My entire house currently would not look out of place as an extension of Tracy Emin's bedroom, evidence of mayhem and Christmas fuss is everywhere. As we built up to it all. I got very excited. I always do, not having progressed much from age six, despite being an obviously about to be menopausal middle aged woman. I am glad I am able to be over exited and amused easily, as I was confined to bed for some days prior to the holiday, resembling a blotchy, irritable balloon of a creature. My dreadful sense of humour re charges my batteries and carries me through crappy episodes. My hormones so enjoy doing a merry dance as they tango and fox trot to various autoimmune diseases. I have threatened to have a sex change, but my husband has forbidden it and said he would miss me quite a lot.
I had to do nearly all my shopping on line and drove everybody mad with the amount of times they had to answer the door to my parcels being delivered. He made helpful suggestions such as 'do we need all those' while doing no shopping whatsoever. It is a tradition in our house for me to have a brief huff on Christmas Eve due to being threatened with Father Christmas NOT visiting me. It has taken me years to train my husband into understanding that presents from Father Christmas are not the same as Christmas presents. This does not mean rummaging through his desk and wrapping up half eaten packets of tick tacks and bags of balloons that I put there for emergency shrieking children situations and trying to pass them off as something nice for me. Actually this did happen again, however the children had intervened and dragged him into town in a semi bad tempered state and made him go shopping.
One pre Christmas highlight for me was getting to see both my children performing in the local town church via their school. I am not the slightest bit religious, none of us are, but so frequently I am ill in bed and miss their events. Before it started I was visited by both of them in my special back of church pew position, to check my pockets for allergy pills, as they know that as soon as I am in a damp old church or even for that matter the ancient town cinema and off I will go quite frequently into the most spectacular and noisy episodes. I am clearly allergic to church!
Right on cue I turned into a pre concert spectacle, made more conspicuous by my scarlet red almost floor length fur coat which comes out for such events, but mainly gets worn to music festivals at the dead of night. Glastonbury Festival being it's most favoured haunt. Allergy pills and water sorted, and a brief airing outside to await the cessation of horrendous and forceful sneezing attacks. This drew a crowd both inside and out. Once back in, I settled down to wait for my husband to arrive late with his hair on end. He slipped in next to me and then made me helpless with laughter with his bellowing along to Christmas songs, with various noises substituting words he had forgotten, lots of booming 'LA's' and nonsense sentences.
I am dreadful fidget in a crowd, as I do like to quick draw caricatures of people and get fixated and have to make sure I don't stare to much. I was one of those sort of children, I was always being told off for staring, and that is the case now. A couple of ladies seemed to have hair fashioned in the style of turkeys... flat at the front with an enormous ruff of spikes like a fan at the back, in particular, one rather lovely lady does indeed work at the local butchers, and I had seen her serving customers, the day before, with this very hairstyle under a poster displaying an advert for Christmas turkeys. I do try and turn these dreadful thoughts off, but they keep coming. The children or rather the teenagers notice it, and say I have my evil eye on. They know I am about to whisk my notebook out and either draw something or pen a story. I can't help it. It even wakes me from sleep sometimes so strong is the urge, amongst others!!!! I just have to get up and write or draw something.
Once I was a little better, and able to be out of bed, he and I went late night shopping. We selected a very large out of town establishment and arrived at 1 am in the morning fuelled with a little brandy and set to doing a large amount of shopping. I became transfixed with what I call the rejuvenation aisle. I spent ages reading false promises on bottles about no wrinkles, no fat, no spots and how to have extremely swishy and lustrous hair. Naturally I bought it all and put it in his stocking, at a later stage in the shop, he did exactly the same and put almost identical contents in mine.
I then became transfixed reading a news paper article from the The Daily Fail about men with Beard Baubles.. dailymail.co.uk/femail/arti...
That set me off on a tangent for a bit, but I was then brought sharply to my senses by him. He was keen to remind me why we were shopping in the middle of the night. Actually an epic fail on my behalf. Due to how ill I had been, I had forgotten or rather lost a whole day in the mists of time. I had been so smug about securing my online shopping delivery, due to arrive just before Christmas, secured of course by buying a couple of items, and then to be added to. A very puzzled driver had turned up that morning to deliver me just two items....! I was convinced it was the 22 nd and not 23 rd December. Never mind, we had a hilarious time together, and then lost our car. We spent nearly an hour trying to find the wretched thing. Quite a number of people joined in the search, bent double in some sort of hysteria brought about by our husband and wife bickering. I was asked what sort of car, my reply 'silver and heavily dented' this was spat out in conversation.
As we limbered up for full on Christmas and fuss with relatives, my man went into overdrive with his new mania which has been brought about him getting hold of a 'man bag'. This latest phase has for many months driven both him, myself, our children, and most of friends around the bend. A little black bag on a wide long strap is supposedly going to make his life more organized as it contains wallet, keys, note books and special wet wipes for any emergency. This bag gets left everywhere or draped where I can catch a foot in it. I get phone calls from everywhere about it, and he spends half is life trying to ring up the phone lost inside it. I hate it etc. Before Christmas it was left at three different houses, also two gigs and two different places of work, and at one point had to make a journey on several different lifts from Essex back to Suffolk only to be lost again the minute it arrived at a Christmas Party, which again triggered more lifts. Before this bag existed he had a red one which only came out for travelling abroad and had the added pain dimension of passports added to it. Actually it is easier to find the bag than the phone, which normally for some reason appears at the foot of our bed under the covers. It vibrates and rings at the wrong time, and from time to time I sleep with a garden mallet next to me, due to my threats to exterminate it if my awful sleep is disturbed, this for a while puts him off having it in there, but only temporarily.
My health is trundling along, I am awaiting to hear back form Dr BDP to find out what to do next, I am up to 2.5 grains of Nature Thyroid and do feel better for it, and hope it brings some of my other conditions into line. I have started exercising again. Only up to 25 minutes a day so far. I deeply alarmed some distant neighbours walking along the bottom of our boundary fence today. Our garden and house is set on a gentle slope, and up the top, they could see me huffing and puffing on an air walker cross trainer thing and did not know where to look, also it was raining while I was doing this, but I did feel very awake after it and enjoyed my hot bath twice as much as usual.
Our other neighbours are very good fun and get excited by our rather exciting lighting arrangements and also the fact that my husband has put two chairs outside the front in a 'way out west' manner, I notice with the other not quite so liberated neighbours, that some of our antics bring about frowny eyebrows, but we over smile and wave at them and eclipse any such nonsense.
I have also got used to eating that organic coconut oil that everybody harps on about, daily in my porridge, the strange thing is, that it has driven my ancient tabby cat around the feline bend. As soon as my man starts making our porridge she can smell it and is totally frantic until she is given some. The result is a glossy new coat and a more ferocious meow. I had the fright of my life one night, having had a very late night lady's bath. I applied it (the coconut oil, not the cat) from head to toe, as it makes such a good skin cream for me. I was sitting listening to music on the edge of the bed awaiting my man to bring us a drink in bed... and this little rasping tongue attacked the back of my leg from under the bed - the cat again.... I was temporarily horrified but realized of course that she is addicted to coconut. Most bizaare....any sign of catty dementia has gone... she is actually rejuvenated. I hope I become more glossy coated and ferocious!
I hope to climb up again soon on my medication and I hope along with all of us that 2015 is going to be the year we banish dreadful medical advise to a special dustbin designed to receive outdated endocrinology nonsense. We can of course all help by signing and sharing this petition.... to enable more choice... I for one would like my medication on the NHS and also the testing also! epetitions.direct.gov.uk/pe...
Happy New year to all. MaryFx
Your writings are also a tonic for everyone ! Glad the coconut oil is such a success. Must confess to using it myself even with a garden full of 59 olive trees and 360 degree views of them stretching into the distance - and a barrel of oil in the garage !
