valeriesbookofme

  In the past couple of months, since I have started attending the Episcopal Church here, I have become acquainted with the writings of a Franciscan priest named Richard Rohr. He is almost a contemporary of mine, born in 1943 in Kansas. Although I was born in 1952 and in Montreal, my sister was born in 1942 and the world he writes about growing up in, post-war, changing, is the world that I knew too, experiencing it first through the eyes of my sister and later through my own eyes. He writes in the Preface to The Naked Now, that although he grew up in a Catholic family, his Catholicism expanded in the 1960s with Vatican II, the Civil Rights movement in the US, and the greater emphasis on "the psyche" that came to pervade so much of our life ever since.  This created in him "a fixation for trying to see almost all things as both/and--or a collision of opposites....I was always happily Catholic but curiously Protestant and Pentecostal." Gosh, yes, exactly. I grew ...

Twelve days until I leave for my month-long trip to the UK, hopefully Finland, and Ireland. It's been a rollercoaster month, with COVID cases still high and concerns as to whether the U.S. will be considered a "red" country or an "amber." If it were "red", I would have to quarantine for ten days on arrival, at enormous expense and one I would not incur. I would find another place to fly to. But, it's currently "amber" with the UK, which means I have to take a PCR COVID test within 72 hours of my flight departing and arrange for a second test to be administered two days after I arrive in England. And that's because I am fully vaccinated; if I weren't vaccinated, then I would have to quarantine even with a negative PCR test. I am 100% pro vaccine, got my Moderna shots in February and March. There's such a lot of controversy and ill will right now about the vaccines but the numbers are proving, even with the new Delta Variant of ...

I have almost finished copying all my old SparkPeople posts into a Word documents. All told, with emails and bits of writing added in, the document is over 400 pages long!! With some photos though. I have written a book these last 15 years. Most of it to do with my obsession about my weight and what affects the weight--emotional eating. I've just finished adding blog entries in from January 2015 and saw that I weighed 157 pounds then. Which is only 4 pounds less than what I currently weigh. So, in a way that is a kind of success: I have only gained 4 pounds in 6 years. The previous 5 years, previous to 2015, I gained 25 pounds. So at least the momentum has slowed and hopefully this will be the year when I can turn it around. July was a good month. I kept to the Noom plan, weighing myself daily (lost 2 pounds in July, slow but at least in the right direction), and I kept attending Zumba classes 2-3 times a week. And I usually achieved my 10,000 steps. I also dog sat for my dd a...