Sugar overload....

There has been way too much chocolate and sugar in my life this evening....... and I have not eaten any of it!

It's odd, but I don't actually seem to get cravings for sweet things, sure I like chocolate (preferably dark, bitter chocolate, the stuff that one small piece is enough), cakes, and such like.... but that wouldn't be my number one choice of either comfort food or what my body craves on a hormonal basis (unlike my sister whose other half has been sent out on middle of the night chocolate buying emergencies)..... My hormones are screwed, they know damn well I'm a vegetarian, but what do they want each month..... yup, roast chicken!  

10 months after giving up caffeine, I still get cravings for coffee. Though I am not even sure it's the caffeine I want or just the coffee flavour - I allow myself an occasional cup of decaffeinated coffee, particularly after a nice meal, but I don't seem to miss any sort of buzz from it.... and I definitely don't miss the inability to fall asleep!  I am learning to adapt to caffeine free diet coke rather than Pepsi Max but that has been a slower and more painful process!

Right now, with the fairly recent yeast exclusion, I am craving crusty bread.....and as I am trying to eat healthily and cheese has been more or less of the menu for the last three months, a nice bit of brie to go with it......failing that toast and Marmite (yep about as yeasty as you can get!) would do!

Anyway, after work tonight I turned my kitchen into a production line for the Comic Relief coffee and cake afternoon Mum is hosting on Saturday.... I have made chocolate cup cakes, flapjack and brownies.......and as I baked the air in the kitchen got sweeter and felt stickier (which I put down to the heating syrup for the flapjack).....by the time the brownies came out the oven I was totally over the whole thing... and made myself a very savoury tea of veggie sausages, potato wedges and broccoli.  

I've another batch of gluten free cupcakes to do tomorrow....... oh and then they need icing.....by Saturday afternoon I am not going to want to look at a cake, let alone eat one..... Lets just hope lots of people come and generously donate money.... and take the cakes away!

My own Death....

Now I am sure everyone is familiar with Death By Chocolate..... but today I received Death by Post......

and here he is.....my own Death!

Cute isn't he!!

He's to come to work with me to protect me from the dangers of the office... like paper clips... and elastic bands... and nasty work colleagues :)

The friend who made him for me is a complete star! :)

Random and stray thoughts....

(because my brain is apparently off line for the evening)

Yesterday was a much better day.... lots of it spent with my sister as we cooked mum a nice lunch for mother's day...... both of us bought mum flowers, my sister got a huge bunch of tulips and I bought a grow your own mini sunflower kit..... mum seemed quite pleased, but she'd been out the night before to friends for dinner and we think she might have been a little the worse for wear as she was somewhat quiet and grumpy.

I finished my current knitting project whilst at my sister's...... photos will follow eventually...... which means I am down to just two outstanding items....... I may find some motivation to do something about them at some point.....

Overnight, winter returned.  The temperature dropped rather suddenly and there was a very thin layer of ice on my glass of water by the bed when I woke up....... which is a miracle, no not the ice, the fact that the cats hadn't knocked over the cup or drank the water...... They were obviously too cold to come out from under the duvet.  There were flurries of sideways and whirling snow throughout the day and it's not got above freezing.  I was obviously a tad optimistic last weekend when I posted the spring flowers pictures..... I shall have to find a weather Goddess to petition if this keeps up as I really am fed up of winter now.  Though as I was reminded by my father, it snowed the day I was born and on my 18th, 21st and 30th birthdays..... he reckons we will get snow in mid April this year too..... I did remind him that he wasn't a weather God...

Towards the end of last week I thought I'd finally found my first ever DNF M/M book!  But, being the scrooge that I am I came to the conclusion of, I paid for it I will damn well read it....... (my scrooge like characteristics only just won out over the theory of life is to short for really bad books)..... if it had been a freebie it would have been ditched by about 30% in.

Now, whilst a myriad of things about this annoyed me (as does the plethora of badly written, badly edited, somewhat plot-less M/M books that seem to be out there at the moment) it is this sort of thing that starts me thinking that I could in fact write better and why don't I have another go....... I might, I have ideas, trouble is, I spend all day sitting at a computer drafting documents the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer doing anything at all.  Maybe I should write at work instead........ hmmm... can't think my bosses would be happy with that......

Well, as it's no warmer tonight, best go try persuade the hot naked cats to warm up the bed for me so my feet don't freeze!

One of "those" days

Well just about nothing today has gone to plan, and it's turned out to be a rather expensive day!

This morning I traipsed into town to pick up my parcel from the sorting office.... where unfortunately there is no car parking, so everyone parks on the yellow line, nips in and out and this is all fine.  However, the bloke behind the counter could not find my parcel!  He searched high and low but no, it was not there.  Which made me a little angry as the card they put through the door quite clearly said it would be.  I got handed the number of the complaints department and told to come back in a couple of days!

When I got to my car, the traffic warden had just finished writing me up for a parking ticket.  Bless him he'd waited for 5 minutes to see if I came out to the car before he started writing, but because of the ejits in the sorting office it was too late.... so no parcel and unexpected £70 fine.

I went to mum's house to beg coffee and to have someone to rant at and as I went to go in her neighbour stuck her head out the door to tell me the hairdresser was coming in 20 minutes to do her and her daughter's hair and did I want mine done......... erm yes! It's been needing doing for a couple of months .... queue more unexpected expense as my hair was chopped from somewhere around my shoulders back up into a chin length bob where it was meant to be.  It had better warm up soon, my neck is cold!

The supermarket trip was boring, predictable and at least an expected expense.

Shopping away I was sitting at the kitchen table peeling apples for crumble when Ivan suddenly squeaked, scrambled across the floor on his stomach, went rigid and started shaking.  I fended off the three girls and held him down till he seemed to come out of it, but he couldn't balance and was knuckling over on his front paw.  Eventually got him calmed down and happy, to the extent he was bouncing up at me on his hind legs, so I thought, no problem, he probably just slipped on the wet floor and freaked a bit.  Ten minutes later he was getting up out of his bed and the same thing happened.  Phoned the vet, who thankfully was open still, and got told to come straight down.  Quick exam later and I was told he was fine, nothing obviously wrong with him, that will be £45.00......  the vet's final diagnosis as I was leaving was, he's a lovely dog, but a bit of a drama queen.... tell me something I don't know!

I'm safely back home this evening and I think I shall stay here and knit, and possibly read, and do things that are definitely not going to cost me any more money today!!

And relax......

For it is the weekend..... this is probably going to ramble as I am rather tired (you've been warned, read at your own risk)

We will start with the stocking of doom....... I have managed to wear it all day at work for the last three days.... it feels kind of odd, not really painful, but like someone is hugging your leg, so just, well weird.  On the plus side it seems to be working.... on the down side... I really must shave every last hair off my leg as even the shortest bits keep catching in the elastic and, well, ouch!!  Trouble is I've been told because of how sensitive the skin is on that leg no blades, no waxing, no sugaring, no chemicals........ so apparently I have to go buy an electric shaver....... and any guesses how long it will take me to kill that?

The other downside to the leg is when I first take the stocking back off again the skin that has been under it is shockingly sensitive to touch.... I mean, the cat winds round my ankle and it's all I can do not to scream and kick out.  I've queried this with my MacMillan nurse and hopefully she'll have some suggestions before the cats take pre-emptive action and get in first!  I've also ordered a back up stocking for the bad leg and am waiting to be measured up for the good leg to have it's own stocking.... cos it looks odd only wearing one!

In other news, work is a bitch........ this time of year always is as we are in the last couple of months before financial year end......the new computer system went live this week and they expect us to all be up to speed right away and then add to that we have a whole new raft of changes to the legal system that affect the work I do in particular come into force on 1st April and, well, it's just madness.... and two hours of very boring and dry seminar on the subject on a Friday afternoon was not a good plan... my brain felt like I'd been swimming in treacle by the time I got out of work.

On the plus side.... highlight of the week.... talking about the changes and a colleague said that being young it should be no problem for me.... I kind of looked at him and asked how old he thought I was, to which he said, a couple of years older than him, and he turns 30 in August...... he looked genuinely shocked when I told him I turned 40 next month :)

Tomorrow I shall have an early start as the postal fairies tried to deliver a parcel today whilst I was out but as it wouldn't fit through the door I will have to go and fetch it from the sorting office.  I think I know what it is, which is very exciting... and if it is what I think it is, there will be photos tomorrow!  After that in intend to strenuously ignore the housework and finish knitting something, and possibly read...... I really do need to switch off and have some me time.

Finally for now, I've been watching Crufts on the TV the last couple of nights with very mixed feelings.  For over 10 years it was a focal point of part of my life.....the big show that you have to qualify to enter, and which I did exhibit at every year during that time......  even this year I got tweets and e-mails asking if I was going, just to watch, I haven't shown any of the dogs for about 4 years now.... but no, whilst I miss a few people, those I do miss I speak to out of that environment and don't need to see ... and yes whilst I'd like to go back one day I am not sure how the wide spread the poison the ex spread about me is these days, though I am sure that it is there.... and of course I don't really want to run into her..... unless it's with a car, at speed.......so for at least the next few years it is strictly watching from the sofa with the mob.

Bondage, kind of, but not in a fun way...

Well today started in one heck of a rush, but thankfully it got a lot calmer this afternoon!

After the normal round of trying to persuade the dogs to stay in bed till at least 5.30 - it didn't work, they had a short walk and breakfast and we were back on the sofa for another hour by that time.... I got ready for work - with obligatory 5 minute cat cuddling - and headed off for work.  I actually start at 8.30  but I had a telephone appointment with my MacMillan nurse at 8 am - which I ended up doing from one of the small interview rooms.

Now I love my MacMillan nurse, she actually does know what she's talking about and knows how to treat the defective lymph system in my left leg... unlike my doctor who hasn't got a frickin clue. So we started off with twenty questions, I confirmed I felt fine, I'd given up yeast products (which is harder than I realised as they sneak the damn stuff in everywhere), I'd had no new outbreaks on my leg and the last lot of manky bits were clearing up - yes good great... then the dreaded question... and how are you getting on with the pressure stocking....... erm...... I hedged by saying I wasn't sure my skin was healed enough yet.

She suggested I take pictures of my leg on my phone and text them over to her and she'd be the judge on that one..... Have you ever tried taking a photograph of the back of your calf by yourself, in an office, as your work colleagues are starting to come in, without looking a complete pillock?  In the end I spied my team leader had come in and dragged her in to the interview room to take the photo.

Pictures sent I went off to start working and about ten minutes later judgement arrived by text.... I have to start wearing the pressure stocking......like today......

Now anyone who has flown long distance or had surgery probably has  some idea of what a pressure stocking is.... trust me, it's nothing like those at all..... for a start it's custom made, it's thick black elastic type material..... and it comes with it's own pressure reading in mm of mercury (mm Hg)

Now I like a little light bondage as much as the next person........ but I've never seen the appeal of the body suit type things that look like you've been shrunk wrapped into a bin bag.... which is kind of what I felt I was putting on my leg.  You can't put it on like a normal stocking, oh no, it has to be turned inside out then carefully rolled up your leg.  It sits in place with 5 rows of plastic type bobbles on the inside which grip your skin..... and it compresses... yep it definitely does that..... you can't pull the material away from your leg and you need a pair of rubber gloves to get it off again

I wore it for four hours this evening as a trial run.... tomorrow I will be being well behaved and putting it on when I dress in the morning and it will remain on all day...... it's a very odd feeling once it's on, a bit like being squashed, a little painful at first, but then that kind of goes, you can't really forget about it as you always know you are wearing it ...

My counsellor thought it was slightly kinky in my appointment this evening....... but then again he's a bit weird anyway!

Spring things.....

Some of my favourite early spring
flowers in mum's garden today

Erm, it's March.... already... how in the name of all that is good and even remotely holey did that happen?  I mean, new year was only last week wasn't it?

So, since Thursday when I last posted.... I spent nearly 2 days alternating between bed, bathroom and sofa ... sleeping for most of the time after the first 12 hours had passed thankfully.... the bug completely knocked me out and I didn't really feel fully functional till this morning.  Sadly one of the things about having an immune system that doesn't work properly means that when you aren't picking up all germs known to man the damn thing goes into overdrive at the most inappropriate moments to do particularly unhelpful things.... like send your lymph system loopy, or make your joints swell up.  When the medical powers that be next consider what transplants they'd like to do next, never mind doing a hand, or a face, a working immune system would be nice... erm, either that or possibly a spine transplant....

Actually, on the plus side with the whole being March thing it has got substantially warmer with temperatures reaching almost double figures in the last few days... fingers crossed this will hold (and we don't get too much rain)

On the minus side with the warming up.... the Hell Cats have suddenly got a lot more active.... to the extent where when I am downstairs it frequently sounds like rolls of thunder approaching as they race around.... they are also much louder and singing from the stairs regularly again.  I guess when your naked winter is best viewed from mainly under the duvet with regular forays out for food.  Sadly the evil capacity of these felines is also on the increase and Hugo is currently nicknamed "shark bait"........ as this is what I am threatening to use him as if he doesn't stop pulling down my clothes from their hangers as they are drying on the door frames.

baby daffodils....again from mum's
garden... mine has flowers... you just can't
see them for the weeds!

Today I did the weekend things that I'd not managed on Saturday.... laundry, the supermarket run and a quick clean of the house.... though the whole concept of a "spring clean" is something I am ignoring.

Mum was in a celebratory mood as the free-loader has moved out the attic.... big sighs of relief all round... and thankfully the stress levels have completely dropped straight away.  She was full of planning for the Comic Relief Tea Party she is holding on 16th March.... for which I am apparently in charge of cup cakes and cookies (and I have no doubt the kettle..... though for some reason Mum's kettle refuses to blow up!)

Next weekend in the UK it's Mothering Sunday (or Smothering Sunday as it used to be referred to when I was little) and my sister and I have arranged a posh Sunday dinner and a couple of small gifts .... I am also in charge of dessert, which will be crumble, because, after all, crumble solves everything ..... well, it helps anyway, in my world!