vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh. Finished! And oh good grief BABY I hope SO MUCH you have had SO MUCH therapy and medication since. It is weird looking back on myself having read some of these stories as they were first being published from the vantage point I now have, oof.

Solutions and Other Problems, also Allie Brosh. Just started! We are also reading this as a Shared Activity, a chapter or two at a time. No particular thoughts as yet.

Hypermobility Without Tears, Jeannie Di Bon. This is a self-published book by someone who qualified as a Pilates teacher in 2008, and was subsequently -- after many years of the awful one might expect -- diagnosed with hEDS. I acquired it for research purposes, am nearly a quarter of the way in (it's a very slim book!), and now need to stop to pause to make a bunch of notes. In particular her attitude to Pilates breathing (it's weird, especially for musicians; get me to explain it if I haven't already and you're interested?) is No That's A Bad Idea (In This Context) Stop, for clear and articulated reasons to do with the general levels of interoception/body-awareness/protective guarding (i.e. muscle tensing) she sees in most of the people who wind up as her clients. In her context I think she makes a compelling point and isn't wrong, which means that if I do stick it in the vaguely-contemplated "further reading" section I'm going to need to put in a bunch of disclaimers, but this is okay, actually. (And apart from the inside baseball about the precise nuances of breathing I am of course very amused by the massive overlaps with Mindfulness for Health and Pain Reprocessing Therapy, which are entirely expected but still making me smile...)

The Land Where Lemons Grow, Helena Attlee, subtitled The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit. Acquired because (i) I was putting in an Oxfam order anyway, (ii) I'm a sucker for social histories of foods, and also of course (iii) it's not been indexed on Eat Your Books. I'm 33 pages in and having a grand old time so far (especially with the tidbit that the golden apples of the Hesperides spent a long time being represented in Italian art as citrus!); lots of citations as one goes along precisely none of which I've followed up.

To Posterity, Louis MacNeice. I... am on the face of it Extremely Impatient with this one. Ah well.

I have been rereading some of recessional's original fiction and worldbuilding therefore, and am also finally making some headway on reading another friend's works-in-progress.

... and several of the magazines that have been sat around causing Guilt and a sense of Obligation, subsequent to which I have happily recycled them. Favourite fact from the three so far: Garden Organic/the Heritage Seed Library are trialling using tuning forks to pollinate their tomato crops! ( Facebook | Instagram )

Bonus: sifting through a pile of notebooks etc to try to work out who the hell they belong to, mostly salvaged from the pile that was due to go out to event-freecycle on the basis that SURELY I could do something useful with them if, you know, I sat down with them at a time that wasn't in a field under Significant time pressure while Very tired. And I could! One and a half remain unidentified (I say "half" because We're Working On It).

Writing. A lot of lost property e-mails.

Cooking. One new recipe from East: paneer, spinach and tomato salad, accompanied by the herbed naan from the Leiths How to Cook Bread book (this is probably on my To Cook Through list). I was into this!

Also vaghareli makai ("spiced Indian corn") by way of David Lebovitz, and a slightly underwhelming lemony fennel and broccoli pasta (significantly improved by the addition of pine nuts).

Eating. STRAWBERRIES. Blackberries. Local plums are starting to be ripe!

Exploring. Poked around the green belt a bit to see how the plums were doing! And I think that's most of it?

A very brief poke around the entrance to the Pimp Hall Nature Reserve following a successful drop-off of Objects to the adjacent Household Waste Recycling Centre; tragically the signs on the gates claimed that they'd be locked at 4 p.m., which we had not quite anticipated, and we only reached them at 3.58. Next time, perhaps!

Creating. Hmm. Does sitting around knolling for the purposes of the big lost property post count? I think it probably does; certainly while the photos still aren't good (am I contemplating a lightbox and a tripod of some kind of this specific terrible hobby? to my slight horror, I kind of am...) the arrangements are getting much easier to parse visually, I discovered upon going back through a bunch of them, which I am pleased about.

Growing. Found a surprise pocketful of dried Sugar Magnolia pods, so I am definitely in the black when it comes to number of seeds for next year, which is a pleasant surprise!

Comments

[cesy]

I'm interested to hear more of your views on Jeannie's stuff and Pilates

[fyreharper]

“it's weird, especially for musicians; get me to explain it if I haven't already and you're interested?“

Hello yes, I make curious faces at you!