WOYWW 493

I’m writing this on Tuesday evening. This week I have had very little time for anything creative. I’ve done a tiny bit more on my peacock feathers but not enough to warrant another photograph. Most of my time has been taken up in preparing sessions for my Bible study group, and I’ve done a bit of cooking, and had a hospital appointment.

Sourdough

After weeks of producing dense flat turtles and getting totally fed up with it, I finally got round to doing some more research and trying a different technique. I’m not sure what went wrong because when I first started with that method, it was fine… Anyway, I decided to try the basic sourdough recipe from The Sourdough School, a UK-based site, adapting the recipe slightly, to make it half and half white and wholemeal, which is my preferred mix for bread.

It had fewer steps than the previous technique and the dough did seem firmer, easier to handle and with less tendency to collapse when I turned it out after its final proving, and you can imagine my delight when this is what came out of the oven!

  

Very satisfactory indeed. A good open crumb, and more oven spring, so it’s not nearly so dense and heavy. It is delicious!! This is definitely the way to go.

Kitties

Ruby got out of the garden today. We thought my hubby’s kitty defences were all impenetrable, but a few days ago he ruthlessly cut back a tree near the fence, and she was able to leap over from the truncated branches now all the thin flexible twigs had been cut off. It wasn’t a very nice tree and it blocked the view of the top of the water feature a bit, so I suggested he cut it right off at the roots, which he did today, so I don’t think she’ll hop over again! You can now see the whole of the trellis at the top of the waterfall, in front of the compost heap, and I said we ought to grow a nice climbing flowering plant on there, which would look nice from the kitchen window. Something to plan for the spring.

I had both kitties on my lap this evening and they started washing each other and it went on for about a quarter of an hour! I started videoing them and eventually cut the video from 6 minutes to 3, which I hope isn’t still too long – but they do look so sweet!

Health Update

I still haven’t received the other two pairs of support pants and if they don’t come tomorrow I shall have to phone and find out what’s happening. This really is a bore…

I had my regular six-monthly oncology appointment last Thursday and all is well, and still no trace of any cancer in my system, which is a relief, although I wasn’t really worried about it. I saw a new registrar this time, who was a very charming man. We talked about the hernia, and I asked whether anything else had shown up on my CT scan, for example were there any pulmonary emboli, which there weren’t – there shouldn’t have been, because I’m back on the rivaroxaban which was prescribed when I first had them back in 2016. He asked whether I’d like to see the images, and I leapt at the chance – the last time I saw any images of my insides was when my cancer was first diagnosed, and I asked to see the colonoscopy images of the tumour because I was having a hard time getting my head round the fact that I’d got cancer at all. My surgeon said this was very normal and lots of people couldn’t really believe it till they’d seen it for themselves, especially when it was asymptomatic.

Anyway, I was fascinated to see the CT images and even to my untrained eye, the hernia was quite obvious. I asked whether I could have print-outs of them and he said yes, possibly, but it might take some time as he wasn’t really familiar with the system. My hubby suggested I simply took some photos of the computer screen, which I duly did, and I selected the best of these and annotated it according to the details he pointed out. So here is Shoshi seen from the inside, in all her glory lol!

You can see quite clearly how the hernia has penetrated through the muscle wall. It is quite clearly visible from the outside now, as well.

I’ve got an appointment to see my surgeon in mid-December to discuss what to do about this, and I certainly do hope he’ll be happy to leave it alone at least for now. I really can’t face any more surgery, especially after getting such a serious, life-threatening infection after the last lot.

Have a great week, all my WOYWW friends!