Pita Pita Pita

As I alluded to in yesterday's post, I had some fun in the kitchen last night and made something from scratch that I always wanted to try:  Pita Bread!

I used the recipe from The Mediterranean Dish website, and it was very easy.  I used the oven method, and they were delicious.  Our oven is a bit old so I added on some oven time after the first one, which is something I have to do with most recipes.

And yes, deviating from traditional Mediterranean fare, I had my first one with peanut butter! 🤣

The entire day was wonderful, actually.  I finally took in some clothes  to a tailor that I have wanted to repair for YEARS, had a great workout at the gym, steamed snow crab legs for dinner with my love and his son (and of course clarified the butter for dipping), and then tried my hand at the pita bread after we all chatted and listened to music after our meal.  A solid day.

The spouts are coming along very nicely as well, and I think this picture of them is very cool as you can see the baby sprouts just starting to poke out.  These are broccoli seeds, and each one is about the size of a medium pin head.  Hopefully I can start eating them in a couple of days!

Off to get dinner on the table!

Pacing Myself

My work days were between nine and ten hours long, and I rarely had the energy to tackle my every-growing 'To Do' and 'Want To Do' lists.  With that time freed up, I felt compelled to start filling it with all of those things and more.  However, cramming in tasks each day is not how I am going to find balance in my life, so I implemented a system where I outline six things I would like to focus on each day.  Most of them are the non-negotiable routine tasks, but I do try to add one task away from home and another which within or related to our home.

Yesterday's were pretty basic since I am still building a daily routine:

1. Exercise (daily)
2. Meditate (daily)
3. Take Blood Pressure (daily)
4. Close Joint Checking Account at Bank
5. List One Item on eBay
6. Start Sprouting

The last one was the fun one!  I love to eat sprouts on sandwiches and in salads, but they are either very hard to find at the store or are VERY expensive and expire quickly.  So I bought myself a gadget last Christmas to grow them at home and, of course, it has sat in my kitchen cabinet until now. You can click on the picture below to read all about it.

Yesterday, I took it (and the broccoli seeds I bought to use in it) out of the cabinet, read the instructions, watched a quick video, and got to making my first batch of sprouts.  It took all of two minutes to start them soaking, and they should be ready to eat in about 2 days!  The hardest part of the whole thing is remembering to rinse the seeds every twelve hours, so I have a repeating alarm set on my phone to remind me at 8:00 am and 8:00 pm.  I'm not sure why I waited so long... it just seemed so daunting to try to start... but all I needed was ten minutes to orient myself and get it all started.  I noticed that some of the seeds have already started to show teeny tiny sprouts this afternoon, so I am on my way and will post some photos when they are ready.

I Can Do Scary Things

Last Friday, I walked away from a successful career which I have spent the last 30 years building.  I put myself and my health first, and took a career break.  I have no idea what will be waiting for me professionally on the other side of this break, but that does not concern me right now.

While my career may have taken off, my life had fallen to pieces.  My weight soared, my blood pressure followed that same upward trajectory, and my health was starting to crumble in front of my eyes.  The money I was making was no longer worth the trade off, so I left in order to spend the rest of this year focusing on my health and happiness.

I am blessed to have saved up some money which allows me to continue paying both my daughter's college costs as well as our health insurance during this break.  I am also blessed to have a partner who is willing to cover our household costs for the rest of the year by himself so that I can undertake this endeavor.  I have never been in a position to do this before, especially since I have been a single mother for the last 17 years.   I am thankful for this every single day, and am not going to squander this opportunity. 

I took time over the weekend to regroup and determine my plan for this week.  I was also recovering after surgery last Tuesday, and wanted to make sure I was rested and firmly on the path to healing.

Flashback to last February:  I went for a physical for the first time in seven (!!!) years, and found out that I was not in a good place health-wise.  I immediately started to change the way that I ate, and worked to carve out 15 to 20 minutes each day to do a Walk at Home video on YouTube whenever I could manage a break from work.  I also started tracking my food intake with the Lose It app on my phone.  

That first appointment led to several others, mostly for testing, and I discovered that I had to have surgery to resolve an urgent issue.  About a week and a half before my surgery, I started to struggle with heart rate surges, lightheadedness and dizziness, and chest pain.  It put a damper on the workouts, but I kept on with healthy eating and food tracking, and was able to lose 10 pounds from my February 16 physical to the March 29 surgery.  After the surgery, I worked to nourish myself, finish off my last few days at my previous job, and mentally prepare for my career break.

Yesterday was the start of my journey back to myself... the healthy person that I took for granted, the slim and fit person that I neglected to care for in lieu of work, and the happy person I buried under job responsibilities and relationships that drained me.  It is a slow journey, and I started it with a step on the track... which turned into 2 miles worth of steps as well as dipping my toe back into strength training with very light weight settings on the leg machines.

Although the impetus for all of this is physical, the real work is also going to be inside of myself.  Figuring out who I am without my job title, without my income... determining what really makes me happy and what I want my life to look like on the other side of this break.  That's the scary part of this for me, because I feel like I have lost my identity these past fifteen years and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.  So I am writing it all down here, the physical transformation aspects as well as the deeper ones.  We will see where it takes me.