Sick Day, w Tamarind Sauce & Astronauts

Getting Strong Now (or Later)

It was inspiring to meet with trainer Ben at the gym yesterday--though my hurt knee limited what I could do. I trust it will get better, and I'll work to get stronger again--and protect myself from injuries like this (from overuse at work, not an accident).

Ben & I were talking about Duluth--his sister lives there and, for now, so does Marz. (Today is the first day of her second semester.)
I said my goal is to be strong enough to hike a section of the Superior Hiking Trail. The SHT runs through the city of Duluth--I've walked 5-mile segments--but the entire thing is a 260-mile rugged footpath along a ridgeline overlooking Lake Superior, from Duluth almost to the Canadian border.
No amenities: you have to backpack everything in and out.

The SHT website cautions, "You should carefully consider whether you’re in good condition and prepared before setting out" [unsaid: so we don't have to send the Rope Team (a real thing) to rescue your dumb ass].
I wouldn't want to hike-through the entire trail, but I'd like to be able to. And then just go for a day hike. (There are mosquitoes.) (And bears.)

So that was good, but today I feel a little down.
You know how it is to be set back and immobilized.
Very much not like Rocky running up the steps.

(He does start out a lazy, out-of-shape slob, but he's also thirty years old... Regaining strength at my age looks different. Still, I love that movie--maybe it'd cheer me up to rewatch it again.)

I took the day off work to rest my knee. I have 48 hours till I go back on Friday--hopefully it'll be much better by then. If not, I can do some seated work––looking up prices––but the job is of course mostly physical. I didn't do myself any favors, taking 8 months off, physically. (Psychologically, though, it was entirely a win.)

It's good for me to have this motivation to keep strong for work. I am lazy and would never do it otherwise.
This is a good place for me to be.
________________

Sauce It Up

After the gym, I went to Everett's on the next block––a family-owned butcher and grocery where I used to go when I lived in that direction. They're an old-fashioned mom-and-pop outfit, selling classics like pork chops and iceberg lettuce, but they carry some newer-to-town foods too.

Like this Somali tamarind and date sauce made by a local company, Hoyo (means mother, and also home). Its sweetness is from dates alone. (I'd decided dates are okay.)
It's like a relative of ketchup--the first ingredient is tomato.

(Hm, though the roots of ketchup are in fermented fish sauce, not tomatoes:
"By the early 1700s, the word was apparently understood --by the British--to mean a kind of spiced, savory condiment broadly known in South Asia and distinct from soy sauce. ")

Puck, above, right, is telling Penny Cooper how she showed her bionic leg to Ben. True. Ben was complimentary. I don't know what he feels about things--he's slightly remote--but I love how he just rolls with stuff. "Okay, here is a client who brings her doll."
And why not?

That's the book I'm reading--re-reading. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir who wrote The Martian (movie with Matt Damon. I hear Project HM has already been filmed w/ Ryan Gosling--to be released next year.)
Project is an even better story:
the reluctant astronaut––a junior-high school science teacher––meets an alien astronaut, and together they work to save the galaxy from a light-eating microbe.
It's funny and imaginative--and Weir does the math (literally and symbolically) to make it work. (All the work I don't want to do when I come up with a fun story idea.)

Anyway, I ate the tamarind sauce with baked chicken last night. It was good--zingy and sweetish, and not something I'd overeat, unlike sugary ketchup which I'd pour on like syrup.

I read something yesterday that touched on my question, If you take  semaglutide drugs that remove appetite, what happens to psychological needs that used to be met by (over)eating?
A therapist said that a client who used to overeat started a weight-loss drug and then began to pick their skin off instead.

It is not known:
Do the drugs adversely affect mental health, or, do they reveal underlying issues that over-eating was addressing?

I'm tinkering with how I eat, you know, and wondering about the way food and comfort and well-being are all interwoven.
But I'm not taking away the pleasure and comfort of eating, I'm replacing processed-sugars with other foods.

Aside from some sadness at first (no–ice-cream felt like a loss), and some confusion from changing habits (what do I do now?), giving up sugar hasn't hurt my mood--maybe because I can still overeat. That's even been funny! Like, the day after the election, I binge-ate an entire baked butternut squash. Aside from being very high in potassium (hard on kidneys), butternut squash is a big health plus, even in excess. 😄

After three months of not-eating added-sugars, I feel more level, emotionally--and physically. That's a nice thing.
I thought I'd really, really miss candy and ice cream, because I ate it every day. I'm surprised I don't. Giving myself permission---encouragement, in fact--to eat anything else helps a lot. Food with natural sugar, like butternut squash, keeps cravings away, and flavorful food provides satisfaction. It's still sometimes a drag to have to make decisions to feed myself (instead of the easier option of Just Eat Sugar), but it's doable.

Food in Childhood

If you have an easy, happy relationship with food, this is maybe all obvious. I've never had that.
Well... that's not true. When I was a little kid in the 1960s, I didn't have much choice, and my family ate pretty well.
My mother cooked pretty much every meal, even after she went back to work part-time as a secretary at the University.
Oatmeal or eggs for weekday breakfast. Oh, and corn flakes with strawberries. That was our junk cereal.

We walked home for lunch. What did we eat...?
Geez, I don't remember. It must be in my data bank somewhere--I'll put in a request and see what gets returned.
I remember saying I was hungry but turning down the only snack on offer--an apple.

Dinner was classic mid-century meat (baked chicken, some cut of beef, pork chops); bread/ brown rice/potatoes; and green salad with olive-oil dressing.
Did we even have dessert? My mother baked, for sure. But was it every night?  She also loved ice-cream with "goop": Smuckers chocolate and butterscotch topping in a jar.
She would go on weird diets where she ate nothing by Saltine crackers and Coca-cola. (Not diet.)

Junk food was a rarity--sometimes my father got Fritos corn chips and bean dip (in a can) for Sunday football games, and we could have a few.
Once in a blue moon we went to McDonald's, which was a HUGE treat.

Anyway, as I've said, this all went haywire when she left the family in 1974, the same time fast- junk foods and super-sizes were just starting to rise to their ascendancy.
I'm repeating myself here, I know, but I keep re-viewing it:
What happened? To the country, the world, to us, to you and to me?

STORY IDEA:

You know stories like the 1978 movie Heaven Can Wait where someone dies and they go to Heaven and lodge a complaint–– "I wasn't supposed to die" (Warren Beatty says to heavenly agent Buck Henry)--and it turns out they're right:
someone made a mistake, and Heaven tries to rectify it?

Okay, so this is just the same, but in reverse--thinking about reincarnation and also  about how people sometimes feel they shouldn't be here, they don't belong.
What if there's a mistake sometimes and people are incarnated into the wrong life?
According to the swami I'm listening to sometimes, that's not possible. "You can never be somewhere you're not supposed to be."
But, what if there's a mistake?

Like, you should be surrounded by people you share karma with,
But you're not? "You were never my mother!"
Hm, is that possible, if everyone's been everything to everybody?
I don't know.
Maybe they get incarnated on the wrong planet?
"This is not my solar system!"
Just an idea to kick around...

It could be comforting in a weird, reverse way. "Sorry, you're right! We'll send in some support, but you're just going to have to bumble through this lifetime."
Sure can FEEL like that!