Mistr

Yay for meeting people! It sounds like meeting people in the community is going exactly as you hoped. I understand the temptations of a craft supply sale. I decided that beads are not my thing, but yarn is always tempting.

My plan for the weekend worked out as expected. On the plus side, my elbow is feeling much better. I also feel stronger getting up from rolls. Repeated exercise is paying off. Not having down time is indeed an issue. I stayed up too late last night because I wanted more time. Then could not fall asleep, even though I was tired. If it was a normal class, I would not go to aikido this evening. As it is, I already paid for the last class of the seminar and my house guest is still here so that he can attend this class. I expect the class will be great. Hopefully I can stay awake for it. On the bright side, I already did my mediation for today. If I pack lunch before class, I can just crash when I get home.

Yay for soup and sleep! I need to follow your example and make soup. Probably not until Friday, because it is Pi day this week.

Allergies and other immune stressors are cumulative. So if you are allergic to tree pollen, you might be fine with a small serving of wheat in the winter, but that same serving would be a problem in the spring when you are also breathing pollen. General stress also adds to inflammation. If you had a difficult day, a glass of red wine (with sulfites) with some cheese and crackers could be a Bad Idea™. Those foods might be fine separately or on a good day. We like to find one cause for bad things. That makes it easy to know what to avoid next time. The reality is more likely to be a set of maybe-bad things instead of one villian.

I hope Orange recovers quickly. That sucks that you have to deal with the painters again. If they did a bad job, they should at least not charge for fixing it.

I love your hair! So much bouncier with the shorter cut, and a nice gold shade. I am so glad that Mr. Harriet is feeling better. I hope the good mood continues through the rest of the time you are in Berlin.

I love the hot pink wall. So many apartments are just drab white. That is so cheerful!

Having the downstairs bedroom available has worked out amazingly. Our houseguest needs to do video calls for work during the day. He has the privacy and internet to do that. Dumbledore's office is down the hall. He said that with both doors closed, he could not hear anything. My desk is upstairs and shares a wall with the guest bedroom. I could hear voices, but not make out the conversation. Aikido last night was mixed. The class was great. I could do some things and struggled with other things, which is normal. My elbow is not okay. It was swollen when I got home. I put arnica liniment on it, which helped. It is still stiff today. One of my friends tore her rotator cuff (doing surfing, not martial arts). I am going to have to do like she is doing and mark my left arm as injured. I can train but not do everything. In some ways, I am more concerned about not having down time until Sunday afternoon. I will go straight from work to the dojo tonight. I think my guest will want to go out after class. Maybe other people will be interested and I can head home. I got mostly enough sleep last night, but I have a feeling I will need a lot of recovery time. Saturday will be aikido all day, followed by a party. I am going to bring a sandwich and my knitting so that I can get some quiet time at lunch. Sunday morning will be more aikido, probably followed by going out for lunch. I have the afternoon blocked off for spending time with Dumbledore and batch cooking for the week. Dumbledore has gaming events the next two weekends, so I won't get to see him much after Sunday.

I have successfully made chocolate pudding using coconut/almond milk. It came out well. The taste of the non-dairy milk is pretty much covered by the chocolate. I did use eggs though. The recipe calls for both cornstarch and eggs as thickening agents. I believe you could make pudding without eggs, but the texture might not be as smooth. I have yet to experiment with adding protein powder. Soon, though. It is on my list.

Beautiful walk photos! Extra bonus points for dealing with the tax snafu right away. Those are always stressful.

My rolls were feeling better at aikido yesterday. Stronger and more stable getting up from lunge position. That is encouraging. Less encouraging is that I tweaked my elbow in a new and strange way on Sunday. I was just tossing a light bag into my car. Nothing strenuous. Now it is randomly complaining. Some moves in aikido felt fine, others hurt. Apparently I pulled something. I am going to take a couple days off to let it rest and (hopefully) calm down. This weekend my dojo is hosting a seminar with a guest instructor. This is the third year he has come to visit. He is an excellent teacher, as well as an excellent martial artist. Those things do not always go together. I am signed up for classes Thursday through Monday. I also will be hosting an out-of-town visitor for the seminar. He is a friend-of-a-friend. I hope he turns out to be a good houseguest because he is staying with us Wednesday night through Sunday morning. I was worried about that until I had the brilliant idea of putting him in the downstairs bedroom. This is the same newly remodeled bedroom that is piled with Dumbledore's boxes and papers. Having an imminent houseguest has lit a fire under Dumbledore to sort and organize his stuff. He has been saying he wanted to work on that, but now he has a timeline. He has made tremendous progress over the last week. I think this project was hard for Dumbledore because it shows how much he had to put his personal creative work on hold while he was teaching. Lots of half-finished projects that he started, then had to put on hold and they got buried. I hope that overall it turns out to be a positive thing that he knows where all his notes are for different projects. I don't think it means the bedroom will be available for us to move into anytime soon, but I'm fine with that. I would much rather see Dumbledore cheerful and productive. Dumbledore's continuous glucose monitor is also helping with that. Now that he has data, he is working to keep his blood sugar in the normal range. He is finding that doing so is going to require serious changes in his eating habits - and he is working on making those changes. Being more in control of his chemistry will help with everything in his life. My project tonight is to clean in preparation for our guest. Also to set up the air mattress and make sure it still holds air. That gives me tomorrow to fix it if there is a problem.

Yay for the clean bill of health on your new car! I am glad you can avoid the chaos at work for the afternoon. I hope your team lead is better soon.

I hope you are able to find a good place to live and work. I look forward to hearing more when you have time to breath.

I am going to try the essential orange with vinegar treatment. Even after scrubbing with Nature's Miracle, the couch still smells. I think some of the urine got into the foam of the cushions. I really don't want to have to get rid of our nice leather couch, but we will if it keeps smelling like cat pee. We have been looking at cheap couches from Ikea. I am not enthused, but we could make one of them work. The idea will be to cover the couch with plastic, then with a cover that is washable. Hopefully that will prevent a fabric couch from being used as either a scratching post or a litter box. The cats are happy about having a litter box in the family room. They are not using the laundry room cat box at all. I am somewhat less happy, but I can live with it.

Paying for someone to shovel is a smart decision. My knees were very crunchy when I started physical therapy and are much quieter now, so there is hope. I did supported squats when I was working on getting my range of motion back. To do them, you use a pillar or door frame as the support. Hang on to the support with your hands so that you can move smoothly and slowly through the sticky spots. I found I could get much lower in a supported squat than in a standard squat because I did not have to worry about falling over or getting back up. I needed to use my arms to help get me out of the bottom position until I built up more strength. I don't know if you have trouble with your knees being tight. I certainly did (and still do). A stretch that helped was the M-stretch. You sit on the floor and put your hands behind you and your feet flat in front of you. Your shins and arms make the uprights of the M-shape. Lift your rear off the floor and rock gently forward and backwards. This stretches your knees with no weight on them.

I hope your car buying road trip went well. The app I use is called Free Alarm Clock (freealarmapp.com). It lets you choose from a variety of sounds. You can set as many alarms as you want, with different sounds as you like. So far (2+ years), it has been reliable and not caused any problems.

Photos of my recently completed spinning project cut for size Family news The cat situation continues. We are pretty sure that Dorian is the one peeing on the couch. He peed on the couch throw again, then peed on the couch directly after I put the throw in the wash. I cleaned that up, then he did it again the next night. Luckily it is a leather couch, not fabric. Our project for Saturday will be a deep clean of the couch with odor-remover and leather conditioner. Dumbledore got a new cat box and set it up in the family room. I know both cats are using both cat boxes downstairs. If there is something about needing to pee upstairs, maybe this will help. Today he also tested giving Dorian sedative with his wet food. That went fine. Dorian is dopey and calm. He is pretty dopey to start with, so it is not a dramatic change. The big difference is that he does not startle at any little noise. Dumbledore is going to make a vet appointment for him next week. In happier news, I bought a drum carder! I have wanted one of these for a long time, but could not justify the expense. One of the people in my spinning group was selling this one to get some money and free up space for a loom. She said she bought it a while ago and only used it twice. It was still a chunk of change, but a lot less than a new one. I spent a lot of time carding during video meetings during Covid. Now that I am only working from home two days a week, I do not have much fiber prep time. I have two fleeces that need to be processed for spinning. I figure that if this tool saves me 20 hours of hand carding, it will pay for itself. 😍

I am feeling something similar. I know I should be lifting, but I just can't face doing it. I have been doing yoga, walking and aikido. Some of the yoga is intense core work, and I did a rowing session this week. I am not being a complete slug, but I certainly don't feel energetic. I suspect I need even more rest than I have been getting. I just worry that a rest day is going to start a downhill slide into being sedentary and decrepit. I will make a point of going for a walk in the sun to discourage that thought.

Happy Birthday!

I am glad to hear your sleep deficit is getting better. I was starting to get worried about you. I agree, another nap is a good idea.

How nice that you can hear bells marking the time! I have an hourly chime on my computer because my job often has activities that have to start and end on the hour. It is easy to lose track of time if I am researching and writing. Yay for feeling centered and whole!

I did rowing at lunchtime today. The last time I did it was three weeks ago, but it felt like there was no gap. If anything, I felt stronger and more energetic today. Maybe I was working off some of the stress from work. Oh yes, there is a zen way of doing everything. One keeps a broad focus with one's vision and pays attention to everything going on. Not to think about it, just to notice. How your muscles feel, the noise of other people moving in the gym, noise from the street. Concentrate on moving smoothly with good form without self-criticism. Count your reps instead of counting your breaths.

That is an awesome realization. Quality time sounds like so much more fun!

Weird local weather report: it has been unseasonably warm for the last few weeks. My crocuses are blooming and the perennials are coming up. Today the high is 68ºF. Tonight the low is 18ºF. We are going to have a 50ºF (27ºC) drop over 12 hours. And snow. Spring is expected to resume later in the week. Everyone is sure that we are going to get a perfectly normal snowstorm in March that will kill all the plants that have broken dormancy early.