Last night, in the flat, dead-on middle of the night, two of my biggest weaknesses came together to ruin me. That would be my allergies and my cooking.

I’m not even sure what it was that woke me up. It could have been the sinus drainage, or it might have been the heartburn. Either way, it was the combination of the two that made me writhe in agony for ten minutes, before I figured out I had to get up and try to salvage the rest of the night.

The drainage is easy to diagnose. The grasses and weeds are growing faster than I can keep up with them, and the wind has been whipping them around in the afternoons lately. And the heartburn? Could it be the Caribbean black beans I stuffed into my taco last night? Or maybe the chicken apple sausage I had for lunch? It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to give up eating things like that anyway.

The best thing I did for myself was sleep an extra hour and a half into the work day. In fact, when I got up again at 9:30 am, I thought I’d beaten whatever was ailing me. I was ready to charge into the day, but the energy just wasn’t there. I hit a wall that I didn’t see coming straight at me.

I did a little work, but I spent a lot of time in reflective contemplation, too. I lost count of the number of naps I took today, but I was just trying to get through it.

Needless to say, I didn’t have much of an appetite. In fact, I kept tasting the beans and sausage all day long (and it didn’t get any better as time went on). A piece of toast was all I could stomach (erp!) most of the day, not that it’s a bad thing to do an occasional mini-fast (especially when you’re not moving around much). Tonight I feel good enough to have hope that tomorrow will be better.