Marsia's Diary

I'm back to intermittent fasting, and it feels good. The bad cravings went away finally!

It rained hard last night. We were at a cafe studying because the improv troupe meets at our house Mondays and had to use the blankets in the car to cover ourselves to get from the car to the house. It hasn't rained this late in the spring here in years. It's wonderful and the garden is smiling a big green smile!

Today I plant some things in big pots and plan for our Hawaii trip. I'm having a good time finding hikes my mom is capable of going on. That way there is a goal for her to achieve and I can get her back to the gym. She did well on our walks this weekend. She can handle a lot more uneven ground than she used to, and even braved a trail by the cliffs with me holding her arm.

I'm going to make a lot of food in batches so I have time to garden and get caught up on things for myself like sorting through my books and I am determined to get things more under control so I have time and energy to sketch at the very least. Been meditating a lot, and feel a lot more grounded and content. It helps so much. Time to go do that actually!
 
You sound so happy and on top of things, it´s lovely!
 
Bought a lot of veggies and made Thai chicken soup with lots of cabbage and mushrooms and ginger, and a cauliflower and broccoli with cheese sauce dish (so the veggie haters will eat it). Made a big batch of roasted peppers for convenience, too. It's raining again and I am making creme brule - keto version - when we get back from my mom's physical therapy. I added more reps to some of the resistance stuff I am doing and can hold squats a lot better now. Also added skip rope, which I love doing. Nice mellow day cooking and watching all the beautiful rain come down.
 
I've been scrubbing flower pots for transplanting house plants and cooking a lot. Am almost down to my low weight again. Got in an argument with J, and don't understand how that happened. I am feeling sorry for myself about how different we both are. I think I just need to do my own thing for a while and get a break from trying to figure out how to adjust to the differences. A friend invited me to the city to go to museums together but I am not feeling like it because I am still upset from fighting, so took a rain check. I am having a really productive time making more flower beds after I rip out ivy, and that is very satisfying.

I am sticking to IF. I took my mom and daughter to a pizza place for dinner past my fast time and only had water and was fine. They have delicious salads there, and I wasn't even tempted, so that's great I am getting under control again. Not much exciting or new going on, but happy about getting my weight under control again!
 
Sorry to hear you´re having a hard time with J. That sucks, especially at a time when you´re trying to get closer. But then (speaking as a never-married outsider) maybe it´s him reacting to your attempts at more closeness?
Being on track with food and feeling happy gardening sounds lovely though!
 
Thanks LaMa. Yes, I think it is him trying to convince me I don't need much attention from him, I should just go off and do my own thing, and I am trying to explain that I am not happy with being this disconnected from a partner. Part of it is that he doesn't have time for himself because he works day and night. It doesn't look like there is much I can do about this, so I am going to just do my own thing because fighting about something he isn't going to change isn't going to work. I need to step back and just get a break from this, I think.

I do feel good getting a lot of stuff accomplished that I have been meaning to do for a while. I actually do think it will be good for me to focus on myself for a while and the things I want to do alone.
 
Marsia said:
I do feel good getting a lot of stuff accomplished that I have been meaning to do for a while. I actually do think it will be good for me to focus on myself for a while and the things I want to do alone.
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Sometimes when you adjust your focus, things just work out for the best. Meanwhile, you'll be doing things that you want to do for yourself. Hang in there, hon. I'm too ill to think straight still, but I can send you a big germ-free hug :grouphug:
 
Hi, sorry I have been a flake lately and neglected writing in everyone's journal lately. Felt a little blue and not able to formulate thoughts lately. But things are getting better. J finally realizes that he needs to put the effort into our relationship and we are listening to a book on tape for time management, one that helped him a lot years ago and that was rewritten for the digital age. We listened to part of it on the way to an improv show in SF. I am feeling much better about us, as he is offering to help with organizing the house. For the past several years I have just been completely stressed out with how much there is to do that only I have the time to do, and I never get caught up on things, to the point where I procrastinate a lot because it all seems overwhelming.

We decided to switch bedrooms because his is much bigger and could be part bedroom and part art studio as there is a loft space (which is just storage now) in his room. Plus there are interior clearstory windows in that bedroom that are supposed to have glass in them, but we never got to it, so I can't cook or clean certain times because that bedroom was also his office, and if I make noise in the adjacent kitchen, I either was waking him up or making his work phone calls that he records not come out because of clanging around in the kitchen. So the years of not being able to use the kitchen about half the time I wanted to were really grating on me (plus I have had to tiptoe around in case he was on the phone with clients and I was making too much noise). We are going to get functional furniture for our new bedrooms, too, and when we are done we should finally have enough storage. It will be in phases though as we just have enough money for vacation coming up, and so we need to save up for the furniture. But we have a plan to make the house functional and not a massive pain in the neck to live in now. The house will still need some things like flashing where a deck joins the house and water leaks into the wall and floods a room, new roofs on my mom's part oft the house, and we need to finish a shed that houses the water heater and things for insurance, but finally the house is getting to the point where we can focus on making it how we want the interior.

I think having a house where I have the space to do art will really help and having it where I am not basically in someone else's office space all day and have to be as quiet as possible will really help things. It feels like it will be a lot more my house, too, now. I realize I adjust too much to what other people want to the point of it being really inconvenient for me.
 
The new bedroom arrangement sounds great! Having your own space for creative endeavors should be lovely and J having peace and quiet for his work without it impinging on your daily routine seems a massive improvement for all concerned.
 
Oh, honey. You don't have to apologise. I'm glad that J is starting to see how important you & your needs are.
Marsia said:
I realize I adjust too much to what other people want to the point of it being really inconvenient for me.
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So many women do this, including me in the past. Want you want & need is equally as important as what anyone else needs & wants :grouphug:
 
Thanks LaMa and Cate! I am feeling a lot more optimistic. It is finally dawning on me that I really do need to take my needs seriously. Took me enough years to realize this!! I'm so happy that J finally is helping me and acknowledging my feelings. I figured out to best put it in the context of how much I care about him and our relationship and how I don't want to give up on it.

I gardened a lot today and there is an area that is a little recycled broken concrete patio that had ivy growing all over it. I took off the ivy and found a bunch of pots the last owners of the house had left there and that I haven't seen in a few years and forgot about. So I have big beautiful pots for transplanting house plants now. Buried treasure! The biggest pot I am going to mosaic with my daughter in a few weeks. I planted a lot more bulbs in my shade garden and when I dug big holes for the gopher cages, found a bunch of beautiful retaining wall rocks buried under the surface of the soil, so got great exercise and a lot more pretty rocks for fixing the massive number of walls that were falling down the hill.

Also I get to design two bedrooms in the house, which is one of my favorite things in the world to do. I may do a murphy bed for J's new bedroom so he can have a big desk in there and still be able to get to it well once the bed is up and out of the way. (He needed a new bed anyway, as he uses the current one to do work in all day and wore out the mattress.) His new bedroom (mine now) a weird little room with lots of jogs in the walls, so extra challenge to get his big desk and a bed in there - I love challenges like this!

Ate well today and got great exercise and stayed in the IF window!
 
Thanks LaMa! I am feeling very happy about finding the really big pots - they are really nice, and would be expensive to buy.

I was so sore today from digging yesterday - legs and back are creaky, and it rained all day. So I cleaned house and started my organizational tasks. Wrote down 3 pages of a to do list and I know there are more things, but this at least gets a lot of it out of my head and on paper so to speak. Researched a lot online for what materials to get for all sorts of things, from fixing up bikes to finding a perfect murphy bed to save up for.

Just made chili with lots of roasted red peppers for dinner and broke my fast to have two bowls of it because I was feeling so hungry. I'll take it easy eating tomorrow. I can go buy more salad greens to go with the big vat of Caesar dressing I made today. I've been drinking lots of bubbly water which helps me keep my fast, so will buy some more when we go shopping.

I haven't had this nice of a spring in so long. It's been alternating very sunny and warm and rainy and mild. The redwood forest looks so happy and all the little leaf buds are coming out on the apple trees and the early deciduous trees. There is a humming bird in the yard who does a long happy whistle at me when he goes by. I wonder if it is the same one who I rescued from the cat a few years ago. When I put him out, he flew on the rim of my hoodie and just rested there a while while my daughter got the camera and took pictures. Tomorrow we go to my mom's physical therapy, so short day, but I'll try to get a lot of gardening done tomorrow and the next day before more rain comes.
 
I just love your description of the day- the forest, the bird....it made me smile. You have such a way with words :)
 
I feel a little like that, too, LaMa! J was asked by a friend if we wanted to rescue 3 mustang horses and their foals. He said "no" but now that got him thinking about how we have the perfect horse property. So I went and got a library book out on caring for horses to dissuade him - so he can see how much work that would be. But while at the library I did pick up some books on homesteading. I wish I were organized enough for some chickens and a beautiful garden. Getting there slowly and do hope we can someday.

Today was rainy and cold so ran errands. I stuck to my fast again and will do the rest of my resistance exercises tonight. Had to hurry to my mom's dentist to get them to send her records to someone who will do root canals and teeth pulling before our vacation. They don't answer their phone in that office, so we went there in person and I picked up some more pellets for the pellet stove while we were in town. She is getting so much worse memory wise and tells me all sorts of completely wrong things about her doctor visits that I went to with her. Also most of her tooth chipped off because her teeth really need pulling and she's been avoiding it. And she needs cataract surgery before the trip. She seems to be falling apart at the seams. I hope she'll be ok by the time of the vacation. I was trying to do one last really nice vacation while she can remember it.

My meditation lately has been making me relax and feel grateful. I resisted breaking my fast today and feel happy. Not much new here. Just pouring over beautiful library gardening books and getting ready for another hard rain tomorrow.
 
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