Losing a part of me

I am still not sleeping nearly as well as I would like, but sometimes I wonder how accurate the scores on my fitness watch are. I trust it completely for my walking and heart rate, but whether my sleep score is correct? I’m not sure. Yes, I think I could have slept a little better last night, but a sleep score of 69? Hmph. I did have trouble falling asleep last night… I was in bed by 9:00pm, but could not fall asleep until I decided, at midnight, to get up and take a shower. I know I saw 12:30am on my clock, but I do not think I saw 1:00am. According to my fitness watch app: ‘You slept long enough, but not well enough to bring your stress levels down overnight. You might feel higher stress or fatigue today.’ I do not know that I feel stress or fatigue, but I will try to get a good night’s sleep tonight.

After a disastrous week of gaining weight (about 8 lbs.) I am glad that my weight dropped significantly once again this morning. I am down over 5.5 lbs. in two days… after gaining nearly 7 lbs. in under a week. I should attribute the last two days of my weight dropping to Yom Kippur; let’s see how it looks tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, it is Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. To honour that, when I went shopping yesterday, I bought a smoked turkey leg. This is always a dangerous buy because of the extremely high sodium content in smoked turkey, but I decided to take the chance. Hopefully it will not hurt me too badly, and if it does then it will be from water retention and should be gone within a couple of days.

No, I do not have any Thanksgiving plans this year. My friends who traditionally invite me every year decided to spend the weekend camping, and most of my other friends are either away, or else serving ham. I am neither upset nor lonely for this… growing up in my family, Thanksgiving was never a big deal for my family so while I am always happy to spend it with friends, tomorrow will really just be another day for me. I think back to where I was a year ago – Thanksgiving fell on October 9^th, which means that it was just two days after the October 7 attacks in Israel. I put on the happy face to spend that Sunday with my godson and goddaughter (and their parents and grandparents), but there was nothing happy in my world. I was waiting in earnest for a call that would never come recalling me to active duty. It is had to believe it has been a year already, and what a horrible year it has been on so many fronts. My weight is 60 lbs. heavier than it was a year ago; the roller coaster of my personal relationships (owing chiefly to the massacre) felt like a free-fall abyss for much too long, and while I am relieved that they survived… the last year has been fraught with far too much pain. I have wept for every one of our hostages in Gaza as well as for those Israeli soldiers who have fallen in the war. I have spent the year in a red-hot rage over the worldwide hatred and vitriol spread against my people, proving once again that the only socially acceptable form of racism is against Jews. With every false accusation spread and every protester shouting for Israel to accept an unconditional cease fire (at best) to the death and destruction of our nation and all Jews (at worst) I want to scream and lash out… but I cannot because if I do the useful idiots (Hamas’ term, not mine) will accuse me of aggression and violence. How is it that people who have never set foot in my country can hate us so much? How is it that they do not understand that they would be welcomed in Israel, but they would be executed in the streets of Gaza just for being who they are… and yet they call us genocidal oppressors.

The weather has turned. These last couple of days I have been wearing my jacket out, whether to take Her Floofness for her walks or to sit on the balcony with my cigar. Autumn has arrived in Canada and while Leslie is jealous, she is so from the heat of Texas; I know that Canadian autumn leads all too quickly to Canadian winters! With that said, I am flying down to see her a week from today, and I will spend two weeks in her warmth of her embrace, and in the warmth of the Texas October. If you cannot tell from the previous paragraph, I think I need Leslie’s warm embrace now more than ever. Going through this alone very often leads me to despair… and I cannot let it influence my eating this week.

Have a great day folks!