In which your intrepid heroine attempts meditation.

Stop snickering.

One of the hazards of reading a book on your phone is that the phone narcs on you. The author recently mentioned various apps that help some folks to decrease their stress and manage their anxiety. So my Facebook feed offered one of those apps to me today, and I downloaded it.

After I got home from Trader Joe's and Costco, and Fourthborn and I had stowed the groceries, and I'd eaten some leftovers and put a small load into the washing machine, I decided to fire up the app. The first option it gave me was "breathing." OK. Breathing is good. I'm a big fan of breathing.

The app presented me with a circle like a clock face without hands; it instructed me to inhale deeply as a dot went from high noon to approximately 5:00, hold my breath until approximately 7:00, and exhale deeply while the dot climbed up towards 12:00. After about two and a half minutes of this I got bored, put the app on pause, and saw that it wanted me to breathe for another seven and a half minutes.

Not without some knitting in my hands, bossy little app. Which I'm sure would have defeated the purpose.

So I poked around a little and found the meditation section. There's a one-week beginner's program, and I managed to stay engaged for the entire twelve minutes of Day One. It feels a little weird ~ OK, a lot weird ~ to pay that much attention to my breath. Tracing it in through my nostrils, down the back of my throat, into my windpipe, feeling it quickly warm until I can't feel anything except an urgency to get rid of it now and inhale a fresh batch of cool air. I did that for twelve whole minutes. Just me and my lungs and Soothing Female Voice.

We have a date for tomorrow night. I can't say that I'm any more relaxed than I was when I sat down, but the incessant chatter in my head made itself scarce for the duration. We count all the small victories.