Got milk? Doesn't look like it :(

[LittleClapham]

So I went to the dietician today with three weeks worth of menus. She's pretty sure it is the cheese upsetting my delicate gut. Not cow cheese which I eliminated years ago, but goat cheese. *sigh* Thankfully I have been to a health food shop in the local town St. Neots and they have LOADS of fake cheese. I have had problems getting fake cheese in the past though because quite often a massive clod of it (which costs a small fortune) has to be used in 24 hours! I can't eat that much fake cheese! IBS is both a literal and non literal pain...

The IBS played up a couple of nights ago after I decided rather foolishly to sneak an Ambrosia rice pudding into my diet. I always go to bed at 10:00 and I had done this that night. I was in so much pain though that I couldn't get comfortable and couldn't get to sleep. By about 11:30, I finally dozed off. Then at 5:40am I heard what I thought must have been a large lorry parked outside our small, rural bungalow (I was going to call it a cottage but that is too glamorous!). I looked out of the window to see what it was because my whole bed was shaking. There was nothing out there. I checked that I hadn't left my bathroom light and extractor on because that can get pretty noisy when there is high wind outside. That was off. I put my ear against the wall to see if it was my neighbour's extractor. It wasn't but the noise definitely got louder.

I went out into the hall to investigate. I realised the really loud, rumbling sound, which I could now feel under my feet, was the flipping boiler! I cursed the fact that the cupboard containing the boiler is also the 'sharps' cupboard, therefore it is locked and I couldn't whack it with a hammer. Oh wait we don't have a hammer... health and safety after all! Grrrr....

So anyway, yes this does go somewhere, I woke up REALLY exhausted. I realised I had slept in so I got up really quickly, got dressed and ran outside to wake up a grumpy Ralph. He wasn't happy having his breakfast late (even though he never eats it until later!) and thumped. My two fish were frantically waving side to side as if to say 'feed us!' I noticed immediately that my tics were REALLY bad. I couldn't walk without bending down to touch my toes. I kept thrusting my arms out so hard they were clicking. I even had some tics which had been lying dormant for a long time.

I will admit though... I did do a naughty. Despite my tics being bad anyway I drank a massive cup of coffee. I don't regret it though because it kept me awake! I even managed to go bowling, although my shots were taken in between spins, yelps, coprolalia and arm thrusts!

Oh dear wrote an essay again! See y'all!

[catherinem]

Copious amounts of tea kept me going between lessons at Whitley Abbey (that makes me sound like that was my old school but I was actually head of music) as it was quite a long, busy day and hard work trying to disguise my tics from the kids. Often I wouldn't get to sleep until about 4 or 5 am as I had this awful swallowing tic that would kick in as soon as my head would hit my pillow. When I was vegan I never bothered with the fake cheese stuff, when I was a wee whipper snapper in the county youth orchestra the cooks got some in and it was horrible, I wasn't the only one, one of the 2nd violins was vegan and she didn't like it either. One of the girls from school (that's St John Lloyd's RC down in sunny Llanelli) has just had a liitle boy called Ffionn, my cousin has a little girl called Ffion. To many meat eater think of being vegetarian or vegan along the lines of replacing a lump of meat, I found the best way of thinking of it is just to make sure you have something from each food group each day, so for example a chickpea curry and rice and then fruit for pudding. One of the ladies at FOE had left some soya milk in the fridge for us last weekend

[LittleClapham in reply to catherinem]

I love chickpeas but my dietician said 'NO CHICK PEAS!' Apparently that's one of the things that is bloating me! Thankfully I have found at least one fake cheese which is bearable on pizza, so I will probably get some of that.

Also Little Fionn is pleased that so many people are sharing his name!