My Life as an Inmate at a Health Retreat

Thank you for the feedback - nice to know your out there ...  imagine Twilight Zone music - actually don't! That's too freaky and I never liked that program anyway! Imagine just about any other music instead ... except Jaws, or The Sound of Music because they don't quite go with the 'out there' idea. The theme song from The Micky Mouse Club doesn't really work either ... Gilligan's Island would be good ...


So as promised here it is a description of the mundanities of 'My Life as an Inmate in a Health Retreat.'


5:00 am - Alarm Tunes starts up on my ipod and I lie there listening to pleasant music that lulls me back to sleep ...


6:58 am - Oh No, breakfast is in 2 mins and I'm still in bed


LOL that is not really my day! However, I have gone back to pretending to be a morning person - sort of required because breakfast is really at 7am and I have to walk 1/4km down a hill to the dining Hall. Plus, I'm just a nicer person if I get up several hours before I have to talk to anybody.


5:00am Alarm Tunes starts up on my ipod and I get out of bed and do my devotionals, am trying to study the Sanctuary but I think I am missing something by being too pedantic ..... got to think on this some more but there has to be a better way to study this.


6:00am Do all the getting ready for the day and making the room presentable stuff.


7:00am Breakfast - at the bottom of the hill in the dinning room, so I swathe myself in hat (red), coat (purple (building up to a purple dress and red hat, re Jenny Joseph)), gloves (black) and scarf (either plain blue weave for 'very cold' mornings or pretty crochette blue with pink roses and lots of holes for 'just cold' mornings) and venture out into the crisp promise of a new day.


Breakfast is big! First a bowl of beans, followed by hot cereal and fruit, most people add toast as a chaser and they also have muffins, waffles or pancakes on a fairly regular basis. And great big plates of each, find it difficult to believe how much I am eating. All seriously healthy, whole grain flour, vegan, lightly seasoned but still very tasty. (Mostly, there have been a few things I have discreetly disposed of after one bite!!)


After breakfast is Staff Worship where everybody who can gathers to invite God to be part of the day. I then have a choice, I can go work back in my room or I can work in Richards office. Generally I decide based on 1. Do I need to print anything? 2. Do I want to work without interruptions? Richards office supplies printing and interruptions, My room supplies peace and quiet.


Either way I work until 1:45pm when it is Lunch/Dinner/Tea/The-Final-Meal-Of-The-Day time. Except on Tuesday's and Thursdays (also Sunday's but I don't work then) I take a break between 9:30am and 10:30am and go and do my workout in the Fitness Center, I've already described the heaving of piles of cold metal that this entails in a previous post so I won't go into that again. 


Lunch/Dinner/Tea/The-Final-Meal-Of-The-Day is a lighter meal that Breakfast, it starts with salad, then there will be veggies and some kind of savory - again, big servings. Yes all  those of you who are gasping in horror, only two meals a day!! Not so bad actually, don't feel hungry and the idea is that by eating your final meal so early you have time to digest it completely before you go to bed which is better for your body and your waistline. 


After Lunch/Dinner/Tea/The-Final-Meal-Of-The-Day I have a walk, but I skipped today and yesterday cause it was around -17C and the mucus inside my nostrils froze which is a novel not entirely pleasant sensation. The walks are progressively getting longer, am up to about 3 miles now, note that miles are almost twice as long as Km's.


My days are very flexible, so I am having the opportunity to go to lectures with the guests, I decided to go to one set of lectures each month, this month I'm attending the ones on exercise, next will be the ones on Stress!


After my walk I do as much work as is required to make sure that my 6 hours for the day is complete and then my time is my own; to write my book, finish assignments, surf facebook or write my blog to you lovely folk. Up until now I have mostly been using it to finish assignments and have sent off three since I have been here. Only one to go and it will be finished and emailed by Sunday.


8:00pm is officially my self appointed bed time which means I actually get there by 9:00pm and get the requisite 8 hours sleep so that I do not turn in to a pumpkin at any time in the next day.


What I actually do for my work will have to wait for another day when I will delight, or possibly bore, you with the details of gardening and web-design. (All you people who are sniggerring about my gardening talents ... I am learning new and marvelous things! And, as of yet nothing has died from my loving ministrations.)