Ended up having a long conversation with Kevin last night — it was good. We need to make more time for that; it’s one of the things that grounds me. He was saying that I seemed different, for some of the last few years — more anxious, more frantic.
We think it was mostly a pandemic effect; he says I seem more like myself these days. It’s funny, he wasn’t that affected by the pandemic, I think, but I clearly was. Stressed, depressed, anxious (not really for myself or my own health, but for everyone else), the works.
Hopefully we’ll all come back to ourselves soon.
*****
At least I know what I need to come back to myself. There’s a short list of things that are always centering for me:
• exercising daily, ideally early in the day
• eating tasty (but healthy) meals regularly
• gardening a little (even if it’s just 15 minutes of gathering flowers and putting a vase together, like this morning)
• writing something (even if it’s just a FB post)
• snuggling with him and the kids
• talking to him
He’s so calm. There’s a line in one of the Vorkosigan books, when Miles is talking about Ekaterin, and says she’s calm like a lake, and he could swim in that calmness. Miles is a little frenetic, like me.
I’m Miles in this story. Kevin is my lake.
*****
Plan for today — watch the new episode of Shetland while eating breakfast (oatmeal with cinnamon, jaggery, and sliced banana, very autumn), exercise, do dishes and maybe make a chicken curry, have lunch with Sunil, who’s visiting Chicagoland, Zoom therapy, and then the cleaners come, so I think I’m going to go out to the shed and try to get some writing done this afternoon.
Oh, and read and make comments on my classmates’ scripts — screenwriting class tonight. Should be a good, calm day. Lakes of calm. Oceans of calm. 
*****
Today’s oatmeal: take 1/3 c. rolled or old-fashioned oats, combine with 1/3 c. milk and a generous pinch of salt. Microwave about 2 minutes. Add one sliced banana, sprinkle of cinnamon, sprinkle of jaggery. Enjoy. (300 calories, if you’re counting, and a heart-healthy meal).
Early autumn bouquet: Russian sage, various asters, mums, sedum, white hollyhock, roses, foxglove, dahlias, salvia Amistad.
