korafox

1. Went on an Adventure to post a lost item back to someone (hopefully in time for the next thing they want it for...), and was rewarded with DUCKLINGS.
2. Not too warm to achieve fallback dinner of I Don't Know, Bake A Potato, with the result that we finished the lurking salad leaves and also stuck some of the cook-from-frozen pasteis de nata into the oven once potatoes were done.
3. Ridiculous organic greengrocer had an option on sending us rainbow chard this week, which means I might actually manage to cook one whole new recipe this month (!), which was otherwise... not looking likely. (I have been comprehensively failing to sow any, but there we go.)
4. Went fossicking in sofa to try to at least rationalise my horrid piles. Found one (1) of the two (2) fancy watch chargers I own, and not the one I was expecting to turn up (because I thought I'd probably mislaid it in a field), which hopefully means that given a leeeetle bit more fossicking I might even find the second.
5. Really enjoying playing with pens for the purposes of making notes on the pain reading. (Today has been Mindfulness for Health, with detours to read up more on the gate control and [neuromatrix] theories of pain; I was surprised that Model First Proposed In The 1960s is still apparently more-or-less the best we've got for "how the fuck does psychology and emotional affect and other sensory input actually affect how pain is experienced?")

If you have had long-term pain, of any kind, for any reason, a component of your pain is neuroplastic. Neurons that fire together wire together: you've had lots of practice at being in pain. This comes down, fundamentally, to how we learn.

Which means that while neuroplastic pain management approaches may very well not solve all of your problems, they'll treat a component of them, and that's worth having -- in exactly the same way that we don't want to e.g. give up painkillers that "take the edge off" but don't solve the whole problem.

(None of this is actually novel except insofar as most education about chronic pain blithely asserts that "most" healing has completed within 3-6 months, so pain persisting beyond that timescale Is Neuroplastic unless you've got cancer we suppose. So in the context of My Project, the framing of "this is an approximately unavoidable complication of your underlying condition that requires active management in its own right" strikes me as important.)

It is warm. We have the bedroom window open at night. Dusk is currently around when we are heading to bed.

... I realised I could prop the bat detector up in the open window while we went about our Bed Things and it worked. (Alas A missed most of the activity on account of being in the bathroom, but Proof Of Concept still valuable.)

Other achievements of the day include "1.7 kg of redcurrants picked, processed, and in the freezer" and "finished All Systems Red: the reread" and also "almost finished The Way Out reread".

(I am so so pleased about the redcurrants; turns out that mulching and pruning heavily and watering... works?! Who knew.)

I was trivially able to dig out an example of a documented 5:1 female:male ratio.

Why yes I am rereading The Way Out (previous commentary) for the purposes of making notes on content and structure.

... is a placeholder because I am doing so badly at routines in general and bedtime routines in particular, still, augh.

Reading. Adventures in Stationery, James Ward. Not entirely sold on the way anecdotes were strung together, and definitely dubious about the broader social history, but a pleasantly undemanding diversion in a week where I really needed that and for bonus points it finally explained The Thing About Blackwing Pencils to me.

( Stationery nerding. )

Watching. One more episode of Farscape (S02E02 Vitas Mortis), while bleaching A.

Cooking. Mostly Pasta With Things. (Things have included "kohlrabi and misc other greens from the allotment" and "psuedo puttanesca".)

Eating. STRAWBERRIES. Have also nibbled, from the allotment: peas! broad beans! aforementioned kohlrabi! cherries! the first raspberries! redcurrants! jostaberries!

Exploring. ... bits of a field? OH and I bimbled down to the post office and, en route, checked how the local quince tree is doing. (FRUITING.)

Creating. Painted A colours!

Growing. Iiii just about made it to the allotment to water things on, like, Tuesday, but I have otherwise been... struggling.

... the ginger at home continues to go zoom, though! And I really really need to pot it on, eesh.

Observing. BAT.

I went "HOLD ON I HAVEN'T POSTED--" at 00:01 last night, when I had already been in bed but failing to sleep for about twenty minutes, and so I will tell you that part of the reason that I did not manage to actually post, actually yesterday, is that my reward for having finally e-mailed the headache clinic and said "so yeah I took my loading doses in mid-April, sorry I didn't manage to e-mail at the time, executive dysfunction has been eating my entire brain"...

... was of course a response like "well ideally your follow-up appointment would have been last week but, okay, fine, how about Monday? :|"

"... oh and by the way you know those questionnaires we want you to submit a minimum of a week in advance? yeah if you could get those done too--"

-- which: ENTIRE brain.

(I managed to confirm the Monday appointment. I did not manage to get the headache diary and questionnaires done.)

The watch tells me I achieved +102 "body battery" points, which I am amused to see.

But I have also visited the allotment (on my way back from physio) and have eaten: raspberries, a strawberry, a cherry, redcurrants, jostaberries, peas, broad beans, kohlrabi. V pleased.