My house is turbulent currently, this has been further enhanced by torrential rain storms which have not helped certain lady moods! I had to have a couple of days resting, with a couple of glowering cats who do not get on at all. They always hold a catty vigil by the side of whoever needs their services most. Stereo hissing and flat eared glaring from the end of my bed, which is very amusing to anybody who dares to visit. However my first infection for months since being on LDN so some very distinct improvements from where I was a few months back, this also helped by taking D Mannose which has also greatly helped. I do feel very thyroidy currently and must do my Dr BDP diaries again which of course as usual are overdue.
I am a tad grumpy, my man has been working away to bring in funds, I always know what he is up to as he stuffs his phone in his back pocket and several times a day his backside activates the repeat dial and I am treated to long calls where I can hear him giving structured lectures to groups of people, complete with key jangling noises or sometimes from cafes he has gone to for coffee. I can now tell which one he is in by the distinctive nasally shrill tones of the lady serving. behind the counter.
Much to my surprise, between endless hospital and school appointments for children, I have found myself starting to write a novel... whether it will come to anything I don't know, having got used to only producing endless wittering blogs...but the plot is thickening so quickly that it actually awakens me from deep sleep in order to make me write more.... deliciously foul and intense characters perhaps influenced by life's rich landscape. I have become so fevered and distracted by it, that I have had to self discipline myself and draw up a timetable to make sure I do other work over due, clean the house, answer all of my man's telephones, monitor school work for those part time, do my exercise and also the promised three extra foul jobs a week. Those awful under things deep cleans and hoovering investigations, and of course always be on red alert for possible house buyers wanting to come in. The last lot appeared to have a desire to tarmac most of the garden, their eyes like pound signs regarding my small wooded wilderness where most of the local wildlife resides. I had to be on my best snappy snarl behaviour and keep my trap shut and not mutter about them. As soon as they realized that it would not be possible to erect a tower block of hideous holiday lets adjacent to my house they were off, the filthy exhaust from their car indicative of the passengers within. We are keen to move to the town due to the collective needs of us all between four hospitals.. but so far apart from one very sweet and amusing older man, who appeared to be more interested in me than the house, I have loathed all possible buyers on sight... I am also sick of being referred to as 'the vendor'... I would prefer 'dragon'.
My other obsession of late involves flies, at the dead one particular night of tossing and turning, I convinced myself that only my abode was full of them, but having got on my bike for once, and made visits to a few neighbours on the pretext of other things. I was delighted to see that they were similarly afflicted, The connection between the latest clouds of pests, sunny weather, and field full of half dug in manure not hard to work out. When you live as remotely as I do.. you can actually usually work out the origin of the dung mountains -.chicken being the worse in my opinion. The blue zapping machine which we put on at night to lure nasty things away from me, works up to a point, but eventually we gave in to fly papers. I am totally squeamish about these.. I remember as a child my father telling me that Garibaldi biscuits were actually made of dead flies, and I have never got over it! My husband hung these sticky papers over kitchen bin, which contains three sections for recycling, which of course I kick into the garden when it overflows due to nobody else emptying it. Now every time he or I go near it, we forget about the offending article above, and several times I have become entangled in a vile sticky paper and it's contents, it is a sensation fit for a horror movie. I notice my man made a similar noise yesterday when it happened to him. However the war is being won.. no flies today. The cats used to be relied upon to see off blue bottles or anything over a certain size but they are now semi retired and mainly watch the television these days. Also the current wet weather plays havoc with their fur, so they prefer to stay inside and wait for me to light the fire.
Regardless of the weather I have been trying to get out and about for short periods of time, especially if the sun has come out. I noticed the overflowing onion lorries going past my house the other day, and I was out like shot, and managed a couple of carrier bags of both red and yellow onions which pleased me, as earlier in the week I had gone over the fields to scour for those left behind. I knew I would be disappointed when at the first field I ran into a very over pleased couple of village worthies who gave me that, 'we got their first and have all of them look, and we don't like you etc vibe' they were also clutching two bulging black sacks between them. Hopefully they went home and created a job lot of some wind inducing pickle. I did have a minor huff..but their karma was repaid by my effortless acquisition two days later, by a bountiful supply of near perfect specimens from the road outside, with their fall from the lorry having jolted most of the mud off them,
I have felt most hormonal of late, I sure I am starting to go through that intense lady fuss phase that starts in the late forties.. the slightest thing sets me off, and epic cliffhanger in Hollyoaks made my daughter cry the other night... which then set me off in another room, even though I had no idea what it was. It did make us both snigger. To further add to this, my son is studying music for GCSE and has taught himself from scratch on the piano, with no lessons, how to play the theme tune to 'Titanic' so for long periods of time, I am treated to surging emotional and heart tugging piano music, played with great emotion, as a backdrop to my explosive hormones. He also has a deep relationship with our eldest cat... she has become very fond of this music and will sit next to him as he plays and yowl along in best mournful abandoned cat mode.
I have covered a lot of ground with writing of late and this fits around answering the phones and other such things.. it would help if the different lines rang differently but they don't. Also 'he' has told me that we don't need land lines any more... only internet phones.. which are great if your broadband is good, but ours it not... so trying to hear what people are saying when they ring in on a stretched and weak connection is terrible. I have also turned up for appointments on the wrong date having misheard the dates. However I have come up with a new strategy for getting rid of endless sales calls.. as soon as they want to book me an appointment to sell something to me, I agree and launch into my own sales pitch of what I will sell them at the appointment, they always put the phone down.
My highligh tof this week has been starting to look after my friend's autistic child, after school one afternoon. I am very fond of him and he is very clever and very sweet and looks in passing like Albert Einstein according to how long his shock of wild hair becomes. I have realized that he is the perfect antidote for my brain fog, which I get from the five conditions, although a bit improved on LDN. His need for precision cuts through my nonsense in seconds. I had eleven for dinner last night and he helped me make banana muffins, he was double checking the scales and everything I did and sat peering in the oven in order for me not to burn them, giving me a very good running commentary on what I should be doing, he then instructed me on how to precisely wash the table afterwards. He is ten and I hope I can keep him for the next twenty years.
All in all life is fairly good, some epic hospital moments here and there, and a friend borrowed me recently to be a patient advocate. The surly surgeon I cross examined whilst smiling sweetly has no desire to see me ever again and my friend's operation was planned on the spot and done and dusted very quickly with very detailed follow up at two hospitals.. Matron got involved, and she was a dragon, but there again so am I at times, dragons get stuff done.
On the subject of done... I went out to a well known pizza chain for Sunday dinner - one child too unwell to come but the other ok... and break for me. My daughter came along with her boyfriend and a brief spell of relaxation planned. Nothing could have been further from the word relax. I managed to get through five members of staff including the manager. The starters which were all salads took 50 minutes.. My gluten free starter which I had checked, consisted of a bowl of shriveled lettuce with half a tomato and all interesting ingredients removed.. and the special sauce which I had checked apparently was not allowed... or the cheese or anything, so that went back. I settled for sulking with some olives... The mains arrived with most ingredients missing (after an hour and fifteen minutes) with my husband's containing wobbling chilled cheese thrown on as an after thought. After I ate my so called gluten free pizza I became ill, my Ms Marple like tendencies had me hanging over into the kitchen area where it became clear that my pizza had been prepared on same surface as the ordinary dough. I have been in bed since then, first day up today. Good news though the branch is being retrained in food handling and also all the staff having some special lessons in gluten free, and I have been invited back for a freebie. I do prefer making my own food anyway. Last night I made exotic fish cakes and they did not touch the sides.
Mary F x