Creativity

It’s rare that my 14-year-old cat, Random, takes a keen interest in what I am doing. More often than not, I am just noise in the background that occasionally interrupts his naps. I am there to fill his food bowl and add cool water to his fountain.

But my recent endeavors into home exercising created a spectacle worthy of interrupting his bath time on my afghan. In fact, I had his undivided attention.

My husband and I had viewed a YouTube video about “Spaceship: You” and how to emerge from the COVID-19 self-isolation period a better person. It talked about how physical and mental exercise was the core of our “ship” and needed regular maintenance.

The two of us regularly took walks to achieve our Fitbit daily step goals. However, each of us felt like we could level up our efforts. For my husband, that meant running. I decided to go with a slightly less joint impactive practice. Using videos on my FitBit app, I started bodyweight fitness.

Using your body weight to get in shape is like doing pushups or squats. It’s nothing more than doing fitness videos in your living room, like Jane Fonda or “Sweating to the Oldies.” However, bodyweight fitness tends to focus on muscles that maybe don’t get fully used walking like shoulders, core, and glutes.

I started off ambitious. I did two different workouts in two days. Needless to say, I was feeling it. My body was sore. I felt it when I laughed. I felt it when I coughed. I felt it if I stretched to get something on the top shelf. The fact that I was this sore only highlighted how badly I needed to work those muscles. We are talking modified push-ups (and I was only dropping an inch, folks).

Feeling sore, I decided it may just be best for me to retire early. Go to bed. Sleep it off. Or that was the plan.

I went to bed and read an engaging book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” It’s like the “Behind the Scenes” written saga of science. It takes about how the world was formed, the scientist who didn’t like each other, and how many of these educated beings went out of their way to sabotage one another. Like I said, engaging.

Right as I was about to turn out the light, my bladder announced that it was full and I should do something about that. The truth of it is, I had been increasing my water intake and was making many more trips to our washroom. Fair enough.

And that is when it happened, all those sore muscles said, “Not today. No way.” My entire body revolted. My arms couldn’t lift to push me up. My core, abs, had no power to assist in me sitting up. My thighs utterly refused to lift my legs one more time to swing them off the bed.

As I struggled to move my muscles (think turtle on its back) and grunting my way through it, I happened to glance at the corner of my bedroom. On my reading chair and on top of a lime green afghan, sat my cat, watching me with a trainwreck fascination I have never seen. He was on the edge of his seat, and mid-belly lick, wanting to see how this turned out. 

What was a girl to do? Honestly, my first inclination was to laugh but that hurt too much.

I weighed my options and realized that it may be the bed that was the true culprit. That perhaps if I wasn’t in bed I would have more options of pulling myself up rather than pushing myself.

So . . . I did the only thing I could think of. I rolled out of bed and faceplanted on the floor. While that did nothing to ease my sore muscles, it did allow me to slowly work myself up to standing. By the time I was on my feet and headed to the washroom, the cat and rearranged himself so his back was to me.

Fair enough. The main attraction was over. It was time to go home.

I took the next day off from bodyweight fitness to allow my sore muscles to recover. However, since then, I have gone back to doing them. While I do feel the exercises, I have yet to repeat my faceplant performance for the cat.

So, there is a chance I do emerge a bit stronger from my Starship: You. However, I lost any street cred I may have had with my cat. If I had any at all to begin with. 🙂

 

I have always been aware of the power of words. One, I love to write. Two, I have been challenged by anxiety.

Words can create a picture of fear, scarcity, and loneliness — if I let them. My rumination mind can sink into a negative spiral with just one thought; shifting my mood and my esteem.

As I work on mindfulness and re-writing my mental patterns, I have seen first hand the power of words. I have the ability to control my thoughts, my emotions. I know that. But it doesn’t mean it is easy in all situations.

With negative news flooding my feeds and information sources, it is hard to change the narrative in my mind to support myself rather than pull me further down into the negative spiral. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the shame & blame game while I struggle to learn and adapt to new guidelines.

And then, I stumbled upon this image on my Instagram feed from Jack Canfield:

My negative spirals were a result of reacting — not creating.

Understanding our emotions, facing the difficult ones and rewriting the stories (about ourselves and others) to include understanding, compassion and love helps us to create our reality.

Think, talk and write about the world you WANT TO CREATE. A world you WANT TO SEE. Look for the moments of beauty or upon others with gratitude. When we saw what the world can do, we see how we can be part of the solution.

I will admit that I was a bit hesitant to try the COVID-19 self-isolation trend of whipping instant coffee – but not for the reason you think.

Whipped coffee is simple, easy and has the appearance of pudding with the consistency of meringue. When stirred, it could easily mimic a strong frappe.

Whipped Coffee originated in South Korea and is also known as Dalgona Coffee, named after a honeycomb toffee candy. The key to its popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic is that it is Instagramable and you don’t have to be good in the kitchen to create it. Also, it’s pretty darn amazing how just three ingredients turn into a whipped topping.

The recipe is simple:

2 tbsp Instant Coffee
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp hot water
Glass of ice
Milk (we used oat milk)

Mix the instant coffee and sugar. Add the hot water and whip. It takes about three minutes before you start seeing peaks. (Hint: Put in freezer for about 30 seconds half way helps get it to a solid state). Once it starts to thicken, add some ice to glasses and pour milk into the glasses. Add the whipped coffee and enjoy (makes two).

It is not possible to make Dalgona Coffee with espresso or ground coffee. The key to the whipped topping is instant coffee and it has to do with the drying process of the granules — so not all instant coffee will yield the same results (in whipping and in taste).

Surprisingly, as a coffee roaster, I do have a selection of instant coffee. We take instant when we travel and are unsure about brewing abilities at the places we are staying. We have fond memories of the bed and breakfasts in England that offer little instant coffee packets in their rooms. It wasn’t the instant coffee that caused me to hesitate.

No, it was the sugar. The recipe has one-to-one for coffee and sugar. I am not one who puts cream or sugar in my coffee. For me, a little bit of sweet goes a long way. Bring on the bitter bombs, but I am cautious when sugar is involved.

The drink is very strong in coffee flavour with an overly sweet aftertaste. Once I stirred in the topping, the flavours balanced out with the ice and oat milk. It’s one of those recipes that I am glad we tried. However, it is a bit much on the flavour for me to have more than once.

However, I was impressed at the whipping action of the instant coffee!

Whip it up . . . let me know what you think!

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