The Grand Move.
It’s ‘grand’ because it isn’t within Geelong; so once it’s done, one of my Pages will have to go.
It is within that map, but its name doesn’t appear. Even H’s thanking me for staying this side of Melbourne doesn’t help you ..
I shall reveal all when I post again on Monday night. Pretend you care, OK ?
[grin]
This is the kind of thing that drives to drink a fat old person who has been given to understand certain things about carbohydrate content in fruit:
I have been told and also read that blueberries are THE fruit for low-carb intake, and that raspberries THE fruit no. 2. Yet there is a ‘chart’ that says apples are the same as blueberries !!!
I have eaten apples for my entire life: walking anywhere chomping on one used to be second nature to me. But since being told I must stop eating fruit – except for some berries ! – I have eschewed (like it ?) my favourite fruit entirely.
So WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ???? – I could have been having apple with my morning yoghourt instead of thos ghastly blueberries ?!! – or pears ? – or fresh pineapple ??
But check out the next ‘chart’ and things are even more confusing ..
It’s BLACK not BLUE that’s No. 1; and all those others there come before the blueberries !! VOT ISS GOINK ON ?!
Obviously ‘expert’ opinions vary, and it depends upon whose word you follow as to what you are going to believe.
Thus am I vindicated – as are those who commented on the previous post ! – in thinking that I might just as well do my own thing. So there! [grin]
I am so desperate to settle on an eating regimen that will combine the things I really like to eat with those I really need to eat that I dunno if I’m Arthur or Martha (as we used to say).
And if that ideal smacks of dreaming, I’m going to continue to work towards it ANYWAY.
Because the things I really like to eat are vegetables, fruit, bread and various kinds of cereal. A local brand called Freedom produces some absolutely yummy breakfast cereals –
I came across that one first: it’s not at all sweet, consisting of flakes with a nutty flavour and pumpkin seeds: boy, is it delicious ?! And then I discovered
and decided to mix them together in a 5-something box with a lid. It was at that point that I decided I could, after all, live without muesli, provided I had a boxful of this mixture. I would add tinned pineapple and Greek yoghourt and stir it all together and have it for my breakfast or lunch. Oh, those were the days ..
But in order to reduce my sugar intake so as to ward off diabetes 2, I am sworn off ALL carbohydrates and ALL fruit (almost), so that breakfast would now be just the yoghourt. I love my Greek yoghourt, but ..
Breakfast is by far the hardest meal to provide for myself under the no carbs high fat regimen. No cereal and no toast and no fruit. Jesus christ on a bicycle ! – is there any point in living ?
I can’t help feeling that there MUST be a middle path I could take that would get me no closer to being pre-diabetic but maybe stay at this fairly naughty figure (whatever it is: my GP doesn’t believe in sharing details of that nature). I mean, if I were to cut down on the carbs but not eliminate them .. and if I were to increase fat intake but not to a disgusting degree .. wouldn’t that do ?
Let’s face it, I’m not going to lose weight. But if I can stay here, with my insulin count (or whatever – blood sugar ?) not progressing, why wouldn’t that DO ?!
(I believe I’ve consulted nine GPs since I’ve been in Geelong – 5 of them in the one practice – and I haven’t once felt confident about his/her pronouncements. My GP in Sydney I had for the last 12 years I lived there: I never once doubted a syllable he uttered. While Chic was still about I used to make him come with me if I needed to see Uttam, because I could never remember what he told me. The problem with that was that Chic and Uttam would make each other laugh, and we often ended up having to do a bit of speeding through my consultation .. But it was all good, back then.)
So what I really like are bread and cereal and fruit and vegies (including those carb-filled beans) and yoghourt and cheese, with the occasional piece of rump. But really only occasional. And what I really need is a lot of fat .. So if I were to make up a general kind of plan – NOT a meal-plan, just a kind of guide – that had me eating three meat meals a week and three vego meals a week and one day a week stuffing my face with Dr Becky’s salad, that absolutely does take away the appetite so that it’s a fasting kind of day .. wouldn’t that be good enough ?
In other words, do I REALLY have to go without almost all fruit (except berries) and many of the vegies I adores (root vegies !) and toast&marmalade forever ?
I can’t do that, I’m here to tell you. Nup, I can’t. It’s all very well Dr Becky telling me that after 40 days of this regimen I can have 1 day of eating whatever I want before going back for another 40 days .. If I look ahead for whatever smallish number of years are left to me and see a wilderness into which I must go for 40 days and 40 nights and then another and then another, interspersed with only solitary days of stuffing my face with my favourite foods .. well .. I will have to top meself.
My thinking now is to make some lists of this half-and-half kind of eating, follow them for a few weeks and then have another fasting blood test and see where my blood sugar is. As the GP has told me not to do that before December, it all fits in nicely.
Wish me luck, yes ?
Here you go: it’s brilliant !
It was a question from a blogging friend – a simple one: “How’s the non-vegetarian diet going ?” – that generated this post. Blame Hannah, OK ?
Re-capping briefly: I ceased to be vegetarian because my younger sister pointed out that if I am approaching becoming pre-diabetic (as my current GP recently indicated), it’s because of my non-flesh diet – NOT because I’ve been eating tinned pineapple as if there will be no more in the whole world the day after tomorrow.
Oh jesus, there are so many threads to all this ..
She talked at length about vegetarianism and what it means for the bod: that I am eating nothing but carbs – all those BEANS ! and PASTA ! and RICE ! and FRUIT ! and vegetables that grow under the ground .. And when you consider that, you realize she’s entirely correct: there’s virtually nothing but carbs in a vego diet. And carbs = sugar. Simple.
So it would seem simple that ceasing to ingest these delightful carbs must reduce my appalling waistline one, but also reduce my sugar intake two, right ? (Should’ve reversed those two in terms of importance.)
‘Simple’ is the LAST fucking word that applies to all this.
Look at those groups, for heaven’s sake ! – how can they be causing me to become slowly diabetic ?! And why are they labelled ‘Healthy’ ?! Well, the answer to that is obvious: the UNhealthy ones are cakes and lollies and pies and fish&chips and all the stuff like that ..
But I’m not a consumer of the unhealthy carbs: it’s the ‘healthy’ carbs that any sensible vegetarian consumes daily (obtaining much-needed protein from the beans, mostly). And I am finding that excising these from my daily intake is so awfully difficult that I don’t know where I am, any more. I have a permanently bad taste in my mouth that causes me to be grateful for social distancing because I would otherwise poison people (and no, it’s not ketosis: I’m not attempting your actual ZERO carbs intake).
I know that I must find a dietician. Someone who really does understand it all and can explain to me satisfactorily every aspect of food. There isn’t one down here in Geelong: I once consulted a so-called ‘dietician’ who maundered on about the balance of the 5 food groups and the pyramid and all that shit, sitting there roly-poly and busting out of her ankle boots .. I was offended, frankly. No, I need a REAL one. Melbourne, probably. Which can’t be done right now ..
I MUST NOT GIVE UP.
The rest of my post just vanished. I’ve just about HAD this bloody new editor. Seriously thinking about finding a new blogging platform, were it not for the fact that all the bloggers I know are on this one.
I wasn’t alone:
But I’m not happy about it. That’ll teach me (I hope).
Here is the consummate article on the whole tRump thing, I go so far as to say.
https://the.ink/p/the-illness-he-is
Read that and you’ll have a really good understanding of the ghastly maelstrom that is the current situation in the US.
Or perhaps don’t, and skip away happily ignorant.
Me, I don’t buy it. It’s just too convenient that tRump and Melania have Covid-19. It gets him out of some dicey forthcoming situations.
Unhappily, it also means he’s back calling the shots. You KNOW he’s going to demand that the election be postponed, and who knows what else ?!
But I’m almost past it all. If the US of A can’t ensure that media coverage is even-handed – and it isn’t – then it’s no wonder tRump can just go on doing whatever he feels like to the Constitution (of course, with Barr’s help).
There’s never going to be another year as frightful as 2020, for which even a halfwit can be grateful.
And yet .. what if tRump and Barr manage to skew the election and he hangs on it there ?
Then 2020 would pale into insignificance.
In the last seemingly æon but actually fortnight or so, I have managed to create chaos for myself online and for WordPress support in wanting them to fix it all.
It’s been a horrible time. My own fault for creating an email aiias.
May I suggest to anyone thing of doing that AND changing to using it for his/her blogsite that he/she walks away from the idea ?
.. exactly what the problem is for me here – cf https://wp.me/p6zYMn-53e.
It can be encapsulated within five words:
I AM NOT IN CONTROL.
For the first time in my adult life, I am living in a place where I do not call the shots.
That is so not me that I find it absolutely astounding to understand, now and not earlier than now, that I hadn’t grasped why I have been so unhappy over the last few months.
I am not living, as it were, proactively: I am always behind, running after things in reaction.
My mail is missing ? – it’s in their “disinfecting” room somewhere, but they won’t search until they find it. I’m going to have to create a stink again and turn up every day ’round at the security check-in until someone pulls his finger out and takes another look.
My kitchen range-hood won’t work ? – the person in charge of this kind of thing takes the filter off to have it put through the main house dishwasher. She does not accept that the filter is not the problem: she says, in a polite but unmistakably condescending fashion, that no-one else’s range-hood has ever given trouble .. The phrase hangs in the air.
A family decides – in spite of Geelong’s being under Stage 3 restrictions – to visit on Fathers’ Day and bring loudly shouting children to play in the very small “grassed” area between these units ? There is no-one for me to speak to about this infuriating fact because it’s Sunday; and I can scarcely address the vile children, as none of the other residents appears to give a shit. I must respond as does everyone else.
If those examples appear petty to you, you have an entirely different mind-set from mine. To me they are insufferable.
I am not in control of how I live, and I can’t live like that.
I should never have come to an institution like this; and I would never have thought of doing so had I not been approached with an offer.
It seemed like a godsend at the time, getting me out of a lease that was problematic. And there you begin to see: I am a difficult bloody woman, and I don’t like to be under anyone’s control. That time it was the RE agent, who represented irresponsible owners and who had told me lies when I was looking over the place about new carpet and re-painting. I successfully obtained – eventually – the new carpet by taking them to VCat; but the re-painting was never going to happen. I don’t like finding myself completely stymied – especially in the light of having been lied to.
Having long since found myself among the invisible (read: “old”) people, it’s hard enough living a life that can be described as satisfactory; and my Damascus moment of a few hours ago – it’s currently 3:30am ! – has shown me, inter plura alia, that it is far, far from that.
I am posting about it because I want to drive myself to DO something ..
Obviously I am going to have to move; and equally obviously I do not know to where. Or how. Moving is fearfully expensive. Shall I just walk away and leave everything behind ? – throw it out ? Try to sell it ? Donate it ? Move into someone’s furnished rental ? Where ? HOW to get rid of all my own stuff ? Surely there are some things I want to keep ?
My head is spinning a bit.
But I’m not slowly going bonkers, as I had worried deeply that I was.
I’m just totally frustrated and – surprise, surprise ! – angry.
I am an angry person, under the humour. I’ve been this way since January 29th 2005: holding to myself a deep-seated anger that what happened then ended one life and destroyed the other. He didn’t want to leave me and I didn’t want him to leave me; and maybe it all comes back to that ..
But at least I know, now, that my life is totally unsatisfactory and I am going to have to do something about it.
Anyone who’s known me for any length of time is aware that I have a Reluctant Gut – one reluctant to settle down quietly for any lengthy period, and one that insists on making its presence felt fairly often, as it has done since the mid-’90s. Then, it was so reluctant to be ignored as to be responsible for my being delivered to Emergency at RPAH and, after a fair bit of this and that, to see me relieved of my gall-bladder – which turned out not to’ve actually been the problem. :\
Couple of years later it struck again and, there being no gall-bladder to blame, the gut saw me undergo an ERCP – not the last, btw; and the bile duct wasn’t the problem either.
Since then there have been Episodes of its reluctance to behave normally, leading eventually to my consulting that well-known oracle, Dr Google. He it was who led me to find out about LPR (when I was satisfying myself that GORD is definitely nothing to do with the problem/s) – laryngopharyngeal reflux. Seeing as how I have and exhibit every single symptom of this affliction I am perfectly convinced I am cursed with it; but alas, no GP in Geelong has ever heard of it, and is reluctant to read the highly informative paper I keep printing out and handing over. I have reached, I’m only too aware, a stalemate: I can’t get medical help for it until (if ever) I find a doctor who knows what’s going down.
So. I have found my own help, that of my younger sister down in Tasmania.
On the phone to her the other day, I was talking about my recent comprehensive blood tests (de rigueur at this stage of life !) and mentioned cholesterol results. This trigger sent her off into waves of rage – or maybe fits ? – anyway, it triggered her to tell me all about The Great Cholesterol Myth. Fascinating stuff !! – and here’s an Australian link to it that I remember caused a HUGE shit-storm at the time ..
Briefly, you can forget about your cholesterol levels forever.
From there one proceeds – OK, then: I proceeded – via both “The Big Fat Surprise” and “The Carnivore Code” – to learn of the things I’d been eating wrong. Or not eating wrong. If you get my drift.
I have ceased being vegetarian.
It was never for health reasons that I took it up; but it’s most definitely for health reasons that I’ve given it up. I have a strong feeling – based, I suppose, on hope – that I may overcome my persistently Reluctant Gut. No more adherence to a pulses and vegetables diet; no more total avoidance of anything fatty in any way.
I’m a carnivore again.
Stringer and I used to like to be able to tell each other:
HYHIABC !!!
and this stood for
Haven’t you heard ? – it’s all been changed !!!
It was a favourite exchange when we were away on location together, as script pages in varying colours were being issued each evening, together with revised shooting schedules. Oh, we were an intolerant pair .. [grin]
Today I utter this unpronounceable “acronym” with regard to my temperature blanket. And when I say “all”, you’d better believe it.
So anyone who has the faintest memory of my last posting on this topic will understand that I had to frog everything I’d done – the whole of July – and start again. Strangely enough, that kind of thing doesn’t worry me !
There you go: Winter in Geelong consisted of four colours – with a fifth appearing just the once, when our lowest minimum fell below zero ! (see if you can pick it) – and they are, from coldest to least cold, Delphinium, Cobalt, Periwinkle and Alaska Sky .. a sort of lilac, dark blue, blue and pale blue.
If you look at it sideways –
you get an idea of how the four seasons might look, placed as my ‘sketch’ above.
Oh yes: I begin with plain white, and use it also to separate the months.
Any comments ?
*a stitch called, simply, ‘single crochet’
This is another new recipe !
I worked out that the stress is only there if I’m cooking for Others. When doing it alone, I give myself a big finger-wagging lecture about being stupid, and it really seems to help ! :D
I do not recall how I came upon this INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS vege recipe, but I can only thank all the gods for having done so: I consider this to be the most tasty meal I have ever made. Anyone heard muttering anything like “but the bar is so low !” will be sent to coventry forever.
It’s a fragrant curry, not a hot one: I can’t eat hot any more (sob !) ..
UTTERLY DELICIOUS Cauliflower Curry
Serves: 4
Ingredients
Method
Serve on basmati. The juice alone is sheer heaven.
*You’re going to need the space in the saucepan ! :D
I think the secret is the lemon juice. But whose nose ?, as Stringer was wont to ask. :)
The whole of the ingredients combine to make a vegetarian dish that ANY carnivore would eat with relish and follow with a bit of lip-smacking.
OTY, then ..
Today I write, I warn you, entirely narcissistically (I almost got lost among those syllables: forgive me if I wandered off the path) and lengthily. There are those who will claim I do that all the time, of course; and to them I offer nothing more than a scornful laugh and a toss of the head ..
About aging. Or ageing, as I prefer to write it, incorrectly,
I am able to grasp that it happens to all of us – every single one. That no-one can prevent its happening to her or him (not even Cher the astoundingly beautiful but no longer; not even my absolute hero, Barack Obama). I know it and I accept it. But.
I want to do it at my own pace.
I don’t mean that I intend to eke it out so that I age at half the rate of anyone else. And I don’t mean that I want it to happen kind of evenly, with no rushing ahead or slowing down.
I mean that I do not want to be cast into an ageing mould created by other people.
I will turn into a doddering old fart when my brain is no longer able to prevent me from doing so — not when people around me think I am already one because of my circumstances.
Slight divergence ..
I am a resident under the auspices of an aged care facility: it is called Multicultural Aged Care Services, and bruited abroad as MACS (of course). MACS consists of two areas of care –
And there is a third part — us: eight fully independent rentals, known impressively as Independent Living Units; and we ILUs get no care at all. We are simply residents for whom MACS is our landlord. The units are very nice, very open, very much glass – too much for me, as in the mornings I can never find anywhere I’m able to be on my laptop comfortably .. reflections and light coming from all directions. (Did I hear you mutter “What a whinger !” ? You’re probably right ..) The units have gardens, and with the help and guidance of a long-time friend, mine is becoming something to look at.
So you can tell that this is a place I’m lucky to’ve found — although it found me, but that’s another story ..
The units’ residents are getting on; in fact, walkers are a common sight. Mind you, needing a walker doesn’t automatically mean the brain needs help ..
End of divergence.
I bounced in to MACS in early May 2019 with nary a thought about how I was pigeon-holing myself. For a good while I could see that I am more agile than everyone else, and definitely younger at heart as well as younger, physically; but “how meaningful is all that ?!”, I asked myself gaily as ILU neighbours would struggle past on their daily Very Short Walks.
Gradually I came to understand.
This place is turning me into An Old Woman. I mean, REALLY old. An irritable, demanding, churlish old woman.
And I am not ready to be an old woman.
Am I being clear ? – or merely confusing ?
Well .. I readily acknowledge that I’m 77; and many people will immediately think “So you ARE fucking old ! – what’s your problem ?!”.
It’s what’s going on inside my head. In there I’m still the same — interesting, funny, clever .. everything I once was, she said modestly. Well, I was, so there ! [grin]
I don’t want to be shut down before I’m ready because those around me see me as just another ancient – one more old duck in their aged care premises. I don’t want to have maintenance blokes turning up to check various bits of the unit without my having been advised they’re coming. I don’t want to have my mail seized and sat on by admin until it’s been judged as free from outside contamination (yesyes, I do get that this is something reflective of the times). I don’t like it when I ask for something to be repaired and someone from admin accompanies the repairman and expects to come in here for supervisory purposes. I don’t like being considered in that light.
I am an independent woman.
I lived alone from the time I was sent away from home in 1965 to the time I met my incomparable husband in 1974. And after he died, at the beginning of 2006, I was once again on my own. (For six years I was living off-planet, connected to it only by the thread joining me to my superb grief counsellor Dianne McKissock; and she had become able to pull on it hard enough to bring me down, then.) I’ve been living on my own, looking after myself and having no-one interfere in any aspect of doing that for the major part of my adult life.
I don’t believe I can wear this gradual loss of my identity any longer: it’s stealing the rest of my life away — gently, insidiously, thieving the years.
And I don’t have all that many left.
Whether or not any of this rave makes sense, I can only think to myself chissà ? Who knows if anyone of my generation can read and understand this, let alone anyone born after I was ..
I will agree that the lengthy Stage 3 restrictions are partly instrumental in forcing me to cogitate and eventually produce for my own scrutiny thoughts like these.
But do I agree, too, that once restrictions are lifted and people can once again visit, etc., my thinking will change and become less dissatisfied ..?
I do not. I know me.
The time for a reckoning draws near ..
My mate Amanda, of the Something to Ponder blog fame, has recently been posting about blogging. I’m not trying to be confusing: if you think about it, writing about blogging then posting the writing on your blog is a perfectly sensible thing to do !
It was in discussion with her on this that I realized another point that can be raised under the topic heading is not so much how to write one, but how to follow one. Did I hear you mutter “Ridiculous !” ? – then this post isn’t for you !
I have two sisters (now, when once I had four). The eldest lives in Paris*, in her flat that she bought a good few years ago, after her husband had died; and the youngest on a small holding in the Huon Valley area of Tasmania, together with hers. Whereas the latter knows a shitload about computers and everything associated – lots and lots more than I do – the former has led a life of academic intellectual learning in the areas of philosophy and psychology, and not, as did no. 5 in her academic career, in IT.
So up there in France is no. 1, missing nothing in life but a wider understanding of all techo stuff. I recently forced her to sign up to this blog so that she would be apprised of the various breath-taking aspects of my existence; and she now needs to know how to take in the whole glorious sweep.
[cough ..]
So. There are dozens and dozens of “themes” (entire ‘look’ of any blog) from which every blogger chooses, and they have hundreds and hundreds of ways of differentiating themselves. As well, bloggers can choose to customize, which means an even greater divergence of appearance. But as I’m going to talk about mine, I don’t have any of those frightful numbers to write about.
Things to Watch My chosen theme has a rather unsatisfactory way of showing hyperlinks (which are links to Other Things on the Web). All you can see when you’re reading a post is a very faint underline beneath a word or a phrase – as with my mention there of a hyperlink .. However, if you move your pointer so that the pointer thingy is over the word, you’ll see that the phrase changes colour, yes ? – and there’s your confirmation that it’s a link. What’s more, every link I include opens in a new tab, so that when you’re finished with it, you just X it shut and you’re back to my blog.
Things to Note When you get an email telling you I’ve posted, and you click on the underlined subject heading within that email, you’ll be taken directly to that post and only that post. In other words, the rest of the blog seems not to be there – but it is. As you read the post, scrolling down as you go, you’ll reach the end and find a reference to the previous post, which you can click on. And at the bottom of that one there’ll be references to both the one before that and the one you’ve just left, and so on: it’s possible to navigate your way through any entire blog in this fashion. But having read that particular post, you need only click on either the name of the blog or on the overhead menu button that says “Home” to find yourself having the whole blog once more at your fingertips.
It’s when you’re in the individual post rather than at the front of the whole blog that you can see the category under which the piece has been ‘filed’ (you can search for other posts using these), and also the tags that you can use to search for posts including that term, whatever it is. E.g., if you were to click on chickpeas in my tags, you’d bring up a few posts that are recipes including chickpeas in the ingredients.
The menu buttons at the top are for pieces that stay there and are never pushed back by new entries.
Erhmmm .. Oh yes, comments !
Things to do At the bottom of each individual post that you’re reading you have the opportunity to pass a remark on it. Bloggers LOVE readers to do this: it’s the only true way of judging readers’ commitment. I know (well) a blogger who has something like 12,000 followers, but she believes there to be roughly 100 who are genuine readers – those who fairly regularly write comments. How this happens is that a person sees a post in the ghastly thing WordPress calls “The Reader” – a kind of daily digest of posts across the entire spectrum – and likes it a lot. S/he then presses the follow button and up goes the number of readers. But thereafter said person never again visits that blog, and eventually deletes it from her/his list of followed blogs, but the original number on the original blog doesn’t change. It oughta !
Very long post, and more than likely missing key things. JDB-once-JAD will have to ask about anything she still needs to know.
:D
XO
*having obtained all approval necessary to Parisian living for Aussies: she has her résidence !
I came across some lovely stuff I had bought because I liked the look of it. But it was $16 a skein, so I bought only 2 skeins and used my lovely Stanwood things to wind ’em into balls. And then I rissoled the bits of paper left over; so I have NO IDEA what this stuff is – other than that it’s cotton, and thinner – or maybe more tightly woven ? – than normal, 4-ply cotton. Its colourway is an absolute knockout !!
Listening to yet a another crime novel I did nothing more than single crochet it into a scarf, and I was RAPT in it. I put it down the back of the green chair when I finished it last night, ready for photographing (I use the word loosely) in the morning. When I remembered it ..
someone else had decided there was a better use for the scarf.
Had some toast and 40% less salt Vegemite, and generally faffed about for a good long time; but Boodie didn’t get off, no sir ! So ..
here’s front shot showing the over-all effect of the colourway; and here
is a closeup of it, showing how effective ordinary single crochet can be. And how about those straight sides, eh ?! :D
Not sure at all why the yarn appeals so much: I’m not a purple person (dunno if I’ve ever heard a Prince song !). But I just love it.
Will add it to the Minerva scarf for my sister.
