Day 10 – To Sigueiro – Morning and Evening – October 7

I decided to leave later in the morning, because what is the point of missing a good breakfast, which is included in the cost of the room at Rural Casa Anton Veiras, only to get done walking at 10 am? 

It’s not the getting done early that I mind, it is the missing the breakfast. 

I still woke around 5 am and was ready to go early. Anton brought me breakfast promptly at 7:30. It was good – sweet cake like pannetone, cafe (which I shouldn’t have drunk), and fresh strawberries and pineapple, which go together wonderfully. 

I had forgotten to take off my nitro patch last night, and it needs an 8 hour break each day to continue to work. So, I couldn’t wear it until 1 pm. I also chose to only take 1 ½ beta-blockers as I am trying see if I can go down the dose scale, instead of speeding through them. I don’t know what happens when I reach the max dose. I don’t want to know. Live with a lot of pain, I suspect.

The taxi got me back to Baxioa by 8:10. It was still delightful to walk in the dark and it was again misty and cold. 

Of course, there was an alternative path. And I took it. Margaret would have loved THIS alternative path, as there was no ambiguity about where it was. The main path followed the noisy, big highway. This one paralleled it, but about a 1/4 mile away. It was a paved road, but through a production forest. I walked for 2 hours and didn’t even see a car. I didn’t see a person walking until I got to town. In fact, I didn’t even see toilet paper – a sure sign of walkers. 

I love that we got ‘pee clothes.’ When I first heard of them, I was put off. But using one, and knowing I am leaving no trace behind…and no white paper… I really appreciate them! You can tell when many people have gone before you, due to the spots of white paper along the sides of the road. I was feeling happy about leaving no liter behind. These cloths are easy to launder everyday and dry quickly. They are just so smart!

I read that some perigrinos want a solo individual journey… a solitary journey, and are dismayed by the crowds. I pondered how it is that I have had that isolation. I’m not sure why, but I have it. So, walking and pondering…

~ Insert Realization of my Personal Reason for My Pilgrimage ~

I stayed at Albergue Casa Real, Sigueiro. I liked it very much. It was my first real social overnight. The busy time of day at the albergue is from abut 4-5 pm. That is when all the peregrinos come in. There were a lot; A big crowd. I have to admire how far almost everyone walks each day! I got to talk with two British young ladies and that was nice. 

The albergues have some advantages, other than just potential friends. They have a kettle so I can boils some water for my CPAP. Finding de-ionized water here has been impossible. They have a kitchen area, a dining area, a couch/lounge area. I washed my clothes and they are hanging to dry in some little back room. 

The albergue in Sigueiro, where I am staying, closes in a bit, so I asked the proprietor if I could leave my CMD brochures, explaining that they were just information about a condition that is hard to diagnose. That I have it. 

Once I said “It’s just information. No sales. Just information to help people,” and said it enough times that he got it, he was glad to let me leave them. I am so grateful to be able to give these out. Maybe someone will read it and later, their mum or aunt or friend will have these signs, but get diagnosed sooner than later. I like that thought.

So – big day. Not the miles or the hills, but the internal work.

A big sigh of relief.

Belief.

Possibilty.

Video Link to me on this day:

Additional Links:

Here are links to Video #3 on my YouTube channel – explaining Coronary Microvascular Disorders and A GoFundMe page – 100% of funds will go to raise awareness of these conditions.

https://gofund.me/530d0757

Day 9 – Good Karma – October 6

From MindJournal

I found this as a meme in my FB feed today. I pondered it for a while. The thing that stuck with me was the first sentence, the question: What is my purpose in life?

I think I have found it: raising my daughter, making a loving family (without yelling in the household), and now, raising awareness of Coronary Microvascular Disorders. Living to see my daughter into college.

But maybe there is more. Why am I pondering the question. What more could there be?! I mean, this is more purpose than I feel like I have had ever in my life before!

Day 9 – Baxoia – October 6 – A Bizarre End to the Day

My feet were sore when I got back to my lovely hotel. I guess the early, early morning had taken its toll. I went to my room (oh, blessed room!), covered up the windows with the shutters, covered my body in a thick blanket and slept for 2 – 3 hours! I didn’t think I needed that, but I did. 

Here is the second weird event. When I was ready to rise, I realized that I would be short 1 stamp for today. The only place to get a stamp, The Taberna (“Last stop before Sigueiro”), had been closed when I passed by at 7:30 am. There had been nothing else between here and Baxoia.  So, I had only one stamp from Casa Rural Anton Veiras for the day.

I guess that is a little flaw in the whole 2 stamps a day thing; it assumes that one is walking 15-20 km a day. I am hiking <10, but that doesn’t mean I won’t get my whole 100 km in! I needed and deserved stamp!

There is an albergue next door to Casa Veiras, so I decided to go over. As I came out of the Casa, I could see the albergue hostess was sitting on an outside bench, smoking. I got there and I asked if I could get a stamp. She gave me one, but then followed me out, watching suspiciously as I headed down the drive. She had no English and I had no Spanish. Trying out a conversation explaining my walk, in my mind, been enough to send me walking up the trail.

I guess I was scared she would come yell at me and call me an imposter or something, so, stupidly, I decided to walk around the corner on the Camino. She came down the path to check that I had left onto the Camino, but found me sitting around the corner. She pointed to the way to go – then she stood there making sure I walked on. After that, she went back to the albergue, but sat outside and watched me through the trees. (I could see her looking right at me.)

Did I need evidence, to get my stamp? I mean, what was she going to do? Report me? Why did I even need to explain my walking itinerary to this lady? 

But now I was stuck a quarter mile up the trail. I forgot to mention, I had taken my diuretic. I thought it would be a quick 2 minute trip to get a stamp and back. But now the ‘water pill’ was kicking in and I really needed to pee. I would need to pee every 5 minutes for the next several hours. 

Dang! Why had I not just marched myself back into the Casa, knowing that I knew I was authentic and right. She could have confronted me there and the hotelier would have come to my aid. They knew I had been walking!

I guess I didn’t want the scene. Maybe I still feel like an imposter. I figured that I am willing to project that onto what others are thinking of me. (Actually, all life is all projection – I know that. But today WAS admittedly pretty weird, too!) I had, after all, skipped 4-6 km of the 117 km from Ferrol. And there was that guy who asked me if I was ‘touring or walking’ the Camino when I took a bus to the start point, before I ever started walking…and all the people who commented that I wasn’t a real peregrine because I wasn’t planning on carrying everything in my pack.

Okay, so this feeling may not be due entirely to internal factors. People out there are harsh critics! It may be that rather than pure projection, I am still stinging from the unwarranted criticisms of strangers. I think this is pretty common. Maybe we all want to appear to be certain and unaffected by the opinions and comments of others, but most of us are not. And we should be grateful for most people having that much heart. I don’t want to live in a world where no one cares about anyone else or negative comments. I do want to live in a world where people are more kind, and conservative about what they say. by using the rules of is it true, is it kind, is it helpful.

Out in the woods was when I realized the afternoon smells different from the morning. That was nice. I finally decided to just walk back to my accommodations. I had people to support me there – no reason to fear anyones opinion.

I made it back to the Casa, before the dire needs of my diuretic had effect …and hid in my room for a couple hours.  I had food and a shower, and felt better. 

~

Just like ‘God seeing everything you do’; it’s not just god, it is that you see everything you do. And you always remember. 

I know that I will walk my 100 km. 

I deserve to get a Compostela if I do. 

To do that, I need a stamp. 

I have every right to ask for a stamp, no matter where I am sleeping or if I have to take a taxi from the Camino to a hotel and back. 

I have every right to shorten or length my poles to suit myself and every right to not have strangers come adjust my pack, unasked, in the middle of my hike. 

I’ve worked hard to be independent. I want to be allowed to be the boss of me.

So – I am telling you right now: I am the BOSS of ME!

My Grandfathers Overalls

I got my new pair of overalls in the mail today and put them on, excited to start my garden in appropriate gear. I haven’t had a pair of overalls in a decade, and then they were more a fashion statement than utility; I would never ruin them by getting them dirty!

This decade I feel differently about overalls. These are what I need at the beginning of garden season! These overalls, denim blue and roomy, were made for work, with all the pockets I could ask for.

Last season, I spent a great deal of time wearing my two pair of men’s cargo pants. The fit wasn’t great, and I hated to sacrifice them, but every day, I would go out and crawl around in the soil, coming in with my knees caked with dirt. Every day I had to decide to sacrifice them, as they would never be less stained. Every day I had to decide if I should wash them or leave them caked with dirt, available to put on the next day.

There is something satisfying about slipping out of work pants one day, leaving them in a pile, dirt crusted and stiff, and putting them on the next day and going back to work. At these times, in the middle of a pandemic, I could dispense with worries about what others thought, and be purely utilitarian. It is a sort of freedom within all the containment.

I slipped on my new overalls, strongly reminded of my grandfather. Albeit I have very few interactions with him, I found a strong association with him and overalls.

My grandparents were quiet millionaires in the 70’s and 80’s, when that was an enormous amount of money.  They had a nice brick ranch house in the city, with couches covered in plastic and little hard candies in decorative glass bowls. My grandmother had an extra closet full of society-ready clothing. But what they really loved was their farm; The Farm. This is where I best remember them, especially my Grandfather. 

They had two large barns and a small cinderblock well house. The well house was maybe 8” by 12”. Inside the front door was a small room with a small old-fashion refrigerator, a small gas stove, and a deep well sink. The kitchen held a fascination of items for children. The shelves held medicines like Alka-Seltzer, which we dissolved on our tongue, and loved to hate. There were orange baby aspirin and the stinging bright orange mercurochrome. There were always bulk packages of the absolute cheapest sandwich cookies in the world and overly dilute Kool-aide in the fridge. Once I saw my grandfather make scrambled eggs and brains on the stove. I declined eating them, or he didn’t offer, though he said they were delicious. Mostly, he made grilled onion and eggs for fried egg sandwiches. These were absolutely the best. Wonder-bread, hot butter, salt, cracked pepper, carmelized onion – um! We kids learned to like both onions and black pepper, due to these sandwiches.

Beyond a cinderblock wall with an open doorway, there was a work room one side filled with a work bench with a clamp, small anvil, tools in a tool rack, the other side filled by a Formica dinner table, expandable with leaves. Further down, another wall with an open doorway hid the toilet on one side and a closet over a gas heater. The closet side was heaped with old clothing, boots and shoes were haphazardly stuffed under a small bench between the toilet and the clothes rack. Under the bench was a plethora of dusty or used shoes and boots, matched and unmatched. The fabric of all the garments was soft with age; flannel shirts, long sleeved shirts, and short sleeved blouses made from fabric from the 40’s or 50’s. Most of these had minor flaws, tears, stain, patches. And they heaped around the space heater in an unsafe manner.

This is where my grandfather’s overalls hung. He would invariably be clad in them when we arrived each weekend, stolidly working. Sometimes they had dirt or manure caking them. Other times it was oil stains and the reek of kerosene. He wore them when he drove the tractor, when he worked with the bees, when he sprayed the fruit trees, or worked at the work bench in the large barn, welding and scowling. These were the activities I saw him at for the most part.

On occasion, I saw him at the well house. Usually this would be if his wife summoned him to a family lunch. They would expand the table or move it outdoors altogether.

Grandpa would come in and clean up, cleaning his hands in the tub-like sink, scrubbing them like a surgeon. He used a hard bristled scrub brush at the finger tips, scrubbing a degreasing soap into the nails, then he would clean the nails with a surgeon’s nail pick. A rinse and re-soap with Lava, soap named for the bits of pumice in it. He would work the scrub brush from fingertip to elbow and rinse, always carefully letting the water run from fingertip to elbow. Drying his hands was a similar surgical task, finger tips to dripping elbows.  Why he carried these patterns over from his work day, I didn’t understand. Not until much later. Then, still not so much so.

However, a thing we had in common would be careers in which we were surgeons but hobbies where we were  farmers. I didn’t know him as a doctor or surgeon. I knew him as a wheat farmer, an angus farmer, someone who filled the large barn with hay, and was sweeter to his pet bull and his bees than to any child in the family.

I understand that he was surgically scrubbing his hands, now. But why; I still don’t know. I didn’t know him as a doctor in WWII, a man who became a renouned thoracic surgeon. I knew him as a man who could weld, who set strict rules about leaving gates as you found them, a man who would yell if you didn’t obey and the cattle got out.  And the cattle always got out!

The two of us would elect would go from one task of detail-oriented caring (surgery) ass a career to another detail-oriented caring task (animal husbandry, plant cultivation) as a hobby is interesting. Farming and surery are somehow similar but farming more forgiving. Surgery to Farming. Farming to Surgery.

I am sure there are many things I still don’t know about this man. But now, as I stand in my overalls, eager to get them dirty and put them away without washing, now I understand more than I ever have.

I slip into my overalls, proud to be his grand-daughter. I set aside my doctor self, breath into the clean air of the outdoors, plant my seeds and tend my chickens. I am at home.

 

Photo Credit: Heather Ford at Unsplash: heather-ford-WlvPuu8X1Yg-unsplash

The Problem with Fuzzy Pants

The problem is rather like that in “If you give a Pig a Pancake” by Laura Numeroff…It is not just the fuzzy pants.

But, let’s start with the fuzzy pants. It has been a year; a year of wearing comfortable clothes.  A year of loose comfy shirts, old stretchy t-shirts, fuzzy pants in the winter, baggy pants or shorts in the summer, tennis shoes, trainers or sandals.  

A body gets used to the comfort. No longer will tight, itchy be tolerated. No longer is there room for shirts that don’t allow one to raise arms fully overhead. Nor pants without pockets. No tight waist-bands, no tight any kind of bands.

And, it is not only the outerwear; but freedom! Freedom, everywhere!

Pants are where it started, but next, it spread to underneath wear; bralettes, a stretchy comfortable bra-like containers for boobs.  After becoming accustomed to the lack of wires, clasps, eyelets, and cinching devices, even the soft seams started to become a bother. Since there is no one looking, turning the stretchy thing inside out solved that; no seams on skin! Seems like freedom to be Seamless!

Soon to follow were the ‘cute’ underwear, the ones that might looks great, but ride a little…or a lot. You know, the small fabric sexy ones. The lace that itches. None of those this year! Stuff them in a drawer for Someday. (It’s like Sunday, only farther in the future.) 

And – what about shoes? Why shove toes into a triangular pointed toe box, when our feet are actually paw shaped? Electing shoes with foot-shaped toes seems a good alternative. Keen, Altra, Alegra, Birkenstock if that is your groove…  Barefoot is always an option for some.

Oh hell. After a few months the bra seemed like a silly idea.  Now we are talking some serious natural comfort. I admit. It was tough. It took some getting used to. Really. But after 9 months, men’s boxer shorts were discovered.  Wow! Those are comfortable!

And Hell, just get rid of the pants! Polar fleece pull-overs tops and stretchy legging for winter.  Overalls seem comfy for middle season weather. There are so many cute designs. Or durable designs. Stretchy work out shorts and t-shirts for everyday summer. 

After a year of comfortable clothing, a ‘normal’ outfit was worn out to a doctor’s appointment. The pants itched. Every moment, there was an acute aware of the seams of the pants, rubbing along the waist and down the thighs. The bra, okay bralette…okay, turned inside out, seemed constrictive. The stylishly matching boots were tight with poor traction. The necklace’s clasp scratched at the neck incessantly. The sleeves of the top rolled up inside the arms of the jacket. An hour in these clothes seemed interminable! 

Sudden understanding of a daughter’s childhood insistence of fuzzy pants and soft shirts made sense. In comfortable clothes, we lose our desensitization to uncomfortable seams, tight bands of fabric or leather, and fashion dictates. Months in fuzzy clothes have changed all that. 

Going back to regular clothes when the Pandemic ends??? 

Can’t see that! Overalls are in the mail, after all. 

Losses and Gains: 1 Year of Covid

Limitations

are the Doorway

to Openness

-Tama Cathers

It is approaching a year since I got sick with Covid. Of course, at that time, I was sure it was not Covid. It would take months for me to slowly figure it out. By then, I would come to realize it was Covid and that I was a Covid Long Hauler.

Many Long Haulers are recounting their stories, here at their one-year anniversary. These stories are usually nightmarish logs of one symptom after another; because that is how covid works.  Or they are they are sunshine and roses.  I don’t think my story would be either…or rather, it would be both.

I have been incredibly fortunate in so many ways.

First, I could have been much more ill. I could have had worst long-term effects. I could have been hospitalized or died. I count myself as extremely lucky to be where I am today.

Secondly, I have a supportive husband. He has been there for me both emotionally and financially. It allowed me not to feel crazy in the first 6 months. As a nurse, he knows when people are sick and when they are faking. His acknowledgement of my illness allowed me to slowly come to see if for what it was.  And when, a few months ago, he welcomed me back, it was so meaningful to me.

One of my first worries was our finances, since I suddenly stopped working. This. was NOT. part of our plan. We made all sorts of decisions to cut costs. I am grateful for those. However, one of the biggest cost savings was simply staying home. Being out in the world made me want and need things. Staying at home, I suddenly needed very little. This has saved us thousands of dollars!

We are fortunate to be able to make it financially, with these cuts and savings, despite the loss of my income.  That was great, because it would take 9 months to see any unemployment insurance funding.

I learned and am still learning to give myself the rest I need. It is a requirement. I still need more sleep than normal – 9 hours at night and 1 – 2 during the day. My brain fatigues, causing my whole body to shut down. Most of the time I may look functional, but then I suddenly unable to get out words or hold my eyes open. Conversations with people outside my family cause me to need a 2-hour nap and get a headache, if I am really thinking.

When I relearn something, I have to make new neural connections. I can actually feel this happening in my head. It feels like something between a pleasant tickle and an irritating waviness in the center of my head.

I lost my ability to deal with spatial concepts. While initially this doesn’t seem like a big deal, we actually use spatial concepts in many ways: to organize things alphabetically, or in a to do list, to do math, to pick out the right casserole dish or storage box. My ability to make a plan and carry it out is damaged. I have a difficult time with multiplication and division…hell, I have a little difficulty with addition and subtraction. I struggle to remember dates and appointments, and am as likely to show up early as late. I hate to shift responsibility to others by telling them to call me if I don’t show up online, but I have to do so, because I am so forgetful.

On the other hand, I am happier in many concrete ways. I am getting better and regular exercise, while not irritating old injuries.  I have been able to increase my capacity for exercise slowly over the last 6 months. I am now able to run in 30-60 second intervals and to go backpacking in the mountains. I have been able to focus on my children’s education – and god knows, they needed that!!!

I get to see many friends and family I wouldn’t have seen except for the pandemic.  Zoom and Versatackle have made video conferencing easy. I see my mom twice a week, despite the fact that she lives 12 hours away. I get to see my girlfriends monthly and weekly. I see my fellow yoga teacher trainees as well as my teacher every week.  It is the most social interaction with friends that I have had since I moved 8 years ago.

And I need it. The capacity to interface with people is something that has to be rebuilt. We are all losing that function in the pandemic isolation. I need it for basic brain function. Several months ago, talking with my mom caused me to need to sleep. Now I can talk with many individual people without cognitive fatigue.

I have been working with a speech therapist since December on cognitive function. When I started, I couldn’t see how I would ever be able to work as a veterinarian again.

I mix words – and fear mixing treatment instructions or scripts due to it (Convenia/Cerenia, etc.). I have trouble with calculations – and imagine I would have problems with fluid rates, constant infusion rates, or exotic dosages.  I sometime have slowness in being able to speak and find words to explain new concepts – and worry that clients won’t have patience.  I fatigue easily. The combined physical and cognitive toll makes me hesitant to book work at this point.

However, I now can see that I can regain those functions. I also can see that my trajectory of regaining function shows it will probably be another 6 – 12 months before I can confidently book work, with hopes of being safe and functional.

Photo Credit:

Limitations

are the Doorway

to Openness

-Tama Cathers

Photo Credit: fernandozhiminaicela, https://pixabay.com/photos/covid-19-coronavirus-quarantine-5070666/

EVERYTHING IS VALUABLE

This whole COVID episode has changed the way I see the world: Everything is valuable.

This view started early on in this process.  We realized that most of our recyclables could be useful. I shredded the white paper for animal bedding and feeding to the compost heap. We planned on shopping once a month, so suddenly plastic bags became valuable (cat litter collection, etc.).  I saved cardboard boxes to make pet toys and rabbit enrichment devices, and line plant and mushroom beds.  I saved jars and they came in handy.

Now our food is more valued, especially the fresh. But using up those canned and dry goods in interesting ways – that too has become valuable.

On a to drive, I saw stands of turkey tail mushrooms growing in the trees.  Suddenly, I saw the forest as something full of food and medicine. I felt like I could see things that no one else could see!

I might even have to admit, due to the COVID pandemic, we have gone from normal to semi-preppers.  We put in a garden, made potato box and cold frame, expanded our composting system, got meat chickens, and started growing shiitake mushroom.  All things we likely would have done at some time – but this year we got the deal done!

But I started seeing things differently.  The whole world is valuable.  The tree stump and woodpile grow medicine.  The shady weed bed hosts nutritious nettles.  The forests contain food, shelter, firewood, fiber and medicinal plants.

It is really an amazing way to see the world. It is a much more open and loving way to see the world.

Tama Cathers

 

Photo Credit: Photo by Deglee Degi on Unsplash

Benefits of “Not Seeing Myself”

Last night I got out of bed and stood up, then felt for any dizziness, as I have had that as part of my covid infection. As I did this, I wondered if my husband was looking at me and how I looked to him. Let’s be real – It was pitch black and he was totally asleep.

This thought was striking to me – because I have NOT been doing that lately.  Thinking this way is something Naomi Wolf talked about; women see themselves as being watched.  It is something Peggy Orenstein talked about:  that girls/women often experience sex subjectively.  It is something our training at Sex Coach University educated us about: that women are acutely aware of who they look rather than how they feel and it distracts them from their pleasure.

Until I did without the social influence that makes that happen, I did not see myself as doing that – certainly no doing it constantly.

Now I can see, in contrast, that I was seeing myself subjectively almost constantly.

It is the likely explanation I have been looking for as to why I feel happier about my body since quarantine, despite gaining 5 pounds.

Why? Because I am no longer constantly seeing myself and judging myself, from a subjective viewpoint: i.e. what do I look like from the outside/to others?  I spend more time living my life objectively; i.e. what am I doing right now, how am I feeling physically?

by Tama Cathers

Photo by Mariana Blue from Pexels

Eleventy-first Blog

Today I am posting my eleventy 1^stBlog.

I know you might be saying that it should be my 111^nt blog, but I am feeling ornery, so it is my 11-1^st.  If Bilbo Baggins could have an eleventy-first birthday, I can have a 11-1^st blog.

It has been a little over 2 years. I have posted weekly, most weeks.  I started out exploring my physical exhaustion, i.e. adrenal burnout.  While this may not be a specific condition, it is a common experience.  We, as a society, are going none stop and not refilling our resources. We stay in a state of burn-out. If left stressed long enough, this translates into disease or at least a feeling of intense unwellness.  At this stage, my blog consisted of recipes and herb information, as well as my reflections on my burnout.

Next, I talked about parenting and travel, specifically travel with my newly minted teenager.  I discussed insights into my yoga teacher training(s), and of course, more recipes.  Next up was my elimination diet and the struggle to find a long-term diet that met my needs; i.e. not giving me constant GI upset. I challenged myself to write and do yoga every day.  I discussed habit formation, addiction, essentialism, and body image.  Next, I challenged myself with Bright Line Eating. That went well, so my next self-challenge was untangling the skein of busyness that continued to create stress in my life. Lastly, between recipes, I discussed the burn-out specifically related to my career, and how coaching helped me regain perspective.

The work of blogging has been good. Sitting down to write on a regular basis has paved the path to do what I had not done before, such as submit poetry, let my mom read my poetry, and now to work on writing a book, which might be titled “Changing Clothes, a Gender Swap Month.”

Outside the challenges I have shared here, there have been other challenges in my life, both given by life and elected with free-will. My boyfriend became my fiancé, then my husband. The first two years had a steep learning curve.  We entered a Sex Coaching Training program; two years of deep study and work that challenged us.  We chose, unrelated to that program, to investigate how gender affects us.  We did a 30-day challenge where we swapped gender roles inside our house.  It was profound, one of the most difficult and least sexy thing we have likely ever done! We learned a lot, and now have things to laugh over, and a book to write, which I am currently working upon.

We started a business.  The personal stresses involved derailed our relationship.  We almost failed at our new marriage, despite 5 years of dating, and more than 6 years knowing each other.  Using Couples Coaching Couples and going back to dating each other, we put our relationship back together; another potential book “Dating Your Spouse.” Later, using Gottman’s book The Science of Trust, we again realigned ourselves within our marriage. And that is yet another book to write.  We dealt with alienated children and our own personal growth.

While the last 2 years have been challenging in ways I couldn’t imagine, I am so grateful.  Here I am at my 101^nthBlog wondering what comes next.  I know that there is really no knowing.  There is only living.

What a wonderful thing that is.

Live well, friend.

Tama Cathers, BS, MS, DVM, RYT/CYI, CSC, writer, poet, cook, gardener, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and life-long learner.

photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-mountain-near-river-under-cloudy-sky-during-daytime-247478/

Responsibility #2

I read an explanation for why we may feel overwhelmed when working a full-time job and meeting the other demands of life; eating, exercising, maintaining relationships, much less socializing or sleeping.  Certainly, it is hard to find the time to actually cook, you know, the ‘healthier alternative’ to premade meals.  I empathized with the complainer but was blown away with the logic of the answer.

We are not supposed to be able to do all that.  The 40-hour workweek was established as a post-WW2 hold-over and built on the concept (and work) of an unpaid spouse.  Wow! That helped things make sense!  I was really busy as a mostly stay at home mom the last month or so!

The housecleaner was a magical start to the redistribution of responsibilities in our household.  Still – the dishes were a never-ending problem!  I do a full load… or two, every day.  None of the plastic-ware dries in the washer, so it has to be set out to dry, then put away separately.  I was happy and giddy with clean floors and a clean stove, but I also needed dish help.

At about the same time, we had had a fruit fly invasion; hundreds or thousands of fruit flies coating the cabinets, their numbers increasing hourly and exponentially.  As a result, the whole house joined the fruit-fly battle plan.  No food left out, no dishes unwashed, no compost or trashcans in the house, wash the food catches with every load….

It went really well – again for 2 days.  By day 5, household members (who will remain unnamed…so far) were leaving half-eaten fruit on the counter again, as well as sugary juice glasses.  The fruit flies again blossomed.  Again, controls were instituted, but only got done half @ss.

Sigh.

Again, we needed something dramatically different.  We needed radical changes.

We sat down at a family meeting to discuss what to do.  I was expecting my creative daughter to come up with some genius plan – she often does.  However, it was my husband, instead who came up with an idea.  An appalling idea: we would each pick out 1 plate, 1 bowl, 1 glass, 1 coffee mug and 1 set of silverware.  Everything else got packed up in a box and put away.

I was aghast!

And I agreed to do it.

Why not.  Maybe it would work.

I will let you know.   I know one thing however; housecleaning and dishes are no longer my sole responsibility.

 

by Tama Cathers

Photo Credit:  https://pixabay.com/photos/dirty-dishes-kitchenware-pots-2569516/