Well as the title definitely alludes to – progress is slow in Mob land. I have read with amazement and absolute delight the lovely comments made by such great personalities and wonderful writers as your selves on my blog. I had meant to do my usual and write back to each post or at least bunch them together and answer in blocks but I think a blog entry might be more appropriate. I have recovered from the dreaded lurgy that beset my household before the festive season and although still sluggish somewhat I feel quite good that the awful symptoms have abated. I had pneumonia when I was fifteen and have a slight weakness when it comes to the flu so when I get a bad virus I am fit for nothing for a little longer than others. Also, being as hot as Dante’s inferno due to overheating with the menopause, my temperature is well off the scale to boot when I am ill. However, moaning aside I am much better and my lovely husband is back at work and fully recovered too. I mention the virus again purely for the purpose of creating a link to my next paragraph.
What I hadn’t truly appreciated is that whilst my temperature raged and I was away with the fairies, I totally messed up my HRT cycle of drug taking. I had dug into three separate bubble packs of tablets without realising it and completely messed up the sequence they should have been taken in. I take a combination of oestrogen and progesterone in separate tablet form as I still have the old baby making kit installed and this means I am still menstruating whilst on the tablets. Having never done this kind of half assed mistake before – and believe me I have had every up and down possible with trying to sort out my severe symptoms – this was a new one on me. I didn’t bother ringing the practice – as some of you may have already read in my previous posts, the receptionist there is short on manners, personality and kindness and gives the impression that you next request will be your last – so much so that the NHS have installed a whip and a chair just to get an appointment from her – so I decided to make the best of what was left in the blister packs and see if I could self medicate………
…………Big Big mistake. I am now on a second menstruation cycle in a month and enjoying those abdomen ripping pains that only a bread knife being dragged though your body can make. I have minute to minute mood swings that leave me feeling like I am on a roller coaster, and bless my poor husband, he’s borrowed the whip and the chair from the practice surgery and arms himself big time before approaching what was once his even natured wife – maybe I could fill in for old hairy face at the practice when she wants a rare day off? I digress but some of us menopausal women tread a fine line between almost functioning as a fully paid up member of society or a complete and utter nutter that could torture small children and animals and then bugger off and run a small dictatorship somewhere. It can’t be much fun for my wonderful man to live with so many personalities as having one wife is more than enough for any man. Still, he has the escape of paid employment to remove him from danger for eight hours each day and he should think himself very lucky for that……..Ha. But he also has the knowledge that I am doing everything possible to get back on track and that within a day or two the light at the end of the tunnel with come into full view and I will be someone he recognises from the past that he once fell in love with.
We started a low GI diet on Monday to loose the festive fat and what was also there before we piled on that extra little gift of lard. The garage has been setup as a gym again and we are making inroads into a new exercise routine. Unless I am decomposing by the next festive season I intend to be a lot less heavy and wide by then and looking as good as a fifty year old bat can do at this time in one’s life. This is my only resolution for this year – one is more than enough to fail at – a lot less guilt to contend with when it all goes tits-up.
Now, re the next instalment on the story I was telling. I was contacted by a published author who likes what I was writing and he advised me to take the story and to write it into book form. He even said he planned to have an agent he knew who may be interested to have a look at the blog. I was chuffed to say the least but he also advised me to take the rest of the story offline as it might have been purloined by someone else. I was really thrilled in one sense but then I felt bad for you guys that were following the story. The virus took over everything after that when I ground to a halt and the festive season got in the way too and then workload and then the HRT fiasco so here I am only now about to get writing the book. I had no inkling of whether I could write and still don’t but your feedback on the blog has been a surprise and a delight and I want to at least try. I have a lot to learn in the craft and art of writing and am currently reading a book about how to structure a story, design a plot and develop the main protagonists and so on. The story is complete as it has already happened but I need to know how to write a book and not just a blog. The book on how to write a novel makes a lot of sense to me and I realise I have an uphill struggle as just about every other writer does but I know that this – fear of ability - is not a unique feeling. I certainly am not arrogant enough to call myself a writer and never will unless I get published but I am an apprentice one for the moment. It is thanks to each and every one of you that have now or in the past been so kind in your feedback that I am going to have a shot at this. I will blog regularly but not any more from the story as if I stick it all online then no one will buy it if it every sees the light of day. If I never get it published then to hell with it, I’ll just write it up online anyway.
I am chomping at the bit to getting around to reading all your blogs because I have missed reading good quality stuff that makes me laugh and cry from sentence to sentence. Happy blogging all and thanks again for being cyber pals.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Getting the Monkey off my back!
Happy new year to all and I trust it is turning out to be a good one so far. I hope everyone is well, kicking those old bad habits into touch and acquiring new bad habits to replace them. Thank you to you wonderful people that have posted on my last blog entry. I hadn’t intended to be away for so long but a few things conspired to waylay me and I am only now able to get back into the swing of things.
About the 10th of December – almost a week after my last blog entry - I was doing the usual getting prepared for the festive season’s activity and planning another blog entry when I started to feel under the weather. I slowly ground to a halt over a period of 48 hours and suddenly took a downward spiral into virus hell. For about four days I was completely away with the fairies as my temperature raged, my body ached with such intensity that I felt like I had been the recipient of a good kicking by a marauding bunch of football hooligans and to top it off I suffered hallucinations aplenty. It was the worst virus that I have had in ten years and my God there were times I was suffering so much that I wished I was in possession of a pistol so that I could end it all. Not that I wished to commit suicide you understand - suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem. I was merely unable to find anything that could address the horrible symptoms long enough to give me a break and thus rest my tortured mind and body so being completely worn down and in my delusional state I might just have seen pressing the trigger as a welcome change from the misery I was in.
It was a horrible time and mostly all I did was whimper in a corner because I couldn’t sleep as the symptoms were so strong. And when I finally did manage to beat off the filthy virus I was so weak that I was shaky on my legs, dizzy and light headed for another week. I was worn out just lifting a glass of wine of an evening. Even after I recovered from those after effects, I was racked with heaving chest busting coughs as my body tried almost in vain to clear my lungs of gunge as thick as molasses. My rib cage almost disintegrated at the relentless force of it all and I dreaded every onslaught. God, this filthy little bugger of a virus must have been brought in by aliens because surely it didn’t germinate from our planet. I wasn’t suffering alone though. My lovely husband went down with it approximately a week after me so at least I was able to host the Christmas festivities and such like when the family came to stay. He wasn’t quite as bad as me and was well enough to participate in the festive activities with good humour and cheer. But like me he coughed and hacked his way through and swore blind I was breaking his ribs when he was asleep as coughing alone surely couldn’t cause so much agony. I assured him that I wasn’t walking on his rib cage with stilettos on whilst he was in the land of nod but that if he continued to moan big style that I’d make a point of finding our baseball bat and doing a nutty on him whilst he slept just to justify his accusations.
Our New Year celebration was one of fun, laughter and optimism for 2008 as we shared it with six of our immediate neighbours and friends at a wonderfully constructed dinner party contributed to by all those in attendance. And New Years day was spent again with them and more of our other neighbours in a civilised and friendly canapés and drinks party next door. After four hours or so, quite sensibly most of the neighbours headed off home for a nice quiet evening in but, ourselves and the hosts, felt it necessary to extend the bonhomie and good cheer we were feeling by strolling along to our lovely old inn for a few more snifters just to round the evening and the festive season off. After all, we deserved it didn’t we? Just about everyone at that party had been ill or knew someone who was and so we deserved to enjoy ourselves now that good health was almost restored and our bodies might just be able to handle a hangover.
Work piled up for me and I have only just caught up and also only now feel like blogging again. I was laid pretty low by this virus and the irony is that whilst I couldn’t sleep when I was suffering the awful symptoms, all I wanted to do after was sleep. I’ve only just caught up with everything and today for the first time feel great, fully restored and ready for the year ahead.
I have come into the New Year with a lighter heart and with more direction than I have had for a very long time and with the intention of ditching one final last ‘Toxic Friend’. Something that I have wanted to do for a very long time – well actually from the first time I met her – but it’s a complicated story and one I wont bore you with now but just having that monkey off my back makes me feel like I’ve lost fourteen stone of ugly fat already!
Fair well dear all and I hope 2008 is your year.
About the 10th of December – almost a week after my last blog entry - I was doing the usual getting prepared for the festive season’s activity and planning another blog entry when I started to feel under the weather. I slowly ground to a halt over a period of 48 hours and suddenly took a downward spiral into virus hell. For about four days I was completely away with the fairies as my temperature raged, my body ached with such intensity that I felt like I had been the recipient of a good kicking by a marauding bunch of football hooligans and to top it off I suffered hallucinations aplenty. It was the worst virus that I have had in ten years and my God there were times I was suffering so much that I wished I was in possession of a pistol so that I could end it all. Not that I wished to commit suicide you understand - suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem. I was merely unable to find anything that could address the horrible symptoms long enough to give me a break and thus rest my tortured mind and body so being completely worn down and in my delusional state I might just have seen pressing the trigger as a welcome change from the misery I was in.
It was a horrible time and mostly all I did was whimper in a corner because I couldn’t sleep as the symptoms were so strong. And when I finally did manage to beat off the filthy virus I was so weak that I was shaky on my legs, dizzy and light headed for another week. I was worn out just lifting a glass of wine of an evening. Even after I recovered from those after effects, I was racked with heaving chest busting coughs as my body tried almost in vain to clear my lungs of gunge as thick as molasses. My rib cage almost disintegrated at the relentless force of it all and I dreaded every onslaught. God, this filthy little bugger of a virus must have been brought in by aliens because surely it didn’t germinate from our planet. I wasn’t suffering alone though. My lovely husband went down with it approximately a week after me so at least I was able to host the Christmas festivities and such like when the family came to stay. He wasn’t quite as bad as me and was well enough to participate in the festive activities with good humour and cheer. But like me he coughed and hacked his way through and swore blind I was breaking his ribs when he was asleep as coughing alone surely couldn’t cause so much agony. I assured him that I wasn’t walking on his rib cage with stilettos on whilst he was in the land of nod but that if he continued to moan big style that I’d make a point of finding our baseball bat and doing a nutty on him whilst he slept just to justify his accusations.
Our New Year celebration was one of fun, laughter and optimism for 2008 as we shared it with six of our immediate neighbours and friends at a wonderfully constructed dinner party contributed to by all those in attendance. And New Years day was spent again with them and more of our other neighbours in a civilised and friendly canapés and drinks party next door. After four hours or so, quite sensibly most of the neighbours headed off home for a nice quiet evening in but, ourselves and the hosts, felt it necessary to extend the bonhomie and good cheer we were feeling by strolling along to our lovely old inn for a few more snifters just to round the evening and the festive season off. After all, we deserved it didn’t we? Just about everyone at that party had been ill or knew someone who was and so we deserved to enjoy ourselves now that good health was almost restored and our bodies might just be able to handle a hangover.
Work piled up for me and I have only just caught up and also only now feel like blogging again. I was laid pretty low by this virus and the irony is that whilst I couldn’t sleep when I was suffering the awful symptoms, all I wanted to do after was sleep. I’ve only just caught up with everything and today for the first time feel great, fully restored and ready for the year ahead.
I have come into the New Year with a lighter heart and with more direction than I have had for a very long time and with the intention of ditching one final last ‘Toxic Friend’. Something that I have wanted to do for a very long time – well actually from the first time I met her – but it’s a complicated story and one I wont bore you with now but just having that monkey off my back makes me feel like I’ve lost fourteen stone of ugly fat already!
Fair well dear all and I hope 2008 is your year.
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