1. this book is a little dose of paper hyyge in itself: gently cheery fundamentally decent and altogether cozy.
2. i finally learn the correct way to pronounce the word.
3. i tell HOM we will (ok, partially) decorate the home for christmas this year. perhaps with an advent candle set-up.
4. nevertheless i confess i skip multiply over sections of the book. in particular i skip over the entire outdoors-in-summer chapter.
moving on to fiction next for a bit.
vesicles are dry. scabs are off. scar is absent. yesssss.
in other news, today i awaken with the same pervasive right-sided body pain but i fancy it is a tad less intense. i stand taller with less effort! i walk with rhythm and bounce! i forget what it is to be pain free but i imagine i am a step closer!
i gingerly step into the day!
we fly to visit J2 Ji and A in two days. i run my last clinic three days ago attend the final work meeting the following day send in all my deliverables and show up for the webinar yesterday. HOM bakes the promised cake for his friends attends his piano class and spends the day running errands for his mom.
now we are in this limbo between frenetic activity and vacation mindlessness and it is a time of delightful languor indeed. it beats rushing to the airport right from the clinic with the wind whipping my sails and checking in by the skin of my teeth, optimization be damned.
rather me-centric and almost discarded very early on, except she has a disarmingly frank chattiness and lots of ideas about things to do that is rather infectious. in the end i make it to the penultimate month of the year of the project, barring the skip lesions.
the key takeaway is her analysis of unhappiness. ...people cultivate unhappiness as a way to control others. they cling to unhappiness because without it they'd forgo the special consideration that unhappiness secures... unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish...
bingo! i think. this describes some people one has encountered to a t.
that's today. launching the roughly once-every-five-years two-week circus of grandstanding pipe-dreams flaming arrows repartees and ripostes. my wishes for this time, built upon previous (often unrealized) hopes:
HOM and i are developing a cozy bosom relationship with the plumber. HOM has him on speed dial. we text him on sundays. we talk to him at 10 at night. we await his visits with great excitement and hope. the kitchen and the loo thank him and his expensive toys.
chinese parents like to say, you must become a doctor when you grow up! or a lawyer! i tell HOM it is a far better strategy to become a plumber. the work is varied challenging whole-heartedly appreciated and the compensation is excellent. plus you don't pay crippling malpractice insurance fees.
random thoughts:
*once again (thank you for the cross) - matt redman
this is mostly a collection of essays on life from the perspective of great age written with disarming superficial simplicity so that it reads lighter than oliver sacks' gratitude but is as bijou a book as the other.
not as good as her first book perhaps but still the same spell-binding chattiness.
she shares two pearls i relate fully to: take care of what hair you have (left), and eat chocolate.
not being a rabid nature-lover, here are things that delight even a philistine:
on account of being confined because of zoster and of being home alone and of suddenly experiencing an unseasonal attack of energy, i:
it occurs to me the time-honored classical description of zoster pain as being dermatomal may have been authored by someone not actually experiencing zoster in the first-hand up-close-and-personal sense.
a personal encounter with zoster will tell you that the pain involves that whole half of the body containing the offending dermatome and is not in any way as civilized and contained as being confined to the dermatome alone. or even the next dermatome. no siree. the pain sadly engulfs the entire half body, freely co-opting neck and limb and other uninvolved anatomical parts. it would cross the midline if it could, i tell you.
in other news, this is day 2-and-a-half of acyclovir and the damn vesicles are still going strong.
what i notice from random furtive glances at various passers-by's cellphone screens is that the top 3 preoccupations of middle-aged-looking people in public when they are scrolling their phone are:
witty self-deprecating charm bundled with all-round goodwill generosity and welcome served on a series of epistles and garnished with the passage of time and history.
luvverly re-visit.
helene hanff is really a refreshingly agreeable writer.
not the one over the door.
the one that is a dainty cluster of vesicles on a discreet part of the body from which emanates waves of gut-wrenching pain, is wot. owwwwwhhhhhh.
in other news, thank God it's now and not earlier (traveling) or later (traveling). although HOM has to go and ask, why didn't you get the vaccine? fear of needles, that's why.
having just irretrievably dispatched down the rubbish chute the activation QR code of the new continuous glucose monitoring kit that i buy at a huge discount i am now bereft of the toy i planned to test and am newly committed to a second kit at a smaller discount and thereby negating any discount to begin with. the new technology had better be worth it.
< cue ominous murmurings much head banging and dark looks at self >
xiamen jb (and jb and jb and jb) kyushu xiamen (again) earthquakes fires and storms and monsoon surges illness and infirmity (stalwart companions) politickings and chicanery (robust perennials, these two) meetings and farewells and most lately the bloodbath in the wall street 'hood. periodically featuring people, some uninvited.
it's enough to put a girl off the rest of the year.
or make her ask bemusedly, where did the first quarter go?
solo ideas for april, the little poster says, and suggests a visit to my favorite coffee shop (great thought!) a trip to the museum (yes! been some time) a walk in the park (that too) or a meal al fresco (until reality sinks in certainly).
