ROUTINE EXAMINATION

Those daily rituals and why we like them

The other day, as I started sliding my left arm into the shirt I had selected for the day, I felt a shooting pain in my shoulder.

That was odd, because my shoulder hadn’t been seeking attention prior to this. But there it was, barking at me and making it difficult to pull on my shirt.

I let it slide, thinking things would be better the following day.

They weren’t.

Same routine the next day. And the next.

I knew nothing was seriously wrong, other than inhabiting a body trending toward obsolescence. So why not break out of my routine: Why not slide my right arm into the shirt sleeve first?

So I did. Or, shall I say: So I tried? Because, almost unbelievably, I couldn’t do it; I could not get my right arm to slide into the shirt first. I kept fumbling with the fabric and twisting the shirt’s torso to give my right arm the correct slot, but I couldn’t make it happen smoothly.

Again, for a moment, I wondered what was wrong surely, pulling on a shirt shouldn’t be this difficult.

And then it hit me: I’ve been pulling shirts on starting with my left arm for so many years, my brain and body just take over and don’t readily adapt to change.

So I decided to experiment: What happens if I start brushing my teeth on the upper right side of my mouth instead of the customary lower left?

Sadly, same result: The simple change confounded me. It felt odd brushing the right side first, so much so that I lost track of what I was doing. When it was time to shift to a different quadrant, I couldn’t smoothly complete the move. And then I couldn’t even finish because I was so discombobulated.

Out of curiosity, I tried tinkering with other normal daily activities: I realized I always begin washing my face with my left forehead, so I tried my left cheek first instead. Bad idea.

I step into the shower with my left foot first; I know this now because starting with my right foot made it somehow difficult to close the shower door since my body isn’t in the “right” position.

When I’m popping out of my car, I put my weight on my left foot first. I tried the right foot instead and almost jammed the door into the front fender as I fell off-kilter to the side.

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Same with eating cereal, grabbing a glass of soda, peeling the paper from a straw, even dropping sweetener into iced tea: I do all of these little things exactly the same way, every time, without even knowing it.

Well, the good news is that the pain in my shoulder seems to be gone now, and I’ve returned to my comfortable left-sleevefirst route.

Yes, it’s a routine, something we’re typically not supposed to fall into if we want to live a happy life. But I can now say I gave it a shot and found out that maybe I need routine to stay happy.

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Fun in a bottle

Preston Hollow neighbor builds a local salsa brand

If you shop at Whole Foods, you’ve probably seen Amee Joshi. About once a week, she is at the Preston-Forest location, passing out samples of the handcrafted salsa she began selling two years ago. Her product is called Jalsa, which means “celebration,” “festival” or “fun” in Hindi. It’s an appropriate name, consid- ering the recipe was created by Joshi’s Indian mother-in-law, whose late husband was a connoisseur of spicy food.

“She made it more like you’d make chutney,” Joshi explains. “It just has a different flavor and texture.”

After learning the recipe, Joshi served the salsa at parties and gave it as gifts.

For years, her friends encouraged her to sell the stuff, but she worked in global taxation and policy development. Becoming a small business owner wasn’t feasible, given her demanding schedule. Then she had children and took a few years off to raise her sons, both of whom attend St. Mark’s. Instead of returning to corporate America, she decided to bottle her salsa and give it a name. But not before doing some research.

“I spent about a year just understanding what it would take to really launch a brand,” Joshi says. “All the legal requirements. All of that.”

Once she had a firm grasp of the logistics, she began searching for people who could help turn her dream into a reality. She didn’t have to look far. Joshi lives in our neighborhood. That’s where she met John Rubi, a manufacturer of private label goods. Jalsa is bottled at Rubi’s food plant and then adorned with a label that was created by yet another Preston Hollow resident, graphic designer Jennifer Brower.

“The Preston Hollow community has been so supportive of us,” Joshi says. “Our friends in the area have been great.” Jalsa became available online in 2013. Shortly thereafter, Bolsa Mercado began carrying the product and other retailers quickly followed suit. You can buy a bottle locally from Whole Foods, The Fresh Market and a few independent grocers for $5.49. Joshi hopes to continue expanding, but is more concerned with cultivating a brand known for philanthropy.

“Our objective with Jalsa is really to give back,” she says. “I would love to get to the point where we can donate significant parts of our profits back to our community whether it be local, global or national. I feel like I’m blessed and I have enough. If I have the ability to create something that can help others, I would love to.”

—Elizabeth Barbee