Beating to My Own Rhythm

I saw a quote on Instagram a few days ago about beating to your own rhythm. I didn’t save it, and I can’t remember who posted it so I can look for it again. I can’t remember the rest of the quote, either, but it sparked something in me because when I saw it, I immediately thought, “Yeah, that is me; I am definitely living and beating to my own, sometimes strange, rhythm these days.”

The first few weeks of staying home at the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic were challenging for me in general, but they were extra challenging in the “doing shit” category. I spent several weeks doing nothing that I did not absolutely have to do, even though I had so many things I could have been doing. Not only was my anxiety through the roof, I couldn’t find any motivation. I started to feel like a lazy slug, dragging and moping around day after day doing nothing productive. I read so many posts on FB and Instagram written by people talking about all they were accomplishing in their stay at home time, and I felt even worse. I wondered what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I take advantage of this forced time at home and tackle all the projects that needed tackling in my house and life? It was a low time already and comparing myself to what others were doing made me feel lousy.

After a few weeks of feeling so low and anxious and trying unsuccessfully to find my groove, I began trying to give myself the grace I always try to give to others. I realized that my mental health had to be a priority if I was going to make it through this season without losing my mind, and comparing myself to others and what I thought I should be doing was not good for me. I eventually decided to give myself permission to simply “go with the flow.” No matter if the flow was a raging river or a lazy, meandering creek. Or a stagnant pond.

It has not been easy to lower my expectations of myself. I still want to measure myself against those productive people on social media. Other days, I find true inspiration in what others are doing and writing about.

I still have days here and there when anxiety gets the better of me, days when I mope and drag around. But if I have a day that I feel inspired to do something, anything, I do it. If I have a day when I feel like sitting on the couch all day watching Netflix, I do that, too, and I try to not feel guilty about it.

Some days, I go for a brisk one hour walk around my neighborhood or a 4 mile walk around Creve Coeur Lake or ride my bike. I feel so fantastic on those days, like I am ready to take on the world. Other days, I can barely make the effort to walk down to the basement and do laundry.

Some days, I get up and take a shower right away and even put on makeup. Other days, I stay in the same leggings and hoodie for two days and feel accomplished if I simply wash my face, comb my hair and brush my teeth.

Some days, I chop vegetables and eat lovely, healthy, gorgeous salads with homemade dressing. Other days, I survive on Doritos, grilled cheese sandwiches and peanut M & Ms.

I have (mostly) stopped beating myself up for the “other days.” Thankfully, those other days have become less the norm than they were in the beginning, and I am embracing the beating rhythm my life is in this season.

I am doing the best I can, and I wish I could have had that realization 10 weeks ago. (Wow, 10 weeks???)

The weather the past few weeks has been less than stellar, but my weekends have been productive. I love spring when I can get outdoors. The past three weekends have been full of trimming, planting, mulching, pruning, raking, sweeping, sweating, and last but not least, aching. 😊 Now, my favorite day of the year is here. The day it is finished. 

 

(I sure do wish I could wave a magic wand over that tower of herbs ^^ on my deck and make them GROW faster. I can't wait to go out there with my scissors and snip pieces off to use when I cook.) 

 

I feel a real sense of accomplishment. My front porch looks inviting, and I made it through another spring of trimming bushes with an electric hedge trimmer and did not end up with an ER visit and stitches. 

Who knows what my rhythm will look like as life slowly returns to normal and I go back to the office next week, but I will continue giving myself permission to beat at my own rhythm. 

Right now, that means relaxing and rocking with a drink and a book. 

COVID19 Cannot Stop Me

This stupid virus that has taken over the lives of everyone around the world has stopped me from doing a lot of things. But there are things it has not stopped me from. Though I do need to be stopped, from all of these things:

Baking bread

I have never baked so much bread before. My motto has become, “So many bread recipes, so little time.” At least once a week, I make some kind of bread. Rustic Rosemary bread. Crispy, buttery focaccia. Chewy and salty soft pretzels dipped in cheesy queso. Flaky biscuits. But look at these pretzels. 

When I am not baking bread, I am dreaming about what I am going to make next.  It must stop. No, really, it must. I’ve eaten more bread in the past few weeks than I have eaten in 3 years since I started eating semi-low carb. (Why can’t bread be low carb???) Pinning bread recipes on Pinterest has become my favorite pandemic pastime.  

I made my own sourdough starter. I decided to do this a few weeks ago when yeast was nowhere to be found. My first batch failed. My second batch failed when I accidentally sort of cooked it in the microwave. My third batch is awesome. So awesome that I named it. Apparently, it is a thing to name your sourdough starter. It requires so much feeding and attention in the beginning that it is starting to feel like I got a new pet, so why not name it? I named mine Margie, after my grandma, because for now, it is happily bubbling and growing in her pretty pink Depression glass jar. 

I am pretty sure I check on it to see how it is doing more times a day than I checked on my kids when they were babies.

I have officially lost it, right? I am naming sourdough starter and calling it happy. 

Making unhealthy things that are not bread

I’ve made homemade ice cream. Twice. I’ve baked cookies and made too many grilled cheese sandwiches to count. Thank goodness butter has not been in short supply yet. This is why I have taken up running and walking and biking.

Shopping for things I do NOT need

I cannot stop shopping for stupid stuff. Make it stop. Somedays I wish Amazon would go out of business. I do not need 3 or 4 more cookbooks. I really don’t. I have a pretty extensive collection already, plus, hello, Pinterest. Who really needs cookbooks anymore? Apparently, I do. 

This is another reason why I have taken up biking and walking and running. 

For 8 weeks, or maybe more, I lost track, there was not a package of toilet paper to be found in any store or online. Who in the world would have ever thought OFFICE MAX would sell out of toilet paper?? Who would have thought I would have looked for toilet paper at Office Max? I had plenty so I shouldn’t have been concerned. But oh, those empty shelves made me feel very concerned. Then, my supply started to dwindle a bit, and even though I still had plenty, I started looking for it. We want what we can’t have, right? 

Weeks and weeks later, I saw one lonely jumbo package of Northern on the shelf, and I grabbed it. My daughter laughed at me and said, “Mom, you do not need that!” I bought it anyway. Now, every time I go to a store, I look at the toilet paper aisle and buy a pack if there are any (only one though, because thank goodness for me, there is a limit of one). I don’t need it. But I buy it anyway. I am starting to feel like a doomsday prepper, only instead of hoarding food, I am hoarding toilet paper. (Nope, not showing a photo of that. I gotta draw the crazy line somewhere!)

One day in the future, my grandchildren, if I have them, will ask their parents, “Why does Grandma always have so much toilet paper?” In hushed voices, my children will tell them, “It’s okay, honey, she's really not crazy. She lived through the pandemic of 2020 when everyone was afraid they would run out of toilet paper.”

Speaking of hoarding, I also keep buying flour whenever I see it. It is scarce in the stores. But hello, my sourdough starter needs to be "fed" a good amount of fresh flour every day. Some people keep their starter going for years. Decades. I did not know this until recently. Now that I DO know this, I do not want to run out of flour. I don’t want Margie to fizzle out simply because the store shelves where flour belongs are empty. 

I’m pretty sure Margie will not fizzle out anytime soon. And if she does, well, I’ve got plenty of yeast now, because I am sort of hoarding that, too, now that it is sometimes on the shelf.

And I guess I need to find some more things to bake so that flour doesn’t go to waste once my starter is going and starts to live in the refrigerator where it only will need to be fed once a week.

And hopefully, one day, vegetables will be scarce so I will at least have something healthy to hoard.

What I Am Missing. And What I Am Not.

8 weeks into this stay at home gig, I realized something this week that I was not expecting.

There is not much that I am really and truly missing.

It is a strange feeling. A few weeks ago, I missed going to work. I missed it so much. I missed my coworkers. I missed the camaraderie and the silly lunch conversations. I decided that I really did not enjoy working from home as much as I always thought I would, and I had a difficult time staying motivated to work.

This is going to sound awful but at the end of my 8^th week of working from home, I have begun to like it. I do still miss seeing my coworkers because I enjoy their company. But I have a sneaky feeling that when we are told to go back to the office, I am not going to want to. I have been doing my job just fine from home, and I see no reason to go back to the office. There is nothing that I have to do that cannot be done from home.

I was supposed to be in Chicago for a PLIDA meeting this week. Several of us were meeting at the hotel where the conference is going to be, but since the conference was postponed from this September until May 2021, and since Chicago is kind of a mess right now, we postponed our site visit until October. I was going to take the train, which I was looking forward to as a fun adventure. But, while I miss the people I would have been getting together with, I realized yesterday that I am not really missing the actual trip. I know I would have enjoyed sharing some wine and good food and good conversations with people who started out as professional colleagues and have now grown into friends. But, from now until September would have been a whirlwind of conference planning craziness, and I must admit that I am glad for the reprieve.

I have realized, as I have no doubt many people have, that it is not the “doing things” that I miss so much. I tend to be a homebody anyway, so staying home has not been a whole lot different than my normal life, other than I am not going to work. What I miss the most are people.

I had a few other planned trips for the upcoming summer, but what I will miss most about them is the people I was supposed to be spending them with. Colleagues in Phoenix at a conference in June. Cousins and my son in Colorado.

Last Friday was supposed to be our Angel Ball. And goodness, on that day, I missed it immensely. I have been a part of Angel Ball since I first became a Share volunteer and joined the very first AB committee in the spring of 2002. It seemed very strange to not be frantically getting ready for it last week. But again, I mostly missed the people, some who I only see each year at Angel Ball. That is my favorite thing about that event.

I miss those lunch conversations that help take our minds away from the heavy work we do. 

I miss sharing stories and gossip over glasses of wine with the few friends I have. 

I miss the lovely ladies in my book club.

I miss striking up conversations with strangers in line at the grocery store or at the park. 

I miss people watching. That is a weird one, I know. But I love sitting in bars and restaurants and parks and airports (especially airports) and just watching people. 

I think of myself as an extroverted introvert—while I enjoy alone time and am not really fond of large gatherings, I do relish talking to and relaxing with people I love and care about. I love hanging out on porches and decks and around fireplaces and kitchen islands, snacking and laughing while soft music plays in the background.  

There is one thing I do really miss doing—eating in restaurants. I do not eat out a lot, just a time or two a month, but it is something I love to do. And the restaurants I miss the most are Mexican restaurants. My whole family loves Mexican food, and while I love to cook, Mexican cuisine is not something I typically make beyond tacos or quesadillas. If we are in the mood for it, we go out. We all have several different restaurants we love for different reasons. One for its closeness to our house; we can walk there if we want to. One has fantastic street tacos and cheap margaritas. Another I love for the Mexican Street Corn. My favorite of all has it ALL…all the free chips and salsa you can stuff yourself with, delicious food, yummy and huge margaritas with the bonus of being on Main Street in downtown St. Charles AND a deck out back that overlooks the Missouri River. And the most wonderful owner, a little Mexican guy who hugs you and kisses you on the cheek. And has been known to open the outdoor space when it is already closed for the season just because you asked him if it was open. 😊

I took that picture the last time I was there in early November. 

One of the times that we almost always go out for Mexican food is on Cinco de Mayo. That was not an option this year, and we were all feeling a little down about it. On a last-minute whim, I decided to make a Mexican feast for us at home, and I even did a little decorating in the kitchen. Tony was out of town, but the kids all loved it, and I gotta say I impressed myself.

I made: pulled pork quesadillas and topped them (well, mine anyway!) with Mexican coleslaw; Mexican street corn; salsa cheese dip and Mexican Rice along with strawberry margaritas (that we drank in the afternoon 😊 ). It was all so tasty, but the best part was dessert—Fried Ice Cream Pie. OMG. I have been in the mood to make homemade ice cream, so in addition to all the other stuff I made on Tuesday, I made cinnamon ice cream. The pie crust was made from crushed cornflakes and almonds, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt all fried in a skillet with butter until it was brown and toasty. Half was pressed into the pie pan; the rest topped the ice cream. This may be my favorite summer dessert ever. I am already imagining a scoop of that ice cream on top of apple pie in the fall.  

I am still looking forward to going out for Mexican food as soon as I can, but days like Tuesday—well, I need to create more of them because it was memorable and one of the best days we have had in weeks. Even the kids said later that drinking margaritas in the afternoon and having such a fun dinner made them forget about the pandemic for a while.That is hard to do these days as every time I turn on the news, things are worse. As of right now, there are more than 76,000 deaths. I have no words for how shocking it is to know that a virus has killed that many people in 2 months. 

I guess the theme of this post is that I realize how much I need people more than I need to do things.

I miss people, more than anything else. I spend lots of time alone anyway, but I have realized the past weeks that I am not so fond of that. I CAN be alone and be perfectly content and okay. I can shop online, pick things up at Kohls and Walmart, have whatever I want delivered to my porch by Amazon. 

I CAN get through difficult times by myself. But just because I can, doesn’t mean I want to. I feel so lonely and isolated from people, and that is not how I want to spend my life.

I am most looking forward to the day when I can see the people I care about and hug the sweet man at my favorite Mexican restaurant.Or at least sit out on the deck and read a book while enjoying a margarita.