Trifling things

In my fit and fickle twenties I laughed when I heard an older friend had hurt her back playing Scrabble. Not in heartless derision you understand, but because I thought the person telling me was going to say 'squash' when she started the word after 'playing'... I had no idea anyone could cause themselves an injury doing anything as staid as Scrabble! This came to mind yesterday evening when I was as incapacitated by pain as I have ever been through this episode. 'But, I haven't done anything!' I wailed plaintively (silently in my head, of course)... and then I began to wonder if startng a jigsaw, which I considered a pleasant variation on the few sorts of nothing there are to do, might actually have caused the trouble. I give thanks for thus having an action plan at least... or actually a non-action plan, I guess...

I give thanks for being able to limit the challenges I rose to today. If you like jigsaws you'll know they can be pretty compulsive, so as mine is on a fold up board on the kitchen table and my back insisted I leave it there, I give thanks I thought of covering it with a tablecloth so I wasn't drawn into thinking 'Surely just one more piece won't hurt...' every time I went in there, just in case it did!

I give thanks for gorgeous snow scenes and black humour on Borowski, a sedentary tour of scenic local places via the last episode of the Coroner and a novel where (completely unexpectedly) the feisty independent female protagonist, without close family or companions over Christmas and New Year feels unusually confusingly alone... and even more so after she's injured and can't get about as she usually does!

I give thanks for looking up at just the right time to see the sky colouring up at sunset, and for rising to the challenge of capturing that without falling out of the window. For a delicious tea of roast peppers, red onions, vine tomates, feta, pine nuts and pesto served with garlic bread and appreciation that all those ingredients, unknown to me for all my childhood and most of my adult life, are now do readily available.

I give thanks for realising though I couldn't countenance making one of my justifiable famously intoxicating trifles just for me, not justify eating a family size one alone...I could mock up individual servings with a madeleine, defrosted frozen fruit, a splash of something spirit warming and a dollop of ready made custard and cream. Mmm...now it feels like Christmas! Don't think I could ever become a drinker again but I could happily eat myself into a smiling stupor any time at all :-)