October Restoratives - Anomaly Edition

Sometimes it takes a long while to get spurred into action and make hard life choices.  Some of us contemplate a whole lot more than the average Joes and Janes - more meticulous?  Maybe.  Or maybe just plain scared sh*tless to step off the beaten path.  And then we decide, but the heavens decide a monkey wrench is in order instead.  Nothing like a health curve ball to keep things interesting....

And health is perpetually the squeakiest wheel.  It has to be; everything else is meaningless without life.  And even then, when it came time to scheduling procedures, instinctively my immediate reaction was to see whether everything could fit in around Tax Day client demands - life coach friends would say capitalism and the patriarchy got their claws in and don't let go easily.  And it's true; the nagging guilt only let go when I pried them off.  But waiting till year end wasn't a good alternative.  So the schedule was set on MY timeline for a change.  Once in a while, personal priorities get oiled first.

Yes, this is all very cryptic.  The lawyer in me is skeptical about disclosing personal information on a public blog, even while the whole point of the blog is to be public.  Ah well ... feeling my way through THAT balance.  Suffice it to say a medical issue needed tending, and now disability benefits have kicked in.  A blessing in disguise.  The only other time I have been away from work this long was the last procedure.  An anomaly.

Very kindly, floral well wishes arrived from the Orifice to the Mother Ship, where the post-hospitalization recuperation began...

... all the better to access Mommy comfort food, a necessity for re-establishing the gut microbiome that got decimated by the post-surgical fasting and clear diet...

Brown rice fish congee, and invocation of the social exceptions clause to the vegetarian policy.  There should be a health exception too, so the social exceptions clause needn't be stretched so thin.

... and the boardwalk out at Jones Beach for slow practice walks on unusual 90 degree days in October.  It was a most lovely way to ramp back up gradually to full mobility and get the digestive tract back on track.

Beach goldenrod.

Whale sculpture - a relatively recent addition.

The full picture - hollow inside, save for plastic bottles and debris, to draw attention to the impact of our plastic consumption habit on our wild marine friends.

Blessings disguised around illness and mandated recuperation and disability leave.  Fingers crossed that these disguised blessings pave the way for greater blessings.