Now that cancer is receding farther and farther in the rear view mirror (thank goodness), I am trying to reevaluate things and muster up the effort to reshape my life closer to where it should be.

I have started studying French again. I've had about a month of Duolingo lessons (well, I missed one day. But my current streak is twelve days long, and the streak before that was nineteen days).

A bigger deal: I am trying to start getting active again. I have to. I am at my all time highest weight (due to some medication I've been on), which is still below the national average for women my age and height, but I feel uncomfortably heavy, and I've been thinking about reasons I want to resume exercise. Anti-depression effect. Graceful aging. And just feeling good about myself. I can't do karate anymore, and my go-to exercise for years, exercise DVDs, isn't very easy, as we don't have a computer with a DVD drive in a room set up for exercise. English country dancing is fun, but it's just two hours a week.

I've gone out for several walks. Tonight I made it a walk/jog.

It's tough, I'm not going to lie.

I just have to think of long term rewards.

And ice cream is nice, but I really don't have to have it EVERY NIGHT.

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I've managed 21 days on Duolingo now, studying French, and it's going swimmingly--except that I'm speaking one or two sentences at a time, to my iPod touch. If I want to get better (and especially, if I want to record a video in 90 days, perhaps speaking French with another person), I need to practice it with other people.

I had a vague recollection that there were some language conversation practice groups in the Twin Cities--I recall seeing a notice of some that met at several of the local Barnes & Nobles, many years ago--so I went to the Internet and googled 'French conversation groups Minneapolis.'

That led me to a website, Alliance Française Mpls/St Paul, which I gather is a school/culture center for the French language. It has a list of places for French conversation groups in the area. I found one that meets on Saturday mornings at Espresso Royale, a coffee shop near downtown (at 13th and Hennepin). I was a little doubtful whether a mere three weeks of (re)study would make me fluent enough not to be simply an annoyance to everyone around me, but it has been coming back rather quickly, so I decided to give it a try.

So I went, and I was quite glad that I did. I spoke French for an hour and a half! Stumbling French, mostly in just present tense, but I did better than I thought I would. The group has apparently been meeting there for years, and I had the great good luck to sit down with two women, my age or a little older, one of whom has been coming to the group for ten years, and one who also considered herself a beginner but was certainly better than me. They were very patient and friendly, and the second woman was groping for words as much as I was, so I didn't feel too self-conscious. The group was a nice mix of young and old, from a variety of different professions and countries. I managed to get the gist of about 85% of what I heard, I think. I had much more difficulty coming up with words to reply, but I persevered.

It was fun! I plan to go back next week, and I think it'll give me a great deal of help in improving my French.




{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

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I've really been in a funk, which is one of the reasons why I've been quiet here.

Rob is done with chemo (yes, I know I need to write something on the CaringBridge account) but he is still mighty tired, and I haven't noticed much in the way of improvement yet. He is starting physical therapy to regain his strength. They told him at his first appointment that it may take months to recover from the fatigue.

Fiona has successfully transferred, to the University of Minnesota, and is taking classes there now. She is living at home, and commuting in with me in the mornings, which is nice. It just takes me about an extra five minutes or so to drop her off. I know she'd rather not live at home, but she has no job (she lost hers, since it was an Augsburg work-study job), and she didn't have time to arrange housing on top of arranging for the transfer. So she's at home for now.

Delia is still mulling college options. She was five for five on acceptances--and then got turned down today by the place she wanted to go to the most, the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. It was also the most reasonably priced, which is going to be a significant factor. The letter said it was because she didn't have credits which we KNOW she had. We are going to try to reverse their decision but, yeah, we don't know if there'll be much hope.

As for me, well, I'm still studying French every day. The last couple of days I've been feeling really lousy, emotionally, but I don't particularly need to go into details. Just a lot of things seem awfully hard right now.

The terrible weather really doesn't help.

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(Note to self: remember to hold the iPod Touch in the other direction when recording video.)

I think the deadline for signing up for this is tomorrow (?).

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