In any weather, a walk outside I say! It really does so much.
(As long as there’s no slipping on the ice – yikes!)
Keep Smiling!
It Really Does So Much
Tag Archives: Wellness
The Salad Hour
Greetings, Greetings!
It’s getting to feel like summer around here, and I’m so glad for it. Spring always seems to draw on for too long. Too many months of damp and chill when all one wants is sun and warmth!
I’ve been just about the busiest, and it’s only going to get more so for me! The Bristol Renaissance Faire opens in 5 weeks, along with my little book shop – The Quill and Brush. What a summer waits ahead! I hope to see you there!
I have a custom. It’s the salad hour.
Every evening I make a salad for supper. Usually accompanied by a little something extra (crackers, or a bite of this or that). I started this habit a while ago now. I guess it’s been some years, begun out of an awareness of what my body needed versus what I was accustomed to consuming.
I’m what one might call a creature of habit, so I don’t get bored with this. As long as there’s a bite of something additional with it (cheese, hard-boiled eggs, a piece of salmon, a piece of toast).
In any case, the right eating choice for my health has now turned into what feels like a habit of self-love and self-care. A time of day to relax, put something good into my body. To say nothing of the fact that making a salad takes minutes, with very few dishes messed. I love that.
Do you have a custom like this? Something good for your body or spirit that is just for you? If you don’t, I encourage it.
Love yourself. Love one another. Stay Inspired.
A Teaspoon A Day, Sort of Way…
Hello Dear Friends! Welcome and cheerful greetings!
So, I have to say, however Grinch-like this may sound, I am glad that Christmas has passed.
Why?
Well, of course I love Christmas like anyone else. And I especially love the true messages of Christmas. But it’s sort of like this…
Once upon a time, when I was in my young years, around the early-teens, someone in my extended family got married. Now, I’d always lived a quiet, simple life. And I was an only child. And yes, I had a few friends, and a sprinkle of family. And yes, occasionally exciting things happened. But generally speaking, life was just quiet and simple.
Well, this wedding was something new and interesting. I don’t recall there being much of weddings before that point, and to admit, even to this day, I haven’t been involved in or attended, all that many. And, I wasn’t involved in this one either. More, just a young lady watching the excitement of others from a distance, and thinking it was all quite different. Again, my family is small. And my life was always quiet.
Funny, just now, I’m not even certain I attended this wedding! I have some photos, but I didn’t take them. I don’t think. Was I at this service? I must have been. For why did it all make such an impact on me, if not?
How strange, our memories.
But here is what ultimately happened. Right after this wedding day, my spirit plummeted like a swallow falling down through the sky to smash into the earth. It was immediate. I don’t even know that I ever told anyone how I felt? I didn’t even have any crushing emotional attachment to any of the events surrounding the occasion, except as a happy observer of some special-goings-on.
I eventually recovered. But yikes. I was…shall we say…crestfallen and sullen. And what I learned about myself is…I don’t like a shaking up. I don’t like too much excitement. Soaring too high, and crashing too hard. I don’t like surprises either…unless they are very quiet and gentle surprises…and even then, I don’t prefer them.
HA! I’m so weird.
I have since pinpointed other scenarios from before, and many after, that time. After a largely anticipated happening. Full of sparkle and magic. Christmas fits the mold. Or rather, the whole bundle that is the holiday season. The swallow of my soul soaring too high. And even still…this being the quietest season of all times. It’s just the holidays. They can make one overly sentimental, or analyze too closely. Or expect too much. Or become sullen when the glitter is gone.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I live cheerfully and with delight in my life! But more in the a teaspoon a day, sort of way. I think each day should have simple pleasures, gratefulness, amusement and happiness in it. Just nothing to stir my pot too mightily.
Of course, if you’re the type that embraces a good shaking up, and as much as you can handle, or are someone somewhere in-between…that’s awesome. LOVE YOUR LIFE!!!!! And the opportunity to have that again, is just around the corner, I’m certain.
But all I’m saying is…I think the best magic and inspiration really is, just in the every day. When your eyes are open, you see it. And it’s stinking beautiful. That’s my favorite. And it’s enough for me.
Stay Inspired.
Once I ate…
Once I ate mostly for pleasure.
Now I eat, mostly for health.
And it’s funny how…
I’m happier now.
In a way I cannot measure.
Stay Inspired!
Green Love…
Though unlikely to ever aspire to a green thumb, I am starting to appreciate growing, and caring for indoor plants.
My attempts at a respectable kitchen herb garden lately failed. However, I was really just taking joy in the company of sprouting emerald leaves. Ultimately my intention wasn’t to eat my efforts, especially after I understood what it takes to make a pot flourish.
Let’s just say, indoor edibles need all the best in soil and environment, along with a plant-minded intelligence from their keeper. I only offered a little water, light, and love…
I’ve found that it’s soothing to sit with a few pots of green at my kitchen table as I eat a meal, and considered that it would be nice to sprinkle a few more around my nest.
I love the idea of house plants improving my air quality, if even by a small margin. They also, to an extent, feel like companions, that I benefit from for just a little attentiveness in return.
I looked up the health blessings of owning indoor plants. I can’t say that I was surprised to read about them helping to abate anxiety, or how they improve the air we breath. But I was very interested to learn that they can help one to focus and be more creative. To work better. And to even get well sooner!
With so many boons for collecting window-side flora, I’m going to keep my eye out for some additions. I also think a small desk plant seems a particularly productive idea!
Stay Inspired!
In A Gentle Breeze…
Good Day, Good Friends…my every well wish to you today!
Just now, I am enjoying a gentle breeze. After many days of very warm weather, it is welcome. My unit has been called ‘the tree house’, owing to the level I’m affixed amidst the trees. At certain hours, the sunlight beautifully goldens the walls. And on a temperate day, the wind carries through every room, the birds sweetly larking just outside. This is just one of those particular moments, that I especially appreciate my nest. We must all have a place to call our own…
I took photos before walking down to an appointment with a new stylist yesterday. I’ll post the cut soon. My hair is short again, but not very. Technically to my collar bones. However, my locks have a mind for waves and curls when the weight is cut out, so it appears even shorter.
Let us just say, I am…as happy as a ridiculously happy clam. Though long hair can be pretty, and an accomplishment considering the time it takes to grow to that length…I was at my wit’s end with the tangles and heaviness. Most appreciating the stylist’s scissors! Somehow, I’d managed the patience not to cut half of it off myself in advance…
This was becoming a genuine consideration.
As I posted last time, I had been ill. Unfortunately after writing, things worsened, ending in a visit to immediate care and antibiotics. I feel I’m still recovering. It is, and I’ve been here before, a reminder of how fragile we are. Obviously, the pandemic has us all remembering this. Yet often, it isn’t until our own health is tested, that our natural vulnerabilities manifest.
How thankful I am for modern medicine, and for my doctors, and for the insurance I am even lucky enough to have. Insurance, and enough money to pay for a doctor and medicine, is certainly never assured. Especially these days.
I revisited the reality that, even a relatively common infection, seemingly innocuous, something your immune system will overcome, can turn down a dark road. My mind wandered more than once to…had I lived in another earlier century without antibiotics.
I don’t like to think about that.
In everything these days, I am reflective. And in everything now, I see God. He who made me. Me, so temporal and fragile. Me, so human.
I wish more now, for others to be happy and laughing. And I feel more now, compassion when others are hurting. I was not always this way. Or as much, this way.
Sometimes you have to first be humbled…by life. By your mistakes, your weaknesses, your hardships, and even your deepest joys…
I feel God every time I am in nature…
In every little buzzing life and precious petal.
And all I have been thinking, and feeling, and believing, is that God is all there is. Is all there ever was. All there will ever be. And I am content.
I believe that I, we, are in His hands. And that when we suffer, or are very happy, it is all so that we can feel the life we were given, and live more in awe and reverence of it, and with more grace toward ourselves and others.
I feel this, even in a gentle breeze…
Stay Inspired.
Beware The Ninja Pepper…
Hello folks! Today, I invite you to enjoy a good chuckle on my expense. After all, we all need to laugh more, it’s good for the health!
Last night, I was perusing the produce section of my local grocer. Often there are appealing ‘ready-made’ options along with the vegetables. In past weeks, I’ve tried two kinds of stuffed portabella mushrooms from this section, filled with garlic, spinach, cheese and such. They made some rather delicious vegetarian dinners for me!
I’d once noted some stuffed green peppers and thought I’d like to give them a go. The next time I saw them in the produce section, I was going to pick them up. A little spread of cream cheese over crisp green pepper, some cheddar sprinkled over top. They looked bright and fresh, and some melty cheese would make them even more delicious…
Last night, I saw the peppers and snatched them up. When I got home, I heated half of the peppers up for supper, excited to try something a little different. Right when I was the hungriest for dinner and the peppers were hot, I portioned out a plate and cut a very big piece of pepper. I then forked it up, and put it into my mouth…
Now, in hindsight, I question why I didn’t realize that those peppers were not regular green peppers? They plainly looked like homemade jalapeno poppers. The peppers were long and not round. But when I opened the package, they sure smelled like fresh-cut green peppers! Was I just willing them to be what I wanted them to be?
[Photo of the offending peppers uncooked]
So I take that first good crunch right into the mouthful and immediately understand that there has been an error. I glance down at my dinner plate, full of jalapenos, while this first bite makes me want to pass out on the kitchen floor. Call me a baby if you want, but I have no tolerance for a mouthful of jalapeno. I’m now in Hades and my nose and eyes are starting to run. But then something even crazier happens…
No lie, I went deaf. I was still standing there trying to swallow the first bite, and all of the sudden my hearing goes from normal, to as though wads of thick cotton were in my ears. I’m underwater, and all the background noise is muffled out. I was of course too distressed over the fire in my mouth to be much concerned with my hearing, but the sensation of deafness was memorable…
“My ears feel funny! Do they look normal to you?”
It took about 20 seconds for my hearing to return, just as I was frantically dumping the steaming peppers into the trash and running for kleenex. Dinner was foiled! Ninja peppers! Sneak attack! You tricked me!
“Guys? Guys! I can’t hear anything! Where’d everybody go?”
Once fully recovered and munching on an alternative meal choice, I knew I had to look this up. Temporary deafness from eating a hot pepper? I certainly couldn’t be the only one.
Turns out, I’m not. “Could Spicy Foods Cause Temporary Deafness?” By Hearing Wellness was an enlightening article. Granted, sounds like digesting some of the world’s hottest peppers would more likely cause such a thing. But just a shout out to otolaryngologists…I didn’t eat a Ghost, Viper, Reaper or Komodo Dragon pepper, just a wimpy Jalapeno, and it happened to me…
“Get it out! Just get the hot pepper OUT!”
*An otolaryngologist is an ear, nose and throat doctor. I learned how to pronounce that word here.
To summarize the article, there are two theories. Either nerves are temporarily affected, or mucus buildup (which rushes in to save you from the burn) is the cause. If I were to take a good guess, it felt to me like some nerves went berserk!
*Berserk: Violently or destructively frenzied; wild; crazed; deranged. (Dictionary.com)
“I’d rather eat this table than another jalapeno!”
Yikes! But you know, let’s just say this was karma. For, once upon a time when I was a kid (but old enough to know better), I told a much younger cousin to take a big bite of a pepper from our grandma’s garden. I told her it was not the hot kind, even though I knew that it was. Yes, even nice girls play not so nice (albeit harmless) jokes for a giggle! When the poor mite bit into the pepper and began to cry, grandma scolded me knowingly, but I claimed innocence. Naughty indeed! Well, I received my comeuppance…
Prepackaged Lettuce? Let us not!
I haven’t eaten a single bite for nearly 42 hours. Right now, I’m gingerly sipping on veggie broth, hoping to work my way up to food. On Sunday evening, I started feeling not quite right and didn’t really want to eat my dinner. When I woke up Monday morning, I felt like my feet were heavy and I was very fatigued. By 10:00 a.m., I knew something was working on taking me down…
The flu was my first thought, for it is highly contagious and is working its way around these parts like wildfire. For all my hand-washing precautions, the flu can get you airborne style. No one is safe. I spent last night in agony. I went to Hades and back in my feverish dreams, praying for deliverance. I was quite sick. This morning, I knew that it wasn’t the flu. Food poisoning had come to pay me a visit…
And though I don’t have a lab working on it right now, I can pretty much say with certainty where I got it from. Prepackaged lettuce. As a vegetarian, I eat A LOT of lettuce. I throw the greens over everything…sandwiches, soups, as a garnish. The prepackaged, prewashed stuff is obviously convenient…
However, I have lately felt very dissatisfied with my prepackaged salad purchases. I buy the plastic tubs, and even though there is always plenty of time before they expire (as per the date on the packaging), when I open them, I frequently find unsavory lettuce. Slimy lettuce…eww. Black, rotten bits…gross. Some healthy, while much is wilted and distressed…not for me!
Just this Saturday, I’d made a sandwich and had to pick the best pieces from a package that ought to have been entirely fresh but wasn’t looking all that great. I even thought, I hope I don’t get sick. Handsome came home with a fresh package from the grocery, and I promptly told him how annoyed I was getting with the packaged kind (as I threw away the bad lettuce from the fridge). We were wasting money on convenience…
It only takes a few minutes of online research to learn of the risks of prepackaged lettuce. Recalls are rampant, and pre-washed on the label holds no certain safety value. As I lay fitful and feverish all night, unable to even sip water without nausea and sharp pains, I thought to myself, I’m pretty strong and healthy, but what if an elderly person or child got this? They would be at serious risk…
I won’t be purchasing ready-made salad mixes anymore. Apart from the bacterial risks, I was losing money anyway with as quickly as they were going bad. Henceforth, this lettuce lover will be buying a fresh bunch/head every few days, and taking the extra time to prepare it myself. But as for just this moment, another cup of warm broth and a long nap is calling my name. Be safe, all you gobblers of greens!
Snackin’ Like A Hobbit
Ok. I’m not going to lie. I’m an eater, a gal who loves food. You won’t find me skipping a meal unless I’ve got the stomach flu…and I’ve got a pretty good immune system. I’m like one of the hobbits from The Lord of The Rings (if you don’t know this schedule by heart you’re clearly not a hobbit, I’m sorry for you).
Today, I had to skip a special part of my day because I was genuinely so busy, that I couldn’t even sneak an M & M in my mouth. I missed snack time and the day just wasn’t the same. See, I have a thing for making what I call ‘little plates’ in the afternoon.
What’s that? You think this plate looks like a big plate? Not for this hobbit! But even if you don’t have my appetite, remember what good that little break can do for you and take it! A walk around the block with your orange slivers and a soak of the sun, a nibble of chocolate on your warming coffee run, a slice of cheese on a baguette with a daydream of Paris, some salty olives and thoughts of Italy, or one of my ‘little plates’…everyone needs a break and a treat, hobbit or not. Take a moment for you!
Inspired By Venice 