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Sep
24thGinger Tax
Years on the equator. There have been plenty of tribulations involved with living and being in Africa, but one that most others don’t have to concern themselves with is the impacts of the more direct sunlight that hits the equator. Weekends at the coast include others frolicking in the pool at noon, while I hide in the shade until 3pm or 4pm. Mornings at the beach usually include setting a timer for ten minutes to limit the duration of my exposure. When friends wanted to walk along the beach at noon to go and get gelato, I had to decline. My one friend was really pushy, and I had to outline, clearly, what an hour-long walk on the beach meant for me. It was still tough; not only did it leave me alone, but they all sent me photos of eating (very delicious) gelato. I’m the only person on safari in a long-sleeved shirt and hat. When I ran the Lewa Marathon in 2014, I did so in SPF 70, a long-sleeved SPF shirt, and a hat. Careful. Proactive. It’s never enough. In 2010, right before my wedding, I had an irregular mole on the back of my right arm. It was excised, and found to be malignant. There I was, mere months away from my wedding, with cancer. It was terrifying. I remember foolishly checking the internet for my prognosis. They’d told me it was Level 4, but the internet showed me results for Stage 4 Melanoma […]
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Apr
14thDay 1 – iControl
God, a gallon of water is SO. Much. Water. I empathize with others who have done the 30 Day Water Gallon challenge now, who feel weird and bloated and strange. And the peeing. Of course, the peeing. The good thing is that I have to keep up with so much water drinking that I don’t really have the “space” to drink much else. I drank a can of Coke Zero last night with dinner and then I was so behind in water drinking that it just didn’t seem worth it. The Water Drink Reminder app has kind of a neat gameification element, in that it has a “subtle” little arrow on your progress bar that lets you know where you should be during the day’s consumption, so if you’re behind, well, yea, it can be a little stressful, but it did help me prioritize my beverage consumption. I was almost reticent to drink my tea this morning, but I realized that it’s nice to start the day with a hot beverage. Having water with me is suddenly becoming essential — I forgot my bottle at a meeting today (Day 2) and was immediately regretting missing out on the time to drink more. I liked the reminder that it was time to go to bed, and realized even on the first day that bedtime is something that creeps on me out of nowhere. Having the reminder from Sleep As Android that, if I wanted to get my eight hours, that it was time […]
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Apr
14thiControl
There will come a day when I completely combust and lose my shit, but, if there’s some technology around to help me, I’m aiming for that day to be NOT today. My life feels out of control. Between my more-than-full time job, my distance Masters programme, being a good friend, being a better wife, caring for an elderly and very beloved cat, and editing a novel for my agent and keeping up with publisher’s requests, I don’t know when I find time to sleep, let alone breathe. To top it all off, my fancy Samsung phone had broken and had only just been “repaired” and returned, so, with my technological lasso/lifeline, I resynced my watch and decided it was also time to resync my life. There’s an app for that. Mostly because there’s an app for almost anything now. I am going to make changes and give the reins over to my phone, that will push commands to me via my watch, and my life will get more structured and better. Am I crazy? Probably, but the idea of letting “someone else” make decisions for me for a while sounds like bliss. Drinking I am a Coke Zero addict. Once I have one,I have one chug, it rapidly becomes 100 ounces in a day. I sleep with a litre bottle next to my bed and chug from it first thing in the morning. It’s probably bad for me, because most things are, so I’m going to try and replace it with water and, […]