Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Today I am 43 days refined sugar free. I've not had processed sweets and very little fruit through these last six weeks. A couple of days ago, it dawned on me how good I've been feeling physically the last ten days or so. More energy. Less fatigue in the afternoons. Sleeping through the night and waking up feeling ready to actually get up. I feel no pull to eat candy, cookies, or other sweets. It's very much like when I stopped eating meat -- a few months into being vegan, I felt no desire to eat another steak or hamburger, sausage or hot dog. With the sweets, a very strong need filled me every day to have something. Being free from that feeling is amazing. When I sit and think about the last seven years, I have to shake my head at what I've stopped consuming. The first to go was soda. For years I was drinking a 16 oz bottle of soda each day. Along with the soda was a candy bar. It's a wonder my teeth didn't rot out of my mouth. It's also a wonder I didn...

This semester I'm fully online again. I'm happy to be. I've become even more of a homebody than I was before going completely online. I thought after being online during COVID that I would never want to be again, but I've truly come to love it. My hope is I can finish out my time and move into retirement by just teaching online.  Being home all the time allows me time to listen to the house. To really see the parts that make up the whole.  *** I wrote the above a week ago, fully intending to write about my house, the dogs, being able to move through my days in a way that brings me peace and joy. I was going to finish the post during the week, but like usual, I got sidetracked and the post was forgotten about. Then yesterday, January 24, happened.  Anyone paying attention knows a man who was trying to help a woman who'd been shoved to the ground in Minneapolis was murdered. After he was surrounded by thugs and pepper sprayed, wrestled to the ground, beaten, kicked, a...