Settling back into school is still somewhat of a challenge, but this week I got back into the habit of going in before my 9:30 or 10:00 class (Vietnam War MWF and History of Race and Immigration TTR) for around 8:20 so that I get an hour or more to practice. It has been a REALLY good feeling to do that! This week, my goal is to get back into going to the gym, although I still need to work out some scheduling hiccups for that. I guess I've had a lot on my mind at times...concerns about a close friend of mine, who, unfortunately, is in another relapse of anorexia and is one pound away from involuntary hospitalization. The problem with this is that here it means she will be there for three-four months basically sitting around just eating. No group day treatment, just meeting with her nurse therapist I think just twice a week. She has worked out a deal that if she can maintain the weight she is at, and keep her electrolyte blood test results ok, that she can stay out. An acquaintance of mine from the group at the Women's Health Clinic said that if she can maintain for just a couple of weeks, she'll be all right because they are set to have discharges very soon, and as long as she is still all right then, they won't be able to admit her for some time. With many, I would be viewing this in a different light, but with this friend, having seen her go through three out of her five hospitalizations (2 of them lasting more than four months) I know that going back into the hospital is only going to cement the habits even further. All it does is make her gain weight at this point, there is no psychological benefit, and definite harm that comes from it. She's registered to go to another program about five hundred kilometers away in a few months where they will let her take part in several daily groups. It's not a hospital program either, but residential treatment, so the feel will (hopefully) be a lot less sterile and cold. We had a very long tea/coffee session over the christmas break, and discussed a lot-one of them being how scared she was that the pattern was just going to repeat and repeat unless she tried something else. The problem is that the healthcare system here won't pay for very many other places. I haven't seen her since then-I wish that a big hug could just take away all the problems.

Today, I realized with a large shock, that I have a small chance of being personally affected by what is going on in Egypt. My counsellor at Women's Health Clinic has a daughter that is working (and I can't remember what she does) in Egypt, and left I think last weekend on vacation over to Egypt. I hope very much that she has already returned safely over here.

As I've mentioned before, I love to knit...earlier this month, I was on Bernat's website (or maybe it was Patons) and found an on-going program run through Save the Children collecting hand-knit/crocheted low-birth-weight baby caps. Some 4 million babies die each year in the first month of life, most of them from easily preventable or treatable causes. Close to 2 million of them die in the first 24 hours! On a large scale, Save the Children is working with other organizations to help provide trained workers to attend each birth, and along with the worker a birth kit containing sterilized instruments, and (this is where Bernat and Patons come in!) a hand-made baby cap. A couple of very easy patterns were provided on the website, and with the three (maybe four) generations worth of yarn kicking around, this was one project I couldn't turn up. It takes me about an hour to make a cap, and it's become somewhat addictive-I now have 35 made. The only issue is that the box (an Amazon box of course!) is very close to full. Perhaps it's a good thing that to get it there by February 28th I don't have that many more days left of knitting.

I can hardly believe that tomorrow is the last day of January. I'm sure that for the whole of this year, every month on the 2nd, I will be amazed. It's been almost three months without my mom, and it has been three months since I heard her voice. Sometimes it seems like the more time that passes, the harder it is to believe, even though things have generally fallen into a relatively smooth rhythm. It was either very late wednesday night or very early thursday morning that a dream I had involved my mom-the first time in a few weeks. I guess it related to the group on thursday evenings, because in my dream, some doctor had told my parents that she suspected I had anorexia (with terrible repercussions). It's unfortunate that dreaming about my mom has pretty much always resulted in utter frustration and anger during them!

A hymn that I sang in church this morning featured the line "Spirit, open my heart, to the joy and pain of living". Life can be full of great joy, but with it will come great pain.