Blog Babble

As my wellness habits become more routine, I’m finding straying from the essentials affects me quickly.  Sleep is one of the most important things to prioritize for your health—both body and mind.  I had terrible sleep habits.  I barely slept at night and basically just took sporadic naps.  I put a lot of work into fixing those habits over the past year.  It wasn’t the first thing I changed but it quickly took precedents over everything.  I knew going into this week that my routine was going to be disrupted.  Several late nights and early mornings meant my sleep was going to take a hit.  This morning I woke feeling out of sorts.  I didn’t make time to go down to the river for my morning coffee.  I wasn’t in the mood for a meditation practice.  And it snowballed from there.  I felt tired and maybe a wee bit cranky…not my usual mood in the morning these days.  I sent some grumpy woe is me texts to the family chat.  It was not a sympathetic audience.  They gleefully took the opportunity for some deserved payback snark. The family morning tormentor became the tormented. 

At that point, faced with an annoyingly chipper family chat taking delight in my misery, I made the only choice I could—yup, broke out the rainbow toe socks.  It is hard to be in a bad mood while sporting rainbow toe socks. 

I kind of missed not doing my morning meditation but I still wasn’t really feeling it.  I recently began experimenting with sage.  I find it very relaxing and mood lifting.  So, I grabbed my sage smudging kit and got a great smoke going and just sat quietly letting it do its thing.  I’m lucky to have a beautiful view of the river from my apartment so as the sage smoke danced about, I watched the ripples the river made from the passing ferries. Instant mood readjustment.  There is just something so soothing about the water and just an appreciation of something vast beyond us—it is mesmerizing.

Simple as that—my mood went from cranky to gratitude and this quiet calm to replace the tired.  I believe in hedging my bets, so I put some frankincense and lime in the diffuser to make sure that calm stuck around.  Then, my sister texted me. I assume she wanted to bond in shared misery complaining about her morning and missing breakfast for a work meeting.  Being the supportive sister I am, I informed her about my successful mood adjustment and in true sisterly fashion taunted her with the cozy bowl of soup I was now going to make myself.  (Payback snark is a family creed) You may think this is a post about mood adjustment and healthy ways to get yourself out of that pit.  It is not.  This is a cautionary tale about how sending mean snarky vibes at your sister will create some bad cosmic payback your way. 

I hit send on my text and happily went to go make some yummy soup.  I could smell the sage still surrounding me and on my way to the kitchen the frankincense and lime permeated the air.  Today was turning out much better than the morning foretold.  I was feeling so high from my successful use of all my tools I’ve been developing to keep me in that good headspace that I decided to tackle the dishes.  For anyone who knows me this is significant.  I hate doing dishes.  Lucky me, I live with someone who finds doing dishes relaxing—just one of the many odd things I learned about my husband after 20 some-odd years of marriage.  I now take full advantage of being a supportive wife and leaving him relaxing opportunities (read: dirty dishes) I got the pots washed, the dishes in the dishwasher.  Delicious creamy mushroom bone broth soup heating up on the stove.  And then it happened…

I stepped my happy rainbow covered toes in a puddle.  Hmmm…I’m thinking to myself…this is why I don’t do dishes.  Larry always complains I make a mess and get more water on me and the floor then I use on the dishes.  But this was a big spreading puddle.  And as I tried to dry it up it seemed to keep flowing.  I debated the wisdom of opening the cabinet under the sink to see where this little waterfall flowing under the door was coming from.  The debate went something like this:  if I open it I will have to deal with what is behind the door…maybe it will stop and I can just have Larry take a look when he gets home…but what if the waterfall keeps flowing…with my luck I’ll flood the neighbor’s downstairs apartment…shit…I gotta go in…

It was a bad choice.  Well…not for my neighbor.  But for me, it was not good.  There was like ¼ inch of water sitting in the cabinet and it was continuing to flow outward.  Good thing I’ve been working on my resting squat position because I was going to be in that position for a long time cleaning out everything in there and trying to squeegee out the water.  Remember earlier I mentioned how much I love water…yeah that didn’t include yucky drippy pipe water.  Turns out it wasn’t just a leak.  The pipe literally corroded strait through and water flowed freely from the hole.  And no, I didn’t leave the faucet on.  I’m not that useless.  But I did dump a pan of water into the sink.  Because yes, I am that much of an idiot. (insert facepalm here) 

The good thing about selling your worldly possessions and moving out of the suburbs to apartment dwelling.  Maintenance!  We have the best crew here and they came up immediately and replaced my waterfall pipe with a shiny new one.  As I sit here blasting some hard rock music (Because yeah, some mood issues can’t be fixed with sage. Sometimes you must go hardcore and choose the angry hard rock outlet) and eating my now cold soup, I contemplate my morning experience…

I think the first takeaway is don’t be mean to your sister because she is clearly in touch with her evil side and cursed me because I mocked her missing out on breakfast and having to eat a corn muffin while on her conference call.  I need to find other outlets for a mood boost when I’m feeling cranky that do not include finding joy in my sister’s muffin misery…sigh. 

The second takeaway:  Don’t let your mood dictate your whole day.  Find something to change your path…just not the sibling tormentor route clearly.  Even little things to make you get that moment and a chance to just breathe.  Bad moods are normal…but you can choose to hold tight to that feeling or to let it go and not let it mark your whole day.