November

 Friday:

After a cool rainy spring, summer seems to be here with 30+ C days and cicadas screaming outside. One is clinging to the fly screen of the kitchen window, I can mostly see its belly but I think it is a 'Black Prince', much prized when I was at school due to their relative rarity. 'Greengrocer' is the one you see most often. Cicadas are a huge fat insect, size of a mouse without a tail and rather threatening beady eyes, but completely harmless. Except the for the ear-drum shattering calls. 

Jasmine finally got her L plates and is learning to drive (she passed the knowledge test first time, but we had delayed due to Covid). I do not enjoy teaching, I get nervous with even an experienced driver let alone a complete beginner! I hate not being in control of the car. She is actually quite careful and hasn't done anything bad, but every time she goes a bit close to a parked car or her speed creeps up to the limit instead of super slow I nearly have a heart attack. I'm going to have a stomach ulcer after this. My husband has done most of the teaching so far, but he isn't around after school. We just go round very quiet streets so far.

The pain in my foot got worse, I had an ultrasound and a blood test and the doctor thinks it was gout - I didn't even know that was still a thing but apparently it is quite common. I had a course of steroids - Prednisolone - to reduce the inflammation and that helped a lot with the pain in my heel/ankle but I still have pain and numbness along the outside of my foot. I need to go back and see the doctor but I've been confined with a bad cold (which I got from my family, I didn't get a Covid test this time but they did and were negative) which I don't want to spread to the doctor's office. I'll go next week. 

I'm back on the CSIRO total wellbeing diet, focus on whole foods and lots of vegetables, you count units (3 carbs, 3 dairy, 2 fruits per day etc) not calories and can have one indulgence per day. I lost weight in week 1, put it back on in week 2 with sickness comfort food plus Aiden's 14th birthday, back on track with week 3.

Speaking of Aiden, several days after he'd seemingly recovered from his cold he came home from school exhausted and napped all afternoon. Then the next morning he woke with bad chest pain and a racing heart rate. Our doctor sent us to the ER where we spent a lot of the day - in the children's area they were playing Despicable Me on a loop and didn't bother to change it, we were watching it for the third time when we got to leave - an ECG was normal and he was feeling a lot better by the afternoon. Probably a virus but we don't really know. So that was a worrying day. 

My uncle who had a stroke is almost back to normal he says except for a bit of dizziness, and he won a tennis tournament last weekend so that is great. My poppa is ok at home with regular care visits I think but haven't heard just lately. I want to visit but not with sickness running around the family. Even if not Covid, I don't want to pass it on!