I am spending the weekend at my friend Susan's house. I was meant to teach at a bead shop here, in the Philly area, but my classes didn't run. I decided to come anyway. The time was blocked out, I had shuffled around appointments, no reason not to come.
I have known Susan since 1975. One of the things (besides similar, very off, senses of humor and love of words and languages) that has connected us all these years is the fact that we are both, Not Small Girls. We've been Not Small Girls together for all that time. There's a picture of us on a teeter-totter at the Copenhagen harbor. We were both so happy that day, since it had never been easy, for either of us, to find partners for that particular piece of playground equipment.
I was a bit apprehensive about coming here this weekend because of this. Clearly, we did not get to be Not Small Girls by eating lettuce leaves and exercising frenetically, though when I could walk without pain, we did take very long, brisk walks together. I was more concerned about the food. Simply put, I viewed weekends here as a license to eat. To overeat. It started with the trip down: a bag of chips, one notable time I managed to eat Brie and crackers while driving, plus probably a specialty Starbucks something or other from one of the rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike.
I came supplied with chocolate, partly for me and partly for my putative students. The dark chocolate is one of my daily indulgences (I'm allowed! It's good for me!) and keeps me from eating worse things. The other, I brought because I didn't let on that I'm not teaching. I also had a box of skinny Triscuits (you didn't seriously think there wouldn't be Triscuits in this story, did you?). I managed to eat maybe a third of those, but I also had a salad for lunch, on the way down.
It's Sunday morning. How has it gone so far? Well, Friday night was Friendly's and I had a prime rib supermelt. I also had a side salad, and I only ate maybe a third of the fries. I did have a Happy Ending Sundae, though, with honest-to-God full fat ice cream and unreconstructed caramel sauce. I was stuffed.
Yesterday I had an English muffin with butter and a hard-boiled egg for breakfast, and light cream in my coffee, because that's what there is here and I'm not putting in skim milk. Just not. Lunch was steak panini at a previously untested place and it was very good. It was also huge (I should have only eat half and I knew it, but I went on) and a smattering of home-made chips and fries, but not many of either. And then I said I had to have a salad for dinner, so we went to Panera where I had the strawberry poppyseed chicken salad, which was primarily lettuce and fruit. And it felt so good to be eating that. I literally had felt off balance from not getting my greens.
Susan also took me to a delightful sort-of, not really gourmet grocery store, The Fresh Market http://www.thefreshmarket.com/
and I bought all manner of wonderful cookies, etc, there. I also bought no-salt cashews (I just ate a handful) and olive oil and champagne vinegar. But I had to taste all the cookies, and a cookie here and a cookie there is more than I've been doing.
The balance so far? Passable. Not the stuff-fest it would have been (which right there is proof of the ripple effect of healthful eating. I'm sure I was the reason we held off from the mozzarella stuffed breadsticks yesterday) but not what I've been doing at home. So in the middle. I feel puffier, I'm sure there was way more salt than I've been accustomed to. But I took my blood test before I left, and I moved the appointment to July 3, so I have lots of time to get over this weekend. Get back on the wagon.
The other aspect of this weekend has been the R&R of the title. I was terribly stressed. Partly from constant pain, yada yada yada, but also from a variety of outside influences in my life. A lot of people have been leaning on me fairly hard, as well as a couple of occurrences outside of anyone's control, and I was majorly stressed. It was manifesting itself in a herpes flareup, a quite bad one--and that seems to have vanished from Friday to today. Also, my husband works from home and seldom goes out and all the constant companionship was taking a toll on me.
This morning Susan went to play golf. I will soon leave to visit the shop where I was to teach, but the morning alone has been delightful. I didn't have to talk, explain myself, interact, be nice, be anything but me. I read. I mostly read, I played a little Scrabble on the phone and other than that--nothing. Silence, blessed silence.
I spent money instead of making it this weekend, but I needed this time.
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