![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettI have, over the past twenty-four hours or so, been pulling cards from my various tarot and oracle decks (by which I mean "all three of them"), and the set I got from The Golden Wheel was particularly striking:
(The Eight of Wands, The World, and The Fool. The sky seems continuous across all three cards; the Eight of Wands faces right, and The Fool faces left, both leaping toward The World, mirror images of one another.)
kaberettOver the last few days I have been reading lots of Dreamwidth; I'm now caught up to the 19th of December, which is as up-to-date as I think I've been since April.
I have also had a toasted sandwich lunch on a park bench with A, under a clear blue sky; quietly played several games; and, eventually, made a start on setting up next year's notebook.
Thank you for sharing your lives with me. <3
livjack in Skegness, which I remember basically nothing about because it was in the middle of the final weeks of Mum's life. I think we stayed in a cute tiny house and did a bit of walking in the countryside. I have more memories of our trip to Norfolk in May. doseybat and verazea got married on a lightship on the Thames, and my partners had a Jewish blessing of their 20-year-old marriage, both on the same weekend. cjwatson, Shabbat Shuva in Stoke, Yom Kippur in Cornwall where I had to respond to the first fatal antisemitic attack in this country in my lifetime, Succot back home in Cambridge, a very flying visit to Sweden for the Shabbat during Succot with ghoti_mhic_uait, and back for Simchat Torah and returning to college.kaberettkaberettReading. Me, a few days ago:
... I picked up the bad and naughty book I'm not supposed to read after 8pm because it's too annoying It was annoying
So that's how The Story of Pain (Joanna Bourke) is going. ( Read more... )
I have also made a tiny bit more progress on Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), read one and a half magazines sent to me by Organisations Various that I feel bad recycling unread but which have a tendency to Accumulate in that state, and some of a Libby sample of Cloistered (Catherine Coldstream) based on one of you mentioning it mid-November, which I have just about got up to on my reading page. Also, I am up to mid-November on my reading page.
Added to the queue are Vespertine (Margaret Rogerson; courtesy of someone mentioning it a while back, probably skygiants, and my library Acquiring A New Copy), The Long Journey of English (Peter Trudgill; a present from my mother, in her capacity as a linguist), and Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes (Rob Wilkins; a loan from my father). For the sake of my spreadsheet of books (with the increasingly inaccurate filename books-2011.ods) I am probably going to be trying to finish rather than start things for the rest of the calendar year (not the Bourke) but we'll see how that goes.
Listening. ... an episode of Elementary that a relative was watching...
Playing. Scrabble! Monument Valley 3. Inkulinati (having another go at beating my head against a run at Master difficulty).
Cooking. Another batch of the quince and squash stew. Two days' worth of minestrone (with bulgur wheat because we are apparently out of tiny pasta, but not that), which worked well as Some Lunches. I think little else of note.
Eating. So much of my mother's cooking various, including a few last tomatoes from her greenhouse (!!!). Also my father's mince pies.
Exploring. Several stonks around Cambridge, including visits to some little free libraries and to various likely locations for snowdrops (mainly the grounds of Churchill, up at the chapel end, where they do indeed exist). Brief trip to Anglesey Abbey, which also has snowdrops coming out and one very enthusiastic daffodil; winter garden remains lovely.
Growing. The pineapple leafs are taller than the (remaining, trimmed) originals, as of... two weeks ago? Ten days? But I think I hadn't yet mentioned and it's still making me smile.
There is one (1) curry leaf cutting that is Not Yet Dead.
kaberettI am now noticing that it is in fact Fairly Consistent that I can Do More in terms of Pilates if I'm doing it at a rate of Two Full Sessions A Week rather than three. I am Somewhat Dismayed at now needing to go "okay, this clearly means I'm not fully recovering doing what I'm currently doing at a rate of every other day-ish, which means I will derive more benefit if I do less of the activity"; I am trying to cheer myself up by persuading myself that what it Actually Means that I get to play with a greater variety of Colouring Things In on The Sticker Chart.
I am amused that I am about as Oh No This Is Terrible about Officially Reducing My Mat Time as I am about getting onto the mat. Brains. Brains!
kaberettMy mother has today loaned me some knee-high compression socks in a fun design and... the amount of presyncope I've been getting on standing up from squatting is approximately None, despite feeling while squatting like It's Gonna Be A Bad One When I Stand Up. So I'm probably going to be buying myself more of them as my mother's present to me for this winterval.
Obviously I was delighted when I got to page 7 and found the rainbow...
kaberett... which meant I thought it was very funny when later said afternoon I became aware that there's ongoing scrutiny of their operations from the Business and Trade Committee (first link I could find, it's bedtime). Also very funny that the time from name change to shed legacy of being Awful to Nah You're Still Awful was approximately -5, on a more national scale than I'd previously clocked...
kaberettSlightly to my surprise, earlier today I got a text from my GP saying approximately "yes your serum ferritin is now 'normal', but also, uh, by this we mean '15, with a reference range of 13-150, after six weeks of supplements', so... keep taking the supplements and we'll retest in six weeks!!!"
It is possible that the reason this actually got flagged at all was in fact that I've got a slightly elevated white cell count, and had I just had normal serum ferritin I'd have had to submit the "uhhh sooooo..." eConsult. Which I'd been gearing up to do, because the serum ferritin result showed up in the NHS app sooner than anything else!
Unfortunately, I had been working myself up to mentioning some Possible Additional Signs Of Concern in said eConsult (the various unimportant bleeding, like "there is usually old blood when I blow my nose BUT/AND I am very much using a steroid nasal spray every day") and I now have a solid excuse to keep putting it off for another six weeks, but hey. No longer officially anaemic! Pity about what's going to happen when I run out of supplementary iron, huh!
kaberettReading. Nothing (quite) finished; various snippets. ( Scalzi, Bourke, Boddice, Cowart )
Watching. Wake Up Dead Man (the third instalment in the Benoit Blanc/Knives Out mysteries). ( Read more... )
Three episodes of Man vs. Bee, in company; this is... not for me.
Playing. Inkulinati! And, with the niblings: Match Madness, The Genius Square, Rummikub, Dixit.
Cooking. A new-to-me fruitcake recipe from one of my cookbooks; a dal from the cookbook I am not actually going to manage Making Everything From by the end of the calendar year (but I am pretty close).
Eating. I have now had A Mince Pie. Also a very long lunch at the Gardeners Arms. The brownies that all the reviews of the place we wound up staying in Ardlingy mentioned (which were indeed v good).
Exploring. Wakehurst Place, both at night for Glow Wild and during daylight (a little)!
Growing. Bought curry leaves. Proceeded to strip most of the stems (freezing the leaves) and Treat As Cuttings. There's at least one of them that doesn't look actually dead yet...
Observing. OWL OWL OWL. Very talkative tawny, as we were leaving Wakehurst on Friday night. Snowdrops, also at Wakehurst, to my mild horror. And, blessedly, NOT The Charity Tractor Parade...
watervoleIt's surprisingly hard to gain weight when you actually want to.
I'm down to 48.2k (go back four or five years and I was probably closer to 58k)
The loss is because my insulin doesn't work as effectively as it used to, so what I eat isn't all converted into useful energy for the body.
I'm now eating larger portions at meals, and I'm adding in snacks of nuts/cheese/fruit/other nibbles between meals, but the catch comes whenever I'm ill.
I gain gradually, then I get an asthma attack. One steroid course, and I've lost half a kilo.
Then I catch a bug from Theo - sick one day and not eating the next - I lose weight again.
It's rather like the old analogy of a frog climbing out of a well. As fast as I climb up, I start to slip down again...
But, at least I know what the problem is, and I'm doing what I can to improve it. As long as I can stay well, I'll hopefully get a bit more weight and energy...
It's still important to avoid foods with a high glycemic index - if too much sugar enters the system, it gets overloaded and enters shutdown mode for a while - that causes blood sugar to spike (which is a BAD thing). one thing I've learnt from what I'm being taught is that bananas have a high GI - best to only have half a banana, unless they are very small ones.
kaberett - stories and selveskaberett - <3liv - Year in review 2025kaberett - some things make a postkaberett - vital functionskaberett - [movement] in which I get to follow mine own teachingkaberett - [embodiment] ... huh.kaberett - today EVRi actually managed to deliver a parcel, not only on time but earlykaberett - [embodiment] huhkaberett - vital functionskaberett - LANTERNSwatervole - Diabetes and weightbranchandroot
