At the beginning of her best seller memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert said, "I have lost my appetite for life."  

Liz divorced her husband and traveled to Italy, India, and Indonesia--the kind of extended trip that would appeal to any woman at a crossroads who's lost her appetite for many things. When the appetite is gone, try something exotic and distant.  

Because I've watched so many movies this month--good ones, marginal ones, and cheesy ones--I decided to watch the movie version of Eat, Pray Love.  I'd read the book when it first came out, back when I was doing my own more modest solo traveling by car.  

As I watched  pretty woman Julia Roberts visiting  pretty places, I was not inspired by it as I had been the book.  For one thing, I've reached the expiration date for traveling solo to other countries.  Gilbert's quest is for young, hip, fit, and wealthy women.

I did go pick up an order of spaghetti after watching Julia Roberts' enjoying some genuine Italian spaghetti.  Maybe that would do it for me!  But what I got from Julian's was a flavorless pale pink spaghetti with no thick sauce or meatballs.  

More and more often as I flip through magazines and watch movies I think "Not Applicable." Recycled make-up advice, weight loss tips, recipes and fashions seem irrelevant to where I am at the time.  

But I related to the "loss of appetite" phrase.  Since my surgery, I have had hardly any appetite--for food, for making things, for reading.  I feel I'm in a sort of limbo waiting to fully recover enough to go or do anything.

Others feel a similar limbo, I think. The pandemic tamped down adventure and  travel.  Add to that surgery and other life changes and the fact that almost half of us have not been vaccinated-- it just feels safer to stay put.

But how to re-awaken appetites?  That is the question rumbling around in my mind on this rainy Tuesday afternoon.