Week of 3 July 2023

Backs, shoulders and arms

This week I was going to write about how well I was doing putting last week‘s shoulder exercise habits back into place.

But, well, I’m not.

Last weekend, I decided to very helpfully over-exert my back when I was emptying the food scraps bin into the compost. It was sore but manageable and I had no excuse not to do the shoulder exercises.

All I had to do was work out when and where (or after which existing habit) to do each one, put the stretchy band in place, and do the exercises.

You can guess what happened. Or didn’t happen . . .

Meanwhile, my back pain persisted and on Friday I went for my pilates session with the physiotherapist and, after that, a massage. Nice, right? With instructions not to walk too much but to make sure I did some short walks over the weekend, I headed home.

By Saturday morning it had gotten worse, much worse. I felt like all the good work I’d done since last time it was really sore, back in April when I had the MRI, had fallen apart.

It’s so frustrating! This seems to be never-ending and as soon as one thing starts to come right, it slides back again.

Needless to say, I had an uncomfortable weekend.

Eyes

After giving up on contact lenses for a few years in favour of the glasses that work for reading and distance (following the inevitable decline of my close vision once I got to ‘the age when . . . .’), last year my optometrist suggested I trial some disposable ones.

They come in handy trial packs of five, and I kept them for a while before I tried them. But when I did, it was like magic. I could see and I could read! I figured they must be multifocals (not true multifocal but some transition arrangement that has the same effect) like my glasses.

So I could have, if I’d wanted to, get more. But I’m lazy and I also didn’t like the idea of daily disposables with massive amounts of plastic. So I continued with the glasses.

I hate wearing glasses with masks and lately it’s been getting more and more irritating.

I went back to the optometrist this week and asked about the lenses. They weren’t multifocals as I’d thought. One eye is scripted for close vision and one for distance and somehow, working together, they allow me to see at all distances.

I’d tried this before with standard lenses and it didn’t work for me so I was really surprised to hear this. I said I was willing to try this again, but asked if there was an alternative to daily disposables. She thinks reusable ones aren’t a good idea for me so suggested monthly disposables.

I’m happy to give that a try so we ordered a trial pair to give me a month to get used to them.

Week 27 summary

What was the best thing about this week?

I made my first reverse park since I passed my drivers test last century.

Also, watching the last two episodes of Deadloch.

I do love watching series filmed in Tasmania, seeing places (and sometimes people) I know on my TV screen.

What did I learn this week?

I learned that when you have a direct debit set up on your credit card and your card expires, you need to contact the organisation that’s billing you and tell them you have a new credit card . . .

I sat in on a conversation that some Aboriginal people organised at our workplace for NAIDOC week.

This was an interesting yarn, including a discussion about what is an Aboriginal Elder (the theme of NAIDOC Week this year is “For Our Elders”). I really appreciated the opportunity to sit in on this conversation, to listen and learn.

What did I notice this week?

The great chicken bowl mystery!

The chickens have a water bowl (well they have several, but this one is their favourite), which constantly seems to get knocked over. We don’t know if an animal does it during the night or if the chickens do it. One day this week I noticed it had been moved closer to the bottom of their yard.

“Oh, you moved the bowl?” I said to Kramstable.

“No. I thought you did,” he said.

I didn’t. He didn’t. So who did?

Will we ever know?

What I’m reading this week

• The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks
• The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler

Habit tracker

• Morning ritual: (Goal = 7): 6
• Move (preferably before 3 pm) (Goal = 7): 6
• Three times a week writing habit (3): 0
• The Little Red Writing Book exercises (Goal = 5): 0
• Listen to writing podcasts (Goal = 2): 0
• Physiotherapy exercises (at least 4/5) (Goal = 7): 7
• Shut my computer down before 9.15 (Goal = 5): 5