Today could/should have been a difficult Whole 30 day. I was at a conference all day, so I had to pack all my snacks and lunch. 47 and I loved conferences! We packed every pocket in our backpack or computer bag or purse (and definitely our jacket pockets) with mints and candies and pretzels and goldfish crackers. We always brought enough to share – because that’s half the fun of snacking; reaching out to offer a friend some Skittles is a little bit magic.
48 and I brought small oranges, maybe mandarins? to our first conference. (They were too big to be clementines.) But, it turns out that offering a friend a slice of an orange just doesn’t produce the same magic. So, I simply snacked when I
was hungry, ate my salad for lunch while my tablemates ate creamy scalloped potatoes and decadent desserts, and drank the tea I brought to keep me busy and awake in the meeting. It was just…different. Not being the girl with a bag full of snacks felt really different. No one but me noticed, I suppose, but something kind of shifted with regard to that today.
How many times have I offered Skittles to someone who is really trying to watch their sugar intake?
How many times have I wandered the room on a break, offering (nutritionally empty) food to those who really aren’t hungry?
Today, I had a container of cashews with me, and I did find myself offering some to my friends – and they were happy to munch a handful of cashews during one of our breaks. It wasn’t quite the same as decadent treats like some fine chocolate – or silly treats, like Star Wars character Pez dispensers! It felt different today, and I guess I’m paying attention to my motivation for bringing snacks for the gang…when no one even asked me to.
Peach tea is my thing this week. I put 4 Celestial Seasonings Peach tea bags in a 2 quart pitcher, fill it with hot water (my tap water gets very hot), and let it steep for…oh, I don’t know…however long it takes for me to go off and move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, realize the dryer is still full from days ago, turn it on for a few minutes to fluff it up again, fold the laundry from the dryer, put the stuff from the washer in the dryer, then put in a new load in the washer, but check my bedroom for any dirty clothes that color, then add those clothes in, then go pee because…because 48, I guess, and when I’m in the bathroom with th
e door closed, find a shirt hanging on the back of the door that should be added to the washer, go add the shirt, but return to the bathroom because when I was in there I remembered something I needed to do – like get more toilet paper or something – but there’s plenty of that there, so it has to be something else, and if I just stand here a minute, I’ll remember it, but standing there in front of the mirror reminds me that I need to pluck those hairs on my chin that I felt while I was sitting with my chin in my hand today at the conference, but I think I took the tweezers into my room, so I go in there to look, and when I’m there, I remember that it wasn’t chin hairs that I was trying to remember in the bathroom, it was Qtips, so I go to the hall closet to get some more Qtips for the container in the bathroom, and the closet has things stacked and shoved and really needs to be organized, so I know what I have and stop buying things I already have, things like little circle bandaids and Neosporin and dental floss, which makes me think about how I really need to call the dentist to get an appointment, but I keep forgetting, and I’m pretty busy going to conferences and such, which reminds me how much I loved my tea today (in my metal cup that keeps it cold for hours!) at the conference – oh yah! my tea! So, I go to the kitchen to check it, and it just needs a bit more time, so I just run out to the shed to get a roll of paper towels…
And when it’s steeped, I put the tea bags in the compost bowl and put frozen peaches in the pitcher. Somehow, the tea sucks all the sugar out of the peaches, and it makes the perfect, barely sweet peach tea.
Perfect, I tell you!
Be Gentle With You 