Obsessions

Cooking Shows And HGTV Can Be Surprisingly Inspirational

I'm obsessed with cooking and home-improvement shows.

Honestly if I could only have five TV channels HGTV, The Cooking Channel and Food Network would be three of them.

Last night as I sat in my hotel room not feeling well, I watched Chopped - a cooking competition with mystery baskets of ingredients. Surprisingly it was an episode I hadn't seen. The contestants were cooks at soup kitchens and included a Franciscan sister who started The Nun Run in Chicago and a soft-spoken but feisty retired woman who wants to make sure that all the teenagers at the LGBT shelter where she cooks are treated with love and kindness as if they were her own grandchildren.

Lovely and touching and inspiring - how often does that happen on what is essentially a game show?

I almost got sucked into this obsession again tonight. I am not well and mostly have been sleeping when not at work. Sitting in the too comfy bed surrounded by cozy clean white linens, I watched hours of Island Life and Chopped. When I looked out my window I saw this

I should try to run, I told myself for hours. Then I thought, if I put on running clothes, maybe I will go.

The purple striped running a shorts and wireless headphones were my biggest motivators. My most fun shorts. Whatever it takes, I think.

So now I'm out running in the darkness and liveliness that is downtown Miami when it's 81 degrees. - well anytime really. The water is lapping next to me and runners, walkers, dinner goers and dog walkers are all around.

I'm feeling better - even though I'm slow as molasses. Good thing I don't care. Sometimes, most often I find, it's the journey that's important.

I started my run listening to Eminem but now Jimmy Buffett and friends are singing to me via Pandora  - always happy joyful songs.

"Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call,
Wanted to sail upon your waters
since I was three feet tall.You've seen it all, you've seen it all."
-Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks At Forty

A little Zack Brown Band - Free.

"So we live in our old van
Travel all across this land
Me and you

We'll end up hand in hand
Somewhere down on the sand
Just me and you

Just as free
Free as we'll ever be"

And finally a little Bob Marley - No woman, No Cry.

"Everything's gonna be alright"

I'm starting to wonder lately if I'm choosing my music or if the universe is. 

And do these joyful tunes and words mean I'm hopeful again about love? Maybe.
I don't know who "you" is but I like the idea. And I do believe again that everything's gonna be alright.

So much so that I actually went out to dinner instead of ordering room service or takeout from the hotel I have barely left for three days.

I'm so glad I did. Delicious meal, friendly waiter who remembered me and a beautiful night to sit out on the restaurant terrace. 

On my way in and out, I enjoyed the bronze sculptures of Fernando Botero - sculptures I first saw two decades ago along the Champs Elysees in Paris just after we had studied the artist in class in Caen.
 

As I walked back to my hotel chatting with Tim of the long-lost friend ilk, the night was warm and calm and very nearly perfect. It felt like hope.

We chatted for an hour as I sat  outside the hotel leaning up against its entrance sign - a silly, cozy spot.