230310 a good day
Mar. 10
Snow is falling. There seems to be little wind and it feels peaceful. The temperature is right on zero so it's warm, especially with the snow. It is Friday, yay. Even though I don't work at a Monday-to-Friday job, I still feel happy when it is Friday, from habit. End of the school week for the grandchildren: they are good at getting out the door in the mornings, most of the time, and come home happy..
What calm I felt this morning. I managed to get out of the grocery store for under $200 dollars. That's twice this month. I put back the Cheezies I almost bought. I love the Humpty Dumpty ones. They are the best. But the empty calories and fat! Yikes. Processed beyond recognition; once they were corn and a bit of cheese. Now they are delicious but poisonous.
There was an interesting article yesterday about colon cancer in younger adults. The author surmises that a lifetime of eating highly processed foods may be destroying bodies. * Sigh. I was as conned and ignorant as anyone, buying chicken fingers and cereals and prepared foods for my family, and probably did them a disservice, feeding them so much not-whole foods.
It is water under the bridge: an interesting idiom when you consider that one stands on a bridge over the water. I guess that is the perspective one has on one's past. Time is the water, the past is what it is, and the river goes on. And you can change. You can be a little better today than you were yesterday. You can love better and be more aware of your actions. "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done." This line from the Common Prayer book kept coming to mind this week. But this morning I feel released from the self-criticism and regret. I wish, of course, that I had done better, but I let it go.
Snow is falling now. I have done the BIG errand, the grocery run, that is. It's a seemingly small chore, but I feel so fragile now: the lights, the aisles of bad food, the inflated cost of every bit of grocery that we are buying, I and my fellow shoppers. I am wholly focused on getting the right foods, and on soon escaping the stress of it. I see the poverty in the faces. I leave three items in the food bank box, which, by the way, could be advertised on every aisle as a reminder, but which really belongs in the lobbies of the big shiny buildings of the wealthy chief executives. It is the bottom 99% who scrape nickels and dimes for donations, who "run for cancer research" who are told to recycle, use less plastic, while the ones getting richer on those backs, go on getting richer. How big a yacht does someone really need?
I will, in spite of that outburst, hold on to this feeling of calm. I will watch the snow, and make some meals, and go for another walk. Keep calm and walk.
Covid is not just another flu. It does weird things to people, it leaves many with long-term ailments and disabilities. I am still wearing a mask in stores and public places. There is no doubt that a mask will be some protection from covid. Otherwise masks would not be used in hospitals, even before covid and certainly, going forward.
Snow is indiscriminate. It falls on everything.
*****
Dinner: cantaloupe, sweet potato scones (savoury), quinoa, salad of red cabbage apple and carrot, tilapia and potatoes poached in almond milk, ginger, lime and pepper. No oil, no dairy. The scones have eggs, white flour. With the fish, I wanted to re-create a Newfoundland dish, cod au gratin, without the dairy, but it bore only a distant resemblance! It was good though.
Mumma Yaga
Most of the Time, by Dylan, is such an excellent song.
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