vital functions

2025-09-21 20:22[personal profile] kaberett
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[... sorry about the template, I hit return in the title field and IT POSTED. details to appear shortly. :-p]

Reading. ( Ann Leckie, Monty Lyman, Ronald Melzack & Patrick D. Wall )

Writing. ... I have actually put some more notes into The Document.

So many lost property e-mails. (And at some point I'm going to need to start replying to them, too.)

Watching. On YouTube: True Facts: Bats, The Science Of The Hunt. NSFW. Definitely... An Experience.

Cooking. ... yeah no I managed to make veg spag bol on Friday but otherwise we've mostly just been feeling faintly sorry for ourselves. Okay, no, that's not quite true, I did also achieve baked potato on Wednesday.

Eating. Misc takeaway from The Field (leftover Sunday night curry for dinner on Tuesday; leftover vegetable fried rice + Szechuan tofu for breakfast on same...). I remain mildly resentful that the Wagamama menu still does not contain any of My Favourites.

Growing. The second attempt at pineapple has NEW LEAVES. The second attempt at lemongrass is maybe Going? And other than that I have no idea because I have spectacularly failed to make it to the plot this week.

Observing. BATS. A variety of excellent dahlias and passion flowers on a Trip To Town (post office, pharmacy).

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[pain] today's book gets so close to The Thing

2025-09-19 21:32[personal profile] kaberett
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

... and doesn't quite make it.

On page 187 (of 218), we finally get this paragraph:

At this point we need to return to a crucial caveat. In most cases of persistent pain, whatever caused the initial injury has healed. Pain is now the primary disease. But there are a number of cases where there is continual damage that triggers nociceptive fibres; chronic inflammatory diseases are good examples. It is also important to point out that not every case of back pain is our brain's overreaction. A small -- but important -- minority of cases are caused by serious conditions -- cancer, some infections, spinal fractures and the nerve-compressing cauda equina syndrome -- but these can usually be ruled out by doctors, who will be on the lookout for 'red flag' symptoms. However, in the majority of cases of persistent pain (and over 90% of cases of back pain), there is no longer any identifiable tissue damage; our brain has become hypersensitive.

In a book that otherwise dedicates a lot of time to talking about gender and racial inequalities in healthcare access, including a solid half-paragraph on how common and how painful endometriosis (a chronic inflammatory condition!) is, the bit where "well this only applies to most people..." gets breezed past is certainly causing me more feelings. And yet it's still the closest anything I've read so far actually gets to engaging with the fact that the rest of us exist, so... no get-out-of-writing-essays-free card for me here, alas.

(The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, mostly pretty good and definitely got me to think constructively about a few things -- like the merits of classical vs contemporary Pilates for my specific usecase via discussion of knitting -- and introduced me to some more, like open-label placebos and "safe threats" and the impact of paracetamol on empathy. It's incomplete, but not disrecommended.)

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[growth] pineapple is go!

2025-09-18 19:19[personal profile] kaberett
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

A little while ago the toddler's household told me that you could turn the top of a pineapple into a whole entire pineapple plant (with the caveat that at least 60% of the time it goes mouldy). My first attempt at this had got as far as growing a whole entire root network but then suffered a Tragic Incident from which it never recovered; the second had been sat around with partially-browned but no-longer-becoming-more-browned and definitely-still-partially-green leaves for Quite Some Time. I had more or less hit the point of "... is this actually doing anything? at all?" and then upon my return from the most recent round of Adventures I rotated it in service of watering it, to discover...

a pineapple crown, growing a whole new set of leaves

... that it's growing a WHOLE NEW SET OF LEAVES. Look at it go! I am very excited!

(My understanding is that if I manage to keep it alive that long it'll take somewhere in the region of 3 years to fruit, and then in the fashion of all bromeliads will die having produced said single fruit. Happily this is about the rate at which we eat fresh pineapple...)

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tired. so tired.

2025-09-16 22:24[personal profile] kaberett
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Have spent most of the day asleep.

  1. Attempt #2 at pineapple-from-trimmed-top has NEW LEAVES.
  2. I am also fairly sure that attempt #2 at lemongrass is taller than it was when we set off on our terrible adventures about ten days ago.
  3. Actual bed. Favourite mattress.
  4. I got to make someone's entire day by sending an "... I think I have your object" e-mail.
  5. Leftovers for dinner: curry from the crew party on Sunday night. Didn't have to think about food. Extremely grateful for this fact.
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vital functions

2025-09-14 23:59[personal profile] kaberett
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Reading. Tiny bits of Solutions and Other Problems and The Painful Truth.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac.

Exploring. Chester, including Chester Zoo!

Eating. Almost all of my favourite field foods, including raspberry and lemon curd toasties, noodle pots with the addition of the prepped salad bits (spinach! red onion!), the giant lemon and sugar crepes, and flapjack. ("Almost" because the cake options CHANGED.)

Observing. The Milky Way. Something that might have been some kind of satellite or might have been some kind of shooting star. CHESTER ZOO, etc. At least one field bat.

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BATS

2025-09-09 21:56[personal profile] kaberett
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Between one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.

... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.

It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.

And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.

There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.

Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.

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It's Autumn and there are apples. And plums. And hope in the darkness.

2025-09-09 21:14[personal profile] glinda
glinda: an autumnal woodland, pale blue sky visible between orange leaves (autumn leaves)
I've been doing lots of low key self-care this last week. Stress - or perhaps the absence of it, my shoulders coming down from around my ears - has been taking a toll on my body lately, so I've been putting in the effort of doing the little things to take care of myself. I got a haircut, I went for a massage, when one of my knitting ladies offered me apples and plums I said yes and made jam. (And parsnip and apple soup, and an awful lot of apple sauce, some to freeze, some to make muffins and pies with, some to eat on porridge.) I took advantage of these last few mild but breezy days to air out the house, change the sheets and dry them outside for probably the last time this season.

There's a tideline in my flat, you can see where I've been on a tear, cleaning things. Taking everything off shelves, dusting them and putting them back. My little pumkin fairy lights are up, and I've put fresh batteries in the rest of my fairy lights. I've been writing a lot lately, so I prioritised cleaning and tidying my computer corner, so I have a refuge I can retreat to when the deep clean is getting on top of me. I've been doing lots of the small jobs that I keep forgetting, and a couple of bigger ones that I've been putting off have turned up to be easier than expected to accomplish. I've finished a couple of craft projects - strategically, they were getting on top of me - and started others, and it turns out the jumper I just finished has highlights in the perfect shade to match my new favourite skirt. (Neatly turning it from just a summer skirt into an autumn and spring affair, I can wear it now with thick leggings, boots and the jumper.) I started a new craft kit that's been lurking since some time during the second lockdown. It's a little amigurumi style crab. Round and round I go, my tension is tighter than it ought to be but that's okay, amigurumi need to be densely crocheted. I got a small payrise and treated myself to a new LEGO set as a reward.

Everything feels a lot, but I'm working through my to-do list, making progress and trying to be kind to myself. There's more to do but I'm getting there.

There's so much to be worried about. So much to be angry about. But I can only do what I can do and sometimes all that I can do is take of myself and those around me.
  • ◾ Current Mood: calm
  • ◾ Current Music: Adele - Hometown Glory
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vital functions

2025-09-07 22:50[personal profile] kaberett
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Reading. Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie: finished the Radch stories; on to The World Of The Raven Tower!

The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman: in progress; not yet Cross with it but also not yet Impressed by it.

More Dreamwidth catchup.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac!

Eating. SO many tomatoes.

Exploring. Poked around Preston a very little!

Growing. ... SO many tomatoes. More watering system established at plot (so hopefully all the peppers will still be alive and well upon my return). Sowed some probably-past-it seeds.

Observing. A saw a deer on the drive up to Preston! A proper big one with antlers and all! We were very impressed.

Also the local owl Yell.

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