Oh Paddy will you carry me? I think I've lost my way

I’m not very good at this any more, am I? All of my good intentions have gone out of the window – I just never seem to feel like sitting down at the PC and writing anything. In January I at least had excuses for it – now I have none.

Part of the trouble is that there is not a lot to say. The weather is, on the whole, miserable, and my mood matches it. I’ve been feeling pretty down in the dumps lately. This is despite, or maybe because of, the fact that I’ve had a birthday since I last posted. As birthday’s go it was ok, although nothing to shout about. I decided that I would replace my food processor for my birthday present from Chris, and even that didn’t work out well, as we got back from John Lewis only to find we had the wrong one. I had to go back and change it the next day. Going to John Lewis to choose a present – that was my birthday treat. I made the mistake of taking Chris, who moped around the shop after me so that I felt pressured and left as soon as I could. We had lasagne & chips for dinner though, so at least that made up for it a bit.

The day before we had Dad & Pat over for lunch. I’m not quite sure how I ended up cooking lunch for my birthday, but I did. I had a half shoulder of lamb in the freezer though, so treated us to that. Chris doesn’t like lamb, so I got him a pork steak. Also Dad wanted me to look up some car insurance quotes for him online. I tried to explain what a pain it was, but he wanted me to go ahead anyway. In the end though, we didn’t get anywhere and he ended up deciding he would have to phone round. And I got really upset when I kept trying to tell him about my car insurance, and neither he nor Chris would let me speak. I shut up in the end. I have to ask myself how many times have I realised that it’s just best to keep my mouth shut and not say anything. Either I say too much, or no-one is interested in what I have to say, or I try and be helpful and everyone takes it the wrong way. I often wish my brain would just refuse to let me talk anymore.

I’ve given up on the idea of writing too. I am not getting anywhere – I don’t seem to have the discipline. I thought I had a fairly good plot outline until Chris found a few scribbled notes and laughed at them and said they were just weird. And I tried to envisage actually going ahead and writing something and sending it off to publishers, and I realised that I would never actually find the courage to let people read it. I couldn’t face being laughed at. And Chris would be worst of all. I am trying to read more though. I feel my brain it atrophying. All I do is watch rubbish TV and walk the dogs. Conversations are with dog walkers only. Which reminds me of another problem with the writing thing – I have absolutely zero social skills, so there is no way I’d be able to write decent, or even half decent conversations.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, reading. I used to read a lot (well I’ve studied enough in my lifetime). But in recent years I’ve found my concentration has got worse and worse. I can’t even concentrate on the TV for more than a few minutes at a time. I used to put it down to work stress, and I’m pretty sure that’s what started it. But it seems to have snowballed. I can read a decent novel for quite long periods, but anything else and my brain switches off after 5 minutes. But I’m trying to read more anyway, in the hope that even if I only read for short periods of time initially, the ability to read for longer, and to take in what I’m reading, will return. I have also been encouraged with the recent findings that show the brain increases in size with activity, and that this can happen throughout your lifetime. So there’s hope for me yet.

Our latest problem is that Chris’ PC gave up the ghost on Saturday morning. He started getting warnings that the CPU was overheating on Friday, but by Saturday morning it would not boot at all. It was due for replacement though – he’d just been putting it off because of all the hassle of re-installing programs and moving all of his data over. So we went out and bought a new top of the range HP PC, with an i7 chip, 8 gb of Ram & 1.5tb of hard drive. Trouble is, he can’t get the stupid thing to work properly. It’s Tuesday now, and he’s spent 3 and a half days on it. This morning it was blue screening on him. I wanted to take it back, but it at least seems stable for now. It seems the worst of the problems was caused by Zone Alarm, which doesn’t want to work with 64 bit machines. Of course, a load of the Windows 7 updates have refused to install. I think he needs to re-install Windows from scratch, but he’s not sure how as none of these PCs come with discs any more. And I’ve got well and truly hacked off by people telling me he should have bought a Mac. For a start he doesn’t like them. For another thing, the last thing you want to hear when you’ve just spent an entire month’s salary (well pension) on something is that you should have bought something else.

Is that it? I doubt it, but I can’t think of anything else to say at the moment so I’ll leave it there and post it.

Welcome to Reality

I had a lovely birthday on Sunday. Ok I was cleaning & cooking in the morning, but after that it was lovely. We had a really nice piece of roast pork: it was from a farm just up the road – not sure of the breed but it was some special breed. I slow roasted it, and it just fell apart. The flavour was beautiful. We had profiteroles for dessert. This is me on the sofa with Dad, Pat and Max after lunch…



And here’s a nice shot of Pat & Max…



I had a new small shoulderbag for my birthday – I wanted it to take when walking the dogs and it’s a sort of camouflage colour, so it shouldn’t show the dirt! I had a Gorillapod (a small flexible tripod) for the camera as well, plus the Bowie Reality CD and a couple of computer games. Problem is one of the games (Grand Theft Auto IV) won’t work on my laptop, which is a blow. I also had money, so am planning to get some make up that I can’t really justify the expense of otherwise.

Of course, Jez couldn’t let my birthday pass without playing up for Christopher when he took her for a walk before lunch. He had to take her over Canford Heath as they’d closed Delph Woods for maintenance work, which meant there were loads of dogs over the Heath. Chris lost her for over 40 minutes, although he did know roughly where she was and occasionally catch sight of her.

On the subject of Jez, the lump on her side doesn’t look very nice. I think it’s slightly ulcerated, so I’m bathing it in salt water to see if it will clear up. If it doesn’t it will have to come out. As for her leg, I tried giving her her anit-inflammatories for 4 days, and she didn’t seem to hold her leg up as much. She was also a lot livelier. More importantly though she has clearly been worse since coming off them again. I’ve put in a call to her orthopaedic vet today, as this would suggest she’s in pain and that holding her leg up isn’t just habit. I had a chat with her physio today again, and wondered whether we were aggravating it on her walks. Interestingly, I didn’t throw things for her to chase on our walk today and shortened the walk slightly and she seems to have been slightly better.

Let me see – what else. Well it’s been very cold her the past few days. The wind has been bitterly cold. We even had a few flurries of snow today. Then yesterday, at 7.30am, I was rudely awakened by the doorbell: it was the men delivering our bookcases & bedside cabinets. I ask you – what sort of time is that to get people up? I had to answer the door in my pyjamas.

Tuesday therefore we put together the big bookcase (the small one was already made up as it was the display model). I also put together the 2 bedside cabinets. Since then I’ve been busy sorting things out, putting them away, moving stuff around. It’s slowly coming together though. I did find some interesting things when clearing out though. Well, I say ‘interesting’ – more ‘why have I still got that’. In one of the old bedside cabinets were all of the cards we received when we got married. Trouble is, I can’t quite bring myself to throw them out. I also found all of the exam papers from my O and A levels (school exams we used to take at 16 and 18 for you non-Brits). I haven’t thrown them out yet – I thought I might try a few out on you in the coming days.

Well I think that’s about it for today. I’d better get this posted.