The Cool, Calm, Collected Plan, Day 3

I would call it the CCC Plan, but that sounds oddly like something from the Soviet Union, and while I trend toward being a social democrat, communism is beyond me.

Anyway.

I have a tendency for my brain to yammer in a panicky manner when I'm hungry, or when I'm eating, or after I've finished eating. I'm pretty sure that this harkens back to the ancient childhood/teenagerhood thang where tasty things = sneaking around and hiding it from my father. My adrenaline gets up, and my brain says, essentially, Quick! Before anyone notices! Get the cake! Grab a handful of raisins! Before it's too late! It's stupid, but there it is; it exists, and I just have to deal with it, since ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

So now, I'm bringing in the soothing inner voice: It's all right. It's okay. You're fine. Shhhh, you're fine. It's pretty much a choice between using the soothing voice or spending the next few weeks being very tense. If I am tense, then I feel like this thing is being imposed upon me, and that I'll need to break free by eating vast amounts of chocolate. If I am calm, I won't need that. Ergo, I use the soothing voice. So far, so good.

Saturday, I made hot & sour soup, because when we're sick (and lordy, we both still are) we need hot & sour soup. I have an excellent recipe from a light-Chinese cookbook, and this time through I subbed in a few ingredients since we didn't have the ones I usually use. (What the hell, as long as the basic flavoring ingredients are there, it'll work.) Sunday, I made some scallion pancakes to go with 'em-- just three of them, since we only had a single bunch of scallions-- and woke up my Hub and served him hot & sour soup and scallion pancakes, and he declared he was the happiest man in the world. Roasted some potatoes and packed them up so that we could have a pre-made side dish-- with both of us still sickly, the more pre-made stuff available, the less likely we'll order out. I've broken out the Kathleen Daelmans cookbooks again, and I'm slowly nosing through them. I poached a few chicken breasts last night, shredded them, and packed them up, too. The pre-made plan for tonight is that after dinner, I'll make the soup that'll be our lunch for the week. At some point, I'm thinking that it wouldn't be a bad idea to chop up and frizzle some chicken breasts, then pack them into the freezer, so that I would be able to pull out pre-cooked bits for dinners instead of having to face the thawing/trimming/chopping/cooking process... but really, that's an "if I get around to it" sort of thing. I will not push, I will not obsess. Must relax.

The good news here is that I seem to be oozing back into getting-shit-done mode. I'm trying to stay aware of my headspace while I'm doing it, and if I start getting tense and weird, use the soothing inner voice on myself and relax. Caaaaaalm.

The holiday season is upon us. I am attempting to remain calm about that, although right me and my Hub are in discussions about what to get ourselves as a Christmas present for the household; usually we buy a bunch of gifts, but frankly, this year we can't afford a) buying all that stuff and b) risking the usual "oh, how nice... um, why?" reaction. Also, we haven't felt very holiday-ish yet, since one or both of us has been sick since before Thanksgiving.

Bleah.

Staying calm. Walking very fast on the treadmill in the mornings, which is about all the cardio I can do at the moment with my lungs still screwy. I woke up in the middle of the night with a cramp in my left quad, which hasn't happened in a long time; in retrospect, I suspect that a) I was lying on it funny, and b) when my Hub kicked all his covers off, they landed on me, and I was sweltering-- I remember I was really, really hot and sweaty when I woke up. Bleah. Must stretch more.

Got back to eating breakfast yesterday, stuck with it today. It really does help. Must remember that.

Caaaaalm. Must stay caaaaaaaaaaaaaalm.