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Honey is Sweet

Too tired - 2007-09-28

I haven't the strength to answer everyone directly who has sent me email and left me notes, but I really wish I could. I didn't sleep much last night because of the bleeding. I had to get up every four hours to have a shower and rinse out everything I'd been wearing. Okay, I changed dress or housecoat because it's so blessed hot that they were unpleasant to keep wearing, but everything else was blood-soaked.

It's not just the interrupted sleep - all that washing and rinsing and showering takes a lot of energy, that I haven't got. I guess it's final, I'm going to go in for that shot on Sunday. If possible. I am not happy about this, I do not want this, but I cannot continue to live like this, either. If nothing else maybe the next time I could end up dead from blood loss. It's weird to say that, but I have to face it, since twice I've been told it was life-threatening already.

Well, so that's just depressing, and there's no need to dwell on it tonight. We watched the movie Nine Months tonight. At first I was watching it thinking 'I want another baby.' But at the end I thought better I should think of it as an opportunity to remember how wonderful having my six babies was. I've gotta say, that movie is one hell of an advertisement for home-birth. At least it seems so to me. I'm glad my last five babies were born at home. ;-)

I had some other things on my mind, but I can't remember what they were.

I think one thing I've learned is that when in the past, on the extremely rare occasion I asked for feedback from other people, I was clearly asking the wrong people. It's not just that y'all didn't tell me my writing is all shit, I wasn't (and am not) looking for reassurance per se. It's that I got a specific sense of what some of you like or don't like or what you are looking for when you read here. Something actually concrete that I can understand and hang on to.

I imagine (having now this experience to draw from) if some of the ones who told me my writing was 'shit,' had actually given me an idea or specific example of what was wrong, that would have been something I could work on, as opposed to the generic sense that it's all bad. And for that matter, my husband (who is generally incapable of saying anything positive about me) has on more than one occasion told me he likes my writing and thinks it's 'great,' but just like the others, he has never given me anything concrete to hold on to. 'Great' is just as useless as 'shit' is seems to me. Although not as hard on my happiness for sure.

I didn't do anything today. Besides the whole showering and changing thing. And the temperatures are up again, or else I am more sensitive to the heat. I've also been in really bad pain. I don't know what that is about. If I'd been doing stuff I'd just assume it was muscle soreness, but I haven't. It just sucks to live in this body today.

I almost said 'sucks to be me,' but it really doesn't. With everything that is wrong, I can't think of many people I would even consider trading places with. So I must be doing something right here. Mind you, I'd be quite willing to trade for a healthy (or healthier) body, but only if I could keep everything else in my life.

I've found a couple of recipes for butter mints I'm going to try. This will be something of a revolution. I haven't even allowed sugar in my house for years. Then I would allow some sugar junk (what we call it) as shabbos treats, but certainly no more than that. We bake with honey or date syrup or maple syrup (when we were in New England) or rice syrup. We use all whole grains, and all that sort of good stuff. Heck, we used to grind our own flour (and still have the grain mill, although who knows if we will ever get it set up here?). And now I am considering making sugar junk, in my own kitchen, using store bought sugar no less. Oy!

It's what life in Israel has brought us to. Even with some dependence on prepared foods and snack foods, we eat and drink probably a quarter of the sugar that a normal Israeli consumes. And that takes a heck of a lot of work, let me tell you. Well, anyway, the kids brought back some butter mints from the U.S. this summer, and I've been really enjoying them. So much that I was considering how to get more from the states. Finally the little bell went off, why don't I just make them myself?

It's hard to explain to someone who has the entire range of American retail available what it's like here - and one of the hardest things is that Israeli sweets have no flavour. I mean, really, no flavour. They are sweet - that is all anyone wants from them. Fruit slices come in all the different colours, but all taste alike, a sugar explosion in your mouth. Hard candies and gummy candies appear to be flavoured, but when you eat them they are almost indistinguishable. As long as it's sweet, terribly sweet, Israelis seem to be happy with it. Except of course for chocolate which has to be sweet and chocolatey.

Which is why the butter mints from the states are such a treat. The have taste, they have flavour. They are actually minty. What a concept. :-)

I have tried to find some sort of substitute for the sugar, but so far no luck. It may be one of those things for which no substitution is possible. At least if I make it myself I know it has no extra junk in it. So that is something.

I'm really tired, and I'm putting off going to the bathroom because it will be so involved with all the washing and so on. Putting it off isn't good because I have to do that before I can go to sleep, so by being tired I'm keeping myself up more than I would if I would just get up and do it already.

I'd best stop typing at least, it's a small step towards getting there.

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~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
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