The other day I was thinking that I would have made a very bad pioneer...
This first occurred to me when I was doing the dishes after letting them pile up for at least a day or so. I thought, "Man, I thought doing the dishes was annoying when all I had to do was stick them in a machine and turn it on. I wish we had a dishwasher in the apartment." All things considered, doing the dishes isn't that bad but 1. It's a chore. It's annoying and 2. It's absolutely impossible to get them clean the way a dishwasher can. Even the clean ones. The ones I really scrub are still kind of dirty when I put them away. But then I thought, "Dang. What if we only had a couple dishes so I actually had to wash them after every meal, and what if I had to take them down to the river so I had access to water (or had to scrape and reuse them dirty if there wasn't water)? That would really stink. And 100 years ago I probably would have had to do just that- or at least go out and pump the water and wash them in some kind of tub or something.
I think playing the mind game "What would I have had to do to accomplish this if I were a pioneer?" is great for giving silly complaints some perspective (not that I won't still be full of silly complaints).
Another one happened last night. I met D for dinner on campus and then went back home to veg while I waited to pick him up after his exam. On the way home on the bus I kept thinking about how good it would be to have some of that cookie dough in the fridge. And when I got home, I changed into my pajamas and ate some cookie dough. Not too much. Not all of it or enough of it to get a stomach ache like I might have done in the past, but the point is that I broke my diet on a complete whim. I enjoyed it while I ate it, but then I thought to myself, "What would Laura Engles Wilder have done in this situation?" Did she eat cookie dough in the covered wagon crossing South Dakota in a blizzard? Heck no. She was probably happy to have some very non-sweet non-chocolaty bread once a day. Even in 2008 there are many people who don't have enough food to eat. Cookie dough is not even an option to consider.
So hopefully I can keep that in mind if I have another cookie dough emergency the rest of this week. Can I seriously not make it without eating something sweet or eating after dinner until Saturday? It's kind of pathetic if I can't. Last week and the week before (which is not marked on the Habitcal- it was a trial run week) I had 2 failures each. Let's see if I can make yesterday the only failure for this week. I only have 3 days- including today- before I can junk food all I want on Saturday.
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Today's workout:
60 min spinning
At home strength workout- lower body
2 rounds of stairs
