Dusk last night was canyon-purple, that purple shade of nighttime blue, I drove the half mile in to town to buy ingredients for dinner.  Friday night, and I was surprised by the relief downtown on Broadway, an actual light that sat on the skin in the air.  This was more than fall: The tourists are gone.

Timing is everything.  I am on a budget, and re-learning to be conscious of continuous diet changes that my body continues to gently recommend, so I listened when my body said, lasagna!

I was like really, with seventeen dollars, for the week?  But whadya know brown rise lasagna noodles were on sale at the Whole Foods for 2.50., the tourists are gone!  And other than that I just needed some ground chicken.

When my aunt died last year I maintained for a month on candy, cupcakes, coffee and energy drinks.  It’s how I got through, and didn’t realize it until I was up one sleepless night and felt my heart, my very blood racing.  I made a decision soon after, it was the end of September, on the road in Austin, Texas, to quit energy drinks cold.  

I will spare the gnarly updown details of the year in dietary health that followed, but lets say it ultimately led to going off caffeine when the Summer Solstice cycle started.  It wasn’t my intent to do that, but on the Wise Woman Path intent or not, our rhythms will sync if the willingness for authentic truth is there.  

No caffeine for a junky like me led to seriously od’ing again on sugar for about a month.  

My point is, going off energy drinks has been a looong, slow curve. Everything is connected.  Because of that most recent sugar run, I detoxed myself recently, off all sugar, including fruit and complex carbs, by eating green vegetables and lean protein only.  Now I am slowly reintroducing whole grains and other minor sugars.  

So I came home from the sweet quiet of town last night and made homemade marinara with heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic and olive oil.  Simmered my lasagna in it and ate two of the heartiest plates, feeling its energy through out the core of my very cells.  It has been a year almost since I put my last Red Bull down.  Since something deep in me said SLOW.  SLOW DOWN.

I am treating my body preciously, have been trying with honest intent.  It is half-hearted at times.  Cutting out caffeine for the first time in 20 years made me really, really consious  of how much I relied on it for artificial vitality.  I slept more during the month of August then I have in years.  It seriously looked like depression, but I knew better.  I was grieving, adjusting, healing, allowing Time.

Today at the Farmer’s Market I got green vegetables for the week.  There was a luscious quiet in the air, a satisfaction in the people on the street.  My cabinets are filled with whole brown rice and kasha grains, my freezer with lean meats.  I had just enough cash left for flowers to go on my writing desk by my window.  Driving home a white puffy thunderhead poked over the canyon wall, a wizard peeking his wrinkled face in through the blue curtained sky.  Or papa surf.  Time is funny.  It keeps going.

It’s good to be alive.