* I pulled the "British School Slipover" (a vest) back out tonight and added a couple more rounds on it. Probably won't get any knitting in tomorrow (or even write a post because I have class from 8-3, a Gen Ed council meeting at 3, and a 6 to maybe 8 pm meeting at church. I do not like the second week of the month.
* Apparently Dolly Parton has "health challenges;" her sister is asking for prayers and she's cancelled some planned things. I really hope it's nothing too bad; but she is 79 and also recently lost her husband, and....yeah. That would be a bad blow in a year full of them, though. I really hope it's something minor and treatable.
* I'm not sure but I think I either had a stomach bug late last week, or ate something that disagreed strongly with me - woke up Friday morning with muscle cramps all over, was nauseated (I almost never throw up with things like that though) and I felt poorly for several days. Started wondering again "is my hecking gall bladder going out and I'll have to have surgery" but it's a lot better now....and I think the pain I had in my side was actually muscle.
I'll see how I do THIS week; it's also possible it was allergic overload after a day in the field and I am taking the second half of the class to the same spot tomorrow. I seem to get GI upset and muscle cramping with bad allergies some times. (Pollen is very high because it's been so hot, not rained, and there's almost no breeze). Allergies stink but at least they don't require surgery to treat.
I hate though how a sort of generalized existential dread comes with it; a feeling that you will never be comfortable or cheerful again. Part of it is the back and shoulder pain but I think part of it may just be weird biochemistry.
* I started a new book last night (needing a break from the excesses of the rulers of ancient Rome) - it's a book someone posted about on Bluesky (Perhaps it even was the author, Nicola Chester). The post was enough to get me interested in pre-ordering it from Bookshop (my go-to place for ordering books these days). It's called "Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women's Journeys Through Time, Land and Community"
It's apparently interwoven stories/memoirs of the author's search for a farm to live on, and then the memoir of women who did farm work in the 1940s (not exclusively, or even, it looks, mainly, Land Girls). It's set in the UK, so parts of it will be very UK specific, but that's fine, I enjoy reading about the geography and history of that country and about country life in general.
I liked the foreword, where Chester described her own "personal farm" as a girl - a Britains set of farm animals the the other parts needed for buildings and fences and vehicles, and how she'd set it up on her bedroom carpet (she is perhaps my age or a bit younger; while many of the toys were clearly handed down from the 40s, she noted a couple of the figures of people were clearly from the 1970s). At any rate, I remember that. I had little plastic farm animals and when I was very small I had a whole farm set with a barn and fences and trees and even little tan plastic bases (representing soil) with green vegetables (I remember corn and cabbages, there may have been others) you could "plant" in it.
A lot of the fun of those sorts of things is the setting-up; once I had done that trying to make up stories about it or move the various figures through the set up was less-satisfying (then again: I really had no experiences with farms; I was a suburban child). But it's a familiar game.
Oh, I'll eventually finish SPQR, but it's good to have something a bit...cheerier? to interleave with it.
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