Day 3

**pulls out a fresh tissue**

As Day 3 rolls into Day 4 of the steroids, I am finally slowing down. I slept 5 odd hours last night instead of only 2 or 3; I got tired doing stuff outside and lost all motivation to push myself because of some Go-To-Hell indigestion like a huge meal just consumed which doesn't quite fit the available space. Even when you haven't eaten. Or like a baby kicking your stomach into your lungs @ nine months pregnant when you've just eaten a tiny plate of Christmas Dinner.

Now I want chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

Stupid me, I put a sign on the front door saying "Trick or Treaters will be hung in the trees to feed the Bats" to keep the lil fuckers away should they wander down this far tonight and all that time I should have been inviting them in and mugging them for their chocolate.

Happy Halloween, my good left tit.

Speaking of Halloween, they had this utterly HUGE spider at the Red Shed the other day and dayam, but I wanted it. I could have draped it over the front porch in the dark and put a Party Here sign out on the road frontage and really enjoyed tormenting entertaining the dear wee ones by inserting solar lights with red film over them into the eye sockets.

That's not too twisted, is it? Really? I suppose I could let them keep half their chocolate - the half of each one I don't eat....

Calling time

**pulls out a fresh tissue**

It's 1.35am and I am going to snuggle up with my cards, my wheat sacks and read Deb's copy of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now.

I'm struggling with it a bit, but that might be because it's causing a major shift in my inner Being paradigm.

Or it might be over-adulterated crap like Conversations With God.

It's a bit like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - but without the motorbike, or the scenery. Well, not so far, anyway.

Another sticky situation

I have a sticky one that I haven't managed to solve on the Linux box - every time I log on my IM app it loads an old MSN contact list that still has deleted people on it. If I re-delete them and log it off and back on they are gone, but next reboot they are back. Must be a quirk in that IM version. Half a brain would tell me to stop it running at boot time but I'm usually trashy on PAMS (and now the new shit) etc when I log on upstairs and forget all about it until I'm safely downstairs again and on the "doze box. Like now.

Speaking of sticky, what's brown and sticky? A Sticky is!

Yes, we have a new Sticky!







I like Stickies. I hope he stays around for a while, he can keep me company pottering in the arbor while I'm not well enough to do anything useful.

And speaking of arbors... the grape vine isn't even 10% leafed up yet and already it's got baby bunches all over it. It's only 3 weeks out of bud.

Between the garden, the arbor, the new planned arbor extension, the BBQ and a harvest like is shaping up, it could be a grape summer. If I stay out of the sun - we aren't friends at the moment.

What a difference 12 months brings - in every way. This time last year I was pumping on all cylinders with everything to get out of bed for and now the biggest thing that mattered is gone and I'm just going through the motions.

Today I slept from 1-5.15 pm - longer than I slept all of last night. In the end I couldn't settle until after 4am and was awake again at 6.45, but exhaustion overcame steroids this afternoon and tonight's dose has me wide awake and the stereo cranked up a bit while I decide whether I really want to de-clutter the dining room at 12.30am or work on a web site with fuzzy eyesight, or just fuck about until boredom sets in and sends me to bed...

And etc

This morning I kicked the kids out of bed and got them into the car to school late and then I went to physio at the hospital and then I went to the Red Shed and showed restraint by only buying more or less what I came for and then I went to the supermarket and kinda did the same thing there and then I went to the other supermarket to get Nushie tucker and then I drove home and I brought the groceries in from the car and then I dragged out the big extension cord and mowed the lawn before the rain came - all of it end to end - and then I went to pick up Adam at 12.45 before coming home and tidying up until it was time to throw a jersey on over my gardening clothes and race into the hospital pharmacy for the third time today and back through the 3pm Mummy rush to pick up H who finished early so that I could come home and take some painkillers and crawl into bed with a pounding headache and a throbbing bulging eye and a wheat sack and after a long snooze I went to the supermarket to buy Ads some milk and stopped for a yak with the Old Boy for half an hour before heading home to eat a late dinner and harass the Crazy Quasi Lesbian Lady upstairs (henceforth to be known as CQLL or 'Sequel') after chatting to Flattie on MSN and taking the first dose of my oral methylprednisolone @ 500mg twice a day for five days. And then I got stuck into a new website that needs doing asap. It's nearly 2am and I'm a bit tired now.

As we got out of the car at home this afternoon, H says "Did you know your jersey is on inside out?". I said "I'm so fucked it's lucky my pants are on the right way around".

And then I checked that they were, just in case.

As you do...

H says "Hillbilly".

All this on a bad day. No wonder I'm sick, my candle flames hath meteth in the middle methinks and all but snuffed out and there wasn't even a rusty knight riding a pig on a spit to rescue me. I wonder if there is a windmill nearby to practice tilting on? I'm leaning towards "no"...

Telling porkies

Nush used to dine on piggie bits back in her farm girl days and loved pigs trotters and pigs heads and other assorted porcine things (they go great with rotting possum, I suppose), so I bought her a packet of common or garden domestic pork trotters from the supermarket a few weeks ago. I gave her one; she sniffed. She sniffed again. She mouthed and licked and spat it out, declaring it unfit for canine consumption.

I was gob smacked, how could she not like fresh pigs feet?

So yesterday, when Glorious gave us some home killed bacon, a bacon hock and a couple of trotters, I nearly binned them thinking Nush wouldn't bother.

She bothered all right. She gave one a good going over yesterday afternoon, before leaving it to mature through a night's winds and a morning's hot sun and at lunch time sat down with clean paws and bib tied to feast upon her treasure. Through most of the afternoon. And this evening. She only stopped because it was getting dark and cold and Nush had noshed herself into a state of doggie satisfaction.

I guess it's true, our domestic market produced pork is so bad that even the dog won't eat it.

Truth is a funny thing and I was thinking about it whilst sorting out the last bits of the vege garden this afternoon (as you do). What is THE truth? Is it the same as OUR Truth? Truth is just a subjective thing that carries the weight of personal experience or personal belief based on a million different things, isn't it? Is it not a living, breathing, dynamic thing?

We hold our truths inside; they guide us, they shape our world. We inhale the truth of the world around us, identify and filter out pieces that mesh with and update our own opinions and exhale the remnants of ideas or ideals altered and in doing so grow a little every time we open ourselves up to change. If we don't change, we don't grow. Well, grow up, anyway.

My truths are simple. I am Fabulous, Darling. OK so I'm fat and sick and old and poor and not much to look at on a good day and rather blunt, opinionated and forthright (that's a nice way of saying assertive, which is a nice was of saying stroppy) but I have a wacky sense of humour, can carry a monologue with flair, have nice hair and the tooth all the teeth I have left are my own and sometimes I can be quite sensible and helpful (even more than I am bluntly, opinionatedly and forthrightly assertive in a stroppy sort of way) and if the Simons of this world can't handle it, that's their problem.

Isn't it?

But the truth is that, even being this fucking terrific, I still get to spend my life alone. There is no knight in shining armour on a white steed coming to save me because someone ate his bloody horse when the pork they bought from the supermarket wasn't fit even for the dog. You know, it's no fun being sick all by oneself, even when the drugs are good (which most of them aren't) and that's one Truth I hold to be self-evident.

Of course, I believe in UFOs and justice for all, too.

Whoever said Life would be fulfilling and nurturing was no doubt lying and probably raised pigs.

Strangely enough

I was just about to upload and post the following pics when something really weird happened - FireFox crashed.

OK so I've seen it fall over a few times before, but this is the first time I have seen a message box pop up saying "We are sorry that FireFox has crashed, we will attempt to restore your sessions on restart" or something similar. I immediately thought to myself "Who the hell are THEY and what do they mean that THEY are fucking sorry? They were my sessions that crashed!

What was wrong with a box saying "Ooops, looks like we done gone fuck up again, we'll be right back after you restart all your shit and we attempt to bother retrieving your so rudely terminated sessions for you". Of course, that would be more the Linux type of error message like "Kernal panic" and "dazed and confused but trying to proceed". MY personal fav from that list today is "You can’t do that in horizontal mode." I don't get to do fuck all in horizontal mode.

Speaking of confused, the cops and the dog handler waltzed through the paddock about lunchtime today and didn't stop to say hello. They must have been anxious to catch up with someone, possibly the person who parked this



on the soggy side of the park after jumping a few posts on the way in.

I heard a lot of clanking down the bank so the kids and I, including this big sook



went out to watch as one of Huck's boys pulled it out. Very exciting *yawns*.

Nushie is all sad because the Big Sook has gone home now after 10 days holidaying here and she misses him, so she took my chair off me this evening. Then Tommy took it off her.



I'm not stupid enough to argue with that, he's not really a pussycat.

There was something else I was going to say but I'm carrying double PAMS on board tonight and I can't remember.

Your reprieve - for now

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Let battle commence

Today was neuro day at Outpatients and after a long session with his registrar, I got 15 minutes with The Man to discuss my MonSters active status, overdue MRI films, new symptoms, steroids, DHBs who shit in their own nest and deny their patients treatment options, how to attempt to get around said DHBs and their tanties and why not falling down the stairs is a really good thing. The registrar admired the big bruise on my left knee and ran through a whole bunch of tests. The nurse did the whole blood pressure/weigh in stuff and we discussed natural pest control in the garden and why don't men have handbags cos God knows some of them need 'em.

Outcome? Possible referral to a new neurology locum coming to a hospital near me, long term ideas on how to maintain current medical personnel status quo and a long weekend taking Losec to prepare my tummy for the onslaught of my first 5-day course of high dose oral steroids on Tuesday (as opposed to IV ones which would be a pain in the bum, or hand, or something and turn the whole house upside down while I was hooked up as an in-patient).

The Man ran through a few of the expected physical fallout issues the steroids commonly present at this dosage like upset tummy, "wired" 24/7 and can't sleep (the opposite of the return to MS utter fatigue that I've had again for a few weeks now), fluid retention and weight gain, blurry vision and the high odds that I could turn into the bitch from Hell for a week or two, the latter of which Ads says might be hard to tell the difference anyway. With selling points like that, how could I possibly turn them down? Especially when he said he hoped I'd gain at least 3 and maybe 6 months of settled symptoms and a lessening or disappearance of the latest round of new symptoms that currently have me so worried.

And very worried I've been.

All this and he's a total sweetie too - what more could a girl ask for from her neurologist?

PS The registrar was a she, not a he and very nice she was, too.

Politically speaking

I don't do politics, as you probably know.



Did you get it? Heather got it straight away but I didn't.

While you are pondering that, see whether you are as valuable as you think.

$5190.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

Better get ya chequebook out, I don't come cheap!

See how many died the day YOU were born

125,534 People

FYI 121,671 another people died the same day as the Music did.

See whether your geek factor is slipping like mine is

59% Geek

and see whether you can think of more colours than me - it shouldn't be too hard...

31

and for posterity, these are the ones I could think of:

Aqua, Black, Blue, Bronze, Brown, Cerise, Chartreuse, Coral, Cream, Gold, Green, Grey, Khaki, Lavender, Lemon, Maroon, Ochre, Orange, Peach, Pink, Puce, Purple, Red, Salmon, Sapphire, Silver, Tan, Tangerine, Violet, White, Yellow

and these are the ones I missed...

Alice blue, Alizarin, Amaranth, Amber, Amethyst, Apricot, Aquamarine, Asparagus, Auburn, Azure, Baby blue, Beige, Bistre, Blue green, Blue violet, Bondi blue, Brass, Bright green, Bright turquoise, Brilliant rose, Buff, Burgundy, Burnt orange, Burnt sienna, Burnt umber, Camouflage green, Caput Mortuum, Cardinal, Carmine, Carnation pink, Carrot orange, Celadon, Cerulean, Cerulean blue, Chartreuse yellow, Chestnut, Chocolate, Cinnabar, Cinnamon, Cobalt, Copper, Copper rose, Coral red, Corn, Cornflower blue, Cosmic latte, Crimson, Cyan, Dark blue, Dark brown, Dark cerulean, Dark chestnut, Dark coral, Dark goldenrod, Dark green, Dark khaki, Dark pastel green, Dark pink, Dark salmon, Dark slate gray, Dark spring green, Dark tan, Dark tangerine, Dark turquoise, Dark violet, Deep cerise, Deep fuchsia, Deep lilac, Deep magenta, Deep peach, Denim, Dodger blue, Ecru, Electric blue, Electric green, Electric indigo, Electric lime, Electric purple, Emerald, Eggplant, Falu red, Fern green, Flax, Forest green, French Rose, Fuchsia, Fuchsia Pink, Gamboge, Golden brown, Golden yellow, Goldenrod, Grey asparagus, Green yellow, Han Purple, Harlequin, Heliotrope, Hollywood Cerise, Hot Magenta, Hot Pink, Indigo, Klein Blue, Islamic green, Ivory, Jade, Kelly green, Lemon chiffon, Light blue, Lilac, Lime, Linen, Magenta, Malachite, Maya blue, Mauve, Mauve Taupe, Medium blue, Medium carmine, Medium purple, Midnight Blue, Mint Green, Misty rose, Moss green, Mountbatten pink, Mustard, Navajo white, Navy Blue, Old Gold, Old Lace, Old Lavender, Old Rose, Olive, Olive Drab, Olivine, Orange Peel, Orange Red, Orchid, Pale blue, Pale brown, Pale carmine, Pale chestnut, Pale cornflower blue, Pale magenta, Pale pink, Pale red violet, Papaya whip, Pastel green, Pastel pink, Peach orange, Peach yellow, Pear, Periwinkle, Persian blue, Persian green, Persian indigo, Persian red, Persian pink, Persian rose, Persimmon, Pine Green, Pink orange, Powder blue, Prussian blue, Psychedelic purple, Pumpkin, Raw umber, Red violet, Robin egg blue, Rose, Rose Taupe, Royal blue, Royal purple, Russet, Rust, Safety Orange, Saffron, Sandy brown, Sangria, Scarlet, School bus yellow, Sea Green, Seashell, Selective yellow, Sepia, Shamrock green, Shocking Pink, Sky Blue, Slate grey, Smalt, Spring bud, Spring green, Steel blue, Tangerine yellow, Taupe, Tea Green, Tea rose, Teal, Tenne, Terra cotta, Thistle, Turquoise, Tyrian purple, Ultramarine, Vermilion, Viridian, Wheat, Wisteria, Zinnwaldite

Caput Mortuum? Mummy never taught me that one!

Happy landings

I'm the only person I know who can fall down the bloody stairs (well the bottom two) carrying a computer and not only not hit my head, but not break anything and not drop or bang the computer (not my computer, either, it's the neighbours wot needed a scrub and hose down after the bloke ended up at hotcams.com, amongst others, while looking for a new hot cam for the stockcar that's due on the track next weekend... yeah, sure, *Tui* haha sprung ya, ya grubby bastard).

Of course, there probably aren't too many stupid buggers like me who carry computers downstairs.

Apart from being shaken (not stirred) and having a couple of sore knees and some rather bruised big toes (*shrug* toes?) I think I'm fine. Damn fine *struts like a 95 year old*.

I should have known better - I fell down them same treads nearly 20 years ago when the house was being built. That was before I fell down our ones at home and ripped my knee apart.

No wonder I don't like heights - it's not the fall that kills you, it's the stop at the bottom.

Sacked

I cannot tell a lie; my downfall is toast. It's the universal fodder, innit? Sweet, savoury, neutral (but not carbon neutral, not if it's done right), toast is the one thing appropriate to any time of the day or topping of choice.

Except maybe sardines. Horrible things, I never could get to like those.

But while I was just making my toast and deciding what to have on it, I got to thinking (I heard that groan) just how much for granted we take toast. We trot down the road and buy a loaf of bread. If we are feeling flash we get Vogels or some heavily naturalised loaf product in a fancy brown wrapper. If we are feeling impoverished, we might buy cheaper than chips budget loaf. When I was a kid, Nana used to order a white baracuta which came with a piece of brown paper around its tummy before we exchanged it for ours; if we were lucky Mum might buy us a tank loaf. Later on, she would send us to the shop 3 miles away, on horseback to buy bread at the weekend; she must have known full well that we would eat half of it by the time we got home. I guess it was cheap entertainment to get us safely out of her hair. And it worked.

A few thousand years ago would have been different and in wondering how cooking bread to make toast was discovered, I figured out found out that some Caveman must have accidentally dropped the pre-packaged bread mix into the river (hence the hunter/gatherer label thereafter given to men because they sucked at growing wheat) then burnt it whilst drying it out that night. The name "toast" is thought to come from a mispronunciation of his reply to his wife when she scolded him - "toss it" although there is a school of thought that thinks perhaps it was a misheard translation of her shouting the word "Tosser" at him. Either way, toast is terrific. Get yourself some today!

Speaking of wheat, my hot wheat sacks are all ready and in bed with the cat. Time to go!

Grubby

I've been pottering in my room tonight, cleaning it when I suddenly realised that I hadn't cleaned it in a year. Oh, it's been dusted and vacuumed and tidied, but not all at the same time - it needed cleaning and if ya don't know the difference, you probably haven't cleaned yours, either. There's nothing like being bombed on meds to point out the obvious, eh.

Speaking of meds, I am going to see the neuro's registrar next week and will have a chat to him about the pins and needles in my arms and hands and the numbness in my fingers and toes. Maybe he has some new, magical meds that target the MS instead of the Host for a change, cos God knows I need more drugs, new drugs.

Actually, there are lots of things I need and provision by the Universe of a few of them would mean I didn't need any drugs at all.

I had another thought too but I've forgotten what it was. Oh hang on, I remember. I was thinking about the apparently low IQ J. Public suffers from and thinking that some of them work in industries making up stupid labels for common things that are just ridiculous, specifically, in this case, the label "occasional furniture". Now the rational part of me knows that such furniture is so named because it can be moved and used as the occasion demands, but the other, larger bit of my brain wonders what the fuck the occasional furniture is when it's not being furniture? A car? Like, how many metres/foam squab does a chair do these days, anyway? But then I said to myself, "self", I said, "who is dumber, the person who makes up the label or the drones who perpetuate the mistake by using it?" and I replied "neither, it's anyone who thought that I would have an interesting thought while cleaning my room at 11pm on a Friday night, bombed on meds.

Gotcha!

Dance of the seven wails

For many years, the quote "Give me a child of seven and I'll give you the man" has been attributed to the Jesuits. A quick bit of Googling suggests that this is potentially the opposite of what was originally proposed and that

"The primary source for the origin of the idea of the quotation…is the Ratio Studiorum, a sixteenth century document composed by Jesuits describing the characteristics and structure of Jesuit education."

Seven seems to ace with the Archangels; big with Buddha; churr to the Cherokee; mainstream in Mythology; serious in Sport and in Christianity is everything from the Seven Joys of the Virgin to the Seven Deadly Sins and just like sex six is a natural number. Seven is the primo example of Ancient Wonder and also a part of the title of an awesome song covered by the Eagles.

It's also the age when our babies stop being little kids and start being big kids with a life of their own, thinking and acting independent of their parents. I think I can apply that concept to MonSters, too.

This coming year is looking a little scary - it remains to be seen whether it's scary-good or scary-bad...

Happy birthday, MonSter, let's forgo the pills and jiggle the night away.