Just a bit

 I'm trying to get over a little nose congestion and have it not go to my chest.  I've had that problem all my life - Fargo was the worst with the wind and cold - but I still get it here in Tennessee once in a while, too.  Basically, I've been told, my sinuses aren't quite right but it would take a lot to make them 'right' and they probably wouldn't stay that way, so learn how to deal with it.  I eat a lot of soup and drink a lot of tea.

I made pea soup this morning with garlic and onions and clove spice, and drank it all straight down.

I've been studying Greek, trying to increase that score from 15 to 16 - and also doing Spanish-->French and French-->Spanish on my phone, and caught up on a few lessons of Russian today after watching a big cat handler's Youtube again with Esme and pointing out that I could understand some of what she was saying.  My Duolingo scores on the French-->Spanish and Spanish-->French are both sitting at 10 and 11, respectively.  My English-->French score is just hovering under 70, and I know that could be improved but the grammar is getting into 'you have to study now' territory.  I'm still using the free version, as well.  And I was surprised to see my Russian score materialize today also at 11.  They didn't have those scores back when I did the free A-level Busuu course and then caught up some practice on Duolingo. 

Found a little red photo album from my early childhood and posted a few pictures for my sister to see, and to try to figure out who the people were in them.  I was really originally looking for what the linoleum looked like in our house when I was a child - because I could remember it almost exactly.  I picked out an image on Google that I was sure was it - and when I found the picture in the album, yes, *pat on back* it was exactly the same pattern.  Those sort of things stick with you when you have a photographic memory.  I remember my mother being upset that I would trace such patterns with my fingers, and especially the mirroring in it was something I was fascinated with.  Come to discover later that patterns and dyslexia mirroring things were a big part of how my brain works - little surprise!

 

 

I was also doing my Lithuanian / Latvian vocabulary - on baba dum only Lithuanian is available and on Baltoslav both are.  I was finding it useful to look away from the screen on ba ba dum and hear the word, 'spell' it in my vision, and then look and see if the word was what I thought it was before trying to match it to the picture I also thought it should be.  BaltoSlav doesn't have pronunciation, but Google translate has gotten much better at pronouncing Latvian, and I've been watching some more Tuta's Lietas as well for that.

 Still no actual USE for these languages other than my brain works much better and less stress fully with this 'in all the boxes' than with remembering 50,000+ items in inventory per department in the hardware store I worked at.   

bits

 We took hours insulating the washing machine wall the other day - but it got done.  Esme had to test a lot of her measuring and cutting skills - and we had to keep pressing through until every step was done the way Mark wanted it done.  I smashed one hand a little on something (still can't remember what) and cut myself with the utility knife, but only a little bit.  Mark always says if you don't bleed on a project (jokingly/sarcasm) it wasn't done right.  I was a bit hangry and really wanted to just be done with it - but he kept finding more details for us to do in each layer before proceeding.   I had come home from the postal route and was making soup in the other room in tandem.  It was good soup - turnip, with zucchini, onions and kielbasa.  I made some lentil with pork fat and red bell pepper today, but the turnip soup still won out as much better.  Mark was making a pork roast for him and Esme - I ate about a tablespoon of that with an avocado for dinner.  It is going to get below freezing tonight, and we've gotten the elderly mama cat in - she slept on my lap while we watched StarGate.  

 I haven't run the little car all week, but will have to see what happens tomorrow after work.  We have run the suv and it was doing well.  We did a major animal feed run in it and got the propane bottles refilled.   I am not going to try to take the little car to work tomorrow as I don't need the anxiety of not getting there in time.  That is a big reason we needed another car that was more reliable, but I can't just let the other one sit all the time either, as it needs to be run for it's battery etc.

 I've been trying to deal with the teeth all week and done a fairly good job.  I'm still grinding most things or making them into blended soup - and bread and cookies that have been soaked thoroughly in coffee.  I've mashed up bananas and peaches.  I've still worn the teeth every single day, and I'm down to just a few painkillers a day (ibuprofen), mostly before I put them in the morning and just before I take them out at night.  I'm fearing there might be a tooth shard in that one place that still hurts so much. Once in a while when the plate slips a little trying to bite something, I can feel a hard bit slide on the plate there - and it would be pretty severe if that was my jaw bone doing that in just that one place - but a bit of tooth shard makes a lot of sense.  That would explain things, including a slight swelling just above it that has not went down.  

Why am I not running into the dentist and asking them to x-ray now that I've thought of that?  Because me and my stupid pain tolerance - it isn't quite so bad that I know something is wrong, but it's annoying.  And to me, what is annoying, is probably their 'what can you give me to get it to go away'... like Spock raising an eyebrow in mild annoyance at somebody rushing him with a sword.  I spent an entire summer with a fracture from falling out of a treehouse, because my mom didn't think it could possibly actually be an injury, because I only cried a little right afterward.  At the ER after another injury, the nurse wasn't sure I could possibly be injured because I was laughing uncontrollably - then she saw the x-ray - that one required a splint.  I held a gushing wound closed on a finger cut down to the bone from my house all the way to the clinic and the doctor there could not believe what he saw when I finally took my hand off it - 'have you been holding that shut the entire time since it happened?' Of course I have.  Why wouldn't you?  Then he gave me ten stitches with lots of superglue over them and a splint on that so I wouldn't move it while it healed.  There is still a long white scar on that finger that if someone looks closely at they stop and ask 'what the hell happened there'.  I have another check-up for the dental in a few weeks, but I will keep in mind that there might be something there that needs to be looked at.

My nose DID stop hurting, finally - after being an added torment to the other mouth pain for almost all of the past two weeks.  I can now do the 'bunny rabbit nose' thing without a shooting pain, and the mobility of my upper lip has also returned, which you don't really realize how much that is used in talking, drinking and eating until you have about half-capacity in it (or none) and that still hurts when I move it a lot, but mostly around that spot I think the tooth shard might be under the plate.

 Most of the rest is going well.  I spent several hours today reading a silly book.

When I brought the turnip in from the store, Esme and Mark looked at it and asked 'what IS it?'  I was surprised - the lady at the store was young, and she knew what it was.  I said: 'C'mon people, it has purple on it, it's a turnip!'  Mark said 'Those don't turnip around here often'  *groan*  I had to try to tell Esme as much as I know about the differences between turnips, rutabagas, and everything else.  Info-dumped on her and I know she understands that is just how mom is *ha*  I cut it open and had her smell it, too, as she likes the smell of onions.  I told her I couldn't explain it but that, to me, it smelled something between an apple, an onion and maybe a radish.  The soup turned out excellent, but I couldn't convince her to try it.  Especially not when Mark had pizza to offer.  It will be a good while before I can eat pizza, or even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without a knife and a fork (but I did do that today, and did succeed).

The turnip soup:

1 turnip, about 1.2 lbs. according to the grocery receipt, washed, peeled and diced

in enough water to cover in a big pot

added a tablespoon or so of olive oil

salt, black pepper, rosemary garlic seasoning

let that boil on medium for at least an hour

added some zucchini, onions and kielbasa from the freezer

let that boil a bit longer, maybe another forty minutes

removed from heat, then blended smooth

poured up in a clean glass jar

 

It is sweeter than potato soup, and has less of that 'mealy grainy' taste that potato soup sometimes has.

 I've been studying mostly Czech, Welsh and Spanish the past few days.  The Czech is in review mode, the Spanish is normal and the Welsh is in super-hard 'Am I going to use this vocabulary? mode'.  I haven't done too much with the to do list, but I did remember to do a few of the things that I had on it, like take the garbage up, and do some laundry things.

 

bits

 Study Lithuanian, then do my Wani Kani kanji at some time today.  I did a good amount of French last night when I was up and couldn't sleep - and started another floor rug for something to do with my hands.  Esme has her next math module to do.  I made her do one Friday and gave her a break yesterday, but both are due tomorrow.

We went to town early this morning and picked up some essential groceries.  I know I'm being tight with the budget, but with getting the car loan last month and the insurance it is my instinct to reel in as much as I can until we really know what we have for several months in a row - plus, winter is coming, and that is always more expensive. Esme is a bit worried with the tight budget, but she knows why I am doing it.  I wish I could solve her anxiety on it, as I am basically doing it to lessen my own anxiety.  That is an odd combination.  Now, we are not out of anything that anyone needs in the house, but I didn't buy many extras, either.  I've actually been working at using up some of the extra, or at least things in the cupboard that weren't being actively used but could be.

Washed the bedding and made some rice for lunches the next few days.  Washed Charlotte, as well.  There are two very pretty tomatoes that were green when they were given to me on Thursday, but have reddened up nicely.   I chopped up one of the other ones and put it in a container in the freezer, which I often add to stir fry type dishes.  I put the larger tomato and a lot of other vegetables together with some sausage from the freezer and served it with mashed potatoes from the last ones at the bottom of the box that needed to be used up.

I took my hair shears and trimmed about two inches off of my hair - been thinking about doing that for a week or more now.  Now Esme's math is done and I have a bit more language to do, make the bed, put up the rice, and fall asleep, hoping to sleep a bit more than last night. 

bits

They did the second part of the tooth extraction on Friday.  I remembered the tea bag advice and the bleeding stopped much earlier than last time.  I went to work on the postal route on Saturday, and even brought some groceries home.  I've eaten a lot more than I did last time, but I am still tired enough that I've crashed early and slept as late as possible both days.  Mark made a pork roast starting early this morning, and we've had that for lunch.  I've done an assortment of lessons on my language accounts, Russian, Chinese, Danish, Catalan, French-to-Spanish and Japanese.  I've played a lot in Minetest Luanti, and made a couple of quick-and-dirty computer graphic scrawls to avoid going directly to sleep last night.

 

This morning I pulled a third white scallop squash out of the little front garden - that was the plant I started in a yogurt cup this year because I really wanted one of them - and it has come along very well.  Not much else to report - back to work tomorrow.  Next month they will do an impression for making the denture - and then after that has been made, they will pull out all the smaller teeth in the top that are left and put the denture in - and I expect that will actually be the hardest one.  These two last appointments they were pulling out the largest two molars in the back on each side - that were leftover AFTER they took out my wisdom teeth many years prior.

 

 

hvac and dental extraction

 They installed the hvac system - it leaked on the floor a lot that first day, but they came back the next day and fixed that.  It seems to be working very well now.  I had the first of three dental extraction appointments, and it bled for about six hours or more.  I went through a lot of gauze, and bought a good deal more because I know there are more extractions coming before they can fit my denture plate.  That was yesterday morning, had swollen some and felt like I got punched hard in the cheekbone (upper jaw was where the teeth came out).   But all of that was on just a few ibuprofen and no other pain medication (because other pain medication does not metabolize for me.. not really fun).   It feels much better tonight, but I took both days off of work to make certain I wasn't 'biting off more than I could chew' with the healing process.  I've napped once today and am about to head to bed again.  I took the nap earlier because I was feeling cold.  They gave me antibiotics, and I've tried to eat a few good vitamin packed things and an avocado.  

 

I bought The Last of Us for Esme, series one and she is watching that.  She had played the game and didn't explicitly ask for the series but I saw her looking at it when we were killing time waiting for the pharmacy yesterday.  She read the entire back of the cover and then put it back.  I took that as a sign that she was interested, and she didn't say no when I said we could get that.  She has watched half of it already - but it's a bit scary for me at the moment because I have enough odd dreams just with the teeth issue.  I don't need more in my brain to be stirred up.  I did watch Jurassic Park two yesterday, but had Mark fast forward past the compy stuff in the beginning and near the end, because I really don't like those bits.

 

I've been doing French and Spanish, and finished all the challenges in a little game called Minbari Lane that is a Japanese town building sim.  The next dental extraction is in August. We also have to go to the school this next week and talk about what classes Esme needs to graduate and make sure she has everything on the correct path for this year since she missed a class last year and we couldn't get her to summer school to catch up on it because of the one vehicle and scheduling conflicts.

bit o bit o Christmas Eve

 I did some cleaning today - laundry, sweeping, sorting papers, scrubbing, pulling trash cans and changing bedding and rugs and dog blankets.  It all has been needing to be done in more than the little scraps of time I had put to it when necessary the past few months.  I watered the plants - which I have done when they needed it yes, but maybe not as often as they actually preferred.  

 

At times I felt like I wasn't sure what I should be doing with myself, since I'm used to having 'no time' - which Mark reminded me doesn't mean I have no time, just none I allot to that.  Same with the little car's brake fluid - I would have done that today, but that would have been three days not doing it - waiting to have 'enough brain' to extend beyond the queue of items I already have been doing on rote to get the jobs done etc.  Yes, it's something to work on, but no, 'just do it' isn't always a good answer for it.  Today I did each of the tasks in pieces, and then did something else (game, coffee, language lessons) and then returned to the tasks and eventually got a lot done.  

 

I do have a way that works, it is just annoying in general to others and I can't do it sometimes, I have to push it around and space it out into intervals to make it seem like a bunch of smaller tasks.  I 'tell myself' that if I had tried to take it all at one whack and then did the leisure items I don't think I would have gotten as far.  It's part of that 'yes it doesn't make sense to you' but I've lived in this brain and this is how it ACTUALLY works, vs. how it looks like it should work.  *shrug*  That is something like an ADHD thing.  Mark says I can just 'tell myself' something else.  Not really.  When that huge brakes-dragging-the-whole-train feeling is there, that is all I can say about it.  Do I get it done the way I know I can, or keep failing trying to take it 'head on like a normal person'  Me, not normal... so, option one and be productive in the zig-zaggy ADHD way that actually accomplishes something.  The biggest problem with those scraps of time earlier in the months was that was all the scraps I had willpower for, among everything else I was doing, and when I reached the critical mass point where I went to do something else it always ended up being bedtime or worktime or town-run-time etc.. and I never got back to doing more of the tasks than was necessary.

It's Christmas Eve.  I've done French and Italian (I had bopped onto Italian for a practice session yesterday and then it was already loaded when I came to do my Catalan.)  I stared hard at a Japanese program that I haven't made time for in months and was offering a good deal on a subscription - but I decided to not do that.  I listened to a full Christmas album on another site in French, which was pretty neat.  

Tomorrow is Christmas.  We have a meal planned and time to open presents.  I will take myself off to bed here in a little bit and see how much sleep I get.  I had set the alarm forward to 'maximum chicken time' - 7:45 am.. and didn't get to sleep all the way to that.  I had been up for two hours in the night - which was the only reason I was able to sleep past five.  I don't really want to move my schedule though - I will need to be up early again all for the next week.  So, I will try to get to bed early tonight and see how that fares.

We watched several episodes of Crossing Jordan first season.  The episode I was looking for was 'Miracles and Wonders', which in our sequence is marked as number 12 - it is officially episode 13 of the first season.  I always like that one for how things weave together.

Quests for Humans

 It's been busy weeks - on top of busy weeks.  The cold let up a little - we're getting some rain but hopefully no ice overnight.  Got the little car's heater fixed.  Mark had his birthday - I gave him some clothing and some candy that Esme and I had picked out when we got propane one day.  He watched a lot of the cartoons and movies he likes - and ordered some things for his computer that is only just now arriving.  

It doesn't feel like Christmas will be here in a few weeks.  I've only bought a few things and to be completely honest - I never even took the little tree down last year. It's still up from LAST YEAR.  But it does need to be taken down and cleaned and the lights replaced and put back up.  If I can figure out time that I have ambition that isn't used for making dinner and laundry and existing.  I've come home and just sort of collapsed on the couch for a while and not been very conversational a few times.  That isn't really my style - It's been a bit like the epitome of 'flattened'.. edging back towards human at the end enough to eat and talk.  Usually my style is to come home and eat a huge pile of food and chat way too much until I deflate from the anxiety of the day and then ease back down from the high-tension end of the slide into normal.  I've had fewer of the 'keep doing what needs doing but anxiety of single being in a single timeflow with multi-dimensional timeflow thoughts that I can't process so I stick them down in the box all day until it overflows' type of days.  But I'm not sure if this is better or not - the 'I've kept doing all that needed doing but my 'brain box' is only full of dead space - no brain, no thoughts, just 'stop' or 'go' and now that I've stopped I'm flattened' feeling is a bit worse.  I guess other people would explain that as : 'I'm tired'.  But I guess that is proof I do still have those multi-dimensional thoughts when I start to think about it... when I'm not so tired.

Today I pushed on and after work went to the bank (hard quest, it closes less than a half hour after I get out of work, about a half hour drive away from bank), feed store (also closes an hour after bank does, but only fifteen minute drive away from bank), then another store for Mark and the grocery store, and then home.  I am really glad the little car made it through all those stops.  When the mail truck was having trouble with its battery that was an ever-increasing anxiety making multiple stops without running the truck long enough to charge the battery in between.  Quests for humans, indeed... with difficulty settings.

Not to mention it gets dark so early now.  And is extremely dark and cold and sometimes icy in the mornings.  It could be worse.  I don't want it to be.  Boss was ranting to me about somebody taking days off and going to be fired for missing work - and I told her my anxiety stack is still on all the ice days of previous years and I can't say one word one way or the other about anyone else because I'm just doing my best to be there every day and anxiety about what will happen if/when the weather changes.  She tried to assure me that I can't control the weather.  Yea.  That is what worries me.

I called all of our errands and my work days 'quests for humans' the other day to Esme - as she helped us get groceries with Grandma, and propane.  I told her it feels like that sometimes, like ticking off parts on some video game quest until you get all the bits done - but then it's just done for that day, and it rolls back around the next day starting all over again.  I had a very very busy postal route the other day, but not so much I couldn't get it done.  I'm wondering what this weekend will be like - Christmas packages et al.  This is the time of year they used to call in some help.  I used to be that help, on the weekdays - but now I am at the office job during the week.  Last Saturday they said that they were surprised I finished it all without needing help, but I said I didn't know they were providing help yet, so I pushed through and got it done - by continuously telling myself during the day : 'It's not going to help to sit here and stare at it - up, onward, get it done' over and over until it got done.  Thus: the quests for humans.  There is a book I keep seeing that is close to that name but it isn't quite the same emotion.

And I feel like my hips, knees, ankles, fingers and wrists are all clicky at the moment - it could be worse, don't want it to be.  It's like my muscles are made of toothpicks bound together with lots of rubber, and the toothpicks are clicky and shifting around and hoping they don't break.  I am glad the weather has been good - hope that continues to be.  Just keep getting home from work, dinner, head to bed after a bit.  I played the game a few days (Sims 3) and it still feels like I've just wasted most of that time.  I discovered how some things work again - without going and looking things up - but still, it got nothing done in the real world.

I've sent out several copies of my Mikki Mack book to people - sold one locally, and still need to find a way to get the rest of the stack to the local gallery.  They are open later on Fridays (or, at least they used to be) so I might have to take up that 'quest for human' mentality and just push push to have that be something I want to get done so I make sure it gets done.  At the office job that is how I make things work - just push push and when I stop to breathe for a minute line up the next stack.  Same thing with the postal route.  Same thing with lots of things, it's the only way I keep the balls in the air.  I'm just still adjusting to that weird feeling of stopping and there isn't new material coming in from all sides of my brain that has nothing to do with the task at hand or minimal tangents.  It's like missing an old friend that don't hardly get any time to spend with, except the old friend is my creative side which is asleep in a chair in the corner.

Languages - lots of Japanese.  A little bit of Czech.  Not a lot else.  The Japanese on my highest Duolingo profile is actually getting into new words FINALLY.... why has it taken so long?  It really has.  And I do like the little yomu yomu app that has short conversations or stories to listen to.  The Czech language app is a bit annoying in that it is supposed to recognize your speech and there are so many things I cannot come close to pronouncing (acc. to the app) but yet I feel like I understand them and am saying them as best I can. 

fast forward friday

 It's cold.  The window in the little car decided today was a day to stop working - and it's electric, and without whatever broke while it was sitting in the driveway overnight, it won't go up all the way and it won't stay up, either.  The mechanic has ordered a part for it.  My keyboard is acting funny in the cold, as well, all of a sudden.  And because it is this cold - I really just want to go to bed and stay in bed until I have to go to work tomorrow.

Finished reading 'Lessons in Chemistry', (by Bonnie Garmus, fiction book) which I had set aside a few months ago - well, more like six months ago.  But it was good to finish it.

Saw some language polyglot person in a post that said they learned 'conversational' level in 15 languages over the course of a year.  Yea... probably not, especially looking at that list of languages they posted.  However, my idea of 'what is conversational' is probably higher level than most people would think.  I am thinking he means the absolute basics, hello, goodbye, how are you, where is the restroom 'survival' phrases.  

I think 'toddler level language' - to be 'conversational' you should be able to speak simply about what you need, want and think about things - as all the questions, understand numbers, have a good handful of adjectives, place names (library, bank, rooms, park etc.) and other nouns.  You should also understand at least half of what a speaker might answer back to any of your conversational / survival questions enough to get the information.  But maybe they consider that a higher level?  

 I would say I am 'adequate' in maybe 6 languages, and that is a much higher level than what I just said, able to read newspapers and watch tv, along with being able to read more although I might still check a dictionary on an uncommon word or to check the right form of the word to use.  I could say I am 'conversational' (my description above) in up to 11 or 12, and that I have a 'bare basic' of I know some key phrases and recognize even more words but my grammar definitely wouldn't be able to hold water in a conversation in about twenty different languages, total).

 Although this has taken a lot more than 15 months - and many more resources than a single app or class course each - I'd say I'm at 8 years on focusing on the Welsh and French (2017 when I discovered Duolingo those were the two I focused on), scattered amounts of Japanese and German from many stops and starts, and 3 to 4 years on many of the others as I really began my push in 2021 for Czech and Romanian and restarting Japanese - then added the others as I continued and while I was taking that Comparative Linguistics class at the online university course. 

That course had me look at Finnish, Greek, Irish, Latvian, Turkish, Zulu and Hungarian to get an idea of the structure differences of all of the different language families.  I tried Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Dutch to compare them specifically against Finnish and German.  I beat my head on Spanish, all by itself, for three or four months exclusively and then found Catalan, and Portuguese were both easier for me (through French similarities) and still have trouble with responding in Italian, although I understand it okay, the Spanish and the French both get in the way there.  I took a Russian A1 course this year because I was watching videos of a lady training big cats that she spoke to the in Russian.  I also though it would help me with Cyrillic letters for learning Bulgarian, as an offshoot of getting fairly good with Czech. - but I  can't say I'm conversational in that. I also took the first few levels of Chinese on Duolingo to support learning Kanji in Japanese when I moved from 'studying this a little' to 'actually understanding this and needing to go deeper now.'

I had a dream the other night that I was opening up a letter that said I was being published for a book that I have not yet written or even thought of.  I 'remembered' the book in the dream and it was so complete and funny and it could work - and then it fell apart like sand through my fingers as I pulled myself awake.  That happened once before with a detective story, as well - which I only got half of it down on paper before I couldn't remember it anymore.  I guess we'll see if I can get started on this idea, but with it being cold and working six days a week - maybe I'll need even a bit more inspiration or enough time with a notebook to lay it out.

I had gotten Esme a Christmas present coming in the mail because last year I waited too long and missed it - it was out of stock for months, and then I finally got her one of the versions, but not the one she really really wanted (She still said she liked the version she did get).  Well I got it early, and we decided to just give it to her early and let her enjoy it for the extra month instead of waiting for it under the tree and maybe it wouldn't even work (it was a game cartridge).  It worked.  She is happy.  She has this weekend to play it and then Thanksgiving break next week for a few days, as well.

monday monday, wait, it's not tuesday

 It's been so much of a Monday, it almost feels like it should be Tuesday by now.  But I'm headed off to bed, so that will happen in a few hours here anyway.  And somehow it is also more than halfway through November.  *squints at calendar*    Doing less Japanese than I should be doing.  

 Fussing around with the architect profession now on Sims 3, thinking about playing with the gardening dynamic after this.  It is supposed to rain a lot tonight again and be better tomorrow, then turn very cold.  The furnace is out at the office - after being asked to start turning it on to 'comfortable' for visitors and so you're not in a coat all the time... up from 'bearable with a coat' for me, which is where I had it on - so *sigh* now I'll be putting on my double thermal layers and fuzzy socks again until they get someone to get it fixed.  I bought some malted milk to put in my hot tea.

I've reached that two month review point, but now with working through Thanksgiving I know we won't have any time to discuss vacation days and then I was overhearing that it isn't two months, it's four - two for a half day, and four for a full day.  *blink*  But I am still liking the basic job, getting things done, keeping track of things, getting things we need and getting the bills paid etc.  And having my own bills paid helps so much.  I've had to make a lot of calls to electricians and plumbers lately, and that has had me saying 'oh my introvert' a little as I take a few minutes and regather myself and call the next one.  But I'm getting through it, and there isn't anyone there to ask me why I'm taking three minutes before calling another one... do what you do etc.

apropos of nothing, tried the ginger and sesame flavor Halo seaweed snacks today and it is good - I usually eat that with rice as a sort of 'pseudo' sushi snack.  So, I'll have to make some 'sushi' rice to eat with some of it soon, and the sweet-and-spicy chili tuna packet bought with the same intention.  I also bought two cans of brown sugar boba tea but haven't cracked into one yet.  

And what was the reason for these strange foods?  Went shopping with someone else and 'really didn't need anything'...a pizza, cheese, pepperoni and some canned vegetables were all that was on our list - but I ended up getting a few other things as well, and a birthday present, and that is how you spend money that you don't really need to *sigh*.  Although I did have a cat brush on the list, didn't think I'd find one, did - and have been using it on our little elderly cat because she has trouble grooming herself now AND likes to lie out in leaves and gravel.  So often, she still has bits of stuff stuck to her fur when she comes to sleep in my lap.  It's getting colder now, so if I'm going to be sat on so often I thought I'd get the little soft plastic brush and put it somewhere I could reach it from my chair.

bits and bobs

 Got up this morning and did the dishes, some laundry, gave Charlotte a bath.  Several of the animals were commenting on how the dog blankets smelled like Daphne still, Loki was curled up in one for a good while today (he's a cat), but Sweetie gave herself 'a sad' as Mark said, and I gave her a new blanket and we washed the ones that were in front of the heater.  I had not felt Daphne was healthy enough to be lifted in and out of the big bathtub the past week - and thus, Charlotte hadn't gotten a bath, either, as we usually did them at the same time.  So, she needed one and got it today, while it is still warm enough to not be freezing afterwards.  Then I played a few too hours too many of the Sims game that I finally got working again with the update packs on my computer.  Not sure how to categorize this, but playing games is one of those upside-down curves for me - it's fun to a point and then well, I know that time could be used better somewhere else and I feel like I've wasted time with nothing to show for it... and the Sims is doubly so on that, because of all of the household tasks the Sims get either annoyed at or happy about finishing... it's kind of like a box within a box effect.  

It's mixed feelings - - I'm having a 'fun leisure' day in real life, but using it playing a game, which 'gets nothing done'.  I get annoyed that the Sim on my screen is 'making progress' but I have wasted four hours that was supposed to be fun, and maybe it was, maybe it just kept me from doing other things I should have done.  Should I have cleaned?  Should I have baked?  Should I have learned Japanese for an extra hour?   It was a bit too easy to do the game for the extended period of time that could have done many things in real life otherwise.  The game was lower-energy expenditure than many of those things, but that is only a benefit when I consider something like I could overwork my muscles cleaning or etc. instead of resting.  And for being lower-energy, it is almost zero output.  And this is why I rarely play games that are more than a few rounds of Tetris or Duolingo.  Duolingo IS a game, but I do feel that perhaps I get something out of it that I can bring elsewhere, in translating the languages.  Whether or not my Sim learned how to make food without burning their house down is not an accomplishment that transfers much.  Mark and I have talked about that is something that was hard on our generation and that the younger generations don't have it as much - we were taught 'if you're having fun, something has to be wrong' and also lots of pressure put on productivity and 'monetizing time and hobbies'.

I did do some Japanese language learning.  And I already hurt from 'something' the past few days that I haven't put my finger on.  Not sure if it is sitting in my chair wrong playing the game, sleeping in, much grocery-shopping on Friday, climbing the stairs, the rainy weather outside or the postal route coming back at me from yesterday - but my hips definitely hurt today as well.  I did the yoga routine two nights in a row but skipped last night because I had already done so much on the postal route.  I've stretched a little today, and have climbed the stairs many many times of course, but I told Mark 'It's like I'm getting old'... one definite thing about hyper mobility is that you benefit most from variety of movement.  And, counter-intuitively perhaps, repetitive things, even 'sedentary' things like sitting slumped in a chair wrong or tensioning your leg muscles constantly while sitting forward, all of that adds up in weird ways.  

The yoga type is 'restorative' or 'vinyasa 'flow'', style - for spine and flexibility.

Mikki Mack book released for sale

Mikki Mack!

 I released this book on Amazon today, It is available for sale in paperback and in Kindle.  

I had been working on it since last November, but mostly in fits and starts.  Esme made the beautiful cover image, which continues to the back of the paperback with a glorious long fluffy tail, just like the description says.  I didn't feel, at first, that I could do anything to match her talent on the digital images - but I pushed myself to go out there and do something, so that the story could get out.  Mikki is a very sassy little cat - and she tells the stories of several cats of our own, and of friends, all wrapped up in one fluffy gray ball.

I am spurring myself to put out more of my stories just to get them OUT - I have so many just sitting here that I don't feel are good enough, or were waiting for some larger anthology... but in this day and age... getting it out and into the world is more important.  You never know when 'someday' isn't going to happen at all, for one reason or another.  Especially when you have social anxiety in general.

*sigh*  so yes, today is an 'oh my introvert' day.  I'm going to have to drink a lot more coffee and finish my Japanese and see where my brain is at before continuing with either : the little pig story, loosely based on a story Esme told me when she was a toddler, or setting up one of the House of Sunlight stories to edit separately and see where that gets me for page count.

I could comb through the Pinocchio's Grandniece is a Dachshund story sometime soon.. but as I said, I have so many things piled up that I freewheeled and had a great time writing, and then put in the drawer and said no one will like it.  They won't get a chance to like it or not like it if it never goes anywhere other than the drawer.  (That's easy to say, not easy to do).

And I did a video interview for online tutoring.  Another 'oh my introvert'.. but I just went and did it - because I do feel the experience was important and that I did have something to say about what I could do to teach words and reading.  I have a lot of experience with learning not only English, but other languages - and with having the kind of brain that doesn't immediately get it from the regular perspectives, so I can see lots of ways other people might get lost, and try to help them get to the goal.

1.)  Duolingo Japanese profile on level 20 : done

2.)  Duolingo Japanese profile on level 11 : did some but then I fell over for a nap

3.)  babadum to 50 cards at least : done

4.)  Baltoslav to 25 or more : 90 done

5.)  Clozemaster Japanese and Chinese 10 sentences each (that is their free daily limit)    : done

//I went and did some WaniKani - it's been such a time since I did that.. and I've forgotten so much of the onyomi and konyomi spellings but not doing it isn't going to help me get them right.

6.)  work on some more book stuff

:: started a Kindle Vella.... based on a writing prompt I have in a file.  It's called 'Tiger Stories' and it says it will take up to 72 hours for the first chapter to become live online

And I made lasagna - I'm about to go check on it in the oven right now.

Recipe at Patreon Neurodivergent Cooking : warning, it's leftover meatloaf in there... but you use what you got, use what you keep, keep what you use, that's one of the mantras of this style of cooking

Thursday thursday

the list

Japanese routine :

Duolingo profile at level 20 : done already, first thing, before schoolbus even

Clozemaster (Japanese then Chinese, 10 sentences each)  :  done

BaltoSlav Japanese words and pictures : at least 25 cards up to ? : done 75+

Babadum Japanese at least 50 cards : done to 75

Duolingo profile at level 11 : done, second thing, when I turned my second daily alarm off on the phone

*growl* I should do some more WaniKani review, but I don't wanna -------------

I did fifteen cards the other day and that felt like a lot as I had to make notes on ten out of the fifteen.   The format is much tougher - it's wrong it's just marked wrong AND doesn't come back up anytime soon unless it is related to another it is asking about - and it has konyomi readings which have to be spelled out perfectly as well as translation meanings.

 

I took a picture of the rosehips on the wild roses for someone I had given another type of rose plant to earlier this year.  She keeps wondering why her rose cutting I gave her is dying back and then getting just a few new leaves etc... I told her just keep watering it enough and when it gets to be winter it will be dormant, then in the Spring she'll see the magic. (ie: pink 'confederate' style multilayered roses)  The new leaves are a very good sign that it has grown much more root (it had 2 inches when I repotted it for her). 

Should I go and get chicken feed today?  It is in a different town than the place I went for groceries yesterday.  It is perhaps going to rain tomorrow, and then I work for three days (also raining).  There is still plenty of chicken feed - but I'm twitching whether I should go and do it while I have brain and time, and if the vehicle wasn't being tetchy it wouldn't really be a question of anything more than pushing myself out the door.  I should find some sort of plastic bin to put the backup battery in in the back of the truck, and then I'd feel better about that.  It would fit temporarily in my big toolbox if I took everything else out of it.

One of our older dogs, the one that hardly ever goes outside for more than two minutes, decided to go out the front door when I was getting the elderly cat in this morning.  She ran off up the road nose to the ground.  And she finally came back in with Charlotte now after about an hour.  I would have chased her this morning but she was doing the 'ha ha you can try but you can't catch me' and hasn't actually wanted out there in months... so I shrugged and said 'ok'.

Drink more coffee... think.  I sort of feel like today is in a holding pattern as I'm waiting on our paycheck to pay the bills, but don't have work or anything else that is actually required.  I don't feel fired up to cook anything in particular.  And that chicken feed bin is nearly full.  They will eat the stuff from the other store (that is open more hours than the one I would go to today, and also open on Sunday where this one is not), but I can definitely smell the difference between the two (commercial bigbox store stuff is darker, and smells like soy sauce) and have noticed that they eat this Amish-feed-and-tack-store stuff so much more willingly than the other, chasing handfuls of it across the yard etc.

timmas spred sig bra:

illustrations for the little cat book

my daughter had made me a really excellent cover image, but she was too shy to make any more for the interior of the book

I keep telling myself I should do a bit more on that.  I should really do a lot more on several of the stories that are 'ready but not ready.... '  They say if you keep holding it back because you don't think it's good enough it is really just that you're scared to give it away into the world where others will now see these thoughts.  That is very true with House of Sunlight, because those stories are of a 'wait, what, you broke my brain' twisted nature, as most of them began as dreams.  But the cat book is 'safe', mindless little cat story that is about being cute and even so, the grammar doesn't really matter as much because it is told by a cat.  Like that fox nine book I read.  But still, I never wrote the last story I had intended to (and my undercurrent says so?  make that the sequel, if it ever happens) but the book has well enough to stand on it's own at the same time with the five stories that are written in it. 

**lots of work today**... with still trying to keep it simple

I got somewhere: 

illustration from 'Mikki Mack' book

I submitted my little cat book for final review, without ordering a proof of it - I think it has one spelling error in it, maybe I can fix after they review it, the ebook thing pointed that out to me (it was in a name).

Throughout this heat, I've been making sure to water some every night.  And it is finally supposed to rain some tomorrow.  Harvested more basil and arugula tonight, washed and chopped them, and put them in the freezer.  I think I'll have to put that in a tomato sauce if I want Esme to eat any of it at all.  Or I can make another egg frittata with it.  There is another flush of little green tomatoes coming on two of the plants, and the cucumbers want to do something, again.  The peppers aren't sure, they took a beating in this hot weather, shedding some of their leaves, but they're thinking of blooming again.  There are little tendrils of potato leaf coming up above the soil where I had planted the potatoes last week. 

bounce

true story : when one day you set an alarm for 5pm to make sure you get up and feed all the animals and soforth, but you never actually end up going to sleep and miss the alarm while you're doing things, and then day after day you think - but I do fall asleep for a nap sometimes in the afternoon - a 5 pm alarm makes sense - and just turn the alarm off when it happens, whether you're asleep or not - as a reminder 'I should be awake now, things to do'.. and then weeks later realize : this is just my 5 o'clock alarm now, nothing to see here, move along.. no why would I get rid of it, it's the 5 o'clock alarm, right?  

(above : Loki and Minion enjoying our hexagon structure outside above the fenced in yard)

 R(x)=Pi(Chips + Salsa)

For some reason, I thought of that in the middle of last night and it made me laugh.  I enjoy that - when I am sleeping and something so absurd but highly specific comes up, and I have to wake up and write it down.  It's not always so funny once I've done so, but anyway, it's a spice of life.  Much better than the twisty-turny even weirder dreams I have, some of them are great, but usually confusing, cave of wonders type places, foreign libraries with books that don't exist, work in a parallel dimension type thing and time travel paradoxes etc.

It's been the work weekend - short route but got overheated anyway on Saturday, lots of extra work once had gotten home and sorted myself out - we cloned the prettiest of our coleus plants and some more begonias, repotted petunias and other things.  Then I had some more work today, and we talked about but did not repot the ivies - Mark is thinking about what kind of trellis would be best for those.  And I work tomorrow, too, now - I found out a few hours ago.  Been trying to keep my hands in order, and my knee from hurting, and get enough sleep, took a two hour nap this afternoon but made myself get back up at 5 pm.  

we did six tubs of these!

the purples are so vibrant

 

we're cloning the prettiest ones to increase our gene pool as we will be collecting seed from dozens of plants to save for planting next year's crop

found a little non-dangerous brown ringneck type snake under the watering trough, numerous frogs and beautiful little (and very fast FAST) skinks

Have done Japanese, French, Hungarian, Chinese and Catalan (from Spanish) language lessons.  Have played a lot of Stardew Valley in between things (a 'day' takes about 15-25 minutes in the game, and it can only be saved at the end of a day) and that is all in French.  I find it funny sometimes I have a hard time talking to Esme about what is going on in my game because my brain immediately wants to bring up the French word for everything - Tonneau instead of Keg, Bacal, instead of Preserving Jar.

Duolingo main profile : About to reach level 9 in Chinese, level 12 in Catalan (from Spanish), still at level 10 in Hungarian (from months and months ago), but halfway to 11.  Japanese at level 19.   

phone profile: Catalan at 9, Japanese at 9, Hungarian at 5   Definitely see the differences as I've only been playing on the separate phone profile for little over four months (150 days), and usually just about the minimum, as well, compared to years of work on the other profile and 30+ languages bouncing around, and depending on how much time I have etc.   One thing I do like about this 'tandem' of doing the same language at diff. levels is that it shows me where my weaknesses are in the higher level one when I've just done some lower level stuff and vice-versa.  And the phone has the speaking lessons, which boy - I feel like I know some of these until I try to get that combination to come out of my mouth and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised and other times I feel like that cat in the l'eau meme (included below, for completeness) that can't get it's tongue to stop curling.

not my pic, for reference only, as it is a famous meme

Will try to find out this week if they know anything more about what happened with our truck.  Originally, they said it was just low on gas, but then I told him about the water in the gas in the town and asked him to check it a little further to make sure we didn't end up with the same dangerous situation from before.  When it started doing the weird stuff the gas gauge was well above a quarter tank... and by the time he got it started and working again, he said the gas indicator light was on.  Mark says that is a good sign something was 'up' there, and condensation or water in the gas mixed with it being an old vehicle could have caused a false reading there, at the very least. 

 

 

I've done the laundry and need to steer myself towards sleep for another long day tomorrow.  Three pink tomatoes from the garden - they look so strange on the counter with our pink and green eggs.  Speaking of eggs, all of the other chickens seem to be doing okay, so far.

more patois

 

a bit more of the strange things I always say, that probably don't mean exactly what they are supposed to - and who knows about the grammar.. it's a patois of probably a rural type of French my grandmother would have learned??, maybe some Welsh, and probably also mixed with Latin that I've picked up over the years to fill in some of the gaps of what I didn't learn correctly from my grandmother.  Between today and yesterday I noted a few more of the ones that I use often.

ga se ve ça va! - translate says it means, 'its okay'??? Not really! I need to know more about this one!)  // I said this today, and I didn't realize it until it had already come out of my mouth.  Why?  I saw a dead spider in the bathtub, that wasn't there a minute ago (had probably been in the overflow when I started to run the bath!).  What do the words mean?  No clue where it comes from - but I've said it many times before.  It's definitely a description of surprise and means I don't like that at all.  I would say in a pinch it means the opposite -that whatever that it is, it is NOT okay.    Esme would come running if she heard me say that loudly and ask What's wrong?!?!

engré savoir ne quoi // something on the order of 'it's difficult to know why (that it is difficult)'

on se la // that is how it goes?(translates to 'we are there' actually), maybe 'we are like that' it is usually part of a sentence,  like c'est la vie, but having to do with how things go in general  c'est la vie, on se la ceci ce vie, je ne sais pas être aussi ne toute ça mais c'est la vie, c'est la vie- it's like remembering parts of an old song I don't ever remember hearing??

on prêts , on prêts ça , often sounds like 'amprets' or 'empress' when I'm talking fast // we're ready, we're ready for that, like allons'y but a different tone that means things are correct now for us to proceed, where allons'y means 'let's go'

em brasé // it's bruised, it's damaged (when I picked up a tomato and the underside was leaking)

We really did a lot out in town yesterday, but today I realized I still needed to get chicken feed before the weekend ties me up.  So I pushed myself up, did some chores and went out and did town again, and got gasoline in that car at the same time.  That is still harder for me than it is for most people, I'm certain of it.  I thought about a lot of other things I could do - all the cost-analysis and psychological things that sometimes keep me on reins and just wanting to get home and be done... even getting done the two things I really did need to do was going to be exhausting, no matter how enjoyable some of the rest would be - it was just even more relief to get it done and be home.  And now I'm home and cleaning out leftovers to eat for lunch, looking at recipes for other things to make and thinking about what I can do for the afternoon.  I've started a dishcloth in that yarn from yesterday already, and still need to finish that bag.  There's always more laundry.

 

(at the top) : some more of the geometric windspinners Mark has been working on.  His 'extra large paperclip' sold a few at the market yesterday - the lady said she was going to use them to keep sheet music pinned down.  Several others picked them up and tried them out - but they didn't buy any.  He has sold half a dozen or so of his ergonomic lighter holders that keep hold of a bic-type lighter without letting it fall out even when it is upside down.

I did some Japanese at about 2 am... I should probably tune into my French lessons today, but we'll see where I go from there.  I'm still playing the Stardew Valley in French, which makes it difficult at times to talk to Esme about new things in the update - I give it to her in the French on the screen and the approximate translation I think the English should be (without going to the wiki) and she says OH I know that one, I haven't done it yet, but I think I've seen it.  Jus de Igname de neiges (juice of the snow yam).  She made a crack about that while we were in the canned vegetables at the store yesterday, I don't see any snow yams yet, do you?

I do like my madeleines pans - the pair of them I got this Spring.  I also like trying to remember the recipe from scratch each time and just winging it - it still turns out good.  The dogs appreciate it, as well.  I dropped two of them popping them out of the pans tonight and had to throw them in the sink to cool - but there was much happy hound at the end.  They always do get a few lately, and over the course of the next few days in the fridge they'll beg every time I open the bag.

simplest recipe : 3 to 4 eggs (from our chickens), 1/2 cup white sugar, 3 tbsp brown sugar, vanilla extract (BEAT), 1 cup flour, baking powder, salt, 1/2 cup softened butter (BEAT) - put 1 tbsp in each madeleine pan well, bake at 375 degrees (preheated) for 10-12 minutes, do not flip, use a spoon AND a fork to take them out (fork to hold, spoon to scoop), rub darkened side on a plate of powdered sugar and place on another one to cool, put up in a plastic bag with a paper towel set in the bottom of it.

Did the French language lessons - then began to research the biryani spices and recipe variations some more.  I saw the difference between garam masala (which I have) and biryani masala (which I don't have), and figured I can probably use the entire research to just make something similar enough and find what I like.  That's the goal, really.

engres cau'r ça va

/philosophy post/ I find myself saying this little mantra to myself, and others, even without knowing the true provenance of it, when I'm just trying to get over the hump between now and 'a little ways from now'... was talking with Mark about that, I've gotten so much better on the postal route with the 'encapsulation of useful time'... I'm not wasting time, I'm getting paid and doing a necessary job, but still, it often feels like I'm just pouring the time into a bottle, corking it, and setting it on a shelf to look at but nothing really 'happened' during that time.  I delivered mail, another day, and I'm tired again.  

engres cau'r ça va 

It's hard enough, but it's okay.  / We've closed the hard thing up, and it's okay.  

après ci ca va

after this, it's really okay

aux troussé / à ses trousses 

It's on my heels, I'm being chased by it

Assez quoi! / Quoi?  / A ne se très se quoi / je ne sais quoi

Enough already / What is it? / It doesn't matter a bit / I don't know what it is

 

Some of that feeling, I've come to realize, isn't all anxiety, some of it is my ADHD.  And I'm using my own brain against myself (in a way) to keep myself on the task at hand, and since that is a huge effort, it feels like anxiety, but it IS getting the job done.  And I'm getting better at it.  But the 'extra tired' also comes with that territory, of doing the task and also doing the task of keeping myself on the task.

In the past, when I first started doing mail, there was so much more to worry about overall that I would actually feel mini anxiety panic attacks - because there was so much to worry about, and I was here pouring time into this task and trying to make it make everything else okay, eventually.. finances, life, goals, ultimate understanding etc etc.. I let my brain spread out too thin and didn't keep it on task - and then when I was finished with the route I STILL had all the regular worry waiting at the end of the 'string' of time.  I would spread it all out all day long like a huge four dimensional matrix in my head and look at all of the red flashing lights and then turn myself into a ball of stress.

It took a long time to hold my feelings in my hand, separate them down into their elements and look at them and not feel that domino-effect cascade of panic with it - and not have that panic come and take me over at the end of the day or whenever something else went wrong later.  That's a lot like the kids who sit still all day and then have a meltdown at the end... but all this time it was just masquerading as something else in me.  But also, the answer to it was in me - I just had to look at it for what it was telling me, so I knew what I needed to respond with.

So sometimes I have to take myself by the lapels (figuratively), and go through the paces:  I am one creature, at one sequential time, that this sequence has a beginning, and an end, and is moving at a set pace that I cannot change much.  The only thing that will make this feeling better is to continue along this time-string doing this task until it is done. (small breaks can help sometimes, but that's also a bad habit - it's like stopping while climbing a rope, you're still hanging there, and getting through to where you can put your feet down is so much better)  So, I'm doing this, and will continue to do this until it is done.   Because it is a task that does need to be done, and I'm the one here to do it.  And then, later, we will think about the other million things.   THEN I can let it overwhelm my timestream and matrices like a Rubik's Cube and work like an overactive pinball machine trying to make sense of this Universe.  But not while we're doing this NOW... and yes, somehow, that still feels a lot like anxiety, but a different color.  And treating it just as 'I have anxiety and worries' never helped before, like having this reminder about time does when I know it is this.

 

an attempt at what it feels like, to be stuck doing the one thing, but your brain continues to bounce while you try to hold it to the one orange line that is the shortest distance between the two points, it is naturally wanting to be a quantum particle anywhere at all within the triangle 

languages : I did mostly French, Japanese and Russian today with just a touch of Finnish to see if I still remembered the words.  I also did the 'minimum' on both profiles (about 50 xp) and we'll see how much time I have tomorrow.

bits of nothing much

Well, Friday was a bit frustrating, but it ended well.  Our mechanic brought the mail vehicle to us around midnight, and a loaner battery for us to get the other truck to town to have a new battery installed in it at our convenience.  And I got to work on Saturday.  Because I hadn't known if I would have a vehicle working, I didn't volunteer for Sunday and here I am, with a Sunday off.

And I'm playing a game - Stardew Valley, that has had a new update and Esme has been playing it for a while and chatting with me about little bits here and there.  I'm playing it in French, and trying to read the wiki in French as well and with lots of new things, that is a learning experience.  You see lots of words that you normally wouldn't - and wonder if they are just translation oddities or if that is the way it would actually translate to French.

my new farm and house have a long way to go, but I spent some time on it already.  Some new crops are carrots, summer squash (yellow) and broccoli.  And there are some very strange new events, like 'Green Rain', in which large fiddlehead ferns grow as tall as trees and moss grows on everything.  You'll also find Demetrius (the local scientist) outside his house in a Hazmat suit doing experiments.

Those are 'tomates marinées' (marinated tomatoes) and I just since those pictures got my little chicken coop with two chickens.  

I've been to my studio table the other day, while I waited anxiously for the mechanic to arrive... and just messed around a little with pens and then with paint.  With finishing the one language course, and feeling generally stressed - I've been doing French on both Duolingos.  However, because of algorithms, that doesn't stop my FB and emails and ads from showing up in everything from German to Greek.  I still find that hilarious.

 

Yes, there are a million other things I could be doing other than playing a game.  My brain reminds me of that every other ten minutes or so.  And yet.  //fall on floor in starfish formation (yoga, ADHD stuff)  Yes, it's been a hard week. 

3pm //we've gotten the new battery... it'll be a family effort to install it

bits of surrealism

a sketch : Turkey Mama and her Chicks

I couldn't convince myself to get into paints or pencils last night, even though I've been sort of 'itching' to - I can't get over the hump of spreading out even more things, among the things I've put away and those I haven't yet ... and doing messy work that takes physical time, and then putting it away or leaving it out - having yet another physical thing that no one else will ever see except maybe here etc etc... even though the urge to create is really really strong -- I understand most of our society's response to such a creative SPLAT as I used to make daily was : 'Do you ever sleep?  What do you do with all of that?' and those are both valid and further confusing questions

it's an ongoing existential crisis thing and I feel like I deal with it pretty well considering the absolute event-horizon space-warp thing that goes on in my head all the time.  I've worked hard to 'slow my clockrate' as Mark calls it - we're both 'high clockrate' people in his terms, but it's all mental work and sometimes especially after waking up from dreaming, it feels a bit futile and like I really SHOULD race around doing eighteen things, and then I remind myself that I'm only human and it's impossible to do everything at once, no matter how much coffee you drink.  It all feels so surreal, finite vs. infinite, NOW time vs. all other time.

 

So part of my coping with the exact difficulty of 'create--don't create' at the moment is reminding myself I can open my graphic processor, which is not very technically advanced, use it to choose colors and put some things down like a digital etch-a-sketch and just because I don't want to go to my studio table or art easel, it doesn't mean I have to choke that urge down to put an image 'out' of my brain, or play with the process, like the turkey mama and her chicks above.

 

 

and I can try to urge myself to finish other things I've started

pulled this off the little loom and finished it up  

It has a button closure underneath there and is big enough for a pair of glasses, a checkbook or several pens

It's 8 am.  I stayed up until 10 last night (didn't even make nine the night before) and was up only once with a dog, and then slept until 6:30 am.  

Finished the A1 Russian course.  I'll keep going on Duolingo now as I had sort of held off of it and done the other languages because I was guaranteed to get some practice every day doing that.  I feel I can read Cyrillic a lot better than when I started that - which was a goal for Bulgarian learning.  The Bulgarian site sends me a word of the day every day, written in Cyrillic, and I've been able to pronounce it from the word quite a bit better before clicking it to go to the page with the translation, trans-literation and pronunciation audio clip.

did a smattering of Greek, Danish, Spanish and French, will do something on my phone later

started another crochet tote bag to make during television time, it's smurf blue

have to call the mechanic later today (he didn't respond yesterday but I only called him once) and see if he has ordered the parts for the truck.  Work Saturday - of course that is still a worry about getting home, but what can I do about it other than call the mechanic today, which has to happen a little later.  I'm feeling lately like Samuel Beckett just before the Quantum Leap... like I have way too much energy but if I begin to expend it instead of save it for the things I need to do, I will fall to exhaustion instead.  So it's a bit like having your physical body on a leash while the brain is a bouncing puppy.  And yet - I don't want to get into other huge things either, because I can't sustain them.

Baking might help.

Watching a bee gathering nectar in the clover, while watering the garden and filling the chicken dishes, helped a little, too.

Made breakfast, egg and cheese on toast.  Set out a stick of butter from the freezer to thaw to make something with later.

Made cinnamon rolls, with just a glance at a recipe and hardly any measuring (the butter was pre-measured, because it comes in a stick) - they turned out pretty good, at least, while hot and with coffee.  Sometimes these things get hard as a rock when they cool down - will look at that.  I can see why some people use cream cheese in this type of recipe, and perhaps with more flour and something like that I could roll the dough even thinner on the parchment paper and still get it back up without it becoming lace.  It's been years since I even tried to make them from scratch, coffee cake used to be my goto because it didn't require the rolling.

onward

Did package run, had a lunch date cancelled but picked up an avocado and came home and made good food.  Esme said she had already eaten - so made the recipe down below.  I have another heavy shift tomorrow.  I've continued some Danish - interesting mix of the other languages coming into focus there - and did Japanese and French and Spanish today so far, as well as the Russian course I've been working on.  Not charting now, though.  Will sit down with some yarn and work on something while it is still so very hot outside, do the laundry, and then will head out to the garden perhaps as I didn't water this morning (but did last night)

Have gotten several of these plum tomatoes from the plants I bought at our local high school plant sale.  They aren't what I expected, at all - these plants.. but they're producing something.  I've got a sneaking suspicion they are also determinate - but we'll hold the flag out for a bit longer on that.  I'm still waiting for the first blush of pink on the other tomato plant.  I had a couple of leaves from the small collard patch, as well, to check the taste. 

tomatoes billed as : 'Gardener's Favorite' I bought at a plant sale 

earlier this year, not quite what I expected!

Recipe :

light olive oil, frozen yellow squash, frozen greens bag (kale, nasturtiums and other bits from last fall - wow, it was good though, in the whole mix) and some 'chicken parmesan' 'skillet seasonings' mix I've been using up

half of a (regular sized, slicing type) tomato, cut up, added to the above mixture as it started to heat up - I stashed the other half of that large tomato in the freezer

cut up avocado, put it on my plate

stirred in about four tablespoons of rice, added black pepper

served with a torn up tortilla

Danish : (for spelling practice)

dejlig - lovely

hyggeligt - cozy

undskyld - excuse me / sorry

hvor - how

engelsk - English

En dejlig aften : A cozy evening

Det er hyggeligt - That is cozy

Et hyggeligt hus - A cozy house

Kan du hygge dig - Have a cozy time

Hvor er det hyggleligt - How cozy 

Jeg hygger mig med dig - I am having a cozy time with you

bit : I had read somewhere - in one of my culture lessons maybe even a year ago - about the French habit of lightly perfuming their pillowcases and even their body at night, often with lavender, to assist with sleep.  And they will often use a different scent on their body during the day and when out in the evening to differentiate to their subconscious when they smell the other scent it is 'rest' time vs active time.  At the time that I read it, the article didn't make much of an impression on me.  But, I have remembered it.  I usually use an hour of music on my computer set at a low level when my brain can't slow down.  Once the music has proceeded through the album song by song, it shuts off, and if I haven't fallen asleep by the time I hear that last song - I might get up and put on a different playlist.   However, a few times this week I did put a little bit of lavender scent along my shoulders, since I already had a lavender scented lotion.  We'll see.  I can't say if it worked well or not, until I've tried it a few more times.

bit o bit my brain moves fast, my body doesn't

 

 

We went to the farmer's market last night and spent three hours there, only sold a few plants - but we bought from the other vendors so much we didn't even break even *ha* but good sourdough bread, and a few fresh vegetables, and a big handful of pineapple mint (never seen that before, it smells wonderful) that I washed and put on the dehydrator all night hoping to make some tea with it.  I made a chicken and yellow-tomato and pasta dish for Esme and I and we ate some sourdough with it.  I crashed hard about ten pm, with dogs bouncing me up twice during the night.

So, up at 4:30 am.. why?  I don't know.  I was disturbing myself dreaming about trying to find a vanity cabinet and top for someone with a 14 inch sidesplash (if you know, you know) and it has been a good long time since I dreamt about my old work - so, gah, up and at 'em...  did Italian and Spanish and Latvian, did the dishes, fed the chickens, went out to the garden and had a very nice 'not on a schedule' shower and hair routine that I usually don't have any time for.  Did a bit of German and my Busuu Russian course.  Laundry, more kicking around the garden, water stuff, fertilize, talk to a hummingbird, look at morning glories, pick a few things (lime basil! strawberries!), make an omelette and use up the rest of my rice.  I've made more dishes.  *sigh*  I think about the 'luxury' on my plate compared to my ancestors.  I think about how much I value it compared to others - and how little it feels in comparison to something like an electric bill.  Kick around the garden a third time feeding banana-peel water and egg-shell water to a few things, and found some lemon cucumbers!

 

Did more German and Latvian again to see if anything from earlier (correcting mistakes) stuck to my head, a few did.  Wonder if I'll do French later on my phone, yea maybe.  Give a good think about whether I need to read my library book (Hello Beautiful World Where are You, Susan Rooney) or it's still depressing - still depressing, I'd rather clean - so I guess that book is still motivating somehow.  Clean things up a little, trying to kick myself to do the rest of the laundry and wash some bedding.  It would be nice - I have the time, but I haven't folded the clothes out of the dryer and the towels are in the washer, so I'm in limboland until I push myself to fold the dryer stuff.

 

I am planning on cooking something a bit more elaborate for lunch later - thai eggplants and tomato - and yet, Esme won't really like that, a bit more limboland.. but we have pizza if they want something else.  Nod.  I should bake more as well, finished the last of my homemade pound cake yesterday.  I should pick blackberries if there are any - but I've already kicked around the garden three times now and it's going to be hot later.. if I get into things, I could end up doing a lot, or I could just pick at the edges and water and weed here and there and think about a hundred more things than I do.  <--that's me in a nutshell.  And now I've had all that breakfast and it will probably hold me for quite a while if I get involved in something else, so I'm wondering about pushing lunch to dinner.  I should make some more rice, but the glass container I put up the rice in (to serve for several meals) is now in the sink.  

 Sit down and write this.... it's not even eleven am!

the lemon cucumbers - they were hiding under leaves on very small plants - but they're ripe and ready to be used in sauce.

updated : my ambition fell off after dinner and I just did French review on phone, and then again on computer

noon : folded the laundry. *there were no fireworks*

Planted three potatoes that were in the chit stage, and some old white scallop squash seeds that needed to go out or throw out.  Saw a little skink run across the wellhouse and it was yelling Panic!  Minion thought that was hilarious - and she was following me a bit because it was shady there.  She watched me give water to the chickens, and hung out in the weeds.  She said no I'm fine, you go inside, I'm going to sit here and watch the birds.

I wanted to add that I've been doing something new for the past few weeks with my email.  I took a night to just EMPTY everything I didn't need.  And now I delete almost everything every morning out of all the folders - and basically, whenever I'm in there - if it's not save material it's gone almost immediately -  it's a little weird thing but I know it makes other people feel better and somehow I feel it's nice to see it empty as well, not stacking up in the thousands, who knows what is hiding in the depths sort of thing.  Modernity.  Gah.

nine pm - good, did things, felt like I made some progress on things, made rice, cut forage of lespedeza and ragweed to feed to the chickens, gave the dogs a treat of scrambled eggs, made a good dinner for Esme and I, watered the garden again (and Esme fed chickens, and I fed cats), Mark and I watched a movie, I finished the laundry, did dishes (again), wove a bit on two different projects, listened to some music while I did that, and sort of felt a plateau