So this is day 19, easy to keep track of since we arrived on September first. We leave in a week. How long did it take to get used to the time difference? To being here in general?
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Sleeping first. It was maybe two or three days before I had gotten enough rest to recover from the overnight travel and for the clock time to stop feeling wrong. But I don’t think I ever fully shifted my sleep patterns. I am waking much later in the morning, some days not till 9 am. I am going to bed fairly early, soon after a late-ish dinner. I have a bout of wakefulness every night in the wee hours. I need an afternoon rest time.
I don’t remember having this issue before. Is it age-related, perimenopausal restlessness? Is it anything to do with Mark’s having to call in to work meetings, sometimes at 10:30 p.m., with people in the Midwest? Is it a relic from the couple of years I spent getting up to give a 2:30 a.m. dose of medication to a teenager? Or is it from being mentally checked in to the U.S. news cycle and the activity patterns of my friends on social media? (I’ve already run out of high speed data on our temporary international plan.)
It could really be any of these. In our current circumstances, it isn’t really a big problem, though. We have the space and time to rest, and it’s okay to keep weird homeschooling hours on days when we school.
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My appetite has been off kilter for sure. Not the amounts but the timing.
I almost can’t eat breakfast. I can manage a yogurt cup before eleven, and maybe a glass of juice. I mean, if someone goes and brings back pastries, I can eat those, but it is not because I am hungry. And I can drink coffee, about the same amount of caffeine in the morning as I always do. I like the Nespresso machine a lot. Two pods set on the “longest” setting, one on top of the other, makes one satisfactory cup of coffee.
Then later, especially if I didn’t eat pastry or yogurt, I get ravenous around 1 pm. We’ve been having our biggest meal at lunch time, and that seems to suit, since Mark often has a string of meetings around dinner time. That’s when we tend to go to a restaurant with the kids and have a slower paced meal, with wine, and usually we decline the dessert course and go get ice cream cones afterwards. So we’re done with the big lunch around 2:30 or 3.
If I need to shop for dinner, that’s when I go. The kids are resting, Mark is working, and I am full of lunch and will not be tempted to buy all the good things.
Often I’m not even really hungry when dinner rolls around. I’ve cooked a full meal a few times, but a lot of dinners are charcuterie, cheese, bread, butter. Olives, maybe, or a jar of tuna-stuffed cherry peppers. Salad greens. And a bottle of wine. Sometimes Mark and I go out. It was easy to have a light dinner in Menton, like broiled fish or steamed mussels; the fare up here in the mountains is heartier. I can’t finish my salads.
Last night I felt so full after dinner, and the not-enormous quantity of wine had gone so much to my head, that I felt like I really needed a day to live on mineral water and plain yogurt.
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It could be that I felt off, stuffed, because yesterday was the first day in a while that I did not do a lot of walking. It was a work day for us, and based on Mark’s meeting schedule we decided to stay in the house for lunch. We had enough food on hand, including leftover homemade chicken soup. So I didn’t go anywhere at all till it was time to take the kids out, first shopping for climbing shoes, and then dinner as Leo requested at Annapurna, the Indian restaurant that has been here since the early 90s.
Physical activity patterns: so different for all of us. Leo, who has an orthopedic issue which limits his leg endurance, has walked more than I think he has in years, mostly on his own exploring. I have gone shopping for food and other necessities most days, on foot, carrying groceries back in reusable shopping bags that are definitely coming home with me as utilitarian-yet-slightly-chic souvenirs. Our rental house is 500 meters down a street that’s pinched between the river and the train tracks, so there’s a bit of a hike to get anywhere.
There’s a walk after dinner almost every night, even the evenings we dine at home, because that is how you get gelato.
But on-purpose exercise totally fizzled out. Mark’s not been doing much running; he gave himself shin splints on one hill run in Menton. As for my routine, lap swimming is out, and I don’t do open water. Obviously I cannot bring my free weights here. I didn’t feel motivated to join a salle de musculation seeing as I prefer lifting privately at home. I did bring a set of resistance bands and I did one session with them back in Menton… but…
…I feel tired and sore, the good kind of tired and sore, from all the walking all the time! It very much feels like I’ve had enough exercise. I don’t know if it’s an illusion or not but it sure feels like I fall into bed every night with aching, used muscles all over. Just as if I had swum a mile or run 5K.
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I am really curious how fast I can reintegrate into our normal life back home. I wonder if any new habits will persist, for better or for worse.
I did hear that there is going to be a new ice cream place going in to our neighborhood, within walking distance…
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