who only by moving can balance

• turns out the questionable beetroot pasta does a much better job of resembling food minus the cheese. still not going to make it again, but very glad I only added the cheese to the half of it we actually ate on Monday -- which meant that the other half did not wind up going in the compost today.
• ( teeth )
• PIP review form showed up on Friday last. I've requested copies of letters various from the GP. I have not actually opened the damn thing and started going through it yet. temptation to just scrawl "all my incurable congenital conditions are still incurable, PS I have chronic migraine now" over the front and leave it at that Extremely High (but will not actually be indulged).
• made it to the allotment!!!!! saw FAKE SNAKES, one of which was Basking Happily in the (currently mostly empty) bed in the greenhouse. ( animal harm )
• SAW THE BAT SAW THE BAT SAW THE BAT. was on call with S. stopped abruptly and stared fixedly over the top of the laptop screen out the window. went "-- but it might just have been a bi-- IT CAME BACK IT'S A BAT BAT BAT BAT BAT BAT". approximately.

Reading. Very very slow progress on Hallucinations (Oliver Sacks). Very soothed by the descriptions of (aural and visual) hypnogogic hallucinations -- it is very nice to have A Name For The Thing and to know it is Attested. I have just started chapter 14 (of 15).

Watching. Migraine World Summit 2024. Even I am most of the way through writing up my notes on it.

Playing. More Filament! We are enjoying this a lot, and definitely enjoying it vastly more playing collaboratively than we would be playing individually. We have hilariously complementary intuitions about graph theory, by which I mean "I absolutely could not get my head around the gorgeous set of levels designed like constellations, which A thought was refreshingly easy" and also "I have solved at least two problems in other levels that A was grumbling about not being able to remember enough knot theory to prove were unsolveable". Also very smug about having insisted that [additional set of Clues] were in fact Clues that could be Solved, and getting going with solving them.

(... extremely unimpressed with the slidey-puzzle that DOESN'T FUCKEN SLIDE, though having said that I've just kicked the internet looking for high-level info on how other people have approached solving this puzzle and found, well, one approach other people have taken to solving this puzzle...)

Also had an extremely satisfying week in Flight Rising in terms of Obtaining More Familiars. (MANTARUNE. Also -- though I can't quite remember if these two were actually last week -- Ethereal Trickster; Silkmith.)

Cooking. Rice pudding!

Also paella in the fancy Le Creuset two-piece paella pan-and-griddle Object A's mother donated to the cause.

Making & mending. NET THE SECOND. I decided I'd gathered Sufficient String to make a start on it; I didn't quite have everything in muscle memory still (or at least, not sufficiently in muscle memory that I could do it reliably if I was paying even a tiny bit of attention to what my hands were doing...) so had to rewatch The Videos (which, you know, Great Hardship). This round is going much more smoothly (in part because I fished my expired Freedom Pass back out of the bin to use as a netting card, and it's rather more robust than cardboard...) and I indulged myself to the tune of sorting the string lengths by colour before starting.

Also have taken responsibility for printing out a friend's thesis and discbinding it so they have an Actual Object, because wow does the Physical Object part of things Make A Difference. (I delegated the actual printing to A, and didn't clock til after I'd punched it all that we should probably have adjusted the page numbers so they were positioned appropriately for duplex printing...)

Growing. A took me to the plot on Saturday after a fairly agoraphobic week. Successfully finished (as much as I'm going to) pulling dead raspberry canes out of the raspberry thicket, weeded the fruit cage a little more, and deposited two barrow-loads of woodchip on paths.

Observing. BAT (ish; detected). MOON (lovely crescent).

Did not actually see it, and it did not actually yell at us again once I'd called Adam outside to Witness, but! first bat observation of the year! I have been saying with increasing irritation to anyone who'll listen "oh come on, surely it's bat o'clock by now--" for the last couple of weeks, so I am delighted to finally have confirmation that: BAT

In the form of notes-to-self rather than a shape that is likely to be useful to anyone else, but I keep flipping between dishingouthealth and Food52 and actually having a single consolidated write-up to refer to is Useful for making Easy Food actually, you know, easy.

( Read more... )

In response to a question about non-diet lifestyle factors for managing migraine, from someone who has multiple publications in Nature-subsidiary journals pushing the idea of migraine as at least in part a metabolic disorder, following a lengthy Bit about how Blue Light Glasses are An Absolute Must to Reduce Oxidative Stress In The Eye:

Then we have toxins. Toxins in cleaning products, toxins in makeup -- for women -- toxins in perfume. Perfumes are unregulated; they have all sorts of crappy stuff in there, and these odorants go directly into the brain via the nose because the blood-brain barrier is broken in the nose; otherwise, we couldn't smell. So chemicals can go directly in there, which I believe is also why perfumes are such a potent migraine trigger -- and cigarette smoke.

Like. On the one hand they left it in, which means I am using it as a barometer for how much to trust anything else this person says, but. but. THE BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER IS BROKEN IN THE NOSE.

I stopped off at the allotment to drop off the contents of our compost caddy, this afternoon, and then continued on down the hill to collect DRUGS (controlled substances for A, steroid nasal spray for me because the one I've been using since circa 2016 has been unavailable for months at this point and I finally managed to coax my GP surgery into prescribing an alternative, which took one written request and three phone calls) and then, on my way back up, Sternly Enjoined Myself that, per title, I was going to stop by the allotment again. All I had to do was open the front gate and go through it. I could then immediately turn back around and go home without even getting to the second gate. This Was Permitted.

... obviously, having got myself through the front gate I spent a very happy hour pottering and had to drag myself away. Things achieved: some weeding of the fruit cage, including some bramble roots I've previously repeatedly tried and failed to get up, but apparently at present the ground is soft enough for PARTIAL VICTORY; relocating several of the raspberry canes I pulled up (they're raspberries so I'm fairly confident they'll cope with the indignities...); and tidying up some more of my raspberry thicket via removing extremely dead canes from lo these several years past.

I am currently very keen on the idea of going back, but it's extremely bedtime. We'll see if the desire survives sleep and contact with the morning, though there's the added complication that I really need to finish Hallucinations before the library wants it back in a few days' time, and tomorrow is the first day of the 2024 Migraine World Summit...

I think at least some of the anxiety about going to the allotment has been about setting myself up to fail.

I've been gradually (very gradually) putting slightly raised beds in. I thought I was ready to get the last of them in the ground last autumn, whereupon while digging a hole for a leg I discovered yet more carpet. There followed Yet More Digging Up Of Carpet, and today I finally got the whole thing into the ground.

Some crucial factors: * it's been raining; the ground was soft * A was with me

These bed frames are 13' by 4'. Lifting them up to shuffle them slightly back and forth to check where leg holes need to be and then clear the space to actually dig them is trivial with two people and a right bloody pain with one, especially with heaps of cheerful soil in the middle. But I've been thinking "and my priority HAS TO BE getting that bed sorted out--" when that! is a patently ridiculous! bar to attempt to meet!

But it is now In The Ground, and the Ribes are all putting forth sufficient Bud that probably it is a bit late to be pruning them this year, and I've distributed a bunch more cardboard in the interests of making the paths slightly more navigable and less treacherously slippery mud, and I've made a start on redistributing the sharp sand that has been patiently lined up at the edge of my plot, and I've tidied the flowering stems off the artichoke now the birds have had as many of the remaining seeds as they appear to have any inclination to.

Progress.

Reading. A little bit of time on Otherlands (Thomas Halliday): I'm currently most of the way through the introduction and painfully aware that thus far I am not the target audience for this book. I am hoping I'll enjoy it more once we're through the "did you know that: fossils" bit.

But that's going to have to wait! Because I got to the front of the library hold queue for Hallucinations (Oliver Sacks). I am most of a chapter in and enjoying myself.

Writing. I am finally catching up on & finishing off my physical notes from the 2023 Migraine World Summit, because I wanted to get that done before the 2024 summit begins, and I am rediscovering how excited I was about piecing things together a year ago. Maybe even having written the notes I will get around to writing the blog posts! (Also how have I been on the galcanezumab for less than a year. How has it been less than a year good grief.)

( fountain pen digression... )

Playing. I have definitely picked I Love Hue back up notwithstanding that the never-show-me-ads-again purchase doesn't seem to have migrated to the new handset. I am as yet undecided about whether I'd rather send a peevish message or just spend some more fake Google money.

I think I have hit the point with Mines where I am satisfied that I can solve puzzles without dying through sheer frustrating clumsiness, which might let me put it back down.

Filament (previously) continues to flash the neon PORTAL sign: the Good things come in pairs... Coloured Pairs, very definitely and deliberately in orange and blue.

Cooking. Little of note apart from the bit where I, uh, slightly gave us food poisoning last night. ( Brief details of food, rather than illness. )

Eating. Apparently I unambiguously like winter squash now, or at least I unambiguously like Queensland Blue enough to snack on it furtively throughout the day if I've roasted some for dinner, and to be mildly sad that we've only got one remaining from last year's harvest and will have to wait until next winter for more of them.

Making & mending. I am currently experimenting with rehydrating glitter glue...

Growing. Seedlings are seedlings. I am sort of getting anxious for them to get big enough that I can kick them out of the propagator and get the next lot of things started, but while more of them are still hatching every day I'm a bit reluctant to evict them from the warm box...

Last night we picked up Filament. We are only a little way in but so far, between the female-coded voice talking at you cheerfully out of the ceiling speakers, and the security cameras that follow your every move, and the puzzles you solve in order to help the female-coded ceiling-voice Get Free (???), and the Important Colours the first two of which are "blue" and "orange"...

Fun so far!

Mostly this week I have been Extremely Preoccupied, so relatively little to report!

Reading. Something That May Shock and Discredit You, Daniel Lavery. Finished! Returned to library! Digesting.

Listening. Dark Side of the Moon deserves much less background noise than, on this occasion, it got.

Eating. Many things Made For Me. Highlights:

• Korean Kitchen
• galettes
• apple & caraway muffins

Exploring. Poked around Southport some more. Found some stained glass, and many good mosses and lichens; was witness to A finding a snail.

Growing. I was doing SO WELL with getting my aubergines and peppers going and then I dropped the propagator while leaving the Travelodge. :| There was Swearing. Following some sifting I've not found everybody (I'm at 24 IDed seedlings where I was at 28 at previous last count) and I no longer have any idea who is who, but. Some of them seem to be recovering from the shock. Once I've slept I will contemplate whether I want to sift again.