Boring? Depends on your perspective.

These last few weeks I've been finding it difficult to find anything interesting to say on this blog. It feels like nothing really interesting is happening. I asked Jeff to help me come up with things to write about, and I realized that although life is just going along as usual here, that doesn't necessarily mean you all will be bored by my updates. So, in no particular order here are some things that have happened in the past few weeks:

1. Ice cream updates: The cinnamon almond ice cream was delicious. We will definitely be using that recipe for ice cream base again, and I think it will be able to be adapted to make many wonderful flavors. I tried to make maple ice cream, following a recipe using maple syrup, and it turned out a little too eggy, and a bit icy despite having a very high fat content. I decided that instead of just maple, it tastes a bit like French toast with syrup, which is not bad but is not what I was going for. I think I will have to try making it a different way next time.

2. After much waiting, I had an appointment with my neurosurgeon here to go over a follow-up MRI from February. It was completely unremarkable – no change from a year ago, which is good because it means that there is no new abnormal tissue. Exactly as expected, but still reassuring. Around 7% of people who have surgery to remove a brain stem cavernous malformation do end up having regrowth, and while I am not at high risk of having this happen, there is always a chance. So even though the doctor was running quite late and I ended up spending about two and half hours in the waiting room for a ridiculously short appointment (we didn't even go into an exam room, we met in a back hallway where there is a computer to look at images), I didn't mind too much getting the news that everything still looks good.

3. Last week I went for a walk from my office to the University bookstore completely unassisted (not even a cane) other than having Jeff act as a bodyguard (making sure I had space and making sure that students staring down at their phones didn't run into me). This is the first time I have gone out anywhere public without a walking aid (besides times when I am using Jeff as a walking aid). I walked very slowly and deliberately, and it took a great deal of concentration, but it is a milestone nonetheless. The whole distance there and back was probably about half a mile, and total walking time was probably about thirty minutes, with a rest in between to look at merchandise at the bookstore.

4. I have a couple of new tricks that I can do: I can now get up from the floor without using my hands for support, and can similarly go down to the floor  from standing without using my hands. Also, I can walk up and down one step without a handrail or other support. I am not especially consistent with any of these things yet, and lose my balance about half the time, but it is still progress. As I get better at them, these skills will be very useful for navigating curbs and enjoying picnic blankets :-)

5. Jeff has a cold for the second time in about three weeks. I feel bad for him, getting hit back-to-back. I also feel a bit pleased with myself for managing to avoid getting sick all winter – the obsessive hand hygiene that I learned while working at the VA and at Harborview has become a habit, and seems to be paying off. Now by publicly saying something about managing to stay healthy I've probably jinxed myself, and will come down with a cold in the next week. I will continue my hand hygiene routine and let you know whether it is powerful enough to stave off jinxes :-)

Experimenting with Ice Cream

I think I've decided that spring is officially the worst season here. The days are getting longer, which makes it seem like we should be able to spend more time outside, and like it should be getting warmer. And these two things are sort of true, but not to the point that it is really nice to spend time outside, or that it is objectively warm. The past couple of days we have had highs around 16°F and lows around -2°F. This is somewhat warmer than it was, but still fairly pathetic spring weather. Since it warmed up and melted a bit and has now gotten cold again, the roads are filled with deep ruts of ice, and there are hard ice piles and ice boulders on sidewalks and in parking lots. There will be more melting and refreezing, more lakes of ice, and everything is dirty and brown. Everyone I talk to is tired of winter and wishing it would end, and many people who have lived here for a long time truly do seem to be deluding themselves into thinking that it is normal for winter to end sooner than it does. Everyone is a bit stir crazy, and all small talk is about the weather, and how we should all be living in warmer climates. I am getting the sense that this is typical of March and probably April here. It is enough to get anyone feeling a bit antsy and gloomy.

In response, I have gone on a bit of a homemade ice cream kick. It started with the thin mint ice cream. Then last weekend I made some chocolate coconut milk ice cream for a friend's birthday. She is currently not consuming dairy, I had seen this recipe and wanted to give it a try, and it turned out perfectly. I would definitely encourage anyone looking for a vegan ice cream recipe to check it out. I've spent some time checking out several food blogs and ice cream blogs (they do exist), and wanted to try it out this recipe for ice cream that does not use eggs, but achieves some of the same benefits (creamier, less melty) using another method. Right now, in the freezer waiting to be tried, is an experiment with that ice cream base, flavored with cinnamon, vanilla, and sliced almonds. I will let you know what we think of it :-)

Slogging through slushy spring

There are definitely signs that spring will eventually arrive, but it seems as though we are going to have a long, slow melt. This is generally a good thing, because it means low likelihood of flooding, but it also feels like winter is dragging out. Whereas two weeks ago everything was white and covered with new snow, now everything is brown, and snowmelt is creating lakes on streets and sidewalks, then it freezes and creates mini ice rinks all over town. There is even one in our garage, and our garage door froze shut earlier this week (snow melted, water got in under the garage door, then it froze and the bottom of the door froze to the ground). We have had to be creative in figuring out how to keep this from happening again, and it seems that a small piece of wood placed under the door that keeps it from closing all the way (and thus prevents the door from being immersed in the lake that turns to ice every night) is for the time being a good solution. In many ways, this is the ugliest time of year here, and it would be nice to get it done quickly, but according to weather forecasts that is not to be.

Things are relatively uneventful here. We have four more weeks of classes, then two weeks of final exams, then school is out for the summer :-) I have a feeling we'll be dealing with this ugly slushy weather until then, but how great it will be for the better weather to arrive just when we have time to enjoy it!

Snow, sweatpants, and ice cream

In the past week it has gone from feeling like winter will never end to feeling like spring is within reach. Last weekend we had some of the coldest days yet this winter, then we got dumped with a huge amount of snow (maybe close to a foot?), then in the past couple of days it has warmed up considerably and we are beginning to experience the slightest bit of spring melt. All this means that Jeff has been very busy clearing snow from our walk, and from around the foundation of our house to prevent flooding when the melt occurs.

Jeff showing off the massive snow bank that has accumulated at the edge of our patio from his shoveling throughout this winter. This is where I carved out my snowman when the snow bank was about half the size it is now.

We have been able to go outside on walks two days in the last week, and this trend is likely to continue – highs are expected to be at and above freezing every day for the foreseeable future. Of course Jeff has been spending plenty of time outside even in the frigid cold, but it has been harder for me to get out, and the warm weather helps quite a bit (I have clearly adapted to life in the prairies, as I truly do consider anything near or above freezing to be warm weather).

As February was such a cold month (average temperatures were about 8°C below normal, and normal is pretty cold), I found myself wanting to constantly be wearing warm sweatpants and sweatshirts while I was at home. The problem was that I only had one pair of sweatpants and one sweatshirt, and since the sweatshirt is more than fifteen years old (the University of Oregon sweatshirt that I bought during my freshman year of college), I decided that I should get more. For some reason, it is ridiculously difficult to find normal cheap sweatpants for women in Canada. I didn't want anything fancy – just something like this. But all I could find were things like this, and I'm sorry, but I don't want to spend $68 on a pair of sweatpants.

I wish that I had thought about it when we were in California, because I'm sure I would've been able to find something. Instead, I scoured the Internet trying to find somewhere that sells regular sweatpants and sweatshirts in Canada, and didn't really find anything. However, I got a lead that there might be something at Target. Target is new to Canada, and overall is not doing very well here. They don't have the same products as they do in the US, or the same prices, and you can't search for things online. But I sent Jeff to Target, and he was able to come back with one pair of women's sweatpants in my size (the only pair they had), and a pair of men's sweatpants and a men's sweatshirt that are a little bit big but fit adequately, and all were more expensive than I feel like they needed to be, but at least they weren't $68. I am frequently shocked by what is and is not available in Canada. It's cold here – but maybe because of that they are able to price gouge on the sweatpants.

One thing we did bring back from California were some Girl Scout cookies. Canada does have Girl Guides, but their cookies are not the same, and I really get a craving this time of year for thin mints and Samoas. Last week I had the genius idea to make some ice cream in the ice cream maker that was mint (colored a lovely green) with crushed thin mints mixed in. It turned out to be fairly amazing. I have always been an ice cream purist – just cream, milk, sugar, and flavoring. But after reading this blog post, I thought it was at least worth a try to add some egg yolks. And I have to say, I may be a convert. Maybe not all the time, but I will definitely be using egg yolks in my ice cream again. I feel like there are probably people I should apologize to for insisting that ice cream does not contain eggs, so if you are one of those people, I humbly concede :-)

Return to the land of the living

This past week I have been working nonstop on two separate grant applications. On one of them I am the only applicant, and on the other I am a co-applicant. Both are due tomorrow. There are some exciting things that go into grant writing, like thinking about what research I might be doing next. But for the most part, it is a relatively unpleasant process. Also, because of the timing, the last week is a blur– I feel like I'm emerging from some kind of twilight zone. Hopefully this won't be something I have to do very often!

The week before last was much more pleasant. We took a brief trip to California, to get out of the snow, and visit some friends. First, we spent a bit of time with my friend Elaine and her family, which now includes three kids under four years old. With the nonstop energy that comes with three small children, we didn't get the camera out as much as we would have liked, but we did capture a couple of things:

Jeff the human slide

Me with Elaine and baby Adele (in the stroller)

Next we visited our friends Kristi and Andrew, who have zero kids and for the moment, three small dogs.

Jeff the human dog park

We went for some nice walks in the UC Davis Arboretum,

and the Tennessee Valley area in Marin County.

Kristi and Andrew impersonating the dogs

As you may notice in the pictures above, I got a fancy-schmancy new walker, with all-terrain wheels that make it possible to do some off-road hiking. There isn't a distributor of this walker in Canada (it is designed in Sweden, and there really isn't anything else like it), so I ordered it and picked it up while we were in California. I had been looking for something like this for about six months, with no luck. It is challenging to find mobility aids for active people. There seems to be an assumption that anyone who needs a mobility aid is too decrepit to be going out on adventures, and I really don't think that is true. At least it's not in my case.

The real reason that I wanted to find a walker that can handle more serious activity is for this:

I can only go for about ten seconds at a time right now, and after a few bursts of that I get quite tired, but I feel like with practice running may be in my future. My physical therapist put an elastic bandage wrap around my leg and foot to try to keep things in place, and keep my left leg from flailing, in the hope is that with time my body will learn how to stay aligned. It's both exciting and difficult – having a goal to work toward, but feeling so far from that goal.

On a completely unrelated note, is this on shelves in Safeway in the US, or is it just a Canadian thing?:

Jeff stumbled across this when he was shopping, and found it completely hilarious :-)