i'm knitting lace for the first time and it's surprisingly fun! i've been intimidated to try lace for years, bc despite having more than 2 decades of experience knitting i still don't feel especially confident in my skills. i usually prefer a pattern where i can memorise the entire thing start to finish, and i only need to look at the written pattern to see the stitch counts for the size i'm making (still can't memorise numbers!). but it turns out with lace you just memorise smaller batches of repeating stitches! which is very pleasing on the old tism

(cw mysterious weight loss) whyyyyyy am i still shrinking?! ive been keeping a much closer eye on my weight than i would otherwise like to - i hadnt weighed myself in many years until i started noticing my clothes weren't fitting right this spring - and i'm getting pretty freaked out by how consistently i'm shrinking given the fact that i am very deliberately doing NOTHING to cause this to happen. it's between 2 and 4 pounds a week, every week. WHY???? since friday i have lost another 2 pounds despite literally just laying in bed eating ice cream every day. why!!! i sent my friend one of the pictures of me tied up from thursday night, and their first response was something like "oh my god you really ARE shrinking! i know you'd said and i did believe you but seeing it is different", /before/ commenting on the fact that i'm hogtied and in a partial suspension in those pictures lmao. like yes i'm still fat but like, i'm small fat now. the clothes my massage therapist gave me are sizes 16 and 18, and they fit me. some actually fit loose. i haven't fit into anything size 16 since i was in deeply unwell eating disorder territory a decade ago. and i just keep hearing my GP rattling round inside my head saying it doesn't matter bc i'm still fat. i'm getting worried that there's something wrong and i'm just not realising bc ive been otherwise feeling comparatively so much better than i was when i was bedbound. like genuinely how would /i/ know what a healthy body feels like? my massage therapist suggested it could just be that my contraception pills might be resolving a hormone imbalance i didn't know i had, which. may be?? but isn't progesterone supposed to make you GAIN weight???

i have 2 carers on my regular rota rn. one of them is very sweet and friendly, reacts with genuine concern when i'm unwell, but unfortunately (for whatever reason) only does her job if i am sat next to her telling her how to do each individial bit of it. and if i dont remember to tell her to do something, even if it's part of her regular routine of stuff she knows she has to do for me every day, she just doesnt do it. like yesterday she missed my daily meds bc i forgot to ask for them, and the day before she just left a bag of trash in my hallway blocking my bedroom door, because i was too sick to keep an eye on her taking the bins oit and she apparently just abandoned the task as soon as she was out of my direct line of sight. the other carer, carer 2, knows that carer 1 is like this and expresses deep frustration about it every shift changeover. except she doesnt express it at carer 1, she expresses it at me! last week she /told me off/, in my own home, for not having reminded carer 1 to wipe down the kitchen surfaces, because now she'd have to do it instead. carer 2 is significantly more competent at the job, HOWEVER. she is not friendly with me. when she sees me being really sick, she doesn't react at all. carer 1 was asking if i needed an ambulance yesterday bc i look like shit warmed up, and carer 2 today looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and then walked past me to the kitchen 👍. like, i can leave her to do regular routine tasks and i know she wont abandon them the second i step away. but i also cant do irregular tasks with her either, bc she drags her feet like im making her do the last thing in the world she wants to be doing. and that can be something like, hand washing my swimming costume after ive been to the pool in it, so that it doesnt get destroyed in the washing machine. i have to sit with her and make her do every step or she wont even begin the task. aand she literally huffs at me the whole time. for all the difficulties that they come with, they at least are meeting my bare minimum care needs. but the council is asking me to do genuinely like. more than ten hours of paperwork. in order to keep this bare minimum of care. and i cannot ask either of these carers to help with the paperwork, because neither of them will do anything that even slightly resembles an admin task. 🥳