Tag: life

The power of the ping-pong ball

These last months, I have been feeling sluggish and exhausted, always waking up tired. I mentioned it to a doctor and she told me to make an appointment with a pneumologist who is also a sleep specialist, as a proper sleep appointment takes ages to get.

So I had to sleep on night with bands around my chest and waist, an oxygen meter on my finger and a plastic tube in my nose (I was surprisingly able to sleep with all these contraptions).

Monday I showed the doctor the results and sure enough, I have sleep apnea, albeit light, and luckily for me, just when I am sleeping on my back.

But I asked myself, how can I control that if I am asleep?

That’s when a ping-pong ball comes in handy. Or a pool noodle, for that matter. You just attach the ball to the back of your pyjamas, or you wear a belt where you have slid a bit of the pool noodle to make sleeping on back really uncomfortable and you end up getting back on your side.

And it is amazing how much more alert I feel. Don’t need one hour to get out of bed anymore

Posted as part of Six word Saturdays

Carries a stool? A sketcher, surely!

I was walking up a very steep hill this morning in Torres Vedras, on my way to a sketching meetup when a car stops next to me and the driver asks me if I was going to the meetup and if I wanted a ride.

We didn’t know each other, but she saw me walking uphill with my foldable stool on my shoulder, which is a big tell. Of course, some urban sketchers enjoy drawing standing up, sometimes leaning on a wall, but most of us carry a foldable stool or a foldable chair so we can draw more comfortably.

And really, how common is it for non sketchers to walk on the street with a foldable stool on their shoulder?

Posted as part of Six word Saturdays

Microblog Mondays – a very intense weekend

Slowly recovering from COVID side effects. It did help that I had a week holiday last week, which culminated in a national urban sketching gathering in Figueira da Foz.

When I read the program, I was stoked. We were going to sketch rice fields and salt evaporation beds. Really outside the box, I thought. But 4 hours at the salt beds? What were we going to do for 4 hours?

Turns out, I could have stayed the whole day there. There is an interpretation center that shows all the process of the salt production, our guide was very enthusiastic, we gathered edible plants that grow in salty lands (salicornia and sea purslane).

And of course, I couldn’t leave without a kilogram of salt and a smaller bag of salt flower.

Microblog Mondays: new month, new life

One week today since I started living in my new apartment, an apartment just for me, where I don’t have to wait for the bathroom or the washing machine. (Although I haven’t brought my washing machine yet, but this is a detail).

And I feel really privileged to live in the city center. Plus the street I live in is really quiet, as it is a dead end, so no traffic. Some mornings I can hear the birds singing. The only slightly annoying noise is the sound of the pigeons.

So yes, I feel quite content.

Microblog Mondays: leaving my “bunker”

That’s how a friend of mine calls my room, as hardly get any sunlight because the window faces an inner courtyard and my view is the wall on the other side.

But now, thanks to dearest M. and D. ( who gave the contact of one of his friends who has apartments for renting and who battled on my behalf), I have a new apartment, in the center of Lisbon and full of light.

That’s what made me fall in love with it.

The year is starting well…

Microblog mondays- In between the raindrops

My dance school had an end of the year party last Wednesday, dinner and then dancing with a live band afterwards.

Negative COVID test was required at the entrance so many people were dancing without their masks, with a false sense of security.

Yes, false, because Friday one of the attendees developed symptoms and tested positive for COVID.

As I didn’t attend the dinner, just the dance, wearing a mask all the time, it was considered a low risk contact, which meant I should go only to work and back, wear a mask outside and inside. So I spent the weekend cooked up in my room, only leaving it to go to the bathroom and to get food, putting on a mask each time I went to the bathroom or the kitchen. Because there are 6 other people living in the apartment.

And today I got tested. There were these long 30 min waiting for the result, if you are positive they will call you. Luckily, I am negative.

As we say in Portugal, so far I have been able to walk in between the raindrops. Hope it stays this way.

Microblog Mondays- the longest 30 min of my life

I had an outside drawing class this Saturday and a few of us were having lunch together before the afternoon session and I get a phone call from a colleague telling me she had tested positive for Covid.

I tried to get a rapid test at the pharmacy but they only had a free spot today, so I decided to self isolate, even though the odds of me being infected were very small.

So I managed to get tested today, at the university near my work and they told me that if I was positive they would call me during the next half hour, otherwise the results would go to my email.

The last 2 minutes of the half hour seemed to last forever…. No call came. I checked my email just to be sure, and yes, I am negative.

Phew…

Microblog Mondays

View on Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CO5j7sGHpVa/

This was how I felt this Saturday, as I finally was able to book my Covid vaccine for the 29th of may.

But now my mood just fizzled out. Just got a text from my landlord saying I have to give the apartment back to him until May 31st, and I can’t understand why, as the law had suspended the end of the contracts until June 30th.

Still trembling…

Off to take something to help me sleep…