If How to look good naked hadn’t started I would have finished that last Debbie with this:

I took Bernard for a walk yesterday at lunch time. He is a very good dog and I don’t bother taking a lead with us. He loves to run ahead along the assumed route and will gallop like mad when you call him back or change directions after he passes. When he reaches a road or crossing point he waits there and if you tell him to sit he totally will. Anyway, we headed out to the meadows [of Grantchester fame] and everything was going fine until we got to the group of cows and bulls gathered under the shade of a tree. As we approached one young bull stepped out and stood in the middle of the path. This bit of the path was tricky because it goes through a ditch and on either side of the path it is completely overgrown and impassible.

So bull is standing on the opposite side of the ditch in the middle, Bernard reaches them first and just freezes. One larger bull saunters over and starts sniffing Bernard and he is just not moving. I tried to call him back but he wouldn’t move. So finally the bull finishes and Bernard runs back to me, I start forward because I will not be intimidated by a bunch of cows and Bernard will not come with me. So I had to hold his collar and walk with him talking soothingly all the while.

We make it through them and Bernard shoots off happy as anything.

On the way back to the office, I noticed that he’d developed a system for travelling through the heat. Since he liked going ahead, he’d reach a patch of shade and wait for me. Once I caught up, he’d run ahead to the next patch of shade until I caught up ad nauseum. So of course when we got back to the office, I expected him to go to his water dish but he didn’t. I had a look and the water was stale and warm so I refilled it, he took two gulps and that was it.

Lovely beast, but completely mad.

On Saturday I put some of our leftover bread out for the birds as usual. There were about six chunks, each about the size of my palm. I scattered them around as usual too. Normally, the birds peck at them for a few days and everyone is happy. On Sunday when I went out to mow the lawn, the bread was gone. I asked Weasel’s parents if they had any idea what could have taken six bits of bread but they were stumped. I know we have a hedgehog or two wandering about [so cute!] and cats always pass through, but we haven’t seen anything else. Our general consensus was that none of them would have taken the bread so it is a mystery. Answers on a postcard please.

I was delighted to receive two Laurell K Hamilton books for my birthday, the latest Anita Blake and Merry Gentry books. I love Laurell’s books, I would rate her as my favourite author [as much as I'd rate anyone like that]. The problem I have is that previously we had a nice balance, there was a lot of plot with sex as a plot point and thankfully on camera and well written. This pleases me since I’m a huge pervert and too many sex scenes are off-camera. Anyway, the balance was good until the last two Merry books and this most recent Anita book. Now they are sex books with very little plot, to the point where part of me wanted to skim the sex and see if there was more plot coming. The other problem is that I feel like I’ve read the same book three times.

I have two theories: first, she’s under obligation from the publisher to produce X number of books whether she’s ready or not; second, she honestly can’t figure out how to get out of some over the series-arching plot points she’s written. I love the Merry books because the faery politics in her universe genuinely fascinate me and I really want to know who is going to win the race to the throne. I love Anita books because the characters are so complex, the situations they find themselves figuring out feel so real, so familiar and I love the conversations and descriptions. I guess more than anything, I’m so sad to see the quality fall so much. I’ll still keep buying them though, I’m in love. My other worry is that she’ll lose fans who aren’t as rabid as me and she won’t be getting new readers based on the latest Anita book. It is porn basically and really only enjoyable if you have the character relationships from the previous 12 [technically 13 if you count Micah] books. Sad.

For the last few days I’ve been waking up tired. It is such a foreign feeling after five months of rest and recuperation. It is walking this line between pushing myself and not pushing myself down. I know I keep repeating this point, it is more for my benefit than yours. I have started using the heart rate monitor my parents gave me for Christmas again [I stopped when illness became too intense] and I’m happy to report that my times to and from work are basically back to normal, although it is harder than it ought to be. Also, my heart rate is running a little high but I expect it to calm the more it gets working again. The ride home today was great, I managed to hold steady at 15mph for at least 10 minutes out of 30. Which probably helps to explain why I wake up tired. I’m going to the gym tomorrow for my first proper work out since December 20th. I’m nervous.

And now How to look good naked is on so I go!

This morning I woke up just after 7 and decided I’d like to sleep more, which took me to 9:15. I had to be at the gym by 10 for my review. I had a very hurried morning which normally I don’t mind, but when I woke up I was surrounded by the cobwebs of a strange dream.

The dream had a section of time with me and Horatio on a very wide train with movie theatre style seating. We were apparently going to Manchester, presumably from Cambridge. Anyway, we had an announcement come over that we were making a two-hour stop in Lewes [this is in East Sussex]. For those of you unfamiliar with English cities, Cambridge is in the east, Manchester is in the north west and Lewes is on the south coast. Dream logic is all crazy. Anyway, Horatio and I got to Lewes and decided to check into a hotel for the two hours [as you do]. Apparently, we were tired and wanted to sleep. On our way out the hotel staff were nice to the point of being very scary, giving us huge drinking mugs with horns on and other things that are vague. Apparently their niceness was because I was pregnant, which is partly why they were okay with giving us a room for two hours. On our way back to the station we ran into some sort of street festival and that’s roughly when I woke up.

So I was very confused and cobwebby all morning.

The gym went okay, happily I hadn’t gained as much weight as I thought I had and I haven’t lost much in terms of weight lifting. Sadly my cardio seems to be way down, but now that I’m cycling to work again and back at the gym I’m hoping it’ll come back rapidly. My ball exercises have suffered a little on one or two movements, but overall very good.

When I got home the weather was so amazing that I decided I’d mow the lawn. I invited Weasel to join me and pull some weeds. She was going to finish her breakfast and come out so I got started. I was nearly halfway when Weasel’s parents called and asked if we wanted to go to Duxford Imperial War Museum as a friend had given them free tickets. Weasel loves Duxford and we don’t see her parents often enough anyway so we agreed and asked for two hours grace. I finished the lawn, had a shower, some food and they showed up.

Duxford was having an air show today, so there were thousands of people there. I got to mock the annoucer guys, at one point he said he was going to pass us over to Neil who would explain blah. So then my phrase of the day was, “and here’s Neil with another interesting fact!” I was entertained anyway. I kept waiting for Rock you like a Hurricane to play. There were some pretty amazing stunts with the helicopters, but all in all there was too much looking up for my tastes, I think I was simply too tired to enjoy it properly.

I’ve decided to buy a hammock. A nice double one on a stand that Weasel and I can sit in and read and have drinks on a nearby little table. Bliss. Hammocks are expensive if you want these things though. That happens to me a lot.

As you all know, I’ve been reading xeney.com‘s archive and I loved this paragraph from August 2001:

I feel pretty strongly that the government shouldn’t be in the business of sanctioning particular types of consensual adult sexual relationships over others. I think it sucks that we even consider getting married to get benefits or to lower our car insurance. Marriage ought to be a matter for religions to deal with; social contracts ought to be available for anyone who wants to enter into them. How much I pay in taxes ought not to be dependent on who and how I fuck, and neither should my health care.

I have always been pro-marriage for anyone who feels the fancy – but I’ve never had someone argue it in this way. Safe, sane and consensual will always be my requirements for most anything.

God my brain is fried. I need sleep post-haste.

I am very quick to think the worst of myself. If I’m having trouble with my homework it is immediately because I’m stupid. It isn’t that it has been five months since I tried to do any. It isn’t that it is because I’m grumpy and hormonal. It’s because I’m stupid.

I am having such a hard time walking this line, pushing myself is all I ever do. I demand near perfection in almost every area of my life. If I don’t succeed it is because of some fundamental wrongness in me, not because of outside circumstances, not because of a one-off mistake. Now I have to stand back and watch while I try to navigate what is normally so easy.

I’m nervous of the gym tomorrow. What if Malcolm doesn’t believe that I’ve been ill? What if the gym music is too loud for me to hear him? What if my teeth get to hurting too much and I have to stop? What happens when the music is loud and all I can hear is my pulse and he tries to explain things? What if I’m so far gone after five months that I have to start over from the beginning? I always think people who see me and listen to me rattle off my usual exercise routine think I’m lying. I wish my body reflected my efforts.

I’ve been trying to do one homework assignment for nearly two weeks and I keep hitting mental blocks. I want to be a counsellor, but I don’t think I can do all the study required. I think I could be an excellent counsellor, but all the knowledge, skills and tools feel so beyond me.

I really hope this is nervousness, hormones, worry and anxiety climaxing and nothing more sinister. This is what happens when you’ve been bitten by depression, not once but twice. It stalks my every bad mood, every strange day, every frightened moment.

And now I can tell myself I feel better because I let this beast out.

Weasel asked me what I had planned for tonight and after a think I got to say, ‘nothing’. I’d decided that I was knackered and I didn’t feel up to doing homework and since tomorrow is my day off I plan to do my homework then. I also plan to make delicious peanut butter cups. I love Reese’s but I only get them when I have other things I need from the importer on eBay, so then I’ll have all the wonderful American food knocking around making me fat, then it gets eaten and I do without until I decide I need more Miracle Whip or similar. Anyway, I like to think that things I make from scratch at home are generally better for me [i.e. no extra salts, fats or preservatives] so I found a recipe for peanut butter cups which will début tomorrow. Yum!

As I was washing dishes tonight, I realised that I had a lot of non-chewable food today. Cream of Wheat, soup, vegan chocolate dessert thing and a yoghurt. I like to chew, this is weird.

I have been looking for a forum for years that meets the following criteria:

• Has at least a 50:50 woman/man ratio [or more women]
• Based in the UK [or at least has a strong UK presence - this is simply because I have enough friends I never get to see, I don't need to add to that list]
• The average member is between 20 and 40 years old – I’d like to get to know some adults now
• Members that will share my interests; like specific books, music, movies, exercise, cooking, gardening etc. My current forums are nice, but if I mention Tori [for example] most either a) don’t know who she is or b) don’t like her, so it is no good to me. With most of the members being teenagers they don’t want to discuss the latter three with me, they’re ‘boring’ topics.
• Active members that are active enough to keep it interesting but not so many that I can’t keep track of who is who
• Isn’t going to shy away from me and my not-socially-normal love life

I have since decided what I am looking for does not exist. Mostly because the British just do not behave in the ways that would make a forum like that successful. Blanket statements never work, so if you know of a good one please let me know.

I guess part of me will always feel lonely, but I do not have the energy or the inclination to invest myself too much into other people. Also, British types do not like it when you come on too strong and if I really like someone I’m not sure how else to do it. In the past I’ve tried being more aloof and taking my time, but that sort of translated into lack of interest and the relationship fizzled before it even started.

I’m all over the place tonight, clearly the ‘nothing’ plan has made me giddy.

I think most of you were around on that magical day in 2004 when I was finally able to announce that I’d had my first orgasm at 23 years of age. Today can be another memorable day, I managed to achieve multiple orgasms! Twice!

I have to credit this with the illness. It sort of forced abstinence on me, I had zero sex drive. It felt very strange, normally I’m already ready [so to speak]. Now that I’m finally feeling more myself [badum-tisch] I was able to catch up from my long dry spell.

My thoughts? Not as exciting as they make it out to be. It was like having one orgasm twice… which is exciting, but I guess reading about it I thought it would be more. I’m not disappointed, I’m delighted. Overall, very enjoyable and I’ll certainly trying making part of my usual activities.