Friday 20th May 2022
The day didn’t get off to the best start. I had a troubled sleep and I don’t function very well when I’m tired – does anyone else relate? I know people who are fine on 4 hours of sleep every single day (hi there parents 👋🏼) but that’s definitely not me.
Usually, breakfast helps to kickstart my day. My current routine involves chocolate cereals, word puzzles and half an hour to an hour of reading. Unfortunately, on that Friday morning, nothing really quite worked out. I got acid reflux and inflammation from eating. I failed Quordle & Octordle and barely managed Wordle. But those things are not worth ruining your day though, are they? What really threw me over the edge of grumpiness is the all-too-common fat phobia we all experience but is never recognised as such by most. I was in a foul mood after fat phobic comments were thrown casually the night before and then a fat phobic paragraph was read first thing in the morning on page 3 of a book I’d just started.
The work day was also quite tedious for some reason. I felt like the week had dragged on for far too long and I was ready for a break. One of my chronic illnesses, Adenomyosis, decided to pile it up on me with various sources of pain, which obviously didn’t help.
But! There’s always room for improvement in a 24-hour day and, somehow, the day eventually picked up, which is yet another reminder not to write off a whole day just because it had a bit of a wrong start.
I started feeling better in the middle of the afternoon after I put the fifth season of Young Sheldon on in the background. I find the sitcom to be both funny and wholesome – not perfect, but entertaining. Sometimes, you don’t need perfect – in fact, you never do because it simply does not exist – you just need uplifting and/or lighthearted. The show did exactly what I needed it to: cheering me up. From then on, I was much more upbeat and was finally able to enjoy other people’s presence, especially Andrew’s (my partner), with whom I had a short but sweet cuddle in bed before going back to work for a little bit before calling it quits for the week.
For dinner, I made a delicious pasta bake with some of my favourite veggies – aubergine, courgette, red pepper and broccoli. I am tired of food that makes me sick, whether it’s predictable or a surprise. Most of the time, my chronic illnesses make meal time stressful and less enjoyable because I never know if I’m going to pay for it later. Thankfully, though, dinner went down like a charm, so I was really chuffed that something I cooked, which is a challenge in itself, turned out to be a success.
Later on, we played a board game with Andrew’s family. My friend Laura, who recently left for a 5-month career break to travel across Eurasia, gave me a few to look after. Pandemic was one of them. It felt kind of strange to play it after the last couple of years, like we shouldn’t be playing a game that’s so close to reality. Andrew was the only one who’d ever played this one before and it took us a while to wrap our heads around the rules. I honestly considered giving up and getting an early night instead. However, after an hour or so, we finally got the hang of the game and it ended up being quite fun and thrilling!
I went to bed with a painful bloat and drenched in sweat from the near-summer heat and the overstimulation, but I felt so fulfilled that the physical discomfort didn’t get to me for once. I spent the rest of the evening watching kitten and puppy videos in bed, which is quite frankly a glorious way to finish the day!
Here are my recommendations based on the above:
- Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, the free online word puzzles that have been all the rage in the last few weeks. I also do Wordle FR – the French version of Wordle – and Sutom, which stands for Motus backwards, a popular game show in France. Occasionally, I’ll give a try to Heardle and Worldle but I’m not very good at recognising songs or countries 😅
- Young Sheldon, the Big Bang Theory spin-off that takes us to the childhood and the family of… you guessed it, Sheldon! The first couple of seasons are available on Netflix and I purchased digital versions of seasons 4 & 5 on Amazon because I didn’t want to wait
- Pandemic: a 2-4 player collaborative game where, as the name would suggest, you have to find a cure to five viruses around the world to stop epidemic outbreaks in the selection of cities present on the board
- @thekittenfoster on TikTok (and YouTube as well based on the info on her profile)
