I’m ready for tomorrow. Coffee maker: prepped with ground coffee and water. Peanut butter sandwich: made and ready to throw into my bag before I leave the house for work. Now I’m reclining on the bed, leaning against pillows beneath a blanket, fresh out my nightly lavender aromatherapy shower. My hair is clean and damp, and that is one of my favorite feelings. There’s a glass of ice water at my side, and a large mug of hot water with the juice and pulp of half a lemon – one of my latest obsessions.

^ I wrote that paragraph last night and then got too sleepy to continue. Typical. I took this selfie first, though:

Post-shower, post-aromatherapy, post nightly skin care routine. [15 June 2023]

Picking up where I left off, I find it interesting how illness often seeds new obsessions and rituals. I now look forward to the nightly mug of hot lemon water. (Is there a name for that beverage? Lemon tea?) I started drinking it at night at the suggestion of a nurse at the beginning of the pneumonia – going on five weeks ago – yes, I still have it, though I’m on the mend. I’m waiting patiently for my lung to heal, and it’s been tricky, this waiting. I’m terrible at it, impatient with taking it easy, with the wheezing and gurgling in my lung when I breathe (gross). But instead of focusing on that, I lie in bed every night all cozy and clean and aromatherapied and counting my many blessings as I sip my hot lemon water.

And now it’s morning, and I’m sitting at the kitchen counter writing this as I sip from an enormous mug of coffee before I get ready for work.

Yes, I’m back at work.

No, I haven’t yet been cleared to work out. Two days ago at the hospital I posed the question again and was told in no uncertain terms that I’m not to do any lifting, not even light weights. No lifting at all. No elevating my heart into the aerobic zone. My body, said the doctor, is trying to heal my lung, and it can’t do that if it’s busy lifting things and experiencing any kind of heart-rate increase. Being inactive is going to help my body in this bizarre reverse universe.

BE THAT AS IT MAY, I’m grateful that I can otherwise go about my regular life. I go to work and then go straight home; I haven’t run any after-work errands since I’ve been sick. I’m grateful for the health that I have, incredibly grateful for Kyle, who’s been taking care of me and making sure that I don’t do too much.

Oh! Speaking of working out, I have been cleared to do stretches for my exercise. I’d been getting into that, anyway, as you may recall. That’ll have to be the main event rather than the supplemental event, and the more I think about it, the more eager I am to see where that takes me. Perhaps I’ll get back into yoga, proper. Perhaps it’ll shape the future of my fitness life in ways that wouldn’t happened otherwise. Illness, as I’d said, seeds new obessions. I don’t know about you, but interests easily become obsessions in my world.

Have the loveliest of days, friends.