I went on a local garden tour with some friends yesterday. Now I want to grow all the things. And, since the group met at my place, I actually got some cleaning done before hand. Now it's just laundry and dishes--chores where I can spend 90% of the time being lazy.

Lovely pictures, tommyrot!

I love the picture of the three of us! Scola, I'm clipping that for your address book picture instead. Why do you smile for my sister and not for me???

Never mind that she took fifteen pictures getting the hang of the thing. Jessica, you didn't do that thing where you swap the heads to get the best composite? Does anyone amateur do that? I found the ads confusing, myself.

NY was...the services were as you would expect for a woman who grew up in Brooklyn and worshipped at a Lady of Lebanon Catholic church--Mass was partially in Aramaic. I declined the trip to the cemetery in order to rest up, and joined the group for a reception which was very interesting, meeting mainly her daughter's friends in mourning. And got to know her long time boyfriend better (of the decedent, not the daughter).

I try not to imagine the daughter's position--she's a doubly orphaned widowed mother of a ten year old, and she's in her late 30s. She was clearly strung tightly. Cousin O's partner seemed more subdued, like he'd worn himself out mourning, and was now in the quiet long phase of losing your life partner of 15 years.

I try not to think of my parents' mortality at times like these, but it's pretty impossible. I think my sister wasn't showing how much she was affected in that way. She's very close to my mother especially.

I am the sort of person who rehearses loss, just to see. It makes it hard to talk about, not least of all because I sound like a nutcase.

Speaking of the sis, she's been avoiding soy because she's very fibroidy and doesn't want a replay. It's been driving me mad that she's discarding product after product with soy lecithin because she read something on the internet. Her reasoning was that soy encouraged fibroids, so no go. I asked her which components of soy, and were they present in soy lecithin? She looks up soy allergy, which says that the proteins that trigger the allergic reaction are not in lecithin.

So she's okay, right? But I tell her the mechanism of fibroid-feeding doesn't have to be related to allergens. What specifically about soy? Phyto-oestrogen, she says. And too much oestrogen is a problem for fibroids. Okay. But there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, so I suggested she google phyto-oestrogen and fibroids together.

Turns out that soy oestrogen is a dominant oestrogen (way simplified) and is a better kind of oestrogen to have around than her body's naturally produced.

tl/dr: If you're prone to fibroids, eat a diet rich in soy. She'd unknowingly been doing the 180 because she never took it through.

My mother will be so happy. The soy ban bothered her a lot, but she never walked Sav through it (if she had, it would have been much faster, since she's a biochemist who's just never studied that ).

OH. THE FUCKING SWEETEST THING. Because he knows, Scola left a travel mug of good tea with his doorman since he lives near the church. So I had good tea with me, on a trip where I couldn't be bothered to wrangle my own.

You're a love, Tom. As well as consolidating my esteem of you, you blew my sister's mind.

Love.

Iron railing painted. I'm only a little painted. Dianthus planted. I need to clean house and swim. There aren't really enough hours. I want to nap. I'd put off the cleaning for weeknights, but this week is going to be a bear anyway. Probably won't even get around to starting on the spindles (I have paint!!!)

Tom is indeed a rock star.

Thanks for looking after ita, Tom.

I've spent some time with the soy question, since in my case the less estrogen, the better. The problem is that we don't have much data on what compounds processed soy products form in the body. The conservative approach is to eat one to two servings a day of whole soy foods such as soybeans and tofu, but to avoid soy protein additives.

Soy lecithin shouldn't have phytoestrogens left in it and is normally only used in very small amounts as an emulsifier. It is, however, a highly processed derivative of soy waste. You'd have to eat quite a lot of processed food to eat a significant amount of it, though.

tl/dr: If you're prone to fibroids, eat a diet rich in soy. She'd unknowingly been doing the 180 because she never took it through.

Yay! I've been eating edamame in small doses as a precaution (although I love it so).

Okay, I was excited about edamame, but not that excited.

Sigh. Apparently my upset tummy from last night was NSM the hangover as the harbinger of a nasty headcold. So I'm sniffling AND have an upset tummy today. BOO.

BOO. Get rest, you have to party Connecticut-style this weekend.