life — Page 205

Self-Care: Maintaining Balance

June 23, 2015 at 3:15 pm by Claudia

As I traverse this part of my life, I’ve learned that I need to do whatever I can to take care of myself. To be in balance, both in my body and my life. Self-care. For me that means several things. First and foremost, I eat a vegetarian diet and have done so for over thirty years. Whole foods and a plant-based diet – grains, legumes, soy, fruits, and vegetables – make up my daily food intake. I feel healthier when I eat this way. I feel stronger.

But sometimes I overindulge in sugar. I’ve done that a lot this year. When that happens an imbalance occurs. I gain weight. I feel less than vigorous. I start to see the tell-tale signs that I’ve overdone it. So, I have to get things back in balance. I’ve recently started to eliminate sugar once again.

The same goes for sleep. One of the ways in which I take care of myself is to keep to a regular sleep schedule. I know that I need to be in bed reading a good book by about 10:30 at the latest. I wake up around 6 am, every day. If that schedule is disrupted, which – let’s face it – is going to happen occasionally, my balance is off. I have to correct, to find my balance again.

Self-care is something we all do, whether it has to do with diet, with exercise, with sleep, or with any imbalance in our bodies and our spirits. Fresh air, exercise, a positive attitude, a sense of abundance and thankfulness – all of these things go into creating a balance for ourselves. If basic needs aren’t met or if stress and crazily busy schedules take over our lives, we’re going to need to correct at some point. Just as the pilot of a plane or a boat that has gone off course needs to correct and get back on course.

Sleep. Exercise. Meditation/Mindfulness. Diet. Taking time for oneself. All of those things will contribute to feeling rested, fresh and balanced.

I used to, and still do at times, suffer from yeast infections. I can’t think of a woman I know that hasn’t suffered from that at one time or another. Yeast infections = a body out of balance. I’ve used Monistat® for yeast infections more times than I can count.

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See? There it is again. Balance.

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Problems Back Home & Some Chautauqua Cottages

June 18, 2015 at 8:23 am by Claudia

My absence from home is not coming at a good time. We’re having electrical problems; due, I’m sure to the loss of power we had during the tornado/microburst. Don put in a call to our neighbor, who is the electrician who put in the wiring when the house was flipped. It’s worrisome.

And then, late last night, Don called in a panic. He was getting ready to go to bed, so he was about to let Scout outside when he noticed her left ear was bleeding. A lot. Big clots of blood. She didn’t seem to be in any pain and he tried to stop the bleeding to see where the injury was, but it wouldn’t stop. So he called our vet and took her in around 10:00. After long minutes of panic on our part, the vet said that it was a fairly common problem. There is a growth inside her ear that had probably been there for a while. It had either been lacerated or it popped. Since it’s in the head, it bled profusely, as all head injuries do. They kept her overnight and today they’re going to cauterize it. And they’ll give her a bath because she is covered in blood.

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep a whole lot last night, but I’m praying Don did because he hadn’t slept very much the night before.

Send some positive thoughts our way, will you? For Scout and for our cottage. And for the abundance needed to pay for it all, which, at the moment, seems to be missing. Sigh.

I managed to get some photos yesterday as I walked through Chautauqua. It was a gloomy morning and I had to use the iPhone. (I do have my big girl camera with me and I promise to use it soon.)

6-17 chau houses

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These are on the larger side; my favorites are the smaller, narrower, dollhouse-like Victorian cottages and I’ll take some pictures of those while I’m here. Almost all of the cottages in Chautauqua have cottage-style gardens like the one picture above.

Workmen are everywhere right now; fixing, painting, planting, getting houses that were closed for the winter open and ready for the summer. They have to be done with everything by a week from this Sunday, when Chautauqua officially opens for the season.

By the way, a reader alerted me to an article on Chautauqua in this month’s Victoria magazine. I don’t read that magazine, as a rule, but I bought a copy the other day and the article is very informative.

Happy Thursday.

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It’s a Very Small World

June 17, 2015 at 8:11 am by Claudia

Chautauqua.

It’s beautiful here – except for the weather. The weather, alas, is the same as it is back home; muggy, stormy and generally uncomfortable.

The night of my arrival, after a 5 hour train trip that turned into 6 hours, and a 90 minute trip from the train station to Chautauqua, I dropped my stuff off at the apartment, met my roommates (I was the last one in) and then we all went over to the Artistic Director’s house for a lovely meal.

It rained torrentially while we were there. Thunder, lightning, the whole shebang.

But then this happened:

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I haven’t edited this photo, save for adding the watermark.

This is how it looked on Chautauqua Lake.

We’ve been in rehearsals for two days now. I love the cast members I have met so far. More are coming on Thursday. And, as always seems to be the case, I’ve found out that I coached two of them years ago at the Old Globe. Theater is an extremely small world. In that same vein, one of my roommates is the costumer designer and we were chatting about her wedding a couple of years ago, which, it turns out, took place very near to my home in a well-known mountain resort. She told me that the rehearsal dinner took place at a different venue – an old distillery – and I quickly figured out that she was describing a place just down the road from our cottage. Then she remarked on what a lovely area it is and that she worked with an actor once who lived in that same town. Now, I know of a few well-known actors who live near us, so I was thinking about possible names. As she struggled to remember his name, she mentioned that they had worked together in Pygmalion in Williamstown.

She was talking about Don.

The moment I realized it, I said “That’s my husband!” And we laughed. I also got a chuckle because I was thinking of all these other names and not Don’s. Theater is truly a small world.

Then my other roommate, who I met last year and who has a long history with the Chautauqua Theater Company, and I had a conversation and we discovered I had coached him in a production of The Countess at the Old Globe. When I met him last year, I thought he looked familiar and I also remember a conversation we had at the time where we racked our brains trying to figure out how we knew each other. It wasn’t until this year that we got the connection.

Just after this realization, we walked back to the rehearsal room and another actor in the play who has done a lot of television and film work (on The Wire, for example) looked at me and said, “We’ve worked together. I recognized you when I saw you.” And then we went through possible connections and realized we had worked together on a production of The Hostage at the Old Globe.

It never fails to amaze me. I’ve coached hundreds and hundreds of productions over the years, so the details don’t always come readily to mind, but I never forget a face. I knew I recognized that actor, but the director said it was probably from The Wire. Turns out it was because I coached him in a Irish dialect!

I love this sort of thing. It’s so wonderful to meet up again with faces from the past.

Happy Wednesday.

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Self-Care: Maintaining Balance

Problems Back Home & Some Chautauqua Cottages

It’s a Very Small World

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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