RPL at Home (August 2023)

📺 Watching

If you recall from last month’s edition of RPL at Home, I recently realized that I am a spy TV show fangirl. So after finishing season 2 of British spy thriller Slow Horses, I figured shouldn’t I be watching what is arguably the best spy TV show ever made?? The Americans. 

We actually started watching The Americans when it was still on the air, but for reasons my aging brain can no longer remember, we stopped watching it. Well, we picked it up recently, and my goodness, it is a fantastic show that just lures you in.  

In case you’re not familiar, the six-season show centers on two deep-cover Soviet KGB agents living in the Washington DC area in the 1980s. Their cover is a boring married couple with two children living in the ‘burbs, and the show is just as much about marriage as it is about secretive spy stuff and Cold War international relations. The acting, the writing, and casting are all excellent. So whether you’re a fellow spy TV nerd or just enjoy an epic TV series, I highly recommend this one. 

My one quibble with the show: why/how do Elizabeth (the lead female) and her teen daughter Paige have perfectly normal, lovely hair? Where is all the mega-teased, hyper-permed big ‘80s hair in this show???  

We’re currently on season 4 (you can watch it on Hulu), though we have taken a brief pause to watch some more timely shows like The Bear. I know, I know, some of the footage is decidedly not vegan friendly. But, again, my goodness, it is a fantastic show and every episode is a masterpiece in directing, acting, and cinematography.

📚 Reading

I was recently reading one of those New York Times’ roundups of new books they recommend, and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese was recommended. His first novel, Cutting for Stone, had been on my to-read list for ages, and since I like to do things in order even when it’s not necessary, I decided to start with his first novel. 

Cutting for Stone is not a short novel, but wow, was it worth the read. I now understand why the book was on the NYT bestseller list for over two years(!). It’s a grand family saga that moves across three continents and five decades in a big, beautiful way.

It begins with two twins born joined at the head in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in the 1950s. Their mother, a nun from India who works at the hospital, dies in childbirth. Their presumed father, a British surgeon at the hospital, flees, so the twins end up being raised by two Indian doctors from the hospital and go on to take similar but very different paths in life. 

The author is a physician in real life (an acclaimed author and physician, talk about an underachiever), and much of the book deals in medicine: ailments that affect the local population, specific symptoms and the procedures needed to allay those symptoms, etc. Even though I have weak ass stomach that gets queasy at the sight of a paper cut, Verghese’s writing is so beautiful and almost magical that I was never tempted to skim over these parts.

I loved his writing so much that, after finishing Cutting for Stone, I marched straight over to my local bookshop and demanded a copy of his new book, The Covenant of Water. And by marched, of course, I mean sauntered, and by demanded, I mean quietly picked up off the shelf and paid for with my credit card. 

🧘🏾What I’m working on in life

Working less! Ironic that I have to work on working less. LOL. But that’s what happens when a natural type A with high expectations needs to slow down. 

If you already read last month’s RPL at Home, you know that I finally finished writing and photographing my second cookbook at the end of June. Woohoo! 

With that enormous project off my shoulders, I have been forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone. My comfort zone, of course, is being a workaholic who loves her job and, up until recently, regularly worked 12 hour days. 

Recently, I’ve been asking myself hard questions like: Do I need to work 12 hours a day? Is everything on my plate necessary for me to do? For anyone to do? What areas of my life have I been neglecting that I need to start prioritizing? 

I am proud to say I have made some pretty major shifts in my life and my schedule. 

For one, I now start my work day around 9 am. 

This might seem very ordinary for most folks, but it wasn’t that long ago that I was starting my work day at 6:30 am, sometimes earlier. I’d wake up, do the basic hygiene things, make tea, then get to work. And work until 7:30 pm, when I’d eat dinner. And occasionally, work after dinner. 

Now, I start my mornings with movement. First, I go on a walk with Max each morning. A minimum of 20 minutes, but often a full 45 minutes. We chat about both work and non-work stuff or listen to an interesting podcast and enjoy the lovely outdoors and beautiful weather we’re blessed with in San Diego. 

Then I come home and exercise. 

Again, this might sound ordinary to a lot of people, but up until a few months ago, I hadn’t consistently exercised in FOUR YEARS. During that time, I was dealing with various injuries, many of which were brought about by lack of exercise (along with my overly mobile joints). Knowing that (a) exercise is enormously beneficial in so many ways and (b) I used to love working out…I am baffled that I just cut out exercise from my life for so long. 

But, for the past 1-2 months, I have been incorporating exercise into my life every day or nearly every day. Some days it’s just for 20 minutes, but the consistency feels like a major victory. And I’m feeling great. My joints and muscles feel stronger. And I feel happier. 

The added benefit is that, unlike in my 20s when I was obsessed with my body looking a certain way, I now exercise for my mental health, confidence, strength, and longevity. If the slightest ab definition comes in from all those core exercises in my pilates classes, that’s just the cherry on top.  

PS: I’ve been doing a lot of exercise classes online. The channels I regularly visit are Move with Nicole (for pilates) and MadFit (for strength workouts and dance). 11/10 for both channels.

And while I sometimes still work until 7:30 pm, I also sometimes end work earlier to read (for fun!) on our patio. I even bought cute patio chairs to make it more likely I’d actually do that.