who only by moving can balance

• Have just started Rising Strong (also Brené Brown). Am partway through the introduction. So far I'm kind of at "... she... really doesn't have many hobbies that involve obsessive accident reports, huh." She just... seems to be entirely unaware of the entire genre of "here's how I fucked up, here's how I got out of it, Don't Do What I Did Kids".
  
• A thing that seems to be helping with my insomnia at the moment, which has sort of arisen from reading Daring Greatly: promising myself that I'll look after me. I didn't really expect it to help the first time I did it and then I felt my muscles unknotting and about ten minutes later I think I was asleep. (This is notable in that if I'm by myself I'm routinely awake for around 90 minutes after lying down in the dark, having taken bed meds including ones that induce drowsiness and even after sedatives; this makes my therapists pull faces, because apparently people should Definitely Fall Asleep Within Half An Hour, which, w h a t. It's better if A is around, but as far as I can tell that's because I trust him to the point that my hindbrain is willing to accept that if he's asleep it's probably safe for me to go to sleep, but it still usually takes me A While after he's dropped off.)
  
• Lots of exciting things in the post over the past few days, including "Victorinox appear to have given up and just sent me an entire new penknife at no charge", "the jewelry stand I ordered as an Extravagant Indulgence arrived and it is Great", and "C, who is wonderful, arranged for a botanical illustration colouring book from Kew to show up at my door, and for bonus points the previous owner has already coloured some of it in so I won't even be forever Too Afraid Of Ruining It to actually start".
  
• Other extravagance of the week: soft blue stripey pyjama bottoms that fit me. I bought them on Monday; to first approximation I have spent almost all the subsequent time that I wasn't either in (transit to) lab or asleep Curled Up On The Sofa In Them. They are comfortable and pleasingly tactile and making me very happy (and also quite a bit warmer).
  
• Our first annual mortgage statement arrived earlier this week: happy flativersary to us. Still baffled; still grateful.

• Last year, in the lead-up to my birthday, I spotted a relatively cheap three-tier cake stand in the window of one of the local charity shops. I got it, because I was planning Afternoon Tea for my birthday, and have been enjoying it sat on top of the dresser since; this weekend just gone I got it down again and piled it up with madeleines (baby's first!) and scones, for a Jupiter Ascending watch party hosted with miscellaneous cousins various. It is a tiny extravagant frivolity and it makes me very happy (as does feeding people Afternoon Tea, it turns out, so I should be aiming to do that more often).
  
• And then on the Monday we took the Leftover Afternoon Tea down to Kew, to visit the Chihuly and Interview the recently-acquired Young Man of one of said cousins. We picnicked on the grass just inside the Victoria Gate, in view of Sapphire Star, and it turns out that in addition to Woobly Glass I am, also, very fond of Providing Picnics, so I shall aim to do more of that, as well.
  
• Progress at the allotment, various: yesterday, after sending my work for the week over to my supervisor, I had dinner and headed out and stayed til dusk. I weeded the allium and the Ribes, I fed the bin, I removed a token carpet square. Today, after my supervisor meeting to discuss said etc, I gathered up the bricks from the ex-cat-stairs and took myself down to the plot and sorted out the water butt, which involved (i) building it a wee platform of said bricks and (ii) actually giving it a thorough scrubbing. I did not feed the bin because it was still full, but I did admire the Ribes in slightly more light than I had by the time I left yesterday; and I made more progress on The Carpet (!); and I picked some spinach to put in dinner. (It's mostly going to flower, now, but the more of it I cook with the less guilty I'll feel when I rip the rest of it up to get The Sodding Carpet out.)
  
• This morning I picked up My First Tube Of Tostran. In the process I had a cheering interaction with My Default GP at the current place, and then while waiting for the prescription to be filled I was approached by someone using a walker and Asked For Wheelchair Advice (on behalf of their spouse rather than themself) and got to be Kind And Helpful.
  
• On my (slow and meandering) way home, I found (1) a cast-iron plausibly-suitable-for-injera pan, and did a bunch of research on where and how to buy teff in the UK, and (ii) spotted in a charity shop window a Kenwood mixer bowl, so promptly crossed the road and purchased it immediately, because I Am Become My Grandfather.

Needs direct sun with good support,
for preference, south-facing walls;
and well-drained soil and fleece in frosts
and water when the weather's hot.
Slow to flower, rarely fruits;
give the thing at least five years.
Mind the thorns, the strangling vines;
mind the poison the sap bears.