Ang's Journal

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Sleep: Last night, I took a long, hot shower before bed & applied a ton of Biofreeze to my shoulders & triceps. SH says I went to sleep at 10:20 PM, Facebook Messenger says 10:26 PM, all agree I woke up at 6:00 AM. Call it 7½ hours of sleep. Deep sleep. I woke up feeling rested & my arms weren’t hurting.

Program: Kneeling prayer this morning, meditation this afternoon. I’ve now meditated three days in a row, which (lately) is a big deal. My longest streak ever was 17 days in a row. I should try to beat that. I called my sponsor this evening – got voice mail. Sigh.

Work: Another decent day. I got to the office early & then my BioWatch client called me & we scheduled a meeting at EPA HQ for 1 PM. Held the meeting then worked from home the rest of the day.

Food: I had early coffee w/cream, then ate standard breakfast (casserole, keto biscuit) around 10:30 AM. Celery & almond butter snack around 5 PM. Wasn’t hungry for dinner, but finally ate a freezer meal (pork tenderloin/kale/squash) just before 9 PM. I’ve been thirsty all day.

Exercise: I followed yesterday’s plan this morning: I did the pre-hab exercises & Day 1 of Core Play. I’m only doing about half of it – any exercise that calls for 10 repetitions, I’m generally doing 5. I’m not going to finish this program in 4 weeks – it will be more like 8 weeks. That’s fine. The wrist-stretching exercises both feel good & thoroughly demonstrate how messed up my left wrist is. Moves like plank & lunge show how weak my left triceps is. I have an appointment with Dr. Spallone for tomorrow to see if an adjustment helps.

Mood: I’ve been in a good mood today. Is it the fish? The sleep? The exercise? Getting back on lithium orotate? All of the above? I did have a bit of a Sad over the fact that I decorated my apartment for Christmas, alone. But alas. The life of a single person.

Grats: 1. Six days in a row I’ve worked out. I’ve identified a problem (left arm weakness) but I’m working on a solution (chiropractor appointment tomorrow). 2. Got through the EPA client meeting today & now have some firm deadlines. 3. A* thinks I'm beautiful.

Program: I prayed this morning. I went to the Attitude Adjustment meeting this morning. I also talked to D* after the meeting – I think I’m going to back up in my step work & stop trying to force my amends. We’re going to meet after Thanksgiving. I set an alarm to meditate this afternoon, but I was chatting with A* when it went off & ignored it. I renewed my habit of calling D* in the evening - & got her voice mail, which is the irritant that made me stop doing it.

Mood: My mood has been all right today. I’m relieved that the dogs are with Shay & Laurel for a few days. I’m pleased that I cleaned my apartment & got a ton of laundry done.

Exercise: I didn’t exercise today.

Sleep: Last night’s sleep was poor. I ate a lot of processed carbs yesterday & paid for it with searing indigestion.

Food: Mixed. I ate my standard breakfast (coffee w/cream, Southern keto casserole, cheesy biscuit), plus a Siggi’s cherry yogurt. Then I ate leftover pizza for lunch & skipped dinner. I’m making Texas red chili in the InstaPot right now, to enter in the office chili cook-off tomorrow.

Grats: 1. I finally migrated my journal from LiveJournal to Dreamwidth. I’ve wanted to do that for years. I have a lot of work ahead of me, deleting all the LJ entries & re-coding all the imported entries with tags. But I will feel better not having my data sitting on SixApart’s servers. 2. My chili came out very well. If people like Texas red as a style, I could win tomorrow.

Sleep: pretty good. I forgot to drag Shadeaux's Cozy Cave into the bedroom before going to sleep, & once I realized, I was too stubborn/lazy to get up & move it. She was very sad to not be sleeping in the den/bedroom with the rest of her pack, & kept coming in to check on us. Around 5 AM, I relented & let her into the bed. She curled up against me, sighed deeply, & we all slept like spoons until about 7 AM.

Breakfast: prosciutto muffin, slice of sweet potato quiche, half an avocado, blackberries, half a grapefruit, black Constant Comment tea.

I pulled a batch of barnyard bone broth out of the slow cooker - it's pretty good. I used the garlic spice mix from Wildtree.

Lunch: monkey salad. Yeah, not a balanced meal.

Dinner: I found this recipe for Sweet Potato Waffle BLTs a while ago & thought it looked like sex on a plate. So I made it last night - & was greatly disappointed. Not only was it an immense pain in the ass to make, but the waffles were greasy, had no body (duh, no gluten), & didn't even really taste like sweet potato. The batter was so greasy & runny, I ended up making pancakes instead of waffles. So the expectations I had from the food blog photos were definitely not met:


Food blog fantasy....


....my kitchen reality.

While I was disappointed in how my sandwiches turned out, they weren't awful. They were an acceptable dinner in any case. But it took two runs of the dishwasher & an hour of cleaning to re-set the kitchen, so I don't imagine I'll be making Waffle BLATs again any time soon.

Sleep: not so good - because I didn't follow my pre-bedtime routine. Why is Daylight Savings Time so much more disruptive to me than, say, one hour of jet lag? I think it's because it changes familiar circadian signals without changing a location. I *know* what the light coming through the windows in my kitchen is supposed to look like at 7 AM. When it doesn't look like that until 8 AM, I am disoriented.

Breakfast: prosciutto muffin, slice of sweet potato quiche, half an avocado, banana, black Scottish breakfast tea.

Snack: two apple pie Larabars. Uh-oh, the sugar dragon is roaring today.

Lunch: spaghetti squash & Mama's spaghetti sauce.

Snack: two coconut cream Larabars. RROOOAAARRR!

Dinner: spaghetti squash & Mama's spaghetti sauce.

funkyplaid's beautiful photos inspired me to finally post a few of my own Edinburgh snapshots, which were taken about two months ago.

The first photo is taken from the window of the kitchen on my floor. That's right, if my room was on the other side of the hall, this is the view I would have. Instead, I look into the dumpy courtyard behind Farm Foods & a wall covered with pigeon crap. Alas. I took this photo at about 4:00 AM one morning whilst struggling with insomnia. Sometimes being up early is ... worth it. The only feature I dislike in this photo is the antenna that mars the silhouette of the mountain on the left. But I think the colours of the sky more than compensate for the small technological intrusion.

The photo on the left, below, was taken from along the Royal Mile. The building pictured used to be a church, but it is now called the Hub, & is one of the central organising points for Edinburgh's many summer festivals. Church recycling is quite common here; offhand, I can think of former churches that now serve as a hostel, pub, movie theatre, & an automotive garage. When I'm walking from home to the Institute of Geography, I see three steeples along the Royal Mile. In order, they belong to buildings that are now: a tourist information centre (the Tron), a cathedral/tourist destination (High Kirk of St. Giles), and the Hub.

Edinburgh is really an amazing city - almost everything I could want in a place to live is located within walking distance of my residence. There's stunning history, fine shopping, a plethora of pubs, quality academic institutions (not just the University but the National Library & numerous museums), & accessible natural areas just outside the door. There's so much variety packed tightly into the city centre - very few American cities can compare. And no American city can even come close to matching the architectural diversity! But there's diversity in more than just the buildings. The THINGS that go on here! I haven't even done one-tenth of the things I want to do - I haven't hiked in the Pentlands, I haven't gone to a Gaelic church service, I haven't been to the Royal Observatory, or gone to a football match, or toured a distillery, or been to ANY live music ... I better stop this train of thought before I convince myself to play hooky tomorrow ...

The final photo combines the first two, showing the Hub's steeple in the foreground & Arthur's Seat behind. You can also see the line of the Salisbury Crags running in front of Arthur's Seat. I took this from the Half Moon Battery in Edinburgh Castle on the finest, clearest day imaginable.

Last night featured the return of the worst recurring nightmare I've ever had. I first had this dream when I was a senior in high school, & it has tormented me on & off since then. But I hadn't had it in YEARS.

Here's the plot: I'm sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair that's in the center of an immense room (so large I cannot see the walls or the ceiling, but somehow I still know I'm indoors). I hear footsteps approaching me from behind. Eventually, a man appears on my right, about 15 feet away from me. He is medium height, with short black hair, green eyes, & a completely neutral expression on his face. He is dressed in a conservative black outfit, & is carrying a silver handgun in his left hand, which he keeps pointed at the floor. He paces around me in a semicircle, watching me the whole time but saying nothing. When he comes all the way round to my left side, he approaches me, puts the gun to my temple, & says, "Are you ready?"

Now the horrifying part of this dream is that I always answer, "Yes" & then he shoots me in the head. I've had this dream many times, so I always know what's coming. The minute I start hearing his footsteps, I'm screaming in my head, "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" But my suicidal dream-self answers in the affirmative anyway.

I hate this dream.