. If I’m not posting here and not commenting on your blogs for now, please know I’ll be back as soon as I’m recovered.

(I’m on the left under covers. Jason stayed with me, the kitties knew I was upset.)

Thank you all for listening. I’m grateful for my support system (both on- and offline), and for being able to say goodbye to my grandmother, and for my family members that have taken such good care of Grandma over the years, and for being back in San Antonio so that I was able to spend one of her last days by her side. I’m grateful that once her pain got to be too much, she didn’t have to linger long in agony. I’m grateful that she had to a chance to tell so many of us goodbye. I’m grateful that my boys got to know her and are old enough to remember. I’m grateful for my husband for taking care of things while I’m out of commission, and for his very flexible job, and for the kitties who know something’s up and keep trying to comfort me. I’m grateful for yoga, which has helped to keep me grounded while my body tries to process the grief physically. I’m grateful for so many things, and I know the love of my family and friends will help me to get through this time.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 8 Comments

January in Review

Posted on February 2, 2018 by Thistle

Please note: This post was pre-drafted before my grandmother’s health began to decline (more on this soon). I’m allowing it to post still, but I will be slow to respond to comments etc.

***
I didn’t do monthly recaps last year and found that I missed the process, especially when I was looking back on the year for happy moments. I don’t know that I’ll do this every month – I have a tendency to forget – but I’m going to try to do better.

Generally, the month was a fairly good one. I didn’t do as well as I wanted in terms of nutrition or mental health, but I made progress in a lot of other ways and had some truly happy moments.

Goals
A couple of my big goals of the year got crossed off very early – namely selling our WI house and paying off the credit card. Yay!!! I also got rid of 95% of my yarn surplus, leaving only a couple skeins plus the stuff I need for my afghan-in-progress. I saw two movies in theatre – Darkest Hour and The Post – and tried out a few new TV shows (Supernatural – no!, Stranger Things – yes!, Glee – meh…). I also got to go to the San Antonio Cat Cafe. So I’m off to a great start in terms of goals this year!

Health
As I said above, I didn’t do so well in this category. While I exercised a lot – 28 days, 1700 minutes – and hit my yoga and walking goals (34 yoga sessions, 31 miles), my nutrition was all over the place. My weight didn’t budge due to this, and I kinda started from scratch this week. Again. In terms of mental health, I’m still working with my doctor to tweak medication levels, and have yet to find a good therapist (sigh).

(Goddess pose – this is HARD!)

Books
This was a major slump month for me. Of the five books I read, only one (Consider the Fork) really stands out. One (Mind Games) I forgot completely, as evidenced by the following anecdote. Two weeks after I finished it, GoodReads recommended a book to me based on my reading Mind Games. I had no idea what it was talking about and had to go look Mind Games up, thinking a book got onto my read-list by mistake. Oops! There are a few books coming out in February that I’m highly anticipating, so hopefully it’ll be a better month in books for me!

Highlights of January
Selling the house and paying off the credit card obviously top this list. Other highlights include:

  • celebrating Jason’s birthday
  • listening to many outstanding TED Talks
  • visiting the Cat Cafe (twice!)
  • meeting with my writer friends (including one I haven’t seen in a couple years)
  • joining an online yoga community
  • getting our taxes done (yay refunds!)
  • Ambrose starting driver’s ed

I have to note that many of these things I’ve felt more intellectually than emotionally. My emotional state has been very scattered and often numbed out this month. I know that when I look back on January later in the year, it will be a good month in my memory. For now, though, I’m processing most of it on a thinking level rather than a heart level. That’s something that I want to get better with time.

Coming up in February
February should be relatively quiet, beyond the fact that one of my kids will be learning to drive, heh. My nephew’s fourth birthday is the weekend, and of course there’s Valentine’s Day, but mostly I expect I’ll be pretty homebound. I plan on easing up on the yoga this month – daily (sometimes twice-daily) sessions are taking a bit of a toll on my body – and doing more walking, hiking, and maybe even running again. And if all goes well, we’ll finally be able to replace my failing car this month. Wish us luck with that one!

How was your January? Any fun stuff coming up this month?

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Wellness Wednesday – A Look at Up Til Now

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Thistle

Hello everyone! As it’s a new year and (hopefully) the beginning of a new journey for me, I wanted to go back over a bit of my history up to this point. Those of you who have known me for a long time will already know these stories, so feel free to skip them. Also note that this post will be long!

Continue reading →

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Yoga With Cats!

Posted on January 29, 2018 by Thistle

Yoga with cats should have been on my bucket list, but it wasn’t. After all, I get plenty of yoga with cats at home. Nimi is a big fan of yoga, often lying by my side and wrapping herself around me for the entire session. (She gets really annoyed when my knees nudge her away during extended child’s pose, ha!) Yoga with someone else’s cats is a different experience entirely. Yoga in a group with several dozen cats? That’s just plain awesome! Definitely a bucket list item, even if I neglected to put it on mine!

The San Antonio Cat Cafe opened sometime this past fall. I bookmarked their site and liked/followed their facebook page. When they started hosting yoga with cats in December, I was unable to go to either event. I’ve been waiting and waiting for another workshop to come up, and it finally did last week. My friend Stephanie and I both signed up, and went to the evening event last Tuesday night. The yoga was slow and available for all levels, and the cats indeed played all around the yogis for the hour-long practice. Things I learned:

– I can’t resist cats. I really can’t. If I’m not careful, I might just come home with a fourth kitty-child one of these days.

– Grey kitties are the cutest kitties ever.

(my Gavroche)

– Maybe this is only a coincidence, but all the tuxedo kittens (of which there were about a half-dozen) acted just like my Gavroche – friendly and silly and lovable and super active, but not the brightest cats ever. Haha!

– Cats really do bring people “prizes.” None of my three babies have ever done this, but one of the tuxedo kittens brought me a toy mouse and then hung out on my mat for quite some time, essentially adopting me.

– Speaking of mats, my cotton yoga mat – which I use on top of a regular mat, for extra cushioning as well as less slippage – is a huge cat-attraction. They love it!

– Savasana, or corpse pose, is an interesting time to have one kitten playing with your toes and one kitten nestling into your armpit. Ha!

Really, it was just so much fun. The workout was good – I was pretty sore the next day and decided to take a day off – but the cats running around and joining us were what really made the night. I obviously need to get back to volunteering at a shelter soon or I’ll go kitty-crazy and then I’ll really have to worry about bringing a fourth kitty-child home one day!

Posted in Wellness | Tagged | 2 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Recommendations?

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Thistle

Two Sundays ago, I talked about bookish slump I’m kinda in. But I realized since then, there are some books and other things that are holding my attention. They’re (for the most part) stuff I don’t have as much experience with, so I’m asking for recommendations today!

TED Talks
My cousin’s wife sent me a TED talk on the first day of the year. It was only the second one I’d ever watched (I think?), and I fell in love. Since then I’ll been grabbing talks at random when I have time to watch them, usually from their Facebook page. But honestly, I don’t know how to find them more efficiently. I don’t do podcasts and I don’t want to subscribe to a service that will send me dozens of links/videos per day. I don’t know if there’s an easier way to do that, so mostly I’m asking for recommendations for specific videos. Do you know an excellent TED talk? Leave me a link in the comments!

Chunkster Fantasies
Despite my love of Brandon Sanderson, I’m really not well-versed on long epic fantasies. I’ve tried a few and quit (Wheel of Time, Game of Thrones) and I’ve recently been craving these longer complex books. However, the last one I tried to find for myself ended up feeling like a derivative of Sanderson and the Wheel of Time, and I quit halfway into the first book. I like fantasies that spend more time on character and limitations than on cool special effects magic, and I’ve had a hard time finding something with a good balance of worldbuilding, story, character, and good writing. Suggestions?

Cultural Exploration
I recently read the first few chapters of a book that will release in March (Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Edeyemi). It’s set in a fantasy version of West Africa, steeped in a combination of real-world culture and the speculative worldbuilding. Those chapters were phenomenal and I can’t wait for the full book to release. One of main selling points for me was that blend of culture and fantasy. I’ve said it before – I get so tired of magical books set in London! Give me magic from around the world, culture from around the world. Let me read a fantasy set in Indonesia or Paraguay or Zambia. Right now, I’m very interested in reading about non-American, non-European cultures, whether in the fantasy genre or not. So if you know some good ones, please leave your recommendations below!

Nonfiction
Consider the Fork was definitely the best book I read this January, and I had none of my lack-of-focus problems while listening to that audiobook. Between that and the TED Talk obsession, I kinda think my focus is now going to be mostly on nonfiction for awhile. I’m not normally a huge nonfiction person but every once in awhile, I go on a kick. Problem is, because I’m not really a nonfiction person, I don’t know a lot of what’s out there. Second problem is, I’m super picky! I avoid politics, government, and war stuff, as well as memoirs, and I prefer nonfiction steeped in culture, sociology, psychology, or micro-histories. Because I’m so picky, it’s possible that only one in ten suggestions will end up working for me, so if you’re a big nonfic reader, go to town here! Leave me a list of dozens, haha!

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 14 Comments

Consider the Fork, by Bee Wilson (audio)

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Thistle

Subtitled: A History of How We Cook and Eat

I’ve read a lot of food history over the years, and some cooking history as well. While this book deals with both food and cooking, it is instead a history of kitchen implements. Wilson asks the question of why we use specific cooking and eating tools. Why a fork? Why an oven? Why a Keurig or balloon whisk or wooden spoon? The micro-histories of pots, knives, cans, ovens, and even kitchens themselves are discussed in terms of their evolution through culture and innovation.

Until this book popped up as a daily deal at Audible, I’d never even heard of it. I bought it on a whim, fully prepared to return it if I didn’t fall in love. Instead, I fell absolutely in love. This book was fascinating! I learned so much – far more than I could ever put into a review – and beyond the facts, I loved hearing about the various ways cultures and time periods affected our view of manners and etiquette. I’ve said before: I’m not a cook. I can cook, and in fact I can cook really well, with all the right instincts. But I don’t enjoy cooking one bit. Yet, this book made me feel at moments that maybe I could like cooking? (It’s not going to happen, but props to any author who can make me entertain the notion!)

Wilson discusses her own history in the kitchen throughout the book, starting the introduction with a rhapsody about the wooden spoon with which she cooks. My husband (the cook 95% of the time in our house) uses wooden spoons, but I personally can’t stand the things. I can’t make them work right in a pot or pan. I grew up using plastic spoons and spatulas, and still do. Wilson’s introduction got me thinking about the whys of this, and how it really comes down to nostalgia and how one learned to cook. A wooden or melamine or whatever spoon just feels right. My kids, notably, cook with both kinds – best of both worlds there!

(best cooking spoons ever!)

It made me think: what are the things I absolutely need in my kitchen? You have the usual (stove/oven, fridge, probably a microwave for heating things up, cutlery and place settings), but what else for me specifically? What do I need beyond those things? My electric kettle, coffee grinder, and pour-over for coffee. I have a French press and an Italian Moka Pot but I almost never use them. The pour-over is my go-to. The kettle is awesome because my kids also use it to make ramen or tea. (Also, Wilson talked about heating water to boiling in the kettle before pouring into a pan for cooking, something I’d never thought of doing before!) Besides coffee stuff, I must have my toaster oven (particularly for warming up most foods – I use it more than the microwave), my plastic cooking spoons/spatulas, a rice cooker, and my double-thick cotton crocheted potholders. Every kitchen will look different, though. Most have a toaster, rather than a toaster oven, whereas we haven’t owned a toaster since 2005. I also never had a rice cooker growing up and was only introduced to that later in life, whereas my boys name the rice cooker as the most essential thing they need for going to college. Jason would be lost without the Kitchen Aid we got for our wedding, though I think I’ve used that beast less than half a dozen times in the last eighteen years. Jason prefers pans without nonstick coating, I prefer them as nonstick as possible.

Another thing I thought about as I read was the difference in how food is eaten in different parts of the world. I’m not a highly seasoned traveler, but I’ve lived in France and I spent some time in Palestine. During my time in France, meals were eaten in courses: bread and salad; soup; main course; yogurt. In Palestine, we sat on floor cushions for communal meals served on giant platters. We picked up morsels of meat and vegetable with bread, or spooned – yes, spooned – chunks off the small whole roast chickens mixed in with rice. Even in the US, I’ve seen vastly different approaches to dinner. My family, for instance, keeps the food in the kitchen and only individual plates are brought to the table. My in-laws instead bring all the food to the table and pass it around, so that people can continually grab from bowls as the meal progresses. Of course there are many other ways to eat, both in the US and around the world, and learning about the differences in food culture (cooking and eating) was one of my favorite parts of Consider the Fork.

This review is somewhat scattered. That’s because there’s just so much packed into this little book, and I kinda want to geek out about every single thing. I’m so glad I took a chance to buy this audiobook.

Performance: Consider the Fork is narrated by Alison Larkin. This is the only thing I’ve ever listened to narrated by Larkin, but she could easily be a contender for one of my favorite readers. She read the whole thing as if she were telling a story rather than reciting a history, which worked perfectly for the writing style of the book. I’m never good with in-print nonfiction, so I always appreciate a decent audio performance, and this was more than decent. It was awesome.

Posted in 2018, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – Small Changes, Big Results (2)

Posted on January 24, 2018 by Thistle

At the beginning of the year, I discussed a few changes I’d made in December and the positive results of said changes. It’s been three more weeks since then, and I have some updates, and another couple small changes that led to big results (though not a good one, in one instance).

Sugar
I mentioned in my previous post how well I felt – how stable my body felt – after a week without eating much in the way of sugar. I was hoping to build on those results. However, in January I’ve made a further small change that is a typical downfall for me: I began to hyper-focus on sugar grams rather than look at the whole nutritional picture. When I first started the experiment, I was careful to keep my sugar down to a small amount of honey in my morning yogurt and one small candy in the evening. The rest of my sugar grams came from condiments and whatever might show up in recipes. In January, I began to manipulate the numbers. If I didn’t have any sugar grams between that morning yogurt-honey and the evening Dove Promise, then I could have two Promises. If I made breakfast taco filling, I’d put it on a flour tortilla instead of a slice of whole wheat bread because the tortilla had no sugar grams (even though it had vastly inferior carbs). That sort of thing. It’s led to 1) not feeling at all stable or like my blood sugar is under control, 2) disordered eating patterns, and 3) more days of saying sure, I can just eat sugar today, whatever. So it’s time to go back to the drawing board, and figure out how I can approach this thing more sustainably, to work on my insulin resistance without hyper-focusing while also paying more attention to the health of my overall diet.

Pillow
Last summer, I mentioned that I developed plantar fasciitis. In the fall, I went to my Airrosti provider (physical therapists that manipulate soft tissue), who said he didn’t think the issue was plantar fasciitis. He worked on my whole leg and up to my hip and lower back, and gave me a lot of exercises to do to strengthen and loosen ligaments. These helped in the short-term and I began to try running again, but soon even the icing and exercises didn’t help with the foot pain. I gave up any high-impact sports and focused on walking and yoga again. In the past, yoga has worked miracles on my ligament tension, but it wasn’t helping my aching right foot. However, once I was getting on the mat daily – my small change from December – I noticed that no matter how much yoga I did, my lower back on the right hip area was always painfully tight. It never seemed to get any better! And I thought about it, trying to figure out what might be causing this tension. An idea occurred to me.

About nine months ago, I stopped using a pillow between my knees at night to stack my hips (I’m a side-sleeper). The story behind why I stopped is irrelevant. Point is, without my hips stacked, my top leg – often my right leg – would hang off-kilter and pull on that part of my back all night long. My hip/lower back area was always tight because I re-stressed it every night. So I started using a pillow again, and that made an immediate difference to my back. The tension I worked out in yoga stayed worked out. I didn’t know if this would translate all the way to my right foot, so I did some experiments. After indoor jogging and some rough-terrain hikes, none of that foot pain returned. The exercises that my Airrosti provider gave me became a lot easier to do. I’ve yet to try outdoor running – trying to ease into things – but I have a feeling that I’ve solved this problem. Yay!

On Small Changes
I’ve discovered something in the last two months: small specific changes can be very powerful. They aren’t too overwhelming, and I can take some time with each one to try to really determine if they’re doing anything. That’s easier for me than making wholesale change all at once, then not knowing what results come from which change. I’ve begun looking at the small blocks in my life and trying to figure out where they’re coming from. If a simple change like repositioning a yoga mat to face a different direction can make me love daily yoga again, then other little changes surely can help. For me, this is part of this year’s one-word, Cultivation – cultivating a life I want to live, cultivating habits I love and enjoy, cultivating ease and happiness in place of forced adherence. There might be more of these posts in future!

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Sunday Coffee – Tidbits

Posted on January 21, 2018 by Thistle

It’s been a rather crazy week and my brain is a bit scattered, so I thought I’d just babble about what’s gone on.

1) Dolores O’Riordan’s death hit me very hard on Monday. She was one of the formative artists of my adolescence. I wrote a tribute for her on Facebook and Instagram, so I won’t repeat it here, but I will say that she’s one of the only celebrities whose death has hit me on such a personal level. I admit, I cried. And I put on the first album of hers that I owned and danced. Jason changed his mind about his special birthday dinner and instead put on an Irish dinner as a send-off (she was pretty important to him, too).

2) San Antonio had another of those bizarre winter storms. We got down to into the teens for temps, which is so unusual that I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen in all my years living here. There was freezing rain on top of that, encasing the cars in ice and basically shutting down the city. Snow was predicted but it never came to my part of the city. Just black ice, which is no fun. The boys were home on Tuesday because of it, and barely made it to school on Wednesday.

3) Ever since early high school, there are three times of year that seem to hold particular mental health struggles for me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that this is depression and anxiety spilling out from early trauma that’s been stored in my body. Mid-January is one of these times. The date is flexible, but it’s often January 17th that I fall apart. I don’t know which particular trauma caused this particular trigger. I just know that every year since I was 15 or so has blindsided me around this date. No different this year. I did not feel well already on the 17th because I was nervous about all the ice. Then I was home alone, dealing with anxiety, and I fell apart. Hard. I spent the rest of the week trying to deal with the lingering anxiety and fear. It probably doesn’t help that my doctor just changed the dose of my medication. I’ll adjust, no worries.

4) Jason won an Amazon Echo Show at work this week, so we now have an Alexa to hang out with us, haha.

5) My middle son starts driver’s ed tomorrow. !!! My oldest will hopefully start in April, provided he’s cleared for it (he has some mental health issues that have prevented him so far).

6) My youngest son has started doing yoga with us this week!

7) OUR HOUSE IN WISCONSIN SOLD!!! We found out late Friday evening that everything had gone through. Since it’s all being done through a third party (the relocation company), we didn’t know when it would happen, though we’ve been in progress on the whole thing for a while now. I hadn’t wanted to mention it publicly until it actually went through. So many crazy things happened around the sale of this house and I’m so relieved that come February 1st, we’ll only have one house payment due. Maybe now we can start working on getting out of credit card debt and back on level footing after four years of moves! Yay! We celebrated all day yesterday – family Wii bowling, library (where I got to sit with the book club for a bit!), Half Price Books, then a movie at one of those places that serve you dinner during the film. We saw The Post, which was excellent. And I’ve now officially seen more films in theatre this month than I usually do in a year. Heh. Today we need to go back to budgeting hard, but it was really nice to have a day to celebrate.

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