Power, Presence

My Unfortunate Healthy Habits Hiatus

July 8, 2023

On our most recent road trip we ate our way through most of this Costco sized bag of potato chips and completely finished the Costco bag of Skinny Pop Popcorn. And that wasn’t all we ate…

I am just realizing something.

When my daughter is home (because she is an an adult kind of person now, and has a life outside of our home), I often bail on my healthy habits. Not that I always follow through on these anyway. Just that when she is here, I do worse than normal.

For example?

I eat things that I normally don’t eat.

Yesterday, we picked her up at the Reno airport, which is about 70 miles from our house. She graduated from college a week ago and is officially finished with life in Los Angeles, for now at least. So to celebrate her arrival, we ate lunch at the Habit, one of our favorite hamburger places (because they have both spicy tempura green beans and burgers with grilled onions.) I didn’t feel too bad about that. I had my burger lettuce wrapped to cut down on the carbs, and limited myself to only a few string beans. But when we stopped for gas at the 7-11, I got a Big Gulp of Diet Doctor Pepper. And a bag of barbeque potato chips.

I drank soda and ate barbeque chips all the way home.

I justify this by saying that it is necessary to have snacks on a road trip, and even though a 70 mile drive home isn’t much of a road trip, it’s still a little one.

We had Costco microwave popcorn for dinner.

I ate an entire bag by myself.

Also when she is home, I do not want to do any work.

Not even the kinds of work that I generally enjoy or that need to be done.

I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to start organizing her many wonderful belongings that have just moved back into the house. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to work on my book. I don’t want to weed the garden or tend the blackberries. I definitely do not want to worry about cooking any kind of healthy from scratch kind of meal.

I want to sit on the couch with her and my son and watch Netflix.

Maybe it is not a terrible thing to ease up a little on the self-judgment. To give myself a little extra grace. These last few weeks have been momentous in many ways. I am still trying to take it all in. The death of a loved one. Two graduations. My daughter’s newly arrived possessions that need to be resettled into our home and that are currently taking up space on the floor and kitchen table and bathroom counter and on most other flat surfaces in the house.

Through all of this, the dishes need to be washed, the laundry needs to be put away, the weeds keep growing.

Diet soda and Netflix rom-coms are not going to solve any of my problems. They will not heal anything. But maybe they are not so terrible for me, as long as they are occasional and do not become new habits.

So I think I’ll head out now for a little walk. Walks are great perspective bringers (and a daily walk is a healthy habit for sure). It also will help the chips and popcorn settle in my stomach. With any luck, the perspective it brings will enable me to steer clear of the ice cream in the freezer once I get home.

Daily Grace, Presence

Graduation Day

June 24, 2023

(Written a week ago on the morning of my daughter’s college graduation day)

Today is “Eat a Donut Day.” (Because my daughter works at a donut shop and donuts are free! And since it will be our first stop this morning, as we are in town for her college graduation, we can also have her make us fancy donut shop coffee and matcha drinks.) She will show off her barista skills, which is especially impressive, since when she left for college she didn’t like coffee at all. Now she both drinks it and knows how to make it. Of course she is not working this morning, since it is graduation day and all. But we can stop by and say hello to her coworkers who are friends and enjoy a donuty breakfast and watch her run the espresso machine. 

Today is “Spend More Money Than You Normally Would on Sunday Lunch” day (because it will be a major celebratory luncheon, the kind that doesn’t happen very often.)

Today is a day when we woke up in an Airbnb that felt like a posh hotel room. It is the opposite of the last Airbnb that we stayed at, the one in Lompoc where I woke up around midnight to the sonic boom of a SpaceX rocket launch. That one shared a bathroom with other guests and had additional rooms rented out, including one to folks who arrived in the wee hours of the morning (possibly because they were out watching the failed rocket launch), guests who snored loudly enough to be heard in our room down the hall.

The backyard of our Airbnb. We didn’t have a chance to use the putting green…

This Airbnb has its own bathroom, a separate private entrance, is in a neighborhood up in the hills that I could never afford to live in, and is run by a host who provided snacks, bottled water, a kettle for tea along with green tea bags, and shampoo (in case you forgot yours).

I was grateful to find this Airbnb because it was relatively affordable (Sure, it is a 40-minute drive from UCLA, but it cost a fraction of what lodging near the university was running).

Today, my daughter graduates from UCLA with a degree in Environmental Science, along with two minors: one in Conservation Biology, the other in Community Engagement and Social Change.

Her roommate of two years graduated yesterday. (UCLA has their department graduations on different days) and is moving out today. My daughter will be staying in her apartment a few more days, but we are hoping to get most of her belongings into our car after the ceremony to start the process of moving her home.

Not that she is actually moving home. Our home for now is going to be the place where she keeps her stuff while she’s off doing other things. First up? An internship this summer where she will study butterflies and do research with scientists  from the University of Washington. 

After that?

Who knows? There are other internships she is applying for, and then ultimately she’d like to go to graduate school to get a PhD.

A PhD?

Who knew that you could go straight into a PhD program without getting a pesky Master’s Degree first? I didn’t.

It’s a donut day. A sweet day. A day of celebration. But also a day of endings, of transition, of change. Of moving! Of packing and loading the car and loading up memories. It’s a day when I want to be present for every moment. To be grateful that we made the drive down from home yesterday, that the car ran smoothly, that there was virtually no traffic, that I remembered where the cheapest gas was on the I-5. Thankful for Google Maps that got us to UCLA and then to Tacos Tu Madre, a little restaurant where we had breakfast burritos for dinner last night, burritos that were stuffed with scrambled eggs and truffle guacamole. (This thing? This truffle guacamole? It is one of the finest things I have ever tasted. It’s tempting to try to replicate it. But that might spoil it. Truffle guacamole will forever be in my memory as something that we ate in Los Angeles on the night before graduation).

There have been celebrations in the past where I have been so worried about getting the picture right, the video right, that I missed what was going on right in front of me. So. No worries today about getting the video, the picture, the forever image of her walking across the stage to receive her degree. Don’t need to do that. I will watch. I will watch and keep it safe in my heart.