Are We There Yet?

The holiday travel hasn’t even begun and I’m feeling stressed and exhausted already.

Fortunately, the utility company did not add to the stress with an outage, so I was able to bake grain free bagels to take on the road and, tomorrow afternoon or early Wednesday, before heading out, I’ll make cassava flour naan bread to go. A couple of boiled eggs, avocados and a cooked protein I’ve not yet decided upon (either organic free-range chicken or wild shrimp) and I’ll be all set insofar as feeding myself in the hotel room that doesn’t have a kitchen.

Did you know you can heat a meal in a hotel’s ice bucket?

When I did the Batman 5K, I took cooked organic potatoes and boiled eggs for breakfast. To heat the potatoes, which I’d stored in clear plastic microwave containers, I placed a container in the ice bucket, made hot steaming water by running tap water through the coffee machine, poured the hot water into the ice bucket over the container, popped in a boiled in-shell egg, put the lid on the ice bucket and, in not so many minutes, voilà... hot potatoes and a warm egg.

Lunch, when I did Batman, was apples with almond butter or bananas. Dinner was pre-cooked salmon and cassava flour naan bread. Both were wrapped individually in tin foil, and I literally ironed the salmon, through the foil, to a nice warm consistency by use of the hotel’s iron and also used the iron to toast the in-foil naan bread.

Just a few hotel hacks for you on how to manage without a kitchen and an inability to eat out.

Feeling stressed, exhausted, blood pressure running high, I did manage to get laundry done over the weekend. The unit, not needing a deep cleaning, is being dusted and straightened out as I go, I took a deep dive through the containers in the patio storage area and dug out my pilgrim’s outfit to wear for the Turkey Trot, and I managed to make it through this morning’s workout, hoping for a second wind to make it through tomorrow’s last workout of the week, and Thursday's trot.

A funny thing happened in the pain cave today.

Over the weekend, Trainer messaged me a funny gif of a dancing Batman, to which I replied ROFLMAO.

He said, in today’s session, “I’m not sure what you meant by ROFLMAO. I thought maybe it was a typo”.

I was aghast, “You don’t know what ROFLMAO means!?” and spelled it out for him.

He said he started to turn to his wife and kids, ask them what it meant, but thought better of it.

”It’s a good thing you didn’t”, said I. “Your family would never have let you live it down that you didn’t know what that meant”.

I probably won’t let him live it down either. LOL.

Not exactly sure why I’m experiencing such an energy drain right now, but highly suspect it’s dread because Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday and getting together with the family not my favorite thing.

But I’m a mom, a grandma, an auntie, a sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and I’m the oldest and only one left of my mother’s children ─ as all my brothers and my one sister are deceased. So I’m kind of the patriarch and need to show up ... even if it is only once a year.

To other relatives (the children of nieces and nephews), I’m like the mythical unicorn ─ they’ve heard about me, been told I exist, but have never seen me. LOL.

If I don’t get another opportunity to post before I head out .......