Yay: Ceviche!

The best part of yesterday was making ceviche. I love to eat it, but I’d never made before.

A staff member came into the meat/seafood department of our grocery store yesterday morning as I was shopping, to put ‘two dollars off’ stickers on items including several packages of Shrimp. So, I got a few and the citrus I needed to make Shrimp ceviche. 

It was good but not as great as is the ceviche I got regularly at Ancora in Vancouver. Still, it was healthy, and I can tweak it as it evolves in my repertoire of new post-diet recipes.

My neighbours, Kevin and Shelly, came by to invite me over for snacks and to play tile Rummy this afternoon. I’m really happy they invited me; I feel genuine affection from both of them.

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I got up this morning and immediately into my routine—feed the cats, light the fire, open the fence for Sheba and prepare her breakfast, make and cover the bed so that Miss Dirty Feet doesn’t get my bedding dirty when she comes in from her morning excursion that always includes the compost of neighbours across the empty lot—it’s how every day begins.

But this morning, as I became “awake” to all that was in my gaze, I was emotionally overcome with intense joy to be here with my pets. It truly is almost overwhelming to feel how happy I am to be here in this place where I never imagined living.

When I contemplate the change in “who I was” before my hospitalization, when I think of my behaviors, from how I dressed to the things I did and with whom, to “who I am now,” how I live my life here, it’s a huge change. The most surprising thing about my transition is that it wasn’t premeditated.

I’d long looked at semi-rural properties for sale like some people might look at porn—as a way to pass time, to imagine, but with absolutely no intent to act. It was escapist fantasy in the same way, as a child, I would go through catalogues to choose what single item I would claim if I could have one free gift.

I saw this home for sale online on the evening of September 4^th, 2017. I called my realtor the next morning, sold my old place within two weeks, got this place and moved in on October 7^th. I am still frequently emotionally overwhelmed by the rightness of that decision—a decision that still doesn’t feel like mine.

The image of this house sprang me to action. I felt possessed, as though I’d discovered a portal to a life of rapture and helplessly drawn to move by external force. And thank God … or that force. I’ve felt it this morning, and I feel it often, as a sense of ecstatic rightness that ‘washes’ over me, like a wave moving over my body at the beach.

Why does it make me feel so happy to be here? Because it seems to me that I bought myself an ideal senior’s playpen. 

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I bought myself a camera online this morning. I’m not about to use my iPad for taking photos on my walks, so I bit the bullet and got myself a camera with a decent zoom feature. Soon, I’ll be able to post decent photos here again.