Sunday in the Park with Ru

 

This is my soul food. Sitting on a park bench, overlooking snow-capped mountains and a tranquil ocean, listening to birdsong on the breeze that stirs my hair, scenting the sea in each conscious breath. I am warm in the sun and caressed by the wind, connected at once to the earth and the divine, a tiny (but significant) part of a greater whole.

Sometimes I’m too restless to sit, so I walk among the trees. It’s a different kind of soul food in the forest. While the infinite horizon and big sky are cleansing, the forest is nurturing and intimate. Tender in a manner that eludes even a calm day by the water. I feel present and presence, as if the trees themselves are welcoming me into their company. Whether I’m by the ocean or in the woods, I always emerge from the park with a renewed sense of strength, hope and peace of mind.

It’s become a weekly ritual. Ter drops me on Sunday morning and I spend some time feeding my soul. It’s been sunny through most of May, but this morning I woke to clouds and a damp chill in the air. I’d planned to bring the Canon this week, so when Ter asked if I still wanted to go, I said why not? No rain was predicted and my camera has a “cloudy day” setting. I put on my hoodie and off we went.

I sat for a while by the water, marvelling at the mirror surface of an ocean that’s rarely so still. There was no wind to speak of, though the birds across the cove were almost hysterical in making such a racket that meditation was darned near impossible. I spied an eagle cruising close to their trees—didn’t get a photo, but concluded that warning shots were being fired in defence of offspring. Nature isn’t always benign and peaceful.

When the not-predicted rain started to sprinkle, I left the open ocean for the shelter of the wood. I have to say, the woods might be my favourite place on a damp day; the foliage is lush and the scent intoxicating, not to mention that wondrous sense of being alive within a living entity. It’s utterly remarkable. Anyway, I wandered the trails and took a bunch of photos, particularly fascinated by the tiny bursts of colour amid the omnipresent green, until my phone binked to advise that Ter was on her way. By then I had hiked around the park’s perimeter, even finding myself on the street when the trail I was on took me between residential properties.

“Did you have a good time?” Ter asked when I got into the car.

“Yep,” I replied. “Time for tea!”

Because the best thing about this cloudy chilly sprinkly Sunday in the park was knowing that a warm, dry home awaited when I was done.

With love and gratitude,

Soul Food?

 

Quitting sugar is a bit like quitting booze. It can be awkward in a social situation. My office tea buddy is a treat freak who can rationalize herself into committing any form of dietary misdemeanour. “I’ve earned it” or “I deserve it” are two of her favourites, and she is notorious – or was, in the before times – for enticing co-workers with bowls of chips, boxes of cookies, and plates of gourmet doughnuts cut into bite-sized pieces (aka “quarters”). She’d often IM me with alluring details of a new chocolate bar she discovered at lunch, ending with a coy “Want some?” that I rarely resisted.

In truth, my powers of resistance are stronger than everything except my desire to please, so when the offer of some new sugary discovery was extended, I accepted to be polite. I do hate to disappoint people.

Still, when I recently told her that I’m off sugar for health reasons, she made all the right supportive noises before she said, “Well, the time will come when you have to surrender—just once—for the sake of your soul.”

Treats are comfort food, and comfort food is comforting for a reason. It’s emotionally gratifying. Soul food, as it were, being good for your soul because it feels good, period.

Oh, but wait a minute. As I understand it, my soul resides in but is not part of the compostable container. Being the spark of divinity that binds me to the Universe and all living things, it’s the one thing I will take with me when I leave. My soul needs attention, sure, but not in the form of food. It needs no physical nourishment. It certainly isn’t prone to sugar cravings that will wreck my mind and my body for hours after a treat is consumed in seconds. It just isn’t.

What is, however, is the sneaky little part of my brain that resides just out of sight behind my ears. Known to neurologists as the amygdale, it’s been described by one expert as “the toddler in the room” where demands, tantrums, addictions, and primal emotions like fear and anger reside. It’s the part of my makeup that claims comfort from food and will say anything to get it. Including “I’ve earned this”, “I deserve this”, or “My soul needs this”.

Clever, eh? How it uses first-person logic to negotiate and get its way? It actually tries to trick me into believing that a brownie will make me feel better when in truth that brownie will a) not taste as good as I remember and b) make me sluggish and crabby for the rest of the day. Why would my soul want to feel like crap? Well, it doesn’t. My soul knows what’s good for me and my body, and my prefrontal cortex (aka “the parent in the room”) concurs. It’s the voice that says,

“Away with you, Princess Amygdale. You’re busted.”

Poke Check

 

These days, people sound like kids trick or treating on Hallowe’en night:

“I got Pfizer.”

“I got Moderna”

“I got AstraZeneca.”

“I got a rock.”

Now that the greater number of people I know have had their first dose of vaccine, the subject has changed though the format is the same:

“I got a headache.”

“I had nausea.”

“I was super-fatigued.”

“I got a rock.”

I’m not anti-vaccine by any means. I’m more “pro-healthy immune system”. I was also somewhat concerned that being vaccinated might worsen my current auto-immune issue, my logic being that rubella caused my rheumatoid arthritis when I was a kid, and the homeopathic flu program in 2016 ignited whatever it is I’ve been dealing with ever since. Not to mention some distrust of a vaccine so new in its development that the potential for serious side effects down the road cannot be predicted. Call me old school; I wasn’t buying it.

The Universe has a clever way of coaxing me into changing my mind. It takes its time, dropping breadcrumbs designed to present another point of view and I, being a perceiving type who tries to keep an open mind, will often consider new information before adjusting—or not—my original opinion.

When Ter eventually decided to get the jab, I supported her because she felt it was important that one of us “take it for the team”, and her immune system isn’t fighting an ongoing battle like mine. Once she made her appointment, however, I began to wonder at the wisdom of relying on herd immunity as my protection against contracting COVID-19. For one thing, I know a couple of people with auto-immune conditions who’ve had their first dose and suffered nothing more than a sore arm and a day or two of feeling slightly under the weather.

Then, during an email thread on another subject, my siblings each mentioned having received their first dose. I explained my rationale for not being vaccinated, whereupon my older older brother metaphorically took me aside and suggested that I might be misinformed. Neither Pfizer nor Moderna contains the coronavirus, and while he respected the logic behind my decision, he hoped I might reconsider given this information.

At this point, I asked Ter what she thought about me being jabbed despite our earlier agreement. She replied that she’d been rethinking the plan but hadn’t known how to broach it with me—so thank you, older older brother, for opening the door to that conversation.

It also helped to remind myself that new technology is as much a miracle as an untried property, and since I live in a loving, friendly and generous Universe, why not accept the vaccine as a miracle and trust that I would be safe? That sealed the deal.

I had my first dose of Moderna on May 21. When I told the nurse (Michaela—she was great) that I had RA, she said I might have some joint pain after the shot, but it wasn’t likely to be severe. Within minutes, I was getting what felt like tiny carpet shocks in my left hip—most strange. It didn’t last long, but during the next thirty-six hours, a weird little zitzit struck random joints without developing into anything more sinister. Otherwise and so far, I’ve skipped the headache but not the nausea, slept like a super-predator for 16 hours a day, and had a touch of vertigo if I move my head too fast. In other words, nothing much different from the usual!

In fact, I now harbour the wild idea that the vaccine might cure my present condition ...

Food Porn XIII

"Chovocado Pudding"

The pursuit of drug-free pain management continues. I stopped taking Aleve every other night after a scary bout of what might have been food poisoning but also checked every box for overuse of non-prescription meds. I don’t even take it occasionally, anymore. Once bitten, you know.

But once bitten, what was the alternative to my little blue pill? Once again, I looked to my diet. COVID restrictions have helped in one area: “take out” means more than a bacon cheeseburger for pickup. Now it means “prepare to be taken out for a day after eating take out”. It’s amazing how quickly my body responds to inflammatory foods, and tasty as that burger may be, it’s also loaded with salt, fat, dairy, and whatever the steer was fed before it became a beef patty. I’m basically shrink-wrapped for twenty-four hours after consuming one.

I also live with a food narc. Ter is a strong believer in food as medicine; she has a ton of books on the subject and has made it her personal mission to feed me all the right stuff. But she can’t control what I choose to consume on my own watch.

So on the morning when I announced I was giving up sugar, she almost wept with relief. The preceding few weeks had been fraught with pain, frustration, and desperation as my symptoms worsened and I stubbornly continued to ignore my inner voice. In fact, I had almost defiantly begun hoarding treats: muffins, cookies, granola bars, candy, chocolate – if sugar was the primary ingredient, I bought it. Finally, after a particularly rough weekend, I surrendered. Consulting one of Ter’s anti-inflammatory books, I determined that honey and maple syrup could stay on the list, but everything else had to go. No sugar? No problem.

And so to the “food porn” part of this post. I would never in a million years have imagined that a phenomenal chocolate pudding could result from five ingredients that exclude milk, cream, melted chocolate, sugar, or any of the other items on my verboten foods list. But it can, and it does:

One ripe avocado

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

2.5 to 3 tablespoons maple syrup

Pinch of salt

¼ to 1/3 cup almond or coconut milk (your preference)

Put everything into a food processor and blitz until smooth and creamy. (Note: the amount of almond milk depends on the size of the avocado and how creamy you like your pud.) Refrigerate for a couple of hours – it’s really good cold – and enjoy within a few days. Word is that it spoils fairly quickly, but mine has never lasted that long.

I dare yours to do the same.

COVID Hockey

 

Elliot comforts Basher (again)

Basher may be distraught, but I’m not. Not really. The Flyers didn’t make the playoffs (again) this year. The usual suspects – weak defence, iffy goaltending – are to blame; that, and too little production from the top guns. I think Jake Voracek was the team points leader and he didn’t hit double digits in the goal count. Same with Captain Claude ... but overall, I’m willing to blame the oddball circumstances of playing pro sports during a global pandemic. Momentum was broken by COVID delays as much as by injuries and consistently slow starts. Rarely did we score first, and while the boys were fully capable of coming back from a deficit, I don’t know how often (if at all) they actually held a lead straight out of the gate. Every first period I saw was a prime opportunity for the opposition to pounce as Philly spent twenty minutes getting their act together. Second and third periods were generally better.

I could speak more knowledgably if I subscribed to the NHL channel. Cardigan and Ter would be tormented with non-stop Flyer games, but I’d have a better idea of what went wrong if I’d seen every one. This year, Canadian fans of US teams were kinda cursed, though I must admit the revised format of a team playing within its own division made for some dandy, playoff-type rivalries. Philadelphia is in an ugly division, too. Boston, Washington and the Islanders make for way more swears from my chair, though I like Pittsburgh enough to forgive Sid Crosby for scoring in every game—sometimes twice!

At least I saw some Flyer games, via feeds picked up by Sportsnet from their American counterparts. Yikes, that’s another annoyance – listening to commentaries from the Boston, Washington or Pittsburgh crew. Philadelphia broadcasts must be contracted to a secret society or something, because I have yet to hear the play-by-play from their side. And it can be painful, listening to the man-crushes over players I’d like to slam through the boards. The best US broadcast team came out of Buffalo during back-to-back Sabres games: the guy doing the play by play was genuinely hilarious (opposed to thinking himself genuinely hilarious and being genuinely mistaken). He reminded me of Rod Phillips, who used to call the Oilers’ games in the days when Ter and I listened to them over the computer. Creative play by play is a true art form and Phillips was a master. We still use some of his sayings around the house, most notably the “dastardly defensive breakdown” when something goes awry in the kitchen.

Ah, well. This year’s irregular regular season is done and dusted for my boys. I’ll keep an eye on the playoff standings, and expect Ter and I will watch the finals. All was not lost, either. Cardigan has learned a ton of hockey jargon by osmosis; he and Basher often debated whether to pull the goalie and when, and darned if he didn’t hold his own against Basher’s blunt-edged logic.

He still doesn’t understand icing ... though I’m not sure Basher gets it, either.