Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Gretchen Wieners Fantasy

Other than two finals next week, I have survived my first semester of my PhD. I had a strong start, doubted myself for a few weeks In the middle, and had a strong rest of the semester...until the past week. I allowed myself to be way too stressed out about a quiz, then I didn’t spread my work for this week out very well. I stayed up late working on Sunday and Monday night. Last night after drinking lots of hot tea, my stomach started hurting so badly that I decided to go to bed and sleep off my stomachache. In college, I could pull all nighters running on caffeine and pressure, but I have apparently aged out of that. It’s probably for the better anyway. 

This morning, I ended up going to work late and spending my morning putting last minute edits on a paper and finalizing my statistics project. While I worked, I cooked three Toaster Strudels for myself and pretended that I was Gretchen Wieners, daughter of the inventor of my current favorite breakfast pastry. The pretending didn’t work, and I still had to fulfill my duties as a graduate student. 


In addition to my Toaster Strudel bonanza, I decided after receiving a point off of an assignment (with no comments explaining why) that I deserved to treat myself after class today. I’ve talked about this before, but probably not on this blog: my self care runs the gamut from healthy, active choices like going for a long run and drinking water to destructive yet delicious choices like eating a can of sweetened condensed milk or eating too much fried food. Tonight after class, I picked up Popeye’s chicken for dinner and enjoyed the tenders with fries, a biscuit, and a bourbon and Coke. 

For those keeping score at home, that means that in addition to three Toaster Strudels with icing, I had a Popeye’s meal and a cocktail for sinner. Throw the Clif Bar I had for lunch into the mix, and my ability to make adult decisions like “What counts as a proper meal?” could easily be called into question. Yet as I am sitting on my couch and sipping the last of my cocktail, I can’t help but think the dietary choices I made today can’t make my muscles hurt any more than the healthy long run I did on Saturday, and maybe I have actually found a balance. It’s probably better to do the running self care first and the poor dietary choices self care second. 

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. 

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