x plus mas

I was just thinking, hm, today everyone else's LJ seems to be so much more interesting than my own. I'll just comment and not post.

Then resonant8 posted something about putting up a Christmas tree and I thought, hah! I shall post on my Day of Decorating.

T'young son and I went to town and bought not one, but two Adventskränze. This is the first year evah that we are having a real wreath on our front door! T'son chose it; it's really nice with berries. Plus we have the advent wreath we always have on the table, plain with my own red ribbon and a few straw stars around it, and four fat orange candles on top. Because tomorrow is the first of advent!

Also, do people remember from last year round or before that? The two times I feel like a German is a) during the World Cup, and b) at Christmas. So I go all-out.

T'boys have lego advent calendars. We put up fairy lights and also, for the first time this year, I got outdoor lights in our apple tree, red and yellow and blue, really nice! Then I got out the wooden Adventskrippe which is a sort of advent calendar where you take one wooden thing out per day until you assemble a complete nativity scene. I also bought a Christmas card holder except we haven't got any cards yet.

What do you lot put up for decorations? Any nice idea for mantelpieces? Window sills?

Tomorrow I plan to bake some Weihnachtskekse. Oh du fröhliche...!

my back's still bad

I went to see an osteopath on Thursday who spent an hour feeling my back and making me bend and gave me my first useful diagnosis. I feel the pain in the lumbar vertebrae; he reckons these are inflamed because they are scrunching together due to years of bad posture: I hollow out my back too much. Also, the joints between my pelvis and thigh bones are very stiff, apparently, and this has translated itself up into my lumbar region. This makes sense to me.

He asked me to put an icepack on my back 10 minutes every hour (I'd been putting heat and he said this was wrong; to get the inflammation down, I needed to cool it). And he wants to work on the pelvic region because my pain in the lumbar region is too acute to do anything there; I get too nervous about manipulated there.

I go back on Monday. I also teach again on Monday.

writing experiments take the world by storm!

Remember when I did my writing experiments? And invited everyone to come and join in?

And then sheldrake did one in response? And it were fab!

And now starrylizard (whom I only met two days ago, and I can't even remember through whose Friends of Friends list) has jumped in on that ever-growing and onward-hurtling bandwagon!!

Whee. I am so happy and excited to welcome a third wheel to the wagon.

Anyone else? :-)