The title comes from a bit of spam I got the other day, I misread the title and it gave me a giggle so every time I see this Debbie I can have a giggle.

I have been reading the xeney.com archive for weeks now and as of now I am officially caught up. I love reading journals. I am the ultimate snoop, if left alone in a strange room I want to poke through everything and see how X works and more. I never do anything like that without permission in real rooms, but my god the internet is full of people who are just opening their doors to you. I get to see inside their houses, their relationships, their bodies [illnesses, pregnancies, conditions and everything in-between] and I love it. Reading the archives of a long-standing site like Beth’s is heaven, it is like a novel only more personable. I have ended up with a lot of ‘mommy blogs’ recently, I am okay with that, but if anyone has any ‘blogs’* that are more in common with me I’d appreciate the heads up.

* God how I hate that ‘blog’ is interchangeable with ‘journal’. Back when I was young we had journals usually as part of an actual real website. Before LJ existed. Later when people wanted to share what they’d been looking at online they could via their web blog as a separate activity. The distinction made sense, everything was fine. Why did blogs become journals? And are there any real web blogs left?

I had a dream last night that I trimmed all my finger nails as usual except my right thumb nail for some unknown reason. So when I woke up I was surprised that they were still long. I only like to trim my nails right before bed so I can have over night to get used to them. I’ve been needing to trim them for about four days but I’ve been too tired to do it so they’re very long now. I had cause to wear gloves this week and I’m not sure how women with scary 2″ nails manage to wear gloves, it was very annoying and a little painful.

Gym was better again today, on the treadmill I did 14 minutes [two minutes walking, two minutes running] for the first time since illness – I was stopping 10 minutes before. Everything else was a little easier, but still challenging.

I have decided I want new glasses and prescription sunglasses. I haven’t had new frames since 1999. So I’m planning to go to two shops that have sales on after my hair appointment on Friday. I am very excited to have them when I get to France at the end of July. I’ll be able to wear the sunglasses out cycling without worrying about contacts at all. I’ll be able to go on walks with Weasel any time I want without having to choose between clear vision or bright lights. Bliss!

My sister told me yesterday that I’m probably her best friend at the moment. I agree, I think she’s probably my best friend too. It’s very strange, I haven’t had a best friend I wasn’t shagging since high school. My friendships have a tendency to be sort of one-sided and I don’t feel that here. I guess it just feels awesome to have someone who knows me so well and still loves me. I love having someone who shares my interests, we cover everything; cooking, exercise, books, music, movies, art, pet care, home improvements, shared histories and anything else that takes our fancy. I’m really loving having someone in my family who I haven’t disappointed in some way.

I’ve booked an appointment to get the grommet fitted. My hearing just isn’t going to come back on its own. I have to wait until the 22nd due to my holiday then the doctor’s. By then it will be over six months since I’ve been able to hear, it went on January 13th. Once my ear is sorted I will be free. My teeth still hurt when my heart rate is up, but I think it is because of the ear.

I ought to mention that my last shopping trip was much more successful. I managed to find two shirts, a long pair of shorts, a shorter skirt and four pairs of perfect shorts. I’ve been trying to find good shorts since 2002. They usually turn out to be too long or two short or in the wrong colour or too big or too small or something. Next had some very cute linen ones in a variety of shades and on sale so I bought four pairs. I’m very pleased. Now I just need to find a few more shirts and I’m done!

It has been pissing it down all day. It has made me feel vaguely gloomy and introspective [like I don't do that enough].

I went to the gym first thing and the lack of traffic and people was noticeable. I did my workout with a lot less pain than last Wednesday and I was able to increase some resistance levels and weights. I also managed to get my ball exercises to a more reasonable 20 crunches, 20 back extensions up to 40 of each. I’m definitely not dead on my feet this time and I’m not sore yet, sure I will be tomorrow.

I decided I wanted pizza for lunch so Weasel and I walked up to the Co-op only for her to realise it wasn’t the credit card she’d picked up but her debit. Recently we switched to making all our purchases on the credit card so we could a) take advantage of the 3.9% cash back on purchases made on it, b) leave our real money sitting in our bank account collecting interest for more of the month and c) be more protected if someone took our card details. Normally it wouldn’t have mattered, but while we were making sensible financial decisions we got a new bank account so we have new debit cards too and she hadn’t memorised the pin yet and you can’t make purchases without a pin. So we walked home.

I managed to not make a bad situation worse by not saying anything on the walk home. My brain is mean when it is angry and denied pizza after working at the gym so it was only suggesting biting sarcastic things to say which wouldn’t have helped the situation. Then I remembered the time we’d gone to Tesco for our full weekly shop and I’d forgotten my wallet. [I cycled home quickly and got it and Weasel wondered amongst the books, games, CDs and DVDs while she waited for me.] So I used that as an opening and we were okay again. She offered to go back but I was worried about her overdoing it post-surgery and pizza was a luxury not a necessity so I was prepared to go without but she insisted. She also said she wanted to try riding her bike again and she’d go to Budgens which is much closer instead. When she got back it turned out she lied and went back to the Co-op. So I had my pizza about three hours after I decided I wanted it.

I had a sluggish few hours until I got too annoyed with myself so I did the mountain of dishes from my cooking adventures yesterday. Then I had a go at my homework again. When that got too much I had a shower and now I’m back with the homework again. It is a very easy assignment in theory, but I cannot get my brain to do it properly. I’m learning about the Egan Model at the moment, it is made up of three phases; explore, understand and act. Basically this translates to where are you now with X situation, where you would rather be Y and finally what can you do to turn X into Y. I love this model, it has taken what I’ve been doing since I was 16 and my Dad told me I had to choose to be happy and made it clear.

My method before was to pause and look at my life to see what wasn’t bringing me happiness then whatever it was I tried to think of ways to get out of that unhappy place and when I figured it out I did it. Example was in 2003/04 when I felt bad about my job, my weight/body and the flat [specifically the neighbours]. At the end of 2003 I had a meeting with work to see what I could change. We tried a few things and after three months I didn’t feel better so I handed in my resignation. They managed to find a part time job that worked for me. In the summer of 2004 I joined the gym to help with my body issues. Finally, in November 2004 we moved. 2004 was also when I had depression again, I was on antidepressants from January to August. I do not like to be unhappy and it is much easier for me to find my way there instead of to joy.

I digress, the assignment. I have to either write 500 words about how I find the model helpful or unhelpful or draw a chart showing the advantages/disadvantages of the model and summarise why I would/n’t use it. Being the sort I am I went ‘ah! 500 words – piece of piss I’ll be done in no time!’. I was wrong. I got about 200 words and dried up. I’d covered all the points I wanted to. I was also fighting the urge to write in bullets. So I decided I’d got it wrong and the chart would be better for me and I tried again. I have had a hard time coming up with different points. I have about six advantages and four disadvantages. I also keep changing tack on my summary. So then I get frustrated and give up only to come back and try to tweak my six points into more impressive points or add to my summary and it isn’t going well.

I was sort of hoping by dumping all the stupid story here it would take the doom and gloom with it and I’d be inspired to finish. It doesn’t seem to have worked yet.

I feel like I should have achieved more today, but only in a vague way so it is just annoying me. I blame the all-day rain.

Picture the scene.

It is late, you’ve been out with friends and now you’re walking home. You pass under a street light that is shining on a newly stained wooden gate.

Your brain filters through this last bit of information and reminds you that you have a white-out pen in your bag. You combine these two pieces of information and glance furtively around. No one in sight, it is dark and the gate is just begging for some of your wisdom.

You take the pen in hand, approach the fence cautiously keeping an eye out for any passers-by and wait for the muse to take you…

‘CUNTY’

Each letter centred individual on a board. There. There is your message for mankind.

Today isn’t over yet, it has been going on for days. I keep waking up around 6:30, no particular reason as far as I can tell. Doesn’t matter what time I go to bed.

Doodle and I took in the first episode of The Riches [starring Eddie Izzard! and Minnie Driver!] over breakfast and we love it, so I’m getting the rest. This is to help sooth the pain of losing both Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars in the last few weeks. VM was amazing and I wish that they would do a fourth season. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but they still have a couple of weeks to save it.

Then we went to the grocery store and picked up the bits and pieces I needed to feed everyone [being Weasel, Doodle and Mish]. I’d planned on sandwiches and crisps with dip for lunch, peanut butter cups for yummy sweet thing and chilli and corn bread for dinner. Unfortunately, everyone was too full of lunch to have dinner. More for Weasel and me! I also made smoothies [mango, orange juice, pineapple, lime juice and banana poured over crushed ice]. I was in the kitchen for hours. I love cooking and half of me wishes I could do this all the time; plan a specific menu, buy the stuff and make it happen. Usually I have too many other distractions or by the time it comes to make dinner I’m exhausted.

Anyway, Mish got here safe and we had some lunch then played games! She brought Munchkins with her which had a bit of a learning curve [for me at least] but was excellent the further in we got. We moved onto Sequence after that and everyone seemed to really love it. We ended with Trivial Pursuit and that was brilliant. We play in a fairly lax way giving hints and allowing multiple guesses, Weasel won as per usual. We’re definitely going to have to do it again soon, I love games. Even better would be if we could find two more people who wanted to come too, six people would open more game doors for us.

I’m very tired so this has lost some lucidity, but I’m also wired so everything is a little too intense. Perhaps this is the time to stop. Tomorrow I’m going to the gym and hoping to weed some more, but we shall see. Then Monday is a lovely plan free bank holiday which I hope will contain at least one movie with my wife.

I know that I focus on the miserable side of life a lot more than the joyous. I’m quicker to bitch about how Weasel doesn’t do X rather than saying how wonderful it was to come home and find that she had: filled the bird feeder, done the dishes [two days worth], made bread and was going to go back to work after she finished wiping the sides. It is very easy for me to think that she spent years staying up to late, working too hard [or not working at all] and not helping around the house. I worry less about her these days so I don’t think to mention her so much.

E asked me today to please consider going into work more. At the moment I work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I cannot work three days in a row so I’m definitely keeping Wednesday off, I go to the gym, get the groceries delivered and clean up a bit around the house. Fridays are equally precious to me, I do homework, go into town if necessary, clean more, call my Mom and have band practice. E has asked me at every review since I switched to part time two years ago if I’d come in more and every time I felt sick even thinking about it, I didn’t this time. On one hand I’m nervous because I haven’t got back into my routine post-illness yet and trying to get my balance back would be hard with another day. Same token though, I haven’t got back into my routine yet, so isn’t this a great time to slot in something else? I know I would not be willing to work a full day, but Friday mornings might be an option. The problem is that I use my Fridays like crazy and if I have to make my 15 days of holiday a year encompass those I’ll be lost. Already 1st June has the morning taken up with a hair appointment [my stylist has Wednesday off too so we have to meet on Friday] and 8th June has a train ride to Leeds for a weekend with the boy in it. I told E I would think about it over this weekend, I think I’ll have to do a pro/con list. I don’t need the money so my only incentive is to help them out and I think that is where I get into trouble in these things, I’m very bad at saying no.

Anyway, enough of that or my brain will explode.

The weather has been amazing for the last couple of days, it feels like summer already. I’ve decided I need to get some new shorts or skirts. So tomorrow I’m going into town and I’m going to try shopping again – clearly I am a masochist. Anyway, weather; cycling in summer is heaven, the paths are clear and dry, visibility is long, the wind feels amazing, people actually smile once in a while, more doggies are out having walks… cycling in summer is just easier. I need to get my bike in for maintenance before the end of July, that’s when Horatio invited me to France with him and his family and we’re totally going to cycle all over everything. It’ll be wonderful.

I bought a hammock today! I was at work and I was grumpy [no lunch break and I didn't leave until 5 - long day] so I decided to just do it. I bought the boldblue one with blue fixings – basically the one in the main photo. Very excited for it to arrive.

Gym tried to kill me.

I’m glad we’re back on speaking terms again.

I managed the full 40 minutes of cardio and I even did the running. The rower and the stepper [both of which I love] were harder than I wanted them to be.

I even managed to get 40 on-the-ball crunches in – I had to do one set of 10 and two sets of 15 though breaking them up with on-the-ball back extensions. I used to do all 40 in a row. So good and bad being back.

Sadly I was completely broken by the time I got home so I haven’t done much of anything else. I received a grocery order, watched Legend [which was just how I remembered it] while trying yet again to get rid of the piles of paper that like to plague my desk. I managed to shred a lot of it, the pile is much smaller. However, I have a lot of random crap I don’t need [small candles, face mask, three pairs of broken headphones, old postcards] and I don’t know what to do with them. I think I’m going to have to make a project – go through the whole house listing everything we don’t need then dividing the list into sell and give away. Creating more work for myself is the perfect way forward.

I have vague plans to go into town on Friday morning to try yet again to see if there are any clothes for me to buy. I’ve bought a few things online but I’ve had to return half my order every time because things just don’t look right on me. For all my efforts I have two new shirts, two summer night gowns and a set of three tank tops that I’m not sure I ought to be keeping anyway. I just wish there was something I could do to achieve a normal figure. Even if I lose more weight around my tummy the fact remains that my shoulders are significantly wider than my hips – in fact if I lose the stomach, I might even look more ridiculous. I’m stopping here because I could talk for hours on my odd shape.

This morning was my morning to sleep in and catch up with myself, but someone decided to call random numbers without double checking what they were dialling at 7:15 this morning. I couldn’t get back to sleep. My plan for revenge is to call them at 5:30 on Sunday morning and ask for Mike. It wouldn’t make sense to them but it would sure as hell make me feel better.

Not that I’m petty. Or bitter.