My night’s sleep was sporadic and unpleasant, the alcohol having crept out of my bloodstream to leave me alone with my thoughts and worries. It was not a dynamic start to a Wednesday. As such, it was not a Wednesday I wished to wrap snugly around this project and adorn with a fanciful bow. It was a day, a day spent mostly in a post-election harrumph, with a handful of tolerable celebrations at our disposal. As of this writing, still no result. Perhaps by the time this article is published we can stop wondering. (note: nope) For now, we can turn our attention to how we spent our yesterday:
National Chicken Lady Day
For this celebration, which was disappointingly not going to be an excuse to watch some old Kids in the Hall clips on Youtube, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Tina Dupree. Dr. Tina is the titular honouree for this day, and it has nothing to do with her DNA consisting of poultry ingredients. She’s the Chicken Lady for an entirely different reason.
Apparently Dr. Tina worked for 12 years as the Director of Community Relations with the 2nd largest chicken fast-food chain in the world. I’m not sure if that’s definitively Popeye’s, but I can’t imagine it isn’t. Dr. Tina’s thing wasn’t just pandering to communities to get them to up their bucket-purchase count, but she tried to make an actual difference. She became a motivational speaker, and through her books and training she has encouraged others to step up and make a difference.
I have no idea who created this day to honour Dr. Tina – it may have been her publicist who did so, in an effort to move more books. But the idea behind the day is either to enjoy some chicken (which we did!) or to acknowledge somebody who lifts others up and makes their world better. That’s easy for me – I’m married to someone who does that literally every day of her life. Even Sundays when we don’t leave the house or generally speak to people, she lifts me up and helps me to enjoy my world a bit more.
Hooray for chicken-people everywhere.
National Stress Awareness Day
As we all sit with one eye on our phones, watching for news alerts that might indicate how this election will hit its final chord, I think we’re all acutely aware of the dangers of stress. This is meant to land on the first Wednesday of every November, and I don’t know if that’s specifically because of the election or not, but it fits. Everyone with a stake in how this madness plays out is feeling some iota of stress today.
What can we do? Meditate? I haven’t done so in a little while, and a quick run through the process yesterday was nice, though not wholly effective. Stress-eat? Sure, that’s a pretty normal thing for me. Consume alcohol? Not really an ideal way to deal with stress, and besides, I did enough of that on Tuesday night. Dog therapy?
Dog therapy. That’s the best way to beat stress into the bloody pulp it needs to be beaten into. We hung out with our dogs and felt our worries melt away yesterday. I encourage everyone out there to use the same method. It also pairs nicely with an alcoholic beverage, in case you still need one of those.
National Eating Healthy Day
Well, be still my ever-expanding waistline, what a joy it shall be to dive deep into a day dedicated to eating healthy. How high must we climb upon the food pyramid to achieve maximum healthiosity? How devoted must we be to our twelve daily servings of vegetables and our half-gallon of V8 juice with each meal?
Perhaps it’s an apt sign that we entered yesterday having devoured the last of our leftover Halloween candy. We had nine chocolate bars left after the October onslaught of hungry begging children, and we made quick work of them. So yesterday was candy-free and relatively healthy. We ate some vegetables. We ate some fruit. I had some yogurt, or ‘yoghurt’ if you want to get all silent-H fancy.
Eating healthy has been difficult this year, in part because we have had so much nudging toward junk food and candy treats through the calendar, and partly because even when we haven’t had a celebration that forced us (forced us?) to eat unhealthily, we still enjoy snack foods that aren’t particularly good for us. But we have made an effort, and Jodie has actually done quite well with this. The point of eating healthy isn’t just losing weight or gaining massive muscles; it’s being healthy. And, apart from breaking bones and experiencing weird, undiagnosable pain, we are mostly healthy.
So much excitement in this day, I can hardly contain myself. It’s a shame National Sarcasm Month is over.
National Candy Day
Let’s just say we celebrated this one early and often. As did most folks.
Kind of weird that it shows up a few days after Halloween, but I guess the assumption is that most kids will still have some candy left. This strikes me as vastly underestimating the gluttony of children.
Today as of this publishing we still don’t know who won the election, and we are growing wearier by the minute as we wait. Here are our potential distractions:
- National Doughnut Appreciation Day. Again? We’ve already done two of these, along with Buy A Doughnut Day. I guess we’ll celebrate if we have to.
- National Love Your Red Hair Day. We don’t have any between us, but maybe we’ll track some down.
- National Men Make Dinner Day. Not really a novelty around here.
- American Football Day. I suppose we’ll be watching some football then.
- Guy Fawkes Day / Bonfire Night. Remember?
- National Hot Sauce Day. Hot sauce on everything! Who wants ice cream?
- Bank Transfer Day. So many fun days, how could we possibly skip something as awesome as this?
- Commercial TV Broadcast Day. Another fun one.
- International Stout Day. Might have to wait to celebrate this until the weekend. But we will.
celebrate366.com 