Ravishing Russian Choir
During my early morning walk I heard Russian choir on radio WORT http://www.wort-fm.org/ . It was ravishing, it made my day.
It turned out what I actually heard was ‘ ‘Ravishingly Russian’ http://www.msrcd.com/catalog/cd/MS1311
Want bit more stress-FREEDOM in your life?
Here’s an idea for a bit more stress-FREEDOM in your life:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6611967/not-google-plus
thinky AND crafty
Tomorrow one of my Australian cousins will come to see us for a few days.
While munching our English muffins on the back porch my daughter told me about the present she is going to make for my cousin. I told her that I admired her rare capacity to think up the kind of present that would make a person happy and then manufacturing it.
“I am a thnky and crafty person” said she “and I like to see the happy faces people make when they get a present from me”.
Details with photo about the typically Wisconsinite present will follow as soon it will be confectioned. I will have to find a toilet paper roll, though, so she can get started on the crafty part.
what doesn’t kill me, makes me thinner
or: every cancer cure has a silver lining!
I knew, I even signed a paper proving that I was told, that radiation therapy of the abdominal area can cause, among other side effects, also diarrhea.
Which it did. At first only on the treatment free days on weekends giving me a good excuse to skip the mandatory family walks.
The last three treatments were made with higher doses of radiation on smaller surfaces, in order to boost the curative effect. Which I assume they did, but they definitely boosted the side effects as well.
For the last three weeks (two weeks before and one week after finishing the radiation therapy) I have had the worst case of diarrhea in my life. The last three days I have been practically living on crackers, broth and cranberry juice.
However, during the 6 weeks of treatment I lost 12 pounds (5.4 kg) weight, a side effect of the side effect diarrhea, that I don’t mind at all.
The flipside is that the side effects of the therapy should dwindle away in 3-4 weeks after finishing it and I am going to put on weight again, adding to my overweight – if I don’t dwindle away myself in the process. Which would be too much loss of weight, even if my body mass index had turned into ideal.
Which I hope it won’t since my last motto is: better overweight in the bed than ideal weight in the casket.
I am planning on a wild experiment today: to gormandize a whole boiled potato and a whole grated apple today, on top of the beef broth and cranberry juice liberally served by my wife. It will have a win-win outcome: if I can hold them, I will keep, or, maybe even slightly increase my weight while definitely increasing my energy and pleasure levels. If I can’t: I will improve my body mass index.
If this isn’t positive thinking, I don’t know what is.
the pleasure of causing pleasure
Causing pleasure to someone close to you can be a pleasure itself. These days my wife took the cake: she signed up my son to an indoor soccer session, my daughter to an art course, and she took me to Trader Joe’s. The limited but exquisite selection of European food and beverages enabled me to go down the path of pleasurable memories of places and people I like, taking me to Italy, France, Bohemia, Bavaria, Hungary. The dry Hungarian red wine called Bull’s Blood of Eger evoked cozy evenings spent in unpretentious restaurants of that medieval town with friends.
The pain side of the day was efficiently rolled back by the new anti-itch lotion my wife bought to mitigate the painful allergic rash that still persists on my feet.
My own contribution to the family pleasure pool remained exceedingly modest, in comparison: I cooked Hungarian chicken stew (a kind of “goulash”) with Italian gnocchi and joined the after dinner euchre party.
a new kind of pain and a new variation of pleasure
Although the surface of my 3 incisions feel better, I started feeling a new kind of pain under the surface of the wound on my hip. It’s a deeper kind of ache, as if someone had kicked my gluteus maximus with a very heavy boot very viciously. Luckily we have painkillers so I took two of the lighter kind (Tylenol).
On the other hand my kids re-introduced the card game “uno” which can be played by all of us, whether only three are available or we manage to infect and persuade our guests to play with us, versus euchre, which strictly requires 4 players.
Playing cards, like every play, creates its own world, with its own rules, space and time. I vaguely remember some 30 years ago having read Johan Huizinga’s “Homo Ludens” proving this very fact we experience now daily.
Harmless plays simply add to own pleasure balance without hurting anybody. Well, most of them. The kids also got a ‘traffic jam game’ called “Rush Hour”. I watched them push the little plastic cars left and right following some kinky strategy reminding me of Rubik’s cube and then I decided that I would not start playing it, thus avoiding the possibility of being disturbed by visible proofs of my incompetence and impatience.
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