vital functions

Reading. SEVERAL.

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Next up is... probably skim-rereads of a couple of books on pain I've already read, making notes this time, and then onward to the stack I haven't actually read before. (One of these is Mindfulness for Health, which I expect to be middlingly annoyed by (the last time I tried it I put it down in frustration fairly early on, at the point at which it became clear that both authors were fundamentally healthy people who'd had An Accident; this time round actually assessing the impact of that perspective on the advice is kind of the point). Then there's Hurts So Good, and finally Touch, which I acquired from Oxfam on the basis that if nothing else its chapter on pain is actually titled "Pain and Emotion".

(I am not going to get through all of these next week, but I will make some progress. I also maybe slightly searched the library ebook catalogue for "pain" and thereby added yet more recent-ish things to my reading list; Abdul-Ghaaliq Laikhen's books are a fairly high priority.)

Writing. Quite a lot of PIP submission (for someone else, at least!). Not done yet. This remains the priority for the next week.

Watching. The new Old Guard 2 trailer!

Playing. I Love Hue: The Alchemy now COMPLETE, and... so is The Ascension/Earth.

Cooking. A was away. Consequently, two recipes from East that they expected to dislike: black rice congee, of which I am definitely a fan, and a kimchi fried rice I had no objection to but no particular plans to ever make again.

Also the caramelised onion and chilli ramen, about which we were both meh although!!! I did! get to use choi sum THAT I HAD GROWN, which is still novel enough to be exciting; a recipe for tinker's cakes from a tiny cookbook I bought for EYB indexing purposes -- Welsh cakes with grated apple, which I liked enough to probably make a note of; and a slightly underwhelming "saucy Japanese greens with sticky sesame rice" that did at least use up some of the spring greens in last week's veg box. (I then made something up the next day to use up the other half, and that worked much better for our tastes: ginger/garlic/mushroom stir-fry sauce/little bit of mirin.)

Eating. CHOI SUM FROM THE GREENHOUSE (I am extremely excited about this, in case you couldn't tell). I think my great excitement about my first British asparagus of the season was last week? And also first British strawberries of the season yesterday, as the greater part of my treat for Anti-Migraine Stabs.

I have also been very much enjoying apple and pear juice + angry water + ice + a little bit of fresh (garden/field) mint.

Making & mending. Actually dug some trenches and started moving the railway sleepers around??? I have a whole entire outline of a raised bed in a place I've meant to have one since I got the plot in the first place?????

(First layer needs screwing together and then I need to sort myself out corner posts to attach next-layers-up to, and also I need to decide whether I want to have it two deep or three deep, but feeling v positive about this.)

Growing. Choi sum!!!

Also: despite my earlier misgivings the redcurrant is actually doing astonishingly well compared to the last several years, so good job me on that particularly vicious pruning??? Gooseberry also looking extremely promising; jostas I am much less surprised about looking good.

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Observing. A saw a slow worm at the plot today! Also the allotment fox; also, on my way home from the allotment the other evening, the previously mentioned Gawky Teenage Fox. At home, we've seen the bat! Also there is Yelling coming from a portion of the hedge that very notably has a pair of robins shuttling back and forth to it at fairly high frequency. I'd rather it weren't so dry, but the fact that it is means I've had the wood pigeons and the corvids balancing in deeply ungainly fashion on the water dish in order to drink, which has been fun to watch.

We are less happy about the local outdoor cats having decided that they too wish to take up birdwatching on our patio.