A strange day of coincidental cornucopiscence

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I have of late, though wherefore I know not, had a bit more energy.  Maybe it's a seasonal thing, as autumn up here in the wheatbelt is almost more of a spring than spring itself, what with the rain and all.  But truly, it's a bit illusory.  When I go to do something like a bit of messing about in the garden, I am clearly not as capable or endowed with stamina as I was only a little while ago, but the main thing is that I feel strangely more energised despite this.  I think the Bowen sessions and herbs are combining very nicely.

So over the last 24 hours or so I've taken advantage of this and the perfect meteorological clemency to do a bit of garden wrangling.  Not a lot, just helping Meeta with the emplacement of our new bird bath and mulching up some of the beds down the NW side of our house.  We're making what was the driveway into a pleasant linear-ish courtyard for hanging out and general beautifulness purposes.

Looking toward the side gate.

And back the other way.  Nice, eh?

Not so very long ago, a small mulching job like this would have been something I'd have just blithely and competently motored through, enjoying it well enough, but with more than half my focus on the 'getting-it-doneness' of it all, so I could bullock on to the next thing.  A lovely facet of being physically handicapped now is that despite there being some things I simply cannot do at all, most stuff just takes a lot longer, and requires more ingenuity.  So it's all more enjoyable, now I've gotten past resenting not being able to dig a hole 'properly', for example.

Then this morning I harvested the first few of our pumpkins - I'll leave the rest on the vine as long as I can, we shouldn't see frost this early, surely.  Your first harvest is a wonderful thing.  We didn't do too much vege planting straight off when we got here, partly as it was still winter, partly due to me still very much adjusting to my new physical reality, but mainly because we'd decided to go slow, plan a bit, and get into the garden in a different and more conscious way this time.  We've always been planters, which some people see as odd given our history as serial renters, but really we're no less stewards of the planet just because we don't hold title deeds, are we?  Anyway, the first pumpkins are out curing now.  It's ace.

No idea what variety these are, they came from an excess plant from the neighbour's.  

She doesn't know either.  Mystery punkins!

Later in the day, and this had been on my mind somewhat, I had an appointment with something completely different.  I shall start by saying that  I have never been much of a tit man, really.

Sure, as a heterosexual male I naturally enough acknowledge the attractiveness of the female of the species in all her womanly bloom, and breasts are without doubt a part of all that.  What I mean is that I've never really had the sort of fetishistic lustfulness for all things breasty, or found myself always drawn to women with a particular size or shape of breast.  Maybe it's somehow to do with my very early life experience, for I don't think I was breastfed for all that long by contemporary mores.  Honestly I can't remember, but I think that's right.  Part of the movement to 'liberate' women (as it was then termed) in the late 60's/early 70's was a push in some circles to be free of a physically attached child for such a large and onerous proportion of one's life and besides - we'd developed formula now.  Or maybe not, I don't know.

Breasts are good, I like them.  But not so much on men.  

This is no-one I know, btw.  Doing an image search for 'breasts' is interesting, isn't it?

Now I am starting to get used to my PL2G app on the iPhone I am preparing for events like, for example, a trip to the doctors, by pre-programming some of the things I'll need to say.  One thing I love about the discovery process with this program is finding out when it has a picture symbol for something you've typed in.  It even has a picture of Kevin Rudd!  So anyway, one of the first things I typed in was


"I have a lump in my left breast" and sure enough, there's a little picture symbol with breasts and an arrow.  Cool!  I left the voice as female for that visit.

My left nipple has been a bit sore for a couple of months on-and-off, but a few weeks ago it suddenly developed an alarming lump.  Very tender too.  Men can get breast cancer, I know this, so I chose to cease ignoring it now.  The doc thinks it's possibly mastitis, ups my antibiotic dose, and says to get an ultrasound if it hasn't cleared up in 5 days. It hadn't cleared up.

I love some of the classic small-town stuff we get here.  It's the same sonographer I see today as did my liver last time (liver's fine, thanks for asking, just my gallbladder is apparently tiny) and we had a good enough chat considering my speechiness thing.  There's no 'collection' of cells as one would see with a tumourous growth, and she asks me about medications.  Because it looks to her like gynecomastia.  And since we're all small towny folks together now she made a quick call to my doc who thought it a very reasonable diagnosis and sent some instruction about not needing the antibiotics anymore and I don't need to see her so let's everyone be cool and happy.  Gotta love this commonsense stuff when it rears its head, yes?  In short, I have grown a very small breast.  Yep, just the one.

As it turns out, one of my medications (domperidone) which I use for gastric motility, is used in some parts of the world to promote breast milk production, so I'm guessing that 4 years or so on, there is finally a side effect.  Simply live with it, I shall.

Sigh, I suppose this does mean I am now, technically, a tit man after all.

Weirdly, I like this new development.  It makes me feel just a little more in tune with the creative force, but in a more yin way obviously.  So, garden growing and personal growing, what more could you ask from a day? Felicitous fecundity all round.