still here

 Wow, that was a quick 6 weeks.  What happened?

I worked like crazy to finish all my grading before Christmas break began, and I was a very good girl and worked hard on my planning in the first few days off.  So when the offspring arrived I had plenty of free time, which was lovely.  DD came down from Flagstaff with her cat and stayed for the better part of a week, and DS2 flew in from Missouri on December 22.  His arrival was my best Christmas present this year.  

It's not like we spent a lot of time together, but we did have some Christmas shopping expeditions and one truly fine outing to see the Sistine Chapel exhibit at the Croft in downtown Phoenix.  It was exquisite.  These are the Sybils -- each prophetess at a different stage of life, all beautifully rendered. 

One thing I loved was being able to walk right up to the panels reproducing each work.  If you go to the Chapel in real life, you have to crane your neck to see everything -- not that I've been.  Yet!

It was just really lovely having everyone home again.  We had lots of great meals together and accompanying conversations.  I was able to take my second annual Happy New Year photo, too: 

Over New Year's I read Brandon Sanderson's latest epic The Rhythm of War, all 1200-odd pages, and loved it.  I only regret not having read it in time to talk to DS2 about it, but we'll have time for that eventually.  

I had my semi-annual thyroid cancer check up at the end of December, and just before going back to school got all my results: ultrasound looks good, but my TSH had ticked up all the way to 1, which is shockingly high for me -- the highest I've been off Thryogen in ages.  So my endo upped my meds a bit, and we'll see how it goes.  That was weird, I admit.  I also didn't like how high my fasting blood sugar was, but honestly, we were still working our way through all the holiday treats.  My students and their families are incredibly generous, and this year truly surprised me, given how generally bad things have been for everyone.  

Tomorrow marks the end of our second week back from break, and we're just stuck in this groove and not getting out any time soon.  It's wearying, having to teach the way we are now, but I'm doing my best to preserve the experience for my students.  It's going to get very weird as we move further into chemistry and we get to the hands-on stuff... It will be a lot of extra work (It's always extra work, this year it will just be more extra work)  but I'm thinking I can manage it.  Here's hoping. 

The house seems extra quiet now, even though it wasn't much noisier when the kids (not kids anymore!) were here.  Well, having another cat made things a little more lively, as he was likely to attack the Christmas tree on occasion.  But now the house just seems simultaneously too big and too full of stuff no one is using.  I have a strong urge to clean out cupboards and book cases and offload all the stuff that's just sitting there that no one will ever use or want.  It's such a satisfying feeling, but I don't really have time for it now.  But if we're going to renovate? That's the perfect time for that kind of a purge!  I hope we can. 

I managed to do some things I'd been putting off: some tailoring (every shirt I buy from Loft needs to be taken in, they're styled for people built like bricks...) and re-making (my birthday skirt from Anthropologie was too short, so I bought another one on clearance and frankensteined them together.  Looks fine!)   I'm thinking about starting a knitting project... or an embroidery project even, since I finally took the task light I bought months ago out of its box and set it up.  (It's what made reading those 1200+ pages possible without massive eye strain.)  So far I've just looked at a million patterns and not decided on anything yet.  Ha!

I do seem to be freezing all the time, though, these days.  My favorite place is on the couch under the blue blanket.  But really being honest, I'm cold, then I put the blanket on, then I warm up and take it off, and that cycle repeats endlessly.  Sometimes I just put the blanket on and like an infant, when I am warm and still for a moment, I drop off to sleep.  It helps. 

I survived the holiday sweets blitz with only a few pounds gained and I'm already back to where I was when they started.  I'm also back to doing my (almost) daily exercises and they have been tremendously helpful with my hip but my left shoulder is just not happy with me.  Of course it is not the shoulder itself but the muscles around it, and the problem is almost certainly a posture issue plus I haven't been doing my neck stretches.  The surgery was 15 bleeping years ago and my body will not let me forget it.  I'm hoping another week of diligent attention to both posture and stretching will get me out of this flare.  At least the hip is under control at the moment. I'm also keeping up with my face yoga/massage, trying to counteract the effects of gravity, extra pounds, and aging... having to see myself on Zoom screens all day long has unfortunately piqued my vanity.  I took a selfie I actually like:

The world is still a mess and I am mostly on a news fast except for headlines. Considering the circumstances that seems to be the best decision, since there is literally nothing I can do about any of the nonsense currently underway. Somedays I catch myself worrying about it but I know that's pointless.  It seems with all the white hair I'm now growing I'm finally gaining some wisdom? Perhaps!

 I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.