Lunchtime Back-Blog

It’s the day after date night and I’m sitting here tired and hungry—it’s lunch time—but there’s nothing here I really feel like eating and Liam’s asleep so I can’t leave. I’ll end up snacking on something. I’m taking a break from work. Breaks are necessary.

So yesterday…I must think back to yesterday…. Again, we got a good night of sleep in, although my dreams were in extreme/vivid/Technicolor/annoying mode, and at one point I forced myself to get up and pee just so I KNEW I’d been dreaming and I could leave that annoying world of my random subconscious. A bit later I was awake and Liam awoke and I drank a Blue Machine and Liam and I headed out to the garden. I’m almost sick of the garden: it’s like an experiment in miniatures and failures. But I’ll admit my spirits are not high today, so my outlook is bit pessimistic. That doesn’t change the fact, though: the garden this summer is not living up to my expectations. I guess the inverse of that is I’m not living up to my garden’s expectations.

Journaling every day makes me realize just how routine and boring my days can be. Not that my entire day is ever really boring, just the whole routine of waking, going to work, eating oatmeal, drinking a mocha, drinking water, eating almonds, eating a banana and an apple. I had PC problems, which resulted in IT problems, which resulted in productivity problems, which resulted in me doing pushups and reverse pushups and then just laying on my back looking up at the ceiling with the IT guy on speaker phone and my phone muted and I wished I could nap or will my knee to wellness, but of course I couldn’t do either of those things.

I had emailed my doctor about my knee, and he responded back that I should make an appointment to get it assessed if it’s not “markedly improved” by the beginning of next week. I hope for marked improvement. Even if the swelling goes, I’m going to be afraid to do anything on it. I may just make an appointment anyway. I suspect this knee, and the resulting lack of exercise and brain chemical adjustments may explain my down mood to some extent. Maybe that’s the full explanation. I plan to swim tonight—the legless swim—but that’s today, not yesterday, which is when this entry was supposed to have taken place. Narrative skills lacking.

I picked up my boy after his lunch time and he had his usual good nap. I used the rest of the peppered turkey to make a sandwich and was a bit disappointed to realize I had no cheese, but that’s not a deal-breaker and I still had mustard and red-leaf lettuce and my double fiber bread, of course, and I ate some pretzels. I drank water.

~~I have a 40-ounce stainless steel water bottle I take damn near everywhere, and I hardly ever wash it, which is probably gross, but I try to drink 2 or 3 bottles full of water each day, if not more. Sometimes I lose it for a short time and have to drink my water from a glass and, for some reason, I don’t like that as much.~~

I made a lot of progress on the document I’m writing, and that was a nice change. Lately I feel like I have 10 different slider bars I’m pushing forward just a smidge each day and sure, when you add those smidges all together, things were accomplished. When I look at any one slider bar, though, it’s discouraging how little I’ve advanced it along in a day. But I finally got to give one a bump and maybe move it a bit more than a smidge—that felt good.

No other exercise for me, of course. It’s times like this I realize how much I NEED my runs or bike rides, but I keep going on about this knee. Who cares about the exercise when my wife has an art show opening this weekend and it’s date night?

Angie got home from work and I had a quick shower, then we loaded up and headed to Beatnik Books in Roseville, where she’s hanging some of her paintings for a few weeks. Liam and I weren’t much help, but he enjoyed the place and the two dogs that were hanging out, there were plenty of things to play with, and I was recognizing books here and there that I’ve read or plan on reading. They have all been donated. Me: I’m a book hoarder.

When we were wrapping up there a train had pulled up on the tracks a stone’s throw away, so I took Liam over to check out his first train. I kept wishing it would move on, but it didn’t and we did.

For dinner, we headed to P.F. Chang’s because we hadn’t been in a while and Chang’s is pretty good. Not surprisingly, I always get the same thing.

~~OH! I’d had some barbera before we left. I forgot that until now.~~

So I ordered a glass of a petite syrah and had a second one a bit later, and dinner was crispy honey chicken with brown rice and a side of garlic snap peas. It’s a meal I really love, and we don’t go to Chang’s all that often, so I use that as justification to order the same thing every time. Of course, I’m also reluctant to try the new and (to me) untested.

It was a later night for Liam. The art hanging pushed us off normal schedule a bit, but things were ultimately okay, especially once he’d gotten some food. We went and got ice cream at Cold Stone (they’re everywhere), and I had a Love It of dark chocolate mixed with vanilla bean with some M&Ms tossed in there. We drove home. We put Liam to bed. I drank one glass of wine, read a bit, and went off to bed.

And now it’s almost lunch-time-over, and I haven’t eaten lunch, but I did type this.

So goodbye, lunch time. I wish I’d let you live up to your name, ‘cause I’m real hungry. I’m gonna have to (hafta? [gonna hafta?]) do some scrounging, I think, and come up with something to put in this belly. Then I’ll say “hello” to the pool when Angie gets home. I’m looking forward to that, and I hope it shifts my mood a bit, which it likely will. That’s part of the beauty of exercise: it’s good for the mind and spirit—it’s not all about the physical.