So last week, when I was feeling in a funk, I took a mid-afternoon walk and since I wasn’t listening to music, I tried recording my thoughts as I walked. Here’s what I came up with and indeed, it is stream of consciousness at its finest.

Between allergies and tossing and turning all night for many nights in a row, I have never been more tired. It is making me not want to do anything during the day, which is sad because now that the kids have gone back to school I have the time to catch up and really get ahead on stuff. 

I’m taking a walk in the neighborhood, down the road I don’t go on often, though Ash and I did go this route many times on our covid walks. One thing that I sort of cut from my life that was from that time were walks but mostly because I went back to running. Now I have this knee issue that worries me; makes me think I won’t be running very much. I have two more weeks that I need to make it through before I run this 10k, then I’m going to rehab myself. The pain in my left knee has mostly gone away but now my right one hurts and I can’t figure out why. I’ve done a few massages to the muscle that really did help loosen it up but going downstairs still hurts. Sadly, this race is hilly and I worry that it’s going to hurt me. I don’t mind running on an injury but the fear of long-term damage is pretty scary. 

It’s unlike me to run or walk without music but it is kind of nice walking out here now. It’s a little hazy though, given that tomorrow it is supposed to rain. I don’t like to be a procrastinator but seeing as how I can’t seem get my life together right now I am putting off some work until tomorrow. Midterm grades are due so that will really push me. I won’t miss that deadline again! 

I really like O’Hara and it is funny because I always thought this road was too close to Vassar so I thought it wasn’t really like Killearn but it is very much like any of the other places on that side of Raymond Diehl. And it is funny how unlike these homes look from Limerick and that first side that was obviously built before the other side. But that is also why I really like this neighborhood: the diversity of homes. I always said I didn’t want to live in a cookie cutter neighborhood. Don’t get me wrong – Todd and Bridget’s house is very nice but it looks just like everyone else’s. I have never wanted to look just like everyone else nor have I ever been like just everyone else. I am not the same and I know people aren’t either but the fact that they want their homes to look so similar is weird to me. I guess people like the uniformity and they don’t have to do anything different. These are the same people who don’t want a lawn to mow. Sure, it’s a lot of yard to have and a lot of work to do but it also makes the house look nice and separates you from the neighbors. One thing I don’t want is to be right up on top of my neighbors. It just is never something I want to be. 

I am walking into a cul-de-sac that I have never been down because there is a house for sale on it. If you don’t count the house that faces Fogerty, the street only has three homes and it is funny that this one costs almost $600,000 and was built in 2019. Almost like the other two homes were here by themselves and then they crammed this one in. In fact there is a house behind the new house that was probably here and when they built this first one I bet those people in the back were really pissed. It would be cool to live in a cul-de-sac so that the kids could ride their bikes and whatnot but you buy the house for so many reasons and I couldn’t find one like that. Besides, our yard has enough things for them including enough grass to run around, the swing, the pool, and all the other backyard space. In the end I am not unhappy with this neighborhood in any way, other than the fact that people cut through playing their music loud, but that will happen anywhere you go. Sometimes I do think about other people’s neighborhoods and get a little jealous of the positives that they have like that. Sure, maybe people don’t drive down your road very often but you’ll still hear music. Heck, Killearn lakes is where that girl got hit in the median! There really is no perfect place to live; you just have to make it your own.

 The birds seem to know that it is springtime and I have seen many a house with an Easter themed wreath or decoration on the door. I wish I felt motivated at all to partake in those rituals but I do not. I am barely aware of when Easter is, let alone do I feel like I have the money to spend on such trivialities. I think I’ve become a little curmudgeonly about some of that stuff. Or maybe it is just because I am worried about money now that I can’t get myself to a place to do fun things like that.

 Debating which route to go; left is short and flat, right is a little longer and hillier and I realized that the same pain I’m having in my right knee I am now having in my left knee. It is on the inside just below the knee cap. It is interesting that I am having this pain, seeing as how I did not have it and then I didn’t run very much after the last race so why am I now having the pain in both knees? I suppose that the next step here is adding glucosamine to my daily pill. And perhaps if I take it now all the way up through August, if I decide to train for the Boston mini my knees will be set. Rest and glucosamine seem like a good point of attack. I am very glad that I decided to take this walk because honestly, I was not feeling like myself in any way. Living in a fog even. I allowed myself to take a nap after I went and got my car washed and went to the grocery store because after taking the allergy pill that was necessary – I could not stop sneezing and my face was hurting – I was so incredibly tired I wasn’t even aware of what was happening around me. It is funny how sometimes the allergy pill does that to me and then other times I can push past it and keep working through my normal life.

 I will never forget the time that we went out bowling with friends on a Friday evening and before we got there I had taken an allergy pill and we had a lot to drink, beer mostly, and when we got back to Tiffanie’s house I was so tired that I sat down on the couch with one of the kids and I passed right out. I was kind of embarrassed about it but the combination of those two things had me unaware of what I was doing in so many ways. This is another reason I don’t like medication but even with all the changes and new additions I’ve put into my life for health, allergies have not been fixed by them. Last season I would say they had lessened but they have not gone away completely like so many other afflictions that I’ve had in the past. In fact, it is funny to go back and read journal entries from years ago where I complained about so many problems I’ve had and now I don’t have them hardly at all and I can only say it is from the better eating. Mostly it has to be from fasting. 

I am looking forward to the long fast I’m in now. We ate breakfast around 9:15 this morning and though I had a drink at the grocery store around 11:00; that’s the last I’ve had today and we won’t be eating until Ash gets home tomorrow. It may be 4:00 pm before we have food tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to getting back into longer fasts. Ash thought we might be doing too much and it could be beneficial to go back to two meals or hold off on some of the longer fasts. I believe him because I have read and watched some videos about this exact same thing. But for me personally, I think I need to reign it back in and have just the one meal a day. The problem really came in when we had so many plans that revolved around drinking beer. We mitigated it as best we could in terms of eating while we drank and not drinking for too long. But I would like to go back to better eating and drinking to see if I can start feeling better again. I’d like to say it would solve my sleep problems also. When I eat lunch as my only meal I always sleep better. 

However, it only occurred to me this morning that one of my problems is probably that my body just caught up with daylight savings time. I didn’t feel like it affected me too much but then I watched a video talking about how it disrupts circadian rhythms and it makes a lot of sense that I am still dealing with it. The guy in the video said it has been a week and he’s having problems dealing with it and I thought, yep that has got to be my issue too.

 I think another problem that has disrupted me was spring break. Kids were home and we didn’t have soccer, so our whole regular routine was thrown off. And while I have prided myself on getting better with rolling with the punches I perhaps have not done as good of a job as I could have. I feel like I allow those changes in my life to keep me off kilter and I just don’t handle them as well. It is an intangible feeling; I don’t really know how to explain it nor how to actually fix it. However, when I become aware of it I can acknowledge that it is there but I am so not certain of how to adjust my feelings about things that make me feel like something is wrong… I’m not entirely sure when I will use this but with the April writing challenge coming up maybe I can work some of this into that. I can’t remember if the theme was hopes and dreams or something like that. I don’t really understand how most people do these things, especially with the alphabetic challenge. Last year when I chose bands that were significant to me that was easy. Mostly because it had that personal reflective nature that I can write about any time any day but if I have to be a little bit more creative I’m just not sure what I’ll do. I guess maybe I could get very organized and plan ahead and if I knew what the subject or theme was each day it wouldn’t be so difficult. And I guess I would have to do that within the next week. 

The road I’m on now has such a weird collection of homes. One of them is clearly an old style but has been redone in a way to make it look newer and there is another across the street and down that is the same but then the other ones, older and smaller; almost like they were put in and then the other ones were built up around it. Some of these homes still have those white sheer curtains indicative of an old person who lived here in the ’70s. It’s funny that nobody got rid of them. Then you go to one house and you can see that everyone has blinds so they clearly upgraded. It also reminds you that while anyone could go to the store any day and upgrade their curtains they clearly do not.

Now I am turning down a road that I have never walked on before. I know where it goes and where it will come out, close to where I came back in this area. There is a guy spreading fertilizer in his yard and he is the second one I have seen today. Clearly an indication that I’d better get on it with weed and feed. The yard started looking pretty good after the kids mowed but there’s a lot of dollar weed out there. In a perfect world I would hire somebody to come in and fix that problem but I don’t have that money so it will be up to me to spray something and hope for the best. The front yard is going to be a mess for quite some time but I will do what I can to at least get the grass to grow. Now that the trees are gone from the front it might not be so bad. Hopefully it means that more grass will be growing. 

There is a really ugly house on the street that has sort of a castle feel to it. It is literally the ugliest house that I’ve ever seen in this neighborhood. It is funny what makes a person think a house is appealing or not appealing; I think it is the same intangible ” thing ” that indicates what kind of music you like. Bruce Springsteen will never sound good to me but to other people, they hear it and think this is great. It is very weird how that works. It is funny in this neighborhood to note that there are homes where people have clear cut the trees, for which I do not blame them but when you come upon their home and everything opens up it is weird. I know Ash would still like to cut more trees in our yard but I think at this point we have taken all the important ones. If we took the last tree in the front the kids would not have a swing and for now, they all enjoy it. I don’t want to take some of those fun childhood things from my daughter even though her brothers are slowly outgrowing anything fun and childlike. She is only 8 and she has a child like whimsy about her so who am I to abolish that?

 I don’t get some of these homes. Some of them are truly ugly homesteader looking things and they back right up to the other road; no easement whatsoever. I’m just so used to the easement where I am and in most of the streets over here that it seems very odd. The pollen is in full force now here too as I mentioned my allergies are kicking my butt however what bothers me more is just how much the yellow pall settles on everything. It just makes everything sort of dull. It is supposed to start raining in the middle and all through tomorrow. If I didn’t mention that before, and lucky in that day as an opportunity to sit in my room and catch up because I won’t want to be outside. When it is sunny out I am not happy to sit in the house and just look at how pretty it is out here. I am very ready for a beach day, but I honestly can’t figure out when the heck we would go. As I was asking my friends what they thought, we all sort of agreed that a Sunday would have to be the day. The problem is coming up, all the Sundays are spoken for. I’m trying to get Isaac a birthday party going for a few of his friends and even though it is only March 21st, we’re already looking at May because all of the April weekends are just too busy. Between soccer games, beer events, and regular life there’s really no other day.

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Yeah that was a serious brain dump but some day in the future, I will want to read that!