The Good, The Bad and The Weird

I went to see Jean the Physiotherapist on Monday.

The good news is, if her diagnosis is right, my right hip is not a big problem; the right pelvis is a little out of place. I didn't know I could do such a thing. Jean gave me two simple exercises to do twice daily, and wants me to come back in two weeks if there is no progress; about a month if I feel better.

The bad news are: 1) because of the exercises, I'm having aches and funny popping noises all over again; 2) I've got to throw away my favoritest, comfortablest pair of shoes because the sides are so soft I'm not walking on the sole but on the side with my right foot, and 3) I'm good to weave, but have to relearn how to get off/on the loom bench. Let me show you.

I had a skinny person reenact for our benefit. You know I'm short; the big loom's breast beam and bench are high. So, every time I have to get off the loom, I swing my right leg like a pendulum. Which happens a lot when your warp ends keep breaking. That's it. Jean said I have to alternate my legs when I get off, but I'm a bit scared to try that just now.

Monday was a bad day. (Here come the funny old-lady bits.) We ran out of milk after breakfast so I managed to get some before I saw Jean and put it in the car for Ben to bring home. I also got two plates; I got two a week ago Wednesday and promptly dropped one on Friday, and since buy-one-get-one-free was still on I got two in case I broke another. I remembered the bus schedule incorrectly, missed one, ran errands and loaded the pack too much before the next and hips and legs started to hurt. I thought I saw the taxi office had moved, so I went to one end of the town, saw a big sign but not the office, so I went to the old office nearly across our little town which is now a shop, couldn't for the life of me find their number on my cell, walked back to the sign and rang the number. It turns out the office is just upstairs. I staggered home shortly before one, I was exhausted, and there was no milk for a nice cup of tea. I was exhausted until late Wednesday afternoon when Sam and Annabelle came over to work out some more admin stuff for our exhibition.

Sam brought me three lovely pumpkins from her garden. Just Tuesday, I made the best humus ever, half of which was baked pumpkin. So now I'm thinking pumpkin bread or cake, in addition to the usual baked. And last week, I made the best banana cake ever. You could say this not-being-sick is working.

Today I tried to make a poster/invitation for our exhibition, but the weather, ergo the light, was so changeable I could not get descent pictures of our drawings after a whole afternoon. When I photograph drawings, however, I see completely different things from when I'm looking at them. Sam has delicate but refined work in a variety of styles; Annabelle has always drawn feminine figures, not willowy, but mother-of-earth types, and her work is interesting to spend look at.

I haven't gardened, I haven't exercised, and I keep tidying, cleaning and reshuffling my drawing kit but have done only one uninspired practice exactly a week ago that promptly went into the fire. Fingers crossed; tomorrow.  

And the weird; the biga/chef/levain/sourdough. And how little I know about it. Keeping a biga is like keeping a pet, but it's an invisible, tempestuous one. I put the food out, it disappears at different rate, and the darned thing likes to play dead.

In the past, I only followed recipes using regular flour; I knew [insert-your-favorite-word] took 36-48 hours in this house rather than the 12 in the book, but otherwise they've always worked. After reading the health benefits of slowly-raised dough recently, I decided to start a [i-y-f-w] to keep and use, without a recipe in mind, and because the first instructions I read used rye and wholemeal, so did I. These take longer, and the whole country had a "polar blast", so I got quite flummoxed and kept checking all kinds of websites instead of sticking to the one. Today we had normal temperatures and I fed it regular flour and a little bit of sugar and yeast and it looks back on track, but now I have so much I will have to use some tomorrow.

Such fun.