Shredding and Misfits

When Handsome Son took my car through inspection yesterday, he had to find the documents in the glove compartment. Insurance certificate and registration.

This is not one of the neater parts of my life. Each time I get an updated document I toss it into the bag of them in the glove c. So you have to sift through, squinting at the tiny dates to find the most recent, while the police officer who just stopped you sighs and shifts from foot to foot.

Anyway when HS son got home, he said oh, I did a bit of clearing up. And dumped a lot of old documents in the table. Not that his own car is a model of clean and neat, but I digress. What a reversal -- a son tidying up after a mom.

So a lengthy search for the shredder ensued, and I eventually realized that the thing I kept moving out of the way while I searched for it was um, the shredder.  Not too sharp right now.

My inner artist immediately went to oh, I can use these strips to weave something, while my inner tired person went to no, I don't think so.

Haleem arrived early today, so I missed the official arrival of the Misfits pink van.

You'll note the chocolate covered cherries hiding on the left,  vital nutrition. And tuna will feature in tuna salad,  also some pasta idea, beautiful brown eggs, shrimp which I haven't decided how to use yet. 

Cheese because it's a staple around here, strawberries and yogurt desserts, sliced bread to save energy just now and make good sandwiches. Coffee supplies just in time, and this time I ordered ground, not beans. Avocado oil which I seem to get through fast.

And I'm all set for some easy cooking. I can't remember the last time I shopped at a grocery store. That seems too strenuous.

And the last stage, as the fruit is resting in water a while 

Box broken down and tied with string, ready to recycle.

Happy day everyone, back to my exercises today, using hand weights and trying to remember what my scribbled exercise notes mean. 

Try to read your notes on life, it helps. As does a call like one I got from the doctor who ordered the parathyroid test telling me one reading is high but not after all an issue. Yay.

Oops, I did it again, and new exercises

 You know how I've always said I accept speaking engagements far out, because I've always thought I'd be safely dead by then? And  I never am, and I have to go through with it? I just did it again.

Late July I've agreed to speak online in a pod, as part of an Invictus Games fundraiser, by the Sussex Squad. They're a brilliant group, who support Harry and Meghan's charities with very effective targeted fundraisers. I've been taking part in their Spoutible twice-weekly pod since it started. They can get up to several hundred participants.

So they asked if I'd speak about my own life experience, as far as I feel okay.  This probably came from my recent comments about D-Day, and my point that everyone in a war zone is at war, some, mothers and children, without weapons, and memories of what war does to you if you're in it.

The Invictus  Games, created by Harry for wounded war veterans, are a marvellous way for veterans, women and men,  disabled physically or mentally, to compete at their own level and regain the dignity they lost on being invalided out. Heroes all.  It's a tribute to all veterans of any war, and an acknowledgement of what we owe. So yes, considering my family record, I can do this. 

But, then,  I may be safely dead..;)

Speaking of staying alive, I've been getting creakier as I go, particularly a hip which is a pain in every way. It's been an issue on and off for decades, result of surgery, but lately a bigger nuisance.

I've been doing the chair yoga and started to get a bit bored with knowing exactly what was coming, so I switched to Bob and Brad, great physios, for specific hip exercises, which are helping a lot. 

Their presentation is hokey, but they're excellent physios, and teach the anatomy of pain and its sources.  And they're men, but do treat women and include them firmly in their thinking, yay.  I've had quite a bit of help there.

I know these moves from other exercises such as chi gong, yoga, all that, so it's just a different approach to the same  moves. I'm doing the stretches lying in bed, before I get up and go to sleep. For now they're definitely helping. Anyway, just sayin'.

It's not about living long,  it's about keeping well enough to enjoy it. I don't want to eke out a sad old time!

Meanwhile in between sitting on the patio, admiring my potatoes about to flower 

and my burgeoning, burgeoning, I tell you, flower seeds 

otherwise doing nothing but listen to birds and the wind in the trees, I did more stitching.

 

Trying on here 

The seams are sticking out because this is the first pass, and I was trying on right side out.

The side seams are French seamed. You first stitch up, wrong sides together, then turn, right sides together,  roll the seam between dampened fingers and thumbs, to bring the stitch line to the surface, then stitch again, to enclose the raw edges. 

I was watching Marion's World while I worked on the second pass, and, lookit, she's working on a linen top, too. Smocking though.

This gave me an idea. My sleeves are wider than I want, as a small person, but why not slip a couple of tiny smock type pleats into the sides of the sleeve hems, as a design feature and a fitting move, to bring them in a bit? So that might happen.

Happy day, everyone, try not to commit too far out! Do as I say, not as I do. Except do stretch.