Wednesday 7 August 2019

"I'll Not Be Working"

Hello from Edinburgh Airport. I am off to the USA for a work retreat, but "I'll not be working" I said to the inquisitive airport official. You need a visa for that. Nobody expect an investigative phone call from me over the next few days. 

It seems a bit unfair as Canadians had Monday as a holiday (as did many Scots, apparently, and my guess is that it was the modern replacement for Lammas Day), and so I didn't work three days in a row, wrote up two stories yesterday, and here am I not working again. 

Still, I have a book to review, so I will be kept busy, and meanwhile it will be nice to have yet another break from The Worst News in the World. Yesterday I went to spin class, barre class and Italian class before plunging into TWNW. Both stories I wrote yesterday were about sexual abuse of minors.

"Is there any pudding?" I asked B.A.

"Are there any ice cream bars left?" asked B.A.

"No," I said guiltily, having eaten the last one during an editorial meeting.

"Well, I'm set because I'll have the chocolate cornflake crispies," said B.A.

"Oh yes," I said. "I meant to tell you about that. I haven't eaten them all, but I ate some...."

Only now do I remember that there are carrot sticks somewhere in the fridge. 

Amazing fact: over the weekend, I did no mindless snacking. And also, I do no mindless snacking when there are no snacks. I still wandered in and out of the kitchen and opened and shut cupboards, but as there were no potential snacks, I did not eat them.  I think about going to Tesco for snacks, and then the snack attack passes. 

This is hard cheese on B.A., who is going to have to take any desired snacks with him to work and then back home again. The other solution is for him not to leave any open snack bags. Due to early childhood training, I have a psychological block against opening snack packages I didn't buy. Although not above raids on the cookie bag, I don't think I ever dared open a new pack.

Meanwhile, I have been practicing conscious interior kindness. Whenever I see a very overweight or obese person, I wonder how many children they have or what stresses they have been under, and then I feel a kind of solidarity with them. This is a great contrast the super-fit days of my late twenties, when I mentally divided women over 40 into two groups: the Hockey Moms (short hair, pudgy) and the Glamour Queens (dressed to the nines). Naturally, I wanted to be a Glamour Queen, which was shallow. That said, I don't think the ballerinas on the stationary bikes around me are shallow: I just think they are young and keen. Thus I feel a solidarity with them also, for I was once myself young and keen. 

It helps that my spinning class instructors yell a lot of encouragement including the message that There Is No Judgement in this  Room!

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