The irony in procrastination

I learned something today which has helped me feel a little less frustrated about myself and accepting the fact that I am not lazy when I have procrastinated in my work, because of something a motivational speaker on Instagram had said.

“When a person goes into procrastination it is the brains coping mechanism, a response to coping with too much emotional trauma and overload”.  I may not have quoted them correctly, but it made me understand why I have procrastinated so long in my work.

Since September 2022 I’ve hardly written a thing towards any novel, because I have undergone a lot of emotional turmoil in my life.  A grief, followed by a diagnosis in my son, followed by erratic behaviours and arguments and a break in a long term relationship – coupled with the emotions I was already trying to tackle of loneliness, recovering from long-term sickness, trying to start foundations for a new routine, career, every aspect of my life I was trying to concentrate on all at once and I got overloaded and emotionally burned out.

This is why I have procrastinated so long, because I was trying to fix too many problems in my life at once, that I ended up exhausting myself on an emotional level and found I lacked the energy to think creatively, because I’m tired.

I’ve tired myself out by overthinking other problems that I did not have the energy to throw myself into the problem solving of make believe problems.

I understand this now and it has taken a huge weight off my shoulders, the weight was the anger that I had become lazy, when in fact I was the opposite.  I was working myself like a slave to do everything and being hard on myself when I failed my personal creative and career goals and dreams. 

I have also sat back and reflected that some of the things I was angry about because I felt I was lazy about them, I had actually accomplished great things but didn’t notice because I was bogged down in over perfecting them or just simply not noticing the progress I had made.

For example, March 2022 I could barely get out of bed and walk downstairs and up just once without having an asthma attack and shaky legs. 

From Easter 2022 I started to do small exercises, forcing myself to do the little things, until they built up.  Well they did build up over a time and I didn’t notice the physical achievements I was able to do.  Now I can walk up and down the stairs five times before feeling shaky.  I can do 70 reps of side reaches before I feel I need a break and for the past week I have been able to start preparing my own meals and even cooked a meal for the whole family the other day!

Things I haven’t been able to do in almost eight years!

But did I praise myself for doing all that?  No!  Because I didn’t notice until I sat back and reflected on the past year.

No more than had I noticed last week that I’ve lost 14 inches around my waist in 2yrs!  14 inches!

I’ve been on a high protein diet and I have cut out a lot of the unhealthy snacks and caffeine I used to drown myself in, not all of them, but most – to the extent my diet is almost unrecognisable from last year! 

Certain aspects of my health have improved immensely, though I still have two major problems which will never go away completely because it’s part of the auto-immunity problem I have. 

I’m reading emails daily, whereas this time last year I used to go three weeks without checking them! 

I’m spending a lot less time on social media too, I spent my whole day on social media last year! 

I’m starting to read more books.

I’ve finished an art class online.

I am halfway through two more free courses, one ran by Mel Robbins. 

I’m posting on my blog more often than not, whereas early last year I could only really post about once a week. 

I’m cutting my nails instead of biting them. 

I am replying to friends and family as soon as they message me instead of taking weeks to get back to them! 

I’ve accomplished more milestones in the past year than I have my whole life and I didn’t notice them!

I was beating myself up for being lazy and yet I was doing so much – the irony!

I also noticed another thing – I felt I didn’t have the energy to write towards my novels and I was journaling my life pretty hard in private for the past two months and guess what?  I noticed all my journal entries about my life amounted to 350k words, 350k in just two months!

I was writing approximately 2k in private journals and 4k on another one which I sometimes share with selected people a day, I say was, I still am.  This is not including the word counts for my blog posts and poetry by the way, I never counted those up! 

I told a friend online about this and I said why can’t I write like that towards my novels?  She asked the same question back at me too!

Yes, why can’t you?  Why can’t you implement changes in your style of writing so that you can do that just to get the first drafts down quickly?  Maybe you are overthinking your first drafts way too much?  You are trying to perfect first drafts immediately because you feel it’s urgent to write your novel, yet you are not writing your novel because of it. 

Irony again!

Once again I may not have quoted her 100% but that was the gist of the conversation.

Using the same method I do for journal writing to write down first drafts would mean that I would get the first drafts of four or six novels down per month that would be amazing if it is as affective as my journal writing is!

However a novel is more than just a first draft, so that was just over optimistic thinking!  But you get me, right? 

I haven’t started implementing this yet, I am talking about it today, because it is today I am trying to start with that, today is the day I am going to change my first draft method.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!

Isolation & cabin fever

I have a very boring life.

Seriously, since Covid hit the world my life has been boring and extremely isolating!

I have a weak chest, I have asthma, but I have also survived pneumonia four times over the past eight years the second from last bout nearly killed me!

Therefore this has meant I am one of the few thousand vulnerable who is so scared of going out that I haven’t left the house since July 28^th and that was to have a tooth pulled!

I didn’t start going to the library like I said I would at the end of November.

Though I caught Covid19 on Thursday the day before Good Friday 2022, I did pretty well – I wasn’t hospitalised at least and it was around 9 weeks after my first ever Covid vaccine. 

I am sharing this because there are rumours going around that I no longer live with Paul as nobody has seen me in months!  Believe me I am still here, I am just hiding from all the germs!

Because I can’t find a mask that is safe enough to wear whilst having asthma, my asthma is still pretty bad and I don’t breathe very well through my nose because of sinus issues – so it’s really not an option to wear a mask.

I was starting to think about going to a gym and going back to the library weekly starting from January, but now I hear there is an even deadlier new strain coming out of China again and China is opening their international doors again!

So I thought, aw fuck it, why now?  Just as I was about to risk going out at least once a week and without a mask! 

So I am in limbo again and this is part of the reason why my depression hit me hard the other day – I just want a normal life!

I don’t trust the NHS to save my life if I were to get the new strain of Covid – especially as the NHS can’t seem to get me my second dose of Astra Zeneca and they agree with my health issues the other two are a no-go option!  Yes, for nearly ten months I have been waiting for them to contact me about Astra Zeneca for my second shot, I am not fully protected!

The NHS is also struggling to get me a much needed appointed for something else – an overdue appointment, I won’t mention what.  But should it take a year to try and get a simple appointment and still there are none available?  We try every single day in hope of a cancellation, but to no avail and I am in pain whilst waiting!

So we decided to go to the pharmacy and buy the kit to do it ourselves, but when they heard I had a symptom with it, they said, no you really need the hospital to do it… WTF? 

The pharmacist thinks it’s urgent, the NHS doesn’t!

I’m glad I am not any sicker than I was the last time the doctor saw me, because based on what the doctor feared, I could have been dead by now – but that’s really not important apparently!

So because I haven’t worsened in the three months, six months and nine months the doctor contacted me by phone, they are presuming it’s not cancerous.  That’s all I am saying on the matter, yeah so for cancer they are still dragging their heels with appointments.  But that’s not all, I have relatives and friends of relatives tell me that cancer patients are more or less considered the walking dead now as the NHS is bankrupted and cancer diagnoses have a two year waiting list and guess what?  Most people are dead by the time they get checked out!

But right now I don’t care about all of that – I care about getting out and about again!  I can’t go into my own garden thanks to the twat that lives next door and his vicious dog!  I haven’t felt the breeze on my face or wind in my hair or the rays of the sun for months!

Months!

I feel like an indoor caged animal, left in a cold room all alone and forgotten! 

I can do lengthy isolation, my childhood trained me for it, but I have never ever in my entire life gone more than three weeks without leaving the house, before Covid came about and during those times we were always guaranteed at least three to five different visitors per week on average! 

Paul and I are hardly speaking these days without arguing, we get approximately thirty minutes a day to talk now – Henry is too absorbed in whatever he is absorbed in at the time that I generally get less than fifteen minutes with him, other than the house rabbit Ray – I have no one I can verbally talk to anymore and guess what?

I am embarrassed to say, its causing some of my long forgotten speech problems to come back – I stammer occasionally again and my lisp can be caught every now and again, problems I thought I got rid of in college!

Why?

Because I am not talking enough to anyone!

So as crazy as it sounds, I told Paul – you will hear me talking to myself in the bedroom because I need to keep practising my speech, as problems are reoccurring.  So I record myself again, yabbering on to myself in the bedroom like a crazy woman, to try and prevent the speech problems from coming back!

I am talking about everything, doing running commentaries on anything I can see and hilariously I forget to shut up when I am in the company of both Paul and Henry occasionally.  They think I’ve lost the plot and I know they’re right!

So with that being said…

I love you all… I am going round the twist… and I hope I make it to the other side in one piece!

At least I know I can last five months before cabin fever starts setting in!

Thanks for reading!

Remission, weight loss and dreams

It may have been a long remission between Easter and last week, because for the past few days I have been sleeping a lot and finding things a little difficult again.

My immune system has taken a massive hit and I feel like I have influenza but there is no temperature and not much else of the normal flu like symptoms.  The brain fog is coming back, the depression is hitting hard again and then the washing machine breaks down two days ago and it needs replacing.

The asthma has got a bit worse too, but it’s the feeling that I am turning into stone or lead I can’t get over – every limb feels weighted. 

Very sleepy is not a good description really – I kind of feel like I am going into a hibernation period, if you get my drift?  But what is weird about that is the fact that I can’t seem to sleep at night.

My appetite has stayed much the same, not eating much at all, so the idea of gaining weight over Christmas is silly as I seem to be losing up to two pounds a week still or not moving on the scales at all.

I found a local gym for £8.75 a week membership, I can afford that with my personal allowance and I will be signing up for the membership around the end of January, to help me tone up – my upper arms in particular as they are the only things which don’t seem to be doing what the rest of my body is doing… losing inches and toning up.  They are a good gym to go to because they specialise in helping people who have long-term health problems or are morbidly obese, which I need because I have asthma and a couple of auto-immune problems, one of which is rheumatic arthritis.

It’s exciting to note that I have lost ninety six pounds over a year now without much effort, now let’s take it up a huge notch!  I am not that far off from my goal weight and with this gym membership I should reach my goal weight before July with any luck – at least I haven’t been on the morbidly obese scale for a while now- In fact I remember a time where I was a horrifying 56 on the BMI scale that was nearly two years ago!  No, this wasn’t the reason I was bedbound either, the bedbound came first and this kind of obesity was caused by that!

How did I manage that?

Simple!

I was a highly active person who walked an average of nine miles a day amongst lots of other exercises and physical activities, needing to eat an average of four thousand calories a day just to sustain myself or collapse – to becoming a severely ill and bedbound person literally overnight, but never readjusted my diet, until three years later when it dawned on me what the heck I was doing!

I had such spleen pain and constant chest infections for nearly eight years solid, the amount of times I was diagnosed with pneumonia too, I couldn’t move because the spleen was too swollen and I was literally advised to do nothing in case it ruptured!  NHS overstretched before covid even existed and so operating wasn’t an option given to me! 

Especially as I was eating my feelings when the depression stepped in, meaning I was over doing food on a massive scale for someone who was extremely sedentary!

It wasn’t until around three years ago that I realised when I am having an angry or a depressing day, I go to food again for comfort, I realised this is a base instinct we all have; why?  Because as animals we would take our anger and frustrations out on other animals and bite them and attack them, but as humans have learned to civilise ourselves somewhat we suppress our anger and food is the substitute for the primordial release for biting!

So when you feel depressed, sad or angry get yourself chewing gum – believe me, it works – only I find it hard to have gum these days because most of it contains soy and soy is really bad for my spleen issue.

Around four years ago was the time I had a completely free from diet, no eggs, no gluten, no lactose, no soy and a mostly paleo diet.  This helped a lot with the breathing problems and the swollen spleen, eventually I learned that I could eat almost anything without pain but there was something still off – occasionally my spleen would swell again and it took until earlier this year to find out what was doing it… mustard and soy. 

Now I am not on a free from diet anymore, but I have to avoid soy and mustard, or the spleen swells up again and my asthma has a bad day – unfortunately most of my favourite foods contain them, as I especially love mustard!  So suffering is a choice now – which I don’t choose often! 

Not a lot of people who are recently acquainted with me take me seriously about how much I understand nutrition and exercise since they’ve always known me to be this size.  But in actuality, I am really switched on, because I used to be very athletic and I can name in approximation the calorie worth and nutritional value of most foods.

But for some people they can’t understand that if you know all of this, then why did you allow yourself to get so fat?

Because if you live a certain lifestyle for too long, then you become ill where the physical aspect changes but not the food – you can see how this is easily done.  But people will be people and some people are morons and don’t use their head on this kind of stuff!

I remember a time where my doctor suggested my diet was too healthy, too low on salt, too low on fats and too low on calories, that I was blacking out three times a week on average and going into severe full bodied cramps.  Because of lack of electrolytes as I didn’t add salt to anything and I had a low fat diet which was mostly vegetable based.   I remember having to keep a food diary constantly and keep every nutrient in mind and I remember having to rush out to McDonalds at random times throughout the week to get the high fat, high salt and calorific food I needed because I didn’t have time or the wherewithal to eat a large meal, so I had to opt for big macs as a dietary supplement.  A weird contrast to my life now!

No, I do not miss it, because I didn’t enjoy having to do those things – what I do miss is the health and fitness I used to have and the energy I had as well as the body.

In the future, I am hoping to get all that back again, only this time I am going to be smarter, no big mac supplements anymore – I have a weight lifting professional friend who had the same problem, only she supplements the low salt problem not with crisps and salted fries or peanuts, like I did – but as adding rehydration salts to every bottle of water she drinks!

At the time I knew I was a protein type metabolism but I didn’t fully understand it as much as I do now and I never knew you could get really nice protein drinks to get what you need in per day.  I was literally trying to stuff down copious amounts of chicken and fish every day into my system – another thing which will change in the future.

You see, back in the good old days of when I was active, I was active alone and without a fitness network, so I was literally clueless and often had stomach ache and a bulimic reaction to the food I needed to eat.

You live, you learn.

Paul and I are still living together but we are separated, still he is trying to support me the best he can with the diet I need.  He has told me that our finances are better than we used to have as we are now being supplemented now he is retired, which means I can see the doctor more often and the diet can improve slightly.

In March my own personal finances will have doubled for me, which means I could also supplement myself too – so I should be losing the weight much faster soon.  I will get back on it all after Christmas, properly.  

Calorie, protein and nutritional monitoring that is, as well as signing up for the local gym classes!

My self-employment should be kicking off around March too, so hopefully I will earn enough to consider moving out of Paul’s by the end of summer, maybe – who know?  I can’t see me living alone to be honest, but there you go!

I don’t do New Years resolutions, so please don’t take all of this as that!

My second biggest dream right now is to rediscover my inner pride and vanity! 

When I was healthy and fit, there were a lot of people who said all I needed to do was dye my hair blond and get a Chihuahua and I’d be like Paris Hilton in my style!  I was offended, because what’s wrong with a brunette?  Though I like the idea of platinum hair! 

Though maybe they were just on about how much I love pink and fluffies? 

My first biggest ever dream I’ve had forever now, is to find someone who genuinely loves me and wants to keep me, build a family with me, push me to be the best that I can be and we motivate each other like live in life coaches!  Along with this the person has to tolerate that I can be suffocating with how I love them and hands on with them, because I am just like that!  I am like Elmira from Looney Tunes – but they also have to tolerate eccentricities, daydreams and creative pursuits as it’s all a huge part of who I am!  Please also, the person must understand I am very childish – I am overly playful and I am not too responsible really.  I am such a hedonist to be honest!

My third ever dream is not what you think it is either… nope… no, it’s not really anything to do with my stories or art – it’s having a great home and social life. 

The stories becoming movies is really a fourth dream… shock horror… I know!

I kind of kept that a secret as I kind of wore this with shame for a while – but I am starting to release the true me and I have to be honest with you as much as myself now, don’t I?

I feel bad admitting that actually.

I am still writing, don’t fret!  I am just not all that bothered in giving boring details about word count anymore, because nobody really cares enough to comment unless they are a troll who moans about how often I update word counts!

But meh – I always lacked structure anyway, I say I intend to write one novel but I end up writing a little towards twenty and so…. I am learning to become at peace with me and the way I am… so should you!

But project AD and the Easter project are the main focuses for me right now, even if I only write about twice a week on both of them – at least its progress!  You have to remember I have lots of other projects on the go too!

I know lots of people are eager to get their hands on project AD and this is why I am writing this as fast as I can, because I know there are a lot of people in waiting over it. 

I just got to get it out there anyway, because it’s a great story and I am very excited for it.  I am seeing merchandise in my head already; it will be a great new toy brand in my opinion as it is a dystopian comedy for kids.

But the Easter project is also gripping me a lot too with so many amazing ideas I am literally bursting to share them with someone but scared I’d shoot myself in the foot if I did!

So that’s what’s happening in my life right now.

Thanks for reading!

What is summer?

I guess I am boring, but summer is my least favourite season of the year, I don’t like it when it’s too hot and too hot for me is anything over 25c/77f I think it’s because warm air is really bad for my asthma and I don’t like sweating outside of my control!

The big positive about summer though is it’s really nice to my arthritis; I have less pain in summer and I am more likely to be active in temperatures of 17c to 24c which is around 62 to 75f.  Paul thinks I was born for Hawaiian or Californian climates, but meh – I don’t think so, too dry?  I love my woodlands and would miss seeing moss and oaks and things like that – but it’s tempting knowing I’d be in less pain!

Paul nearly got us to move to Seattle a few years back as he was nearly offered a job there, but he refused on grounds that Henry wanted to stay at his current school; if Henry had taken the idea of trusting what we wanted, we’d be migrating back to the UK around now, because Paul is of retirement age and Henry would probably of had a slight American accent – he’d have been there from 7yrs old to now 12yrs old.

Summer is nice for park walks and beaches if it’s not too hot, but the best thing for me about the summer is the fact that watermelon and berries are abundant – I can live on watermelon alone during the summer if I could!

Another good thing about summer is ice-play in the bedroom, but I have had boring and wimpy exes that run from those ideas – well all but one ex and funnily enough it was another woman – no men seem to like the idea of ice!

I like the summer rain, warm with scatterings of rainbows and going for walks in it if it’s light.

Gardening has to be done in the very early morning or late at night around half an hour before twilight or it will kill you if it’s over 24c/75f.

People are happier in the summer, which is a bonus, but I hate how crowded places in nature can get during this time of year – I go out in nature to be at one and in solitude with it, but in the summer it’s hard to find a place without other people!

Midsummer used to mean parties for me, as Midsummers night is special here as a solstice, but also a couple of days later is a joint birthday between my dad and my brother and there was always a big family celebration about it!  A huge BBQ and what have you.

I love BBQs.

Another one of my favourite things is going to pick your own farms, especially the strawberry fields! I don’t think summer has happened unless I’ve gone to one of those and I love garden centres and nursery shopping!

I have always wanted to partake in country fairs, but never had the opportunity really to.

But summer is not my favourite season; this is probably why this entry is short! 

I like swimming in warm waters and tend to be even more of a water baby on really hot summer’s days because I think I am half Piscean or something – lol – well I know I am a Pisces ascendant in any case!

I am not the kind of person who sun bathes, I’m a bit of a vampire really, a true mythological mermaid!

Thanks for reading!

Junk, craft & gardens

Rummaging through old boxes and bags around the house, I have found things I have lost because Paul had moved them and placed them in towering piles at the corners of unregulated rooms, I have come across things I have completely forgotten about for years.

I didn’t realise at the time I made them, but I was a really nifty knitter and crochet thing (maker)? I have found two pairs of fingerless gloves I Knitted for myself as well as knitted hair dangles, two scarves, a babies blanket and a cowl.

Funny thing is I remember giving it up as I thought I was rubbish, but there you go.

I also remember giving it up because it was one of the main causes of my carpal tunnel syndrome as I am addicted to fidgeting so I took up the hobby as a kind of fidget toy that was productive idea.  However I got addicted to making things and I was knitting 100 stitches per line 100 times a night and my arm became almost unusable for three months because of it.

If I knit more than fifteen minutes it comes back.

Such a shame as I had a lot of projects I wanted to do.

I’m traditional and so I often like to knit cardigans, blankets and dungarees for babies as presents, so it’s hard for me to choose not to knit when I know there is a new baby on the way for friends and family.

Weird thing is that sewing and embroidery doesn’t affect me as much as knitting does.

I hand sew, scared of sewing machines because of things that happened to me as a kid; mum didn’t like my love for fashion and design, so when she was resizing curtains she bought one day I asked her to let me help her sew the seam with the machine and she deliberately nudged my hand where I had three inches of stitches go through my hand.  “There’s it’s your own fault, now stop bothering me about it”.

I want to get brave with using sewing machines as I have always thought about making my own clothes someday; Paul told me there is a lady in town who will make clothes to my specifications if I provide her with a comprehensive pattern for her to follow and she will do it with any material I give her for £25 an hour.

It would be nice someday to be able to do that.

The silly thing is I was the most excited about finding some playing cards I haven’t seen in a while; the donkey cards, snap cards and the old maid.  I have loved those cards since I was a kid, but Henry isn’t really into playing pairs or snap with me, unfortunately.  He is completely absorbed with robot making and learning geography.

I have loads of board games too; nobody wants to really play anymore.  We used to make a point that every night, or at least most nights we’d play a board game for one hour before bed, but Paul and Henry grew out of it and I was the only one who wanted to play.  Too much resentful arguments during gameplay ruined the fun for me, so we don’t bother anymore.  Even on special occasions like Christmas and my birthday, they just can’t help but make a scene.

This year on my birthday I got a lovely three course meal home cooked for me by Paul, a rare treat and it stretched our budget badly!  It’s a landmark birthday and I got no landmark present.  I don’t mean to sound bitchy but it was very disappointing.  Paul has always known this landmark birthday was something I wanted to be special for the last three years.

But I guess it’s not his fault the oven broke down two weeks before my birthday.

I understand in Paul’s mind, birthdays mean nothing to him; but for me, my life hasn’t been celebrated past my seventh birthday.  The last ever proper birthday party I have ever had was when I was seven years old.  All other things were always two weeks after my birthday, never parties and always something my brother wanted to do in the façade that it was really for me.

Is it really bad to want to feel special from time to time?

I am always made to feel unreasonable.

I try to look on the bright side though; at least people won’t circle around me smiling weirdly at me whilst they sing out of tune “squash tomatoes and stew”.  Ugh I really hate that version of happy birthday.  But I’m no kill joy, honestly.

I am starting to sort the house out, finding all my stuff, moving it to my bedroom as we’ve moved apart now me and Paul.  I don’t mean I’ve moved out of our house, I mean, we’re living sort of separate lives whilst still living together and I want to organise my stuff.

Mostly because it destroys me that I worked hard to keep things being thrown away over the years by my mum, only for it to come here, get lost amongst Paul’s mess and when I find it, find that its broken irreparably.  It bothers me when it’s an ornament or an item of clothing that was thrown in a corner out of the way being ruined, instead of going in a laundry basket – but it hurts a lot when I find it’s a handwritten story or a watercolour painting I have done.

Paul is a recovering hoarder (pack rat).  When I first moved in this house was quite something… It took me nearly two years to get the house into some sort of liveable shape and it was a very tumultuous time emotionally between us as Paul had to let things go in order to give the growing baby their own space too.

When I got sick, the house got bad again.  But for years I struggled to try and clean at least one room a month to keep on top of things, but the problem with that is energy and health.

I have asthma; one of the biggest things that set my chest off is dust.  Cleaning is not his priority, so this house is never dusted by him, always me.

Once a month it took me about three to eight hours in one day to clean a room, just one room.  To always find that three days later it looked like it hadn’t been touched, because Paul will shift items from other places in the gaps I made.

Years of struggle and arguments over it – new friends I have made since living here has no idea of Paul’s past and Paul is quite sneaky in letting people believe it’s me who has the problem… look at all the books, they are all hers.  Because I have bookcases downstairs visible for everyone, they see it as a truth and it’s not.

If you were to see the house, you would see all of my areas is clean and tidy most of the time.  You can clearly see where Paul spends his time, as it’s the messiest corners of the house with very dangerous high piles of whatever.

My bedroom is heaven in comparison the whole house.  The dining room is not functional for its purpose and the kitchen is just downright dangerous.

I used to care for our front and back gardens up until two years ago when the bad neighbour moved in with his girlfriend and decided to start sexually harassing me all the time whenever he saw me in the garden.  The gardens are now dangerously overgrown, because I won’t go out there and Paul has no spine to tell the guy where to go.

I have wanted to call the police, but being deaf I can’t use a telephone; Paul has flat out refused to call them on the grounds of lack of evidence.  I suggested we use a camera to film me in the garden so they can observe his actions, but of course our poverty is the perfect excuse for Paul not to do that.

As my illness has been the perfect excuse for him not finding a job. 

I miss my garden.  It was one of my ways in staying sort of fit.  I miss walking on the ground barefoot as I pick strawberries and columbines.

I miss doing “what that mad cow” is doing as the bad neighbour called me once, when I decided to go in our front garden and sit directly behind our privet hedge amongst the tall wildflowers because there were tamed frogs, toads and magpies who liked to visit me out there.

I remember hearing his girlfriend and daughter telling him to shut up and leave me alone, because they knew what I was like and they liked what I did.  They often commented about how my garden seems to steal all of nature’s beauty from them, all the butterflies and birds visits my garden but not theirs.

Their garden has decking from door to fence with only four small pots of violas, is it any wonder?

I’m a bit of a hippy, nature’s child – actually I might have under exaggerated, just a little…

Since I watched Shirley Temple’s Heidi when I was 5yrs old I have always wanted to own a homestead with my own goats and chickens running about me free, feeding them at 6am singing like Cinderella.

Before I got sick, I was very much a morning person.  Waking up like a new-born every day, excited to start living again, throwing open the curtains and singing “Good morning” by Doris Day making everyone in the house want to kill me as they recoil under their covers like vampires hiding from the sun.

I can’t do that anymore; when I wake up around ten to fifteen minutes after I have walked about a bit getting washed and dressed the coughing fits start for about an hour on a bad day.  If I wake up and don’t move out of bed, it’s not so bad, but as soon as I get moving it comes.  The really bad days scares the crap out of me.

When I do eventually move out of Paul’s house, it’s going to be tough on anyone new I make a relationship with.  Those early morning coughing fits are scary for even Paul who has been used to them for eight years.

My consultant believes he knows the cause of this, but he will not treat me because our local hospital is almost bankrupt and has a policy of treating life threatening conditions only.

I have enlarged adenoids that won’t shrink and broken cartilage in my nose made it worse.  I broke my nose around 5yrs ago which made the coughing worse, they won’t repair the cartilage, it’s considered aesthetic.  Although they call it aesthetic, it won’t improve my looks; my nose will still look big!  But there are times the cartilage moves and makes me sneeze uncontrollably and it hurts.

The biggest thing about all this stuff I am finding is that I don’t want a lot of it anymore.  I want to give it away to a charity/thrift store.  But Paul, ever the hoarder, told me not to do that.

He then caved in and said OK, I take some stuff for you.  But it’s all talk.  The bag of things has sat on the floor hall for a week now.

Hopefully someday we’ll sort things out here.

Happy reading!

Today I am having tooth surgery

I’m having dental surgery today, because I am known for severe anxiety attacks and I have asthma, I am going to be going under anaesthetic for it.  I am having a tooth extraction and a filling; because I broke one tooth on a chicken bone and the other I don’t know how that got damaged. 

Before anyone judges me, no I am not in the habit of crunching down on bones (though I do a lovely bone broth) – this was meant to be a chicken pate in a burger I had a couple of years back but there was an unexpected bone in it which broke one of my front teeth when it got stuck between them and I tried to get it out myself, because my former dentist couldn’t see it!

There is a good thing about this, you are probably horrified – it’s a front tooth how can you be so positive about it?  Because I had a double set you see and I was never confident about having that tooth there anyway, now the dentist I have reckons we could try and train the other tooth to close the gap – yes I am nearly forty but it looks like I am going to be getting braces soon! 

So for the first time in my life – well after the gap is filled up with my other tooth, I could smile in the future with ease.  I was always self-conscious about my teeth and was never inclined to toothy grins! 

My top set are good, they are nice and I am proud of them, but my bottom set was always too untidy looking and I was never confident in the past to sort it out.

Now with this problem tooth gone, I will feel a little more confident, especially if we successfully close the gap with the spare tooth.  If we don’t, then the other option is to have that spare one removed and get a bridge.  When that is done, I will be so much more confident and my next step to personal confidence will be to try out contact lenses!

I have to admit I am terrified today, because I do react to anaesthetic badly and I take much longer than the average Joe to wake up from it.   I remember when I had an epidural when I was giving birth to Henry, my legs should have got feeling back within three hours, or so the midwife said, but I took eighteen hours before I could walk again!

So, with that being said – I am not going to be doing any live for potentially two or three days from now, because I am likely to be like a zombie after that!

No social media for three days I think!

There will be posts on this blog daily still, they are pre-planned, in fact I am talking like this is a live conversation today… it isn’t, this was actually composed on the seventeenth of July.

I will take pictures before the tooth is removed and later on, when I have closed the gap I will show a before and after – but I won’t do it before then! 

Thanks for reading!

Sickness and feng shui

Covid hit my Henry in the first week of April, then it hit me a few days later, because of this I have been functioning at zombie level, because not only did I have Covid at the time but I was recovering from a non-Covid chest infection and gastric flu – which coincidentally, happened again just a couple of days ago.  More gastric flu hit the house on Wednesday and apparently gastric flu is spiralling in and out of everybody’s lives a lot in the last few weeks or around here in any case.

Because of all of this, I haven’t written a word towards a novel since the 2^nd February 2022, ironic considering this was going to be my hardest working year in writing and I wanted to start as I meant to go on for the year.

I am exhausted but recovering slowly, my asthma seems much worse these days and my bronchial tubes seem to be permanently filmy and half opened, along with this it is also a bad hay fever allergy year for me.

Just existing is difficult these days, but I am trying to push through and though I have never been a huge coffee drinker, Covid has made me become one of the worlds many addicts as it seems to be one of the main things which is helping me through it all!

I don’t know if it is my neurological problem or Covid which has made this happen, but recently I am struggling to walk in a stable manner and I am finding it hard to sit up from a laying down position.  My legs feel like they have weights on them, however the weird thing about it is, it is as though I am walking on air at the same time, or that the ground has become marshmallowy.

My appetite has decreased further, where a simple dish of a small salmon fillet and half of a small a jacket potato with nothing else, is a feast to me!  This has meant, finding highly nutritious and varied foods on a small scale has become hard to manage.  I literally need micro-meals, I don’t mean microwave meals either, I mean small meals, miniscule for an adult, perfect for a 5yr old and I need to eat at stupid times.  I now regularly have to have a small meal at 10:30 pm just to get enough calories and nutrition in the day, which doesn’t help the insomnia.

A positive thing though, is I have discovered I am not actually lactose intolerant at all – I have found I have issues with gluten and lactose purely because those foods contained soy, since eliminating soy completely from my diet, I am now able to eat gluten and lactose again and let me tell you, its pure joy!  Though being a Chinese food addict means I can’t indulge in that anymore unless it is homemade and without soy!

I found out because twice I accidentally consumed things containing milk and then expected a bad night of gastric like proportions, but no, nothing happened.  Then I had another food which had milk and soy and I reacted, Paul thought that maybe it’s because I ran out of enzymes, but then we noticed that my lactase pills were not working for certain food items.  So I began a soy elimination diet, as suggested by a friend.

So I had been spending £18 a month needlessly on lactase pills, because it wasn’t a lactose problem at all, it was a soy one!

Despite being ill a lot this year, there is a noticeable improvement in other areas of my health, since going back onto lactose and gluten.  My skin and hair have improved a lot and a couple of other personal issues.

Henry is currently sick with very bad gastric flu and his fever broke earlier today, he had a temperature for so long that the doctor had said that on Saturday, if there was no improvement, he would have had to of been admitted, so there is a lot of relief there that the fever has now broken!

Because of all these health issues and so on, I decided that I should reconsider the house in a feng shui style, I knew certain aspects about feng shui, but not a lot, and I realised that things were better in certain years when furniture was in different places and worse when it was moved in other places.  Considering this, I read some books about what I did right back then, but was doing wrong now.  I found that there is a lot of blockages in areas that was good, particularly the health – which explains why we’re sick potentially.  The health centre of our house was established around the time I started to get sick eight years ago as a laundry pile area – not good feng shui, also we have small mirrors which we glued around each other so our reflections are always fragmented and cut up into bits, again not good feng shui!

Also I noticed that I moved dragon ornaments away from the places that they would like to be according to feng shui, we did better financially when a dragon and a tortoise was in the south west corner of the living room, but things have changed since I put them both in the south area of our bedroom!  Effectively moving them from the transformation area to the career area – career wise things may have improved as we are developing good contacts, though have not dedicated ourselves fully into creating a career just yet – so we will not move them back to the transformation area, but instead, move a spare dragon from another area to the transformation area and then move the tortoise out of the bathroom, which is a bad area to keep it according to the practise, especially as the bathroom is half in the health area!  Because our health centre is split into two rooms, which is unusual and complicated in Feng shui terms!

I love Chinese culture a lot, I believe a lot in the Chinese astrology and I do not like western astrology, I believe Chinese astrology to be more accurate in my life.  So, the idea of throwing me into Feng shui as well, I think, is a good idea!

My grandmother always said there was Chinese in my family, but I found out that she was slightly wrong about the nationality; they were actually Vietnamese and Singaporean ancestors, which kind of explain my so-called throwback eyes as some people call them (I actually think it’s kind of rude, but there you go).

 I would love nothing better than to move the furniture around again, but at the moment the family is sick and the areas I want to move would cause bad things to happen moreso this year, because those areas are all the areas of this year’s sha chi, which means if you move those areas outside of good construction days (according to chinese astrology) you will activate the bad energy there and make things much worse.  So we can’t make improvements until the 9^th of May or the 23^rd and 24^th of May, as per the household’s astrology signs.

I am a water dog, Henry is a metal tiger and Paul is a fire monkey!

Anyway, thank you for reading and maybe in the future there will be more about the feng shui as I learn more.

A plan, lost time and mindless jealousy

Going back to my post about social media from the other day, I have decided today to make a list of people to watch on social media to try and make me more social with the people I love speaking to and getting replies from.  It will help me manage things better, I am a person surrounded by endless lists for things because my illness can make me too preoccupied with trying to manage my symptoms such as coughing mucus several times an hour and that sort of thing, that I can often forget to do important things such as drinking fluids, eating and even socialising.   

Paul has suggested in saving up to get an Alexa for me, so that it can remind me every half an hour to take a sip of my drink because it is becoming a big problem for me and he thought as well that this can remind me to eat and even socialise.  I sometimes go two weeks between reading emails too, because on bad days (and I am getting more and more of them) two weeks can feel like two days to me, there are times where I haven’t spoken to my favourite cousin online for six months, but to me it feels like two weeks, when I look at the last time stamp I apologise profusely for the time span between our last chats and overcompensate by talking for three hours when I do finally get to contact them again.  It is bad to consider that I make more posts for my blog than I do in contacting people I know in reality.

I really do lose such big chunks of time because of my illness, I go into a groundhog day whilst the entire world moves on and have normal different days and they get to partake in the events of the future whilst I am still struggling to breath and thinking its Sunday.  Henry comes into my bedroom to shake me awake as I am too deaf to hear him say good morning until I put my hearing aids in and I ask him;

“Why are you wearing your uniform on Sunday”? 

“It’s Thursday mum” he says.

“Oh that happened quickly”, I say whilst trying not to fall back to sleep.

But a lot of the time I don’t go back to sleep for twenty minutes because my chest needs clearing and I have to go to pee, but it is a struggle to get there whilst choking and I have a bucket midway between the bedroom and the bathroom because I often choke so bad I vomit.

On bad days those coughing fits don’t calm down for nearly two hours before I can rest again.  It is difficult to be like this when my personal doctors surgery is only opened for 8am to 4pm every day and they prefer to use after 12pm as emergencies only – I never really had a planned appointment from the doctors because my personal GP rarely works the emergency shift and if I want to see him I need to wake up around 5am just to clear my chest, get dressed and eat then rest for an hour after eating just to get to see him for 10am, they are aware of this but I am sure they think I exaggerate!

If I get the flu it lasts for 4 to 8 weeks on me because by the 5th day it always turns into bronchitis and by 2 weeks it goes into borderline pneumonia or pleurisy, doctors are worried by this, it is happen too often and I am showing signs of antibiotic resistance too!  

To all those people who work full-time and hate on people like me who rely on benefits to live and often say venomously how they wished they had my life sitting back watching TV all day instead of working – well I beg your pardon, most of the time I am too deaf to watch too much TV because of severe ear infections and I can’t hear music either during my bad days, all I get to do is read or be online and sitting at a desk is tiring, so you want my life huh?  You can have it if I can have yours!  I’d love nothing better than to work if it means I get great health with it and a great social life!

Welcome to my life for the last seven years, pretty isn’t it?  Yes, please do be jealous of this so-called lazy fat bitch, because my life is great isn’t it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update November 2019 AKA I am still alive!

I didn’t continue Inktober from day 5 and I haven’t done anything towards NaNoWriMo this year either, my health has got quite bad in the past few weeks, for some reason or another I have developed something new where I am sleeping an average of 10 to 15 hours a day and when I am awake, I wished I was asleep and this is something strange for me, because I not a person who loves their bed (unless I am making love in it)!  I don’t find sleeping a productive venture, other than maintaining health (which I don’t have any more anyway).  I am living in constant pain too; painkillers aren’t cutting it anymore for me, not even the occasional co-codamol, I am having almost permanent nose bleeds and other strange bodily phenomena, such as the feeling that I have a glass splinter in my foot and my arms are going numb and losing strength at random unpredictable times.

My IBD markers have also risen and my rheumatic arthritis has decided to wake up again, it often goes away and comes back again, remission I think it’s called?

My depression had got better until last week I received a medical request which puts my ESA medical due around Christmas week again, just as I felt that Christmas might be financially impossible this year I get this as an added assurance, because I don’t think I will pass it this year due to the fact that my consultants are very laxed in actually giving me a name for some of the things that are wrong with me.  I knew my local NHS is struggling as it the NHS nationally, but yesterday on TV I finally learnt why my consultants are particularly lacking in their treatments of me – they are part of what the government consider the notorious Nuffield branch crisis.

I never heard of it before now.  I don’t really understand what it means, but there seems reason to be concerned according to the news I watched last night about being part of the Nuffield problem.

I don’t vouch any knowledge on the thing.

All I know is that someone advised me to take a certain person to my medical this year as it may help my claim, because I am a client of a specific charity and apparently this could give my claim some weight.  I just hope I don’t sink.

I haven’t been able to practise my recorder for a month either, because I have been getting a little chesty, I was expecting this, because every year between November and March I get bronchial issues – I have been given medication for asthma but the doctor declines calling me asthmatic, I don’t know what that is about, but there is no name for my breathing problems when I get them.  When they get really bad the doctors say I might need to stay in the hospital as I always seem to get bad enough that they feel I am borderline of pneumonia or pleurisy.  Hopefully that won’t happen this year; I am tired of the fact that I haven’t had a decent healthy Christmas in almost 7yrs.  It is starting to make an Ebenezer out of me. 

I haven’t written anything other than 9 poems since my last post and I don’t think I like them enough to share.  Some of them touch very delicate subjects.

I have also managed to list whilst in bed, all of the story ideas I have had had over the years and number them, 187, that is scary and I felt instantly depressed that more than half will likely never be started let alone finished.

I noticed that I shouldn’t really call myself a horror writer too, as most of my stories are comic fantasy or dystopian, I think all in all there are only 6 non-vampiric horror stories in the list, about 12 vampire stories in the list, but mostly comic fantasy.

I have an idea for a sequel of a top Broadway musical, but I know I wouldn’t rightfully be able to write it as it will be an infringement of copyright and it is a shame because I really think that this sequel would be amazing.  The musical has always been one of my favourites, Annie.  I love most musicals anyway, but that one is special to me as I remember watching it the first time when I came out of hospital for the first time aged 5.

I won’t say my plans, but if anyone needs a sequel to it, please let me know – I am not a dunce, I will know if you are of genuine sources or not.  I have often thought about writing a letter to the source of the musical or current copyright holders, but not sure when I will take the plunge – as I am embarrassed, because of my health I may not be able to deliver on a strict dead-line.

Another thing I need contact from is from anyone who knows how to get my Henry onto junior MasterChef, he really wants to be a chef when he grows up, he has decided – he also wants to do a baking marathon for Children in Need next year, but I have no idea how he can do that, I can’t afford to give him ingredients for 100k of cupcakes, ha-ha, he will be 10 at the time too.

Wasn’t it amazing what Rylan did as well this year?  Henry always thought the guy was awesome, but now he is inspired to do a 24 hour baking challenge because of it, I said he won’t be allowed he is too young!  So then he thought of a specific number of cakes – though he says they have to be gluten and lactose free so I can have a couple!  Isn’t that lovely?  He thinks of his mummy?

I don’t know if it is a sign, but I have nearly finished a novel, when I get the energy back to continue it I will have about three chapters to do before I consider it done and coupled with this, I have been getting dreams.  Those dreams are of me moving house, every night I am in a different house in a new dream, what is weird is I accidentally found a house that is identical to my dream in Derby with identical surroundings in the town, specific shops and maps, it has blown my mind away about how I found that.  Thing is, I don’t think I want to leave Rugby.    I think it’s a nice little town, the people know me well like I have always been here and it is really is in the centre of everything you need in the UK – an hour from London, 45 minutes from Birmingham, 90 minutes to Manchester, it’s just a great spot to be!

I have discovered after reading several books in bed over the weeks that one of my main problems creatively, is that I overthink things.  I play too many ideas into others and eventually lose their uniqueness, I have learned to let go.  I have learned that it is ok to repeat themes in my writing in order to make things more interesting in places, but also learned that various themes can be used only once and there shouldn’t be any regret.  I have also learned that mentally I use the excuse of not having much experience in anything in life as a way of holding me back from having a life.

I am on a big learning curve right now, my mentality is changing and it is growing me.  I am also changing on a personal level – I used to be a very meek and obedient person who was afraid to make people unhappy even at the expense of it making me unhappy, but that too has changed.  I have started to learn that if I am not happy with something I will tell that person and I will try to maintain kindness as I do, but ultimately I won’t suffer anymore, not for others, especially as it was never appreciated in the past or even recognised.  I do however insist that I maintain kindness as much as possible and maintain a positive attitude, I have an intolerance for misery still, that is innate within me and I think that is in part the reason behind why I am more of a comic/comedy writer.  I know this blog doesn’t show that, as my poetry is often very dark, but my stories, when I eventually release them for the world to see, will be quite light hearted and funny – well I hope so anyway.  My poetry may still be dark and bleak in a lot of respects, because it helps release what is soaking my insides up, bad things from the past, my deepest yearnings, my tears and fears, I have to release this emotional cancer somehow, don’t I?

I never intended to be a comedy writer, it just happened.  I always intended to be a horror writer but as funny as it sounds, writing horror is horrible and I don’t like to do it anymore.  I used to relish in making people scared and feel sick to the stomach, but only certain people and now they are gone from my life I realised how neurotic they made me and how horrid they were making me.  So now I only want to make people smile, laugh is even better, inspire would be a jewel, but I would be happy with a slight upturn of the mouth from my readers and nothing more if only to make the world a bit more brighter.

(was written on the 14^th November but only just got around to copying it for this blog – I have not been well, in fact the whole house has had the flu this week on top of everything else).