The word moxie means courageous spirit and determination: perseverance.  I’m not feeling like I have very much moxie right now.  Today is better than yesterday was, but not great.  Hannah has a close friend named Kathryn.  She and her husband Mat have a coffee shop called Moxie.  This morning, we met with them at their coffee shop and had a very nice visit.  She will be giving birth to their 1^st child soon and they have many questions.  It was nice to go our somewhere and talk with other humans about things other than food, juice, sunshine exercise, etc…  

Anyway, I got to thinking about the word moxie and looked it up.  I have known many people who have moxie.  I feel like it’s a trendy word so, being fairly old fashioned, I tend to use the words courageous, determined and perseverance instead of moxie.  I’ve seen a lot of things in my many years of life and find that these words can apply to many different situations.  I’ve been in healthcare for many years and have witnessed many acts of heroics in saving lives.  I feel that firefighters, police and paramedics have to have moxie to do their jobs well.  During Covid I witnessed many different examples of moxie – I like to point out that I think that truck drivers were truly heroes during that time. 

Talking with Mat and Kathryn today made me realize how much moxie it takes to become a parent in this day in age.  With much more information available to us due to the internet parents must make many more decisions than I had to make when I began having babies in the late 1970s.  It takes much time and preparation just to be educated on the choices you will need to make to parent as well as you can. I applaud Mat and Kathryn for making the decision to learn and listen. They asked good questions and listened to advice that we had for them. I believe that they will do well when it comes to parenting.

Today we have done fairly well.  Due to our visit this morning we did not get in our morning walk or 20 minutes of baking in the sun time. I got my sunshine in later in the day and boy oh boy is the sun hot here later in the day! We ate large salads for dinner.  We’re learning to put a wider variety of vegetables on our salads for good nutrition intake.  I put chickpeas (garbanzo beans) on my salad and it was very good.  We are using a vegan ranch dressing which is also very good.  We have added light weightlifting to our daily exercise regime.  Tiffany originally had a weightlifting restriction of 5 pounds, but her progress has made me feel comfortable increasing that by a bit.  I continue to watch her closely and without question she is improving. 

You’ll recall that I’ve explained just how lazy Tiff and I have been for years.  When we began walking, we didn’t make it ½ way around the block before we turned around and walked back home.  Those 1^st few days of walking neither of us could talk during the walk because we became short of breath easily.  During our walk this evening we talked about how we couldn’t talk during our walks just 10 days ago.  We try to look at the positive things when we’re feeling down, discouraged, and frustrated – this is something to keep high on the positive column.

Day 17 is done, day 18 is on the way.  “Recipe for Iced Coffee:

1. Have Kids
2. Make coffee
3. Forget your made coffee
4. Drink it cold!”   – unknown