Thanks. If I do have to have injections, I will be fine after the first one. It won't be unknown territory anymore and I can tell others that it is more the idea than the actuallity!! Have no idea why it's suddenly in Italics. Did nothing different.
Perhaps the italics are to emphasise your very brave approach here, I absolutely love your thinking on this, and it deserves the extra attention the spontaneous italics add to your message!
@Antje77 really missing the tales of your escapades and your animals and your swims and your dates and your neighbours. Have you become mundane and ordinary now you're a working person? I hope not. Can we have a story sometime soon please?
(Very long post trying to make up for my abscence on this thread lately.

)
I still have to wade through 36 alerts after being mostly offline for days. I'm halfway through a week of sailing, started right after four days of work. We've been sailing very odd hours, and I was tired to start with so I've ignored the forum and only logged in for my daily round of trying to catch some bots and spammers. Which is mostly a rather meditative chore to start and end my day with. No idea how useful this is but I've been doing it for so long it now signals my brain that it's time for bed so at the very least it's useful for me.
I had working men on my bridge so I made some pictures in the cellar of my bridge where you're not allowed on your own. There are two of these to lift the bridge, quite impressive:
Before those work days I had a sad goodbye for my cousin, who finally died of cancer. A three hour drive so I slept illegally in my car the day before, very pretty spot in nature called de Biesbosch. Too tired after a day of family and emotions to drive back afterwards, so another night spent in my car, and a morning swim in this very narrow but surprisingly deep water.
Dating life has sadly been rather tame lately. Chatting with so many people that it's hard to keep track of who is who, but while I like chatting, that's not really what I joined that dating site for, right...
I've met two men lately, both around my age. One I had good hopes for, very interesting man, who came for a cuppa on my bridge. He said he'd like to meet again but changed his mind a couple of days later with a polite message saying he liked me very much as a person but no attraction. Dang.
With the other it was clear that it wasn't a date as such, and we're still chatting daily through whatsapp. He's the sweetest man, so very thoughtful and worried when I'm tired or such. He has a recent diagnosis of autism, and it's wonderful to see how he works on making things work even if they are very difficult due to his autism. He loves to walk long distances (did 80 km in a day a few weeks ago), preferably organised walks. The walking is not an issue at all, the people are, too much coming in. And because he also loves chatting with people he runs a great risk of overdoing it.
Last week he walked the Elfstedentocht, 5 days of 40 to 50 km a day, so every day started in a full bus, lots of people, ruining his balance at the start of each day and not enough time to recover from all the social input between days.
He made it, but it became harder and harder for him every day and I was very worried he would crash after the third day, and so very proud he made it!
If only he had the type of brains for reading and writing, or discussing what's happening in the world, or diving deep into some subject or other... But he doesn't, so I like him very much but he would be boring as a partner, I think I need a bit of intellectual play as well as physical.
In preparation for seven days of sailing with unknown foods I had to bring some smart choices in case our guests wouldn't have anything suitable to eat. So on sunday I turned my bridge into a cheese crisps factory, running the microwave alongside my bridge.

Knowing myself and cheese crisps, I've bagged them in portions, no more than one bag a day. So far I'm winning!
You wanted an adventure as well, so here comes the one that happened on monday.
Or maybe this whole week is an adventure.
I'm sailing with my favourite skipper, he's 71 and has at least 35 years of experience. But not on this ship. He sold his own ship last year to enjoy being a pensioner, which means everyone knows there's an experienced skipper with time on his hands who may be coaxed into sailing when you need someone.
So we're together on a ship neither of us has sailed on before, and it's 3 times as heavy as the ship he's used to. Lots of wind as well this week. And it uses traditional winches to hoist various sails and other things.
Turns out he has no experience at all with those winches, and you do need someone to teach you to use them safely.
So now I'm in the interesting position of teaching my skipper, which means I'm at the helm when hoisting or lowering sails, even in 7 Bft. Not a situation I've been in before, skippers tend to let their mates play on the aft deck when there is no wind, not when things get interesting.
But he needs to get the hang of it this week, his next tour on this ship is with his girlfriend, who not only hasn't worked with those winches but is also terrified of them. So he needs to be able to teach her while feeling sure himself.
It makes for a very interesting change in dynamics between skipper and mate!
And then there was the adventure at the end of the first day, which was perfect because our guests (13 people in their 60's and 70's) were completely in awe of me so now they'll do anything for me.
We were tacking on the IJsselmeer from Stavoren to Medemblik, going quite close to the coast just south of Medemblik. A little too close, and we got stuck. The wind blew us even closer to the shore so I lowered the sails and my skipper tried to get free with the motor. Which didn't work.
So we thought maybe we could bring out the anchor by attaching all our air filled fenders to the anchor to make it float so I could walk it out and we could reel ourselves from the shallow spot. (While the ship is around 30 meters long, it's only 120 cm under water, so if you're stuck you can walk around the ship.)
In the end, I spent around an hour in the waist deep water, working with the fenders and anchor, and our guests appeared to be very worried I'd drop dead, either from the (not so) cold water or from a hypo: one of them is a nurse and she really didn't like an insulin dependent diabetic working hard in the cold water. Very sweet but quite unnecessary.
Our trick didn't work, too shallow so we couldn't make the anchor float, and I walked around the ship (nurse didn't like a diabetic walking barefoot in the water one bit either

) to see what the bottom was like. I found a deep bit just behind the ship. So while I was getting dressed again, after declining a perfectly clean blanket being thrown over my wet swimsuit and explaining that no, I really didn't need a hot shower, my skipper managed to get us free with the motor using that one deep spot!
And we hoisted the sails and had two more wonderful hours of sailing before arriving in Medemblik just before dark.
I hope you are satisfied with this story,
@MrsA2 . I'll try to post more often and a bit shorter though...
