Written October 8, 2024
Hello Dear Readers,
I woke and dressed this morning, ready to go outside and vacuum leaves from our lawn. As soon as I opened the door, a sharp chill greeted my skin, biting my skin. Winter is definitely on the way. Shivering with cold, I quickly closed the door, leaving the cold weather behind the door. Let’s do the yard work after I eat breakfast.
The weather in Nashville has gotten pretty chilly over the past few days, causing leaves to fall from the trees. We noticed some maple trees in the forest behind our house were changing color. Although the temperature rose quickly, by the time I’d eaten my breakfast, it had warmed by 10 degrees F. My biological thermostat has been broken since my brain stroke, so I am more sensitive to temperature change than ordinary people. After my breakfast, it was warm enough to tolerate, just like I had planned.
There are two big trees—one on our property and one on our neighbor’s—that seem to be constantly battling to outdo each other with the amount of leaves they shed, leaving me to clean up after them. It took me nearly two hours to vacuum most of them. After nearly two hours of leaf collection, I decided that I had done enough. I’ll have to evaluate the yard again tomorrow after my run to see if I need to do another session on Thursday.
My wife mentioned to me that she felt like running at night even though she runs at 5:30 a.m. It’s pretty dark in the morning. She does not get to see any sunlight during her morning run anymore, and she feels that she does not get enough sunlight. She hopes the time shift will make some sunlight much more accessible.
I am aware that my wife is struggling to balance her daily schedule with her biological rhythm. When the days are shorter, our biological clock changes. My wife had a restless summer and sleep problems, and now she seems to have the opposite. She just hopes for the timeshift so that her schedule is closer to her biological clock.
I, too, plan to shift my schedule to wintertime shortly. It’s almost as if I did a trial run of my intended schedule once daylight savings time ends, although I did not do the exercises I designed to do on that schedule. My body cannot tolerate the cold anymore, so I plan to run much later in the day to avoid the extra stress on my body.