Cooling It

It is sweltering here. We've had a very hot summer - many, many days in the 90's. Bad air quality, too. I'm wishing I were in Maine, on the water, either on a boat or looking at boats. Instead I spent a couple of hours this afternoon in a hot gymnasium with no air conditioning feeling queasy, bloated, and exceptionally lethargic and wondering where my stamina and conditioning went.

Actually, I know where it went - it may be true that when one is 22, one can neither get much exercise or regularly eat right and not suffer any ill effects or get really out of shape. This is not true for someone my age, but I keep forgetting my age. I keep forgetting I need to work at it now. And so it comes upon me, suddenly and yet often, that I cannot expect to have stamina and be in shape without working at it. I try to stay out of the heat but still end up doing too much sitting and not enough moving. It's as if the heat seeps into my bones even while I'm inside. I don't know why this keeps surprising me, but it does. I just keep getting out of whack and then remembering that I have to do something to keep from getting out of whack now. Somehow I need to find out how to coordinate my inner young self with my outer old body. I'm sure this is also connected to my issues with sleeping.

As it turns out, great minds think alike. I was awake during the night and finally gave up trying to get back to sleep and got up and turned on the computer, only to find in my inbox a reflection Barbara Crafton sent out just minutes before called Jesus Napped. (You can read it here.) She notes that she has learned to embrace the middle aged insomnia thing and even learned to take naps, even though she was not a napper before. She said she used to think she could trust her body to do anything she wanted it to do. Ah! I know that feeling. She said she learned to embrace napping as a spiritual discipline. She said she now knows her body has needs of its own.

Food for thought.