Information

For the last two days I have been pruning the inbox of my Gmail account.  Well deleting commercial messages and anything irrelevant to the family and categorizing and storing emails from my children and myself I have been listening to videos and blogs by various experts in Carnivore dieting and ketogenic dieting.  It turns out one of the more informative experts is right around the corner. 

Exercise

For more than a month I have done a daily series of exercises.  I really don't know if my body has benefited from the routine that I perform as I listen to scriptures after saying my prayers.  To some extent I continue because I hate to break my streak.  A few weeks ago on a Sunday morning when I had permitted myself to sleep a little longer than usual I pondered if I could also give myself permission to skip the exercise, but I persisted against my own great desire to subside into bed and catch a little extra sleep.  There are a lot of small routines that have become part of my life in the past few months.  I keep adding others now and then.  Today at the temple I almost headed for the elevator before reminding myself that now I take the stairs.  I have counted 42 stairs from the first to the second level and I suspect it is at least 40 more to the third level.  This makes over 40 feet from first to third floor. 

Memories

Today I have been cleaning out the inbox of my Gmail account.  I have to decide what to discard and what to keep any files by name for family members in particular events.  When it was finally time to stop I had reached a period when I was operated on for cancer. ,My doctor told me that Holo I had a stage for plus cancer it had not metastasized.  During that time I lived with two of my daughters four of their children and one of their husbands and a two bedroom apartment on Manhattan in Washington Heights.  For most of the six months that I lived with them I felt that I was dying and I was.  There are other memories that I encountered as I went through the emails including Lucinda's blossoming as an essayist and the  tragicomedy surrounding my ex-husbands descent into folly.  I love my life my children and the adventures that I am reminded of. I am grateful for my memories.

Fatigue

I have a lovely comfy bed in a pretty room that can be darkened so it's like the middle of the night.  I have a hard time resisting the temptation to take a nap on my very comfortable mattress.  The problem is, once I lay down its hard to get up again.  I usually take a long nap on Sundays and it usually impacts my sleep by reducing the amount of time I spend in deep sleep.  When I resist the urge to rest and close my eyes I have a far more productive period of sleep.  I find that if I feel a bit fatigued when I go to bed at night I feel better in the morning and ready to perform my initial morning routine.  I am grateful for fatigue.

Beef

I had a lot of beef for lunch today  I had purchased several roasts and after cutting one into steak sized slices for freezing I kept the other in the refrigerator and sliced it into somewhat thinner slices as needed for lunch.  The roasts I purchased were boneless and very nice in terms of being sliced, but they were a bit lean and therefore not very tender.  However I found that if I braised them after browning them on one side I got a quantity of lovely dark brown liquid that makes the perfect sauce for when I eat the beef.  A little pepper and some Himalayan salt to enhance the flavor and I am perfectly willing to take on the task of chewing the meat.  Although beef can be expensive, I have encountered one sale after another that kept the price in the hamburger range.  I feel more confident of adequate cooking when I handle beef since pork requires a more thorough cooking and chicken can be finicky.  So I am grateful at this time for beef.

Exemplars

Tomorrow I plan to participate in a Day of Mourning in protest of the increasing number of libertine abortion laws that are exemplified by the law passed in New York State which removes the alleged protections that were supposed to be applied to make abortion safe and un-common.  I will wear black, stay home and stay off the internet, not shop.  The movement was started by a store owner in New York State who closed his bookstore after the libertine law was passed with ghoulish rejoicing by the New York Legislature and signed into being with great fanfare by Governor Cuomo.  He closed it for one day and posted a sign explaining his actions.  Some states, such as Utah which recently passed a law against aborting babies with Down's Syndrome as the only cause, and Idaho which is contemplating a law that acknowledges the murderous nature of abortion, are bucking the trend.  I am grateful for the bookseller who served as an exemplar.

Fresh air

I dislike the cold of winter and I dislike hot weather as well.  My early life was spent in Utah where there is little humidity to emphasize the effects of cold and hot. I spent more than 20 years in Virginia where a warm summer day can feel like living inside a hot sponge because of the lack of evaporation.  My first experience of long-term humidity came when I moved to the coast of California between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.  In Utah 60° on autumn or spring day seemed pleasantly warm.   In California 60 degrees seemed cold because 30° below body temperature was emphasized by the humidity.  Whether Virginia Utah or California I found there were enough days that were unpleasant that I really never developed the habit of walking regularly except during a brief period in the early two thousands and I gave up the use of a car with the deliberate intention of forcing myself to walk.  I went back to using a car rather reluctantly at the request of others for their own convenience.  Yet I enjoy fresh air and lately I have taken steps to enjoy more of it than I have in some time.  I have tasted the air on the beaches from Hawaii to Crete, from Oregon to Florida and I am grateful for fresh air.