Àgres cau'r ça va

 Getting through the week, cooking dinners, doing laundry.  For some reason I am now studying Korean Hangul alphabet, French (at level 3 instead of 5), Italian, Japanese and Lithuanian on different profiles.  The Lithuanian is on Baba dum and it is close to Latvian, I can bring it up on my phone in spare minutes and do a couple dozen to keep in practice.  /raises eyebrows at own self.  I guess it is variety week?  

 I'm crocheting a rug and nearly done with it, started while I helped Esme do some algebra the other day (the 'help' is that I sit here and make encouraging small talk and supervise that she actually gets through it, occasionally actually looking closer when it seems to be truly frustrating - so the crochet helped to distract me enough that she didn't get too anxious I was looking over her shoulder.)  We could use another small floor rug for when those I made last year are in the wash.  

 And I am making drawings to make a puppet because we thought up some skits that would be cool.  I used to make toys and puppet like things long ago, but haven't done much lately.  Materials will be interesting if I get 'off the kitchen table and into the garage' with that idea and onto the workbench.

 Our budget seemed to be working last month even with the more expensive things, and the tightening of our belt in a few other areas.  I am still going to be extra-conservative through a little longer.  We were going to go grocery shopping tonight but we still have leftovers and it has been raining and colder. 

 Àgres cau'r ça va?  I haven't been able to find anyone who can translate that, but it is one of those pidgin things that I say between Latin, Welsh and French.  The 'agres' is actually said more like 'on-gres', similar to the word 'engraved', so maybe a contraction of On agrès, 'we get ready/prepare' Esme says she has heard me say it since she was small but she only has half a feel for it, and knows that it is usually something I say during lots of activities, stress, to-do-list etc.  Similar in feel to 'Quests for Humans'  The closest thing that I've gotten to a actual word-for-word meaning is 'We are completing difficult tasks? (we're preparing  - closing up, is it all good/ok?'  I am also slightly reminded of my mother saying something like 'batten down the hatches' at times, and the 'Angres' (agres, on agres) has always implied some sort of difficult task that we need to get ready for, like a ship for a storm, or a castle for attack etc.

ça va?  ça va. 

Sunday sunday bits

 We went to get the little car the other day and now it started and ran, but it was overheating on even a short trip - which it had done once before long ago, but it was not just the coolant being empty or the radiator cap breaking now.  It was something else, which I haven't asked the mechanic what that was yet - but he says it is ready and he has run it around town some and it is no longer doing that.

 

I've been really watching our budget this month because of the extra vehicle and insurance costs.  I've had to ask everyone to tighten up and make sure we are on the right path and I haven't underestimated anything going forward.  I'll know in another week or so what that really looks like - I hate that bills don't give you some sort of lookahead so you can estimate.  I have a pretty tight little spreadsheet of all the actual income and expenses over the past few months and I think I've got it on the nose, but I still want to see it work out in real life.  The insurance bill seems to be different every other month and I overestimate so that I can be sure to keep us in range.  And with all the vehicle expenses, rental car, the downpayment for this vehicle and the mechanic bill on the other one - it's been an expensive month.

 

I don't know why I'm doing Italian now on one profile, and French on the other.  I did that Duolingo levels things for about fifteen of the languages I have practiced over the past eight years - and Italian came out at a 38, even higher than Czech and Romanian.  And I haven't put that much time into it.  And the Spanish level being so low, 11, compared to the others - and I have put time and effort and frustration into that.  I know that means I should not be taking these as accurate data points because they contradict the actual working level I feel I have in each.  Anyway.  We watched the DaVinci Code the other day and I understood a lot more this time around of the French especially, but some of the Latin also even with the subtitles off than I have in the past - but I was listening, and trying to understand the 'mumble mouth' that a lot of the actors have.  I backed it up a few times to make sure that I had caught what I thought I had - didn't get every word.  I also understood the Italian in another movie that was just a few simple sentences. 

 Did the postal route, ready to go send and receive more trucks at work this week.  Then resolve the budget for next month and see where we are on track etc.  Pushing Esme to focus more on her difficult online portion of her math class so she can pass this semester (unlike last year).  I need to get her working on her driver's license harder as well and next month she will apply for college. 

 I've been having more of those dreams that I often get.  Two big themes that show up so often, I tend to recognize them in the dreams themselves as 'oh this again'.  The first one is that I am registered for a class (usually Math or English) and I don't know where it is, or when it is, and I don't know how long I haven't been attending it but I'm sure I am going to fail because I haven't been keeping up and didn't even remember I was supposed to be going to it.  The second one is the 'I am carrying my car around with me like a toy/cardboard box' where I get out and pick up the car, put it in my pocket, etc.. because I can't get it to go where it is supposed to go, blocked in traffic, not working etc.  I have read somewhere that is actually a power move - that in your dream you are realizing you are in control and that you can take charge of the situation.  Ok, I'll take that - it's nicer than the other interpretation that I feel like I can't get where I am supposed to go so I just break the limits of reality for a little while instead of waking up.

In one of those college dreams a third often theme also came up, I am me -but not this Universe's version of me.  I was brushing my hair in the mirror.  (what I've read of that people aren't supposed to do that as often as I do, it used to mean death or something, but I've always been able to see myself in mirrors in dreams, and only sometimes is it worrisome like that one time I was in 'not Fargo apartment that I didn't rent' and was looking in the mirror and it seemed like my face was not quite right, and then I turned around and 'me not me' was coming in the door, setting their keys down on the counter and stopping to stare at me in the hallway across from them before dropping their bag to the floor)  

Anyway, brushing my hair in the mirror and trying to get it to lay right - but it wasn't exactly like my hair is now, and I was talking to 'Mark not Mark' in the other room - people in my dreams are alt-Universe versions of themselves, as well, sometimes, and we were talking about having to go somewhere later today - there was someone else there that was one of his friends, someone I haven't met, but they were discussing cars.  From his attitude in the dream I knew it wasn't the Mark I would normally interact with, there were things that were off, and I became even more aware in the dream that this was not a 'million miles' but some sort of -alt.universe metaphor.   It was not our house or one I've been in although I could draw it now and tell you exactly where the furniture was and the colors of things were etc., and I was telling Mark that I needed to get to class and he asked me if I was still taking that? and I wasn't sure, have I missed it, have I been going?  I was supposed to walk there - and in the dream I could see exactly the path I needed to take all the way to a building and then I couldn't remember what floor/room I needed to be at or what time.  And I began to be quite worried, but Mark said that when I got there, I could probably just ask. 

 I've had a few slight wonderings about whether I should take a GPS class or something else online, like I did the comparative linguistics class.  But then I remember I should be doing my WaniKani and I haven't done that in a few weeks. 

 *million-miles, dreams that take place elsewhere, with me really not being me, that extend for days or weeks within the dream with tasks, people and a life that is not my own, and several times in those dreams I wonder how I am ever going to get 'back home' Dorothy-like? and finally I wake up and it feels like it is all still almost there - bits and pieces, an apartment, a fleeting memory of a person, a place, language etc... and then it slips through my fingers and most of it is gone - although sometimes I do return to that same place later in a dream, like the apartment in Barcelona, that I must have seen in some magazine or Google images map, because it is quite detailed - it's my brain playing 'doll house' with things that it liked in the visual-spatial 3D. 

language bit

 

 

 

I got a little too enthused about the new 'level' assigned in Duolingo.  Although, they've had something like this before, and I've been doing this on this profile since 2017.  I started in French (my L2 from grandmother) and German (my high school required language) and Welsh (pure interest).  I am in the fifth section on French, and nearly finished the Welsh entirely twice now before they added more to it.  

 

I was quite pleased though to see that Czech and Romanian were still so high up there, at 22 and 19.  I focused on them at one time and can still do quite a bit when I switch over to them, but would not call myself fluent enough to even read a kid's book..  My biggest problem with them (and with Welsh, sometimes) is that I forget how to spell things properly when I've been away for too long.  I've been working on Japanese for a while, and it still is only at 21!  But then, I did a LOT of work on Spanish, hit my head against the wall on it for months doing only Spanish and hitting it hard - and after all that work then and all the work since, that is only at 11.  I am well into the middle of the second section of it, but it still doesn't come naturally to me.  Catalan comes more naturally to me than Spanish, but it would, being sort of between French and Spanish.

 

I deduct that it has to be based on how many lessons are actually available for that language - and the percentage of them that I've done.  There are way more lessons available for French and Spanish than any of the others except maybe Portuguese (I read that somewhere). 

All of this because I switched over to French after some of the verb conjugations were going through my head at lunch the other day.

 Probably going to get the little car back tomorrow, it will be expensive, and hope the fix 'sticks' - but will have to make excuses to drive it and that will be a bit difficult when it has fallen over in the past.  The newer vehicle is doing everything it should be doing but the whole reason for having a backup vehicle is exactly what happened when we just had the little car by itself and then it began to have problems. 

bits of frog and shoulder

Woke up more than an hour before my first alarm, let the cat in, chased a frog out, decided I would just stay up and take a shower, make coffee, make lunch etc... going to be very tired on the back end of the day but didn't think I was going to get much more sleep anyway. It was a big brown frog, much chasing around the kitchen. He tried to hide behind a big box so I had to pull everything out from under a table and get a flashlight and a cup, and eventually convinced him out.  I know he came in with the cat.  I've seen her chasing them right there by the light outside the door.  There are some reasons the little Manx cat's name means Frog, even though the main one was that she had that shape in the stripes on her back.

 

I did something to my shoulder on Sunday - couldn't even begin to remember what, but it hurt from early on until late into the night.  I wasn't sure how I was even going to sleep on it - sleep on the other side it has more chance to slip, sleep on that side, it hurts from the compression.  It was like someone had rammed a hubcap under my shoulder blade, and it just wouldn't stretch out by any normal means.  Mark saw me trying to stretch / crack it out, and said he had just the thing for that.  He went into the closet and found Esme's old chin-up hanging swingset bar, and put it up on a rafter for me so I could hang by my arms on it.  I did some pull ups and twists and stretches with it, hoping it would help and not make anything worse.  On Monday I held judgement past the 'twelve hours later' mark, waiting to be clobbered by the results of the exercise while I was sitting in my chair at work.  But, to my surprise, it half-popped somewhere there in the morning and the muscles felt used but much much better.  Even after work I was amazed at how much better it had felt from the night before.   It still feels 'used' today but it does feel a lot better.

 

Now if I could get everyone to stop getting the change-of-season sniffles / sinus infection that this time of year brings.  I've had a back-of-the sinuses thing for a few days.  Esme has had it as more of a stuffed-up nose for a few days, and I'm giving her soup and tea.  This morning, Mark said he was feeling it.  I went ahead and did all the dishes since I was up so early.

 

Lots of Japanese.  Not a lot of new words, but the actual drawing of kanji thing they are having me practice is a challenge.   

the bits on a weekend

 Just got back from taking mother-in-law to town and getting her groceries.  Going to make chicken noodle soup with a bit of onion powder simmered in it, and green tea with pineapple juice for Esme for lunch.  She came along to help us with the groceries but she has a runny nose again.  We've been working on catching up on her math for school - the class she failed last year, because she couldn't access the program that was 40% of her grade.  I did some chatting with her teacher last week and finally asked the right question, and got us access at home to the program.  She just kept saying 'have her bring the computer to me' and that wasn't working, one way or another.  Finally I asked if there was still an online portal to use like they did during Covid when they did online schooling - and she said oh yea, there is - and told me how to access it.  Now she can work slowly through these chapters for half-credit and we will be able to keep up with her current assignments much better because she says sometimes she can't do them in class with all the screaming and pushing and shoving that goes on with the other students.

 

Car is doing okay, what it should.  The little trick we have been using to get open the gas cap door has been working well.  

 

My joints along my left side are still taking turns with who wants to complain today.  I try not to complain general, but did post yesterday that 'nineteen hundred fifty eight' bones in my left hip were having a word with me.  That is what it feels like - there is a hitch between two places that shouldn't even be IN that joint, and nothing is quite working in the right place between them - like shifting a car and for some reason it keeps getting stuck in between, but it works, and you can't get it to shift to the right position - and you know it SHOULDn't work that way, but it is, and just what is it damaging doing that??  A lot like that.  Mark says my joints don't have sockets, they have 'orbits'.  That's not far off, either.  Most of it will work itself out if I just don't overstrain things, eat right, and keep exercising it/using it normally.  

 

It is so ironic that with hEDS letting it 'rest' doesn't help as much as people would think,   If something  is 'stuck' letting it stay in that position and not stretching it out is the wrong approach.  But, you also do have to make sure that in grinding it through the 'slightly wrong position' (called sublux actually) doesn't really mess up something.  The snappy muscle bits will snap back in place if 1.) your nutrition stays good and 2.) you use it properly and stretch/crack it properly throughout the day  and 3.) you don't get an ACTUAL injury in the meantime.  I didn't sleep too long in one position last night, either - rolling over every few hours, which helps a lot.  When I'm just really really tired and I sleep for four to six hours straight - things tend to drift more and then getting the bones where they should be can be an unwanted surprise first thing trying to get out of bed.

 

Still doing Japanese on three programs and two profiles now - although I'm only doing the bare minimum.  One of the new apps on my phone keeps yelling at me at random times and I had to explain that to Esme.  Ha.  Oh, yes, my phone just said that because I have only done one lesson today.  It wants attention?  Yes, it does.

 

Speaking of, yesterday I had gotten home from the postal route and our little blind goat, Melody, was crying outside.  She was saying BAA very loudly, because she could hear I was in the kitchen.  She wants fresh food from the bin, like a house cat, and she wants someone to pet her head and say 'what a pretty goat' while she eats inside (she has an inside and an outside bowl).  Also, much like a house cat.  So when she heard me she began baa-ing very loudly.  Mark was in his office, and I was in the kitchen - and we both, at the same moment, said 'BAA' back at her - in the exact same tone - and he came out of his office and looked at me.  We said 'BAA' the exact same way, we speak the same dialect of goat.  I asked him what he had MEANT when he said BAA, because that would explain if it was the same dialect.  He said 'in a minute', and I would have said 'yes, eventually' (which, in welsh, 'in a minute' means about that exactly).  So yes, we both speak 'goat' to the goat when she is crying and it IS the same dialect.  *ha* 

some bits hEDS

 had a good talk with an old friend about the nutrition and family history thing with hEDS (hypermobile Ehler Danlos syndrome) and then deep dove into some of the biochemistry stuff that I had read a few years ago about collagen production and ways to support - it's not a cure, and the body still makes 'bad' collagen, but let it make the best bad collagen it can when it can is the theory... by having the right nutrients present, and that is better than bad bad collagen, from bad nutrition.  That seems to have been serving me better the past few years.

 

The burn on my hand healed after about a week and a half, and when the skin peeled, it didn't pull extra layers off and cause more wounds which in the past, has been the way that worked - I would have to heal about three times from a thing like that, in different stages.

But there are other annoyances that still keep showing up.  Like, crocheting for a few hours the other day, and my arm feeling like I held a great weight up for hours the next day.  And I slipped down an enbankment on Saturday, but that could have been much worse, and the muscle on my inner shin that helped catch that foot from slipping further 'woke up' and screamed nine hours after the slip and for about ten minutes felt like I had ripped the muscle off and put it back on wrong.  The collagen in those muscles finally decided 'yup, we're done, we held it up when you needed it but now the breakdown is happening, let's all give up at once and start requesting healing'.  That always surprises me, because I have to remember what I did, and because it was usually 10-12 hours ago, it can sometimes be very hard to connect.  And it seems illogical to anyone else.  I tried unsuccessfully to explain to a bad manager once why bringing out a bunch of 100-400 lb. vanities at 9 o'clock at night for me to put in topstock before we got out at 10 pm was a really bad idea for me, when he wanted me back there again at 7 am.  He just could not wrap his head around it - it seemed like I had to be just trying to get out of work.  I offered to put them up at 7 am as soon as I got in - for a chance to be functional for the whole day and fall over later THAT night... and he still didn't get it.

 Yesterday it was my left knee - I had been walking a lot, quickly to catch semi trucks that pull up before the driver gets out and runs through our building and I have to find out where they are wandering.  And that feels better today but the left ankle, which I guess did more work for the left knee, is now feeling like I dislocated and put it back in place, which I didn't, yesterday.  I've done that before - and this just feels like that.

Off to work here in a bit - less catching trucks today - there were three yesterday which is a lot in one day. 

some bits - anti inflammation diet

 foods : have been doing this for a few years now, was discussing with someone about it, after discussing earlier in the week with family in another state but they are now back to thinking that hEDS is not what their pain is from and they 'no one has ever heard of it' again *sigh* but I've found some good results for myself and I like these foods anyway.  the family members really love sugar and sugary drinks, as well, and 'can't give them up' where I've been drinking mostly black coffee (sometimes a little milk) with a pinch of a tea that has licorice and other herbs in it for several years (for the respiratory benefit) and that in itself is odd to most people.

bell peppers

carrots 

summer and zucchini squash

green peas

green onions

regular onion

beet greens and kale, fresh from the garden or frozen from garden

cucumbers (ground up as a sauce with mayonnaise, served on top of starches, like rice or pizza) 

olive oil, good quality - avoid many other oils

balsamic and rice wine vinegar 

canned beans, lentils or chickpeas 

brown rice, prepared with rice wine vinegar

rice noodles 

white sesame seeds (added to cooked rice)

nori or wakame seaweed

canned mackerel, tuna or sardines

eggs (from our own chickens, high in omegas, dark orange yolks)

peanut butter

olives

bananas 

mayonnaise 

avocado

relish  

naval oranges 

cherries and blueberries (sparingly) 

canned fruits and pineapple juice

licorice tea in small quantities brewed in coffee (for respiratory)

whole milk only

real full-fat butter, only (no margarine or spreads) 

dark chocolate 

ginger, garlic, hot madras curry powder, lots of black pepper

celery seed (usually in lentils, pea soup or rice) 

daily supplement : methyl folate tablet with food at breakfast 

still do eat pizza, pasta, pork chop or pork stir fry, beef - all in moderation with the family at dinner, although I often will make one or more of my own foods and mix with and limit consumption because it is harder to digest some of what the rest of the family wants to eat.

avoiding corn grains and cornstarch

avoiding overeating of sugar

limiting amount of beef when the family has it, I just don't digest it as well, a little is good (especially with horseradish) but definitely have a limit I can feel

definitely no sucralose or artificial sweetener

I used to drink a lot of green tea, but for the past few years it has made me vomit - it might be the brand type changed something or something else changed with me.

knock off the spiderwebs

 I haven't picked up a paintbrush in about a year, at least, not for long.  This was a slapdash I did back then - never decided if I wanted to do anything else with it, and put it on top of the failed paintings stack.  But thus, I've been looking at it, albeit flat, for that past year, and it has grown on me in general that it had something to it.  When I painted it, I didn't even plan anything, just threw whatever colors I had down and then squinted trying to make some picture out of it.  

I started matching some of the colors today to put on the edges, as having it flat, I was also always looking at the unfinished edges.  Then I put a bit of the colors back through the painting, altering it a little here and there.  It's no worse for wear, maybe not any better, either.  But now my paints are a bit more organized again, less spiderwebs, the brushes and paint pans have been taken out, used and cleaned.  I might clean up the drawing table a little more - closed some containers and moved things around.

It is a temptation to say 'I might need more of that', and buy something.  It is also a temptation to look at the bottles of printing ink I have that are nearly 15 years old? and say throw them out... and then stick them back in another container.  Maybe they'll work if I get another idea and take out my paper and inks.  But who knows when I'll decide to work on it again.

 Working on Japanese.  In all of these years of working with Duolingo they never once did the 'we' or 'they' forms?  I started HeyJapan a few days ago and it already has me learning new words.  And it is making me trace more kanji.  Doing a little WaniKani. 

 

'Eye to Eye' - just sit down and start to sketch, and let the picture form itself to a point - this is the third or fourth though where I had sat down and tried to find my basic black drawing pencils (H, HB etc.) and could not find a one of them, and ended up drawing with something else.  There isn't any explanation for all of them to be missing from my drawing kit except that I gathered them up and put them in a 'safe place' - which is sort of why I don't clean up and organize that often, because it backfires and I can't find things that I usually leave in the open and then know where to find it.
 

there can be only one

 We got a new to us used car, because the little car was still having tantrums, and I need a reliable way to get to work.  We had to look a few times, and ended up with something 10 years old that looks like a good bet.  I hope it is.  I was really stressing out about not having a vehicle and having to pay for rentals when the little car had a problem.  

 Esme and I did our budget for the first thing I wanted to try to get - and it was just too much.  Then the car came back from the mechanic,and it was two days before it was down again.  So I stepped up the game, and found this slightly older vehicle that was more in our budget.  You might be able to tell what it is by the title of this post.  I've asked the family to be a bit more conservative for a few weeks with groceries and everything else - until I make sure the insurance bill is what I checked out beforehand.  I have to call them again tomorrow and make sure everything is as I thought it would be.

I didn't really want to take on even more debt after the HVAC had went down earlier this summer and needed to be replaced!  But I am also glad to have that wrapped up before winter, as the other car wasn't going to be that great in snow, either. 

 Studying Japanese on two profiles and also on WaniKani. 

 

Made the pork fried rice sauce again - NOT the one with 'oyster sauce' which is what I'm seeing online everywhere.  I might have to get some oyster sauce just to see - as that is supposed to be just that and some soy sauce and water to make a pork fried rice sauce.  That seems... too simple?  This is the generic soy sauce based fried rice sauce that I learned long ago.  If you are cooking fresh pork from raw, do that first, and set it aside to cool for a moment.  Then make the rest.

 1 cup of water, set to boiling in the pan, garlic and ginger powder, bit of olive oil, bit of brown sugar, bit of balsamic vinegar, bit of soy sauce, salt, black pepper, bit of prepared stone ground mustard, cayenne pepper or red pepper flake optional

 

bring that to boiling, and stir everything together well... if you are using fresh carrot, shred the carrot and boil it in the sauce separately until it begins to soften, then add green onions, regular onions, any squash or sweet peas and bell pepper, kale etc.  Add pre-cooked pork, bring to full heat, add two eggs and then stir them through after they have cooked a moment.  Finally, add the pre-cooked rice, stir through, turn off the heat and put the steam lid on for a few minutes.

This can be made with kielbasa instead of pork, or just with egg all by itself if that is what you have. 

 

There is also hoisin sauce, which is made with fermented soybean paste, will need to study up how that is different than soy sauce.  It's thicker, I know that.  I've had it once up on a time.  I think out of the choices, I would use that the most often and actually not waste it.  And I used to keep sesame oil but it goes rancid so quickly I have thrown it out long before using it.  I was using fish sauce and the above recipe and lime juice to make a pad thai sauce a few times, and it was quite good.  Same with the fish sauce, though.  I don't know how long it is supposed to keep - longer than I originally expected, but we don't eat pad thai enough to keep it just for that.