Happy Belated Thanksgiving! Another Tip for Shaking the "Blues"

For all my good intentions to write another post sooner than this, well wouldn't ya know, I got sick with a nasty cold right after Thanksgiving. Ugh. As I sit here writing from my bed, I'm feeling somewhat better, but as soon as I think I should get up and catch up on all that has gotten behind this past week, another wave of ick washes over me. Maybe that's psychological, lol.

I hope anyone that might read this had a good one if you celebrate the holiday. I cooked for our little family---my husband, myself, our daughter, grown son and grandson. I worked for three days cooking and was happy to have the leftovers so, at least meals weren't an issue when I was sick. One thing I discovered during the prep of all the traditional fare for my family members, was a recipe for myself, which I guess if you would give a label to is a lacto, ovo, pescatarian *giggle*. (In other words, I try not to eat chicken, pork or beef.) I wanted an entree for myself to go with all the side dish delights. As fate would have it, I ran across this vegetarian meatloaf recipe. I made my own onion soup mix using this onion soup recipe located within the article. The final product was a tad salty for my taste, and I don't know if that's because I substituted my own onion soup recipe or not but overall, taking a bite of "meatloaf" along with some mashed potatoes cut the saltiness and was very good. Next time I think I will leave out the sea salt that the onion soup recipe calls for. If you try it, I'd love to hear what you think!

My last post touched a bit on the struggle I've gone through dealing with the aftermath of my husbands stroke. I don't really want to dwell on that. The reason I brought it up is to offer a few deceptively simple ways that have helped me cast off the darkness of that time and start to feeling like "me" again.

One day at a doctor's appointment for something totally unrelated, my doctor suggested, after I had broken down in tears in her office, that I should take some time for myself. Get out of the house, see a movie, go sit in a coffee shop. I couldn't well be expected to focus the entirety of my existence on staying home with my spouse. "Have one of the (grown) kids stop in and hang out for a while with him while you take a break and get out for a while."

She didn't know that, at that time and for a long time, just motivating myself to take a bath (I'm a bath girl) every day was quite the chore. Let alone bathing and getting presentable enough to go out into the general population. Just thinking about it exhuasted me. And some days it still does. But not every day. 

What I decided I could do is walk outside, into my own back yard, with my frumpy self and just sit in the sunshine and fresh air. If just for five minutes (and some days that's all it was-I'm very fair and can't take much sun and heat). And it helped. 

So today's suggestion is: get outside for a bit. Breathe some fresh air. Feel the sun on your face. 

And don't forget to try to smile.