Sylvia's Journal

I have gotten into the habit of drinking hot water in the morning, and even all day long. There have been days or even weeks when I didn’t touch coffee or tea. It’s good to know I can easily drop these addictives. I learned to drink hot water from a friend who hails from the Far East.

But this morning I decided I wanted some coffee and picked, from the array of cups for the Keurig machine the Dark Magic. It promised spellbinding complexity and a deep, dark and intense experience…as if I was in the Far East. Given the tasks I am working on it seemed a better choice than the Kenyan AA which promised only sparkling freshness. Despite its promises, the cup of coffee was a ‘meh’ experience, and so I went back to hot water.

Faro gets in hot water all the time, now that he is totally mobile. Our derobed living room has lengthened the time between interventions from one second to ten – when one of us has to get up and take something out of his hands that shouldn’t be there, or drag him back from wherever he is going. He is liquid, like water, or maybe mercury, moving fast over surfaces, easily moving over obstacles now. It’s nice to be a grandparent. I can feel useful (to the exhausted parents) and also withdraw without asking permission when I have enough of this policing.

With Sita, Faro and Jim camping out at our house a lot (because of Sita’s gigs in Boston), Axel has been our designated chief cook and bottle washer. He is getting better at remembering to have a meal ready when I come home, exhausted from 12 hours away from home, filled with office work that is at times creative or dramatic. He made nearly all the recipes from a Weight Watcher’s power foods cookbook, a daily treat with few points. He got it at his weekly weigh-in, where he competes with Gloucester women on how to get the most weight off. He has been doing well, with a few lapses. These lapses come from watching MadMen. The series stimulate the consumption of (strong) alcoholic beverages. We are now in season 4, and that habit is still strong. The formula is: Make sure you always have a bottle of something strong at hand. When there is trouble, a difficult moment or conversation, pour a tumbler, empty it in one gulp, then sigh! At least we are resisting the lighting up. I know from my past (smoking) life that watching such actions make you want to do the same – it is highly contagious.

I am making some progress in my coaching training. The end of the sessions with members of my cohort (3 one hour sessions a week for 12 weeks in a row) is in sight. By the time I depart for Egypt, in two weeks, some of these weekly requirements should be completed, lightening my weekly schedule a bit.