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Pilates on the terrace: delightful, except that every time I stopped weighing the mat down with my personal body (due to, for example, lifting up a limb to wave it around) the wind started folding it back up under me.

Pilates more generally: realised today that in addition to normally doing clam and hip stretches at the end of Pilates, and the current Hip Trouble having started after a couple of weeks of not managing that part of the routine because I was only getting as far as doing my bare minimum get-on-the-mat-and-breathe... a whole bunch of the movements incorporate, essentially, sciatic nerve glides. There's another entry to the list of But What Has Pilates Ever Done For Us...

Meanwhile I am out of routine and therefore also eating less protein than I've been managing upcountry, and o have just for the first time since the initial DOMS wound up with post-gym soreness. I have a horrid feeling that my medium term future might contain protein powder; in the short term, dinner was heavy on eggs and tofu.

And, regarding DOMS, last night's "... huh" was about the (extent of) overlap of symptoms and progression with those of post-exertional malaise. This is not yet a fully-formed thought, but it's definitely trying to be a thought. (As part of the theme of "a whole bunch of the experiences of disabled people around embodiment actually do form a continuum with those of the temporarily able bodied, and so do management strategies".)

1. Today in birds: choughs, stonechats, the flock of goldfinches, cormorants, and infinite gulls and jackdaws and crows.
2. Nerve glides continue to sound like bullshit but they are also actually and immediately helping with the mistake that is the sciatic nerve, so that's cheering.
3. Finished the current puzzle! Less the one missing piece. Absolute nonsense, would almost certainly happily do again. The thing about it, right, is that it has lots of textures and internal edges, so it was often very easy to put a big patch together and very hard to work out where it actually went. (Shocking nobody, I was much less into the landscapes and figures in the middle of the big platters...)
4. Made it down to the beach multiple times, both at approximately low tide and approximately high tide. Spent some quality time watching the waves. V good.
5. Sleepy pile with A remains extremely good. <3

Celebrating. My 36^th birthday! In low-key but very pleasant fashion.

Reading. I have made Some progress on Your Inner Fish (Neil Shubin), but alas not enough to actually finish it before the loan autoreturned to the library (and there is a queue, so I have put it back on hold, sigh). I had got up to the teeth. Leaving aside some towering indignation on behalf of zoos and aquaria everywhere (not everything in these settings is Bilaterian! not all Bilaterians have a head and two eyes!!! this is a terrible introduction to phylogeny!!!!!) I am having a good time with this one. In brief: palaeontologist specialising in fossil fish unexpectedly ends up in charge of medical students' first-year human anatomy course, and has Opinions.

Watching. Richie's Brooklyn Gym, a ten-minute documentary short about the gym Casey Johnston joined when she first started lifting weights.

Playing. Working on a puzzle that I am enjoying way more than I expected to, which is a delight.

Cooking. A quiche, this evening, with spelt flour, which I overdid a bit but oh well; and, yesterday, The Familial Celebratory Cake. :)

Eating. PURPLE ASPARAGUS. Raspberries. My mother's moussaka. Birthday cake. Bonus cake from Gweek Village Stores. A Gear Farm pasty.

Growing. The lemongrass has survived being potted up! And the poblano is flowering enthusiastically. :)

Observing. A nuthatch, we are pretty sure, at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary! In addition to the puffins and The Regulars Various, we did get to meet Hot Cross Bun, who is not quite ready for release yet but is getting very close to it. We got to see seal behaviour we had never previously observed (Attie, up in a rehab pool to keep Banana(rama) company while she stabilises on her anti-seizure meds, apparently really likes sunbathing belly-up with only her head underwater; and two of the residents were PORPOISING enthusiastically!!!). Sea pinks; Wundklee; CHOUGHS.

1. successfully bought a leek. spent several whole minutes with reduced bad brain. (local combo of prodrome and therapy hangover, I think, not anything persistent or concerning.)
2. the delay arising from the combination of Difficulty Leaving The House and Emotional Support Leek worked out just fine; we still made it to the wiggles household only a little behind human #1 and very slightly ahead of humans #2 and 3, and still in time for A to sequester themself for Union Meeting. hurrah for things working out.
3. it has rained on the plants (hurray!) and mostly not on me (also hurray!).
4. sweet potato slips have perked right back up after being put in a glass of water this morning (having failed to manage to get them in same last night).
5. orchid continues flowering exuberantly. only three of them but my goodness they are staying.
6. some fantastic rainbows on way to wiggles; ditto clouds-fraying-into-rain.

( Today we were not the first responders to an incident. )

Reading. I am so close to being Fully Up To Date with She's A Beast!!! I have just hit Feb 2026!!! Maybe my brain will let me read literally anything else???

... having said which, I totally managed to take a break from SAB to inhale Platform Decay (Martha Wells), the new Murderbot. Very little of it has stuck with me and also it was a very pleasant way to switch off brain for a few hours.

And I got close enough to the autoreturn on the library loan of another memoir about embodiment -- Run Toward The Danger, Sarah Polley -- that I am actually trying to blitz through it; so far it is not doing a great deal for me but all this really means is that I am not the target audience for everyone!

Watching. In celebration of David Attenborough's 100^th birthday, we have now watched The Year Earth Changed. I had an lot of feelings.

Playing. ... yeah so I completed The Game About Shelving Books, in that I now have all of the Steam achievements including the speedrun achievement (I never normally get speedrun achievements; I never normally even bother trying to get them), and am now Taking Breaks from other things by loading the game back up and wandering around reorganising subject shelving bays according to what makes me happiest (by and large: pick one of "colour" and "thematic grouping"; I am not here for trying to work out how to impose Dewey). At this point, though, that is feeling like a small soothing achievable task that can be A Smol Treet, rather than having the driving urgency of hyperfocus, so that's an extremely welcome development.

Eating. Strawberriessssssss. So many strawberries. I Am Luxuriating. Also: British asparagus! Fancy goats' cheese! The supermarket, having Taken Away the raspberry and passionfruit cheesecake Apparently Forever, has reintroduced it as a seasonal food!

Exploring. We went for one of our normal walks! Adam spotted a deer! We pursuit predated it for a little off amongst trees we had not previously poked around in, and discovered a series of neat rectangular brick walls, all of uniform roofless height, now full of mature trees that had clearly been there for Some Time! We have no idea, OpenStreetMap has nothing to say on the topic, and there is something that has merrily dug setts or dens into and around the foundations...

Making & mending. Bike... works again? Bike works again. Still need to unfuck the rear brake some more but maybe I will manage to take it to see the nice bike shop halfway down the hill tomorrow morning on my way Elsewhere.

Growing. Potted up the lemongrass! Have not potted up the aubergine. Ancho flowering merrily. Maybe I will make it to the plot this week and get some of the things I'm intending to put in the ground into the ground?

Observing. A deer! (Probably muntjac.) The bat! Several excellent front gardens!