Weird thing is, I basically have this dialled too! Jeans, graphic tee, and hoodie every. day. But it takes me a long time to wake up, and if I haven’t had the designated “sit upright until all systems come online” time, basic activities that typically take 1-2 minutes take much longer. 

Ooh it’s been a minute. Busy, busy week! 🫠 that’s end stage September for ya.   How’ve I done against my stated big goal of 1850 cals/day average? Hmm, not great, I am heading into the last day of the week about 500 over. Had two work lunches and two dinners out which are really to blame. At least the dinners were fun (one just me and hubby at our little neighbourhood burger joint celebrating the end of a long week, the other a reunion with my Grease cast mates at a groovy resto bar I’d been really wanting to try). Work lunches were just, eh, work lunches, tried my best to keep the macros solid but obviously didn’t do well enough.   the good! Hubs and I talked to both kids Friday and both are happy and busy, doing well at school so far. ❤️ Saturday we took our bikes out for a long ride along the river path and that was glorious to be out there riding together. Saturday also did some yin yoga at the studio, and Friday and today both I made it to the gym for some real lifting!!!    I also buckled down and braved our reimbursement system to submit well over $1000 of health claims (assorted physio visits, massage, post surgery assistive equipment, new glasses…) —should really have done that months ago but I always build it up in my head to be more of a barrier than it actually is.    For the rest of today, going to shower, then back to the yoga studio, then some data wrangling: I have tomorrow set aside for blah not-my-real-science-but-gotta-get-done tasks, like meetings, writing a slew of reference letters, editorial stuff, so if I want these data to get entered by the end of the month it’s really today’s job. Oh, and homemade pizza tonight, woohoo!

I hope I will paint it! I have not yet been brave enough to tackle either of the dragons I got in the previous KS which shipped…three years ago?  But I love them so much!   The absolute best!    Also, hey, I had soup for breakfast this morning 😜  

I watched The Man Who Invented Christmas and it has such an amazing and recognizable rendering of what the creative process is like, and how the characters come to be, and behave (and misbehave!).  Five stars, highly recommend.

❤️    Also sea shanties.   I’m in.  

I did some squats yesterday while the kettle boiled, mostly because I was feeling out of sorts from the TBI things and from not getting to go to the gym. Many thanks to our DMs for bringing this into my life.    Heidi wakes from the Bookworm state and looks around, giving thanks for the soft moss patch that has held her so gently over the last howeverlong. Her kit and kettle are still with her, and she gathers a few more herbs while the water heats for tea. She doesn’t know how many herbs Ellereth wants, but these few seem different from the ones in the field before. The trail is full of blessings.

Level up, friend, because this is straight gold. When we’re lower level, momentum is our biggest, and at times, only ally.  It takes mastery to be able to let the momentum rest and then start again. Very impressed.   I am delighted by the work things, and am very happy you are fortunate enough to have things so wonderful that it’s difficult to say goodbye. Pooh is a great philosopher. Have you read The Tao of Pooh?   Speaking of delight, the way you and Sovalis talk about running a game, and then also in playing the game,  is delightful. Thank you for sharing. It’s helping feed my nerdy D&D soul.   I hope you’re having a slow restful day. Hooray for good sleep! ❤️ 

Agree with the others that lack of soreness is actually a sign of having created a foundation, and this is good.   Glad to hear that you’re feeling a bit more like you. Sending love. ❤️ 

I haven’t decided what I want the “cave world” to look like just yet. I’m leaning away from ‘forest” and more towards “inner cave lit by unseen glow with a few possibly magical treasures” Some key considerations are that it be simple — there can’t be anything too fiddly or in the walkway — imagine someone walking around with her eyes closed in pitch dark softly lit — if I were to go with apricot hangings on the walls, for instance (which I’m kind of considering so that it’s lovely when lit), they should be linen or another matte fabric that generally absorbs light when not lit. Any lighting should have a very low light feature available without being too fiddly. quiet — no waterfalls or fountains, if you please, despite how amazing this would be, generally.  Lovely. I’m all about it being welcoming and a sense of ‘retreat’ and not a sense of deprivation or banishment I’ll think more on this when I have project-level bandwidth, which I absolutely do not have right now. Inspiration will come.     While I made tea, I noticed that the apples and pears for this week had about one day left, so I peeled and cored them and set them (with just a dash of water) in the crock pot to do their thing for most of the day (low on 6-8 hours) to become applesauce. I put the pear scraps in the compost bin and the apple scraps in a liter glass container, tamped them down with the handle end of the wooden spoon, and covered them with water. They’ll sit in a dark cabinet for a couple weeks and become apple cider vinegar.   We’re scheduled to get more rain over the next few days as remnants of Helene move east out to the ocean. So far we haven’t had any major flooding events in my town — most of the destruction was down-mountain, and the folks there are really having a time of it. Asheville and other towns are just completely obliterated, and some of them can’t be gotten into or out of, and the cell towers came down as well, so information will be patchy coming in. Even if our river floods, I think at this point it will likely only hit inconvenient and ugly at worst, and not the catastrophic and apocalyptic that others are experiencing.    Lake Lure Flowering Bridge (about 4.5 hours to the southwest of me, or down-mountain as we say in Appalachia), and the village around Biltmore is wiped out and inaccessible. I don’t see any reports as of yet about The Biltmore Estate itself, but it has to be impacted.    Here, everything continues to be canceled as people hunker down and wait it out. The flash flood warnings persist, and are in effect until Tuesday evening. I have an appointment downtown on Tuesday afternoon that I’ll likely walk to.   The .303 Bookworm has settled down. I have learned that suffering comes when I ignore the disability, trying to do “what I would normally be doing” or try to continue with whatever task is at hand. If I can let go (lie down in the cave, divorce myself from clocks and calendars), my experience is still extremely trippy but the suffering is reduced. Taking a maxalt helps, of course, and I do that, too. I’m glad I was able to just ride the wave of this episode. I had a lot of insight and inspiration, as I often do, and remember almost none of it, which is also usually the case. I’m glad I was able to eat some along the way — yesterday I had the golden noodle soup with chicken and that is always restorative, and before that I wasn’t able to cook at all, so I had some of the barley and navy beans from the fridge (microwaves are a modern miracle!). I made a salad at one point, and found it in the fridge this morning, and I’ll be having that for a late lunch or dinner today with the last of the chicken noodle soup. I barely remember making the salad; it looks pretty good.   I still have some five grain bread from this week’s loaf, and really all I want is toast with honey and a tall glass of milk, so I’ll probably make that and eat it while I catch up on the forums for a bit.    

OMAD was tough and the results were weak.  I haven't really been counting anyway, just estimating and probably not that accurately.  Last weekend was nice with all the kids home.  This week I did nothing.  I'm tired and I don't care.   I still trust that God knows what He's doing.  It'll be worth it in the end, but the interim is awful, and I don't want to do it anymore.