Well, it's been a better month than sorry September...

But October has not been a star turn. There was the hospitalization of a family member, and the massive flare-up of my dodgy tooth. The other Tern, who is normally pretty rugged, was hit by two separate illnesses over the course of the month. The insurance question lumbers on its wearying way, with no speedy resolution in sight.

I really wish we could shake off this one-damn-thing-after-another phase that we seem stuck in at the moment. It's tedious in the extreme.

But, but, BUT... we're all recovering, and I'm very grateful for that.

And the month's best news was that I remain free of the cancer that attacked me last year. I can't tell you how welcome that piece of information was...


We're also slowly getting used to the low-carb thing, which is good, as it seems increasingly unlikely it will be temporary.


October saw the production of a couple of posts for The Velvet Cushion, Purple Tern's sister blog. This is good, because activity over there does betoken the "reading, looking, hearing, and searching" of the byline.

Whereas, in the interests of topicality, Purple Tern posts often just feature pictures and accounts of our daily doings, Velvet Cushion posts need a bit more time to hatch.

And time, bizarrely, still seems to be at a premium. We are somehow still too busy...

The days disappear in a welter of walking, cooking, shopping, email-sifting, administering, exercising, reading, researching, writing, and language-learning.

So I don't think, 10 months down the track, that we've quite got post-work life sorted yet...


This is the challenge:

How to incorporate into our lives the focused brain-work without which we're just not "us", and the exercise we don't dare neglect, while also keeping up with the basic tasks we can't avoid, and finding time for stillness, mindfulness, meditation, and just plain doing nothing?

There's a Velvet Cushion post coming up on this very question...


But look, I'm not complaining (well, only a bit).

Because there's a lot to cherish.

We love the birds that surround us. The munias are particularly adorable. They move around in little squeaky bunches, and when they take off, they're like an intricate flying carpet.




The flowers are a constant joy:




And there's lots of purple:





As I keep saying, it's a good place to be. Despite all the head-winds, it's a good place to be.