Drumming wasn’t until Saturday. It was too far away from Tuesday afternoon to simply wait for it to arrive.
Preventive measures were necessary.
There are two questions I ask myself when the blue cloud shows up, bumping against the window, threatening to break in:
- Have you had chocolate in the last three days?
- Does this place need picking up?
Chocolate
There is no scientific study that shows chocolate is addicting. Okay, I’ll buy that. I’ll also buy my own experience: When I eat chocolate I want more, a lot more. And when I eat a lot more and then don’t have any more, I get crabby.
If the answer to the chocolate question is yes (it has always been yes), I stop eating chocolate. Usually there is no chocolate in the house by this point, but if there is, I dispose of it.
It can’t go into the kitchen garbage because I have been known to pull out that bag of chocolate chips I was saving for cookies, brush off decaying lettuce leaves, tear it open, and dig in. Chocolate must go into the rubbish chute in the hallway.
Picking up
If the answer to the picking up question is yes (it has always been yes—my mental state seems to show up in my physical state), I pick up.
Books come off the nightstand and the window ledge and the little table and go back on a bookshelf. Accumulated oddments on the dresser are sorted and put away or given away or thrown away. The recycling basket under my desk is emptied. The sheets get changed, the bed gets made.
I don’t know why cleaning up the physical helps clean up the mental, but it does. It has worked before, and it worked this time.
But cleaning the house is a solo activity and Saturday drumming was three days away. I needed to find something else–with people–in the interim.
Solution: Pickleball. Thursday morning.
Chewing the Cud of Good
Thankful for friends who are ready with support when I do hard things.