“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

-Emerson

I keep this quote on my refrigerator so I see and read it often. It never fails to make me smile; it’s the perfect sum of my own, long-time philosophy of life. For example:

Chocolate and red grapes.

These are the flavors I’m indulging myself in at the sun approaches mid-day. They make me feel decadent. The chocolate is a capful of sugar-free Torani chocolate syrup mixed into my coffee; the grapes are from the local fruit and veggie stand (think “barn”) Mr. Wren and I stopped at yesterday on the way home from town. There were my grapes, along with zucchini, red bell peppers, Jonagold apples, avocadoes, celery, carrots, huge beefsteak tomatoes, green string beans, Romaine lettuce, red potatoes, russet baking potatoes and big yellow onions. They all came home with us, packed in a couple of cardboard boxes.

I have no excuse not to make some really delicious, low-carb, low-fat meals now. Yesterday we also picked up more brown basmati rice (my favorite). It’s versatile. It makes a great side dish plain, but cooked in vegetable broth and fancied up with stir-fried veggies, small chunks of salmon, chicken or pork loin, and spiced in a myriad of different ways, it’s a terrific main dish. A complex carbohydrate, plain brown basmati rice even tastes good for breakfast, heated up and sweetened with a little Splenda, spiced with cinnamon and a dash of ground cloves, and splashed with a little soymilk. I make eight cups at a time, using what I need each day and keeping the rest in the refrigerator. I also love cooking it: it smells just like popcorn.

So home-brewed café mocha and a handful of sweet grapes are my way of comforting myself today. The great toe on my left foot is flared, as is one of the joints in my right ankle. I’m doing the double gimp. It’s aggravating, but even as I mutter “Ow, sh*t!” under my breath as I walk around the house, I’m grateful that these flares aren’t worse. They’re maybe a five on the one-to-10 pain-scale. I’ve suffered and coped through far worse flares in the past, and I have a feeling that if I wasn’t taking all the meds and supplements I’m taking right now, I would be hurting a lot more today.

We’re also having another lovely, autumn-like day. It’s sunny but cool enough that I’m wearing a sweatshirt and socks again, with a thin, down throw over my legs as I sit and type this, my feet up on the ottoman. Finny is curled up between my calves, adding his radiator warmth to the mix. This gives me joy. The cool weather reassures me that fall really is on the way, even if we’ve got a high-pressure area moving in that will hike our temps back up into the low 90s by the weekend. The heat will be temporary. I can deal.

Speaking of high pressure areas — these changes in the weather and the barometer generally do have an affect on my RA, so that’s probably why my feet are such a mess today. Hands and wrists ache, too, but they almost always do, no matter the weather. In the end, it’s my own attitude about the disease and the pain it causes that makes the real difference. I can mope and whine or I can smile and cuss a bit to myself. The former only makes me feel worse, but the latter never fails to make me feel better.

It’s my choice to make. I choose positive, every time.