kareina

Thursday I spent the morning doing archive work--data entry recording the information recorded on the outsides of the folders for the various cases the attorney handled. Then I went over to see the eye doc at the university hospital, where they tested everything on my eyes again, and the doctor even did one thing I don't recall ever experiencing before--placed a glass lens directly against my eye and looked through it into my eye. They confirm what had been suspected last week, I do have glaucoma. Not the normal version, wherein one has high eye pressure, but the other kind, with normal eye pressure. Apparently my kind progresses much more slowly, and takes longer before there are any symptoms, and has likely been there, slowly developing for a few years before an optometrist noticed any hints of a problem. With normal glaucoma the usual treatment is to lower the pressure in the eyes to slow down the effects. This isn't so needed when the pressure isn't high.

Instead I will be one of the lab rats in a study to see if certain B-vitamins can help. With luck I will get the vitamins, and they will help. Or perhaps I will get the placebo, and it will help anyway, because I am enough of an optimist to believe. Or perhaps it makes no difference to me personally, but they get enough data from the study to help others. Either way, I will be seeing the eye docs often. Really often. They promise that if my eyes start getting worse they take me out of the study, and start other forms of treatment. However, the doc seemed optimistic that I will keep my sight for the rest of my life. I hope he's correct, I have way too many hobbies that require eyesight.

Friday I worked from home, and then switched to thesis corrections. I also met a soapstone carver through FB and we started corresponding, and it looks like we will be co-authoring the experimental petrology paper on how well soapstone cooking pots hold heat and keep water boiling that I have been wanting to do for ages, but lacked the pots. He has the pots, and wanted to do the experiments to better teach his customers how to cook with them, so why not work together? He does really beautiful work!

Saturday morning was our fortnightly zoom call with my sisters, and the first time in weeks that all four of us made it, it was good to catch up with them. I had planned to spend the rest of the day doing thesis corrections, but Keldor got up around the time my call finished, and we decided to clean the garage and make room to bring his car in, so he can finish fixing it. He's been driving my car for weeks now, as he waited to get another part and deal with the bothersome bits. I am not really clear about what bits he's changed out, and what still needs doing, but it has to do with the breaks and how they attach to the wheel...

by around 16:00 on Saturday we had found better places for everything that has made the garage an unpleasant room to walk through, the floor was clear and swept, the work bench empty, and the car brought in. Then he celebrated by watching a movie, and I sat down to the computer and did thesis corrections. Sunday he'd planned on doing car repairs, but he woke up with a fever and sore throat, so he spent the day on the couch, sleeping through (and occasionally watching) movies, and I did thesis corrections. I also started an early draft of the paper with my soapstone friend and shared the document on OneDrive.

Today I worked from home and was really productive. Keldor, feeling much better, went to work. After work I baked some homemade crackers and he did a little work on the car, and then I settled in to doing more thesis corrections. Now I have taken the serious proofreading and checking all the references cited all the way through the end of chapter 7. Only three more chapters to go, and then I can start working on the figures...

We are closing in on a year since I submitted the thesis. Do you think I will manage to get the corrections done and the document re-submitted before a full year has passed? My deadline, from the university perspective isn't till March, but I would so love to get it done sooner. Of course, this coming weekend we will head to Sundsvall for Glötta Gillet, and we have plans for three weekends in December already. This explains why I have started working on it in the evenings, instead of only weekends we aren't traveling...

By Monday morning the arm I had gotten caught in the ladder on Sunday morning was feeling much better, and I could use it normally, though I was still very reluctant to let anything touch the damaged area. It never did turn in to a dark bruise (or blåmark, literally "blue mark" in Swedish), but by Wednesday it achieved that yellow colour that old bruises get, and was healing up nicely. However, during the night on Wednesday, when I went to roll over in the middle of the night, and was asleep enough to not remember that I had hurt it, I pulled to hard to extract it from the pillows it was entangled with, scraping the tender area firmly against a pillow I was also laying on, so it didn't move out of the way. This hurt enough that I woke up enough to go get an ice pack to put on it, and then fell straight back to sleep. Not surprisingly, it was a bit more tender on Thursday, but has once again resumed not hurting as long as I don't bump it into something, and I can use it normally.

However, on Wednesday evening my hip started acting up again, and by bedtime it was pretty much the worst it has been since I first had this problem in February. When it happens it feels like something is out of position in the SI joint, which results in flashes of pain if I try to move my leg certain directions, or twist in such a way as that joint is involved. So long as I don't do one of the "forbidden" movements it isn't more than uncomfortable, but I get immediate, strong, negative feedback for things like laying down, rolling over, getting back up again, or sitting on anything other than my kneeling chair. Sadly, getting back out from the kneeling chair requires one of those "forbidden" movements.

Coincidently, also on Wednesday, one of my FB friends posted about her recent "Naprapat", who, in addition to doing an adjustment to fix the problem of the day, also filmed her walking and showed her how problems with how she walks is the source for some of the issues she's been having. I had not heard the term before, but before I asked someone else and wondered, and it was explained that it is similar to chiropractor, but involves more massage and gentle adjustments. This sounded like it might help my hip issue, and I wondered how one goes about finding a good one. Thursday morning my hip was still a bit on the stiff side, but doing better, so I went to work as usual. When I arrived to clean the local pharmacy the pharmacist greeted me with a polite enquiry in how things are with me, and I explained pretty good, other than a problem with my hip, which feels out of place. She asked a question or two, and when I said that the local physiotherapist hadn't been able to help, she suggested that I see a naprapat, and recommended Robert Svanborgs in Skellefteå, saying that he is quite good. Then cautioned that he may well be on vacation just now (most of Sweden is). So as soon as I got home I checked his web page, saw that there are no available booking times in the next couple of weeks, so sent him an email saying that he had been suggested as one who might be able to help with my hip issue, and giving details, and asking him to please book me a visit when he returns. Even if the symptom doesn't display on that day, he might be able to help me figure out what is causing it. I haven't really done acroyoga since February, when it first happened, as I am disinclined to put the extra pressure on my hip of another human balancing on my feet--it wouldn't be possible on a bad day, and on a good day I am not interested in taking the risk of thus making it a bad day, and I miss acroyoga!

This week has been rainy, so progress on the window painting project has slowed down, as we can't do the sanding outside when it rains, and I won't do it inside, but we have another window ready to go back up, and it can go where the final remaining upstairs window that hasn't been painted sits. I don't know if we will manage to also sand and paint all the window frames, but even just the windows themselves done before winter will be a good thing.

It is looking likely that I will get to do the archaeology job with Norrbotten museum weeks 35-38, investigating a settlement site near Kiruna. If so, they provide a place to sleep in Kiruna itself. My boss at Umeå is receptive to the idea of my starting there three weeks later than planned so I can get my first ever experience working as an Archaeologist, but since the contract was already signed with a start date of week 36, he thinks that the easiest way to do the change would just be to have me be "tjänstledig" for those weeks--which is to say employed by them, but without pay. However, he wants to hear back from someone in HR to approve this plan before making the final decision. He agreed that he will let my know by 5 August, by which date the Museum really needs to know if I am available or not, so they can try to find someone else if I am not. From a strictly short-term financial viewpoint this is probably not the smart option, as I seriously doubt that the Museum has the budget to pay me as much as the University will, but from a viewpoint of getting new experiences, it is a really good idea. If I am really lucky, I will have seen the Naparat before that job starts, and he will be able to teach me something to prevent a recurrence of the hip issue.

...About how life is the process of telling oneself that "after this week things will slow down again", and then repeating it weekly thereafter.

When last I posted I had been home from 12th Night for a week, and only just managed to finish blogging about the event, and should thus have more time...

Have I mentioned that I have enrolled in the Lövånger folkhögskola? The literal translation for "folkhögskola" is "public high school", but this is not a good translation. This is a public educational system for adults that is aimed at people who either didn't go to Gymnasium (the Swedish upper secondary school aimed at people who are either going to go on to University, or who are going into a trade, either way it is a focused education on the specific path the student has chosen (e.g. their planned university major, or their prefered trade), or who did, but now want to study something else, perhaps for fun, perhaps as a step to a different career path. This is the first year they have had a folkhögskola. It is being provided by the Edelviks folkhögskola, 43 km inland from here, and I am delighted that the school popped into existence at the exact time that I had been thinking "when I get my thesis submitted, I should find a Swedish course of the sort that Swedes take in highschool, I think I have gotten good enough at the language that I could manage it".

The program they are offering is the "Almän kurs", which offers the base classes that are offered in gymnasium, but not the speciality-specific ones that one would have had if one actually enrolled in in a gymnasium program. The package they offered is: Svenska, Engelska, Samhällskunskap, Religionskunskap, Historia (Swedish, English, Community knowledge (or social studies), religion knowledge, and History). On the first day of class (Monday 15 January, the morning after we returned from 12th Night), the school director came in and had a one-on-one conversation with each student to devise our personal study plan. When I first applied for the course I wrote that I wanted the Swedish course, but didn't even think of the other options. After talking to the director I agreed to attend also the social studies and history classes, in a large part because they would require me to actually use my Swedish. This turns out to have been a Very good idea, and I am absolutely loving being a student again!

The program is "half time", which means we meet two days a week. On Mondays there is an hour of Swedish class starting at 10:30, followed by a 20 minute break, after which there is an hour of English class (I sit in the other room and do my Swedish, work on my own, which means that I am available if anyone wants help with their English, as I am the only native speaker of English in the group). Then we get an hour for lunch (I normally stay and keep studying in between eating what I brought with me, or talk with my classmates), then we have an hour of Swedish Literature, and are done for the day.

The morning Swedish class is writing exercises, with a little group discussion, and the after lunch Swedish class is reading aloud as a group and discussing what we are reading. None of us in this group are native Swedish speakers. We have one German woman who was sent to Sweden for safety during WWII, arriving when she was 5 years old, and then sent to live with a family in Vebomark, a village 17 km from here. She lived there for nine years before moving back to Germany to join her surviving parent, their new spouse, and her siblings (including getting a number of younger half siblings over time). Later in life she wound up moving to Denmark for some years, and sometime in the last year or three she got the opportunity to purchase the house in which she lived as a child, and has moved back "home", and is loving it. Despite having learned Swedish as a child, she has a noticeable accent that is both influenced by German and Danish, but isn't so strong as to interfere with understanding her. She and I are the two strongest Swedish speakers in the group, with different strengths and weaknesses based on the differences in our backgrounds.

Two of the other students, a couple in their 30's (V and M), wince everytime someone asks where they are from, then he explains that "well, we are from Russia, but we are Ukraine", which explains the wincing. They moved to Sweden as refugees, and while they can speak Swedish, their English is still better than their Swedish, so they are really needing to work to understand, and I often serve as an interpreter, especially for Wednesday's class--our Monday teacher is super fluent in English, too, and is the English teacher as well as the Swedish teacher). There are several girls from places in Africa (at least one is from Somalia), but they are all so soft spoken I haven't really caught so much about their background, even though they have participated in the presentation round. They are all in their 20s, I would guess, though it is tough to be certain, as they all wear the hijab.

The Wednesday class starts at 08:30 with a one hour, 20 minute social studies session, followed by a break, followed by a second session of social studies, followed by lunch (I stay and do reading or homework), followed by a one hour, 20 minute history session. Guys, I love the Wednesday class so much! This is a larger group, as we have even a few Swedish--two women who are a little older than I am, and have lived in this area all their lives, and one who is in their mid 20's I guess, who let us know the first day that they are autistic. They are all in the social studies class, which is primarily class discussion supplemented with reading, and some written exercises, and I am loving it. I often need to repeat things for V in English (our Wednesday teacher understands English, but prefers to delegate speaking it to me), and V does his participation in the discussions in English (which, if he starts speaking fast, we need to then translate back to Swedish for our German classmate, but when he remembers to speak slowly she is able to keep up).

The history class is one I am enjoying even more. For that one it is only V and I, but they are running it anyway (apparently there had been three of us who signed up for it, but, so far, the third one hasn't attended, so I don't know if they will. They aren't running the religious studies course, as only two people had expressed interest in that one, and they didn't think that was enough to pay a teacher, so I am glad they are running history for only us two), so I do a lot more English interpretation, repeating for him what the teacher and I say in Swedish. We started with pre-history and when humans and other tool-using primates split off from the ape-line primates, then jumped to when the ice melted back from Sweden and the early hunter-gatherer settlement of this area, with people coming in along the coastline from both the north and the south.

This week it was the Viking Age, which meant no new information for me, who has absorbed a fair bit of general knowledge on the period through both the SCA and my archaeology degree, yet I really love sitting there, working on my sewing, discussing what happened when, and the likely reasons that Scandinavians went a viking in the first place. Both Mondays and Wednesdays I go home from school in a seriously good mood.

The other three days of the week I have used for doing my obligatory job applications (I really hope that I don't have to start a job till after the term ends, I am loving school so much) and unemployment paperwork (which hasn't yet been processed to the point of receiving benefits--though sometime this week my status for my case changed from "new" to "under processing", so hopefully I will find out soon how much/if I will be getting payments), housework, and projects. However, now that I have had more than a month to recover from the push to finish my thesis I am also starting to feel like I really ought to take that paper draft that has been sitting mostly done for ages and par it down to the correct word count to submit it to the journal. So perhaps that will even happen in the next week or so. It would be nice to have it submitted by the time my Viva (thesis defense) happens (which hasn't been scheduled yet).

The other thing that has happened is that we got a housemate for the month. B, an SCA guy from Pennsylvania, has wanted to move to Europe, and ideally Sweden for a while. So some months back he posted to the Drachenwald FB group saying that he does, and asking questions about where are good places to move, and why, etc. He has visited Sweden (and many other places in Europe over the years) before, and has gotten to the point in his moving daydreams that he thought it would be worth testing it. Since we have a guest room, and he likes snow and winter, we decided he would rent our room for a month, and see how it feels to actually live here, as opposed to visiting. Since his job includes a work from home option he came on over. If he works from around 15:00 to 23:00 while here he is on duty at the same time as his colleagues and available for meetings as needed. This appears to be working for him, as it means that he can get up in the morning and go for a walk while the sun is up, and then settle in to work afterwards.

He flew in on Sunday 28 January (last weekend) and we drove down to Umeå to pick him up, and went straight from the airport to their fighter practice (in fact, I dropped Keldor off at practice on the way to the airport, which is a 9 minute drive from fighter practice site, so he had a chance to start armouring up while I did the pickup). We had planned on my fighting too, but when I woke up on Sunday morning there was something weird going on with my hip. I did my yoga that day directly after getting up, and my hip felt like something was out of adjustment, and it was hard to pull my left leg forward to get from Downward Facing Dog to Low Lunge. This was weird, and annoying. Sadly, as the day progressed the hip kept getting worse and worse, so we didn't even bring my armour, as it didn't sound fun to try to fight when I don't have proper range of motion with one leg. Even more sadly, we had planned on going straight from fighter practice to an acroyoga session that was just starting up for the term that day, that a friend of Keldor's had pointed out for us, as he thought we would enjoy it. We would have, but by the time that session started my hip was really acting up, so it wasn't possible to rotate my left leg outwards at all, and attempting to move it forward (as in walking) wasn't going properly, and sometimes even hurt. So we didn't go to acroyoga, and I was sad about missing it (but it would have been stupid to try given the way the leg/hip was doing). Instead we swung by the pet food store, bought some new fish for Keldor's aquarium and some cat food, and then went to the big grocery store and got some stuff (me walking way slower than normal, in my quest to find ways to walk without causing any discomfort, and with a component of forward motion).000

That evening, after we got home, I spent some time laying on the floor, trying to find a way to self-adjust or stretch out whatever was wrong, and in the process something happened, and suddenly I couldn't really move my leg at all, but just lay there on my back on the carpet, legs bent, and called for Keldor to come help. He managed to help me get turned over to try to stand, and I quickly gave up, so he carried me to bed, undressed me, rubbed my hip with both voltaren (a topical pain reliever for muscles) and some liniment (which warms the muscles), and I took an alvadon (both pain relief and muscle relaxant--it is mostly the latter I needed it for--whatever was going on didn't hurt at all, if I didn't try to move the leg, but some directions of movement did hurt) then he used the massage pistol on my legs and hips and things relaxed enough that I was able to walk to the loo on my own (and did so the normal several times during the night). Before I went to sleep that night I scheduled a physical therapist appointment, but the earliest option was Tuesday during the day.

Monday morning I was able to walk, but things were still a little weird with the hip, so I got B's help carrying our "spark" (kicksled) up from the basement, figuring that at least having the handles for support would be a good thing (one sees old people using kicksleds as winter walking aids all the time up here), and it might be that standing one leg on the runners and kicking with the other would be nicer on the leg/hip than walking. I don't know if that theory was correct, or if the underlying problem had solved itself, but either way it went ok to "kick" to school, and by Tuesday morning my leg was doing much better. I took the spark again to the health center, which made the hip feel a little uncomfortable, as the last bit of the trip was uphill, but when she did the exam there was no observable issue, and while a few movements and poking at it created "sensation", they didn't hurt the way they had on Sunday, and I had full range of motion back.

So she said that I should just keep doing my normal physical therapy for hips from my older hip problem (which does NOT present like Sunday's issue, but which might be related), and that it should continue to get better on its own, but if not, schedule a new visit in three weeks. She considered and rejected sending me for x-rays, saying that it probably isn't the kind of problem that will show up on x-rays, but if it doesn't clear up on its own that might be worth trying. On Wednesday my hip felt totally normally, and I even did handstands a number of times during breaks in class. I still took the spark, as we have had temperatures flipping back and forth just over and under freezing, so it is icy out, and thus the spark is safter. However they have spread gravel on the ice, which means that there are a number of areas where they sled doesn't glide, and I have to try to take some of its weight and push it carefully over the gravel. We need it to cool back down below freezing, stay there, and add a layer of snow to cover the gravel, which the predictions say might happen starting Monday, but in the mealtime it will still be warm (up to +4 C) and melty this weekend.

If my hip continues to be good we will head to Umeå on Sunday for both fighter practice and acroyoga, and I really hope this happens!

On Thursday morning last week Keldor was feeling recovered from the cold he'd had at the beginning of the week, and I was showing no symptoms, so we decided that yes, we can go to Crown. However, since he'd been sick and thus had had no energy to do the armour repairs that we had determined were needful when we armoured up the week before, we had Thursday during the day to do them, in addition to packing. We managed to get it all done, and got on the road by 17:00. First stop (after leaving the cat's at his dad's for the weekend) was in Luleå, to drop off the box of Halloween stuff my friend L had bought from someone who lives a five minute walk from me, so I picked them up for her (weeks ago), and this was the first chance to deliver them.

Then we drove over to the normal Thursday evening folk dance session (that I used to attend when I lived there), and I got in three quick dances before we continued on our way (total time elapsed from arriving there to departing: 20 minutes. Value in terms of joy from seeing old friends and getting to dance? Priceless!)

Then we went on to Oulu, arriving at my apprentices apartment around 23:00, where stayed up talking probably later than we should have, but we don't get to see one another in person often.

Friday we were on the road again around 09:00, which got us to site at around 18:00. As we were checking in, we were summoned away from the table to feast our eyes on the beautiful "stained glass" windows they had made, showing all of the couples entering in the tournament:

"stained glass" image of the entrants in Crown

"stained glass" image of the entrants in Crown

Because I was fighting for Keldor, and he for me, and that brought the total number of couples to an even number, the artist drew us twice, once with me in armour, and he holding a rose, and once with he in armour and me holding a rose. I really, really love this! They used photos of the fighters in garb and in armour to make us all recognisable! The best part? The whole is made up of individual panels, so everyone who is featured in the art got to take their panel home with them. So we now have ours in the living room window.

I asked her how she did it, and it turns out that she used coloured silkespapper (tissue paper) and intarsia technique, and then laminated the result. Therefore, before I even finished that conversation I found a source for a packet of silkespapper, in all the colours. I am so going to use the technique for decorating events! Alas, I don't think the paper will arrive on time to be useful for Oktoberfest, which is in one more week.

Friday evening I went to bed early (just after 22:00), so that I would be well rested for the tournament, and, even more importantly from my perspective, our boasts. After the tournament I noticed that there was a merchant table selling ceramic stuff, which made me realize that I had forgot to set up our box of stuff for sale (oops). But, of course, the first thing I did was go look at what she had. One quick glance was enough for me to hurry over to Keldor and summon him to the table. He has been actively looking for a "big enough" tea mug for a long time. This merchant, Savivompatti, had lots of "big enough" tea mugs to choose from! After looking at all the options, he bought one of the octopus ones, and he is very happy with it.

Then he returned to fight pickups and packed away his mug and my armour, took a shower, and then got permission from the autocrat to put Keldor's axes and knives and other stuff for sale on a table, and made a quick announcement that they were there. We didn't really expect any sales, but one woman really liked his unfinished knife with copper in the blade, and the unfinished knife where he had layered stainless steel and hardened steel (just to try it, as it isn't easy to weld them together), but she thought that they would be out of her price range. I told her that he loves to barter, and introduced them, and they agreed to a trade--he will make her a new knife, with a copper layer in it, and do something nice for a handle, and she will do him a metal brocaded silk tablet woven band. He is pretty certain that he will win on this trade.

I even managed to join in the afternoon "group singing, mostly in Finnish" a bit before going to the Laurel meeting. They offered me a paper with the lyrics, but for me it is easier to read lips to sing along with a song I don't know, in a language I don't speak, and I enjoyed the session. I would have loved to have had more time for that, but it wasn't an option. After the meeting Keldor and I looked at the Ferry schedule and cost, and decided that it wouldn't cost any more to take the ferry home than it would to drive the full length of Finland and then over and south to Lövånger again, so we booked the Sunday evening Ferry. This turned out to be a very good thing.

Friday evening I was on retainer duty, so I served high tabel, and took my duties seriously enough that I even rinsed their bowls after the soup in the first course. During the feast there was more singing (mostly in Swedish, with some English), and there was a short session of dancing, so the event included at least a little of everything I love most about the SCA (my top four, in alphabetical order: company, crafts, dance, song, closely followed by "everything else!").

Towards the end of the feast my energy suddenly vanished, so as soon as I had served the final course of food I returned to the cabin and got ready for bed (note that 4 others in the cabin, all of whom had participated in the tournament, were doing the same). My nose started running as I returned to the cabin, and I wondered if it was the temperature difference between the hall and outside, or if I was getting sick? So I took a hot shower and put tiger balm on my nose, which cleared things up beautifully, and went to sleep.

Sunday morning as I packed and loaded the car my nose was again runny every time I went outside. Temperature difference? Getting sick? I tried to keep a bit of a distance from others, and for those that got hugs, I kept my head turned well away, just in case. Keldor was still feeling healthy, having recovered from last week's cold, but he mentioned that during the tournament he noticed that most of the sound in his right ear had gone away, which was a bit annoying.

By the time we started driving I was feeling really tired, so I was glad we only had the four hour drive to the ferry terminal, rather than needing to do 13 hours driving time all way way home. Around 14:30 I suddenly felt like I wanted ice cream. Normally I eat only homemade ice cream, but on some road trips I will make an exception, as one can't really make ice cream whilst driving. Besides, sharing photos of road trip ice cream is a Drachenwald thing. So we pulled into the next supermarket we passed and had a look. They had the standard large plastic boxes of super sweet commercial ice cream (no thanks), and some tubs of Ben and Jerry's (I know many people love that, but I don't like chocolate, and all of their flavours included chocolate), and a few flavours of a locally produced ice cream from Närpes Glassfabrik (this is a Swedish speaking part of Finland, so while the company also has a Finnish name, the packaging was mostly in Swedish). The store we were in was small, but they had four flavours of Närpes ice cream to choose from: Banana toffee (nope, Keldor doesn't care for banana flavoured things, even though he eats banana), raspberry licorice (nope, I don't like licorice), white chocolate with strawberry sauce (nope, I don't like chocolate), and old fashioned bourbon vanilla (we have a winner!)

On our way out of the store I bought a packet of roasted almond pieces, and we happily ate ice cream with almond sprinkels till the container was empty and I had completely licked the box clean. That was amazing. If you are ever in southern Finland, try Närpe's ice cream--they make it by hand in small batches, and it is yummy!

We arrived at the Ferry terminal around 17:00, and I lay down on the bed in the back of the van and slept while Keldor started writing his event "berättelse". I woke up when it was time to board the ferry, and we found the "comfort lounge" that we had paid for. comfort. Humph. Not so much. The chairs there recline a little, but so not enough! I am a side or belly sleeper, I can't/won't sleep on my back, nor sitting up. Also, the pairs of seats have armrests between them so one can't even cuddle up and snooze on one's partner. Luckily, the floor is carpeted, so I did my yoga, and then lay down on the floor at his feet and hugged his foot as I slept (he is happy to sleep in the chairs provided, mutant that he is).

We reached Umeå at 23:00, and he had the energy to drive us all the way to his dad's house, where I took a hot shower, and was in bed by 01:30. Since he was still having problems hearing in his right ear he decided that rather than trying to work on Monday he would plan to sleep in till it was late enough to call our local health center and book an appointment to get it checked out. I was totally ok with sleeping in, especially as I was by then pretty certain that I was fighting off a cold (I have no idea if it was the same one he'd had the week before, which, according to the test he took then, wasn't covid, or something else).

Once he'd done his call we drove the cats home, and I went straight back to bed for a nap, not getting up and having breakfast till after 13:00! I took it easy for the rest of Monday, and by Tuesday morning I was feeling better, and resumed working on my thesis. So whatever I had, it didn't bother me long, and the only symptoms were being tired (which part could have been nothing more than doing a roadtrip, event, and tournament) and a a couple of hours with a slightly runny nose and a little bit of something that was almost, but not quite, a sore throat. Hopefully no one else got it.

His call to the health center got him an appointment for Thursday, during which the doc saw nothing wrong with his ear, and hypothesized that the cold he'd had caused some fluid to get backed up in the wrong area near his ear, partially blocking sound. So he's been prescribed some nose spray to use once a day for the next several, and if that doesn't clear it up make a new appointment.

This week I had two appointments in town, and we still haven't made time to fix the issue with the breaks on Keldor's ca, so we decided to bring the cats in and spend the week at his dad's house.

We also brought my new work recliner and lap-keyboard desk thingie, my computer, and a second monitor. As a result, I have worked quite happily here. I am loving the new set up (though it is, of course, better with the even bigger external monitor at home), But having good posture while I work matters, and that is easy to achieve in a recliner, and with the keyboard on my lap, and my mouse or computer pen and tablet on the shelf we attached to the armrest of the recliner my shoulder doesn't hurt when working, because it is neither too high nor too low for my body. As a result I have created lots of figures for my thesis, worked out the figure number scheme for all of chapter 5 section 3 (the laser-ablation ICP-MS trace element composition maps which form the backbone of the thesis), and created the correctly labeled figure pages for all of them, ready to drop the images into. I have also written all of the figure captions for the figures that exist, and some other text that ties into all the above. Bringing the thesis itself to 21,368 words, plus 1,515 words in the figure captions.

Monday's appointment was for an x-ray which I hope wasn't really needed. Back in December I noticed a little bony lump on the top of my right foot (the light hit it just right whilst I was doing yoga, so I saw it, and then poked at it to determine that it really is a lump). It isn't in any way uncomfortable or painful, and I might not have ever noticed it if I hadn't been looking at my feet just then. But one isn't meant to have a lump just there, so, this being a country with medical care available for everyone, I called the local health clinic to ask for an appointment. I made it clear when I called that since it didn't hurt or cause problems they didn't need to try to find time to see me before Christmas, but if they could put me on the list I would appreciate it. As a result I went in to see them on 1 February, and the medical student who first saw me did all of the interview questions (yes, I am healthy, no it doesn't cause me any problems, but what is it, and should I be concerned?). He called in the actual doctor to have a look, and her first reaction was "if it doesn't cause a problem, it is probably nothing to worry about".

Then she pointed out the calluses on the sides of my big toe, and said that they can be a symptom of my toes shifting their position into bad alignment, and that one can buy corrective things to help straighten them back into place, and if left unchecked it can cause your shoes to no longer fit and become uncomfortable, at which point they recommend surgery to scrape away the excess bone that develops along the side of the joint at the base of the big toe, and she showed me the scar from her surgery for just that problem. My big toes haven't yet shifted out of position so much that they interfere with comfort wearing my sandals or my winter boots, but it does explain the calluses that had started to form on the inner edge of my big toes, which had never been there before about a year or two ago. I had been trying to eliminate those calluses by wearing five toe socks and trying to make a point of flexing my toes wide whenever I think about it. Perhaps strengthen my feet muscles will also solve the symptom she pointed out, especially as now I am more aware of it. If not, I can try one of the thingies to encourage them to go back to better alignment.

While I was talking to both the docs I remembered that my right foot had been x-rayed in october of 2021 (when I hurt my toes falling from an acroyoga balance and landing wrong), and wondered if the x-rays happened to show the part of my foot that has the lump? They couldn't look it up, as the x-rays were taken when I still lived in Norrbotten county, and the local health centers in Västerbotton county can't access my on-line health records from Norrbotten, so they asked me to call Norrbotten and request a copy of the Xrays. I did, and was given the choice being snail-mailed either a paper printout (at no cost), or a USB thumb drive (for 200 SEK, but which would have better resolution than the printout). I asked "how about email", and they said "we don't email medical records" (which I think is stupid, but they didn't make that rule, which is likely a side effect of GDPR).so I asked for the usb version.

In the meantime I got a call to the xray clinic in Skellefteå, which surprised me, since I thought we had only discussed obtaining a copy of the old xray to see if the lump existed already in 2021 and I just didn't notice. So I called the local health clinic, and the nurse said, yes, the doc really does want a new xray too.

Therefore I went in on Monday morning for that. I told the xray technician that I had the usb with the old xrays if they want to compare, but it turns out that while the local health clinics can't access my heath records across county lines, the xray departments of the hospital can access my old xrays across county lines. I guess that the doc will get back to me later about the results, and if either or both of the old and new xrays show the lump. But I just stuck a reminder on the calendar for mid April to call and ask if they haven't gotten back to me before then. (Given that I want to finish this thesis during March, April sounded like a good time to return to this question.)

My other appointment was with the hearing clinic at the hospital, to see how I like the new hearing aids they gave me a month ago and do they need any adjusting before we decide that they are keepers? I love them. They work much better than my last pair, and it is much easier to hear (the loudest loud setting is actually too loud for comfort for most things, so I mostly don't use it, unless I am trying to hear something quite quiet). They also connect directly to my telephone, and way faster than the external bluetooth adapter I needed for the last hearing aids. I had her make a minor change (turn down the volume when the hearing aids announces the name of the program I just switched to using the phone app, plus adding a couple of standard programs). She suggested that I come back in a month for final check in before deciding if I am going to keep them, and I countered that given how far away I live, I would be ok with skipping that visit. She said, ok, I will give you a month to decide you want to see me, if so, call us and book time with me, If you don't call before the end of that time I will assume that everything is good, and we will send you the bill for the new hearing aids (I think she said they will cost me 500 SEK each).

The big advantage for us living in town this week is that Keldor has been able to stay after work each day and make progress on my new helmet. He finished the construction today, all that remains is padding and strapping it. He has built it with a very open pattern, inspired by the Vendel period Valsgärde helmet, and he designed it so that I will be able to wear my hearing aids in there, without any part of the helmet coming into contact with them (I will use my old ones for this--they may not be as good as my current ones, but they will be way, way better than wearing my old helmet without any hearing aids at all, and then if something goes wrong and they are somehow damaged by a freak accident, it won't cost me my new ones).

So now we have one more work day, then we will head home for Friday evening and Saturday during the day. We will return to town for the Shire annual meeting on Sunday, and probably stay to help out a friend with projects on Monday.

We have till Thursday to have practiced enough with my new helmet that I have it well calibrated so I can fight in Nordmark Coronet on the weekend. We will drive down Thursday evening/night, sleep at his brothers house, and then do the last bit of drive on Friday during the day. It should be a good event, and I hope I get enough thesis writing done between now and the drive that I can enjoy the weekend without feeling like "I should be working".

I saw a recent FB post by Fruadelias that has me thinking that she is, at heart, a kinder, more compassionate person than I. She explained that she was having new medical symptoms and her doc had said "if it gets worse go to the ER", and now they were worse, but she was wondering if they were "worse enough", as she didn't want to be a bother and in the way for the people at the ER if it turned out to be noting serious (to say nothing of the energy needed to take public transit to get there, given that the symptoms were draining her reserves as it was). In contrast, when I considered the possibility of an ER trip this weekend I never once thought about the burden my presence might cause for the folk working there, but made my decision solely based on the lelel of inconvenience I would experience getting there balanced against the risk that they might not help.

The difference between us starts with how we experience pain. She sufferers from chronic pain, so it is a near constant thing that she is used to working around.
For me pain is normally a fleeting, rare, message from my body:

Me: *Bumps into something*
Nerves: Ow! Don't do that!
Me: *Rubs spot to acknowledge message and promise not to do it again.*
Nerves: Message recived. Alert cancled. Stand down.
Me: *Promptly forgets it happened and resumes tasks...* Hours later... What is this bruise from? *pokes bruise*
Nerves: Ow! Don't do that!
Me: *Gently rubs spot in apology*
Nerves: Message recived. Alert cancled. Stand down.

The one exception to this is when I get an infection, which generally keeps hurting till I do something about it. Usually it is in a finger, which was either stabbed with a needle, or bumped against something, and is thus easy to access, so the second it starts to hurt I am washing the area, (re)opening the wound, and cleaning with hydrogen peroxide before putting on a salve and taping it, and that normally triggers the "Message recived. Alert cancled. Stand down" response on the part of my nerves pretty quickly.

Except for bladder infections. My first one, in 1997 or '98, was the worst, since I didn't have any idea what was happening and thus missed any warning signs my body may have sent, and the first I knew I was already to the "burning sensation when I pee, plus I need to pee again directly after peeing" stage of the problem. Luckily my boyfriend at the time knew about bladder infections, recognised the symptoms, called his dad, who was a doctor. His dad called a pharmacy, the prescription was picked up, along with some cranberry juice, and the problem was soon solved, but not before I had been reduced to tears dealing with a pain both more intense and more persistent than any I had encountered hitherto.

Since then bladder infections have been rare, but they have happened. Since I am terrified to experience that kind of pain again I watch for the early warning signs, and try to always drink plenty of water. The few times it has crossed the line into starting to hurt a little in the bladder area and I need to pee again promptly after having done so, I up my water intake, drink cranberry juice, and make an appointment at the local health center. This usually results in a prescription for antibiotics, and the problem is solved.

The last time was five years ago, and the nurse who saw me explained that I had drunk so much water that she didn't really see bacteria in my urine sample, but she gave me antibiotics anyway, since it was clear from my symptoms what the problem was. She also gave me a small plastic sample jar with a lid, saying that if it happens again please get a sample before you drink so much water, so they can see the bacteria; they don't wish to use antibiotics when there isn't bacteria.

After four years of that jar sitting in the bathroom drawer unused I moved to this house and decided that, since I had never needed it, and it was a good size to take nuts or seeds along on a road trip, it may as well be useful, rather than taking up space. Besides, there is no under sink drawer in the new house, nor any other decent storage in the bathroom (fixing that is on the list, but other stuff comes first).

Now we've been in this house nearly a year, and until last week there was no sign that I might again have another bladder infection. Then, on Wednesday evening, I started to feel a little off, and the first little hint that perhaps it could happen.

But I felt better Thursday morning, and was focused on last minute preparations for my job interview in the afternoon (more reading of relavant literature and checking that my curtain hanging behind me was positioned correctly to make a tranquil background for the Teams meeting), and if there were any sympoms, I didn't notice them.

The interview went well. I felt I gave them useful and relevant answers to my questions, and that I received the same to mine. They have four canidates total they are interviewing, and will try to come to a decision within two weeks.

But Thursday evening I begin to again be aware of a vauge discomfort around my bladder, and needed to pee more often. I drank more water, and resolved to call the local health center first thing in the morning.

When I called she made me an appointment for 10:00 and suggested that I try not to pee before coming, so they could get a sample, or, if it was urgent, then bring a sample myself.

So I re-washed an empty peanut butter jar, and filled it the next time it was urgent (hint, it is always urgent when a bladder infection is involved). I had clearly been drinking enough water, as there wasn't much colour in the sample.

In the couple of hours between calling and the appointment the symptoms, which had reached "unpleasant" early that morning, eased a bit, so they were at the "noticable, but not serious" stage when I walked over, and at no time had the discomfort risen to the painful, burning pain when peeing one can get with a bladder infection. (Thankfully!)

The nurse who saw me appeared to be a man (but I didn't ask, and he didn't say; I mention this only because men, having generally longer urethras, and so a smaller chance of external bacteria making its way to the bladder, than women, tend to not get bladder infections, so this could have effected his decisions duringour meeting) and looked to be at least as old as I am. He took my temperature (no fever), asked me some routine questions and took the sample to the lab. After a short time he said that there was no evidence of bacteria in the sample and I should go home, and to call them again if it gets worse.

I didn't like the sound of that at all. I had already achieved "uncomfortable", and really didn't want to cross the line to "pain", but he didn't listen to my fears and sent me away without help, and not even advice like "drink lots of water" and "drink cranberry juice". (Hopefully only because I said I had had them before and thus he could assume I already know the basics.)

So I walked across the street, bought some cranberry juice and some Alvadon and went home. Things stayed at "uncomfortable, but not painful if I take alvadon regularly and drink water often and cranberry juice regularly" through to Sunday late afternoon. My energy levels were low, so we didn't work on home improvement or even sewing projects, but we managed to play Quirkel, and I read a good way into DukeFlieg's new book.

On Sunday morning we tried walking to the store to buy more Cranberry juice, but I managed only half a block before deciding I should head home, pee again, and lay on the sofa so that it doesn't fly away. He, wonderful man that he is, continued on and bought the juice.

By noon I was feeling well enough to walk, slowly, to the little Christmas market next to the museum, by the Church Village. It was a small markert, but there was a young lady selling some butter she had chruned herself, into which she had added some finely grated Västerbottensost (the best of the local cheeses, just ask anyone in either Västerbotten or Norrbotten), an older lady selling home baked sourdough bread (which went well with the cheesy butter), and another selling bottles of Aronia saft (juice concentrate) that she had made from the berries in her garden. She described them as tart, flavourfull, and high in vitamin C, which sounded perfect for someone fighting off a minor bladder infection without medical help.

It is just as described. I looked the berry up, and the English word is choke berry, which I had seen mentioned in books, but have never tried. The juice is yummy. Much tastier than cranberry.

After the market we went into the museum so I could pee, and to have a look, since we had never been in before. It is nice. The building is an old timber farmhouse, which dates to the 1700's (there is probably a sign somewhere with the year, but, if so, I missed it. The rooms on the main floor are decorated in period style, with appropriate furnishings, and they had available the traditional Swedish Christmas glögg (warm, spiced wine, served over rasins and almonds) and pepparkakor (gingerbread cookies) for the visitors (I didn’t take any, since I don't like wine, and none of the commercial pepparkakor are made with butter, which my tastebuds belive is the only acceptablebaking fat).

Upstairs they had a display in one room on shoemakers, with a lot of traditional work tools and a shoe making treadle sewing machine, and the other was set up like an old one-room school house, with desks, books, maps, and all the accessories.

In the cellar, in one room they had a smithy display, with a write-up on the local smith from the 1800's whose bellows and tools were on display, and examples of things that smiths used to make, including iron wagon wheel covers. In the next room was a display of sewing and fashions, and even an extensive button display. There was also a long, narrow room with an arched roof and a conference table, which looked perfect for holding a small SCA feast, and in the room off of that containing an black Adler from 1913. This is an open-top car, so old you can still see how the style of horse drawn carriages influenced its design, and a display of veterinary equipment.

It was a lovely diversion, but I did need to pee three times before we left. Then we went home, sampled the food we'd bought at the market and played a couple of games of Quirkel. During the second game I started feeling worse (despite the water and juice), and I am quite certain that contributed to his win that round (never mind that he's still ahead in total number of games won).

But after the game I suddenly felt even worse, including crossing the line over to a burning sensation when I pee, and, for the first time since the symptoms started, I had a fever. But it was 17:00 on a Sunday, so not much I could do about it till the health center opened at 08:00 on Monday.

Yah, we could have driven the 35 minutes to the hospital and sat in the waiting room for hours till everyone with more serious issues had been dealt with, and then faced the risk that even with the increased pain and fever the bacteria still might not show up in my very water diluted urine. (To say nothing of being exposed to whatever getms the others present might have.)

I briefly considered that, then decided that I would rather take a hot shower (which seems to help) and go to bed early, so I did, after reminding Keldor that the house is his if I die (I don't cope well with pain, and didn't hold out much hope for my chances).

The next 12 hours involved me sleeping fitfully, holding a hot water bottle against my tummy, getting up to pee and drink more every one to two hours, and taking another Alvaon every three hours, and sweating a lot. Do not recommend.

When Keldor's alarm went off at 05:00 I was starting to feel a little better, so I got up as usual and saw him off and talked with him on the phone while working on a sewing project as he drove to work just like it was a normal week day, though I drank more water and juice than normal.

By the time 08:00 rolled around I was feeling enough better that rather than calling the local Health Centre to make an appointment, I chatted with the folk at the national healthcare hotline, and agreed to wait and watch. By 09:00 I was feeling so much better I had the energy for housework. Not a huge amount, and I paused often to read, but clearly the worst was over and I was recovering rapidly.

By yesterday I had enough energy for a normal productive day, so the bedsheets are clean, clothes have been washed, and the laundry room has been swept and tidied.

So, now I know that when the Swedish national health care webpage says that bladder infections usually clear up on their own within a few days, that, yes, it can, but the process isn't pleasant. The upside is that I didn't take any antibiotics, so I don't also have to recover from the collateral damage they do to my wanted microbes. That said, knowing what I know now, in hindsight I can say, yes, if that Nurse had given me antibiotics I would have taken them! Then I would have been spared the extreme bits of Sunday.

Last weekend we went down to Sundsvall for the V.Ä.V. SCA event (the letters stand for the swedish phrase for "violence is beautiful"), and it is a fighting event. There were many people there that I adore, and I was really looking forward to seeing folk. However, when we got there Friday night I was feeling tired and not so interested in human interaction as I would normally be. I wondered if I was feeling a little off from having been vaccinated Thursday, even though I had had no other symptoms, but wasn't certain. When we were arrived (a little after 22:00) they were in the middle of the "Ask the Knights" session, so Keldor and I sat down at a table and he listened and participated in the conversation, and I worked on my sewing and half listened. These days, when at full energy I should have been able to follow the Swedish conversation with no problem, but my ear was bothering me a little, and I had trouble focusing on the conversation, so I heard/understood only a litte, and was happy sewing. After a little while I realised that I had most of a very long bench to myself, and that the bench had a padded top and was broad enough. The room is very small, and full of people, so I decided to do my yoga right there on the bench, and it felt great. After a very nice yoga session I then lay down on the bench, put my head on Keldor's knee, and took a nap while the Ask the Knights conversation continued. I woke when the formal conversation ended and Keldor and I went down to the sauna for a bit before heading to bed just after 01:00.

Saturday the plan for the event was fencing and archery in the morning, and heavy fighting after lunch. When Keldor was ready to get up at 08:30 I was feeling like I could sleep more, but we'd driven 344 km to get there, and there were friends I hadn't seen in ages, so I got up and joined them for breakfast. However, by 11:00 I was so sleepy I went back to the van to sleep (we had planned to sleep in the hall, on our own indoor SCA event bed of thermarest camping mats and sheepskins, but the poor autocrat discovered when they arrived on site that instead of the hall having the 19 bunk beds they'd been promised, all the upper bunks were missing, so they put out a frantic call for help, and all of the locals who had cots brought them, so that everyone who had asked for a bed got something much like a bed, but cots on the floor take more space than bunk beds, so by the time we arrived on site there wasn't a place where one could put a double wide bed/nest on the floor. Since we have the 90 cm wide bed that lives in the back of the van it made sense to just sleep there. Which, since we parked right by the door both nights (moving the car away during the day time hours), meant that I had a shorter walk to the ground floor toilets than I normally do on that site, since the sleeping rooms are on the third floor).

I slept nearly an hour, woke briefly when Keldor came to armour up, decided that, no, I wasn't going to armour up after all, and slept another 30 minutes. Then I got up, had some lunch, looked out the window, and saw the fighters gathering for the footwork class with Sir Krake. That sounded fun, and like something I could do without armour, so I joined them, enjoyed it, and had a few things click for me that hadn't in other foot work classes (wherein they used different words to try to communicate the same thing. "lean forward till your start to fall and your food will automatically go forward" describes the same thing as "shift forward, leading with your hip until your foot automatically follows", but the latter makes sense for me, and just works, while the former felt terrible).

As the footwork class wound up the hint of rain we'd been having turned into something one can actually describe as rain, so I went into the hall, where there were lots of people sitting around the tables talking and working on projects in small groups. I managed to find a place to sit and sew, but wasn't really in any of the circles and felt myself very outside of it all, happily sewing, but not feeling any connection with anyone. And my ear was bothering me. My ears often itch (it is a downside of hearing aids), and while I know better, sometimes I scratch, and when that happens sometimes my nails do a little damage to the skin. My right ear had clearly been scratched open at some point, and it wasn't feeling nice to have the hearing aid in there (but neither did I want to go without in a place where someone might talk to me, never mind that I wasn't interacting much with folk).

I went out to the car a bit before the fighters finished up, and just lay on the bed a bit looking at my phone, feeling vaguely like I was wasting an opportunity to spend time with friends, but not having the energy to do anything about it. Then Keldor joined me, and comforted me a bit for feeling out of the event, and I comforted him a bit for having taken a blow that probably cracked one of his lower ribs. As we were talking Count Æriker came over to point out that I was the second highest ranked person site, after him, so when it came time for toasts during the banquet it would be him for Drachenwald, me for the King and Queen, then the three Viscounts could take Nordmark, the Prince & Princess, and Gyllengran (the local shire).

This reminded me that, yes, even though I wasn't going to be hungry that late in the evening, I should still attend the banquet, so I did, and had a pleasant time half listening to the conversations around me, working on Nålbingning, doing the toasts in the proper time, but I never really felt connected, and my ear was bothering me. Not bad, like a full-on ear infection (those really hurt), but definite discomfort bordering on light pain.

After folk had eaten some of them moved outside (the tiny hall gets really, really loud with so many people talking at once, which made standing out in the crisp autumn air by the fire really appealing to about half the folk). I suspect that had I been my normal gregarious self I would have joined them, but it was easier to just sit in my corner till the crowd cleared enough to do my yoga, and I went out to the car and went to sleep before 23:00. (Keldor stayed up happily talking to folk till 02:00, and normally I would have, too.)

Because I went to bed so early I half expected to wake early, and contemplated just driving home very early in the morning, and letting him sleep while I drove. But no, I slept in as late as he did, neither of us waking till 09:00. Since we'd slept in the car it was only grab the box of feast gear from the hall and check to see if we'd forgotten anything and get on the road.

Having gotten a total of 10 hours of sleep per day I was awake enough to enjoy the trip home. We stopped at an antique & second hand store, where I bought a nice wall mount cabinet for holding spools of thread and stuff, which came with spools of thread and stuff, and he bought a wide leather weight lifting belt that he thinks we can modify to be a better belt to hang my leg armour from. We also stopped at Skulleberget and went for a short walk up the hill--not all the way to the cave, but probably about half way there felt like plenty for both of us.

Monday morning first thing I called the local health center, and got an appointment for 13:00. When I got there and the nurse looked into the ear that was bothering me they became very worried, and said that it looks like I have a hole in my eardrum. I explained that I had one when I was little, but had surgery to fix it when I was 10 years old, and had it come back? The nurse decided that he wasn't qualified for this visit, and fetched a doctor. The doctor looked, said that she couldn't see a hole in the eardrum, but that it was covered with scar tissue (yes, I know--that surgery when I was ten, and lots of infections and tubes in my ears when I was little). She said that even if there is a hole, and she doesn't think there is one, the antibiotic ear drops she prescribed will still help the minor infection in the ear canal. I thanked her, and happily went to fetch my ear drops.

The drops contain an anti-itch component, so I felt better pretty much right away after using them (though it took a day before the swelling went down so that I could put the left hearing aid in without discomfort). This week has been busy, with at least a couple hours of research each day, putting stuff away from the event, prepping for this weekends event, Monday night fighter training and armour repair. Tuesday cleaning, waxing/polishing the van (which took all evening--it is slippery now! I had never touched a car that has been waxed before--it is going to be so easy to brush the snow off of it now). Wednesday Keldor came home from work so tired that he just slept on the couch while I worked on replacing the zipper on the soft ice chest we use for road trips.

Yesterday morning I noticed that the house across the street, that had been slightly damaged in a fire before we moved here, and which the owner has been fixing up with intent to sell, finally has a For Sale sign on it. So while we did our normal 30 minute phone call as he drives to work, I got on line and checked it out. They are asking nearly three times what I paid for this house! It will be interesting to see what it sells for. While I had hemnet open I looked at the other properties in this town, and then at things in the countryside. Oh, look, a cute farm house with a forest only 8 minutes from here, with a viewing that evening. Way out of my price range, even if we were done fixing this place up and could sell for top dollar, but, why not go look?

So I did (he didn't get home from work on time to join me). House is cute, nice location. The forest is actually three distinct properties--a good sized parcell the house is on, and two, much larger, forest plots further away. The realtor mentioned that the owner wants to keep living in the house one more year before transfering the property, and I wonder if it is worth asking if perhaps they might be willing to sell me the house and few hectares adjacent to it for whatever we can sell my house for, and let someone else buy the actual forest?

Keldor got home around the same time I did, and we managed, after some difficulty*, to load the large, pretty, china cabinet that came with the house into the van. This would have been much easier if the top decorative edge hadn't been both glued and screwed into place, since it was only that bit that made it impossible to slide the upper cabinet through the door and onto the bed. Instead we needed to unscrew the bed from the floor and take it out, so that we could tilt the upper cabinet at enough of an angle to slide it diagonally through the door, and then lift it up and over the lumps of the wheel wells, at which point we propped it up at a slight angle on our beanbag chairs so that it would sit far enough in the van to make room for the base as well. Luckily, the base is narrow enough that we could also fit in the chests and bedding bags for this weekend's SCA event. With all the soft stuff packed around the cabinet it shouldn't be moving at all on the drive.

This weekend is Höstdansen, one of my favourite SCA events, since it is all dance, most of the time. Also some of my dearest friends will be there, including Hjälmar, who moved to southern Sweden at the beginning of the pandemic, and then to the Uppsala area this spring. He will be renting a trailer and taking the cabinet south with him, and I wish him much joy in it. It is pretty (by far the prettiest of the three china cabinets that came with this house), but it is also the largest and least useful as an improvised pantry (which is what we are doing with the other two), so I am looking forward to the extra space with it gone.

*loading the cabinet in the van would have been easier if not for the road construction on our road--they are digging the road down more than a meter deep, then putting a thick layer of stone base before they put the road itself over all--so far they have gotten as far as the thick stone base just as far as our house itself, but not as far as the driveway. The stone base is still a good 20 or 20 cm lower than our lawn, so it isn't possible to drive right to the door, so we had to carry the cabinet bits across the lawn, and then carefully down over the edge to the road level, and then try to put it in. It would also have helped if Keldor hadn't broken that lower rib at the event, and then further damaged it at work yesterday. The only good bit in that injury is that this morning he was moving so stiffly he took the day off, and, since the car is already loaded, he can take it easy. Well, for him. He is busy in the cellar now, carving on a decorated horn copy of a Viking artifact. The plan was for him to do that while I did a bit of work on my paper in progress, so I had better close this here and get to work.

While I have enjoyed all of my days stone carving, Friday was the most fun. Anna joined me, and we made rapid progress on the bellows stone. With the company as I worked I didn't feelthe need for breaks as often as I normally take them.

Friday evening we found out that our housemate tested positive for Covid.

Friday night I woke up in the middle of the night, and since I was awake anyway, I turned on the computer and set up a google doc spreadsheet for the inventory of what had been in the smithy when it burned. Our boss had asked Keldor to write up a list, so I started one for him. Saturday was my day off, so being awake in the night wasn't a problem.

Saturday they were expecting stormy weather.not only was it my day off, it was also supposed to be Keldor’s day off. But with the forcasted weather he and Rod decided to head down the hill and take down the cover over the forge so it wouldn't blow away.

They planned to come back up the hill, and then go to the longhouse to do some rhings with the wood working tools there. I planned to join them, and perhaps do some carving on my own project, it being my day off.

So they went down the hill, and I sat to the computer. Did more with that spreadsheet, sent an important email, paid bills. Eventually put the computer down to cook the food I had meant to cook.

Eventually, Keldor came back up and reported that the weather was better than predicted, so they wound up working afterall with the children's forge activity.

By then I was starting to feel like I might be fighting off a virus,so I tooka hot shower in hopes that it would help.

Sunday morning I felt fine,so I went upto the longhouse and started stone carving. But was lower energy than normal, not engaging with the visitors,just focusing o the stone. After one hour I realised that I really didn't have the energy for that, and clocked out, went home and slept for another couple of hours.

That evening after the smiths came back up the hill Rachel was feeling poorly, and I, while not feeling quite sick, did feel like my body was fighting off something.

So we got covid tests.she tested positive directly, I tested negative.

Monday morning I still felt like I was fighting off something, soI sent a note to my boss, who replied that I should stay home untill well, and that she also had covid.

Another nap, and then I rode along with Keldor to return tools borrowed from the museum smithy at Å (i could relax as easily in the car as at home, and there was no one in the car to risk infecting. On the way ho e he obtained more covid tests, and this time I tested positive. At the same time, I feel better--more like I won the battle woththe virus and there is just clean up to do. Hope that isn't an illusion.

I have never been one to get sick easily, often going a year or more between catching a cold, and then not being sick long if I do. I remember many occasions where my partner was sick, we continued to share a bed, and kiss one another, and I didn't get sick.

Here at the museum one of the other people in our share house got sick a few days ago, and yesterday tested positive for covid. I have not seen much of her since she got sick--she has passed through the kitchen on the way to the loo when I have been in the kitchen, or I have passed through the kitchen on the way to the loo when she was in the kitchen.

I am, of course, fully vaccinated against covid, and, so far, neither Keldor nor I have any symptoms, and I hope it stays that way. I also hope that she recovers quickly and completely, and that none of the rest of us in the house gets sick, and that none of us have infected anyone else.

... and I feel much better as a result.

When we went to bed last night I was feeling rather stressed looking at the calendar and everything coming up and wondering how I was going to find the time needed to prep for each fun thing on the list, in addition to accomplishing work and basic life and home maintenance chores. I was also feeling the changes that start to creep in to one's body when one hasn't made time for anything resembling a workout recently.

The intrest in training has been there, I have just had lots of very full on days in a row, and I am just not getting to it.

Therefore, when I woke today at 03:30 I decided it was time to move, and, unlike some way early mornings when I think that, I actually did.

The DownDog yoga app I am so fond of recently added a Beta test version of a "Strength Flow" routine, wherein one does a bit of yoga, then it gives a bit of strength training exercises from their HIT (high intensity training)app, then goes back to yoga. I had tried this a week or so back, with just a 20 minute session (which came with one 4-minute HIT section in the middle). This morning I did a 45 minute session, and loved it. The yoga bit was a great mix of stretching and strenght poses, and the two 4-minute HIT sections where enough to make me break a sweat, but were still doable (though I did one set of pushups from my knees).

Now I am ready to go back to bed for an hour or so and then face my day. But unlike last night, I am looking forward to the day and optamistic that it will go well and I will be ready to head north for Spelmansstämman this evening.

Some weeks back I became increasingly aware that my glasses were no longer the correct prescription. It had become hard to thread a needle while wearing my sewing glasses. At the sane time I noticed that I couldn't have my driving glasses on indoors at all, though I swear that I could when they were new, if I didn't want to read, sew, or sit on the computer.

My sewing glasses are progressive lenses designed for indoor use, which meant that I needed to switch to the driving glasses when outside, and I noticed that it had gotten to the point that the second I walked out the door wearing them I would saw "gagh!" and promptly switch glasses.

The day that I realized that I was increasingly feeling eye strain from reading I got on line and looked for an optometrist in Skellefteå (the nearest city to Lövånger, the small town in which I now live). There are three there. The first I checked has an on line booking system, which showed the next available appointment a month in the future. The second had one available two weeks out, and the third could see me the next day. Of course I booked that one.

I asked if it is possible to get glasses that are progressive such thst one can have the same pair for both driving and sewing. I showed her the tiny eye on my preferred needle, and how small stitches I prefer to take with it. She put the test lenses on me and showed me how they would look. That felt so great I said yes. She asked how much time I spend reading, and then recommended getting another pair for just reading. That pair won't do for sewing and looking up to talk, but it will be better on the eyes for long sessions with a book, phone, or computer.

The catch? They refuse to re-use my existing frames and they were iut of stock on "frameless" glsses like I normally wear. I explained about wanting glasses that are as invisible as possible to wear with my medieval costumes, and we decided to order straight away the reading glasses and some progressive sunglasses that will be good for both driving and sewing and wait a couple of weeks till their new frames arrive to order the pairof everyday glasses.

So yesterday I picked up the new glasses on my way north, annd I am in love. The sun glasses are easy to read with, and driving was totally comfortable on the eyes. Alas, the delivery of the new frames hadn't come in yet (it is expected Friday) and they need to put the frames on me to take photos and measurements of exactly where my eyes are with respect to the lenses in order to get the progressive lense correct.

When I got to work I realized that my task for the day was at the wrong focal distance for the reading glasses, and the room too dark for sunglasses.same for dance after work. This is probably why I woke with a slight ache in my eyes. Hope they get those frames soon.

I seem to have fallen into not posting often, mostly because I haven't spent much time at all near a computer. While I *can* post from my phone, I rarely do so. Therefore I need to see how much I can remember now...

The first week of February Keldor had a number of colleagues down with Covid/Omicron. First one of them was feeling a little under the weather after getting his third dose of vaccine, and, thinking it was the vaccine to blame, chose to go to work anyway (stupid!). Then he felt worse, went home, took a test: super positive. The same week a couple of other colleagues choose to go to work despite feeling a bit sick, and then later felt worse and tested positive. Idiots. Keldor had worked with them the days they were sick, too. Luckily, Keldor's three vaccines plus having survived Covid November of 2020 seems to have done the job--he never got any symptoms, and tested negative. However, on the following Sunday morning he felt dizzy right after getting out of bed, and spent the rest of the day with periodic dizzy spells when he moved his head certain directions.

Therefore he called in sick on Monday and went to the doc instead, where they confirmed that it was "kristallsjuka" (vertigo) and gave him some exercises to do to help shake the crystals in his inner ear into a better position. He took the whole week off of work, because otherwise he would have been working at a great height, and one doesn't do that when one could get dizzy just from turning one's head to look at what one is doing. Therefore I also took the week off of work, and we accomplished a few things around the house, and did lots of art. It was great.

Of course, in my case, I didn't take time off of work, just changed which days I would work. Since I work half-time I normally work two days one week, and three the next. Instead I worked zero days that week, and five the next.

The timing for that was good, as my friends N & B in Luleå were going out of town, and had asked P, who lives in Skellefteå, to house and dog sit for them, and said I could stay there, too. (the timing was even better, since my friend L, upon whose couch I "normally" sleep when I am back in Luleå for work, had a cold.

So I had P's company for the drive north and south, and during the week last week, which was nice, especially as she drove.

Then this week I choose to work only Thursday and Friday, which gave me five days in a row at home, which was nice. Especially as this meant that we made some good progress on cleaning the cellar and hauling away some of the previous owners junk. It also meant that on Wednesday I had the energy to sit down and work on the paper I started months ago to publish some results of my research.

By "work on", I am delighted to report I mean "finished a complete draft". I was so excited. I had gotten it pretty close before I took the suspension of studies some months back, when I went to nearly full time work at the archives, because I wanted to save up a bit more cash before I bought a house.

Now that I have a house, and have gone back to 50% work, I am hoping to get this paper published, and then sit down with my supervisor and see about down-grading my PhD to a Master's degree, and then getting it done. Would I have liked having a second PhD? yes, of course. But with first losing lab access, and then having funding issues, plus pandemic, plus death in the family. Really, it isn't going to happen with this degree. But it would still be great to get a Master's.

Tonight would have been folk dance--our Sunday dance session has switched to Thursdays, and therefore I will normally work on Thursdays (+ whatever other days are needed to bring me to the right number of hours for the week). Sadly, our dance teacher caught a cold, so dance was canceled this week, which gives me a chance to check in here.

the SCA calendar has been filling back up, and we are doing stuff again. But now I watch what is unfolding in Ukraine, and I worry that instead of having pandemic related event cancelations we might have war related event cancellations. I hope it doesn't come to that. [edited to add: which is a very selfish sounding viewpoint. Even more than that I would like countries to quit going to war and invading one another. Wouldn't it be great to live in peace, with no one needing to die in war, or flee from their homes?

I can remember first hearing the term "the information age" back in the 1970's, but, guys, really. We. Had. No.Idea. I mean really. Live maps updating play by play what is happening in the Ukraine, and everywhere else that is related to that. who could have predicted such a thing?

I heard from a friend in California today. He's going to plant some garlic this week. Meanwhile, look out my door at the -20 C temps and the layer of snow, and wonder at the fact that friends who are not at all far away (cosmically speaking) have garden planting to do. In contrast, my useful task this morning was emptying the freezers to the front porch and unplugging them. By the time I get home from work they will be dry and ready to plug back in and refill. When we do we can sort it into what food will stayvhere, and what I will take with me when I move.

We made good progress last week towards that eventual move. On Tuesday I realised that it was nearly December and that Kjartan had said when he bought my half of the house and I started paying rent that he would happily drop the cost of the rent to half once I had packed and taken away all of my stuff in the public areas of the house and so am occupying only one room. Because we have been taking boxes of stuff to Keldor's dad's house every week when I go down to see him, or he comes here, there wasn't much left besides furniture.

So I double checked with David that booking a trailer for Wednesday 1 Dec and taking furniture then would qualify for paying only half rent in December. He agreed, and I took a vacation day and booked the trailer. Then, Tuesday evening we heard that a friend (fully vaccinayed) who had attended the SCA event with us on the weekend had gotten sick and tested positive for covid. Keldor and I were both symtom free (and fully vaccinated) but we booked covid tests anyway, and asked our work colleagues if we should wait for results before returning to work. (Yes, of couse they wanted us to wait).

So I took my test Wednesday morning on the way to pick up the trailer. David was working from home that day so he helped me load the dressers, loom frame, treadle sewing machine, bookcase and rocking chair into the trailer, and I added a bunch more boxes to the car and trailer and drove south. Upon arrival we first re-arranged the basement room to better stack and store my stuff that doesn't care if it gets a bit cold, and then more rearranging in his room and the guest room to make room for the stuff I want in the warm part of the house, abd then we finally unloaded it all, finishing it just 12 hours after picking up the trailer.

The next day he came with me to return the trailer, since neither of us could go to work anyway, and we spent much of Thursday and Friday as rest days, sleeping 10 hours a day (way more than our usual 5 or 6), and taking it generally easy. He got his no-covid result Thursday afternoon, but mine didn't come back till Friday afternoon. By then he'd already cancelled our participation in his company Christmas party, but we had a friend's birthday on Saturday in Skelleftehamn, so we drove south (taking a bit more stuff, of course) I came home early enough on Sunday to attend folk dance (first time I made it in weeks), where we pland our performance for the Luleå Hembygdsgille Julfest next weekend. Looking forward to that party.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/583187.html

I have been checking Hemnet pretty regularly to see if there is anyplace for sale that I could love, at a price I can afford. I saw one that looked interesting, but a bit far away that we decided to have a look at on Sunday anyway. Its location was lovely--7 hectares, with forest, full of blueberry plants (that have lost their leaves already, of course, but one still recognises them), and a field large enough for a West Crown camping event. However, at 1.5 hours from the nearest airport I don't know that we would be able to host an event there and get people to come even from Drachenwald. The house was in much better shape than expected given that it has sat empty since 2016, and it already had things like triple-pane glass in the windows and had been drilled for "mountain warming". While the asking price made it tempting (as I could have bought it outright), the fact that it is 2.5 hours from where I work means that I couldn't actually live there during the week, and it is an hour and a half from Keldor's work, which is also too long for regular commuting. Therefore we won't be making an offer on this one, which is good as the bidding has already gone to nearly twice the original asking price (which, to be fair, is still well within the price range I would consider for a place I loved in a location I was happy with).

Tomorrow we will go look at one in a better location. This one is only 1 hectare of land, but it is in a pretty location and is about half way between Luleå and Skellefteå, which means just over 1 hour drive north to where I work, and just under one hour drive south to where he works. I don't like the idea of commuting, but at least that would be fair to both (and it would mean we could see one another in person more often than now, when we sleep in our own towns during the week and then spend weekends together).

Since that viewing is in the early evening the plan is for me to then follow him back to Skelleftehamn and stay there Friday night and then head to the Umeå area on Saturday for a gathering of the Norrlands Viking group (an informal group of mostly SCA folk who have Viking era costumes and want an excuse to wear them more than just SCA events).

However, this morning I woke up with the left side of my nose feeling stuffed up. No other symptoms, but one doesn't go to the gym or to work during a pandemic with any symptoms at all, so I cancelled my morning acroyoga and let work know I wasn't coming in. I will see how I am feeling later in the day and if it was just me being paranoid, or if I am actually fighting off some sort of virus and the minor feeling of blocking is a sign of the battle.

Since I am home I am taking advantage of the time--I have stripped the bed and am washing the sheets, and I have been making good progress on figure 4 for that paper that I haven't worked on in weeks.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/581179.html

I woke up today feeling of some sort of blockage in my upper nasal passages. Not a runny nose, but more a feeling like there is some foam in there--air still goes through if I breath through my nose, but not as much flow rate as I am used to. I tried blowing my nose, and got a very tiny bit of blood out, but then nothing more. This didn't in any way interfere with my normal morning workout, and I feel otherwise great.

However, there is a pandemic going on, and I have to actually go to work--since I work for the Norrbottens museums archives doing archiving, I have to go there; they don't want us to bring that stuff home. Therefore I called the Swedish health care number to ask "Does this count as a symptom, can I go to work?" They replied "Don't go to work, get a covid test" I asked where/how to do that, and they helped me find the booking page on their web page. The soonest test was 09:15 (I did the call before 06:00, since I normally meet J. for our workout over zoom at 06:00, so that I can go to work at 07:00).

Now I am home from the test--they have the system set up well. One drives to a specific parking lot over near my favourite grocery store, parks, and then someone, bundled up in winter clothes, with plastic face covering, comes to the passenger side of the car (presumably to keep even more distance) and asks for ID, which you need to drop into a plastic bag (so they don't touch it) a bit later they come back and give you a plastic bag containing your ID, a plastic vial with your name, personal number, and a bar-code on it, and all of the other necessary accessories and some instructions.

After using three different cotton swabs (throat, nose, and saliva), and soaking each in the provided fluid in that plastic vial I turned on my blinkers to indicate I was done, and they came back and used a long-armed grabby thingie to take the bag with the sample vial.

Now I have to wait 2 to 5 days before I will hear any results, which means not going to work, which is annoying. However, I have plenty of thesis work that needs doing, so hopefully I can make some progress there.

The other complication is that I was supposed to pick E up and bring her home today, so now she needs to decide if she is comfortable with the risk. I don't feel sick, other than the annoying feeling of cotton in my nasal passage, but this pandemic is an illness that can be totally symptom-free and still contagious....

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/573156.html

Today I paged down on FB till I came to Duke Flieg's short story of the week . I always love his stories, I seem to fall exactly in the middle of his target market group, but this one was just such a beautiful story, with "all the feels" as they say these days, that, after I dried my tears, I felt the need to share it with a friend who I thought really ought to read it, so I used the "share in messenger" option.

Then, thought of another person I thought might especially enjoy it, and then I thought of a few more, and then I started paging down the list of friends that shows when one is in the "share in messenger" mode, clicking on at least one per page. I chose friends who create things, or who I know would appreciate that sort of magic, or who I thought might enjoy the play of emotions the story evokes.

Eventually, I realised that I had had been pressing the share rather a lot, so, curious, I exited that screen and opened messenger to count. 45 people! That doesn't count the many names I saw and didn't share the story with, because they are also friends with Flieg, and probably didn't need my help to call attention to it. Normally I am content to read the stories and leave a comment for Flieg saying what I appreciated this time. This is the first time I felt so compelled to share. I hope that they all enjoy it (those that have time to read it of course, I have already had a few people reply with "thanks, I will look later", and I expect that some of them are likely to forget). A couple of others have already replied saying that they also found the story beautiful.

I am certain that the story would have made me cry no matter when I read it, but I think I may have cried a bit extra since things have been so challenging emotionally lately. I have mentioned my housemate, E, who is living here on an extended visitor's visa until the end of June so that she can finish up her Master's degree. She's had a very rough year (and a not so easy life overall), and this weekend she got yet one more piece of bad news that shook her enough that she quit eating (saying that she just couldn't keep anything down). By Sunday evening she was doing poorly enough that she gave me permission to call the hospital, and after consulting with the 24 hour psychiatric urgent care people they said I should bring her in.

I wasn't certain were to bring her, so I tried first the main door, which happened to have someone leaving just as I walked towards it, so I asked and she said to go around to the back of the building. Around the back of the building I found the entrance for the Emergency room, and we tried that. Right now you enter the door into a foyer and you press a button on a screen for either serious emergency (symptoms of stroke, heart attack, extreme bleeding, etc.), or less urgent emergency (I can't recall the exact Swedish phrases they used). I pressed the less urgent option, and a while later a computer monitor activated and a human spoke to us. When I explained that we had called and been told to bring her in, they said that we need to go a bit further around the building to the entrance labeled "psykiatrisk akutvård".

That door is locked, but had a call button to push. Very shortly thereafter two people came to the door. When I said we had called ahead and who we were, they said that yes, they had been expecting us. They asked if we had any symptoms of covid or other illness, and since we didn't they took our temperatures (in our ear), and let us into a waiting room.

A bit later another couple of people came and did a pre-screening, asking a variety of questions, taking her blood pressure, taking her temperature again (this time with a hand held thing that one points at the forehead) etc. They went away saying that the doctor would be along soon. Then another person came and asked for a urine sample (not easy to provide, given that she also had had nothing to drink that day, but she managed a few drops).

Then the doctor came and brought us into a consultation room, where she asked lots of questions. I had heard most of what was revealed in the answers before, of course, and it is very clear to me that feeling overwhelmed and upset about the hand she has been dealt is an appropriate and reasonable response. I still wish she were doing better, and that she had had fewer things go wrong in the last year.

Eventually the doctor suggested that E.stay with them, at least for the night, and she agreed. Before I left they gave her a sleeping pill, and much to my delight, she drank water with it.

I got home from dropping her off at midnight on Sunday, and should have gone straight to sleep, but, not surprisingly, I couldn't. So I read fluffy posts on FB for a while and managed to get to sleep just after 02:00. Needless to say, I was not at work by 07:00 the next morning, but I did arrive at 08:30. I managed just over 2.5 hours of work, and decided that I was really too tired to usefully sort archive documents, so I flexed my flex time and went home for a three hour nap.

I got up in time to eat a little something before B. showed up at 15:00 for sledding on my hill. The first time this year that someone has joined me for that. It is more fun with company! Though I spend a lower percentage of my time actually sledding. It was a lovely to play in the snow, and what I really needed. Then I checked in with E. (we had also exchanged a few messages the night before after I got home, and before the sleeping pill worked), who wasn't yet doing as well as I would like.

I should have resumed work on my data processing for my Durham research that evening--I had had such a good meeting with my thesis advisor on Friday, and had been feeling even more keen than ever to get that done, so I can publish the results. But while the sledding helped with emotional equilibrium, I didn't really get by brain on line enough for that, and mostly spent the evening twiddling my thumbs.

This morning I managed to make it to work by 07:40, and put in more than 4.5 hours of actual productive time. Came home and continued reading the archaeological inspired cookbook I bought recently and then took a nap. After my nap I went out for more sledding (alone this time, but B. will return tomorrow), and then came in and did a skype call with E. She is looking better today, but I am still worried for her. But the day is still young, so I think I will try to eat a little something more and do some of that data processing before time for yoga and bed. Wish me luck!

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/572090.html

Today is Thursday, 19 December, 2019

In an effort to bring my body back to its optimal state I hereby commit to these things for today:

Only mindful eating

Take my bowl of food and sit in the rocking chair to eat it
For each bite of food close my eyes and chew it thoroughly (or let is dissolve)
Focus only on the eating

Only enough eating

Take only a half-bowl, or, better yet, only a quarter bowl of solid food at a time
After each session of eating drink a full bowl of water directly
Drink at least one full bowl of blackcurrant leaf tea in between each session of eating
Set an alarm and wait at least one hour before the next session of eating
Record everything I eat in my food log
Eat between 2 and 3 bowls of food total for the day, and aim for the lower end
Eat only during the day time hours, when I am actually hungry

Only healthy eating

Eat only home-made foods
Try to aim my average food intake for the month:
At least 15% protein
At least 20% fruit
At least 20% veg
Not more than 25% starch
Not more than 15% dairy
Not more than 1% junk

For today, as of directly after breakfast (10:36), this means:

I can still eat between 1.45 and 2.45 bowls of food between my remaining meals
I am doing great on fruit so far (64%)
No more starch till I have eaten other stuff (already up to 27%)
My next meal needs to feature veg (currently at 0%)
More protein will be needed later today (only at 9% so far)
Don't forget to eat fruit later today--while breakfast had more than needed today, the month is behind on fruit
I may eat a little dairy, but not much (the month average is 13% already, even though I have had none yet today)
Update this section after every meal!

For today, as of directly after second breakfast (12:40), this means:

I can still eat between 1.2 and 2.2 bowls of food between my remaining meals
I am doing great on fruit (42% so far today)
I am doing great on veg (30% so far today)
My next meal must have protein (only at 9% so far today)
My next meal may have dairy (only at 1% so far today)
My next meal may have starch (only at 18% so far today)
I am doing great on junk (0% so far today, and <1% for the month)

For today, as of directly after first lunch (14:07), this means:

I can still eat between 0.7 and 1.7 bowls of food between my remaining meals
I am doing great on fruit (36% for today, 22% for the month
I am doing good on veg (24% for both today and the month)
I am doing ok on protein (16% for both today and the month)
I am doing good on starch (22% for today, and 25% for the month)
I may have more dairy today (2% for today, and 13% for the month)
I am doing great on junk (still < 1% for both the month and today)

For today, as of directly after second lunch (16:02), this means:

I can still eat between 0.1 and 1.1 bowls of food today
I am doing great on fruit (32% for today, 22% for month)
I am doing good on veg (24% for both today and the month)
I am doing ok on protein (16% for both today and the month)
I am doing good on starch (22% for today, and 25% for the month)
I may have more dairy today (5% for today, and 13% for the month)
I am doing great on junk (still < 1% for both the month and today)

Many of the above are normal things I do every every day, and have for years. Others, not so much so, but doing them will help. As much as I love curling up on the recliner and a bowl of food, and it is pretty much my ultimate in "comfort eating", it is time to seek out other forms of self-comfort if I need it, and get off the path I have been following for the last year. This morning the scale said 58.0 kg, which is still way lower than I was for much of my adult life before moving to Tasmania, but well above where I have been for most of my time in Sweden. At this mass I still appear generally slender, but my thighs start to jiggle, and my lower tummy has begun to protrude. While these are not bad in and of themselves, if I continue to increase in mass problems will begin. Much better to resume a healthy lifestyle now, while it is easy. It will be interesting to see how many days in a row I can manage to post such commitments. I don't expect to manage when travelling to events, but, perhaps I can make this a habit on other days?

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/552825.html

* Usually I fly into Edinburgh early in the day, spend the afternoon and evening with Stephanie and her family, and then take the train to Durham the next morning. This time I flew to Manchester arriving in the early evening and the train didn't reach Durham till almost 23:00

* Last conference I helped with setup and registration then spent all day both days at the conference and the evenings on the computer organising conference notes and preparing to be in the lab afterwards. This time I also worked registration/set up for the conference, but realised after I got there that I hadn't actually made arrangements to pick up the poster that my supervisor had printed for me. One of the organisers was heading over to the Archaeology building to get some other stuff, so she said she'd get it, but Karen wasn't in her office, so she came back without it. Therefore, at first intermission I hurried up the hill to get it, found Karen in her office, chatted briefly, and returned to the conference having missed the first couple of 5 minute poster presentations, but in plenty of time to get my poster up before it was my turn (they had organised us into mini sessions grouped by theme, and my group was the third to present). T

hat evening I was experiencing some discomfort with swelling at the left end of my left scar, so didn't really accomplish anything useful work related, but relaxed and took it easy. The next morning the swelling seemed possibly better, certainly no worse, so I opted to take the train to Newcastle for day two of the conference. (I had wondered if I should try to find a medical center and ask if this new swelling is a sign of infection, but since the swollen area was looking less on the pink/red end of the spectrum than the day before, I decided to stick with plan A).

I enjoyed the morning talks, but part way through session #1 the woman sitting next to me started coughing a fair bit, and even sneezed a couple of times, and all I could think was "oh, no, I don't have time for that, keep your viruses over there". I also became more aware of the discomfort with the swelling, and noticed that the right side was also feeling a bit uncomfortable (never mind that, despite normally hating the thought of "drugs" and not taking pain meds, I was taking Alvadon (Paracetamol) every 4 or so hours). Therefore when the first tea break happened I opted to take the train back to

aryanhwy's and went to sleep for three hours. I woke up on time to have had lunch and started making baking powder biscuits before she arrived home from her teaching in Switzerland.

I visited a bit with her, Gwen, and Joel (when he got home from working on the other house, which is getting close to done). I went to bed early, not that long after Gwen went to bed and Joel went back out to make more progress on the house. Of course that meant I woke up early this morning.

Today is Saturday, and the final day of the conference. The plan is a tour of Lindisfarne,including a talk about recent archaeological excavations, something I have long been looking forward to. I am a little hesitant though--there is still swelling on the left side--it almost looks like I still have a (small, with no hint of sag) breast on that side, except that it is centred closer to my armpit than breasts normally are. If I go on the field trip I will have to be with them all day--the bus departs at 09:00, and isn't returning until 17:30. I still have an hour before I need to decide if I am going. I want to, but should I?

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/537790.html

It has been 24 days since surgery, and this morning I felt like I could try, so I did. Cautiously, of course. In the hallway, where I could gently place my hands on the floor and then carefully walk up the opposite wall, and it worked! I can stand on my hands again! :slightly_smiling_face: I will, of course, wait till it feels right before I try just kicking up. That could take quite a while...

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/537084.html

We did manage to get on the road early enough on Friday morning to swing by Storforsen on our way to Arjeplog, where Josie took a photo to prove we were there. It was a beautiful sunny day, and it would have been nice to have more time there, but since we had a meeting to get to we continued along the way. We arrived at the Silvermuseet about fifteen minutes before 14:00, but the museum is closed for lunch between 13:00 and 14:00, so we went across the street to a cafe and had a bite to eat first. Then I went to my meeting and Josie drove over the hotel and checked in.

I didn't really know what to expect from my visit, so was delighted when Ingela took me in to a back room where she had set out all of their soapstone objects for me to look at, photograph, and measure as I will. That was so cool! I just love the cute little bowl (# 477 in the photo). It is only about 3 cm in diameter. (Yes, I do also have photos with a scale bar, I just opted not to include those on the scrivener cards I have made for each object.)

While I was ~~playing with the toys~~ working, Josie toured the museum and spent time in the giftshop listing to Sami music with the clerk there trying to decide which CDs to buy (she would up getting three of them, I think). I took a quick run through the museum when I was done with the artefacts, but really should go back another time to take a better look. Need more friends to come visit for long enough that we do some sightseeing, too.

We stayed that night in a hotel in Arjeplog, where I copied the notes from my phone into scrivener, and started cleaning them up and adding photos, etc. Then the next day we continued on to Jokkmokk, pausing at the Arctic Circle for a photo. We arrived in Jokkmokk just before noon, which is when the Ájtte museum opens, so we had only about a two minute wait till they opened the doors.

After we left the museum we went looking for lunch. We went into the first resturant we came to, a pizza and pasta kinda place, and I didn't see anything on the menu that I would eat, so we turned around and left. We got a few steps away from the door when an older gentleman stepped out and called us back. He'd heard us discussing the fact that I am too fussy of a vegetarian to be able to find food on a pizza menu, and he asked if I eat pasta. I admitted that I did, and he whipped out a little note pad and started quizzing me on other ingrediants I will and won't eat, and eventually wound up with an acceptable list of things they had in house that I would eat, and he insisted we come in and eat. Josie got the day's special pasta (involving ox tail and a cream sauce), while I got mine with a variety of fresh and canned veg and kidney beans. Much to my delight, the meal was tasty. I ate half of it at once, and took the rest with me, and ate the rest later during the drive.

Saturday evening my friend Julia visited, and David was over, so we just lounged around and talked for much of the evening.

Sunday I worked on getting the rest of the samples into scrivener and their locations plotted on a map (she had given me printouts of maps with the locations marked with dots, so I then had to find those locations on the wonderful on-line Swedish map page and determine their lat/long.

Sunday evening was a special Folk Dance session in Gammelstad. We had about 30 people show up, most of us dancers, but enough musicians to give a good rich sound. This was my first real exercise since surgery (I don't count my daily yoga, which has been kind of modified), and it felt so good to move. I was careful not to raise my arms too high, even when spinning under my partner's arms, and the muscles in my chest/shoulders only complained a few times, and not loudly.

However, I think that pushing myself that much was good for me, since today during yoga I was able to do a handstand for the first time since surgery (11 days ago), and I can now lift my arms nearly fully overhead, so long as they are a little forward. If I try to pull the arms back into the plane of my body when they are up then they lower themselves as I do. But it is noticeably better. Josie says she is enjoying watching how I am a little better each day.

Today I worked from home, and then we went to Nyckelharpa night. Josie loves listening to the music and working on a project as much as I do. Tomorrow I need to actually go into the office, so I had better post this. Luckily, yoga is already done, so there is only a nice hot shower between me and my bed.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/536105.html

making progress, and other stuff

healing and prospects for more

it is true what they say...

the rest of the trip to Crown

slow and steady progress for me, more tangible progress for him

The last five days could have been better, but they had their good points, too

What I have been up to the past 8 days

Missing the rest of the festival

hoping my good immune system works this time, too

Made time to work out

New glasses! Partially...

where did the last two weeks go?

Unexpected holiday

house hunting update

the downside of a pandemic--needing to decide "is this a symptom?"

(no subject)

committing to better health, one day at a time, day 1

not my typical Durham trip

Post-surgery recovery landmark achieved: Handstand!

Silvermuseet etc

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May 2025

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