Week 2 begins

Week 1 was not stellar. But it wasn't awful. It just wasn't perfect, and those Whole 30 taskmasters are, I'm sure, sneering at me for having saltines one afternoon when lunch wasn't available but saltines were.

I gotta tell ya: This was not the best timing for beginning a Whole 30. I have permission from my husband to share that my mother-in-law has suffered a stroke. As strokes go, it was fairly mild, but a stroke is a stroke, and at 96, she had plenty of other issues working against her.

Her comfort and care have taken up a lot of our time, obviously, and some of that time would have been spent creating fabulous and delicious meals from all the paleo recipes I've collected on Pinterest the past couple years.

Instead we're throwing chicken in a skillet, accompanied by nuked vegetables. As one who eats for comfort and doesn't mind cooking, these thrown-together meals are definitely not meeting my needs.

The stroke happened last Tuesday afternoon. It takes 24 hours to confirm (contrasting CT scans provide evidence), so by Wednesday we knew what was wrong, although we already suspected that was what had happened. It has affected her speech – she knows what she wants to say, and she understands what we say to her, but she can't find the right words. The first couple days were total word salad, but she's made remarkable progress since then.

It was a lucky coincidence that she was in the hospital when the stroke occurred. She'd been admitted on Friday, December 30, for back pain and planned to undergo physical therapy as an inpatient for about a week before going back home.

This also was not the best timing, weather-wise, to commit to 25 intentional miles a week. My total miles exceeded that slightly, but I only took four deliberate walks for about 16 miles.

Ah, well. It's not going to be much different this week. I shall accept what IS, and do my best. That's what I would tell you to do under similar circumstances. And I recognize that I need to be at least as good to myself as I would be to you.