Thoughts

We're going to a small local event on Saturday. Something happened and the event has been suddenly modified so we can only use the site until 6:00. I bet the head cook is going nuts. I think I remember that at least one dish was planned to be a long slow-cooking one so now it's going to be a choice between precooking (and deciding how long and how much) or creating a different dish. It's nothing that the cook can't handle but I feel for them having this hit at the last minute. I am thinking about bringing my never-used-yet cribbage board with me to see if I can lure anyone into a game or two. It is this one and I think it is very pretty. https://www.amazon.com/Palm-Royal-Handicrafts-Cribbage-Availabe/dp/B093QGGJH9/ref=sr_1_11?crid=1I33LGINPQSI6&keywords=round+cribbage+boards+wooden&qid=1682652732&sprefix=round+cribbage%2Cspecialty-aps%2C104&sr=8-11 I have my embroidery to bring, of course, but I can't do it for very long anymore and need something else to do during the rest of the event. We're not staying for feast so it is going to be a short day but I am okay with that. The temperature is predicted to be in the low 70s (f) with a 16% chance of intermittent showers, which likely means one or two half-hour moments of rain and then we'll be back to partially cloudy skies.

We had planned on just "hanging out". There is no archery going on, so my spouse has nothing to do but help set things up and tear them back down again. This is good, in that if he couldn't be busy at least part of the time he wouldn't want to go. "Just visiting with friends" is not his idea of a fun event. We're planning on bringing our new-ish pop-up and testing out the new walls I bought for it. It didn't come with walls and we need at least one sun & wind break. I'd originally purchased patterned shower curtains to use for that but even though their black patterning on the white cloth is somewhat correct-to-period for woven design, I don't like them. I'd only purchased two, just enough to lap over each other and cover one side of the shelter. During the winter I got a wild hair and bought three red walls (the roof is a pagoda style in red and black, our household colors) so this will give us a chance to try out the walls and see if they work. It isn't easy to find walls for a 12x12 pop-up after the fact. And I know that red walls are not the best choice - a Pennsic mayor once bought a huge black and red pavilion to use in for the motor pool and it was a disaster because of how the sun shining through shaded everything red. It is now used as (I think) the "noisy tent" out near the battlefield, for musicians. Anyway, I'm not too worried about what things will look like in our interior since we'll only be using one wall at a time to shade/shield, and the few times that we put all three of them up it will be because it is raining, when the interior is going to be murky anyway. On those occasions we'll use the two shower curtains as "drapes" for the open side, which should look nice. But first to make sure that the walls actually can attach to and fit the sides. It is going to suck if we get there and find out that the walls don't work on a drippy day!

Weather and pollen have combined to make me grumpy and sore for a while now. But I had a fabulous day yesterday after sleeping for 13 hours (!) and waking up at a normal time for those who live day-focused lives. I got so much done! Went to bed all chipper and happy planning more to do today after I'd wake up, then struggled to get to sleep and finally succeeded sometime after 3am. Urg. My glucose monitor's alarm did not wake me up so far as I can remember but I did wake up a few hours later at a dangerously low level. It read 41. It doesn't register lower than that so I don't know how low my count was. Drank apple juice and ate a package of peanut-butter crackers (nasty. I must have bought the wrong brand) and things improved so I went back to sleep. Woke up to my count almost at 300, then it dropped down to stupid-low again, and back up again, without any food or dink involved. It was frustrating and the aches in my body tell me that it wasn't appreciated. I know this is a common complaint for diabetics so I also know there isn't an easy solution for the yoyoing. It seems to rely on too many vague variables. You just have to treat as you can and carry on. Channel your Inner Brit, I guess. In the meanwhile, today has been a washout.

Tomorrow I have errands to run. I "killed" the chip on my bank card and will have to go in to get a new one. I hate the hassle of switching over the new specs on my card for each account I have at stores and apps but it beats the alternative. Later in the evening I plan on sewing and baking, which I'd meant to do today. Nothing is dire though so I won't be stressing about missing getting any of it done.

After writing my complaining post (see somewhere below in your newsfeed) and reading all the posts I'd missed, I realised that I hadn't written about how much I am loving this Dexcom 6 glucometer that I now use. There is a little monitor/transmitter which sits inside a sticky pad somewhere on one's body and transmits a person's glucose level to a phone or separate handheld monitor every three minutes. They can't get more than about 20 feet away from each other without the hand-held one going bat-shit crazy, but this is still a cool system.

Anyway.

I was here at my desk, sort of half-craving a taste of Aplets and Cotlets which I can occasionally indulge in, when I checked my monitor. Nope. Blood sugar is too high. And the craving subsided. I love this. I get instant reads on how the levels are doing and never have to go find the test kit. Oh man, and in the middle of my sleep cycle, if I wake up sweaty and shaky and confused, instead of struggling out of bed to careen my way into the kitchen where the finger-prick test kit is located (which energy outlay can dangerously drain one's glucose if it is already low), now I just press a button on the hand-held monitor and I know right then if I need to eat some sort of sugary thing*. It is so convenient. And acts as a secondary conscience, too, keeping me from indulging most of the time. Not all of the time yet, but I've only been using it for a little over one month. And I have to say that there is something satisfying about using the longer readout graph function to see how the levels fluctuate over the course of (up to) a day. I have no idea if it is significant, but I'll be letting my Endocrinologist know that I've learned that I digest food very, very slowly thanks to that graphing. It might make a difference in how I am supposed to pace out my food intake each day.

I did the "you're old now" thing and took myself to a dermatologist for a checkup. No suspicious moles or freckles but there is a rough patch of skin at the point of one elbow and it turned out that it is psoriasis, so now I have steroid cream to use on it as well as an appointment with an arthritis clinic. I suppose I should have thought of that anyway - it runs in the spindle side of my family and as a crafter it is something that will impact my retirement activities. Since the appointment I've discovered a bump on the joint of my little finger on the right hand. I'd never noticed it before. I guess arthritis just sneaks up on one. It will be interesting to see how much I have of it, and especially interesting to learn if there is anything I can do about it. It's not something I've thought about until now.

My SCA Kingdom hosted a weekend of classes (University of Atlantia) last weekend. I spent seven hours in Zoom meetings on Saturday and only one on Sunday since an instructor bailed on the second Sunday class. (I hope they are okay.) Most of the day was focused on medieval Mongolian life - clothing, history, personae, and cuisine. I have a list of book titles to consider purchasing. Normally I would say "check out from the library, probably via ILL" but now that my spouse is concentrating on SCA archery, he is more interested in "going Mongol" and he can't read books at the speed I do until he retires from work. I'm the research-y member of the family so to purchase or not is mostly my decision. It is really nice to see his interest in the SCA's activities growing again. He was pretty lost when he had to give up all forms of fighting, and he's burnt out in the service field, so this new enthusiasm heartens me.

*"Sugary thing" has evolved from a snack box of raisins (absorbed too slow) to a commercially produced glucose gel (one of the nastiest things I have put in my mouth in decades) to... Smarties. Yes, those hard little sugar wafers/tablets/candies which used to show up so often in my trick or treat bag. Folks on he diabetic support group say that they are just as good as glucose tablets for instant sugar delivery and taste better than any glucose tablet around. And they are hella cheaper than commercial glucose tablets. Unlike raisins, they don't go stale in a drawer in a nightstand, either.

My local social circle is pretty small nowadays, after I "quit" the local SCA group. While I see my friends in regular settings (mostly having lunch together), the only other time I am out socially is when the archery community decides to go out after a practise (my husband is an archer and most of the archers are friends of mine). But... *sigh* ... they are almost all also brewers. And that means wherever they choose to go after shooting butts, the decision will be based on how many microbrews will be available. In other words, a pub. If it was just a case of "let's hit the pub" I would not be disgruntled. And I sure don't want anyone to reduce their enjoyment on my behalf, especially when I am a +1 and not a member of the archery community. But dang it, pubs don't have anything remotely resembling healthy food. Certainly not for diabetics. (That would be kinda weird, really.) So while everyone else is drinking two or three new-to-them beers and eating pepperoni pizza, I'm sipping a diet soda and picking at a tiny appetizer pretending that it is lunch. And thus, the sighing. There was a pub near an indoor shooting place that served fabulous, delicious ribs, but at some point a couple of our archers had a falling out with the shooting gallery's management and we don't go there anymore. It's too far to go for just a meal, being across the James River from us. (Where the James meets Chesapeake Bay so it takes about 30-40 minutes to cross/go under the water.) So there! I have voiced my grump. It's not about hanging with drinkers, it's that where there is good microbrew hunting there does not seem to be good food.

I have to go get a Covid test today. Not really "have to", but the two people who we socialize with most are coming over to hang out for NYE and I have a cold/flu/sniffly thing going on. Just enough symptoms to warrant making sure it is a cold or regular winter respiratory thing. I dread going given the timing. Everyone coming home from their Christmas travels are crowding the testing centers. Which I have not been in since last year. I'll say one thing for masking - it has certainly cut down on winter flues and colds!

Wait. No Covid test. Or at least, no rapid Covid test, which means that I wouldn't have an answer before tomorrow night. I contacted the two roomies (they room together) and left it up to them as to whether they are comfortable with me being out with them or not.

We registered for Atlantian Twelfth Night and I think I posted about making Tomten as the beginning of my gift crafting. And now we aren't going. The Omicron infection rate is too high for us to be willing to go hang out in a room with people from five other states. That, and what we were really looking forward to was spending time with friends who'd be hosting us at their house, but he's 75, diabetic, and has had a quadruple bypass. I just can't see us visiting with them, leaving from that big gathering, and then bringing back whatever germs we picked up to share with our hosts afterwards. We have to talk about our decision with the person who was going to travel with us before we definitely cancel but I know he's not going to want to risk our hosts either. However - we could, if they would like, come spend the weekend with them in their isolation (they are very much homebodies) and just hang out together for the weekend. That would be fun too.