personal political

lost and not found

A few weeks ago I lost my reading glasses.

I'm still not entirely convinced that they are irretrievably lost. I wore them last thing on a Sunday night when I was on the computer. I then walked the dog down the street to the nearest tree for his bedtime toilet (about 20 seconds walk), walked back and went to bed. I think I had the glasses on my head for that walk. In the morning, they were gone. I usually have them on my bedside table but they weren't there. It was a public holiday so no one was around when, at 9.30am, I retraced my steps to the tree to see if they were lying on the ground. They weren't. I think the chances of them having been taken by a passer-by are very remote, as it was a very quiet public holiday morning (and besides, who would take such a pair of glasses? If I came across an obviously lost pair, I'd leave them, thinking the owner would come looking for them.)

mind body

I continue to watch my menopause process with interest.

Every woman will know that cycles are affected by both conscious and unconscious events/incidents/processes. But as my cycles wind down, I've been losing that sense of connection.

exercising while the world burns

I did three yoga classes this week and yesterday I finally made it to the outdoor heated pool which goes with my new borrowed free gym membership and swam a kilometre in 30 minutes and got out and felt absolutely fine - not even tired. So I'm feeling pleased with myself.

I realise I haven't kept to my post-every-day-in-June intention and I realise there's a lot of serious stuff I should be blogging about, but I have an exam on Monday so won't be posting much before then.

yoga

I went to a new yoga class yesterday. Today I'm very sore, but in a good way.

skin

I'm sometimes told that I have good skin for my age. What people mean by that is that I'm relatively unlined and unwrinkled. But that's just an accident of facial geography - the placement of bones, features, etc, hasn't created any deep lines.

But beneath the surface - and increasingly on the surface - my skin isn't 'good'. It's damaged, from a typical sunburnt Australian childhood of the 1960s-70s (and typical unaware early adulthood in the sun). And this week I was diagnosed with my first skin cancer. I'm sure it won't be my last.

stuff

Long time no blog, etc, etc.

home (healthcare) delivery

Last night we called a doctor to the house to look at co-parent's infected toe.

'bravely but gleefully...'

Neil Aspinall, the real “fifth Beatle” has died at 66 - of lung cancer. Aspinall rarely spoke publicly about the four Beatles, but he did tell this story of how he met George Harrison:

My first encounter with George,” Aspinall remembered, “was behind the school air-raid shelters. This great mass of shaggy hair loomed up and an out-of-breath voice requested a quick drag of my Woodbine. It was one of the first cigarettes either of us had smoked. We spluttered our way through it bravely but gleefully.

George also died of lung cancer, at 58.

A friend of mine’s brother recently died of lung cancer, aged 60. Another friend of a friend is dying of the same disease.

I can’t help but think that as I move up in my fifties, these stories will get closer and closer. I have friends who have smoked for 30 or more years now. When we were younger, we could postpone the idea of the threat of lung cancer. I suspect it’s going to get increasingly more difficult to do that.

roots pt 2

There's good news and there's bad news on the root canal front - but the good only makes sense if I fill you in on what happened after the first treatment: which is that my tooth continued to react strongly to cold (one of the main symptoms which had brought me to the endodontist's chair in the first place).

grey

I was walking fast up Ox Street last night (slightly late for a meeting) when a man popped out of a pub and immediately began to talk as he strode along beside me.

"You know they say grey is the new black," he said. It took me half a second to realise he was talking about hair. "It's considered to be very sexy but I'm 47 and can't seem to do anything to hasten the grey". He laughed.