Sprightly Daughter Number One turned eight years old this past Friday. I ate cake Saturday. It was sort of compulsory. The beer at the concert Saturday night and the sugary baked beans at my mom’s on Monday were … less so. The pancakes and syrup at Shrove Tuesday dinner? I could make excuses, but I’m guessing they would sound hollow.
What I’m saying is that I am not hopeful regarding the weigh-in on Friday. I’ll let you know.
Weeks like this remind me of how tough the process can be. The name of the game is concentration. Or mindfulness, I suppose. Pick the one that works best for you. But, you know, I’m not going to say no when the eight-year-old says, “You’re going to have birthday cake, right, Daddy?” Of course, that’s when it falls apart. The first slice is emotionally compulsory, the following slices chemically so. The baked beans were kind of the same process.
—
Speaking of Shrove Tuesday, which you might know better as Mardi Gras, depending on your tradition or lack thereof, it leads into Ash Wednesday. Lent. Longtime readers might recall that Lent, 2011, is when this process started. Lent is a time of introspection, spiritual healing, etc. It’s traditional to give something up – often something relatively frivolous, but the older I get the better use I’m able to make of this process.
This year I’m working on giving up anger. If not actually giving up, at least isolating it when it happens and being mindful of it with the hope of minimizing it. Which fits really well into that whole better living thing that Skipping Dessert is all about. Right now I’m working on not being angry at myself about those pancakes I wrote about up in the first paragraph.
—
Thanks for reading – if you’re working on your own Lenten journey, best of luck to you. Let me know if I can help.
Skipping Dessert 