Six degrees of separation

Thursday:

There was a movie some years ago called Six Degrees of Separation which suggested that we are connected to everyone in the world in six or less links. I don't know if that is true, but I had a "small world" moment today on a much more local level. I put an ad online for free packing boxes for the 60 or so we had in the garage, the woman who picked them up this afternoon lived about 20 minutes drive away so not really that close. We chatted while loading up her car with the boxes, and it turns out she is best friends with my husband's aunt! Quite random. We have different surnames, it came up when talking about the school the aunt teaches at.

It was lovely and cool today despite being the third day of an Australian summer, and I went for a leisurely walk up to the library and back. I'm going to have to join the gym though, it's just going to be too hot for me over summer.

One book I borrowed was about the DASH diet, which I have investigated before when my husband first got high blood pressure as it was specifically designed to combat hypertension, but is also generally considered to be good overall diet. Since I have so much trouble looking after myself, maybe it will be easier if I'm doing it for his health? This is an updated version, published 2014. Essentially it seems to be a plant-based diet. Not actually vegetarian, but with fruit and vegetables and pulses etc as the main part of every meal, garnished with a small amount of meat and fat. Very little processed food. Keen on a wide variety of different coloured plant foods. It seems very sensible to me, but I don't know if we could stick to it! We are very much carnivores here, meat is the centre of every meal. Even if we don't cut down on meat too much it wouldn't hurt us to eat a lot more vegetables, and Tim would be very happy to do so. He likes the damn things. I've had a lifetime of struggling to find ones I like and trying to work out how to cook them.

The tree-trimmers came and cut off that branch that was broken. A truck came with five men! This was their last job of the day and a very easy one. Nothing over head-height, so no ladder required. Chainsaw and slice slice slice, broken bit cut off and a few more bits reshaped. Branches picked up, a few seconds with a leaf blower and done. Amazing what you can do with the right tools and experience. It would have been a couple of hours with a small blunt saw and my puny muscles!