wagwaan?

Auld Lang Syne

It's hard to believe, isn't it? The last day of 2010 has arrived. I am not the only one who would rather forget this year. Well, forget the various upsets and pain and sorrow that have happened, that is. Personally, I am secretly rather glad that I had a bit of a wake-up call because it makes life seem even more precious to me, and I hope I didn't sound too morose on the previous post (hi Chrissie!) because I'm not, honest!   What I'm getting at is, maybe it's because we're all getting on a bit, but there were so many sad moments and health crises in the family this year that I'm sure we're all ready to move on now.  And so, lifting my cup of non-alcoholic beverage to you, I say HAPPY NEW YEAR. May you all be blessed with good health, love, happiness and peace!

Having got a head start on the New Year's resolutions with Claire, I thought I'd post another sample picture from the Dailyburn website. This is what the nutrition log looks like, just after breakfast for which I only had porridge and a coffee because I haven't been food shopping yet:

I'm not exactly counting calories, but when you register you input all your data, such as your age, sex and weight, and then select the kind of diet you want (low fat, balanced, low carb...), and it calculates these goals for you.  I want a balanced diet, but I've selected the "low fat" version for the moment as I really need to start shifting the pounds.  To keep track of what you are eating, you search for the food you've eaten, or you can input the nutritional data yourself if you can't find it in the database. I'm basing my food intake on the Slimming World eating plan, but I don't think I can start going back to meetings until I'm earning again, as it's quite expensive at £4.95 a week. For me, this is another way of keeping my food diary, with the added bonus that I can check the fat, protein and carb content of my meals. And, just like with Slimming World, your exercise is taken into account too, only this tool calculates how many calories you've burned when you've done the exercise. Score!

So there you have it. I'm feeling all focused again, which is a relief, and I can't wait to start seeing results. Right, I must get moving as I'm babysitting baby A again this afternoon. Time for some cuddles!

Technology schmechnology!

Much as I love technology, I really hate it when it goes wrong. To wit, my iPhone: I finally decided to update the software on it, and thought I was safe because it was backed up. How wrong could I be. The darn thing updated to the latest version of the software, then promptly did a factory reset. Grrr!  The music I bought directly via the phone is ok, as are the apps, but I lost all my contacts, all my passwords and cookies, all my photos and, worst of all, all my calendar entries! That thing is my replacement memory and if it doesn't beep to tell me to do something, I'll forget it.  

Talking of my bad memory, I really thought I was getting better, but today I went and left a pan on the stove again - completely forgetting I was in the middle of making myself some lunch. And my conversations with the boyf all seem to go something like this:

Me: Did you know about this programme/article in the paper/piece of news from my family/bill that needs paying?

Him: We talked about that last week.

Me: We did? No we didn't. Did we? (with rising incredulity).

Him: Yes. You said... and I said.... and then you did.... (giving me details).

Me: No, but I'm getting better, I remember lots more. Surely we didn't talk about that - I'd remember.

Him: .....

It must be so frustrating for him, and I'm slightly bewildered myself because I don't know what I've forgotten until someone asks me about it, if that makes sense. It's not very nice to feel I might be blissfully unaware that I'm a fruit loop. In fact a friend teased me gently about it the other day, when we were talking about her mother-in-law who has dementia, saying that it's like a CD playing on repeat: once she's covered all her topics of conversation, the record starts all over again.  She reassured me I'm not really like that, but the point is, I wouldn't even know if it WAS, would I?  It's like the twilight zone or something.

I'll now go off and read some previous posts and realise I've mentioned this, oh, like 50 times or something. Sorry :( 

On a more upbeat note, Claire discovered a cool app that I've now downloaded too. It's called Dailyburn and comes from the website of the same name. It's just the thing I've been looking for: a tool where I can keep a tally on my food intake, exercise, weight loss and much more. Because, yes, this coming year is about treating my body like a temple. I hate that I put back on the weight I'd lost, but obv I've had some other things on my plate and took my eye off the ball for far too long. Anyway, I'm really impressed with the "lite" version of the app, so I'll probably be upgrading to the full version when I have some dosh. I'm a very visual kind of person, and I like the graphics. Here's an example of today's exercise log, which was actually one of my most active days in a long while because I had to go back to the GP and didn't have the money for the bus. Before my aneurysm I wouldn't have thought twice about walking there and back but it's a struggle now. 

I also really like the nutrition log, where you get a clear picture of how much you've had in the way of carbs/protein/fat, both in numbers and with a cool pie-chart, along with a water tracker to ensure you have your 8 glasses of water. 

Well, that's it for now. I hadn't realised quite how late it was....

L'entre-deux-fêtes

So Christmas is over for another year and it's that "in-between" kind of time where the presents have all been opened, the food has all been eaten and, in my case at least, you can't wait for the new year to just be here already! Especially this year, when I and so many people around me have had such a bad time. Roll on 2011. 

We had a rather quiet Christmas. Just the three of us. Oh, and the cat of course, who got a catnip Christmas tree to get his claws into.

Sadly, the OH had flu and stayed in bed most of the day, and I came down with a rather bad cold that kicked my asthma into gear on Boxing Day. Apart from that, we are really well, thank you!

Claire really spoiled me this year. First thing on Christmas morning I croaked that "I must go and make some coffee" but she insisted I open at least one present first.... it was a rather fabulous gift set from that famous Seattle-based coffee company, including 2 cups, 2 gingerbread cookies and a yummy packet of special Christmas blend. Dee-licious.

 

Here's the gorgeous girl herself in her Christmas PJs (hope she doesn't hate me for posting this, but I think she's beautiful. Ok, I'm biased.)

We would have gone out for a walk once the sun came out, but in the end we didn't eat till gone 3pm, so it was getting dark by the time we'd finished. Instead, we stayed in the warm, listened to Christmas carols and watched festive television. 

Also under the tree was another mug from Claire, and I can't quite work out which one I prefer, so I alternate between the two, and the frothy coffee tastes equally good in both...

 

The only other picture we took on Christmas day was of one of the glasses my sister SR sent me - such pretty, delicate things, with gold stars scattered across them. Perfect for a glass of "Christmas drink" like we used to have when we were children (red wine + lemonade)....

Talking of festive television (yes I was, a couple of paragraphs ago), what do you think of this year's offerings?  I have caught the first 2 episodes of the new Upstairs Downstairs on catch-up and loved them - looking forward to more. I also started to watch Just William, which was really promising, but I had to leave before the end to go to a doctor's appointment. Maybe Claire and I will watch that tomorrow. I also planned on watching When Harvey Met Bob, but haven't yet. I hear it was rather good...

Well, that's it from me. I never manage to find a satisfactory way of finishing blog posts, so "toodle pip" and all that :) 

Ho ho ho!

 

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. Or Lyle for that matter.  I sent Claire off up to bed, like I used to when she was little, so that I could wrap her presents. The other half is poorly with flu or at least a chest infection, and I'm just getting ready to go to bed myself, but I have some photos to upload before I forget.

This morning I made myself a delicious frothy gingerbread latte and had a slice of the Stollen that my friends Stéphie and Ian gave us for Christmas. Dee-lish!

Then I amused myself cutting out some snowflakes for the bay window. I particularly like the middle one that has a snowman in it - can you see?

At lunchtime I had a "date" with Dr O, who had a Christmas present for me, and we had a scone and a cuppa while we chatted. I also got to say Happy Christmas to some other colleagues and Dr C, which was lovely. They all said how well I looked and how happy they were that I was recovering well. Such nice people. 

This afternoon I just relaxed (ok, I put a load of washing in, but otherwise I relaxed), and when Claire got home we watched Carols from Kings. Such beautiful voices, but I didn't cry like I used to. Do you know what? I hardly ever cry since having the aneurysm. Before, I was like any other perimenopausal woman, in floods of tears at the drop of a hat, but now, not a sausage. It's very weird. And what's stranger still is that my lovely mum, who never used to cry in front of us now sobs openly, since she had her stroke a few years ago. Makes you wonder what goes on in our brains!

For dinner we had yummy foie gras courtesy of my brother and his wife (thank you again N & J!), followed by fresh pasta for which I made a rather tasty tomato sauce, and now I've got to get myself off to the land of nod in preparation for a lovely, if rather quiet, Christmas Day.

Here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, and I hope the weather hasn't made too much of a mess of your plans. Joyeux Noël !!!

 

It's Christmas Eve Eve

Right, I have stopped beating myself up, as per one of my recent posts, and therefore refuse to get upset by the fact that I kind of gave up on the #Reverb 10 stuff. I enjoyed it, but really wasn't inspired by all the prompts, plus I don't always turn on the PC and it's too fiddly to post from the iPhone.  I will probably go back through the prompts to see if there are any that take my fancy, but that's for another day.

In the meantime, Baby A's mum gave me the go ahead to post this picture of him wearing our giant, adult-sized, Christmas hat. Such a poppet! 

There was quite a clash of colours in the photo so I thought I'd make it black and white, but then you didn't get the full effect of the Santa hat, so I did a bit of Photoshopping to make it pop. He is so good at sitting up already - just 3 months old. He also loves to stand (!).  Hmm I think he'll be walking early like my nephews did. I have Christmas cards to hand out, so we are having a bit of a get-together around teatime with Baby A's mum and another friend who wants cuddles too.

But first, I have to wrap some pressies as I'm meeting up with my French friend before she goes away on holiday. Oh, and then I have a GP appointment, so it's a bit of a mad rush today. Thank goodness there's been a bit of a thaw, and the roads are much clearer.

I'll just leave you with a video that my brother Jerry sent me. I had seen an excerpt of it recently, but this is the long version. If you are English then they'll need no introduction: it's a take on the good old show The Two Ronnies, with the part of our dear departed Ronnie Barker played by Harry Enfield. (Cue some trivia: I think I'm right in saying that Jerry in fact delivered the papers to Ronnie Barker on his paper round in Pinner, many moons ago. Funny that, because Ronnie Barker always reminded me of Jerry, especially in Porridge!)

 

Virtual shopping

Have you done all your Christmas shopping yet? I confess I haven't, although I did have the foresight to order a few little things online before the snow hit, so I have some presents stashed away. I shall be finishing the shopping tomorrow or Friday, but in the meantime I thought I'd do a little virtual window shopping. I've got a really random selection for you here!

First off, I saw these amazing wellies on Happy's blog. If you're a Converse fan, you'll like these Dinger Boots - they're fab, although I'm very happy with the Crocs I bought last year (modelled here on the day it started snowing last week):

 

OOps, that's a bit dark but it's straight out of the iPhone. I took it while waiting for the bus back from the dentist's. Now, if you didn't think ahead and get some snow boots this year, how about getting some ice grippers?  I reckon Claire could do with some of these to go over her Uggs as she's already fallen a couple of times this winter, poor thing.

 

Ok, to continue on with our little virtual window shopping spree, how about this gorgeous book?  I really, REALLY want to get back into embroidering. I need a magnifier though, because reading glasses aren't really good enough for close work...

The next stop on my tour is for Lyle. He would LOVE these special catnip bubbles. I am definitely going to be buying him some, but after Christmas, probably. I never got my behind in gear to get them in time for Christmas, and hey, he doesn't know what day it is, does he?

Claire got him a catnip toy recently, and he has been drooling all over it to such an extent we think it's not got any scent left in it. He'll get another one for Christmas though. 

And now for something completely different - an ostrich Bayswater bag from Mulberry. Isn't this the most divine colour? And a snip at a mere £3,000! Crisis? What crisis??

Phew! That's enough shopping for me today. I had better go to my bed now if I want to be up to some shopping of the REAL variety tomorrow. Nite nite all.

 

Well, the weather outside is frightful...

... but at least it's nice and warm indoors. I have this song on the brain though:

It snowed really hard the other day (can't remember which day as I've lost track of time) and we still have about 10 cm / 4 inches out there - nothing like the 23 cm my brother's had in France, but we're going to get more this week apparently. I'm just glad I don't actually have to go anywhere!  The news is full of stories of people stranded at airports etc, which is really not a nice way to spend the time. So, much as I miss my family especially at Christmas, it's a good job we are just taking it easy here this year. 

I thought I'd post the pictures I took in London on Monday after my hospital appointment. First of all, I had no idea that the wonderful Persephone bookshop was round the corner, so that was a lovely surprise.

 I had one or two of their books already, and as I had this one on my wish-list I decided to treat myself.  

Entitled "Few eggs and no oranges", it is a book of wartime diaries by Vere Hodgson, and I'm finding it very readable indeed. That's a picture of the inside cover. Persephone books all have a dove-grey jacket and a gloriously colourful inside cover, each one different, each one a reproduction of a fabric or artwork matching the date of the book. In this case it is "'London Wall', a fragment of a Jacqmar scarf showing a brick wall as the background to the brightly-coloured slogans that were so much a part of wartime life."

The bookshop is on Lamb's Conduit Street, which is a lovely little road in Bloomsbury lined with lots of small independent shops. On looking for a link to give you I came across this really cool website where you can check out a 7 minute video about the shops on this street. I hope you'll have the time to take a look.

I liked this collection of panama  hats in the tailor's window....

Well, as you can see, there was no snow on Monday, thankfully, but since then we've had our fair share as I said earlier. This is a picture taken out of my bedroom window yesterday morning:

...and it got thicker after that!  Lovely and festive - if you don't have to go out in it.

Talking of being festive, last night we were invited to pre-Christmas drinks at a neighbour's house. Their place is so cosy and beautifully decorated for the season. We had drinks (mulled wine for those who drink alcohol, OJ for me), and also some delicious home-made mince pie. Mmmmm.  They told us about a carol service at the local football club tomorrow, so I'm planning on going with them for a sing-song. Let's hope it's not cancelled - we can walk there, but maybe people who have to drive here will avoid going out in the snow. We shall see.

Anyway, that's it from me. I can't quite believe that this time next week Christmas will be all but over.  How time has flown by!

This one's for mummy

Someone shared a link to this on their blog, and it made me smile and feel all Christmassy. So this one's for you:

 

In which I try to catch my breath

Gosh, I am running very behind on the #Reverb10 postings, but as you know we had visitors this weekend, and I was in London yesterday. Hopefully I'll catch up soon.

It all went very well - I took my time getting to the train station, i.e. got the bus, which, due to our strange one-way system, takes forever to get to "the Junction" as we call it. I could have taken a taxi but that's stretching my budget somewhat. Anyway, I got the train into London, which only takes 15 minutes or so, and then I got the bus outside the station to go three stops and then had a five minute walk to the hospital. I got there 10 minutes before my appointment.... but, as is often the case with doctors' appointments, I ended up waiting an hour. I was ok though; I had brought a book but in the end I just shut my eyes and tried to relax. Once again I saw the Registrar, only this time it was a different guy, a Greek Research Fellow who was very nice. I told him I fully expected to be discharged from follow-up, and  he said "let's try and meet your expectation".  I forgot half the stuff I thought I would need to ask, but we did have a discussion about the exact location of my aneurysm - it's way deeper than I first imagined, but I won't go into details, some people are squeamish!

While we were talking I told him I am in the process of setting up a support group locally, as my Community Centre friends are very interested in helping. He said that was a brilliant idea, and that support groups were very much needed, as patients relate better to other patients telling them what they've been through rather than what the professionals tell them to expect.  I told him I was feeling a lot less tired recently and he said that one day I'll go "oh, where did my fatigue go?" and that I'll "miss it". lol.  He also said about 90% of people who survive an SAH feel the same, so that's very reassuring. I did have to sleep for 2 hours when I got home after the appointment, but that is happening less and less - and Claire was home so I got her to cook dinner, which was a bonus.

Anyway, it's like I can see the end of the tunnel now. I knew it was there, but for the longest time I couldn't even begin to see it. 

Which brings us to today. I felt very tired this morning and took it easy, and then after lunch my friend popped round with baby A, who is growing fast.  We had a couple of cups of tea, and nattered, and I got a few smiles out of the baby so I'm happy. We also took some silly pictures of A in a Santa hat, only it's an adult one so it swamped him. Poor child. 

Right, that's me all done in. And now I've remembered that I took pictures while I was in London yesterday, but you'll have to wait till next time, and I'll tell you all about it!

I love my family

Oh what a lovely time we've had.  As I mentioned yesterday, my brother and his family are over for the weekend but it really was a flying visit.  This morning we met up with the girls for another Starbucks (N was visiting my other brother in Manchester), and then we all split up to go and do our own thing. I managed a bit of shopping, just stuff for the house and a few stocking fillers, and then I came home for a bit of a rest. I know I keep saying I've got a handle on this fatigue thing but I must admit I really needed a lie down this afternoon.

When N got back from Manchester he and the boyf (mine, not his, OBV!) went out for a drink, man to man like, you know. Claire and I got in the Christmas spirit and watched Elf ("Santa's coming? Here? I KNOW him!!!" lol) while the visiting ladies had a bit of down-time back at their hotel. The next time we met up it was to have a delicious Chinese meal in town. Lovely company, great food, fab evening. Just sad the weekend is over so quickly.

Right, I really should get off to bed as I have to go up to London to see my neurosurgeon tomorrow morning. I'm pretty confident I'll be discharged from her care as I'm fine, physically, now. Apart from that darn clicking noise in my skull, which is still there!!