Days of Gratitude - Cakes, Cream, Keys, Cafes, Characters and Concentration

Four more days of gratitude.  As I write this - four days before this gets published - I am up to date with these posts.  But have several walks, with lots of photos, to post about.  It's almost certain that by the time I get through those I'll have sidetracked myself into other things.  And I need to get down to writing too and to sit down and make some kind of art and start to learn to draw.  I have the pencils.  I have the sketchpads.  I have a couple of excellent books on drawing, starting from the most basic things such as getting to know what it feels like in the hand to draw a line on a page.

These days have seen a turn.  For the first two, my mental health was quite low.  On both I cried quite a bit at times.  On the second I managed to get out and sing in the evening.  That's something that can be joyful for me.  But I was getting into big meltdown inside and knew I had to leave before it all spilled out and got messy.  Not good.  But yesterday was better and that's carried on into today.

St. Mary's Island, from the cliff tops to the north.

11^th May

Grateful for pie and cake from Whitley Bay. There is much more to eat later. Gluttony. And for the liquorice shop too.

And to have seen the sea again, wandering to the north of the lighthouse with B this time.

Also grateful that last night A and I learned how to strike-through, bold and italic on WhatsApp. Little pleasures!

12^th May

Grateful to have survived the day. Very tough inside.

And that instead of shutting down in town I was able to enjoy a smoothie in a quietish place.

Super Natural Cafe, Newcastle

Anaesthetic cream - but it's still painful.

 13^th May

Grateful that my head is a lot better. A big relief.

Grateful to get through electrolysis without melting, for pretty arcades and a building based on the science of a bubble.

Grateful for the mental energy to read something - the start of a YA novel by this author.  It's "On the Edge of Gone" by Corinne Duyvis.  I'm terrible at reading books at the moment due to my mental health but I've begun this one and so far it's very good and I think I'm going to enjoy the autistic main character.  She looks to be a character rather than a stereotype.

Apparently the only building in the world based on bubble science.

Author's note in the book I've started

14^th May

Grateful that these two items are now in my possession.

One contains 7 each of 63 types of puzzle.

The other replaces an identical one I gave away a while back to someone who needed it more than me. Glad to have another.

Ah, puzzles.  I've heard of Gareth Moore before because he runs the website puzzlemix.com.  For two periods of a year I've subscribed to his site and enjoyed the puzzles there - four puzzles a day, every day, instead of one free puzzle every other day.  The easiest take 30 seconds, the hardest take over 30 minutes.  I keep pondering subscribing for the third year but maybe I should be finding other things to do with my days than adding more to the puzzles I already have to solve at Nikoli, a Kenken site and the Guardian crosswords online before I even open one of the too many puzzle books I still own.

Concentration is an interesting thing.  I have been lacking the concentration to read books.  But mostly I can still concentrate to solve puzzles - and on puzzlemix I would quite often post the fastest time, as seen in a couple of photos in other gratitude blog posts.