From Famine To Feast
It's getting busier. . . I like it!
Well, I’ve gone from being bored out of my little brain to being too busy to exercise – for the first time in over a year. Things are picking up! That said, I will do my best to work in a 45 minute walk after dinner. But my normal walking time of 0715 – slept right through it and then had to get to therapy at 10.
The retirement therapy is winding down. I spent most of the time today talking about art class, cooking, my trip to Pasadena next month and contacting a friend from my Army days and starting to make amends for our disagreement. As my therapist said – all things that are happening NOW, I’m not talking about traumas from the past or fear of the future. Let’s hope it continues. I’ll miss talking to him, he’s a nice man!
I sold a painting today. Holy moly! Someone saw my painting on Facebook and asked if I’d sell it. YES!! Umm, I hope that didn’t come out too eager. My father was disappointed that I didn’t ask for MORE, he loved the painting, but I’m not an artist in my head yet, just an amateur. Change that to rank amateur. So I quoted a price, and the buyer said ‘Too low’ and raised it to in between my price and Dad’s. (Selling to a friend is difficult and easy at the same time.) I am going to paint the same subject a second time while I still have the paints out, and see if I can better the first one. My friend gets to pick the version she likes best. As you can see, Nyx the Queen is a bit put out that I’m spending so much time at the easel. When I lounge in boredom, she claims the warm lap spot for the afternoon. That hasn’t happened for the last month or so.
I have had a great time reading a blog by a British expat in Hungary. She and her husband have started the Mediterranean diet and she posts the recipes they try each day with a brief review. (This is in addition to her great travel photos and stories about life in a village in rural Hungary. Check her out here – makinghungaryhome.
She’s inspiring me – or my competitive side is coming out. (Probably my competitive side, but who cares? We are cooking up a storm.) Here’s what I made today – Hawaiian Sauerkraut. Smells divine! I just have to remember to take the top off every day to let some of the fermentation air out. When I whacked my microbiome and brain, I apparently lost a lot of good gut bacteria and overpopulated the bad. I’m all about the fermenting, kefir and kombucha – a spoonful a day will hopefully keep the expensive functional medicine doctor away after my contract ends this year.
And finally, my ten Kindle book samples for the day. I downloaded and read each of them, some in total, some I knew were not for me in the first few pages – and deleted nine of them. Can you guess which one made the cut today? (Oh, and let’s not talk about the six NEW samples I downloaded this morning. AGH! It’s a compulsion. But I’m still a little ahead. I think.)
The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard f Living since the Civil War
Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man
Fractals of God: A Psychologists’ Near-Death Experience and Journey into the Mystical
A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create The American Republic
The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789
Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free
Just 2 Seconds: Using Time and Space to Defeat Assassins and Other Adversaries
Day the Universe Changed
Lonely Planet Munich, Bavaria and the Black Forest
I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.
Hmm. Not a particularly cheery list this time. I think that I was about to fly to Germany for three weeks of vacation so picked some good, albeit not easy reading, books to force myself to read something educational rather than entertaining. I always try this – it rarely works. When I was an active duty Army officer, before the days of Kindle, I took one thick paperback book to the field with me every time. I thought, surely I will be so bored in my tent and I’ll only have this book so I’ll HAVE to read it. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Umm, no. I got about twenty pages in, then decided I’d rather talk to the cooks in the mess hall, or drivers in the motor pool, ANYTHING but that book.
Years later, I still haven’t read the ‘masterpiece’ but I have read his short stories. Tolstoy is much more interesting and readable in small chunks.
Good gosh, #8, Day the Universe Changed – what the HELL was I thinking? I like cozy mysteries and self improvement books. Just reading the preface made my eyes glaze.. I’m sure it’s a great book – I downloaded it because of a recommendation somewhere, probably the WSJ – but take a gander,
“This book examines some of the moments of change, in order to show how the changes of view also generated major institutions or ways of thought which have since survived to become basic elements of modern life.
Each chapter begins at the point where the view is about to shift: in the eleventh century before the extraordinary discoveries by the Spanish Crusaders; in the Florentine economic boom of the fourteenth century before a new way of painting took Columbus to America. . . ”
Ambitious much? Yeah that book was never going to happen. How funny that working me thought I’d plow through it at some point. Retirement me no longer needs to be able to drop in impressive tidbits at dinner parties or meetings. (Good GOSH, I must have been a boring ninny.)
I’m keeping the sample for Bright Line Eating. Based on my recent DNA tests, I think I will be eating like a Sicilian peasant for the foreseeable future, so anything that can help me with getting my brain in front of sugar cravings is all to the good. Plus, it’s pretty entertaining.
Another day, another Kindle dump.