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Will There Be Sprinkles with That?
Let me say this, about that, I do believe people should take care of their health by living a healthy lifestyle. I know some of all y’all were convinced I was crossing over the dark side when I said it was time for me to enjoy my life with a glass of wine and a bag of Lay’s chips. I really do enjoy my life, but I do not feel guilty about how I enjoy it. First of all, all chips aside, I will never put myself into a deliberate health decline by choosing to toss my healthy lifestyle into the blue bin. I’m here for a good time, and we all know you have to be healthy to enjoy a good time. I will continue to do those things that make me feel good about myself and keep me fit and healthy. As much as I loved my parents and my grandparents, their good old days weren’t so very good at all. By the time my grandmother was my age she’d pretty much given up being mobile and lived on a diet of boiled meat, canned soups, boiled potatoes, tea with milk and sugar, tinned biscuits and bread with butter and jelly. My parents certainly had a much healthier lifestyle, but ran into complicated problems due to their uncontrolled high cholesterol, hypertension and arthritis along with their reluctance to tweak their food habits and take their medications. For the most part, my parents were fairly healthy and reasonably active until their final days. But I want more. Maybe I want it all. I want to have the cake and I want to eat the cake.
So, here I am. I still go to the gym and as LOML puts it “she lifts heavy things up and puts them down again”. I do. I also hike and for the most part I still eat a plant-strong diet. I am focused on keeping my blood pressure under control, my cholesterol in check and my weight down to a dull roar. However, I’m here for a good time, too. What about the wine and the chips, though? Well here’s the thing, I didn’t give up being me when I decided to become fit and healthy. After many, many, many discussions with “Superman” I realized I didn’t have to live the restrictive lifestyle I had been living in the past—in the days when all I was concerned with was dress size and what other people thought about me. I have learned I don’t have to take all of the delicious treats off the menu. I just had to make room for them, one way or another. My life needed to have more balance and until fourteen years ago I thought balance was something a tightrope walker needed or a working parent wanted. These days my way to find real balance in my life is to be more active. Mind you, being active when the thermometer hits 30-plus degrees isn’t always an easy thing to do. On those days I amp up the hydration and throttle back on the treats, except for ice cream. Ice cream will never be just a treat. Ice cream is on the list with the good wine and Lay’s Potato Chips. I have a mental scale of what I need to do to accommodate “all of the things”.
This summer I’m working on reducing, or eliminating, the people and the things that rob me of my peace and enjoyment. I don’t need to be around people who annoy me or work hard to make me feel unhappy. I don’t need things in my life that don’t bring me “joy”, as the infamous Marie Kondo puts it. Here’s to the days when it’s far too hot to be out-of-doors and active. It will be on those dog days of summer when I open up the file cabinets, drawers and closets then get rid of all of the crap that has been weighing me down. Do I really need to keep all of the essays, notes and thesis research files from the good old days? I don’t think so. And, to be honest, I don’t think any of it is relevant, anymore. Goodbye to the Canadian Studies selection of readings. Good riddance to binders full of notes from the Canadian Conservation Institute. Adios to Computing Systems study notes. Do we even have those types of computing systems anymore? I doubt it. I sure I’ll feel the stress draining from my mind as I fill the burn box with useless and long-forgotten computing languages, notes on preserving and documenting artifacts along with copious studies of Catherine Parr Traill’s adventures in Upper Canada. All of that stuff is available on the “inter webs” if I chose to spend too much of my precious time reminiscing about my days as a student.
Balance. That’s the ticket. I’m all about the balance now. It might look a lot like a healthy lifestyle lightly sprinkled with treats. It might look like treats lightly sprinkled with a healthy lifestyle. It’s all a crapshoot. But I won’t be up to my hips in crap while I’m enjoying it.
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