May visits.

I was able to visit Lucy pretty soon after the first visiting restrictions lifted to allow any visiting, because Mum got a sore throat so had to be tested and quarantined that weekend :) I went shopping and bought some baby clothes and also had these newly crocheted booties which I took up. She only just fit in them so that was a bit of a fail, good thing I didn't worry about one having an inside out seam. Had a lovely afternoon and played a board game and went for a walk and had a home dinner. The height of pandemic entertainment really!

The other visiting concession we now enjoy is watching church on TV with my parents instead of alone. Usually at their house but on mothers day at my house, with croissants for morning tea and a baked dinner for lunch. 

And I was recently able to have K over to finish the last of our 6 part viewing of the extended Lord of the Rings. I felt like watching it after a long long time, and she had never seen it, and it was lovely. The story obviously is timeless and the movie holds up really well. 

I joined our church online Christianity Explored course as a discussion prompter. It's a fairly big commitment for me at the moment, forcing myself out of my cocoon to zoom with strangers, but for the gospel etc. I've said no to doing church music until it's over. I've actually rejected a lot of requests. I had a sudden overwhelming influx over a week, and after I accepted CX, and some stuff at work, I felt like I was at my limit. My limit seems to be reduced in this season. I wonder if the pandemic is taking energy away from me, or whether because I'm doing less bc of the shut downs, I want to do less in general. Like I'm retreating into a cocoon and getting overly sensitive. Not sure. Time will tell as life starts up I suppose. However, I definitely feel like I'm doing the right thing saying No to half the stuff.

My cooking obsession has been pancakes made with banana, oats, blueberries and things. Probably twice a week. And also ham and cheese melted on a croissant.

I had a couple of cleaning days this autumn. In April I did the windows, and in May I did a bunch of mat-washing, garage sweeping, furniture moving, and grout scrubbing. Good to get some of the dingy dust out of the house before winter closes in.

My walks with friends and solo have continued, with one friend we have been to 3 local cemetaries.

I've seen a depressing amount of this huge grass along Tocal Road and it was in the cemetery and on Metford Road too. It's Coolatai grass. I don't like it. It's not good. We don't need 2 m high impenetrable grass invading everything.

Park walks with gorgeous sunsets.

Lovely lunchtime walks at Tocal, sometimes on my own, sometimes with Noelene who is the only other walker still coming in to Tocal. I've been collecting scenes to paint.

My team leader went on leave for 2 weeks and I covered her role. I aimed to not get stressed, not try and understand all her jobs and achieve everything, but just plod slowly and calmly along keeping the balls rolling, making sure I understood stuff before acting. And my other aim was to manage the people well, so I had very short efficient zoom meetings and did 5 min check in phone calls with people. I actually used the phone a lot more than email because it was more efficient and friendly, but it was more emotionally draining. But it was definitely worth doing because people appreciated it. And I had really good feedback from my team and the other team leaders at the end of it.

This was my feeling about filling in online forms to recruit someone.

I went to the GP because my current run of progesterone pill ran out, and it was yet another treatment that didn't seem to work at all for my endo. She decided to refer me to a gynaecologist, and amazingly I got in the same day. Not a fun day having a series of doctor appointments and blood tests and conversations about fertility and things. I delayed getting an ultrasound for a couple of weeks and then finally did it on a Saturday (internal ultrasounds) mid May and got it out of the way. And the next part was another gynae appointment to get the results, which I thought were just a check up look see, but was actually bad news, I have a 5 cm fibroid on top of my uterus and an 11 x 5 cm cyst on my left ovary. So I will need surgery. It is uncertain whether I will lose my remaining ovary, but it's a possibility. I am booked in for an MRI. I have also had the blood tests for the cancer markers, and I do have cancer markers like last time, but since we know I have endometriosis that isn't really a concern this time around.

It's all a real bummer. Not a scary time like last time, but really quite depressing. An additional frustration was that I never looked at my private health cover after I got diagnosed. I should have changed to hospital cover that INCLUDES Gynaecology. It would have cost very little extra. It just never occurred to me. I am so angry to have missed this and not have the option of going private at reduced cost. I guess I only have one head and I can't think of all the things all the time.

The close friends I have told have been really lovely, E and G sent up flowers when I first found out, and JK came over for a walk and a talk about my worries at some point in the process.

I have been feeling pretty flat and tired last week, processing my worries about my future and probably some physical stuff going on. Some church friends invited a few of us over on Friday night. I wasn't feeling excited but they are good people.

And it was just lovely. We had good conversation, roast meat and veg and apple crumble, played sequence and sushi go. I was deliriously joyful until about 9:30 when my energy crashed and then just my brain stopped hehe. I was the slowest at sushi go. I've started having energy crashes again. I had a few months of normal regular energy which was lovely, and now I get sudden crashes. Probably need to be strict on that sugar again.

Percy and me on the cello.

A bit of a garden update. It's functioning well. It is a pleasant place on a sunny afternoon. I read here until the shade came over.

This was some of my seedlings, which are now all in the garden.

And here is the garden all bedded in, some edibles at the front but the rest is flowers! 3 kinds of poppies, 2 kinds of sweet peas, cornflowers and paper daisies.

JK has come to stay for a few nights and we stocked up on icky sticky.

I had a flex, so a 3 day weekend, to pick myself up after my gloomy week, and I did some oil painting. I finished off this nice quick wash painting.

I wore my new apron which I bought for the purpose. I didn't bother smiling for the photo so that's my resting face.

And I did a small landscape from a recent photo. I kept changing my mind about the texture so took a lot longer and has heaps of paint on it. Will take a week to dry. Very happy with the mist effect.

Speaking of mist, I went for a walk today in the fog. Walking alone is a good way to check in on yourself. Not so gloomy today. I'm fragile but my baseline is positive not negative.

I also found a rose on the ground. Mysterious. Magical.

JK and I went to parents for church TV and lunch, and then we went for a walk in Maitland and looked at houses and things. I love weekends so much at the moment. I love the quietness and the lazy breakfasts and the walks and getting the cooking done for the week and having not much on and just resting.

We have been doing Ecclesiastes at church, and this spoken reflection on the idea of hevel popped up on spotify one day, and has been helpful in keeping my worries in perpective. Ovaries are hevel. Money is hevel. Pandemics are hevel. Even in 5 years or 10 years this month wont be very memorable, let alone in a thousand years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7bgMUykvsE

April walks and moods.

I have continued to enjoy the blessings of semi isolation. I think 100% lockdown would be very hard, but I've still been working at Tocal (in an empty office) and most days of the week I go for a walk with someone to stay in touch with my friends and get exercise, and it has been lovely. The colder weather, feeling all windswept, walking with a friend, really enjoying that. 

So life is good as it is, but then requests started to come in and I got anxious again about all the things potentially on my plate. I will actually say no to a few of them. I just don't know, if I say no to things, will my comfort zone shrink? Will I end up being a selfish person who prioritises me time and self care above everything else? I also want to figure out how to have a day of rest every week. So that when normal events resume, I just say no to invitations, don't go to the shops, stuff like that, for either saturday or sunday. I feel like having a set sabbath will mean less decisions, less potential guilt or FOMO, because I would have pre-scheduled that time for certain activities and not others. I think in reality it will be really hard to do though.

This is my current work walk buddy and the magnificent draft horse at Tocal.

One friend and I have done walks to explore old local cemetaries.

It's good to have everything green and pretty, and with a lot of lovely winter light, and a lot of time to paint. On the Easter long weekend I first did a whole lot of gardening and window washing and those sort of jobs that had built up for months, and then I started oil painting again. Over a few weekends I did one large laborious landscape, and one small interesting oil sketch.

I found a pleasing solution to the fashion problem of painting. I hate feeling frumpy in old baggy clothes when I am trying to be artistic. So I bought this thick cotton apron! I will have to keep wearing old clothes because my arms get painty but at least I'll have something cool on over the top.

My family doesn't do a lot of phone calls and group videos, none really, so it has been nice to do a couple of them on facebook messenger or zoom. I also do Jillian with Ros on a facebook video call. And getting into playing computer games online, on board game arena. 

Healthwise, my annoying sore wrist has given birth to a visible ganglion cyst. I crowdsourced the topic on facebook, and probably the thing is to don't do thing that hurt. However I am not sure if its exercise or cello which aggravates it.

This week I got to the end of another course of mini pills, Microlut, and that too was not a good endo management. Probably the least bad for my guts, but too much bleeding and that's tiring. So my lovely new GP got me into a gynaecologist (on the same day! praise God) and now I'm going to get a bit more serious management. The Gyn put me on ANOTHER type of pill and I need to go off and get ultrasounded, because nobody has looked in there for 2 years now. It's good to be getting looked after but also it's hard because I have to think about things like my eggs and my short reproductive window and whether lesions are penetrating my bowel and stuff. And if I had already had kids, no problem whip it all out. I'm at such an awkward age where I now have a closing window, and because of my endo damage its a narrow window, but I'm not yet actually beyond the possibility of having kids. It's causing grief and stress. In the big scheme of things, like eternity, or even 10 years, it's a light and momentary trouble. I'm so grateful that my condition doesn't affect my quality of life. But right now it sucks to process this stuff every few months when I talk to another doctor.

Garden update. Grass is green and tidy, geraniums in the wall garden are flourishing and flowering, roses continue to climb more branches up the pergola, and the chinese star jasmine is sending heaps of exploratory vines around the fence, I hope that next summer sees a massive expansion of green covering the colourbond fences.

I have 3 types of poppies growing from seed! It is however such a SLOWWWWW process. After a month, the first ones I planted are still so weak and small. I have already planted out some edible greens and some sweet peas.

Here is the garden, with sweet pea trellises going, but a lot of empty space waiting for poppies.

A little patch of mini chrysanthemums that I planted 2 years ago and forgot about suddenly flowered magnificently by my back door. Would repurchase. 

I was using the tilt shift instagram filter to take photos of flowers like above, and I used to add bible verses and post in my stories. People really liked them, it was a little good practice for me too. I no longer have that filter with the app update sadly.

And finally I have crochet from a pattern! It is supper hard. These are small and quick booties for Lucy, but took me so long because I had to youtube every instruction.

Finding myself watching a lot of TV because it gets dark early and I don't have nights out. I am aiming to change that in May, consume less media and more paper books. It's a hard habit to break though, as much because I like the noise and company of the TV... reading a book in a quiet house at night is a bit uncomfortable. It's the hard thing about living alone and not having visitors atm, I'm either alone with my thoughts, or I'm distracting myself with podcasts and TV non-stop. So we shall see. Can I become comfortable with my silence.