For the record

Well, I only took one photograph today, so it will have to be this. I've whinged on a bit recently about pains in and amongst the metatarsal bones of my right foot. One of the things that has helped has been concentrating on spreading the toes when standing and walking. One way to ensure that happens is to use toe spreaders. Voilà! They arrived yesterday.

I also bought some funky toe spreading socks and I wore those in my trainers when I went to the gym to do Bodypump. They really helped too.

Elsewhere, I had an excellent day on my paper, which had been going pearshaped for the last couple of weeks. I finally managed to get the introduction into shape. In order to do that, I've had to read my way into a whole set of literatures that I thought I could avoid. That's what I've been doing for the last couple of days. And now today, it bore fruit, as the introduction finally started to say what I wanted it to say. Reasonably concisely. From that, everything else follows.

As Mr A has now started work on his OU course, we can have some peaceful times over the next few days when we are each ensconced in our respective studies getting on with things. I've thought quite a bit over the last few days about what it means to have a "Christmas" so unexciting and unengaged that our bins are going out more than we are (that's a joke I nicked off twitter). In the last 18 months we have moved around so much, and seen so many different things, that I feel the need to have some really quiet time in order to process what we seen, and what we've discovered - about the world and about ourselves. In order, properly, to process the memories. And to recreate the base from which we appreciate travel, rather than treating it as a burden. This needs to be done, as looking at the diary for the next six months or so, I see there is going to be plenty of moving around, and some interesting and exciting experiences to enjoy.

Meanwhile, just rest and vegetate. And try to avoid eating too much and bloating up, thus undoing the benefits of all the exercise I've taken.