What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I was off at neurofeedback today and came home hoping to see that the tile was nearly done in the bathroom only to find that they didn't come, except for dropping off the tiles. Darn. So, hopefully, they'll come tomorrow. Neurofeedback was really hard. I feel awful. I kind of want to read, but standing is a huge challenge. Oh, well.

A worker is here fixing the walls in the bathroom. Yay! But also I get very anxious with other people in the house, so I'm a bit extra freaked out too.

One of the guys from the construction company came today to check out the stone wall that needs work on the side of the house. He wanted to take the stones from my garden for the wall, but I said I needed them, so he's going to find other ones. I hope. The landscaper has been looking for stone with no luck. So, anyway, we'll see. The contractor also said that someone would come by in a few days to work on the bathroom. It was funny, as the contractor felt that my Portuguese was pretty good (it isn't that good, but my pronunciation is good, which makes it seem like I am much better than I am) and thought that I was better at it than Joel. I'm not. However, I had to explain that I just talk more than Joel in general. I'm dithering about asking the landscaper if she does stuff like removing weeds along our wall or if she knows someone who could. Sometimes the city takes care of it, but I feel like they are pretty out of control. But there are so many things that need to be done. Ugh.

Anyway, I also got a bit more sewing done on the shirts and cut out a bag and lining that I can work on while going to and from neurofeedback on Wednesday.

The newest painting I'm working on is going well. I did some very pretty zentangle all around the edge to make an oval frame. Tomorrow, I need to paint some flowers in the middle. If I can get it to work out, that will wrap up this piece. I'll do something very similar for the next one, but instead of painting flowers, I'll paint a wild strawberry plant, since my friend grows them.

One of the things I discovered about short wave radio is that it is hard to find things that are actually worth listening to. When thinking about setting up a radio receiver that I could use in emergencies, I remembered this enough to know that I didn't want a regular old radio. Certainly not the kind with the analog tuner. No. That led me to the cool computer-radios. If you look at the graphic on this site, you can see the "waterfall", which is a radio spectrum, and you can just click on the bright spots to listen. That's cool. (You can also tune digitally.) However, while I can now reliably find FM radio stations on the online radio servers, I can't find much else yet. So, that's my new plan: I won't set up computer-radio until I know how to use it and am sure that I'd be able to use it in an emergency. Even then, it might not be terribly useful, as we are kind of down in the valley. But, I'll worry about that later.

A while back, the plastic on my chair wheel broke. The peg that connects the wheel to the chair is threaded on one end, instead of just being the kind that slides in. I got some replacement wheels, because the image on Amazon showed them with pegs removed, which gave me the impression that they could be removed. That seems to not be the case. I contacted the chair manufacturer, and they said that they wouldn't sell me replacement wheels (but I could buy a new chair). So, after trying again to remove the peg from one of the new wheels and failing, I decided that tomorrow, I'll drill a hole in some wood and insert the peg into that. It will be like a peg leg for the chair.

Power is out in much of Europe. We are fine. Our solar panels are tied to the grid, so we have no power now. If this becomes a recurring issue, we may change that. Anyway, we're mostly fine.

Yesterday, I was talking to a lady from tai chi class, explaining why I walk with sticks. I said (in Portuguese), "20 years ago, I worked in Africa", but I put an 'e' on the end of "Africa", because that's what you do in Russian. It is funny to me how often I still put an 'e' on the end of a place name. I've been struggling a bit more recently with languages. I was in an Uber the other day with a driver who spoke Russian and Portuguese, and I had no idea which words were from which language. I think some of these issues have gotten worse recently. Hopefully, they will improve when neurofeedback turns down that part of my brain.

Today was supposed to be rainy, but so far, no rain (which is fine). Joel's bike tire patch worked, as I was able to bike up to the bus stop and back. It is a lot of work to get out of the valley, but I did it. I'll continue to do it daily to try and build up those muscles.

In other news, I have a lot of socialization that happens over Skype, and now Skype is going away. It looks like with groups of friends that I'll be meeting them with Google Meet, and I'll try using Signal (a phone messaging app that also can be used on the desktop) for talking to just one other person. We'll see how that goes. * crosses fingers *

I finished up the last of the podcasts last month that I had organized music for, so I've been working hard sending out requests for new songs. I was anxious, as I've been focused more on listening to books recently than music, but it turns out to have been less bad than I thought. First of all, I have maybe 100 songs that I only sent out one request for more than 500 days ago, so I can send out requests to all of those (if it looks like the contact info is still good). Plus, I've listened to many more songs than I thought, so I have maybe 30 new songs to send out requests for. I only need 60 songs total for the year, and it looks like I need to send out about 100 requests to get those permissions. Of course, with blanket permission from 5 record labels now, that is a bit easier. On top of that, a lot of musicians have given me blanket permission. A lot of musicians have gotten back to me overnight, which is heartening. All this activity with permissions reminds me that I need to clean up some of the database stuff (if I have requested a song twice with no response, then I give up and mark the band as unavailable, which I haven't been doing). Happily, I'm nearly at the end of another round of listening, which means I should be able to squeeze a few more song requests out of that. I'm also trying to organize statistics so that I can predict approximately how much music I need to download to find enough songs to request. When I finish this batch, I should be able to do it.

Joel helped me get the bike all set up today (luckily, we were able to find a seat height that fits us both), and then I rode up and down the road near our house a bit. I didn't do it for too long, as I didn't want to over do, but I plan on riding for a bit every day until I can comfortably make it up the hills. Joel says that the worst one is the one leaving our little valley (would be easier if it wasn't for the biting dogs, which make one of the roads by us unpassable), which is convenient, as it means that I can test myself without going all the way into town. The pedaling assistance from the bike is smooth and calm enough on "eco" mode that I couldn't tell when it was working. Joel says that eco mode gives you more assistance when you are pedaling the hardest. I'll try the other modes tomorrow.

I realized today that I'm also waiting to hear back from the neurofeedback people. Lots of waiting!

In other news, decreasing the calcium worked, and I am sleeping well again. I'm not exceptionally tired during the day, so that is good. I'm glad that the metric still works, as it is so convenient to be able to say, "Oh, I'm having trouble sleeping. This is the problem." rather than having to stress about it.

Very rainy today, but yesterday was supposed to be rainy and wasn't, so I feel like I got an extra day of sun. However, the cows were in the field across the valley, and they are always fun to see.