Rest Day, Renewal Day

Yesterday was my 38th day of running, 38 days in a row.  As faithful readers of this blog know, I am using the word "run" loosely.  At best, it's a slow jog that I do.  At worst--well, let us not think about how sloggy my slow run can be.  

For the past several days, I've felt achy and cranky and so low-energy.  Yesterday, I could almost hear my body literally speaking: "If you don't take a rest day, I'll force you to take a rest day, and you won't like it."

I am prone to laziness of a sort, so I often ignore that voice.  But yesterday's voice felt different, so I decided to take today completely off, in terms of exercise.

I am also taking this day off from work.  A school in Brooklyn is in the process of buying my school, and we've been told that when this happens, we'll lose all our PTO, while being paid for vacation days.  So we've all been trying to use our PTO--at a small campus like mine, where only a few of us have the keys to open the campus, that can be tricky.  So today, I'm using up the last of my PTO, since Mondays are usually a bit slow until after midterm, when more students come back to campus to do their labs, the ones that must be done in person.

So, I'll be doing some baking today, some errand running, some cleaning of the cottage in advance of my sister-in-law's arrival later this week for a vacation.  I already have pumpkin pecan cinnamon rolls in the oven; I use this Smitten Kitchen recipe adding pecans filling mixture, and double the recipe so that I can bake the extra dough as loaves of bread.  Either variation is delicious.

I spent part of the morning reading about the death of George Schultz and marveling, as I often do, how the waning days of the Cold War years so often feels more stable than our own time.  I also read a bit about Amanda Gorman, the first poet to be part of the Super Bowl.  I'm all for anything that gets more of us thinking about poetry, but I'm even happier when it's a positive anything.

Early this morning, I figured out an approach to the sketch I'm creating.  It had 2 big chunks of white space, and the realistic options didn't thrill me.  This morning, I realized that an additional window with a view of a different landscape solved one problem and would announce a subtle surrealism.  This solution has made me so happy.

I was also happy when I was trying to whistle "Shine, Jesus Shine" and had trouble hitting a high note, even when whistling.  I commented on that fact to my spouse, and then, just like that, we're whistling in unison, having trouble hitting the high notes.

It is POURING rain--all yesterday I felt this rain coming and felt that irritability about an impending storm that refuses to break.  This morning, there's not the thunder that I was expecting, but it's the kind of tropical rain that would have made me cancel a run or a walk--so I'm even happier that I had planned today as a rest day.

Update:  The pan of cinnamon rolls is one of the more beautiful baked goods that I've made recently.  And it tastes as good as it looks, which is never a sure thing.