Episode 58: Dishes

This will shock my family.  This may shock the few friends I have that know me pretty well.  It actually sort of shocks me. Here goes...

I actually like doing dishes.

No, I won't come over and do yours.

Ok, so here is why.  There comes a certain satisfaction from just drowning your arms and hands in a deep sink full of dishes.  Ever since I moved in to this apartment, I have lacked a dish washer.  I no longer could just rinse the dishes and stick them in the machine that would sanitize them and make them scalding hot.  I have to get in there, pick off the dirt and debris of the past day's worth of eating (or so... I don't like doing them all the time). I use the many tools of the job: the sponge, which if Mythbusters is to be believed (and they are) is germ laden and disgusting; the bottle brush to get those hard to reach places which my hands are too big to get and the green fuzzy plastic scrubby thing that is safe for my Teflon pots and pans.  With these tools, I wash away all of the left over sauces and fat drippings that come from a rich diet of not entirely healthy foods.  If a particular bit of something won't let go, just give it a bit of time in a warm bath with plenty of good smelling soap and it will lose its stubbornness and eventually soften and let go.  Sure, my hands may be a bit pruny as I continue to wash, but that will take only a bit of time to mend. And at the end of doing dishes, once everything is dried and put away, there comes a bit of satisfaction that the job is done for the night, that there is order in the world, even in just one small part of the world, and that you know where everything is, in that kitchen.  It is a good feeling.

And I'm finding, life is like that on a larger scale.  Doing dishes is an interesting metaphor for life.  You take time to work at the problem spots, or just set them aside if they are too large to get to and eventually, it will all work out.  You may have to do a little bit of work, spend a little bit of time, and you may have to find the right tools,  but your world can come to some sort of order if you decide that is what you want to do.  Your body or mind may get wrung out, may become a bit pruny, but just sit in a hot bath for a while, forget about that problem even for a couple of minutes, and you'll be able to face and beat it when the time is right. And in the end, you will find that order will be restored and you can look back on your life and those rough times when you were up to your elbows in troubles, and see that those troubles have been put away in the right places, life has sorted itself out, and you can feel that you have accomplished something.

For my friends and families with automatic dishwashers, may I suggest that tonight, or sometime soon, you let go of technology, fill your sink up with soapy water, and emerge yourself into just doing dishes and letting your mind go.  And while your hands are busy, and you are enjoying the peaceful meditation of a gentle, relaxing task you may find your mind wandering and a solution comes out of some that celebrates those quiet moments that come when you are just doing dishes.

Happy sudsing!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 37: Brrrrrrr

Ok, so.. is it true that living in a cold place helps you burn fat because you're body is spending so much time trying to keep you warm? Please please please let it be true! I am FREEZING for a good cause, right?

Warm fuzzy socks donned, hoody hooded and coffee cup clutched in slightly icy fingers, I am cold!!  I know that my friends who live anywhere but California are going to laugh at me for complaining that I'm freezing here, when they are dealing with temperatures way below the 40 degrees that is says it is outside, but BRRRRR!!  It is 60 degrees inside my house and I am trying to conserve energy, so I am living with the cold, but I am complaining about it too!  It's not chilly enough to use my fireplace though.

Cleaning up around my apartment and trying to get things done. No diet this week, but I will get back on it next week.  I can stock my fridge with healthy food and eat vegetables and be a grown up. I really can!

Hope this finds you all well and happy!

ToryLynn

Episode 23: Soup making

So today, after I finish cleaning my kitchen, I will sit and chop vegetables while listening to people talk about books on Second Life.  I will combine celery and broccoli and spinach and carrots and cabbage to add to the pleasing scent of garlic and onions sauteed to perfection before I add my beef broth and tomato paste to create a really awesome soup that has no points to it, but tastes wonderful.

After that, I may make some salmon cakes, using more of the celery and adding light mayo and bread crumbs to create perfect patties of salmony goodness that I dip in a effusion of light mayo and balsamic vinegar (OMG! SO YUMMY!).

Then I will go party with the fam as we look at beautiful jewelry and talk about fall fashions (I am, after all.. SUCH a fashion diva. </sarcasm>

Love love to all.  I'm going to have a wonderful day, because I am loved.

Tory

Episode 10: Emotional Eating

I'm depressed today.  Recently, I have been on this huge upswing, riding high, sort of on a giggling manic, but today my mood took a dive and I feel horrible.  Part of me wants to chuck this diet and head straight for the ice cream that is in the fridge.  Part of me wants to rip open the bag of Creme d'Menthe bits that AH bought me to make cookies out of - once I had a few extra points - and devour the entire bag.  I hate being depressed, but what I hate worse is being an emotional eater.

The problem with being an emotional eater is that I may head for that bag of chocolates, or down that half gallon of ice cream and it will make me feel temporarily better with the sugar rush and the endorphins that make my blood go whee!  But in the end, I know it will make everything worse. I will end up on a sugar high, an artificial mood, for a little while, and then I will crash worse than I started.  I will look at the empty container and the guilt will creep in.  I will think "Oh! I was so awful!  Look what I did.. I am never going to get thin."  This will, of course, build on the cycle of emotional eating.  I will get even more depressed at the thought of gaining back all the weight that I just lost, at my deteriorating health. Everything I do or think will have a black cloud of doubt and gloom cast over it and I will get even more negative than I already am.

The other part of depression is the lethargy.  I do not want to move. I do not want to think. This slothlike feeling goes hand in hand with the depression and all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch sappy romantic movies and cry my eyes out. (The Notebook being the movie I cannot watch during these downswings as it will leave me a pile of sobbing goo on my couch.)

In my head, I know I just have to wait for it to pass.  I know that my mind is just playing tricks on my body and I have to wait it out, don't do anything drastic, and try to surround myself with positive thoughts and influences.  I need to accomplish something that will make me feel better about myself.  

Writing is out of the question. There is nothing more depressing than sitting down to write when I'm in one of my "moods" and finding all the poetry coming out of me, or even writing, being about heartbreak, sadness, and death.  As a former recovering Goth kid, this was the tenure of much of my teen angst writing.  I could work on my novel, but my mood will inevitably shift to that of my characters and they may do something drastic.  I'm all for editing, but really often, the characters run the story and I just write down what they tell me to do.  Right now, they're telling me to go eat all the ice cream in the fridge and write them into torrid love affairs that will all end badly.  Not an option.

Instead, I think I will go clean something.  Empty the dishwasher, clean up around my desk (which has the detritus of probably 3 weeks of lack of cleaning surrounding it), maybe even get up the nerve to finally sort out and clean off my dinner table... but I wouldn't hold my breath about that.  

Altogether, writing this made me smile a little bit, which is good and I can feel my spirits picking up.  I had better go clean something while I still have the energy.

Thanks for reading!  (and to my followers! I have three now! How awesome is that!)  I hope you have a lovely everything.

-ToryLynn