Slight state of shock

So I've twittered on I don't know how many times about my manky hands.  Sometimes they hurt, sometimes a lot.  This started years ago and one benefit of working for the Government is that they have the whole Disability Act down and make all sorts of work related adjustments - granted it takes them a long time to crank the wheel and go through the many hoops to get the equipment to you, but it is so much better than other places I could be working. 

So at my disposal I have an arsenal of a light touch keyboard, computer joystick shaped mouse and voice activated equipment.  Granted the latter is slow and annoying as hell and does not like excel - which is not good when one is an accountant - but you get my drift.

For a while when I write for more than 2 minutes I get pain in my hand and I write like a spider - that's kinda not normal but I left it for going up a year before I trotted off to the GP to see if it is something I should worry about - you know, because mum brought me up to believe that you don't trouble to Dr unless you're dying.  He was very derogatory and seemed to ignore the fact that I was telling him my symptoms were worse - the clue was in him informing me that nothing could be done and "for all I know if I stopped taking the anti-inflammatory medication I may find that I am not in pain and it has righted itself over the years."  ERM, hello.....

So being the stroppy mare I am, I stopped the medication to see. Cue 3 weeks later a wail of "I don't know what to do with either of my arms - they just ache soooo much."  So I saw my OWN GP who was very concerned at the severity and speed of the flare-up of pain - indicating that the medication had in fact masked my "condition" getting worse.  Cue a request to the hospital with neurology....

Now the beauty of the UK is that all this is free - yes some whine about the state of it but it is FREE (if we ignore the taxes we pay) but we should think ourselves grateful that we are also not paying through our noses for health insurance as our USA counterparts do.  They saw me quite quickly - well, in comparision to the last time this 'wonderful' government were in power when it would take over 6 months just for an initial consulation, found some weakness in my right hand, prescribed so neuropathic medication and requested nerves tests on my hands.  That was today.....

....I've had one before, they electrocute you but only enough to make your fingers and hands jump about which in the grand scheme of things is kind of funny to watch.  The last one came back saying nerves weren't trapped, again that happened today and I am not surprised at that finding.

What I am surprised at is today's consultant asking questions such as "Is the medication prescribed by the neurologist helping?" - No.  Apparently, that is no surprising because todays test confirmed nerves aren't trapped.

"Did the anti-inflammatory mecication work?" - Yes.

"It is likely that this is the beginnings of rheumatoid or osteoarthristis which would agree with the anti-inflammatories having some affect so I think you need to be investigated for that as well as your ligaments...."

OKAY!  That I wasn't expecting.  Now it can't be that severe if it is that because I can't see any visible swelling which I would expect with rheumatoid arthritis and lets face it, it's not that bad a diagnosis because the symptoms can be treated.  Though one of my friends responses kind of says what I was thinking "you are not that much older than me".

No, I am not, I am not 40 until next year.  I only feel about 20 in my head - my body is probably around the 30 year old mark now (if we ignore the body lift and bat wing surgery now required after the weight loss) but I am getting older. 

I don't know why I feel the way I do though and that is probably why I am twittering away just tapping out what my brain is thinking.  If it ends up to be arthritis then so what; I know that the anti-inflammatories have an effect and maybe a diagnosis would allow for a better medication to be prescribed than what I was on before.

It's not that it is a degenerating disease - a large amount of the population get some kind of degenerating condition as they get older.  It does not mean I cannot lead a full life. 

I think it is more to do with my brain going to the place of "If the nerves aren't trapped it is definitely Repetitive Strain Injury" and me not considering any other condition. 

In the scheme of illnesses it rates very low on my scale to be honest.  Angel suffers every day with her condition and many thank their lucky stars they do not live with her condition every day - Angel has paid a high price but has benefited in other ways - she has adapted and it has made her family so much stronger than it already was and I hold her on that pedestal.  I think I also rate most illnesses against hers and in my head arthritis is miniscule.

The upsides of that diagnosis would be that it would force me to ensure that I stayed healthy - that I kept my weight low, that I ate heathily, that I got load bearing exercise and that I learnt to swim properly so that where I have to give up things such as weights (which I struggle with recently) I can pick up other things that would compensate.  I am sure that Angel would happily teach me how to swim properly - you know, seen as she compensated for her illness and as a result has recently swum in an open water competititon to raise money for her charity - again, there goes that pedestal.

So....all in all, as much as I am in a bit of shock I think it is purely because my head had not already gone there before the consultant said what he did but I would look on it as a positive and make it work for me.

In other news:

Today's lessons:

• it is a good idea not to leave the dining room door open where the fruit and veg rack is readily available to the fluffers
• Abi (aka Baba fluff) does not take one apple to try, she takes the whole bag
• it may help to check the house before leaving it to check for other veg that may have been snaffled because otherwise I come home and find a net bag of tomatoes which have been tried and then left in disgust (by said baba fluff)

Puppy things I learnt this week

Oh dear, found this one was still a draft and has been in draft for nearly 3 months now....

So lets see;

It is not a good idea to leave slippers lying around because baba fluff thinks they are toys and takes them out in the garden to get rained on. You can't blame the baba dog when the slippers look like sheep. 

When Hubby wonders whether baba sheep is crying to get up at 3.30am every day because she wants to lie with her mum and grandma on the bed rather than go outside you should really listen to him because he is usually right and then you get a peaceful nights sleep thereafter.

If you get a small hole in a cushion it is a good idea to move it out of reach before you go out to the shop because this beautiful thing:

does this:

It is about time I realise that the days of being able to eat toffee Poppet sweets are over unless I want to pay £17 at the dentist to concrete my crown back in.

Being off work is kind of fun because more time is available to try new recipes.  Beware that trying new recipes inevitably will mean that half of it has to be frozen as Hubby refuses to eat anything that has vegetables other than cabbage and carrots in and therefore there should be sufficient room in the freezer.

When Scrappy Fluff, now otherwise known as Molly, comes round for a playdate she is like the Tazmanian Devil and it will take 2 hours and then half an hour of posing to get a half decent picture of the two sisters.  Baba fluff will still wake up at stupid o'clock in the morning despite being run ragged all evening.

Puppies think that if their head is over the paper in the house their tush is and therefore they are piddling on the paper, godamnit!

Holidays are coming.....

Okay, I could go all sorts of places with that so firstly lets get this out of the way.......Christmas is nearly here - whoop.  I know Christmas is coming because Next has put out their Christmas ware for sale.  Hubby rolled his eyes when I got excited - just wait until the red votive holders with berries arrive.....

I am holidaying again - at home but it is a holiday away from work and I desperately need that for more reasons than I was spending all hours there lately.

One main reason was that they have some semi-stupid rule to help manage their annual leave policy that you cannot carry more than 10 days over into a new leave year - I had 14 plus more flexi than you can shake a stick at.

The other main reason was the sky man - no he was not cute, though he was 7 foot tall so I had a crick in my neck when he went after his recent visit - because besides doing all sorts of wonderfulness such as rewiring the phone lines to the virgin phone line so that the sky boxes can send their whizzy messages back and forth and replacing satelitte dishes and various accessory parts he wanted to replace my HD box. 

....Now understand, the HD box, only throws a wobbly every now and again but he was concerned because it is a babe in terms of age and he was concerned that it's wobbleness was wobbling in a way he had never heard of before. Nevertheless, I refused to let him replace it because I had 76% worth of programmes to watch on it, the majority of which are not in HD format so you can imagine the number of programmes I wanted to plough through.

Being the nice man that he is, though I suspect it is also some kind of service Sky offer, he gave me his card, told me to watch my programmes and give him a call any time in the next month and he would come and replace the box and give me a further crick in my neck - after all I am just slightly taller than 5 foot nothing.

So that is what my aim is this week - not to clean, I must not spend the week cleaning and doing jobs that my brain tell me must be done.  I must sit still and watch TV and clear the planner.  That is my mission.  Granted so far I have watched the majority of it while completing the biggest cross-stitch pattern I could come across just to keep me in the seat but so far it's an achievement.

The back garden furniture is calling me on a regular basis to attack it with a hammer and screwdriver so that it can be broken down in small enough parts to be taken to the tip but so far I have avoided it.  It helps that it has rained most of the weekend to be fair.

Avoiding the visit to the GP with Beautiful B and the hair appointment that will take 4 hours today because I am greyer than any other 39 year old with thicker hair than most of the western hemisphere population, oh and the hospital visit on Wednesday to have my manky hands and arms electrocuted, I don't have much planned in the way of other activities.

So I may get the majority of it watched.  Might be worth spending the following weekend clearing the sky planner in the bedroom too so he can replace that seen as it randomly turns itself on and off - usually when I want it to record something.  Now either that is not normal or it is the electronic version of a woman with PMT.

One extreme to another....

You know you are in trouble when you go from this at 8.30 at night:

.....when the world and his wife in the remainder of the organisation go home at 7pm (at the lastest) - notice how dark it is everywhere else but my little domain? Yeah you should have seen me wandering down the corridor in the dark trying to find an unlocked door which to escape from.

and to being told that you are going to burn yourself out within weeks because when you get home at stupid oclock you start on the sports and social football club accounts until 1am in the morning because you thought that would be a good volunteer type thing to do in which to keep your finger in all sorts of actual techy type accounting things to do....

to deciding Hubby might be right and deciding to organise some recreational activities after work to prevent the call of treasurer roles when you suddenly realise that the rest of your week looks like this....

Tuesday: work until 5pm, get home in time for the electrician who will look at the bathroom light switch which whose cable inexplicably came off in Hubbys hand before going round to M & Ks with birthday cards and presents.  Return home at 11pm and consider whether you some start some cleaning;

Wednesday: work until 3.30, take Hubby's mum shopping, rush home and unpack shopping, go to fat fighters then rush half way across town to pick up hubby from snooker;

Thursday: Work until 7.30 pm, rush to pick Angel up, go to pictures to see Friends with Benefits and get home at midnight;

Friday: Work from home in the morning while the Sky man rewires the cabling to the new phone line, go into work from lunch until 7.30 pm, rush to pick Hubby up, go round to spend an evening with friends who should have been caught up on eons ago and get home at midnight (earliest);

Saturday: clean, do some treasury accounts despite it being my birthday, quick trip to be tortured at the beauticians as it is apparently relaxing to have hair torn out at roots, hop on train with Beautiful B, see Alan Carr live, return home at half past midnight;

Sunday: clean, because lord no time to do much of it before now, round to Hubby's mums for a joint birthday lunch with Hubby's brother, home, out to pictures with Beautiful B to see Fright Night and return at midnight.

Does anyone else get the idea that I am swapping one kind of crazy for another.

If only returning to work on Monday would be a rest.....  

Boxes and more boxes

So..... I have a hubby who would let me have anything I wanted. I love shoes. Truly. When we met I had the old fashioned thing called money. Well, not a lot of it, come to think about it more that I didn't agonise so much as I do now when buying non essentials....like shoes...and more shoes.

Some shoes were what I considered expensive so they were loving kept in their cardboard boxes when not being worn. They hankered after a better home; a step up from their starter homes. Its taken me 5 years; after all I baulk at paying the same high prices for shoes as I did 5 years ago. Hubby would argue that I don't need more shoes. Bearing in mind that I have moved 15 pairs up in the world of real estate for shoes and estimate I still need another 25 boxes even I have to think about conceding that argument......

Beautiful B thinks I am a bit nuts, Hubby has reduced me to tears previously teasing me about selling my shoes on eBay as I never wear them.  My defence that they were "expensive" shoes and therefore not worn every day didn't really wash with him.  My friend K rushed to my defence, even though she understands the need for lots of shoes regardless of whether they are worn often and knew he was joking; I wasn't sure but even I admit I did not think the idea of losing shoes to someone else would make me so tearful.

I always thought that no matter how much weight a person puts on the shoes would always be there.  Ooooh how wrong I was. Turns out feet can get fat too (yes I know - Duh!).  Now that I have been on a mission to halve my body weight the shoes are so much more comfortable - all things being relative - and are making appearances. 

The number of times the conversation has gone like this in recent weeks:

"Are they new shoes?"

"Nope." 

"Are you sure?"

"Yep - these are older than our relationship darling."

Hubby refrains from commenting on whether they are pretty or not - apparently "shoes are shoes".  Good job that there are people at work that appreciate their beautifulness.....

Mind you, I shouldn't be suprised - Hubby rarely notices the attire - now don't be rude.  If we are off out and I dare to make an effort that is more than the usual jeans and a top or more often gym trousers and a top he comments on my face and hair rather than my clothes.  One could argue that there is no need, therefore, to spend a fortune on a wedding dress because I doubt that he will take much notice let alone be able to describe it in any way, shape or form the day after - I am, obviously, ignoring that argument......

......as I am ignoring the argument that the evening reception would be so much better if it was held in the works social club because the room has just been decorated, the room hire is cheap and the beer is cheaper than anywhere else.......because well, IT'S LOCATED AT WORK.

Now how did this post get onto weddings......

....ahhh but it would be a good excuse to add wedding shoes to the collection.