(no subject)

[meanfreepath]

Happy New Year to everyone. May 2005 be happy, healthy, and fufilling. And may the souls those whom we'll miss in this new year rest in peace.

I am doing alright at home. I'm feeling pretty decent for the most part.

The bleeding has stopped for a day or so now, which is good. The swelling might have gone down a smidgen; it's hard to tell since I'm still pretty swollen. I've been taking little pain medication of late. Basically what's still uncomfortable, beyond being unable to open my mouth, is turning my head suddenly or to extreme positions. So until I get comfortable and full range of motion in my neck I will probably refrain from driving. Yawning and shivering definitely hurt but there's not much I can do there - because of the wires it's just the muscles tensing with nothing really being able to move.

I took a long 40 minute walk this afternoon in the nice weather, which I enjoyed. Exercise is good for well-being, as well as for helping to establish regular patterns of sleep, appetite, hydration, etc.

Eating progresses. I'll be very happy to eat normal food once I can - pureed/blended food just isn't the same. I'd really like to try to find some wide straws, the kind they serve bubble teas with. I've basically got two systems for eating. A regular straw works well for pure liquids (water, tea) and for stuff that isn't thick (like Ensure). With things like the banana and yogurt milkshake smoothies I've been making myself lately, it's a lot harder. Part of the problem, I think, is the narrowness of the straw, although part of it is also getting a sufficiently tight seal to suck when I can't pucker my lips to do so as one normally would. For thicker things (like the potato and onion potage I made yesterday), I just can't pull hard enough to get the stuff up. Then the second system, which they started me off in at Penn, is to take a syringe, suck up the stuff, and squirt it into my mouth. The problem here is that it's rather messy and thicker liquids clog the narrow opening and make the syringe hard to operate. So... I'd like to try using some wider straws, which would reduce the tendency of thicker things to get stuck and would be a lot less messy than the syringe. If only I knew where to find them! Any other practical ideas people might have are welcome.

My parents are very strongly objecting to my coming down to Swat for any of Hogmanay this year. I feel more or less fine but I guess I understand the overprotective tendencies behind their reluctance. Probably, at this point, it would still be rather exhausting, but I'd very much like to get around and do stuff. Certainly over the years I've learned to choose my battles wisely. I still don't know how happy they are about my being in the fire company. My parents have always worried about me, I think excessively. There are things I won't tell them, such as how Engine 14-1 is open cab and how anyone in the unenclosed part would be in a very bad way if it were to get into an accident, which can happen with emergency vehicles.

But I digress. Earlier today Julian was trying to put in a word as to why I should be allowed to go, and I overheard what he and Dad were talking about. Dad's actually afraid that I'd run into "irresponsible drunken teenagers who might start a fight" at the post-Hogmanay gaming in Greylock. I could barely keep from laughing; the ludicrousness of imagining people like eclectic_boy, crystalpyramid, or nightengalesknd in a violent, intoxicated rage was almost too much. But... that's Dad.

There is, however, the possibility of obcordate, Russell, and Zarrar coming by at some point tomorrow (or at least before Zarrar has to return to McGill and Russell resumes his RA responsibilities at Duke). So things won't be so bad.

In other news, there's been so much talk of Schumann and various things we'd perhaps not want to know about his body this semester that I've been tempted into reading a biography of Schumann myself. Now I find myself wondering if I've the one I've come upon in my Dad's library isn't the one nautiluspq was reading. It's Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius by Peter Ostwald. There is indeed a great deal of information about his sexual relations and about a certain sore... Also have read about some pieces of his that I haven't heard and would like to, like his Symphonic Etudes; alas for the absence of Underhill. These last two days, also, the New York classical station WQXR has been doing its annual Classical Countdown and I've managed to listen to a number of things, some Mahler, the Requiems of both Verdi and Mozart, and some of the Beethoven symphonies. John Alston hints at the possibility of the Verdi Requiem next year if we recruit enough people. It would be something to end my Swat musical experience performing something that monumental, although so much of the attention goes to the soloists that I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Grr. WQXR has been using the opening timpani passage of the scherzo 2nd movement of Beethoven's 9th to signal the start of the next piece in the Classical Countdown. It's getting really, really annoying after 2 days...

Comments

[nightengalesknd.livejournal.com]

gallian = suggests McDonald straws.