Category: priorities

Writing into Life, more

I rarely remember dreams but woke this morning from a deeper sleep than I’ve had for a long time, remembering one.

The sense of relief that comes from sleep is immense. The strategy of reducing my caffeine intake, limiting myself to just two or three cups of tea a day – in the morning – and no coffee, is starting to pay off.

It is by no means the only part of my strategy, as limiting or eliminating caffeine altogether isn’t necessarily going to do the trick without other factors kicking in, in my experience anyway.

For me, I know it is a combination of physical and creative and other activities.

It also depends on the type and context of activities.

The heavy lifting and shifting I’ve done recently, clearing stuff out of house and garage and taking them to the tip, are good for the musculoskeletal system, but my nearly 70-year-old back was giving me a few warning signs.  A few stretches at home helped, but not as much as the yoga class I went to yesterday.  There has been no Qigong this week as we do classes in groups of three, then have a break, then back for another group of three.  This works very well and yesterday meant that I had time to do a charity shop drop-off, again with more lifting and carrying – a big bag and a box – and then go shopping for our tea, a stir fry that I cooked using a combination of a bag of pre-made sauce, some hoisin sauce from a bottle, and some dark soy sauce.  I usually make a stir-fry sauce from scratch, using a combination of lemon or lime juice, ginger, garlic if we have any, and again soy sauce; also a bit of brown sugar, salt and pepper.  However, due to my having had a cold, I thought I’d make it a bit easier for myself.  I also took the time to buy a large pot of matt white emulsion, some concentrated sugar soap and a precision paint brush for edges. This will enable me to start doing the painting work I have lined up for later in the week.

So, for now, I’m keeping my strength up and the aches and pains at bay, glad to be able to enjoy a walk with Lydia on this bright and sunny, if somewhat breezy, morning. I always feel invigorated after I come back from our walks, and I now have a good little routine that involves putting her poopie bags in the outside bin, washing my hands, filling and setting off her breakfast ball for her to nudge around the lounge, putting a chicken wing or drumstick (sometimes a lamb rib) in a cool bag for later, so that it defrosts and hopefully gets to room temperature but doesn’t go off, and making sure that there’s a further supply of her raw food starting to defrost in the fridge.

Today I didn’t feel like sitting down for breakfast so I put some mashed banana on toast that I’d spread with olive spread and did some tidying up in the kitchen while I was eating it, unloading and loading up the dishwasher and a few other things.  A dishwasher is a relatively recent acquisition for us and it makes such a difference.  

Later today I’ll visit M in her care home.  We’ll go for coffee and a cake but I’ll make sure I get decaff.  It’s the way forward for me, for the time being at least.

Trev has done some more clearing out as well, which puts us in a good position for me to start painting the walls by the stairs and in the landing area.   I painted through all the rest of the house when we moved in, a section at a time as I wasn’t feeling well and I could only do a section at a time.  I never did get round to doing the walls up the stairs and on the landing though and since then there’ve been a lot of things going on.  I now, finally, have time, energy and inclination to do that job.  It shouldn’t take long but then there’s no need to try and do it in a rush. A bit at a time and it will get done.