You know the non-existent obesity epidemic that’s sweeping the western world? I have been trying to figure out what the goal of it is. I’ve decided it is all about fashion. Fat people [including myself] generally have stretch marks, they jiggle in strange ways, they can’t fit in size 8 clothes, a lot of them don’t cover it up properly when they’re out and about… and since the skinny jeans were fashionable the fat people [myself excluded here - give me boot-cut any day] bought skinny jeans and everyone realised how fat everyone looked in them [everyone [excluding supermodels] looks fat in skinny jeans]. So my theory is this: if they marketed clothes with enough variation that ‘fashionable’ would be flattering on everyone. You just pick a different part of fashionable to compliment yourself, you’ll still be with current fashions but it won’t matter what shape or size you are.

When I started this paragraph on Thursday I wrote: Today I went for my walk then came home, rolled out my new yoga mat and popped in one of the yogalates DVDs. I did the warm-up exercises then the first section which happened to be abdomen. Then I sat down for a long time. My hips got increasingly stiff and my knees reminded me that they needed to hurt some more today so I said fine. Stood up and made a shepherd’s pie. It is sitting on the stove all ready to go in the oven. When dinner time rolls around we’ll heat it up, eat half and freeze half. My next project is chilli.

Now we’re back to today… it has been raining for the last few days. Nice big drops that make noise on the window [not that I can hear it, but I know from previous experience that they do]. I adore the rain. Growing up in Idaho there wasn’t a lot of rain about, we had more than enough snow and a few good thunder-and-lightning storms in the summer; but not the wonderful rain that covers our fair British isles. It smells amazing and it always cheers me up. On Easter Sunday though, we had snow and some neighbours built a snow-bunny.

I’ve been craving French Toast. So much in fact that it featured in my dream last night. I’ve also been dreaming about high school a lot lately. I dreamt about Melissa W twice and I’m not sure why, we weren’t close friends. Night before last I dreamt of my friend Dustin and I wondered when I’d dream about Brett. Last night I went to two family reunions, one for each side of the family. Brett was at the latter one; and he had the bread for French Toast… and a very strange movie called Click which everyone refused to watch. See, the DVD menu had like 20 options on it, the same story told from 20 different perspectives, the problem was that you couldn’t get the whole story without watching each one so it took like 10 hours to watch. Also, my brain suggested the latest reality TV show. Girl in strapless dress wanders around town ‘falling out’ of her dress while a crew films the hilarious results.

Dear god, please please please let me stop dreaming soon.

Oh, yeah, the French Toast. Weasel and I collected lovely baguette from the shop this morning, so we had French Toast for lunch. It was heaven. Never has French Toast tasted so good.

I share this pictures with you then go do more yogalates as I told myself I must do it every other day to supplement my walks. The last DVD for my yogalates collection arrived this morning so I have no excuse to be fat anymore. I hope.

Yeah, people microwave cheese… all by itself… in the original packaging. Yes we spent over £12 on half a wheel of spicy cheese. We love cheese. We routinely have five kinds in the fridge for our cheesy desires. Mmm cheese.

I wish I could figure out how to complain in an entertaining way. But I’m not sure if what I’m doing here actually counts towards complaining? Isn’t it just good old fashioned whining?

One last thing… this is probably too much information for you, but I need to share. My hair is naturally dirty blonde-ish coloured and I dye it red. My pubic hair has always been a much darker brown. Always. Today after my shower, I was putting on lotion and I realised it had changed colour and was a nice dirty blonde. I’m not sure why my pubes changed colour or how. As for when I’m not sure, as I don’t examine my pubes every day, I’m fairly certain that I would have noticed the change fairly quickly. The why/how is troubling.

I’ve updated my illness page today, if you’re interested.

I like to open the door of Weasel’s office and put Fergus’s head around the edge to look in at her. It makes us both laugh.

I think that one must be clumsy, have children who cause mischief or make poor choices in order to have a truly entertaining… blog [gag]. I do not own a car or house so I can’t update you on the state of either. I prefer to keep the focus of my site on me with occasional guest stars like Weasel and Horatio. If I mention anything even slightly controversial about Weasel you can guarantee that I asked her if it was okay for me to post it. I do not belong to any of the ‘traditional’ fun blogging groups. To that end, I’ve decided that I’m going to put a third column in with links and get rid of a lot of the network-y things I collected. It was an interesting experiment, but I think the best thing to do it to keep commenting on websites I do like and hope I can attract people here just by being me.

Yesterday while I watched the entire fifth season of Sex and the City I wrote down a few things I happened to think about:

• I’ve been having dreams that border on nightmares. I’m fairly certain it is a side-effect of one of the medicines I’m taking.
• I want a Tequila Sunrise so bad. The beautiful colours, the cold, wet… yum!
• We know what’s wrong with our bread machine. We caught it in action. It was overheating and instead of cooling itself and starting again it just stopped. We let it cool a bit then used the bake setting and thankfully the loaf turned out okay.
• I find myself oddly possessive of Fergus. If other people pet him or talk to him.
• One feature of my current lifestyle is that I’ll randomly have to stop what I’m doing and rinse my nose out. Who has to do that? Seriously!?
• I was thinking on my walk home yesterday about my future. No job, I’d be a stay-at-home… what? Not a stay-at-home-mum*, housewife? Married to the house. What is the point of me? What was my point before? What has really changed?
• What percentage of actors/artists are left handed?
• My saddle nose fascinates me, I run my fingers over it all the time and try to find objects that fit in it, like pens.
• We woke up to snow on Easter morning. Weasel took some amazing photos, I want to share them with you but they’re trapped on her phone right now.

* The acronym for this is SAHM – which I always read as ’sham’.

Weasel and I have acquired some yogalates DVDs and a yoga mat. I am annoyed that I cannot do my usual exercises so I’m hoping that the yogalates will be gentle enough that I can do something every day to supplement my walk. I’m really excited about it.

I take my listening device to bed with me every night so Weasel and I can have our usual chat and snuggle in peace. Last night, I put my headphones on, turned the device on and noticed that I had a hangnail. Instead of taking off the headphones I took the device with me. I went into the dressing room and rummaged in the little pot of make-up accessories and got the nail clippers and fixed my hang nail.

Then I went to the library and got an old notebook and wrote this down:

I’ve actually forgotten how much noise occurs in every-day life. Creaking floor boards. Light switches. Alarm clocks. Breathing – my own especially. The sound of a pen writing on paper.

Think about all the white noise that’s around all the time. I cannot hear any of it. My head has been so quiet. I cannot wait until I have the hearing aids and I can participate in life again.

Yesterday I went to the post office and I put the microphone of the listening device in the tray bit where you can pass packages and money to each other under the glass. When I was putting my change in my wallet he spotted the microphone and picked it up. I had to say it was my microphone so I could hear him and he was all apologetic thinking he’d been shouting at me or something. When I have the aids I’ll totally be able to be stealth about my deafness.

You know all the pain I’ve talk about? It is called roving pain in the WG circles. Every day I wake up and find where the pain shows up. Yesterday it was in my right elbow, my left hip and my knees. Today it is in my hands, feet and knees. Last night I even let Weasel place bets on where the pain would be in the morning. She thought it would be my left elbow and right hip. I said I thought it would be my feet and knees. So I totally won. It is a hollow victory.

My god the injection kicked my ass. Or the depression has finally kicked in. Or my hormones are taunting me. Or a combination of all of these. I spent the first few days of the week either asleep or on the sofa. My joints [hips and knees mainly] have been fucked. My muscles still get grumpy if anything touches them.

I’ve watched more Sex and the City than I care to think about. I think that overall I do not like the show. However, because the show is vapid I don’t have to use any of my limited brain power to follow it. Their ‘problems’ are so superficial that I get to engage my brain thinking how stupid they are and how they brought their problem on themselves and if they did X, Y and Z everything would be fine. And what a boring show that would be. So using it as a distraction from my problems worked; without it I find myself crying when I stop watching, as thoughts of how crappy things are at the moment come up again.

I actually feel depressed for the first time with this illness. I have done for about two weeks, but part of me was really hoping it was just hormones. I’m going to talk to my GP Friday after next when I see him. I’d like to see about counselling. I just hate not being able to plan. I have no future because every day is so different. Case in point: I had my vasculitis appointment yesterday and I was nervous about it. So I had some nice adrenaline to keep me pain free and cheerful. I knew I would crash today as a result. I was right. I woke up at 9:30, took my drugs and went back to bed. I didn’t wake up again until 1pm. My knees, elbows and hands have been bad today. Ibuprofen helps.

Appointment went well, I only have one more injection to do then we’ll switch to oral medications. I see them again in four weeks. I have to have another bronchoscopy to see what’s happening with my lungs. She described me as ‘resistant’ to the immunosuppressant drugs and it definitely makes sense. It also explains why it is taking me so long to feel better. My legs were full of water for a couple of days so I’m now on water tablets too. The fun never ends.

I’m trying so hard not to be bitter or angry. I’m tired of blocking myself at every turn and filtering everything. I know I can’t have my ‘old’ life back, but I very much want to know what my new life is going to be already. I’ve been in this lost middle ground zone for so long, I want to start moving again.

I’ve seen a few posts recently on other websites talking about X things to do before X age/before they die. I’ve never had a list like that before and I’m not sure what I’d put on one. I’m not big on travelling. I’m already married. I don’t want children. My main goal has always been ‘be happy’. I was there, then I got sick.

Friday night I went to bed as usual around 10:30pm. I woke up at 9:30am Saturday morning, took some drugs and decided to go back to sleep. I woke up again at 1:30pm, in pain. Heard Weasel cough next door and called her in. I was too groggy/pain-filled to figure out how to make the pain stop. So she helped me [told me to take ibuprofen], rubbed my legs a lot and fell asleep with me. I got up at 3:15pm.

I went back to bed around 11pm. I slept through until 9:30am and while I was thinking how fortunate I was that the extra long night the day before hadn’t fucked my sleep up I fell back asleep until 10am. I made myself get up.

And now it is 9pm and all I can think is that I just have to finish this soup and then I can go back to bed.

I don’t know if this is a side-effect of Friday’s injection or a new feature of my illness. Either way I hope it passes soon, I have other things I want to do.

I decided today I’d write a list of things that make me happy or that I just enjoy, but my mind came up with nothing. Equally, I don’t think I could write a list of unhappy things. I think everything is just so spur-of-the-moment for me lately. I’m not used to this living each day as it comes malarkey. Or using words like malarkey.

I can tell you I’ve been watching Sex and the City, Eleanor lent all the boxsets to me; I’m 1/3 of the way through season two. Spoilers ahead for those of you who care. In season one Carrie broke up with Mr Big because he didn’t consider marriage an option at any point in the future and she wanted to be in a relationship with a future – so she broke up with him. That was the right thing to do and she handled it fairly well. In this season she misses him and ends up rekindling the relationship. She is annoyed because he doesn’t make room for her in his life. She has a point, he makes her carry around hair dryers, underwear, make-up, tooth brushes and lord only knows what else all day so she can spend the night at his place. So instead of talking about it, she starts leaving a few things there. It builds to a point and Mr Big packs everything up and brings it to her place and says its a few things she left. She says she left them on purpose and a few heated words are exchanged. Finally, she asks what he wants – he replies that he likes things as they are. Now, in almost every other relationship I know, the next question would be what does she want. He doesn’t ask and she doesn’t tell so they exchange more heated words and break up.

I know this is a huge over analysis of nothing of consequence, but my life is pretty empty at the moment so work with me.

I get so annoyed watching people who are supposed to represent certain aspects of humanity fuck up so badly. She is supposed to be successful, single woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it. She definitely is not that.

I had an ENT appointment today. Nothing has changed in the last three weeks, so we mostly talked about my hearing [or rather the lack thereof]. I had another hearing test, my hearing is definitely still okay it is just glue ear in both sides. They would like to place grommets, but the last we knew my Vasculitis guy was against them. We’re not sure why, so when I see him next week I’m asking. Meanwhile, they’ve put me on the waiting list for hearing aids. The more I think about it today the more appealing they become.

The problem with grommets is that they will fall out within a year – possibly even a month after and my ears could plug up again and I’d be right here again. It is surgery and it damages my ear drums. Let’s day that this ‘flare’ of the WG calms down and I enter a quiet phase, the grommets fall out and I get a flare. Are my ears going to plug every time I get a flare? We don’t know. I’ve not had a quiet phase/flare cycle yet. The hearing aids don’t mean I can’t get grommets later. They will make it so I can hear people talking to me. I’ll be able to hear well enough to go shopping on my own with confidence again [I still can't get to the shops very well, but that's another issue]. I’ll be able to ride my bicycle safely. I still have a week to think things over and do some research. I’ll see the ENT guys in another six weeks, hopefully I’ll be seeing the audiology guys before then.

We had big plans, we were going to walk to the hospital for my appointment then walk home. We barely made it there. We were both coughing and very tired. Weasel called Stoat and he came and collected us. Very grateful for him and his willingness to drop everything and escort me [us] to various appointments. He is coming round at 7:45 tomorrow morning to take us to get the cyclophosphamide injection. I prefer him to drive us when the appointment is that early because it means I can sleep a little more. When you ideally want a minimum of 10 hours a night you have to plan for these things. I’ll be going to bed early tonight in anticipation. Additionally, I’ll be very lazy this weekend because these injections are known to kick my ass.

While at the hospital, I sang ‘a bachelor’s life for me’ to the tune of Hi-diddle-dee (An Actor’s Life For Me) from Pinocchio. When Weasel queried the bachelor part I said that it was great because you could replace any two-syllable word in the lyrics. So we went through several careers, like ’shoe lace’ [I wanted shoe something and I was having trouble coming up with a related one-syllable word]. Anyway, we ended up in disagreement about ‘bachelor’; Weasel says it has three syllables and I say it only has two. The difference is in pronunciation – bach-e-lor vs. bach-lor. I wondered if it might be an American/British difference like ‘figure’ where I [American] say fig-ure and Weasel [British] says figger. We couldn’t reach a conclusion.

My quest to get to bed early tonight means I must go; I may be in an injection fuelled silence for the next few days. Come up with two-syllable careers in my absence. Thank you.

I’m re-reading Not quite what I was planning just after I finished it. Because there is no plot to remember or characters to keep track of every read is like reading it for the first time. So today when I read ‘never could resist overachieving’ I actually got it; I didn’t the first time round.

Smith Magazine are still accepting submissions so I submitted this today:

I’m still trying to choose happiness.

Thankfully when I woke up today I wasn’t in pain – hurrah! Weasel and I got put together and she very kindly escorted me to the hair dressers. They worked their lovely magic on my pitiful hair and now we have this:

My natural colour is a fairly boring shade of light brown/dark blonde that makes me look sort of… washed out. This colour looks divine on me and I love it. On top of that, when it fades over the coming months it fades to a shade that doesn’t look awful against my roots. Having the proper length and wispy bits back has made me very happy indeed.

I don’t love how my face looks at the moment [the steroids give me 'moon face'] so that’s why you just get to see the back.

I used powerful internet powers to create a bookmark/tab icon. I’m not in love with it, but graphics have never been my strong point, so if someone feels like making an .ico for me please feel free! Send it to ezekiel[at]periwinkleblue. Thanks.

When I called Horatio tonight I asked him if he still has his old Manchester phone number. I’m awful at memorising phone numbers [case in point, we moved offices in September 2006, I still don't know my work number - granted I've been off work since October 2007, but the point stands] and I wanted him to forward his old number to his new one [est. September 2007] so I could stop worrying about it. I assume I’ll get better the more I dial it; now that I can talk on the phone comfortably again. My telephone amplifier works great for the most part. If I hold the handset a certain way I can get feedback, but I’d rather avoid that and 10 other spots than give up being able to hear a bit.

Anyway, he said he was glad to be rid of the old number because he’d get calls from telephone people. Me being me immediately thought of people calling to sell telephones… ‘Umm I already have one? Thanks for calling.’ It made me laugh. Thinking it over now, I realise he probably meant calling plans or similar for telephone companies… I blame the drugs.