Snow, seeds, laziness, and perhaps even gluttony

When I woke up and peaked out of the blinds this morning, I almost did a double take when I saw the world was covered in a white blanket again.

By noon it was a full blown snowstorm and the sander was back on the streets spreading sand and gravel in the intersections.

This is week 4 of my three month sabbatical.

I started week 1 of this sabbatical with a real gusto. I mean I was cooking, cleaning, baking, hiking. I was out of my home office and away from my laptop.

Now I’m into week 4. I’m staying up too late. I’m sleeping in. I’m eating too much. I’m watching re-runs. I’m back in my home office. I sat in my desk chair from 4:30pm yesterday until 1:30am this morning with a couple video calls (one with friends, one for a board committee meeting) and then I overhauled a website for a non-profit I volunteer for until the wee hours. Today I spent a few hours switching the theme (look and feel) for this personal blog of mine.

Both projects were long over due, but in no way urgent. I just had a need to be creative and fiddling with a website is an easy outlet for me.

My long walks have been paused for the last couple of days. Partially due to miserable weather. Partly due to me totally overdoing it for the last few weeks and trying to heal up my Achilles. Hopefully not due to laziness, but let’s see how this plays out.

I’m even going to admit that it is starting to feel like a long winter now, and even the hardiest among us is eager for sunshine and warmer days. Facebook is showing me memories from past years where we had already been out for ATV adventures by this time of the year. Just look at how much snow is still in our yard. This is before today’s snow!

As I mentioned previously, I had this goal to work on my fitness during this sabbatical, but this gluttonous eating is out of control, and is surely counterproductive for fitness. Is it from boredom? Stress? Coronavirus? Worry? From reading other people’s blog posts, I’m not alone in this phenomenon.

I want to drive my truck and photograph wildlife and take road trips, but with travel restrictions and flooding rivers and thawing backroads, I can really only drive around town… and to the corner store, where I permit myself to visit once a week, …. to stock up on treats and snacks…. which never last more than a day because OMG there are snacks in the house!

Without being able to carry out so many of the plans I had for my sabbatical, I’m a bit lost and while I want to snuff out laziness, and surely the snacking, I’m also giving myself permission to just kind of feel this out and see what happens when work is put up on a shelf for a few months. I can see now that my frantic baking and over-hiking were a coping mechanism, but I don’t yet know how much of that was for coping with fears of COVID-19 and how much of it was replacing the busyness of my job.

While I’m waiting for the snow to retreat from my gardens, I can garden inside. I wasn’t going to grow anything from seed this spring, because we were supposed to be somewhere in Texas by now on an epic road trip. With our trip cancelled, I started hastily planting seeds in early April, but the soil I used was old and full of some sort of fungus and my paranoia of blastomycosis with having this stinky old soil in the house, led me to toss it all out a week later and start over.

Most of what I planted is a quick and easy herb garden. I have oregano planted, and basil, parsley, sage, arugula, thyme, chives, and rosemary. I’ve also got little tomatoes growing now, and some perennial flowers for my front sidewalk garden.

I love growing things, and watching to see what has sprouted each day. Curiously, arugula germinated by far the fastest this time. Chives and thyme followed. No sign of rosemary or parsley yet. It is pretty cool in the house overnight, but I start a fire in the woodstove every morning for my seeds 🙂 (ok fine, and for me). I’m sure it helps that our daylight hours are already long. The sky isn’t black at midnight already!

You know, I am so fortunate, so so fortunate. I start to think about all the things I can’t do right now. But really, that list is so short and I’m being silly and lazy. I can see how much work used to fill up so much of my waking life, this is an interesting experiment to function without it.

As for more evidence of our great fortune, we ordered a pick up supper from one of our pubs tonight, and they included 3 cookies in our order! ❤️

Yes, we ate them already.

Oh geez, look at the time, it’s already tomorrow. Time to hit Publish and tip toe into my side of the bed. I’ve been sleeping like a champ lately.

Speaking of sleep, if you enjoy listening to podcasts, I highly recommend an episode of Joe Rogan’s show from a couple of years ago with Matthew Walker who is a sleep scientist. It is a fascinating episode about sleep and dreams, the impact of sleeping pills, weed, and alcohol on your sleep, and how much sleep you really need and what happens if you don’t get it:

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker

Wait until you hear the part about how much sleep your surgeon better have had before he slices and dices you! AHHHH!