A word child
Saturday, July 6th, 2019 09:36 pmI'm a touch bemused by the fact that 35 year old me not only had no trouble with the language of The Book of the New Sun, I didn't even notice any oddness to it. There are indeed advantages to a classical education, a minor in medieval history, and a semi-European upbringing. But I think I just let most of the terminology roll over me. If I didn't know that a misericorde is an actual kind of knife, or that khaibit is an ancient Egyptian term for a person's shadow self, no matter. The general sense was clear enough. But now I'm tempted to look all these terms up online just for the fun of it. And to marvel that Wolfe himself had that erudite and occasionally obscure vocabulary available to him *without* the Net.
On a different tangent, I've been experimenting this last week with overnight oats (which sounds like a Pratchett character.) Am convinced that the stubborn weight gain since the spring is due to me eating French bread toast for breakfast (with butter and jam and fake PB) instead of my long-time cereal and berries. French bread has more calories than sliced rye, for one thing, never mind what you put on it. Given my druthers and my touchy insides, I wouldn't eat breakfast at all, but I need meds to move and meds-cushioning food for the meds, so... Instant oatmeal is great, but not nutritionally so, and hot things on muggy mornings aren't great at all. I'm still not sure how I feel about cold oatmeal. It involves more milk than I've had in a while, even if lactose free- good for calcium and aging bones, iffy for digestion. I suppose I should try the nut milks, expensive though they are, and see if that feels any lighter. Or track down the one elusive rye bread that I can stand to eat a nd go back to that.
One odd thing I've noticed in this season of never-quite-awake (heat and antihistamines). I've never needed coffee in the morning, or wanted it. Home-brewed coffee upsets my stomach. (If I must have caffeine, it needs to be cold and carbonated to work.) I do go to my coffee shop for a latte, but the need is social rather than physical. Get out of the house, see familiar faces, exchange a few words, etc, But recently drinking my latte gives me a feeling of well-being that I've never had before. I mean, it could still be psychological: Starbucks doesn't have the same effect. But there certainly seems a perk-up physical component to it now as well.
On a different tangent, I've been experimenting this last week with overnight oats (which sounds like a Pratchett character.) Am convinced that the stubborn weight gain since the spring is due to me eating French bread toast for breakfast (with butter and jam and fake PB) instead of my long-time cereal and berries. French bread has more calories than sliced rye, for one thing, never mind what you put on it. Given my druthers and my touchy insides, I wouldn't eat breakfast at all, but I need meds to move and meds-cushioning food for the meds, so... Instant oatmeal is great, but not nutritionally so, and hot things on muggy mornings aren't great at all. I'm still not sure how I feel about cold oatmeal. It involves more milk than I've had in a while, even if lactose free- good for calcium and aging bones, iffy for digestion. I suppose I should try the nut milks, expensive though they are, and see if that feels any lighter. Or track down the one elusive rye bread that I can stand to eat a nd go back to that.
One odd thing I've noticed in this season of never-quite-awake (heat and antihistamines). I've never needed coffee in the morning, or wanted it. Home-brewed coffee upsets my stomach. (If I must have caffeine, it needs to be cold and carbonated to work.) I do go to my coffee shop for a latte, but the need is social rather than physical. Get out of the house, see familiar faces, exchange a few words, etc, But recently drinking my latte gives me a feeling of well-being that I've never had before. I mean, it could still be psychological: Starbucks doesn't have the same effect. But there certainly seems a perk-up physical component to it now as well.
