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weeknotes, 2/25

so… how does it feel to have half a thyroid? not that bad, actually!

the surgery went well: the nodule came out, my parathyroids (the glands that regulate calcium levels in the blood) were preserved and they didn’t touch the nerves that go to the vocal cords, so my voice is still the same. hurray! i stayed in the hospital for a night, and everyone was super friendly and helpful. the hardest part of the surgery was to find a good vein to put an IV line on my hands… several different nurses and doctors tried, giving up after many painful attempts. in the end, i received anesthesia via a mask instead, like they do for the little kids. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

apart from a little pain while swallowing and some discomfort moving the neck (and apart from the scar, which i haven’t even seen yet), i’m mostly back to my normal self. so now we wait to hear back from the pathology results.

in the meantime, because of all this i found out i had a vitamin D deficiency. it’s hard to believe that someone living in algarve could have low vitamin D, but apparently it’s relatively common in southern mediterranean countries. it’s kind of scary because it feels like it is rarely tested, but vitamin D levels impact so many aspects of health — there are even studies linking it to alzheimer. so i’ll be having supplements for a few months, and making an effort to sit in the sun everyday. we’ll see!

books

2024 in books

i read 73 books last year, which was pretty neat. here’s a colorful goodreads mashup:

there’s around 10 children’s books in there, courtesy of the little niece, and these were practically the only books i’ve read in paper this year (plus contos da montanha, which was a nice find at the bakery’s free bookshelf). the rest were mostly digital loans from libraries, either for the kindle or audiobooks. i went fewer times to our local library here, which is a pity and something i want to change in 2025.

i tried to do a A-to-Z of book titles last year, in which i would try to read at least one book whose titled matched a different letter of the alphabet. i didn’t manage it, in the end: U, Y and Z were missing. i plotted a graph with the frequency of title names, and this is how it turned out:

the letter A was the winner, followed closely by S (courtesy of the scum villain series). i though for sure E would have more books, but turns out not.

last year, i also had the vague goal of wanting to diversify the nationalities of the writers i read… but i ended up doing worse than in 2023. 😅

the US is still about a third of my reads, with the Uk taking second place. i shall try to improve!

overall, i think i learned that i don’t really want to be reading books that i don’t feel like reading at the moment, just to fulfill a duty or some random goal. my readings this year were very much guided by whatever the vibe was at that moment, what my friends are reading and talking about, my comfort series and some interests that i wanted to explore. it felt right, and i hope it will continue that way!

this post is already getting long and i think i’ll end it with a quote from just ride, which i hope will work as a kind of motto for 2025:

Over-deliver politeness and appreciation for whatever you get, even if it’s only time. Actually, it’s not possible to be overly polite. Send a handwritten thank-you letter even if you’ve already said thanks in person, over the phone, and by e-mail. Be “1950s polite.”

weeknotes

weeknotes, 1/25

first week of the year!

ringing in the new year with friends (and their overactive puppy) near arouca was really nice, and i think it won’t be the last time we’ll visit this quiet corner of the country. the mountains and the views were perfect, and we had the first beef day* of the year, featuring doc arouquesa meat.

…but then it was back to the reality of postponed work, family stuff and thyroid shenanigans.

my biopsy results came back inconclusive, which means the half of the thyroid where the nodule is will have to be removed for testing. if it’s benign, then i’ll keep going with half a thyroid. if it’s cancer, then we’ll take out the rest of the thyroid and replace it with synthetic hormones.

the path is pretty straightforward at this point: a simple “if A then B else C” kind of situation. it makes me grateful for competent doctors and a health insurance that lets me speedrun through all these appointments and get things done quickly. i’m feeling fine (physically and mentally), eager to get this done so that i can go home.

also, this marshmallow got a kind of wooden jungle gym for christmas and has been doing her best athletic impersonations. i’m keeping these photos for when she wins some olympic medals and the media wants an interview about her childhood. :D

(*) we eat so little beef these days that i plan to count how many times we eat it this year.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 51-52/24

these were some weird weeks.

we took the train north a little earlier than our usual christmas schedule. being flexible on dates allows us to book cheaper tickets, which is nice, and in retrospect, i was glad we came earlier because we’ve had plenty of downtime to be sick and spend time in hospitals: paulo got some food poisoning just before christmas, i got some high fever that morphed into a pestering throat ache… plus a nodule on my thyroid that we’re currently investigating. *sigh*

other than that, just the normal christmas things: being with family, consuming inordinate amounts of food, seeing friends, reading, kidnapping the little niece for a few days of cuddling.

christmas day brought together several families, and we were 28 people at the table, kids and all! the smaller ones were very excited about santa coming to visit, but cautious and shy when he actually got there 😅

i got some nice christmas gifts: books and postal-themed things, handy 3d printed objects from my brother, an underblanket that makes my bed toasty warm, a pijama and an insect bite healer (a sci-fi gadget that makes insect bites stop itching within seconds). plus, a new macbook air to replace my 9 year old one, which was not a christmas gift but felt like it. it’s so smooth and fast! i must have been very good this year! ☺️

i finished a couple of books these weeks, eleanor oliphant is completely fine, and where’d you go, bernadette (both nice reads), as well as a few children’s books that i offered to my cousis. “where’d you go, bernadette” made me want to take a cruise to antarctica, something i’ve always considered a little silly. i’ve even exchanged emails with the group that manages the quaint post office at port lockroy, but now i kind of want to go see it for myself and help count penguins!

on the last day of the year, we rented a little flat in the middle of nowhere to ring in the new year with friends. it was super quiet, with an amazing window into the surrounding mountains. just our thing.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 48-50/24

mostly quiet weeks, brainstorming and buying gifts for everyone, writing a million christmas postcards, tying up loose ends, riding the usual anxiety about the upcoming christmas trip…

i asked my brother if the kid needed anything for christmas, and he said she needed winter clothes… which led me to a shopping spree on vinted. it’s a second-hand marketplace where people sell their old stuff, but it’s especially nice for kid’s clothes, many of which are only used for a few months. i managed to snatch quite a few good deals and became a little bit addicted to it, truth be told. 😅

these weeks have been good for reading. i finished the hidden life of trees, which is such an amazing book… you learn about how trees share information and care for each other, and how much they struggle without their forest support group. it really makes you look at trees in a whole new way! i also listened to werner herzog’s the twilight world, read by the man himself in his slow voice, thick with german accent. and i finished she who became the sun, which was intense and beautiful, a wild mix of mulan and some chinese wuxia vibe.

i’ve been trying to get back into running, with the help of the “zombies, run!” app. their couch-to-5k program starts reeeeeeeally slow, with just 15 seconds of running in between 1 minute walks, which feels extremely easy, but i like the storytelling part of it, so i don’t want to skip ahead and miss stuff. there’s a race the family is planning to do in april that i want to try to join for the 10k, if i can keep it up until then.

ever since the conjunctivitis some weeks ago, i’ve had the feeling i had something stuck in my eye, which is not a very pleasant feeling. since it didn’t seem to go away, i went to see a doctor, who scraped my eye a bit (it’s not as unpleasant as it sounds) and prescribed some drops and a cream. it seems to be doing its job and i’ve been feeling less bothered by it.

lately, i’ve been forgetting to take pictures (and make videos) a lot, so i don’t have a lot of pictures to share, but here’s one of tiny niece that my chinese friend qiuyu painted:

isn’t that cute? she’s a wizard with a brush!

these early december days have been sunny and fresh for the most part, around 15 degrees or so. it’s not even properly cold (not like in central or northern europe), but in a house without proper heating, you feel it a lot — it’s enough to throw me into a grumpy, whiny mood and make me dream about escapades to warm places. to curb this grumpiness, the fireplace has been working non-stop, and we’ve holed ourselves in the living room, curtained off from the rest of the house. i wish we could just re-do the whole house and make it better… sigh.