oops

I appear to have not blogged for a couple of weeks - oops! It's not because I have crashed, more probably because life has been a bit more busy what with all this Christmas malarkey going on. We had a nice Christmas day with the husbands family, and then with friends on Boxing Day, and on Tuesday we went to see some other friends to play board games. On Monday we hit the sales, and got some mega bargains, and did some of next years Christmas shopping. The husband was on call on Monday, and got a call out just as dinner was ready! It was about 45 minutes away, so he was gone for a couple of hours. No-one has been quite sure about whether he gets paid double for it as it was a bank holiday, the current thinking is that he gets paid normal for a call out, but gets an extra day off. Either way its a bonus for not very much work! Health wise I have been fairly ok, some days by about 5 I feel like I'm done and either pick up again or really am done. It's been nice to have the husband at home for four days running, although has felt a it strange too. I seem to be quite used to my little routine when he is at work, and my love for routine means I find it difficult when that gets broken. Now we are heading into the new year, and are hoping that it brings with it a new wave of good health.

busy

Well this week turned out to be a busy week (well busy for this doofas). On Wednesday we went to deliver some Christmas cards, and went to a Christmas gathering. The card delivering didn't quite go as planned as we ended up staying at the first house longer than planned so just had to put the others through doors. The Christmas gathering was fun, although doing all the chatting and then thinking for playing games was tiring. Then on Thursday I drove to Asda, did the shopping, drove home and unpacked the shopping - all by my very self. I know for most people that this is just a normal thing to do but for me it was very exciting and a very big thing. On Friday I went with the husband to pick up a parcel and went to buy some books from a charity shop. On Saturday we went to go swimming, but the pool was having problems so wasn't open yet, we went shopping instead. We also went carol singing at local shops with our church. It was freezing, it took us a couple of hours afterwards to thaw out properly. This week I have also cleaned the house, a simple job to many but one which I can't do as easily as many. This coming week is going to be a fair bit quieter (apart from the husbands birthday and Christmas).

pub

Last night I had a little jaunt out to the pub. The trip out was to meet up with people from my CFS group. Unfortunately only one other person could make it as the others were busy/too tired. But it was good to catch up with her and here how she is progressing. It made me realise again how important it is to pace myself well, and gave me a renewed gratitude for the group and the medical professionals that gave input to help us understand the illness and how to manage it.

bun

Today I am having a bun disaster. The Husband leads a youth group at church and tomorrow is their Christmas party. One of the things they are doing is decorating buns, so I offered to bake the buns for them. As our oven only cooks on the top shelf I needed to make two batches. The first batch I only put half the amount of egg needed in. This resulted in sunken buns that were biscuit like on top and bun like underneath, but stuck to the case. The second batch had the right ingredients in it. Good start. I put them in the oven and set the timer and checked them when the timer went off. they weren't quite cooked, so I gave them two more minutes. After two minutes they were burnt. Too burnt to use. So I had to make batch 3 and batch 4. Twice the number I needed to make. Thankfully 3 and 4 worked. But it has all left me exhausted. The silver lining though as the husband says is the we get to eat the ruined cakes!

well

Well I thought it had only taken me a week to recover form our London jaunt, turns out it is taking me longer, I just had a couple of better days in the middle of it. I've not helped myself by having a medium busy weekend with my family. We celebrated Christmas as we are not all together over Christmas and went to a panto. It was a really good weekend, but hasn't helped me get back to my norm. On Monday I feel asleep again after the alarm went, then went downstairs and feel asleep on the sofa, and then could just mooch about for the rest of the day. Today I have managed to do a little more, but I am very aware that I am below the norm that I had achieved. Hopefully by pacing myself well I will get back to that norm.

mother

The more I live life the more I realise I am turning into my mother. This is something that people joke about happening, to me it is a reality. And it really doesn't bother me. Although some things I now do that my mum used to do really used to annoy me. One of these was cleaning the house before going on holiday. She used to like coming back to a clean and tidy house. It use to drive us made that she would be cleaning when we used to be leaving, or when other things that we thought were more important should've been happening. But now I love coming back from holiday to a clean and tidy house. And so before I go away, I spend time cleaning and tidying - although I make sure its not done at the last minute. There are other things that I now find myself saying or doing like mum used to. I like it, I like to think that part of her lives on in me. And I hope that I manage illness with just a portion of the grace and dignity that she did, whilst still having those inevitable what's going on I don't like moments that she occasionally had.