ten good things

[kaberett]

1. Yesterday afternoon, at 4.30pm, I sent off the latest draft of the current paper to my co-authors in advance of our meeting on Tuesday. I had been working at it steadily, in small chunks every day. At no point did I stay up past midnight working on it. It isn't perfect, partly because it can never be and partly because most of the outstanding stuff relies on getting input from a co-author who's been avoiding my e-mails since April; I'm very pleased with myself for maintaining sensible sleep cycles, and for sending it off "unfinished", because I don't think there is actually much to gain from me carefully polishing the presentation and formatting of an appendix that is not yet complete.

2. The casserole my mother bought me (I think when I started the PhD) is currently full of apples I brought home from my parents' on Saturday evening; I've done about half the bag, and everything smells correct. (It's James Grieve; they're mostly not available commercially, but they're what I grew up with, and I'm always faintly disappointed by apples that aren't them. So: I gathered up a quantity of them, and I'll gather up a quantity more when I go for dinner tomorrow, and I'll jar them, and I'll have enough to put on yoghurt and in crumble and in cake for the next year, I hope.)

3. Passing a pound-a-bowl market earlier today, it transpired that the cardboard crates of two-or-so kilos of blueberries really were one quid each. So I got one of those (I was not going to buy more, to get home on public transport), and I need to decide how many to freeze and whether o jam any and if I want to make clafoutis happen, and so on and so forth. This is a lovely problem to have.

4. Shortly afterwards, while poking around charity shops looking for yet more tablecloths (pace the Graun), on my way home from a hospital appointment that was uninspiring but unproblematic, I found a pasta maker for fifteen quid. Nobody I asked said it was a bad idea quickly enough, and that's how I ended up heading home on public transport with a lap full of pasta machine and two kilos of blueberries. "...", said a friend. "How does this stuff even happen to you so much" "I really don't know how you live like this" "But well done" -- which I will take. (This also, conveniently, provides me with My Next Cooking Goal. I think I probably don't care about the spaghetti attachment but I am eyeing up the ravioli one...)

5. I am sitting in the corner of my sofa, facing the French windows, looking out on the grass and the sunshine. (I love this house.)

6. I am now, after today's adventures in public transport, most of the way through CN Lester's book Trans Like Me. I keep crying over it in public. I have been earwormed with a song off Come Home, Not Again (and have just put it on: I'm used to breaking - but not this time/Of all the things you've taken, I'm not giving me from mine/I know I'm better lonely but alive).

7. On which tangentially-related topic, I recently got my act together to actually listen to Jesus & His Judgemental Father's latest, It Might Get Better, and I just absolutely adore the lyric my breakfast is an existential crisis. And I have a whole pile of books to curl up and wallow in, which I'm very much looking forward to -- Provenance, which I haven't yet had brain for, and the new Max Gladstone, and the new Nnedi Okorafor along with some of her back catalogue, and all the Kai Ashante Wilson I just acquired, and...

8. Board games! On Sunday I went to a board game social being run by my BSL-teacher-now-friend (having been a longstanding friend of A's)! I negotiated social anxiety in the run-up! I played two new-to-me games, with one person in the group each time that I didn't previously know, and it... worked? I didn't cry? I panicked a bit at the start of the second one but actually it was okay? I did the thing? I won one of them? I... am really, really proud of myself. I am so aware of how much progress this is: eighteen months ago, or thereabouts, I finally finally managed to persuade myself to sit down with a rulebook and an Adam in our living room and have a go at playing Thud!, which I'd wanted to basically since I saw it being play-tested at a Discworld convention. I think I ended up crying twice just reading the rulebook, while A was in the kitchen carefully giving me space to have a panic? I ended up crying a bunch more over the course of our couple of experimental collaborative games? ... I just played two new-to-me games with strangers, on no more prep than breezily informing people that I have hilarious boardgame-related trauma, would want to spend five minutes anxiously reading the rules in silence before starting, and that if I asked a question about game mechanic and it wasn't addressed to you by name then pretend I didn't say anything and let A answer. I... am so pleased with myself.

9. ... slipper socks. I sort of resent that I like them so much, and they are the precise opposite of what the podiatrists I was seeing wanted me to do for wearing around the house, but fundamentally I really hate slippers and would by defaul be barefoot but also my feet get really cold really quickly. So now I own two pairs of ridiculous slipper socks, and I wear other socks underneath and slouch around in them, and I spend much less time with my feet painfully cold?

10. ... and on Thursday I'm heading down to Brighton for The October Ritual, an aquarium trip, and Terre á Terre, which I've been curious about for a while.


There is lots that is good that is going on. I'm spending the weekend in Cornwall (well, driving to and from -- a lightning visit is To Be Made), and while there will be Wrangling To Be Done I am also, very much, looking forward to going (however briefly) home.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

oooo ravioli

[kaberett]

I AM NOT SURE IF WANT like it' a LOT of faff and I can these days afford supermarket ravioli...

[lilysea]

Terre á Terre

Oooooooooh, that looks AMAZING.

This vegetarian would love to go!

[kaberett]

I was shown a copy of their cookbook then found it in a charity shop, and bought it on the principle that I'm not sure I can actually make everything on it and would definitely need the recipes! I'm pretty excited :-)

[lilysea]

Are you going to make blueberry-filled ravioli? That sounds delicious!

[kaberett]

Ha, not on this occasion! I'm going to freeze a lot of them, though, and therefore maybe in future :-)

[redbird]

I've had blueberry pierogi, and they were in fact delicious.

[aldabra]

Read the pasta machine instructions before you wash it. They seize up in perpetuity if they get wet. (Mine has a depressing lump of rust on one of the rollers that doesn't go away if you rub it with lemon juice, as per interweb instructions. I have concluded that I don't have enough grip for pasta machines yet.)

[kaberett]

yep! I double-checked the instruction manual (and retail price >_>) online before actually forking the money over to Sue Ryder. So... yes. Am going to be Careful, and clean it only with A Wooden Stick and A Brush per directions.

[highlyeccentric]

9. What on earth did your podiatrist think you ought to wear? SURELY NOTHING IS BETTER THAN SLIPPER SOCKS. (And they can't be that much worse than regular slippers orthopedically, surely? Slippers have like, zero structure)

Ed: this has been a slipper sock appreciation post

[kaberett]

this has 100% been a slipper socks appreciation post

but the thing they ACTUALLY wanted me to do, right, is that EDS means I've got high arches AND SIMULTANEOUSLY that I am flat-footed, so they were after me wearing a correctly-sized slipper that (a) could fasten relatively tightly (e.g. via velcro) to give me lateral support, and (b) could have orthotics put in it.

In conclusion: no.

[batrachian]

re: #9. yes. i love being barefoot. i also love not being perched on a pair of icecubes.

(the real kicker is that i don't notice or really care about my feet being cold per se, i just notice that i have a lot less energy and am generally being cranky about things and then go OH. THAT IS WHY. DAMMIT)

[kaberett]

EMBODIMENT IS A TERRIBLE HOBBY

[brainwane]

Whoooo!

If you feel ok talking a little more about the boardgame self-accommodation that you use to make it possible to enjoy board game sessions with others, I'd appreciate that, because I would like to be able to participate in that stuff with my friends and I get tetchy in ways that make me very sad to reflect on.

[kaberett]

oh gosh okay, I will see about actually writing up the Lengthy Desensitisation Process Post properly rather than doing it in comments! probably tomorrow.

[davidgillon]

I'm similarly mostly barefoot around the house, and mostly despise slippers, but that doesn't work too well on days when I'm using the wheelchair around the house, bare feet on bare metal bars not being a good winter combination.

My issue with slippers is that I hate their feel across the top of my high-arched foot, so I had a think about ways to avoid that, and bought a cheap pair of the 'orthopaedic' boot style ones in a size too large. That makes them loose enough that I don't have to deal with them being irritating, while being more than warm enough, even on the coldest day. (Of course, loose fit plus dyspraxic bendy isn't an ideal combination for walking, but I'm mostly wearing them with the chair).

Still mostly barefoot though.

[kaberett]

It is something about the internal texture of most slippers that I hate, and the weird intermediate sole-rigidity, in a way that absolutely isn't a problem with most actual shoes but SLIPPERS ARE THE WORST.

[vass]

*drive-by "have you tried", void where really fucking annoying*

What if you covered your wheelchair's foot plates with something in whatever texture you don't hate that's warmer than bare metal? Like slippers for your wheelchair instead of for your feet.

[kihou]

<3 CN Lester.

[kaberett]

YEP. They're great.

[ludy]

Is a shame that i'll be away when you are down in Sussex. Terre a Terre is wonderful (though pricy) and as well as proper meals they do a most excellent cakey/treat things (like vegan doughnuts) in the afternoon

[kaberett]

Alas! I don't make it down terribly often, and when I do it's usually just for an evening concert :-(

Thank you for the tips about the restaurant!

[cadenzamuse]

Hmm, I think I have an SPD about slipper socks because I read that and my brain was like "NO. WRONG. SO VERY WRONG." But then I looked and some of them appear to have moccasin soles? Is that correct? Semi-structured soles rather than just grippy stuff on the bottom of a sock? I might have less of an SPD about those. (Socks have been a sensory nightmare since I was a wee thing, so I Have Opinions. No seams, no fluff or shag or loose pile, must be foot shaped in a way that fits my foot aka Tube Socks Are Actually Evil, no slouch, strong preference for ankle length/no-show although I will do crew-length hiking socks under boots because They Are Correct There or around the house in winter because cold. Although buying fleece lined moccasin style slippers with backs solved most of the Socks at Home problem.)

[kaberett]

Some of them do indeed appear to have moccasin soles, but I avoid those like the plague because they are exactly what I don't want, so it sounds like we have cheerfully incompatible SPD needs here. >_>

HURRAH for slippers that work for you, and solidarity re ridiculous bodies. xx

[alatefeline]

*hugs offered*

Yay socks.

Also you win at peopling and making progress with Things. You just WIN.

[kaberett]

♥

[forthwritten]

HELLO I AM IN BRIGHTON NOW.

[kaberett]

HI WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE AQUARIUM ON FRIDAY ARE YOU WORKING (and/or would you like to get dinner on Thursday)

[vass]

Yay for slipper socks! (For you, not for me. I am on Team Barefoot Where Possible except in bed, when I'm on Team Warm Socks so long as my feet aren't touching the ground.)

I hear that regular socks can be converted into slipper socks via application of puffy fabric paint.