Tag: Baking

COVID-19 Engineering

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I can’t remember where I heard (a good chance it was a JRE podcast) that engineering is finding a way to do what you want with what you have.  At the time, I thought about ways to stay in shape with the things I have at home (before the pandemic, but knowing how hard it is to get out of the house with a newborn) COVID-19 is showing us how deep that idea really goes.

One month side by side of El Duderino and Speedy

From a fitness standpoint, most people’s routine has been turned upside down. Grapplers, crossfitters, gym goers have all had to adjust. But garage gym athletes, folks who favor the kettlebell or sandbag, and bodyweight or calisthenic practitioners have already found a way to stay fit when what they have. Running, biking, hiking, jumping rope, are all great ways to get outside and engineer your fitness with things you probably already have.

El Duderino approves of the shrimp and grits, grilled broccoli, and Amish friendship bread.

With restaurants closed and some grocery store staples picked clean, I know I have certainly gotten more creative in the kitchen. From modifying recipes to make meat last longer, scratch baking, and catering to the sensitive, yet discerning, palette of a toddler, the kitchen has become a laboratory of experimentation and family fun with COVID-19 changing our eating and shopping patterns. Finding new and different ways to keep the family eating a healthy diet has been an interesting challenge in doing what I want with what is available.

Parenting and family activities sure look a lot different when you can’t touch public surfaces. Keeping a toddler interested in anything for more than fifteen minutes is a challenge, but removing some of our usual routine activities (library, playground, science center, pool/splash pad) has made us dig deep as parents to provide entertainment and education. The resources made available from organizations as well as individuals helping each other provide a nurturing environment for their children is heart warming and incredible.

I think one of the biggest silver linings to this pandemic is our collective ability to adapt and overcome. To engineer our way through a problem. A lot of us have become teachers, IT managers, personal trainers, and chefs, in addition to any other hats we might have already worn beforehand. All of those skills have been there all along, they just needed a little nudge to find their way to the surface. With a little ingenuity, and a can do attitude, we can still do most of the things we want with what we already have, and engineer our way towards Serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

This week’s SerenityThroughSweat, some solo miles in the midday Florida sun and my phone shut down from over temp mid workout with the sandbag and the training mask.

Nerve

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I wrote a while back about being brave (Fostering Comfort) referencing Ned Starks remarks in Game of Thrones. He tells his son the only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid. My dad sent me a series of quotes on my birthday this year that I think fit our current situation a little better.

“People often say I am brave, but I’ve never said I am brave. What I think I have is nerve, which is not the same thing. Being brave or being courageous is doing something you are afraid to do and I don’t do anything that I’m afraid to do. Nerve is different.When you prepare to do something, whether it’s sailing a boat across the ocean or climbing a mountain or doing anything that has an element of danger, you prepare yourself and your equipment as well as you possibly can given your resources. Having nerve is the willingness after you’ve done all your preparation to embark upon something whose outcome is uncertain and may be fatal”

Powerful words from one of the world’s greatest explorer/adventurer.  Webb Chiles said this in an interview after completing his sixth solo circumnavigation of the globe at age seventy seven.

I’m not trying to compare going to the grocery store amid a global pandemic to a solo journey around the world, (although the former requires significantly more gear and planning than before all this happened).  The similarity lies in the outcome, and the level of uncertainty.

This virus has turned everyday activities like shopping, walking, shaking hands, and hugging, into activities with an uncertain outcome.  Trying to avoid a virus you can’t see, smell, or hear is somewhat of a sisyphean task. Even if the odds are low after coming in contact with COVID-19, the potential is there to be fatal.

That means everything we do now, what before seemed like everyday, ordinary, tasks, require nerve.  We prepare our bodies, our minds, and our equipment, and then we embark on an activity whose outcome is uncertain.

In the interim, this will result in heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and fear. But, when we do finally turn the corner, we will all able to channel that nerve into other pursuits, serenity among them.

Thanks for joining me and stay sweaty my friends.

This week in quarantine; the daddy drawn coloring book expands from vehicles to dinosaurs, I try my hand at baking bread, and a quick 5k stroller run with El Duderino to maintain some sanity and Serenity if only for the briefest of moments.