Sunday evening bike rides are a thing among completists. Cyclists usually have weekly mileage goals and then check Sunday to see how they are doing. This can lead to the oddball distance Sunday night ride.
These day though I am riding lots more. This week I got to Sunday and was already over 145 km.
Riding with a friend on a Sunday morning
My Sunday began with freshly baked croissants and an 11 am social ride with a friend who is just starting his indoor, winter training. Since we’re in different cities now and there’s a pandemic on, we’re riding in Zwift. We set out to do the TickTock route, a nice, flat 17-ish km in Watopia. It was wild though because that’s the route for the WTRL race this Tuesday and every racing Zwifter was out there giving the course a ride-over. Luckily the meetup function in Zwift keeps people together no matters what watts or speed you’re putting out. That’s very useful and we had a fun ride chatting on FB messenger as we rode.
Croissants!
(Thought: I could set up a Fit is a Feminist Issue meet up ride some time if enough of us are interested. Let me know!)
So that got me up to 162 or so km.
Next up, a bunch of work work and yard work and house stuff, followed by the TFC club social ride at 3:15. That was a chatty bunch of laps in Richmond with fun sprints each lap. We also raced the last 5km. Look at all the red! I think you can tell I was working hard. I’m also wearing the green sprint jersey. The club ride was 37 km.
Recovering at the end of the TFC social ride
You can see where this is leading. There I was at the end of the day just a few kilometers short of 200 km.
So while Sarah and I were chatting about dinner plans I hopped on the bike and rounded out my week in virtual France. (It was also a well rounded day in terms of places: Watopia, Richmond, and France.)
France
There, I did it!
200
Happy now completist friends?
Honestly, it felt good. I might have regretted not finishing the distance. And I’ve increased my weekly cycling goal to match my new habits.
Pandemic fashion is a thing: we’ve got nap dresses, electronic eyebrows (on Zoom you can enhance lips and brows), or fancy business tops and comfy pants below the screen.
Friends have shared how they finally put on hard shoes in the fall and it was a shock. I myself have surveyed my cupboard and have hauled out my pretty shoes so I can enjoy them (I wear mostly flats so no stilettos to trip me up). Adios indoor sneakers; hello unicorn slippers.
Casual gear is where it’s at. The New York Times reports that in April 2020, sweat pant sales went up 80%. But this post isn’t about a shift from business wear to casual chic. This is about getting dressed.
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash Image shows tiny kitten wrapped in a bright coloured blanket.
A local companyin my home province is making t-shirts to celebrate the small wins. (Disclosure: I have no financial interest in this business. They make nice clothes and they have the best size range I have ever seen.) This one is my favourite:
Image shows white text on black fabric saying: I got dressed today little goals.
It’s easy to stay in our comfy clothes day after day. Or to wear our pyjamas all day. And that’s perfectly okay. For awhile. However, changing our clothes can shift our perspective from night to day (it’s morning!) or from rest to work (hello Zoom!), or from work to play (hi there yoga pants AND mat). It can be the one thing we can accomplish if we are feeling hugely stressed.
These days, when the line between our work day ending and me time beginning is very blurred, changing into or from work clothes can help you make that shift more strongly. If you have been finding it hard to mark those boundaries, try making it with what you are wearing, That one tiny step will build on other tiny steps. Be well, stay well.
There’s a very moving ad making the rounds about a grandfather strength training for Christmas so that he can lift his granddaughter up to put a star on top of the tree. I got teary watching it and likely you will too. You’ve been warned.
I love his grit and determination. I also love his smiles.
It’s called Take Care of Yourself and it’s the Doc Morris Christmas Advert for 2020.
I also love its message of functional fitness and strength training as we age for all sorts of very practical reasons.
I share a lot of ‘keep strength training as you age’ motivational material on the blog’s Twitter and Facebook page.
“A small 2013 study of people between the ages of 88 and 96 years old found that those who performed strength-training exercises for two days a week over a 12-week period showed improvements in balance and a lower incidence of falls when compared to those who didn’t exercise. “It’s safe and important for older people to include strength training,” Jackson says. “Even simple bodyweight exercises like squats, push-ups, and dips can help with strength and muscle building.”
Answer, “As people age, they often focus on cardio. They shouldn’t forget strength training.”
I’m not here to criticize the beautiful and moving strength training grandad commercial. Don’t worry. But I do worry that the focus on strength training for independent living buys into the message that physical dependence is a necessarily a bad thing. I hope to put off the time when I need assistance with everyday household tasks and personal care as long as possible. But I also hope when I need help that I and others can accept it without thinking I ought to have done more kettlebell swings or that it was a moral failing of mine to not care enough about my own health and strength.
I worry that our affection for the weightlifting grandfather is connected to a kind of ableism that celebrates movement and blames those who move less, even when we have no choice. In my own case I’ve talked about that in the context of becoming a non-runner and slower walker.
Regular long time readers will know that it’s hard to hold these two thoughts in balance. You’ll know that it’s something I struggle with.
Thought 1 is that older people are encouraged to slow down. It used to be that when people retired we bought them reclining chairs and told them to ‘relax.’ After all, they’d worked hard their whole lives. Not so much now as times are changing but it’s still true that gyms and fitness culture generally are geared towards young, fit, able bodied people. Older women worry they’ll look foolish exercising. If all of our fitness culture is geared towards aesthetics and maintaining beautiful youthful bodies, no wonder older people feel like they don’t belong.
We see this in the ad above when his neighbour looks to be judgemental of his fitness efforts. She seems puzzled about what he’s doing and why.
And yet, there is a huge cost in losing muscle, losing mobility, and increasing our risk of falling if we don’t continue to exercise–including weight training–as we age.
Older people have far more at stake than the young. The young can get away with a lot. They recover quickly if they are injured. And they bounce back from time off fitness efforts pretty speedily too. All of this gets more difficult as we get older. Indeed, if gyms should be there for anyone, it’s for the elderly.
Thought 2 worries that some of our dislike of old age is a tangled mess of ageism and ableism.
The thought here is that we engage in blame about the failure to age successfully when lots of people encounter the kinds of illness and injury in old age that can’t be overcome with kettlebells and powerwalking. In my post about what 74 looks like I talked about my very fit and physically active mother-in-law who used a wheelchair for mobility in the time after her diagnosis with ALS.
See Valuing Old Age Without Leveraging Ableism by Clara W. Berridge and Marty Martinson. They argue that our medical model of “successful aging” without disability sets up the majority of the population, especially women, for failure. Berridge and Martinson write, “Phrases such as “70 is the new 50” reflect a “positive aging” discourse, which suggests that the preferred way of being old is to not be old at all, but rather to maintain some image of middle-age functionality and appearance.”
We want to encourage ourselves to keep moving and to stay strong. At the same time we need respect and compassion for those who can’t move and lift in the same way. It’s a battle I feel personally as I struggle to accept my physical limits without self-blame and still push myself in those areas of physical fitness where I can push. Wish me luck!
I’d appreciate your thoughts about keeping these two thoughts in balance, the push to stay fit and strong and mobile, on the one hand, and the understanding and acceptance when it’s not.
One thing I would say, going back to the video that began this post, is that I wish he wasn’t lifting alone. I wanted a community centre for him to go too. I wanted peers for him to lift with and walk with and drink tea after. We need to do better as fitness communities making inclusive spaces for those who are aging, those who move in different ways, and those for whom both these things are true.
“So give me your poor, your tired, your weak of spine and crumbling of bone. Give me your mushy of muscle and burbly of digestion and bored of treadmill-hamstering.
Give me your old and young and everything between early bipedalism and death. And while you’re at it give me your non-bipedal: your limps and gimps and wimps and wheeled and caned and casted and bandaged. Untangle your sweaty hospital sheets and IV tubes and tentacles of fear and shame and move whatever isn’t strapped down. A finger, a leg, an eyelid. Whatever you can move, keep moving it. Next week, add some weight to that.
Give me your saggy, your baggy, your faggy, your haggy. Give me your freaks and geeks; steers and queers; sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, preppies, jocks, stoners, poindexters, punkers, rockers, hicks, drama dorks, superstars, homebodies, farmers, New Wavers and socs.
Give me your bodies wracked with life’s whims; your hormonally challenged; your rattling bottles of pills like morbid maracas; your diseases of disuse. Your old knee injury from when you tried drunken trampolining.
Give me your your shit-talkers and funk-walkers; the voices in your head who sing the Rocky training montage; your sniveling inner toddler who stamps and says “No!”. Leave your inner critic at the door, or do five pushups every time you speak to yourself seriously in her voice.
Give me your clueless big-eyed newbies and grizzled gray-prickly veterans. Give me your squashy and scrawny. Give me your chickenshits; you people hunting for your fighting spirit and tending the tiny flame of Yes we can inside your ribcage.
It doesn’t matter who kicked the sand in your face. Spit it out and let’s get to work.”
There’s more…go read it. And I love how it ends, “Wherever you are in your journey of strength, you are welcome here. This place is for you.”
One of my favourite things to do as a kid was to pile a bunch of pillows in the bottom of my closet space, crawl in, pull the eyelet curtain that served as a door across, and read to my heart’s content in my makeshift cocoon. As an aunt, I loved building blanket forts with my nieces and nephews and when I had my child, I did the same with them.
Blanket forts, pillows, pets, people — depending on our experiences, we can enjoy a cuddle or comforting touch from time to time on our terms. The pandemic has meant for many of us there are limits on who we can hug or when. The absence of touch for comfort can be stressful. Taking a hug break can be hugely calming and beneficial.
Image shows a black and white cat under a blue blanket cuddling a teddy bear.
Don’t want a hug from another human? Don’t have a cat or dog, or other warm creature in your space? Turn yourself into a human burrito by wrapping yourself in a cuddly blanket or burrowing under a pile of quilts.
Photo by Linus Mimietz on Unsplash Image shows a soft white fluffy feather on brown grass.
Or you can find a soft object — a toy, a comfy sweater, a shawl — to pat. Rhythmic touch can also be soothing and give you just enough relaxation in five minutes to help you keep going on your next task.
I love holiday gift guides. Not that they’re helpful at all: either the items are out of my price range (like this vegan leather lunchbox for $149) or too silly (like this service that will mail someone a potato with an image of your face on it). But gift guides are splashy and fun and a bit inspirational; maybe I won’t buy these gold jug drop earrings for my sister for $395, but I can look for something pretty and classic (and cheaper) on Etsy (maybe these will do).
So, in the spirit of trying to squeeze some lemonade from the severely out-of-season lemon which is 2020, here are some distracting and silly gifts that you probably shouldn’t buy this season.
If you’re looking to go big in unnecessary fitness gadgets gift-giving, you can’t do much better than buying a $1500 app-enabled mirror (called “The Mirror”) that lets you see some canned (but maybe a bit interactive with your fitness data?) workouts from boxing to barre to kettlebells and beyond. The membership for the app is sold separately for $39/month. it displays you plus the canned instructor plus a bunch of metrics. And, it goes beautifully with a variety of decors.
The mirror lets you workout with friends you managed to talk into buying it.
The mirror turned off, against a modernist concrete wall, dumbbells lying casually nearby.
In the “kill two birds with one stone purchase” category: Athleta is selling a COVID/assassin ensemble for outdoor winter running or walking for the low low price of $98. It even comes in two colors, presumably to accommodate differing light levels.
Assassin-y balaclava-turtleneck in classic black.
Killer option two, in tannish mauve.
Some of you might be thinking, “in a year like 2020, there’s no space for foolishness and frippery; I want evidence-based fitness and health products!” Well, never fear, the Barefoot Scientist products are here, complete with full documentation by way of the Barefoot Scientist blog. In this entry on how to start a foot care routine, we are soberly instructed to identify our foot care goals (uh, clean feet? trim nails?) and shift our mindset (start small with a 3-step kit, being mindful of other possible foot needs that may arise). They even have a drop down menu for shopping By Concern:
Dry skin? calluses? aches? Odor? Dirt? Blisters? Nail issues? We got you.
For holiday shopping, Barefoot Scientist makes it easy, offering gift sets for every foot.
Products for the busy exerciser, from Pre-Heels spray to help reduce blisters, to Twinkle Toes to keep the odors at bay.
One problem a bunch of us are experiencing is boredom from doing the same old workouts all the time from home. If you’re looking to shake things up, here’s a product for you: Fitness Dice!
6 wooden Fitness Dice, each with types of exercise that you already do.
Okay, this may not seem revolutionary, as the pictures on the dice look like the plain ol’ vanilla moves everyone has done. But, the Fitness Dice folks beg to differ:
First, roll six dice to decide which target areas you’ll tackle. Then, toss the seventh to determine your repetitions and time. Worried about getting bored? Don’t sweat it: with an instruction booklet to walk you through each challenge, every roll leads to one of 45,000 possible routines, designed for all experience levels.
I’m a little doubtful that changing the order and number of repetitions of these exercises will make for 45,000 different-seeming workouts, but for $19 (and it’s even backordered!), how much can you expect?
Maybe you’re just flat-out missing the experience of the gym or sports club or local pool: the sights, sounds, smells (okay, I just went too far) that are all part of your workout ritual. Well, I’ve got a (partial) solution for you: why not make your living room more like the locker room by putting up this Exercise Room sign, available here for $57.95.
Lest we forget– safety first!
What’s on your fitness holiday gift list this year (either to give or receive)? Don’t tell my family, but I’ve given up on originality, so it’s dish towels for everyone. Hey, you can always use more dish towels…
That was back when all talk of COVID-19 among American sports communities seemed highly politically charged. “Do you even know anyone who has this virus?” they asked. People speculated that it was all made up for political causes.
How the world has changed. These days COVID-19 is everywhere and I meet very few people who don’t take it seriously and pretty much everyone I know knows someone who’s had it.
I blogged here and here about blog adjacent friends recovering from COVID-19. A former regular guest blogger has been sharing her story here too.
And last night in my team time trial we had one team member just back from his COVID-19 recovery period, round two. He tested positive and then negative and then got sick again and tested positive again. Did he get it again or not fully recover the first time? Doesn’t matter. We’re very happy he’s healthy and riding and racing again.
Meanwhile another team member was struggling a bit because he’s part of a vaccine trial. We all hoped for him that he got the real thing and not the placebo, likely because he didn’t feel well.
We’re all talking lots these days about COVID-19. It’s a presence in lots of our lives and affecting the way pretty much everyone lives. It’s also exciting that vaccines are in sight and that the light at the end of the tunnel is shining brightly enough to capture our collective attention. The days of “no virus talk” being a thing you could say are over and I’m looking forward to COVID-19 being over too.
I have a friend who finds the low light of winter debilitating. She reminds herself to start taking vitamin D at the beginning of November. I have another friend who takes medication for their ADHD. They have reminders too.
People take medication for all kinds of reasons and sometimes we forget. Sometimes it’s stress that can throw you off your schedule, no matter how well you manage your meds already. Whether you take a supplement to deal with Seasonal Affective Disorder or a prescription to manage your anxiety, maintaining your schedule with meds can make the difference between a good day and a not-so-good day.
Taking your meds is key to your overall well-being. if you aren’t feeling like your usual self, check to see you if you have missed a dose. Don’t be hard on yourself for forgetting; just take them when you remember, and do yourself the kindness of creating a reminder system. Be well, stay well.
This is the first in a series of posts on my postpartum fitness shenanigans. Next up: postpartum gymnastics.
Once I’d given birth, I was quickly itching to move physically. Not because I wanted to get back in shape or get my pre-pregnancy body back, which is a strong motivator for many women, and it’s complicated. I definitely get wanting to feel “like yourself” again, but there’s an unreal amount of societal pressure around postpartum bodies and weight loss that doesn’t sit well with me at all. I wanted to move because it makes me feel good, and it’s part of my identity. Honestly, in the first weeks after childbirth I struggled a bit with this complete shift of my identity to “100% mother”, and I clung to the hope that working out would provide a feeling of “I’m still me”.
Alas, you’re not supposed to work out when you’ve just given birth, and much less so if you’ve had a c-section. My midwife showed me some exercises I was allowed to do – one of them was lying down on the floor, lifting my arms, then putting them down again. Another was pelvic tilts. Not pelvic lifts, oh no. My bottom was not to leave the floor. Not really a “workout” in my book! I needed to completely redefine what “counted” as a workout. Which I did! (Incidentally, Tracy only just blogged about this yesterday, go read it if you haven’t already! I am definitely usually a person who judges her workouts.) The fact that I’m at over 240 on the 220 in 2020 Facebook workout challenge proves it – I started counting any sort of purposeful movement, even the pelvic tilts.
But still, can you imagine my delight when about 5 or so weeks postpartum I discovered an on-line programme called “MommaStrong“* that had a section for people who’d recently given birth, and then others for further down the line? And it even had a special programme for c-section recovery. It was $5 per month, so I signed up out of curiosity.**
Bettina’s MommaStrong set-up: a laptop, a red yoga mat, a baby toy (aka Captain Octopus) and her mini cheerleader: a baby dressed in blue tights and a grey sweater).
The MommaStrong philosophy is that you don’t need to work out for a long time each day to make a difference, what matters is consistence. The “Hazy Days” programme for the first 8 weeks postpartum is just 5 minutes a day. The later ones are 15 minutes each day, and for those there’s a new video every day. 5 or 15 minutes seemed feasible – it’s hard to fit in a long workout when a little person requires your attention pretty much all day. They’re basically HIIT exercises, although the “intensity” of the Hazy Days sessions is understandably low.
I like the MommaStrong approach overall. There’s no mention of weight loss, which is not the goal. The goal is to feel good, and feel strong, even if you only manage to do half the workout, in a nursing bra and spit-up covered sweatpants. Courtney Wyckoff, the founder and the person who leads all the videos, exudes a cheerful energy with a healthy dose of imperfectionism. She reminds me a bit of Adriene of Yoga With Adriene. MommaStrong tries to be inclusive. It’s not perfect: to start with, the name MommaStrong isn’t inclusive of all people who give birth, and they acknowledge that, but they do try. And the community helps make it more diverse – there’s a Facebook group of queer people doing MommaStrong called QueerStrong, for example.
Even so, I’ve been less than consistent. First of all, I still find it hard to do even 15 minutes every day. My baby has only recently started to tolerate watching me work out for a bit while lying next to me on a play mat without complaining. So other ways of moving, like taking him for a walk, have been easier. I also honestly enjoy going for a walk more than 15 minutes of HIIT. In the evening, when my partner comes home from work, I’m too exhausted to work out. And when I’ve had time, I’ve often preferred other forms of exercise, like yoga, or one of the other two things I’m going to write about in this mini-series: I’ve been doing an online postpartum gymnastics class and a “Kanga” class (more about what the heck that is in a future post!).
Nevertheless, I’m going to keep my MommaStrong subscription for now. I can see it coming in handy once I go back to work in February and time will be even scarcer – and I also don’t think swimming pools will reopen here anytime soon, so I’ll need something to do. A bite-sized 15-minute workout might turn out to be just the ticket.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
*MommaStrong is a whole universe, there’s also a programme for dads, one for teens, and a nutrition programme, all of which I can’t vouch for since I haven’t explored them.
**MommaStrong has recently switched platforms and increased their price to $12/month, which, while a steep increase, is understandable given the amount of material that’s available and work the team must put in to sustain it. I was floored when I saw the extent of it for $5/month.
Losing your sense of smell is so odd. At least, I’m finding it so. Maybe because I had such a sensitive sense of smell, to start with.
My whole life, I’ve been bothered by smells that don’t seem to affect others. Or I’ve been bothered by smells that other people can’t even smell. Because of my migraine headaches, I had something called “hyperosmia,” which made me very sensitive to scents like perfume, cleaning products, solvents (like Sharpies or oil paint), or even biological odours like vomit, urine and feces.
All of those smells could trigger a migraine, and if I already had a migraine, all of those smells seemed 10x stronger while I had a headache. Scientists aren’t sure what causes hyperosmia in migraineurs, but one hypothesis is that the neurons involved in identifying odours get overstimulated or amplified in some way, compared to the neurotypical mechanism of smelling.
When I had a migraine, all of those smells seemed so bad, they would turn my stomach – even make me vomit. I often felt like I was trying to get away from many smells, as if eliminating them altogether would make me feel so much better. My hyperosmia was even part of the reason that, when I founded a home-cleaning business, I chose to use only eco-friendly products. I just couldn’t handle the odours from the typical cleaning products that you find on grocery store shelves.
I’ve always hated going to a salon for a haircut, because of the overly-scented shampoos and conditioners floating through the air. And heaven help me if they put them on my own head – there’s no getting away from the smell of perfume-y shampoo or hair product, even if you wash your hair several times afterwards. (Believe me, I’ve tried.)
Over the years I’ve had so many disagreements with friends and relatives, who wanted to wear their favourite fragrances or colognes around me. The fragrances made me so ill and uncomfortable. Don’t even get me started on scents in the workplace; I’m just thankful that many places now have scent-free policies.
Well, now I get to experience life without any of those smells. At all. And yes, in many ways, life is very much better because of it. But it’s also so much flatter and duller, too. Careful what you wish for, right?
During my quarantine for COVID-19, I would draw in my bedroom for hours, to pass the time. It was so much nicer, when I couldn’t smell the Sharpies that I use for making dark outlines.To this day, I still can’t smell Sharpies when I draw. I only smell them if I stick them right under my nose. And I don’t seem to be affected by the invisible solvents that I can no longer smell, either. I’ve had several migraines since losing my sense of smell, and I haven’t noticed any correlation between using Sharpies and getting the migraines.
At any rate, since getting COVID and losing my sense of smell, I no longer have hyperosmia either before or during my migraines. Meaning, I don’t seem to smell more acutely during a migraine, post-COVID. Which makes me wonder if the mechanism that causes the loss of smell from COVID is different from the mechanism that causes the hyperosmia from the migraines. And I wonder if the hyperosmia will come back, if and when my sense of smell comes back.
I think I wrote about this before, but life without a sense of smell is very disorienting – very flat. Food doesn’t taste the same, and doesn’t appeal to me as much (although, thankfully, I can still appreciate the basic tastes that we get from the taste buds in our tongue: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, and (I’ve learned since losing my sense of smell) the “taste” of fat).
If you can imagine the difference between watching television in black and white, versus watching television in colour, that’s how life seems to me, without smell. Everything is almost the same…but not as vivid. There’s something missing, and most of the time, I don’t even notice precisely what’s missing until afterwards. When I realize I haven’t smelled the “essence” of the place, or the experience.
Our sense of smell is so elemental. Our memories are so closely tied to smell. Think about it – how do you feel emotionally, when you smell that first “smell” of fall? Or the smell of the first rain of the summer, on hot pavement?
I work in a fabric store, and I recently had my first day back to work since getting COVID. I realized afterwards that I hadn’t been able to smell the “smell” of a fabric store. (Which is probably the smell of fabric sizing, dye, and other chemicals – which, come to think of it, doesn’t seem too healthy).
I’m an avid sewer. I haven’t ironed anything since I’ve been sick, but that’s another smell that brings back lots of memories for me. Hot fabric under the metal iron. Or the smell of my fabric stash, that’s been packed away in bins for months (or years). It’s a very specific odour, that reminds me of playing with my mother’s fabric stash when I was a child.
The smell of baby powder reminds me of real babies, and also of locker rooms when I was younger. The smell of clementines reminds me of Christmas. The smell of turkey roasting also reminds me of Christmas. The smell of cookies baking makes me think of my mom.
If we are able to smell, so much of our lives is tied to, and anchored by, our sense of smell.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some things that I’m happy not to smell. I can’t smell my own poop. I can’t smell my own body odour. I can’t smell the yucky barnyard smells that are common in the rural area where I live. That’s kind of nice.
I also can’t smell things burning, which kind of concerns me. Our smoke detector is often triggered when we open our hot oven, and each time it goes off lately, I interrogate my mom: Is something burning? Do you smell something burning?
I want to know if I’m missing something that could save (or cost me) my life. So far, I can’t smell burning (or “hot”) things.
Is there anything that I can smell, right now? Yes – although so far, all the regained scents are very faint. But when each new thing is added it’s absolutely delightful. It’s like having a beloved, long-lost friend come back into my life.
One of the first smells to return was essential oils. I had several bottles in a drawer in my bedroom while I was in quarantine, and every day I would sniff some of them deeply. The day when I could smell “something” – and then correctly identify the oil – was a happy day.
(Interestingly, some of the essential oil scents came back faster than others. That’s a strong yes to tea tree, oregano and lavender. Any of the mints are still so-so. Citrus fruits are faint, but identifiable. Woody scents (spruce, pine) are still hard to identify, and almost un-smellable.)
One day after my quarantine was over, Mom was frying an egg for breakfast, and I suddenly realized that I could smell butter frying! That was a happy day.
Another day, I was drawing with some children’s markers that are scented like fruit. I suddenly realized that I could smell the blueberry marker. Also, the grape one. (But not the banana, orange, cherry, or green apple. Weird.)
Yesterday when I got home from work, I could smell baking when I walked into the house. I asked Mom what she had made – if it was a treat for me. (I was hoping for shortbread cookies.) It was a pumpkin pie. I couldn’t identify the scent of pumpkin spices, but I could definitely smell “sweet baking, warm from the oven”. Happy day.
Last night I was cooking some chili in my slow cooker, and after a few hours – when I walked towards the cooker, to turn down the heat – I could suddenly, faintly, smell chili. That was a happy moment.
Earlier today, I was washing out some empty containers from a natural deodorant that I use. I had put them to soak in some hot, soapy water in the kitchen sink, but forgotten all about them. A few hours later, Mom asked if I would finish cleaning them up, because the smell of rose and lavender essential oils was so strong that it was making her (who also suffers from migraines, and hyperosmia) nauseous. I couldn’t smell a thing.
Today, as I was writing this, I reached over and took the lid off a black Sharpie, and sniffed it deeply. I could faintly smell “Sharpie”. I’m not so thrilled about that.
So there we are. I feel like I’m smelling the world through a thick layer of gauze. Most of the time, I don’t notice any odours. But then occasionally, something will pop through, identifiable, and I remember that the world smells like things.
I wonder if I could be happy with only half a sense of smell (i.e. if my hyperosmia is gone for good). I know I could get by. But I suspect that – as unpleasant as hyperosmia is when it’s bad – I would still miss it, if it’s gone forever. A lifetime without a rich and deeply complex panorama of odours? Not sure I want that.
Michelle Lynne Goodfellow is a writer, artist, and maker. You can see some of her creations on her Instagram feed.
When I was growing up there was an ad for ketchup featuring a song by Carly Simon (Anticipation). The tag line — “…anticipation is making it wait!” — reminds me of the classic marshmallow study looking at the impact of delayed gratification (resisting a small reward for a greater one later on).
Not really relevant to my topic but I think the cat bouncing on top of the marshmallow is cute.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because so much of the stress we can experience comes from having to meet other people’s expectation and demands. Now there are times when you need to respond immediately (child is fishing in the toilet, cat is swinging wildly from drapes, the computer ate your project and so on), but many times, you don’t have to.
Whose agenda are you prioritizing? A colleague gave me a very wise piece of advice years ago. She was teaching a workshop and asked how many of us checked our email first thing in the morning? Almost all of us there raised our hands. What would happen if we waited until 10 am to check? or 11am? Not much we concluded. If it was a real emergency, then we would likely get a call. Looking at my own behaviour, I realized the plan I made at the end of the day before, was frequently delayed in favour of responding to someone else’s agenda.
Put yourself first. So today, when you get that request, think about it carefully. If saying yes means your time will be derailed, delay your response. Takeing control of your time, even in five minute or half hour chunks can make a huge difference.
