Snow Day; New Habits

Blustered and stormed like a raging, white bird yesterday. I stand in the kitchen topless, wearing the new pants I altered yesterday. I’m eating golden-sweet chunks of a fresh pineapple that was on sale for $.99. My dear friend bought it for me while we were out at the store.

“Pineapple is a sign of friendship and hospitality,” she told me and gave a silly smile.

My mom used to eat canned pineapple with cottage cheese, and I’m thinking how much better the fresh pineapple will taste with the cottage cheese, and it does. A rare, creamy, tropical treat in the throws of winter. I use the last pineapple wedge to scrape the cream from the bowl, sure to catch every last pre-measured ounce into my mouth. Because I weigh my food, now. Thank Godde it’s working. I’ve lost another 10 pounds.

I have cleavage wrinkles.

This sounds totally silly, but the silliest things can trigger realizations within a woman. I hydrate. I moisturize. And I’ve always looked…like me, I guess.

Every nine years, something about me would morph a bit, but I always accepted it–even welcomed it. My countenance was bold and adult-like at age 19. My cheeks became slimmer and my visage more sophisticated around age 29.

And now, on the threshold of 40, finally finished with a degree, a marriage, and rearing to tell a new story, I look like all the battles have caught up with me at once.

Weight loss is great until you begin to realize what this actually means. It means you’ll walk around like a deflated skin-balloon for a few years until your body figures out where to put everything.

Coming to terms with what “40” means, I worry that my face will slide off my skull. I have cleavage wrinkles.

I can feel myself entering the corridors of Cronehood, and I’m like,

New Habits

During the Thanksgiving holiday, I stuck to my food plan and sat myself down to read (something that I haven’t done since I completed my degree in the spring).

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a very simple, straightforward, useful book. There is absolutely nothing fancy, and really, nothing revelatory about it. However, Clear manages to collect all the right pieces of personal achievement I had been missing. I’ve never needed help with dreaming big and aiming high. I needed to know what to do every day; how to put down strong roots and be grounded.

The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. […] Small habits don’t add up. They compound.”   -Atomic Habits, James Clear (p. 253)

I knew it was simple, and it is. I’m upset that it took me this long to find it.

I had a conversation with my brother about it this week. What is common sense to us may be totally unknown to others. For example, when I was young, our family environment didn’t include basic information our peers were exposed to, including this is how you identify the life you want and how you work to get it. I’ve learned pieces here and there, and I’ve done okay. But ‘Atomic Habits’ feels like I found the golden textbook I’ve been searching for all these years, and I’m really excited to get started.

I wanted one more day off from work to get my space rearranged in a way that supports my new habits. Thank you, Snow Day!

So much to be thankful for.