notes on adventures: a gregorian year

[kaberett]

[2017 | 2018]

Cooking

• I found an ancestral ice cream maker and have been putting it to good use. I rechurned last year's jostaberry sorbet, and achieved a better texture; I've now made Ruby Violet's vanilla, apricot + soured cream, and black sesame seed ice creams, along with a first attempt at associated wafers (too thick: need to spread the batter further next time).
  
• I did indeed end up making green pasta with my own spinach from the allotment, which I am properly delighted by.
  
• A took me to a knife skills workshop! I learned a bunch of stuff that is very much still in active use around the kitchen.
  
• I've experimented a bunch with Instant Pot-based yoghurt-making, and kept a buttermilk culture going for a while.
  
• Favourite new-to-me recipe of the year: probably smitten kitchen's pear bread.
  
• But also: phở!

My scribbled list of goals-for-this-year included "cheesecake" and "mozzarella", neither of which I've attempted. For this year upcoming, I'll add to those some Ethiopian dishes, reliable scones, competent vegan waffles, and maybe even reliable profiteroles (by which I am still intimidated) and pannetone.

Growth

• Eaten from the allotment this year: globe artichokes (An Error. Harvest Sooner.); some redcurrants and jostaberries; a lot of fennel, fennel seed, and spinach; some garlic and shallots. Slugs got all of the peas, birds got all of the cherries, and my principal harvest was in fact carpet.
  
• At home: strawberries (various!), lots more herbs, one whole fig, and there's five large lemons on the tree considering ripening up. Slowly.
  
• Infrastructure this year: I'm so close to having two raised beds installed and ready to fill in and plant; I've (accidentally) got some potatoes all ready to go in one, and green manure sown in the mounds of earth. With considerable help from ewt and me_and, I got a greenhouse erected.
  
• Infrastructure plans for the coming year: finish excavating the carpet and building beds; erect a fruit cage in the interests of actually getting to consume the currants/raspberries/etc various.

Academia

• I have finally arrived at a place where I'm pretty sure that I am both (1) going to complete the PhD and (2) enjoy doing so.
  
• My second first-author paper has been submitted; I hope to hear back about it at some point in the next month or so. I'm really quite pleased with how the story eventually came together; I'm having to remind myself, frequently, that it's not actually the case that My Supervisors Did All The Real Work -- but it's getting easier.
  
• I've finished data collection, and am all done in lab bar some beaker-cleaning. I'm excited about digging into the analysis (having had a week off!). I am so close. So close.

Which means this year's goal is pretty simple, really, in that it boils down to "become Dr Kaberett".

Health & embodiment

• 30 gym trips, where for two months I was in Belfast and for about six weeks over the summer there was no level access to the building. There has been slow but steady improvement; yesterday, the last trip of the year, while pretty exhausted, I managed to very slowly do all the resistance work I'd done the previous week. "Not backsliding" is my goal, and overall I'm ending the year up 70% on where I was at the start in terms of weight I can shift.
  
• On the downside, my physio maintenance slipped; this is affecting me most badly in terms of plantar fasciitis, and it's increasingly clear I really need to get back into those habits.
  
• Achieved: a bunch more investigation of the probably-hypothyroidism (albeit no resolution); complete healing of the minor foot fracture (as measured by the fact that it no longer aches in the cold); testosterone.
  
• Things I need to do: get my student loan written off; get referred back to the UCH pulmonary lot, because I'm once again (this is a good thing!) hitting the point where my breathing is the limiting factor on cardio exercise. There might be management approaches we haven't tried, though. I've got a GP appointment booked for going on the end of January to get this in motion.
  
• This year has been so full of benefits-related bullshit, but: this morning's post brought a tribunal date, on the 29th of January. I got the last supporting paperwork sent off yesterday; I still have some complaints to follow up, but the PIP bullshit might (I sincerely hope) be very nearly over (at least for now).
  
• Two big exciting purchases: NEW WHEELS for my main wheelchair (rainbow UV-active spokes! lower weight!), and a trailer for transporting the off-road mobility scooter. We need to get bumpers for the trailer, and I'm considering a new battery for the Tramper (depending rather on how the PIP waveform collapses), but I've got a lot to look forward to.

Travel

• Big headline: started out the year in Cornwall, and then travelled from Exeter to Belfast, where we (mostly) were until moving back to London at the beginning of March.
  
• Another week or so in Cornwall engaged in clearout of the mouldering ancestral pile in April.
  
• A long weekend in Derbyshire, mid-August, at a wee house convention, where I gave a couple of well-received talks and generally Had A Good Time.
  
• A Bunch of visits to sebastienne, including one night in Adam's old Oxford college.
  
• Several visits also to me_and's family; the only overnight stay was in Wales.

Personal & other leisure

• Sewing! I learned to darn, and to make a very rough-and-ready hem.
  
• I spent a lot of time falling down a rabbit-hole of How Do Watercolour Pencils Even Work, and while I've been largely stalled on colouring in for about a month I've been enjoying it immensely and am excited to get back to it. Even: we found a made-for-watercolour botanical illustrations colouring book at Wakehurst, browsing the shop after having toured the illuminations, and A very kindly got it for me. It contains tutorials; I am, perhaps inevitably, contemplating getting myself a small set of pigments in a format other than pencils.
  
• Musicianship this year: I started testosterone, and therefore started singing to myself around the house again. I played in three concerts with my orchestra as second horn. In spring, we did the second Mozart horn concerto with a young soloist who won the concerto competition we run in association with the local music service; a new symphony by the orchestra's patron, Berceuses Tristes; and Beethoven's sixth symphony. The summer concert was kind of a grab-bag: Rossini (Overture: The Silken Ladder), Jacob (Old Wine In New Bottles), Borodin (Nocturne), Debussy (Petite Suite) and Haydn (Symphony no. 100 - Military). This term just gone we played Bizet Jeux d'Enfants, the Dvorak violin concerto (I am a fan, perhaps unsurprisingly), and Tchaikovsky Suite no. 1. I've been having another go of doing semi-regular practice, over the last month or so, which has been very satisfying.
  
• Massive personal development: I played a bunch of new board games with new people, and started enjoying them. Easiest way to summarise is probably to link to A's list & let you infer from there.
  
• I read about 45 works (as I track them, not generally including fanfic regardless of length) for pleasure or personal growth. Of these, 34 were borrowed from the local library; they were written by 26 authors of whom 17 were women and 11 were chromatic. 9 were non-fiction.
  
• I've started learning Irish, in somewhat desultory fashion, and have more-or-less kept up with Turkish and, to some extent, French.
  
• Lots of films, lots of TV, lots of Trips To Museums And Gardens (including the Dublin Museum of Modern Art, the Giant's Causeway, the V&A glass gallery, Wimpole, the Whipple Museum, a BAT SAFARI, a local arboretum, a variety of National Trust properties, the London Transport Museum). Absolute highlight: Chihuly @ Kew.
  

Intentions
I didn't pick a word for 2019, but 2018's was connection, and the narrative I'm constructing for myself now is that I didn't want a new word this year because I still had plenty to work on in that general vein.

I spent a lot of 2018 reflecting on (and struggling with) feeling lonely and isolated. My decreasing capacity for journeys outside the house solo has been further limiting my ability to socialise. I'm no longer feeling that isolation so acutely; in large part I think that's down to (thanks, nanila & those of you who carried the torch this year) having made a quiet decision to post something on Dreamwidth every day visible to people other than me. I decided at the beginning of the year that I didn't want to announce that it was what I was doing, because it felt like setting myself up for failure; I've occasionally felt as though I'm "cheating" by including my Monday todo/tada posts as A Post For The Day. But: it's been a really positive experience, overall. There were two days I ended up posting a little after midnight (and backdating for the sake of making my calendar view look nice, hush), but -- I ended up making fewer posts that felt like placeholders than I'd been expecting, and I've been really enjoying the sense of community and comfort I've been getting from your collective engagement and our ongoing conversations. Thank you.

I've also managed to renew some family connections: I started inviting my godcousins over for films and afternoon tea, and have been gradually attempting to invite more people over in a way that feels sustainable and nurturing. (I have a lot of guilt around this; it's a work in progress.) I've supported A in spending time with his families. I have worked on fraught relationships with close people. It's hard, and also, I feel much less alone.

Comments

[lunabee34]

*hugs*

I love reading about people's goals and accomplishments for the year.

I'm so glad you are feeling more connected.

[mdlbear]

So do I, and this is a good list.

[rmc28]

*hugs* it's always good to hear from you

[sporky_rat]

my principal harvest was in fact carpet
Hah, that's a thing. (My harvest was carpet in the house?)

a small set of pigments in a format other than pencils
If you're interested in relatively easy paints, gouache is pretty forgiving.

[azurelunatic]

I enjoy gouache very much. My high school art supervisor observed that I was simultaneously using it like gouache, watercolor, and tempera. I enjoy the flexibility.

[azurelunatic]

👋

[cesy]

<3

[watersword]

I've loved getting to eavesdrop on your life, even when I don't comment.

[kaberett]

<3!

[ironed_orchid]

I've really loved seeing your posts when I read DW.

[silveradept]

That sounds like quite the accomplishment set for a year. Here's going the next one goes every more better.

[nanila]

<3

I'm so very glad you've come to a Good Place on your academic journey. The postgraduate system of study is generally so rigid, inflexible, and unforgiving that it's almost guaranteed to be a hellish experience for anyone not already in a very privileged position. I am happy you have been able to bend it to your requirements (and grumpy that such an effort was required, but never mind).

[tei]

*waves* hello, here via network page because my decision for the new year is very similar to yours— less twitter, more dreamwidth, more connection no matter where I’m doing it, and you seem really cool so I hope you don’t mind if I add you!

[kaberett]

Hello lovely to meet you! Please by all means go ahead :)

[sfred]

<3

Oh, I learned, ish, to darn too! Thank you for reminding me.