Resilience

Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities, by Elizabeth Edwards, was on the Express shelf last Thursday so I snapped it up before I delved into some longer reads, and after finishing another quite slow book. What I thought would be a nice little tell-all about her cheatin’ man, was definitely not. She even admonishes readers (oops) towards the end for thinking they would find the sordid details of her husband’s philandering ways. As the title states, this memoir was definitely about Resilience. Edwards spent a lot of time discussing her 16 year old son Wade’s death by car accident and how she survived, as well as her multiple bouts with cancer. If you weren’t sympathetic to her plight before, you definitely would be after finishing this quick read. I feel badly knocking it but it was just so-so. The book was kind of all over the place. There’s something to be said for using time jumps as a writing style, etc. but I just didn’t care for it here. She also spent a lot of time talking about her parents and childhood, which I didn’t think necessary. I wasn’t too crazy about this one and ended up skimming a lot of it, unfortunately. I don’t know if it’s because it wasn’t what I had hoped to find, or just, well, that was probably it. While we all face adversity, we all have our own ways of dealing with it. I don’t really need to have someone else tell me how to cope. Sorry. I think I would prefer her actual memoir, Saving Graces. Maybe I’ll try that in the coming weeks as my book bag is full of To Be Reads currently.

Have I told you that I’ve stopped consuming alcohol Sunday-Thursday? Well, I have. At least, I’m trying. No, I’m not a heavy drinker. No, I’m not knocking back swill after swill of the hard stuff. However, I do enjoy a glass of wine, not necessarily even a fine wine. It relaxes me and also makes me sleepy before bed. The problems with this are three-fold. While many doctors recommend a glass of red wine a day for its various health benefits, my “one” glass was typically more like 2 – 2 ½. Not so good there, right? Also, I was finding that while alcohol does tend to make you drowsy, it also has a proven tendency to wake you up in the middle of the night when your body realizes, “Hey – where’d my booze go?” and gets all agitated. I was waking up multiple times a night (although some of that was Sadie related) and not feeling rested at all when my alarm went off at 5:30 am. (Yes, you read that right.) And thirdly, my weight loss has not been going so well lately. In fact, the scale is moving ever so slightly in the opposite direction. True, I’ve backed off the cardio a bit since my foot problems began but I’m still working out. I should not be gaining weight. Save for some weekend calorie indiscretions, my weekday diet remains balanced, except for the alcohol. There are little calories hiding in those highballs people. So let’s add this up…..2 ½ glass of wine (though sometimes white or worse yet, rum and diets) = 300 extra calories + no sleep (also a hindrance on weight loss) + the downside health-wise of alcohol consumption in the long run, and we’ve got a little predicament on our hands here. Thus, my self-imposed solution. No alcohol Sunday-Thursday. So far…..day 3……so good. I’m already sleeping better. My body is thanking me for the absent calories and my wallet is thanking me for not drinking wine like it’s water. (Jesus’s miracle don’t come cheap.) I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Please note – newly imposed rule does not apply on vacation, where alcohol can be consumed any day and even during the daytime hours, when partaking in wine tastings in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Only two more weeks!