{"id":1370,"date":"2011-01-22T18:35:07","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T08:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2011-01-22T18:36:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T08:36:11","slug":"busily-taking-it-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/busily-taking-it-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Busily taking it easy&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the silence here on the blog, I&#8217;m recovering well after my surgery! I can&#8217;t do as much as usual, and my concentration span is a little shorter, but I&#8217;m writing, crafting, and cooking, and going into town once or twice a week, and I can take the dogs for gentle afternoon strolls. I no longer need an afternoon nap every day, although some days I do still have one, and I&#8217;m definitely ready for bed by ten pm &#8211; unlike my usual night-owl self. But that&#8217;s all just part of the healing process.<\/p>\n<p>The only hitch in my recovery is an infection in my leg, in the lower end of the incision where the vein was removed to go into my head. So, I&#8217;m on antibiotics for that, and fingers crossed they&#8217;ll beat the infection soon and that spot in my leg can heal up as well as the rest of my scars. Because of the swelling, I have to spend some time with my leg elevated &#8211; which is a bit of a challenge, as our seating arrangements don&#8217;t provide much in the way of comfortable spots to have my leg up while working or doing anything else. I am no good at doing nothing, and I find it hard to watch DVDs during the day &#8211; or at any time, without also knitting or keeping my fingers busy with some craft or other. I did watch the Keira Knightley DVD of Price and Prejudice on afternoon, but that&#8217;s been it for TV, other than watching the news of the horrendous flooding in Queensland the week before last.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of the flooding, I&#8217;ve donated a signed set of my two books to the <a href=\"http:\/\/authorsforqueensland.wordpress.com\/faq\/\">Authors for Queensland <\/a>Flood Appeal auction. There&#8217;s a fantastic array of items in the auction to bid on &#8211; signed books, mentoring sessions, manuscript assessments &#8211; so do go over and have a look! The auction finishes at 11pm on Monday, Australian time (early hours of Monday morning, US time), so there&#8217;s still a day left to bid! I&#8217;m amazed and delighted at the <a href=\"http:\/\/authorsforqueensland.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/18\/set-of-2-signed-books-bronwyn-parry\/\">current bidding for my books<\/a> &#8211; way beyond what I expected when I donated them. The flood appeal will benefit from the generosity of the bidders.<\/p>\n<p>What else has been happening? A range of pleasant things:<\/p>\n<p>A blue wren has been a frequent visitor just outside our sunroom. often tapping on the windows. He moves so fast it&#8217;s hard to get a decent photo, though!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122BlueWren.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1371\" title=\"20110122BlueWren\" src=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122BlueWren.jpg\" alt=\"Male Fairy Wren\" width=\"480\" height=\"355\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122BlueWren.jpg 480w, https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122BlueWren-300x221.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The hydrangea cutting that I took from plants at Guyra Railway Station some years ago, put in a small pot, then neglected, and finally repotted in December, is now growing well and has a flower on it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122Hydrangea.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1372\" title=\"20110122Hydrangea\" src=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122Hydrangea.jpg\" alt=\"Hydrangea in flower\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122Hydrangea.jpg 480w, https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110122Hydrangea-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve wanted to try my hand at making sourdough bread for a while, and the other week I started making the starter. My first loaf was very successful:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110118SourdoughBread3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1373\" title=\"20110118SourdoughBread3\" src=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110118SourdoughBread3.jpg\" alt=\"Sourdough bread\" width=\"360\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110118SourdoughBread3.jpg 360w, https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/20110118SourdoughBread3-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve since made another loaf of plain sourdough bread, one sourdough fruit loaf, and today I made a sourdough chocolate cake &#8211; which is scrumptious!<\/p>\n<p>I have been writing &#8211; although it&#8217;s not going as fast as I&#8217;d like. However, I decided about 10 days ago that one of the reasons I was having difficulties was because some aspects of the plot needed reworking, so I&#8217;ve spent the past week going through the manuscript and doing that. I also had a good idea about how to weave in an aspect of the hero&#8217;s back story into the crimes he has to solve, making the link more focused and intense. So, progress is being made!<\/p>\n<p>All up, the recovery time is passing mostly pleasantly, and we&#8217;re coping with me not being able to drive, thanks to Gordon&#8217;s willingness to make the 55km round trip in his lunchtime to bring me home again after doctor&#8217;s appointments, and the kindness and generosity of friends who have helped out the same way. I&#8217;ll see the specialist in Sydney for my post-surgery check up on Feb 7th, and hopefully I&#8217;ll get the all-clear to drive after that!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite the silence here on the blog, I&#8217;m recovering well after my surgery! I can&#8217;t do as much as usual, and my concentration span is a little shorter, but I&#8217;m writing, crafting, and cooking, and going into town once or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/busily-taking-it-easy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bronwynparry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}