Day One-hundred-and-ten: Vegetable stew

This title is a direct reference to a vegetable stew I made for dinner. I had carrots. I had potatoes. I have fewer stalks of celery. I had a green pepper that I kept forgetting to put on my salads and used up the last of my lettuce for lunch. I may still have vegetable broth but I used a full container. I cleaned the vegetables, chopped them, and cooked them on low for at least an hour. After my first taste, I read the vegetable broth container and confirmed that in addition to being fat free it was also low sodium, with "no salt added." I didn't add much salt but I did add pepper. Even without onions and garlic, other than what was in the vegetable broth, it tasted fine.

However, this title is also a reference to the kind of day it was, a real mixture. First, I was in bed until almost 8:00 AM, for at least ten hours with a couple of short breaks. Then I did all my exercises rather leisurely, including only going about 2.5 kilometers in 13 minutes instead of the 2.7 or 2.8 I had been pushing my pace to in other days. To make up for it I did struggle to complete all 28 of my "perfect pushups," even if they weren't quite perfectly done.

This was followed by a domestic flurry of vacuuming and dusting. Now, I don't dust often enough to know the actual pace that dust accumulates but it seems that it accumulates faster when I have doors and windows open. It may be just a coincidence that I noticed the dust after I had opened them up for a few days previously because I don't notice any dust outside, unless I'm sneezing.

I also cleaned up the kitchen again. This included running the dishwasher twice. Unfortunately it was not for two loads of dishes. Rather, the soap dispenser failed to open. I checked to make sure and it did open the second time. It's an old dishwasher and it wouldn't kill me not to use it. I only recently started using it again when I stopped cleaning up the kitchen after each meal, or at least once a day. I definitely won't replace it until next summer or later.

I even sat outside for about an hour again. Whether what I'm doing is meditating or not, I don't know. But I am enjoying the quiet time.

This afternoon was so good, Ohio State won, that I forgot to retrieve my mail until well after dinner. I've been summoned for jury duty. What's more, Marilyn was as well. I've already addressed the envelope that "excuses" her but I had to improvise. There is nothing on the form for this situation. Since I had already cried today, I can even look on this with some humor. Maybe the meditation is working.

As for my summons, I've decided to postpone it until next year. I don't want anything to interfere with my first extensive road trip. As a first, it will probably be the most memorable in my Life after Layoff, certainly so if I have to start working again. But I'm still hoping that it will be the just first of many, which can only be the case if I don't work.

In the time before I was actually meditating, I had some truly great thoughts, some of which I remember. Of course, they were the ones that require I do something. Yet more tasks in my long list of things to do. Well, I'm not going to do any of them tonight. Tonight I'm going to see if I can sleep for at least eight hours. I think the key is going to bed early enough. Going to bed late, particularly after watching some late television didn't seem to work.