I try, I really do!

Dumbo here went and bought a bunch of yarn for Christmas knitting yesterday and misremembered the U.K. equivalent of worsted yarn. I know have an excess of DK rather than Aran.
Moral of the story?
Don't yarn shop on impulse when you accidentally pass a yarn selling shop. When will I learn to bloody well write down things and not rely on memory - which I know to be rubbish. I should have restricted myself to the bamboo dpns which I knew I needed in 3mm for plane knitting and left it at that.....
::sigh::
I guess I'll be ransacking Ravelry for DK neck warmer patterns now.....if you've any ideas then flag 'em up for me please!

Moving on.
I am not one of Pavlov's dogs. (obviously)
Arimidex=worsening hot flushes - especially *sugar* connected ones.
But, I don't learn. You'd think that if you ate something with sugar in and then had an evil hot flush a few minutes later you'd start to associate them with the sugary things and not want to eat them any more. Nope, not here, doesn't work. I crave sugar, eventually cave and eat something sweet, have hot flush, throw open windows or pull off jumpers or remove socks or all of the aforementioned, curse myself for eating sugar. Rinse and repeat.
Utterly dumb.
Of course, it's pretty hard not to have any sugar but I hardly eat fruit; *definitely* no fruit juices - they're pure sugar; I fall down over cake/biscuits and I go through phases of craving coke (during which I loathe myself). But most of the time - water only. Really. Just water. By the pint.
If I'm on my own I probably won't eat hot food either. Eating anything will bring on hot flushes - so I put off eating until I'm really hungry, at which point I'm really hungry so I eat anything quick and easy. Hello biscuits. ::sigh::
I'm guessing the homoeopath may increase my Belladonna dosage in a couple of weeks time. Which helps. But it doesn't cure it all. Which is what I want. I'd like to sleep on my nice 100% cotton sheets as opposed to the poly-cotton mix ones which dry out more quickly when you're sweaty at night. I'd quite like not to be the person in my office still sitting there in t-shirts whilst everyone else is in sweaters.
::sigh::
End of whine.
Drip.

Grumpety grump

Hmm - grumpy old me this evening.
My birthday blood test looked like this:
Mother of all bruises - yes?
In good news, the bone strengthening tablets have been approved, so no more Pamidronate drips and therefore only a bloodtest every 3 weeks - which up until now have been mostly uneventful. This was a deep vein and despite me pressing down on it for *ages* it still made this mess. I looked very dodgy when I forgot about it and rolled up my sleeve when out for dinner on my birthday evening!


In other grumps - I'm annoyed that I'm such a noble, rule-abiding and forgetful person. If I weren't then I wouldn't have arranged to both go out for lunch with a friend *and* take brownies bowling after church parade at the same time tomorrow afternoon. And therefore wouldn't be texting my friend to ask if we can do tea instead, persuading the Dear Other that he wants to come to a bowling alley for lunch since otherwise there will only be two adults for bowling and refilling and printing permission forms since the original ones were for going to the cinema and there are now a different collection time and place and I couldn't bring myself to not have the t's crossed and the i's dotted. I know things will most probably be fine and I will be fussing over nothing - but if something required someone going to the hospital in a hurry (bowling ball to the head?!) and the forms were wrong we'd be in a bit of a hole.
So now I have to be nice to parents and ask them to refill forms.
And I'm annoyed that if I'd *remembered* this was going on before last night then I would have checked the cinema listings and I wouldn't be trying to reschedule lunch etc etc.

And Jane - if you're reading this, *this is not your responsibility* - we all knew you were going to be away and should have sorted it out for ourselves! We're big girls (and supposedly qualified!).

So, I'll be watching bowling tomorrow since I don't think bowling with a lymphoedemic arm and hand is a sensible option....instead of meeting Sarah's new fellow and having Sunday lunch. Must tell her that now!

In other news, my recycled Sari silk yarn has finally arrived (although mine looks bluer in colour, which disappoints me.....). Some of it has been washed and is drying and some more needs to be done. I've read that that makes it softer for knitting with - plus it's got little bits of straw and the like in it and I'm hoping that washing will have removed some of that. My bathroom laundry airer is festooned with lovely yarn :) (this may make having a bath in the morning something of a challenge.....)

Shiny!

An impression of my brain currently:
Lalalalalalalalalala - ooh! Something shiny! Ooh! Something else shiny! Ooh! Something chocolate! Lalalalalalala! Why am I in here? - oooh, something shiny! Damn! Why didn't I do what I just went to do?! Oh, shiny! Grrrrr.

- Please sirs, I want a brain transplant.
- What! [consternation] Ungrateful girl! A brain transplant! I never heard the like!
- But please sirs, it's my birthday next week - so it could be a super gift - I wouldn't even ask for giftwrap.....
- [burble of outrage]
- Ooh, shiny chocolate!

Pah. Grrr. Huh.

Chemobrain strikes again.......

Mental note to self:
It's generally better to turn up at Sainsbury's with your wallet rather than just a stray £5 note in your purse. This will lead to less embarrassment at the tills when you can't pay and will also enable you to take home your shopping and not have wasted half an hour wandering round the supermarket.
M-kay? Have we got it now? Have we realised that self is to be treated like a 5 year old heading out to school on all occasions?

Everyone else who remembered to take their money/wallets etc with them today: Any rethinks on the t-shirt situation yet? I think the Idiot Grrrl is taking over here and I'm losing my sense of humour with her......

Idiot Grrrl

The Idiot-Girl strikes again.
I am so stupid sometimes.
Sometimes, I think that it's no wonder I have cancer, why should someone who makes idiotic mistakes be here. Natural selection and all that.
Yes, I'm over-reacting and being hysterical and shortly I shall calm down, remind myself that I am not perfect, I have not caused the world to explode in flames and forgive myself somewhat.
But in the meantime I am still the woman who cannot arrive at an appointment that is written down clearly in neat writing, in my diary, on the correct page, written by me, at the correct time.
And if I cannot get something this simple right (it required me to walk round the corner, no more than about 3 minutes, to my GP's surgery - a place I know where it is. All I had to do was put my coat on and go.) then how the hell am I supposed to think of myself as a capable, competent person.
Here I am, contemplating going back to my work and I simply cannot if I can't rely on myself. I catalogue in an academic library. Cataloguing requires accuracy and getting the tiny details right - the tags, the punctuation, the spelling, the dates, all the little details - they've all got to be absolutely correct; because that's the only way you can later be sure that the book you have in your hand is the same as the one in the record. Or that the book you will find in our library is the one you want/isn't the same as another one you've already looked at. You get it right. And I was good at it. I was fucking good at it. And it's not that I've forgotten what to do. Like today, it's not like I forgot how to tell the time, or how to read, or how to walk. My brain just doesn't seem to retain, to remember, to connect things up in the right way. I can know what I'm supposed to be doing, I can think that I'm doing the right thing but then discover I'm not or I haven't. How the hell can I trust a damn thing I do?

So, anyway, I blithely arrived at the GP's surgery to check in for my 4.20pm appointment to be told that my appointment was at 4pm and I'd missed it. And I said 'no, I've got it written down' and fished out my filofax to show and lo and behold, it said 4pm; at which point I started crying (because this is so worth crying over - not). Well, yes it is, for the reasons above and also because I have permission to move to Ibandronate - the tablet form of Pamidronate - the bone strengthening drug I'm on; as long as my GP agrees (and what that means is, as long as they agree to meet the costs of it - well, they don't pay for it, the NHS pays for most of it and I pay the prescription charge of £6-whatever. I guess the local NHS Trust is somehow responsible for prescribing drugs that don't break the NHS bank) Anyway, I wanted to try and get that OK-d before I'm due for my next drip - which is a week on Friday - because of the old then-we-don't-have-to-stick-a-cannula-in-you......but I missed the appointment, her next available appointment is the 12th of March so I'm bollocksed.
This, of course, was also going to be the first time I met her properly as my new GP and now she'll think I'm a time-wasting nuisance. Brilliant first impression - no?
So, stupid, stupid, stupid.
So I cried, and apologised massively and walked home berating myself. It's funny, but since cancer I find myself fairly frequently walking down the street crying and/or talking to myself. No-one has ever yet asked me if I'm OK......
No, I'm not OK; but I'll survive a while longer.
Can I have a t-shirt with Idiot Grrrl on it?

What I did last night, or torture extraordinaire

So, (I start all my posts with 'so' - it's so you all feel like we're just picking up a conversation where we last left off...) So, Sarah dragged me off to 'Body Conditioning' at Kentish Town Sports Centre last night. I rang her after seeing Elaine, hoping for a cup of tea and a chat only to be told that she was on the Heath walking Wooster but did I want to come to the gym with her later. I said 'yes' - god knows why - I don't do 'classes' - I hate being hot and sweaty and I have no stamina. But I went - and I survived. I got really hot, my hand swelled up (lymph fluid: drain! Drain, I say!) and I re-aggravated the ankle that I turned last week - it's strapped up now and I can walk on it - it's just a bit uncomfortable. 'Body Conditioning' is aerobics to start with and then exercises with weights afterwards - I didn't use weights: I can't remember what the weight I'm not supposed to go over is. (If you see what I mean) It was hilarious but no one laughed out loud at me - I'm not terribly coordinated and trying 'grapevine' and the turn and then 'kickback' or whatever those terms are; well, I was lost and was waving my arms up and down in the opposite direction to everyone else and going the wrong way and it was all quite sad. I'm not convinced that I want to go again. Sarah keeps telling me that it'll get easier. I don't mind the aerobics bit (much) but I am very wary of putting my weight on my hands - like in press-up stance and I was scared when my hand started feeling so swollen. It went back down again - apart from the baby finger knuckle that's always puffy now. I'll keep thinking about it.

In the meantime, in order to try and solve the utter disorganisation and being unable to remember things anymore I have bought a filofax. No laughing and no poncy-jokes, please. I just can't cope - I need to-do lists and a diary section with the hours marked in it and somewhere to scribble shopping lists and guide programmes and Peru details. And I was doing that with bits of paper and it was a disaster - I just had scraps of paper all over the place. So, in my eyes, a filofax is just a grand collection of scraps of paper. So there.
It looks like this:

Except, it actually looks more like this:
Yay!! Bright red! For easy finding in bag, for easy noticing when I'm about to accidentally leave it at work/home and for just being generally sexy. If a filofax can ever be such a thing. And it has lovely different colored sets of paper for writing notes, so I can have different colors for notes on different topics!! And it has Day Planner and To Do pages! I'm entirely too excited about a filofax, aren't I? Yes, it's true - but I have high hopes for actually being able to stay on top of things now.....

(Argh! Font has gone all ballooey (I've never written that word before - it looks wrong) and won't let me fix it. ::hate::)