Overcast With a High Probability of Malaise

I don’t think Groundhog Day works for Ontario winters. The groundhog is supposed to predict whether we get an early spring or six more weeks of winter. I’d take either of those options!

March has long been my nemesis and this year is no exception. For the past week, I’ve been feeling weighed down, lethargic, and sad for no reason. I mention this only to counter my last post where I talked about finding moments of joy amid the doom and gloom. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes, your brain knows you’d feel better if you stopped scrolling and got up and did something, but you still don’t do it. Sometimes, the weather and the world’s woes win (say that five times fast). Sometimes you just want to stuff your face with carbs and raid the bakery cupboard for leftover chocolate chips. You can be acutely aware of your own good fortune, full of gratitude for everything you have, but still feel…meh.

I watched a podcast last week where Oprah interviewed the woman from the viral clip of the couple ducking the kiss-cam at a Cold Play concert. The clip has reportedly been viewed 300 billion times. Eight billion people in the world, 300 billion views. I couldn’t stop thinking about that. Of all the issues in the world, this is what we can all agree on? This is what we have in common? We’re united in our self-righteous judgment of people we don’t know? That schadenfreude (joy at other people’s misfortune) gets so much of our energy and attention makes me sad for human nature. [Fun fact: when I looked up the spelling of schadenfreude, I learned it has a lesser-known counterpart, freudenschade – a negative reaction to others’ good fortune.]

I’m not immune to human nature, of course. I also laughed when I saw the clip. I probably made a snap judgment without knowing anything about the people involved. After seeing the podcast, I hope that I’ll be less likely to do that in future and that I’ll remember that there are real people involved, whose lives – and whose children’s lives – are often turned upside down when a video goes viral.

Another notable thing from the podcast was that almost all of the vitriol was directed at her rather than him, and it came almost exclusively from women.

Anyway…enough with the negativity.

For Ray, March used to be the time of year for chopping wood, tapping trees and boiling sap. He’s been missing that ever since we moved to Brighton and left our sugar shack behind. This year, he’s helping a friend of a friend with his maple syrup production. They’ve put in over 80 taps and the sap is flowing. That’s a lot more taps than we had, but this guy has been doing it on his own for years, using manual processes – no tubing to collect the sap or fancy equipment to boil it off.

On the topic of maple syrup, I think the fitness industry has been using the wrong arguments to convince people to exercise – all this talk about longevity and heart health, blah, blah, blah – when they could have been telling us that, if you exercise enough, you can drink maple syrup! On a call with Nick, he mentioned that it’s a challenge trying to replace the calories he burns while training for the half-Ironman….so, instead of using sports gels, he drinks maple syrup. Maple syrup is rich in electrolytes and anti-oxidants, while sports gels contain artificial ingredients, so it’s a healthier, and more easily digestible, alternative. It does put a dent in his training budget though.

My sister and I were up at 4:30 this morning to get to the airport for our 7 am flight to Vancouver (to visit Nick, Megan, and spring), only to receive a notification as we sat at the gate that our flight had been cancelled. It turned out the flight wasn’t exactly cancelled, but due to high winds en route, they had to drop some weight, and we were dead weight. I’m guessing we were bumped because we travel carry-on only, so logistically we were the path of least resistance. (Edited to add: pissing off my sister is never the path of least resistance.) We’ve been rebooked for a flight this afternoon and have many hours to kill, hence the blog post with no real news.