It's my Saturday

I decided to do the week's fieldwork tomorrow. (Two days in a row probably don't give as much useful data as spreading the sampling times out - so, darn it, I probably SHOULD go out on Tuesday afternoon and at least do the observing-thing.)

I have a little stuff to do - grades to post, some prep to do for Monday's lab, and I have a textbook chapter to work on reviewing. I do earn some bucks for this, which I always consider to be "mad money" that I can spend on whatever - because it's money I'm earning outside of my regular budget.

No, I am not going to buy still more yarn! (That said - the big clear storage bag of sockyarn at least gave me something to look at and contemplate while working out this morning. I find the time goes faster while I plan projects). I might get one of these. I've always liked that phrase - that reminder to take a breath, let it out, that things can't possibly be as bad as you think. (There's also a nice bracelet (And hmmm, that one is considerably less expensive than the one I saw in a catalog somewhere....) I really kind of wanted the bracelet, but the catalog I saw it in, it was like $130 and I balked at that....also, I might be more likely to wear a pendant than a bracelet - I have a few bracelets I seldom wear because they get in the way when I am teaching or doing research.

At any rate: reminding myself that all shall be well is an important thing.

(The bad news I alluded to yesterday - I think I can reveal it now but some may have guessed: the friend of my family I spoke of last week passed away. I guess the damage from the heart attack was too great. And I was wrong on one count: he had had some prior problems; my mom told me some years back he had had to have a stent put in. But still. He wasn't a terribly old man, and as my mother said: "It's hard because he was always so full of life." I suppose those sudden breaks are easier on the person suffering them but I think they are harder on the people left behind because you don't get a chance to rearrange your thoughts about the world until suddenly that person is gone - I mean, with someone who has an illness or a condition, or who is way up in years, you kind of KNOW you're going to have to say goodbye soon....

And this kind of thing always raises a strange dichotomy in my mind. While I don't really have a family history of heart disease (on my mom's side, they all live way up into their 90s or low 100s, and then usually die of cancer or "old age;" on my dad's side, up until his generation they all were smokers and died of smoking-related diseases so I don't know what the potential lifespan there is), still: life is short. And bad stuff can happen suddenly.

And sitting down to my salad and red cabbage and green beans last night, I thought about that dichotomy that comes up in my mind:

1. Life is short; do what you can to try to prolong it (hence, the mass quantities of plain vegetables, hence the hour (or at least aspiring to an hour) of working out every day)

2. Life is short, you should enjoy yourself a little (To be brutally honest? I really don't like vegetables all that much, a diet that is 50% to 75% percent vegetables by volume gets enormously tedious, and there are a number of things I would RATHER be eating.) It's been a couple months since I had ice cream, now that I think about it. (I'm trying to reduce, once again. It's the same stupid old thing: I have an appointment in August and I want to be the "good little patient" by having all my vitals looking "better" than what they were previously. Also she may send me in for another round of bloodwork; I don't know how often she wants to check the numbers)

And I don't know how to balance those two, because I tend to fall into an all-or-nothing thinking camp. I do need to do "big" grocery shopping (i.e., going to the Kroger today) so I think I will stop at the Panera - their salads (yes, I know, more vegetables, but at least they're not ones I have to chop up myself) are good and I can get them low enough in sodium for me. And I have one of their loyalty cards and I have a "free" pastry with purchase on the card, so maybe I'll get a bear claw or something.

(I know some people have recently begun resisting the loyalty cards, realizing it's a way for businesses to gather data on a person. Eh, meh. If my using my Kroger's discount card to buy mass quantities of low-sodium canned goods makes that particular Kroger more likely to continue to stock them, that's of value to me. And it's not like I buy anything particularly embarrassing....)

I might also go to the Green Market - apparently they expanded into the old JoAnn's space, so they should have more stuff. It's possible they might even have some low-sodium things the ordinary groceries don't carry. 

(Also on the subject of "big" grocery shopping - a Brookshires store recently opened in Pottsboro. I keep thinking of going and trying shopping there, except that's a bit farther. But on the news last night it was suggested that one was going to be built in Sherman. Oh, I hope so. It will be nice to have another shopping choice. They said on the news Brookshires' was "upscale" but I don't even know what that means....I used to think Schnucks' were upscale but the ones in my parents town are looking a lot more downmarket - actually, rather like the old "warehouse stores" that used to exist when I was a kid -  of late. Or maybe the "new normal" is "upscale means you don't have to bag your own groceries and use a self-serve checkout." )