Last night I went to bed at two, a little sooner than normal, in order to wake up early this morning to help my friends Todd and Bonnie pack. (They’re getting ready to move.) And whereas I’d hoped to doze right off, I tossed and turned for over two hours. I finally fell asleep about four-thirty. For thirty minutes. (Not funny, Mr. Sandman.) I lay awake until six, at which point I drifted off into blissful sleep. When the alarm went off three hours later, I was like, What the hell? You know how it is when your brain and body are exhausted, the way it takes concentrated effort and three repetitions of The Lord’s Prayer to simply put on your socks. That was me this morning. Foggy. I swear, if someone had seen me stumbling around trying to tie my shoes they would have said, “His cornbread ain’t done in the middle.”
Speaking of bread, Todd and Bonnie provided donuts for breakfast. Oh my gosh, y’all, I only had two (I’m not a complete animal), but they were delicious. This is why one should periodically eat healthy. Sweets taste even sweeter, and whole milk tastes even, um, whole-er when you haven’t had them in a while. Anyway, all of it did the trick, perked me right up. For fifteen minutes. Thankfully, I didn’t have to be fully awake to work, just awake enough to move furniture and bubble wrap a few other things.
Since Todd and Bonnie had invited several friends and relatives to their “packing party,” things went quickly. “Many hands make light work,” Bonnie said. No kidding, we were done in less than three hours–just in time for pizza. That’s how Todd and Bonnie got all of us there, by the way; they promised us carbohydrates for breakfast and lunch (and they delivered).
Confession: I ate four pieces of pizza.
This afternoon my regular gym buddy (my dad) went to work out with my aunt, so after I got home from packing I went by myself. And get this shit. The girl at the front desk, who’s almost always there when I am, greeted me when I walked through the door by saying, “Your father was here earlier!” Oh my gosh, y’all, talk about embarrassing. People are associating us together! (Also, they’re apparently not buying my “he’s my roommate” story.) Anyway, my neck and shoulder have been giving me hell lately, so I didn’t do any upper body work today. Rather, I did knee rehab. My physical therapist cleared me to start using the elliptical machine, so for twenty minutes I pretended I was a gazelle prancing through the grasslands of Africa.
Granted, a gazelle probably wouldn’t grip the stationary handlebars for fear it would fall over, but it probably wouldn’t have broken its knee trying to jump over another gazelle’s head either.
Now it’s nine-thirty, and my brain and body are mush. With any luck, I’ll be in bed and passed out before midnight. All afternoon I’ve been thinking about something my friend Corban, who helped Todd and Bonnie today, said. We were packing an antique rocking chair, and he was really going after the legs with the bubble wrap. He kept going around and around with the stuff. Finally I said, “That should do it,” and he said, “My ‘too much’ gene may have taken over.”
My “too much” gene. Is that perfect, or what? I completely relate to having it. When given a task, I almost always feel like I have to knock it out of the park no matter what. Consequently, I often wear my mind and body down in my attempt to overachieve. Honestly, it’s probably why my neck and shoulder hurt–because I got obsessive, because I did something “too much.” God knows I’ve gained weight in the past not because I ate too much donuts and pizza one day, but because I ate too much donuts and pizza too many days. Too much, too much. So again, this is my reminder to myself to slow down and take the middle path, to trust that moderation can get me where I want to go, to let my “that’s enough, that’s more than enough for now” gene take over.
Surely I have one of those.
Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)
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Allowing someone else to put you down or discourage your dreams is, quite frankly, anything but self-care.
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