I've gotten faster at fixing them

The flappers on both my toilets start leaking every 3-5 years, and all the innards need to be replaced every 6-10, which seems excessive? I don't use bleach, and buy Fluidmaster or Korky parts. It is a mystery.

fruit salad FTW

* The best way to get lots of different fruit and vegetables is salad bars, but the second best is to go to parties where people bring healthy stuff. That brought me up to around 40!

feed your gut!

I try to eat 30+ different plant foods per week because dietary diversity is good for the microbiome. Partner A is picking up weird produce to support my goals. Last week: a persimmon! Neither of us had ever had one; it was pretty good but with an astringent after-effect (possibly it was supposed to ripen longer). I was thinking it was weird that persimmons are a pretty well-known fruit given that Americans never actually eat them in my experience, and unlike figs they don't even have a famous cookie to help them out, but apparently they're used more in other parts of the country.

(MRI is supposedly being ordered)

I have had a headache for five weeks straight. It is miserable and unexplained. At four weeks, after I tried all the things, I saw a doctor and went on steroids. They only helped the headache for a day, but the general inflammation reduction was nice, giving me a few days of respite from my normal life. Is this how other people live? With 80% less pain? Able to do cardio without chest pain, excessive coughing, or debilitating post-exertional malaise? Able to go out in the evening and actually enjoy it? WILD. A few times my ears even unclogged and I could fully hear. Or course it caught up on me after three days (in part because it keeps me from sleeping) but it was nice, albeit bittersweet.

Plant foods week of 10/19/25

Chia seeds

Apples

Raspberries

Cauliflower 

Chick peas

Onions

Chili pepper 

Bell pepper 

Figs

Pear

Potato 

Almonds 

Green beans 

Lettuce 

Peas

Corn

Black beans

Pistachios 

Peanuts

Tomatoes 

Cucumber (pickle)

Flaxseed 

Soy

Staghorn sumac 

Coffee 

Grapes

Whole wheat 

Chocolate 

Broccoli 

Red beans

Blueberry 

Blackberry 

Spinach

Cranberry 

Pineapple 

Cantaloupe 

Watermelon 

Strawberry 

Honeydew 

Historical Expectations of Ouch

My mom posted an old high school photo on Facebook and thus I learned that Back In The Day, they did not wear shin guards while playing field hockey. Were they all covered in bruises all season, or do shin guards have a similar effect as football equipment, in that adding protective gear leads to harder hits?

Plant foods, week of 10/12/25

Peas

Persimmon

Mushrooms 

Whole wheat flour 

Corn

Chocolate 

Almonds

Tomato

Soy

Chick peas

Peanuts

Pumpkin seed

Flaxseed

Beet greens 

Cauliflower 

Brown rice 

Grapes 

Raspberries

Pears

Bulghur

Lentils 

Chia seeds 

Onion

Bell peppers

Black beans

Sesame 

Pistachio 

Fig

Spinach 

Mustard greens

read the room

The owner of a radical left-wing bookstore in London told the staff they needed to practice saying no. Anticipatably, they responded by occupying the store.

Mmmm, muffins

Recent post in a local church bulletin: "Mug and Muffin, a quarterly women’s gathering of reflection and fellowship (bring your own muffin!), is in need of a leader." 

"Bring your own muffin," depending on how one opts to define "muffin," is either very obvious (we bring our muffins everywhere!") or very sad (a gathering named after muffins does not provide muffins?)

capes are always in fashion

My daughter now has a 1960s Burberry cape which was once her great-grandmother's. It is FANTASTIC and its construction shows why some clothes can be worth spending real money on; it hangs perfectly. I want her to go out and do an entire Autumnal Tartan photo shoot with it now but I don't think I'll be able to get her on board. She also wasn't keen on the idea of wearing it as Lady Macduff (because apparently there will be fake blood involved) and it doesn't really work with a backpack, so she's just going to need to find other excuses to walk around campus looking fabulous.

we all have our hobbies

 I thought this post was cute. She's just describing a day that was satisfying for her in pretty boring ways.

headache

I have had a headache for three weeks now, and it comes with fatigue and emotional side effects which are even more miserable. I've tried various migraine meds, antihistamines, sinus rinses and compresses, neck/ jaw massage and stretches, eating more carbs, and eating more in general, with no effect. Next week I'll see a doctor (though that seems like a pointless exercise). Frustratingly I'd actually been feeling a bit better before this, with less post-exertional malaise than usual, and was tentatively hopeful that I may be seeing the first bit of improvement in the past ten years (or at least staving off progression).

Plant foods, week of 10/5/2025

 

Tahini 

Chocolate

Lemon 

Cauliflower 

Chick peas

Chia

Flaxseed

Pears 

Soy

Mushrooms 

Spinach 

Tomato

Peanut butter 

Potato 

Red pepper

Onion

Almond

Psyllium

Raspberry 

Grapes

Beet greens

Oats

Pumpkin seeds

Blueberry 

Corn

Prune

Pinto beans

Lettuce

Green pepper 

Bulghur

Lentil

New acronym dropped: Self Contained Underwater Burglary Apparatus

A SCUBA diver broke into a Disney fake paddleboat restaurant and stole $20K.

https://www.jalopnik.com/1970971/scuba-thief-steals-thousands-floating-disney/

and the wine-dark sea

I almost always see the sunrise; insomnia wakes me up painfully early and I make a point of opening my window shades so I can watch it. When I was 11, I was in a weird gifted and talented program in which we read The Odyssey, and I still think of "rosy-fingered Dawn" whenever I see a good sunrise. (Homer repeated several of the same phrases over and over, and that one stuck with me.) Apparently in a more recent translation, Emily Wilson switches it up more to better appeal to an audience who is reading rather than listening to the story. I don't remember which translation we read in 1986 and have considered checking out hers, but let's face it, I'm no longer that into classics.

Memento is an extreme but...

This philosopher suggests recording everything, primarily to assist with our faulty memory. I hate this idea even though my memory issues drive me nuts. Honestly it can be better for us to create our senses of self based on our memories rather than objective facts, because thinking of ourselves as behaving the way we wish we did rather than how we actually did may help us become that person instead of wallowing in shame. Some things we forget for a reason; they're unimportant or traumatic, and revisiting them helps nobody. Most healthy relationships would likely not be improved by re-listening to disagreements. And in the same way many people curate their social media images, some would start living for the recording instead of for themselves, and that would be a tragedy.

I used a five-year diary for a while, with one page for the same date of each year. I ended up throwing it out partway through the second year... reviewing my notes on what had happened the previous year was just too depressing. Not every year is that bad, but plenty are, and I enjoy letting them go as much as possible. (I also threw away all my writing from my teen years, and never regretted it.)