This post may contain...

nuts, brain-fog, and rambling.

Hi all, I just realised I haven't posted in almost a week - again. So here I am.

As far as stitching is concerned, I've been working happily on the frog'n'fairy aka A Restful Night, and have about 200 stitches left to go on this row, before I take a picture - though if I don't get it done by tomorrow night, I'll take a photo anyway as it's the end of the Challenge SAL on the HAED BB.

I realised earlier that I haven't posted about my illness in a while. I suppose that's mostly because I just figure it's better to get on with life. With the exception of the comment in my sidebar, you'd hardly know that I have ME/CFS+FMS by my posting. I don't have it nearly as bad as some, just enough to be a pain in the everywhere - literally. As to how I've been? Well, I've had an interesting few weeks. I got really really sick for a while, perked up for a while, and then the last few days have been ok brainwise but kind of painful. Being the stoic that I am, I've stayed off pain meds as much as possible, but getting up in the morning with stabbing pains along your leg and arm bones is not fun. Especially when your fiance goes to rub your back sympathetically when you say about it when you see him, and it's THEN that you realise that he's making the pain in your back better by doing that too...wait, my back hurt before?

As far as doing stuff though, I've had a good few days. Nothing particularly interesting, besides making Fassolada which is an awesome greek bean soup - and best of all, totally vegan so therefore totally nestissimo, a word that the greeks use a lot and basically means 'allowable during the fast'. The english equivalent is 'lenten' but I'm not as fond of it, especially since it associates with Great Lent and the time before Easter is hardly the only time we fast. Us crazy Orthodox... so anyway, that was dinner on Wednesday night for myself and my sister, who declared that she doesn't like vegetable soup and then ate the whole bowl. Mmmhmmm... No complaints here though, it's nice that she actually liked my cooking! It was also my father's dinner on Thursday night (we were all out) and then Troy and I ate it again on Friday when the rest of my family were busy eating chops and vegies. Not bad for one pot of soup, that probably cost about $10AU (about $5 US) to make!

Thursdaynightgroup resumed this week too, and in true Orthodox fashion we had a liturgical service to commemorate this fact. The 'small blessing of the waters' - a short service, with a ring-in choir (much to the amusement of all present besides the choir who didn't know that they WERE the choir until 30 seconds before we started...) and then lining up to be blessed by Father by being splashed on the head with holy water from a bunch of basil he was holding. I got called a 'distracting troublemaker', what a lovely way to start the year! Father loves to tease me, and I get called trouble more than anything else, I think. The study itself was on the Gospel of Mark, which we're going to be working through for the foreseeable future except for brief interruptions for significant feasts etc (I can think of a couple that might fit 'significant' in the church calendar soon...) and we got through the first 10 or so verses, in the space of about an hour. Actually quite good for our group - we are VERY good at sidetracking and tangents, and so is Father. Study also included (by way of this) the life of St Paraskeve in nutshell form, a conversation on whether Saints feel the same pain in death as Christ felt, why Saints glowed at their martyrdom, and a few other things...I forget what. And then we hung around drinking tea and eating honey crackles and toblerone, and I talked to Daniel for ages.

I plan to get my sister to make me a 'my invisible chronic illness is more real than your imaginary medical expertise' LJ-icon that I can use there, and on forums and stuff. It's just so wonderfully snarky!

Anyway. Recently? Last night we had double-vespers again - first at normal-vespers-Church and the second at a greek church I hadn't been to before, but is BEAUTIFUL. It was the feast day of St Haralambos today and our 'day' for Church starts at vespers the night before - and this Church had the relics of this Saint visiting, along with the abbot of a monastery...so, we went :) And it was great! Except for the really really long protestant-rivalling-in-length sermon, which would have been wonderful if it wasn't in Greek. Jeremy and Troy both fell asleep, and I settled down with my prayer rope and the psalms which I snuck out of my bag and went unnoticed among the service books. Apparently it was good, and I got a summary from an older guy I knew who speaks Greek, so that was good. The bishop was there too and so we kissed his hand, and Troy and I were introduced to the abbot by Father, and he gave his blessing for our baptism and spoke to us and it was wonderful. Then we had Church this morning, and sat around talking after, and then took a lovely lady home and she invited us in for tea, which we drank middle-eastern style - in tea glasses, with lots of sugar, no milk, and sage brewed in it. YUM. And middle-eastern fairy floss which is less sweet and sticky, and more dense, and yum again.

About then I came home and crashed on the couch. I may not had done anything much for a week, but the last day-ish has just totally knocked me out. So a rest tonight, and a quiet day tomorrow, I think.

Kudos to anyone who got through all this!