Rainbow Dragon's Lair

Laura Rainbow Dragon Laura Rainbow Dragon Logging since September 2022
January 18:

Fit December: :x: - ran out of time
Power Hold: day 4 (13, 5, 5)
running: 3km - a brief respite from the cold today. Wind chill was only -9C! I still wore three pairs of leggings, and my warmest running coat. But I was actually warm enough to sweat!
hiking: 6.5 km with Shelby - Shelby was happy that I did not make her wear the blanket. Although I did still put her shirt on her. It's not insulated at all. But it does at least help to keep the road slush and icy cold water from kicking up onto her belly. (We salt the roads here. So snow melts at temperatures well below freezing. But drainage is a problem due to the ground being frozen. Every time we crossed a road we had to deal with ice water puddles at the curb on either side.) We saw Shelby's kitty friend Buddy, and four of her puppy friends, including two we had not seen in several months. One of these, Toby, is a youngster with LOTS of energy. He was very happy to see Shelby!

writing: craft study
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 3528
new consumable words: 118
consumable YTD: 13514

French: Netflix, correspondence

GOBOT :X:
GBOT :v:

Sleeping during the day happened (due to there being less than 4 hours of sleep that happened at night). Also: more correspondence with my brother re: the situation with our mother.

The hospital wants to set up a "family meeting" to discuss her goals of care. They want the palliative care team to be involved in this meeting. (Supposedly "not because we are ready to go there, but because PC is good at having this type of conversation.") They think my brother has been avoiding discussing goals of care with them because he is uncomfortable having the conversation. He is not. It's simply impossible for him to make any decisions in this regard when no one will give him the first clue as to what our mother's prognosis might be. (Currently she does not speak. She is breathing on her own, but has not swallowed anything in over 5 weeks. Yesterday she reportedly opened her eyes and moved her toes and her left hand. This is considered progress now. But no one will hazard a guess as to how much more progress she is likely to make, or if this is the best we can hope for.)

My brother's efforts to get our mother transferred to a hospital near his home are still being blocked. But the current hospital at least appears to understand what he wants now. They are scheduling another procedure (replacement of the nasogastric feeding tube with a gastronomy tube) at the current hospital, possibly in an effort to delay her transfer anywhere until a bed can be secured for her in a hospital near my brother.

Writing and part of my planned workout did not happen this day as a result of all of the above.
I did, however, get to bed on time, and fall asleep fairly quickly afterward. This is a win.

Nothing to do but keep on keeping on. Eyes forward.
 
Nevetharine said:
I dare say your hospitals are just as bad as ours!
Click to expand...
Our hospitals are overburdened. Our entire healthcare system is. When one can get healthcare here, it is generally excellent. But there are long waiting lists.

A lot of people don't have a family doctor because we don't have enough doctors to serve the population. (I am one of the fortunate ones who has one. But I have not seen him about my own health in over four years. If I actually needed to see a doctor, I would need to drive out of town to an urgent care clinic or a hospital ER. It would take over three weeks to get an appointment with my own doctor.)

All of our hospitals are publicly funded. In theory, we do not have two-tier healthcare here. In practice, we very much do, because people with a high enough education level to be doctors do not want to live in rural or remote areas. This is why there is so much red tape to fight to get my mother transferred to a hospital near my brother. If everyone was allowed to choose which hospital they went to, there would be a whole mess of people trying to get into hospitals in big cities where they have the resources to provide a better standard of care.
 
Let's play pass the buck:

The hospital now says they cannot possibly transfer my mother to a hospital near my brother because they are bound by Ministry of Health regulations which forbid it.

The Ministry of Health says patient transfers are 100% within the purview of the individual hospitals moving the patients around. The Ministry of Health has no say in the matter and does not get involved.

Meanwhile, the neurosurgeon says our mother's prognosis is: she could recover anywhere from 0% to 100%.

I could not make this shit up.

Great meeting though.

:facepalm::break::giveup::smash::crawl:


In other news: I found out yesterday that the bank chose to interpret a really stupid clause in my father's will in a way which = less paperwork and less grief for me than I had originally thought it would So win there. (The same stupid clause is in my mother's will too. So let's hope she lives long enough that it won't matter.)
 
January 19:

Fit December: days 26 + 27
Power Hold: day 5
running: :x: - too cold!
hiking: 6 km with Shelby - and we're back to bundling up!

writing: craft study, business webinar
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 3528
new consumable words: 528
consumable YTD: 14042

French: Netflix

GOBOT :v:
GBOT :x: - but at least I was sensible and still got to bed as soon as I could.

So, so, so far behind on my writing this week. But there is nothing to do this weekend except hide out in my room and get it done.
 
GIF amusant Wow par MightyMike


Impressionnant !!!
 
January 20:

Fit December: day 28
Power Hold: day 6 (13, 6, 5)
running: :x: - too cold!
hiking: 6 km with Shelby, 1.5 km errands

writing: craft study
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 3528
new consumable words: 257
consumable YTD: 14299

French: Netflix, some text translation

GOBOT :x:
GBOT :x:
 
So week #1 of "I'm going to prioritize writing on weekdays" was a total failure. Now I need to scramble on the final day of the week to get my first story-a-week story finished. I at least worked on the story enough that I can still finish it today (assuming nothing happens to derail my plans today).

I'm not even sure what happened to Saturday, other than a general lack of focus and being short-of-sleep. I ended up crashing in the evening and sleeping, and then getting up again to do my workout and staying up stupidly late because I was then not tired--but not doing any writing during the stupidly late hours.

:break:

I will do better today!

On the workout front: push-up avoidance is still happening. In spite of the protocol for the current challenge being simply "do what you can." Hence the napping and then working out late at night bit. I will work on this too.

Also: the eating of too much ice cream happened last night at dinner. This may have had a lot to do with the lack of mental focus and need to spend the evening sleeping bit. There are currently 6 tubs of Häagen-Dazs in my freezer. I do not generally eat a lot of ice cream. Just a spoonful here, a spoonful there. Not every day. Not even every week. I'm unlikely to be able to remain living where I am long enough to get through all the ice cream at that rate. And transporting ice cream over a two hour drive to a household that won't have sufficient room in its freezer for so much product anyway likely won't be a viable option. So last night I decided to dig into one of the pots (of a flavour I don't even particularly like, no less) with a spoon. It was a bad idea. The situation with my mother has made my finances problematic. But I'm still a long way away from needing to eat food that makes me sick.

Today is supposed to be my yoga day. But I may do Fit December instead (or as well as, depending on how quickly I get my story finished.) Today is another too-cold-to-run day, but things will warm up here considerably tomorrow. The next day of Fit December is a cardio day. So it will be a better fit to do it today when I cannot run rather than tomorrow when I should be able to. (I had originally planned to double up on FD and do day 29 yesterday. But then the whole procrastination--ice cream--napping thing happened and it ended up being far too late to do the extra.)

Okay. Time to write!
 
January 21:

Fit December: day 29
Power Hold: day off
yoga: 4 min. tree pose for @PetiteSheWolf 's Heartversary. This was a nice meditation on strength in the face of adversity, and the blessings of good health.
running: :x: - too cold!
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

My little hot dog, all wrapped up for our winter walk:
hotdog.png


writing: craft study, short story
new fiction words: 3501
fiction YTD: 7029
new consumable words: 4213
consumable YTD: 18512

Finally: a decent writing day! Got my short story finished. So week #1 of 52 of the story-a-week challenge is done and story #1 of 54 of my personal 54 stories in my 54th year is also done. I am still far behind on the 2024 words a day in 2024 challenge (target for January 21 for that challenge was 42,504 words). But there's plenty of time still to catch up on that one.

French: Netflix

GOBOT :x:
GBOT :x: - but I wasn't stupid about it and at least made it to bed by midnight.
 
@graoumia @Anek @MadamMeow thank you. Shelby appreciates being appreciated. (She lived for 7 years in the shadow of my golden retriever Trudy, who had no concept of personal space. Trudy assumed all humans loved her and existed for the purpose of being kissed by her. On the lips. She helped Shelby to come out of her shell and taught her that humans could love her too. But poor Shelby could never compete with Trudy's big demonstrative love, or her golden good looks. Now Shelby is finally coming into her own and making many friends of her own and finding that she likes the attention very much.)

January 22:

Fit December: day 30
Power Hold: day 7
Wrist Pain: DP (each side where applicable)
running: :x: - freezing rain
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

Whelp. It warmed up here. But then it started to rain. I bundled Shelby up in her blanket and shirt in spite of the warmer air temperature because she would have gotten soaked without thick clothing. By the time Shelby and I had finished our walk the rain was coming down fairly hard and also switching over to freezing rain, and we were losing the light, and it was (what passes for) rush hour in the Booming Metropolis. I didn't like those conditions for running, so just did my DAREBEE stuff.

writing: craft study, short story research
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 7029
new consumable words: 175
consumable YTD: 18687

No new fiction words this day. Floundered a bit trying to decide what to write. Did some research on an older story idea that I had written down but forgotten how I'd connected the dots. Then looked at another old and abandoned project that still interests me but may be too long of a story for me to write in one week. (I don't think it's a novel though. I may try to rein it in to short-story or at least novelette length yet.) Finally decided to go with a short story in my Perseverance story world.

Coming up with a new story idea every week that I actually want to write and that I can do justice to in the short story length will definitely be one of the challenges for me in the story-a-week challenge. But it's one that should get easier the more practice I get at it. At least the time I spent not writing this day was spent preparing to write, not avoiding writing. So that is a win.

French: Netflix

GOBOT :x:
GBOT :v:

Update on my mother:

She is eating! Actually taking food into her mouth and swallowing it.

On Friday she was still NPO, and my brother signed off on her getting a gastronomy tube because the hospital did not want to keep the NG tube in any longer. On Monday they removed the NG tube but cancelled the gastronomy tube surgery because she does not need one at this time.

Also on Monday they asked her what her name is, and she answered them. First word she has spoken in I'm not sure exactly how long, but I'm pretty sure more than a week and possibly as long as three weeks.
 
Thank you:
@Mamatigerj
@MadamMeow
@CODawn
@Deadoks
@Nevetharine
@NancyTree

Yes, the nursing staff seem quite encouraged by how much my mother improved over the weekend.
Neurology just keeps saying that improvement after an aneurysm rupture is highly variable and we won't know how much my mother is going to improve until after it's happened.
But this week at least there are wins.

January 23:

Fit December: day 31 - :completed:
Power Hold: day 8 (15, 6, 6)
Wrist Pain: DP (each side where applicable)
Sore Feet: 2 x DP, subbed calf raises for one-legged calf raises
running: :x: - too icy
hiking: 3 km with Shelby

More rain, freezing rain, and my favourite: ice pellets. Ice everywhere on the ground. Had to walk pretty much in the middle of the road with Shelby because everywhere else was impassable. The sidewalks were a mix of sheer ice, crunchy ice, and ponds. The sheer ice was too dangerous to walk on, the crunchy ice too hard on Shelby's feet, and the ponds just generally unpleasant. The edges of the roads were slush and ponds. So we had to walk well into the middle of the road. (Which tends to piss off motorists, even though they are legally obligated to share the road, and pedestrians have the legal right to take as much space as they need.) The off-road trails were all ice. So Shelby got a short walk and running, once again, did not happen.

writing: didn't get to it
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 7029
new consumable words: 536
consumable YTD: 19223

No new fiction words this day. Took some down time (three episodes of Netflix in French, as opposed to my usual one or just a partial episode, some reading, some gaming). Thought I would have time for the writing later. But nope. (This is why I'm supposed to be writing FIRST!) I did get a lot of other things done though. Made an appointment with my bank to deal with some things (some that I need to deal with because I am now executor of my father's will and trustee of his estate, others that are just to make my own life easier going forward). Talked with my medical clinic re: setting up some tests (just routine diagnostics they like to do on women of my age, but good to get done). Washed all the dishes. (Dishwasher is still broken. I cannot afford to pay for it to be fixed or replaced given that I'll likely need to move out of this house soon. And my mother's PoA doesn't think it's in her best interests to spend her money on it, since she's already not living here now. So I'm basically just SoL there. First world problems, I know. I can survive without a dishwasher. It's just one more loss in a list that's been piling up lately.) Made some black bean brownies.

French: Netflix

GOBOT :x:
GBOT :x: - Almost. But then a stupid thing came up that I had to deal with (which frankly I should not have had to deal with because it involved 100% purchases made by my mother while she was still in control of her own finances, and consequently was none of the business of her PoA--but it was easier to do it than to fight it, so...) Anyhow, I still made it to bed for 11:30. So not too bad.
 
January 24 update on my mother:

She is now speaking in sentences!

Near as I can figure, she is now cognitively pretty much back to where she was one day after the aneurysm ruptured. She had gone downhill a LOT after that point, I think due to her intracranial pressure still being uncontrolled at that time. No one has said what the recent improvements can be attributed to. But they started to happen after she had the shunt installed and properly calibrated. So I'm thinking perhaps this is a sign her intracranial pressure is finally being well controlled.

Of course no one is able to tell us how much more she might improve or how quickly. But for today it is another win.

Also: I don't want to jinx anything, but it looks like the current hospital might actually be trying to get her transferred to a hospital near my brother now.
(We will believe it when we see it. But fingers crossed!)
 
PetiteSheWolf said:
Black bean brownies, are they a Darebeets recipe?
Click to expand...
They were a DAREBEE recipe from the old site:

ripe bananas (I use two large or three medium/small)
100 grams quick oats
50 grams cocoa powder
1 can black beans, drained & rinsed (a can of black beans here is 540 mL)
1 cup "milk" (I use unsweetened vanilla-flavoured almond & cashew "milk" with added pea protein*)
Click to expand...

1. mash bananas
2. add other ingredients and mix together
3. blend with hand blender until smoothish
4. pour batter into baking pans lined with parchment paper (I use two 8" x 6" Pyrex dishes)
5. bake at 375°F for 40 minutes

They are okay warm. But I prefer them cold, spread with cashew nut butter.

These brownies do NOT keep well at room temperature. Once they have cooled, I slice and refrigerate them.
I cut a batch into 16 brownies. (But then I almost always eat 2 at a time. LOL)
Sometimes I make a double batch, which then lasts me for 16 days. Refrigerated, these brownies keep fine for that length of time.

*the nut milk I use is this. I don't know if it's available in France. It has pea protein added to give it the equivalent protein content of cow's milk. I use it for all my baking now (unless I am cooking for my friend who has nut and legume allergies).
 
Thank you:
@Fremen
@graoumia
@Anek
@CODawn
@Mamatigerj
@Syrius
@Sólveig
@MadamMeow
@Nevetharine
@PetiteSheWolf

graoumia said:
:vibes: I do agree that the dishwasher is not the most important thing in the world, but it helps, and sometimes you are less likely to accept new issues... Thinking of you
Click to expand...
Exactly. A dishwasher is a convenience and a time-saver. Nice to have but not necessary in a world of plenty. When its loss is added on top of other stressors, however, it is harder to deal with (especially when its loss is a reminder of those other stressors, because it is directly caused by them). But I will survive this (and the bigger problems too). I just need to stay the course, and not allow fear or anger to cripple my productivity.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon said:
They were a DAREBEE recipe from the old site:



1. mash bananas
2. add other ingredients and mix together
3. blend with hand blender until smoothish
4. pour batter into baking pans lined with parchment paper (I use two 8" x 6" Pyrex dishes)
5. bake at 375°F for 40 minutes

They are okay warm. But I prefer them cold, spread with cashew nut butter.

These brownies do NOT keep well at room temperature. Once they have cooled, I slice and refrigerate them.
I cut a batch into 16 brownies. (But then I almost always eat 2 at a time. LOL)
Sometimes I make a double batch, which then lasts me for 16 days. Refrigerated, these brownies keep fine for that length of time.

*the nut milk I use is this. I don't know if it's available in France. It has pea protein added to give it the equivalent protein content of cow's milk. I use it for all my baking now (unless I am cooking for my friend who has nut allergies).
Click to expand...
@Laura did you ever tried this with another kind of beans ?
 
January 24:

60 Days of HIIT: day 1
Power Hold: day 9
Ankle Recovery: 2 x DP, did the calf raises one-legged
Talk to the Hand: DP (each side where applicable)
running: :x: - rain, ice, fog
hiking: 3 km with Shelby

Rained most of the day, and fog was thick enough to produce a weather alert warning of poor visibility. Waited until after dark to go out with Shelby. Most of the ice had melted by then, and we were mostly able to avoid ponding on the sidewalks by walking around it on the grass.

writing: short story
new fiction words: 77 -- Yes. Seventy-seven.
fiction YTD: 7106
story-a-week challenge: 1 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 1 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1103
consumable YTD: 20,326
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 48,576
deficit: 28,250

Low word count partially because I spent time reviewing my older work in this world and getting back into the voices of the characters. But mostly because I procrastinated.

French: Netflix

GOBOT :x:
GBOT :v:

I need to get back to reporting my streaks here. Mostly for accountability on the new one. Here we go:

Consecutive days of working out: 81
Consecutive days of French study: 1163
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 0

At the moment, "no solo gaming before work" is defined as no solo gaming until I have completed my short story for the week. The week starts at 11PM on Sunday night. (Because if I am still gaming after 11PM, I have missed GBOT, which will mess up my ability to get up and started on my work on time on Monday morning.)

Gaming with friends is exempted from my no play before work rule, even though it only happens on weekends, and I am in theory trying to complete my short story each week by 5PM Friday because:
  1. it only ever happens on weekends, almost always for 2 hours or less, and not every weekend at that
  2. gaming with friends can only happen when it fits everyone's schedule
  3. I'm not doing myself any favours by punishing myself for screwing up by cancelling what is most weeks my only social activity for the entire week
 
graoumia said:
@Laura did you ever tried this with another kind of beans ?
Click to expand...
No. I'm thinking of trying them with kidney beans one day soon though. (I only have one can of black beans left in my ridiculously overstocked pantry, but two cans of kidney beans. And I still have some vegetable chili--what I would normally use the kidney beans for--in my freezer.)
 
graoumia said:
i translated and red beans and kidney beans are the same :LOL:
Click to expand...
Yes. On the can here they are actually called "dark red kidney beans" (et en français "haricots rouges foncés" -- parce que nos emballages alimentaires sont bilingues.) But mostly people just call them kidney beans.
 
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