Before and after going to the dog field with Lydia this morning, I did some work in the kitchen, finishing the decorating and cleaning, then putting things back but reducing clutter at the same time. It does look and feel so much better.
Leaving Lydia to look after the house – Trev was still away but came back this afternoon – I headed over to the Buddhist Centre to do some volunteering for a few hours.
The work was outside. To begin with it felt a bit cold, but I had gloves, a hat, coat and boots. It wasn’t long before I took off the hat, coat and gloves, as the physicality of the work – sweeping – warmed me up. A few people – residents at the Centre – passed me as I was working and all made appreciative comments. The young lady who was supervising me made sure that I was happy doing the work and insisted that I had a cup of tea before I left, which I did.
The satnav on the way home directed me on a different route to the one I normally take and it proved to be a calm and quiet drive, through villages lit up by Christmas lights – lovely.
Arriving home, I was glad I’d made the enchiladas the day before as all I had to do was turn the oven on before giving Lydia her tea and then having a bit of a rest. Trev had returned home and it was good to watch a bit of telly. It’s been a fairly full day, and a good one.
Continuing to work on the kitchen, I made good progress with more cleaning and a bit of painting before leaving the last coat of paint to dry and heading out to do some shopping.
Lydia has kept me company all day and she enjoyed an extra lamb rib as well as a raw chicken wing with her tea.
I had some savoury rice, and vegetarian sausages that were in the freezer. Then I made some chilli enchiladas for Trev and me to have for our tea tomorrow night. I bought avocados and limes to make fresh guacamole, and crème fresh as a lighter alternative to sour cream. There’s plenty of chilli left over so we can have that on Saturday night, or it will freeze for later.
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.
The Buddhist teaching at last night’s meeting was led by a nun from the local Centre.
She introduced the idea that the children’s story of Polyanna could be likened to the teachings of Buddha, with reference to Polyanna’s ‘glad game’. I’m not familiar with the story of Polyanna but I was surprised and pleased to hear about the glad game, bearing in mind the name of this blog site – gladabout.life – and the name of my ceramics business – Glad About Ceramics.
I came up with these names because I wanted to be glad, to move away from sad.
I think, finally, that I have. I can’t say I’m deliriously happy, but I don’t need to be. I can just let myself be.
I have no doubt that I will have blips down and bump backwards but I am now feeling a lot lighter in myself.
It was also helpful when the nun suggested, during meditation, that as we breathe in white light we think of peace and as we breathe out black smoke we think of anger.
The dog field that I took Lydia to this morning was covered in clover flowers. We’re expecting a high of 27o here today; not as hot as it will be in a lot of places around the world but a good temperature for me, here. I can cope with hotter but that will do for today.
Later this morning I’ll be heading out to drop off the 28 small pots that I made a few weeks ago, for their first firing. I have a few glazed pots to be fired as well. I’m not in a big making phase just now, preferring to take things at a steady pace and work with what I’ve got. I’ve got a few pots, of various shapes and sizes, that I’m going to plant up as jardinière, ready for the Aldborough & Boroughbridge Show on 27th July. Aldborough & Boroughbridge Agricultural Show
I am, however, going to the Potterman Studio this afternoon – www.thepotterman.co.uk – to do a bit of work on the wheel. I’m going to concentrate on one particular shape, and discard any that I’m not happy with. I’ll then use these pots to further develop a decorating technique that I’ve been working on. It’s a technique that I haven’t seen anywhere else – yet – and one that I think has much potential. It’s something that’s good to work on in the winter, so any pots I make this summer will help to keep me happily occupied later in the year.
Glad About 
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