Day 14 - Ginger Tea and Bamboo Ear Scratchers

Had some of the usual aches and pains, but felt pretty good. Not sure why. Anyway, also was not super inclined to do my exercising, but I was able to fake myself out with the 5 minute idea. 5 minutes turned into 20, so hey! It works. What can I say?

I'm finding I have a lot of tightness in my hip area. I think this is probably typical of a lot of people, especially those of us who have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting, and most especially those of us who are inclined to be stress puppies. woof. I really noticed it last night after the swimming. It was actually hard to just sit on the couch because my hip muscles were spasming. I was able to massage it out a bit, but I definitely needed to stretch it out a lot more after exercising. Same routine, by the way, calisthenics, stretching, jogging around the house. The jogging felt really good, wonder of wonders. I'm rather amazed at the real change I've been feeling after this steady progression of exercising. Really chalks one up for the consistent, regular exercise crowd. But I am really proud of coming up with the 5-minute fake out mechanism. I just told my mom to try it.

What am I grateful for today? Hmm...there are a few too many things. Blue flowers, soap, music, bamboo ear scratchers, the internet, life...tea. Tea is a good one. I'm loving the ginger tea. A friend gave me a cool cylindrical container of strong ginger tea from a company called Satira. Apparently, this is a spa products company, and by the looks of the website, they have some cool stuff. The ginger tea is very strong, even stronger than the tea I make directly from boiling ginger in water. Surprising, but perhaps this is because the dried content of the tea is actually much more concentrated than fresh ginger slices. In any case, it's excellent ginger tea, especially when you feel like you have a health problem to kick butt on. Hmm...maybe ought to try out some of the other spa therapies from this company.

But can I just say, I think I'm most happy with creating positive change in my life - getting this exercise habit in, helping myself feel better by eating right, faking myself out to do good things for my body, learning to listen to myself more and more. This echoes a lot of stuff I've already written about, but I just can't celebrate it enough. And bamboo ear scratchers. Those are great. (you can find them in stores in an urban Chinatown for a few dollars, not like the one I linked to, which has some fancy, japanese craftsman hoopla attached to it. I think I got mine, actually 2 for 1.75 in San Francisco's Chinatown somewhere years ago.)