Beau Jackson

Stress causes depression. Depression causes anxiety. Anxiety causes emotional outbursts (anger/frustration for me generally). These lead me back to stress.

Have you ever wanted to just walk away from it all? I don’t mean that in a “leave my family, quit my job” kind of way. I just mean, I would like to walk away from stress and depression, and anger, and anxiety, and for a little while just be happy-go-lucky and care free. To just forget about all the problems.

I think these are called “vacations”. I probably need one.

I spent the night in the hospital last night – not for myself. My father in law was very sick and we were pretty scared there for a while. He’s doing much better today, but it’s hard to sleep in a chair all night!

Have you ever pondered the difference between following a recipe and cooking?  To me, cooking is a form of art.  Anybody can follow a recipe, but to really cook is an art.  I think most people can learn this form of art, it just takes time and practice like anything else.  Some people will be better at it than others.

So where am I going with this, and what’s it got to do with Ovaltine anyway?  Last Sunday we stopped by the house of some friends (the James family).  This family is from India, and they are *cooks*, not just recipe followers :).  When you prepare a dish that has 8+ different spices in it, and you don’t measure anything, you just do a little tasting along the way, that my friends is cooking.  Now I can cook like that (thank you Allena!), but what really impressed me is that the James family buys spices in bulk and stores them in Ovaltine jars.  Unlabeled Ovaltine jars.  So, when you watch them cook…well, they’re just cooking with Ovaltine :).

I just thought I’d share that ;)

If you follow my blog at all, you may be asking yourself “wasn’t he training for a marathon or some such?  I wonder whatever happened with that?”

And you’d be right, I *was* training for a marathon, and making steady progress.  But the training had to be put on hold for a while.  Why?  Two words: poison f’ing ivy.  Ok, that’s three words, but I it’s important to accentuate how I really feel about poison ivy.  I hate it.  I’m HIGHLY allergic to it.

About a month ago, I came into contact with some somewhere, and ended up with a systemic reaction.  My face broke out, my right eye was nearly swollen shut, I hade it on my legs and torso.  To put it delicately, I had it in other areas that made running unbearable (and no Allena, you don’t need to chime in with the gory details of that!).

I got a shot, and some pills and it has finally cleared to the point that training can resume.  I’m giving myself an official kick-off date for the resumption of training: Monday, July 19.  So watch for running updates next week!