I wrote (to my Romanian BF in Romania) about 4:30 AM the following (since she is in Bucharest time zone) ~ I am getting worse. I think the lady who is coming needs to take me for an x-ray. I get like post nasal drip and then it's like I am gasping for air and coughing. I have a video consult with my GP at 2:30. I can get the x-ray in the morning. ~ just woke up and wrote ~ I slept more 🥰 Will do X-Ray. (Husband) filled my water bottle 1/3 full so not too heavy. I kept it on my chest like a compress, kept me warm too 🩷
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We met with a lovely lady who we hired to help me. We are very blessed to have this option.
Please pray that I can get an x-ray with not too much trouble or wait. I will call FIRST to be sure they have tech. 🙏🩷🕯️
I SLEPT which is huge other than that times I coughed like that. I am really grateful.
Well, I have a video appointment with my GP tomorrow afternoon. My cough is not as bad but it's not great. I am struggling with some worries about it. I think I am overtired, which is indeed the case.
I got some oil pastels and paper.
I am really glad for the song "it's OK" because it's so deeply mothering and comforting.
As you see I finally managed to get my cloth bin out. I had this on the bed when I had my 2017 foot fracture. It's so helpful because it keeps everything neat. I feel so much better because things are not so messy.
I got a card from my local church which was really nice. My Husband went around with the card at church ☺️☺️☺️
Did you know I go on "kicks" where I have fun deeply looking into something or someone?
So I can't do much right now, obviously. So I watched this ~
"NBC4 interview with Nightbirde in June 2021" on YouTube HERE and her words about artists giving to the world instead of receiving really struck me. She did a great interview. Reminded me of a classmate I knew growing up who was always very kind to everyone.
I love her music. I am also very eclectic in my music. God started giving me music to listen to when I was very ill, I am so grateful.
By God's mercy we had a LOVELY time with god-family ☺️🍕
My biggest prayer request is just that I can sleep at night.
They gave me a tin of tea 🫖 that I really love! I can't have any caffeine until my lungs and sleep are better. So this is going to be my celebration tea for when I have recovered 🥰
I am so glad that I can walk around the house! It's super cold now, 6° f! So it's not safe for me to be out at all with my illnesses. My husband however is at vesper's and I'm very glad for that.
My goddaughter's daughter said that our house is fancy which was really cute! I think it's because we can have breakable things and because I love color! That's what one of my future. Soon to be God willing baptized God's sons said about our house that it has so much color.
Ok so my Circadian rhythms are totally confused. I have slept during day or early evening but not at night. So today I kept myself awake in hopes of sleeping tonight. Last night I took some cough syrup that was new to me. It works great for most people but I am NOT most people!
So not taking that tonight.
I am so happy to be walking, drinking tea, lighting candles and doing research again.
I have a bad cough and am finally coughing up yellow (not red brown or green which are signs of infection). I had honestly no choice but to limit my fluids because I found the crutches really hard and I didn't know what kind of fracture it was. Just that I thought it was fractured but I didn't think it was a compound fracture.
I know what to do about this level of cold and I have had bad insomnia before so I understand it a bit better.
Google explains that Circadian rhythms control lots of things including body temperature. That explains why I have gotten chills or really hot (please don't tell me it's related to women my age 😳🤣 because this didn't start until after my fracture and huge insomnia. No offense meant to anyone but it is easy to try to medically diagnose others who are comfortable writing certain things about them self!)
Meanwhile I am going to read up on the beautiful singer nightbirde who God clearly used in beautiful ways because of her honesty (2% survival rate for her kind of cancer) and incredibly loving heart. She died February 19, 2022. God remember her in His Kingdom! May she rest in peace and in the comfort of the Lord.
So what are you waiting for? Go listen to the song!!!
These are my favorite jelly roll pens! I actually have them already so I will keep them for when my pens run out! I have a space for them in a box under my writing table. I needed the arnica gel and it was free shipping only with 25$ so I found something that I am sure to use!
I thought I would need a knee scooter again but now that I know it's not a worse fracture, I have a walking boot and was told to walk, so I successfully cancelled the order on that. I am so glad I don't need it!!
I ordered this the night that I hurt my ankle. It's been a real blessing! I already have a table for over you on the bed but this side table with wheels has been so helpful!
Thank you everyone for praying! We got there and back safely! I have a hairline fracture on my right ankle. It will be 6 to 8 weeks of wearing a boot, a walking boot and resting. Because of my cold I don't have the strength to leave the house again and do those three flights of stairs. So I will not be able to go to church. Thank you again for praying.
I have an appointment for 10:30 AM tomorrow. I am greatful. It's hard to get appointments here. They have X-ray machine. The person told me there's no reason to get an x-ray today when I will have it tomorrow. I have been in this situation before so I understand it. I'm very grateful that I have an appointment so soon.
I've done this all before and I know what I need to do. It won't be easy but God can use it.
My main prayer now is that I can see my future godson be baptized right before Holy week in our local church.
By the time our medical people actually talk to me, it was 8:00 p.m. for various reasons that I'm not going to talk about, I did not at all want to go to the ER locally. One reason I can tell you about is years ago they almost killed my friend at that hospital. But I won't talk about that anymore. I called and they were full and it would have been hours and I just couldn't take the idea of having to leave my home when I was actually comfortable with my foot carefully elevated. I probably should have just gone directly to the hospital but that didn't happen. We're trying to figure out how to make me warm enough so I can sleep. Unfortunately I can't have a lot of anything near my injured foot. In other words, my foot is cold which really actually impacts if I sleep.
I already have a list of doctors who I'm going to call in the morning. I'm hoping to go to an orthopedic doctor and have the X-ray and probably have a cast and have it done. I can't remember if they do a cast right away or not.
I would love if this is only a bad sprain but I don't know. If I broke my foot. I broke it. It would only be a fracture, though it's not that bad. The hot water bottles are already helping!! I have a really good husband.
I had my candles blessed today this morning! I actually had gone back to church for a memorial service at 4:00 and then I went and got a few groceries. I was really tired but I really wanted to walk more. Maybe that was a mistake but I also trust God's will.
I'm about to get in a cab. I slept on that little piece chunk of snow and twisted my ankle badly and it hurts. My husband knows and Hilly is at home waiting for me and will take care of me. Please pray that I didn't actually injure it badly. Thank you
I woke up on this Saturday the last day of January 2026 as usual before my beloved husband. I enjoyed a small pot of caffeinated tea. I chose yorkshire's Biscuit Brew this morning. It was so good with my lactose-free milk. I read some of Dorothy Sayers, a cloud of witnesses, which I've read before. Isn't this the most gorgeous copy of it? I love everything about it, the color of the style that it's hardcover and that the pages are good quality. And it's so funny and witty that beginning. I just love it. Peter Whimsy is just arrived on the scene at his brother's place. I felt a feeling I'd forgotten about. It was the feeling that I used to feel when I was younger. It was fun to revisit that feeling. It was that I was reading something fun that was British and a bit sophisticated in a unstated way. And that I was eating something fancy. Meaning my tea. And I ate dry toast with my egg salad on top and it was perfect. In other words, I felt satisfied, happy, and I guess rather urban in a youthful, perhaps vainglorious way that I rarely feel nowadays. So it was fun and kind of funny at the same time to experience it today unexpectedly.
For lunch we had leftovers from the Chinese takeout we had gotten. It was perfect sick person food because it was spicy and helped get gunk out of us. It's one of our secret tricks is to have spicy Chinese food when we're sick like this.
Yesterday I read Elsie's offline algorithm-free report and in it, she linked to an amazing hour-long video of a overhaul of a schoolhouse over 4 years into a home. It's a 100-year-old building in Indiana. During my I need to rest because I'm sick day yesterday I watched it. I too was transfixed. It's a very well done video and a very interesting life trajectory of this young couple. I enjoyed watching a little more today of some other videos. There's some repetition but they were very fun to watch and interesting. I watched some of them while making soup! Thank the Lord. I was able to make this simple soup that I hope to make yesterday that I wrote about wishing to make.
So I had two little Pyrex containers in my butter drawer in my fridge of butter. So I melted those chopped up an onion and added the organic baby carrots rainbow colored. Usually we don't buy these baby carrots because they're actually chemically washed to get to be the way they are usually. So however! Because I was sick I took an easy way out. Next time I will just buy pre-chopped organic carrots which are grocery delivery service will provide and be happy that we're paying them to chop them. I know that's ridiculous and over the top but when you're sick it sure is nice. So the picture above the collage which I figured out that I can make with Google photos very easily shows the steps.
Step 1 wasn't totally shown which I just mentioned that is melt the butter and then saute onion, barley chopped garlic cloves (3) and put the carrots in. Because I used a very large pan. I added some water pretty quickly so that the butter didn't burn. If I'd used my Dutch oven, I would not have had perhaps to add this water because I don't think the butter would have burnt as easily. But the thing is my Dutch oven which I rarely use actually. It's a gorgeous, unique shape by staub that we got on an amazing sale years ago. 75% off actually! But the thing is it's heavy. And this pan is not. So eventually I added probably an inch or more of water and I just let it simmer away and tell the carrots were fairly soft. It took a while.
Step 2. Before the carrots were super soft, I added three jars from the freezer mason jars quart size, which means the if it was fully liquid it would be a good inch and a half or more from the top so that it had room to freeze and expand. Anyway, I added three of those which I've gotten out and thawed enough to get out.
Step 3. I added the box of Applegate pre-cooked and cut up chicken. I cut an organic lemon in half and made sure there was no stickers on it. I put that in the soup after squeezing lemon juice out of it. And getting any seeds out before putting it in the soup. Then I let it all cook for a good while. The lemon really added a nice "zing" to it.
Step 4 was unexpected. It was after my husband asked if I added the celery. I had meant buy container of onion, carrots and celery all chopped together from my grocery delivery service. However, I made a mistake and ordered just chopped celery. Organic at that! It ended up being a perfect mistake and I added it at the very end. My husband suggested rightly that I should add more water in case more boiled off and I added some better than bullion liquid, basically chicken bullion, to make more broth by then adding boiling water. So then I threw all the chopped celery on top boiled it more on low and the celery basically melted into the soup. I took out the lemon before it was served.
And then it was done and enjoyed by both of us today.
While the soup was cooking, I managed to get out my baskets which always have the linens in them from our closet. And then I got out a bunch of our new candles and put them in. I always do it that way so I know that the baskets I have fit what I'm taking. And yes that is a lot of candles. We're taking it to church tomorrow for the next day. That way they go in the car! They'll come back God willing by cab! My godson and others will help me on that end on Monday God willing.
I later closed these boxes after getting the candles in for tomorrow.
So they are all ready to go now.
I rather love Google photos giving photo memories. This one from 8 years ago which I screenshotted was fun to see! I remember winning that little sachet of tea. Really good. Tea was something I was still getting into back then and this was one of them.
I've been listening to a lot of music today that is calming and beautiful. This one called
Is beautiful and I've had on repeat. YouTube is good with that.
In the midst of it after breakfast, I started writing what I would call a practice essay. I can write really quickly if I get an idea. And I'd had one percolating for a while. So I wrote about nine pages. That's a lot, but that's how it happens sometimes.
I'm really excited to get back to my Einstein book. This author also wrote two on another physicist. I got these two books from my NYC library. This quote "semester" in my life, I'm devoting a lot of it to quantum physics. I will never understand how to do the science of it or the math, but I can understand concepts if they're explained clearly. David C. Cassidy so far, with the Einstein book, is an excellent writer. My understanding of his 1992 book on Heisenberg called Uncertainty is that it's from his doctorate and a bit more technical. His later book much more recent called Beyond Uncertainty is an updated version of that and also more accessible from what he the author himself says. I'm guessing he grew as an author as well. His Einstein book if I remember correctly, that's in this picture, it was written between these two books. I'm reading it slowly underlining and going back and writing notes in a journal that I have for my writing project on physics. So in other words I'm reading it slowly, but because of that I'm really getting a lot out of it. And he's putting things in a way that make a lot more sense to me personally than other books I read 2 years ago or even recently. So I'm really excited about that! And I found a potential link for what I've written already in my first draft with what I'm reading now and that of course is quite exciting!
So that was a pretty amazing Saturday! And unusually we didn't go to vespers. Plowing has been so so and there was no parking because we live in the city. And it was bitterly cold. Because of that I was able to get everything done. I'm so excited God willing to have candles blessed soon!
I'm not over being sick yet but clearly God gave me the grace and strength to do a lot today. The soup is basically cooled now and I will put it in covered in the big pot in my fridge. Tomorrow. Hopefully I can take care of that. I hope to freeze some of that soup for emergency soup for later. I'll be getting more groceries delivered Monday night.
So that wraps up January! I basically had a run of almost a month of not being sick and after being sick for 2 months that was rather nice. That I'm sick again now is something I just have to accept.
Because I was able to make the soup, I canceled the homemade soup from my grocery delivery service. I would have ordered just that but it had been out of stock when we ordered for our Friday delivery. We're trying to reschedule the two things we had to cancel this weekend and we'll see how that goes.
It's silly how I sometimes want to rush through things. Will I ever learn to just pay attention? To enjoy each day? I think blogging and taking pictures helps with that. I know I look back at my blog from years ago and it all looks so nice. I have to work to remember the backstory and how there were times of real suffering that I didn't blog directly about.
But I'm thankful for today and for the music I discovered today. I had already listened to music by this author that I linked to above. But I had never heard the particular song I linked to before today. Music has become very important to me and something that gives me a lot of strength and steadiness. I'm grateful to God for that.
May God have mercy on all of us as we enter a new month! Hard to believe we will be in the second month of the new year already! Our February is forecasted to be very cold. I think there'll still be a lot of illness because of that. I remember in Elizabeth Goudge's novel The Scent of Water. There was an older couple that every winter they had fear because of the illness that they would suffer. I understand that more now that I'm older. How easy it is to get ill in these months. And it's not just for the elderly clearly.
May God have mercy on us!
(note: I wrote most of this on my phone by what I call 'talk texting' so sometimes my Grammer or spelling my not be right because I did not read over this as carefully as I should; but it's late and I must get to bed!)
