Sad

I’m feeling sad today.

There’s another article in the local paper about someone killing themselves at the local train station. Someone has died on the rails in the town more than once a fortnight over the past 2 months. From what I understand (through what’s been written in the press) all but one of them wanted to die, that one was apparently trying to pull someone else from the tracks.

I can’t imagine feeling so low that death is the only option. At least one of those people has school age children. How do they cope? Will they ever understand why their parent chose to die and leave them?

What is it about my town that’s doing this to people? The paper implies that the tracks on this town have the highest rate of deaths in the whole country.

These people are doing this in front of other people, how do they feel seeing someone standing on the platform at one moment and then jumping off in front of a train the next?

I know there’s no answers to these questions. I wish that these people had been able to get help and support. I’m sure there must be help around, maybe these people didn’t know where to look.

 

Back on track…

…is where I need to be

I had my weigh in last night and I’ve put on 1 1/2 lbs in the last fortnight. It’s what I deserve really, but I’m so annoyed at myself. I’ve eaten so much rubbish lately, firstly when Mr H was away (a combination of tiredness and just being low with him away) and then the weekend just gone when my friend was staying here. She’s not really worried about her weight and will just eat what she fancies and my self control went out of the window and I just ate what I fancied too.

I know I shouldn’t do it, but I did, and I now have to face the consequences. I’ve now been doing the diet for more weeks than lbs I’ve lost and I’m much happier when it’s the other way round.

I’m restarting my food diary and I’ve added an exercise tracker to my weightloss page (at the top, by the about me tab). I’ve recently bought a Lateral Thigh Trainer and I’m going to try and use it every day while the munchkin naps. I hoped to do 5 minutes today, but I had to give up at 3 1/2, hopefully I’ll manage more tomorrow. I do feel good for having done that though. My long term aim with it is to be able to do 30 minutes on it fairly comfortably and then up the resistance (it’s on the easiest setting at the moment).

I’ve got more friends coming to stay on Sunday (as well as a big night out on Saturday with the munchkin’s Godmother) so it’ll be a real challenge this week, but I want to pop in to weigh in on Monday and come out smiling. I’m now 3 lbs off my first stone and I would love to get that in a fortnight, I hope I can do it.

 

Surviving :-)

Well, I’m more than half way through my time without Mr H now, and how am I coping?

I’m actually quite impressed at myself. Apart from freaking out slightly (well, maybe a little more than slightly) in the middle of last night at the noises the house made as it cooled down after a hot sunny day I’m quite proud of myself. I’ve kept on top of my usual hosue jobs as well as trying to get the munchkin into a routine of putting her toys away before we take her up to bed (works ok…when I remember to get her to help me ). I’ve been a bit lonely, but had a lovely day yesterday at R and P’s. The munchkin loved playing in their garden (note to self: buy her a sand pit table) and slept surprisingly well in their travel cot in the afternoon (a good 1 3/4 hour nap). We did leave R and P slightly jealous of how well she sleeps as their daughters, especially the younger one, tend to wake early and not nap particularly well, their day started at 5:45 on Sunday, by 7:30 P and the girls were playing in the garden having been up and breakfasted for a while.

Today was basically a normal Monday, albeit without me having to make Mr H’s packed lunch before fitting in my own breakfast. I was a little naughty and treated us to a McDonald’s for lunch, I’ve been really good and not had one for 3 months, whihc is something of a record for me. The munchkin even ate her chicken nuggets willingly, which, for a girl who usually refuses all forms of protein except fish fingers and bolognaise was quite a turn up for the books. I’ve felt a bit lonely this evening but I’ve had a chat with Mum on the phone and an MSN conversation with one of my best friends. I’ve read more of my book and fitted in some trashy TV (I’m getting into Britains Next Top Model, it’s not something I’ve watched before but the bitchyness is addictive and so funny at times).

Mr H’s flight is due in at Heathrow at 6:25am on Wednesday, so I’ve only got tomorrow to get through and then he should be back here by about 9am. Tomorrow another local friend, L, is going to take the munchkin and I to the local pet’s corner which I’ve never been to before, I know vaguely where it is, but I’ve not actually attempted to go before even though I think the munchkin will love seeing all the animals (not that I know what animals they have there!). If that is where we’re going (and I’m 99% sure we are) then I’ll make sure I take some pictures of the munchkin’s reactions.

I’m absolutely shattered now, so I’m going to sign off and go to my bed. Thanks to everyone who left a comment for me. Bye!

 

Favour…

Can someone give me a kick up the rump please and tell me to stop stressing about Mr H flying to the US for work tomorrow.

A combination of the ‘terror’ attacks here in the UK and me not wanting to be on my own while he’s gone are just getting me a bit down. He’s not gone for long, back on Wednesday, but at the moment I’m completely on my own from when the driver/taxi picks him up at 10:30 tomorrow until 2:15 on Monday when I go to the rhyme time at the library with a friend and her little girl. I’m down on the creche rota for church on Sunday, I emailed round a fortnight ago to say I won’t be able to get there and can someone cover for me, but no response… R did say to me the day after that that she’d pick me and the munchkin up, take us to church and then have us over at hers for lunch, fantastic, but after going away last weekend (and hence not seeing her at church) I haven’t been able to get hold of her to check that’s ok. If I can’t do that I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

I’m finding life very monotonous at the moment and really look forward to the change of routine that the weekend brings, with Mr H away it’s just more of the same and it’s starting to get me down again. It’s not taking much to make me feel low and turn towards the junk food and I really don’t want to do that…

I just need to pull myslef together, but I’m not sure where to start…

 

Higgledy Piggledy Days!

I realised this morning that I haven’t posted much for a little bit so I thought I’d make an effort to say something….

I’ve had such a week of not knowing whether I’m coming or going. I’m finding it hard to get my thoughts and housework in order if I have something happening that changes my normal routine. It sounds stupid but after going out to church yesterday morning to help get things ready for tomorrow’s garden party I found it so hard to get the motivation to do anything. I did the bare minimum but didn’t get things done that weren’t essential so I now feel like I’ve got lots to do today. Grrr… I’m going to give myself some time now (I’ve already done the washing up and loaded the washing machine and dishwasher so I’ve made an ok start) and then once I’ve posted this and had a quick look at some of my blogroll I really need to get on. I’m still trying to follow the whople FlyLady thing and it is helping as despite my low this week the house still looks reasonable and I felt ok enough about it to be able to invite a friend from church over for a drink after church.

The other downside of yesterday’s low was my diet….I’m very much an emotional eater and yesterday ended up going out and buying (and then eating) lots of malteasers…ooppss…. I’m going to have to be so good over the weekend to make up for it. I have lost 10 1/2 lbs in the last 9 weeks and I don’t want to destroy all the work I’ve done already

I had to head over to Chelmsford on Wednesday to see the allergy specialist. He decided to do skin tests to check the status of the latex allergy and also common things like grass pollen and house dust mites while he was at it. I didn’t react to the latex there (though I had a small reaction to the dust mites) but he has advised me to get referred to the dermatologist at my local hospital as my reaction appears to be a contact dermatitis and is worth getting checked out to find out exactly what I’m reacting to in adheshives.

I’ve got to head into the next town on this afternoon to meet Mr H and do the shopping and I’m hoping that by then I’ll have got the kitchen and dining room back under my complete control and maybe even have done a little bit of crafting (something I haven’t touched in weeks…).

 

How do I help him?

Mr H and I sat and watched What a Girl Wants on Saturday night. Pretty crummy film, but one we’d bought cheaply in the hopes it might be ok. The problem is it’s really struck a chord with Mr H.

In the film an American teenager comes over to London to try and find the dad she’s never meet and who doesn’t know she exists. After a rather eventful couple of months/weeks she decides that the life she’d have there isn’t for her and decides to go back to the US with her Mum and leave Dad behind. Dad realises he loves his daughter and goes over to make amends and all is happily ever after….

It left Mr H thinking about his Dad. When Mr H was 2 his Dad left for another woman. From what I can gather there was sporadic contact for a couple of years and then nothing. Mr H can’t understand how someone can just up and leave their kids, in his dad’s case twice! Mr H’s mum was his second wife and there were definitely children from the first marriage (though we don’t know much if anything about them).

It’s all making Mr H rather low and introverted. I just wish I knew what to do to help him. We can’t even talk to his mum about is as she died of breast cancer shortly after Mr H’s A levels. His brother and sister aren’t people that Mr H can talk to about thoughts and emotions particularly. They’re both older than him and I imagine can remember more about their dad. I do know that Mr H’s dad sent his sister a letter on her 18th which she binned without reading.

I’m trying to let Mr H talk when he wants to but I just don’t know what to say. Without trying to talk to his dad I can’t give him answers as to why his dad left. Does anyone reading this have any ideas for ways I could help Mr H? I know I can’t give him answers, I just wish I could help somehow.

 

New phone and more

Hello! My new phone is great! The keyboard is a little small, but I’m getting used to it (hopefully the diet will shrink my fat fingers a bit as well as the jelly belly!). I’m able to run most of the applications I had on my old Sony Clie. What we’ll hopefully do before we go away is set up the Bible software on there and get me some study notes of some sort to always have with me. The camera’s surprisingly good, it’s quite nice to have a picture of Mr H come up when we calls me

Caramaena – it’s definitely been worth getting though I will definitely need the protective case that’s on order as I’m worried about damaging the touchscreen in my bag when I’m out. It’s much easier to have diary/address book/phone all as one rather than several bits cluttering up my bag.

Mum did manage to go with Dad on Monday….the problem with his eye is not a bleed, the doctor isn’t sure why he has little sight in it but had referred him to an opthalmologist who he’ll see at the end of the month. His blood pressure hasn’t dropped so his medication has been upped. Dad has had a lump on the right side of his face for ages, but lately it’s grown a bit more and I’m getting concerned that that has links with his memory and eye sight, though Mum said the doctor’s haven’t commented on it at all…..I’m desperately trying not to Google anything else as I know sight problems (and memory loss) can be linked with brain tumours and I’m trying to not go there….

The munchkin is still incrediably snotty, we’ve had to avoid toddler group today as she looks awful and I don’t want the other parents to think I’m just willing to spread the bug around (though she did pick the cold up from there). We’re having fights every time I try to wipe her nose, she just hates it. It’s making her a little clingy and rather less able to cope with being told off…..we’re getting tantrums of sorts when normally she’d just wander off. Hopefully the snot will ease soon, though the 9 day cold rule (3 days to come, 3 with you and 3 to go – something Mum swears by) would mean that it’ll be Saturday before she’s better as it all started on Friday last week.

I’m doing ok, still feeling much higher than last week, though a useless online PDA company have not helped by failing to tell us items we ordered were out of stock until we rang yesterday evening to find out why they hadn’t arrived after I’d waited in all day for them! Grrr! Diet was not great yesterday as we (me and Mr H) were both tired and a little short fused….. but it was still better than some days last week. I did lose 1 1/2 lbs this week which was ok, I’d hoped for more, but a loss is a loss and more than makes up for the previous week’s gain. I’m going to try and be really good today and before we go away tomorrow, and since it was my sister in law that introduced me to Slimming World I shouldn’t do too badly when we’re with them…..that’s the theory anyway! I sure hope it works and I come back from Scotland with a loss!

 

Good morning!

Hello! There’s a much happier H writing this morning. (even happier now as the door bell has just interupted me with the delivery of my new phone! It looks great, though I need to charge it before I can check it out)

I’m feeling so much more in control and on top of things today, and as far as I can tell as much as anything else it’s feeling that God is in control and helping take the weight from my shoulders. In church yesterday the vicar’s sermon was about intimacy with God and letting Him into our lives and he gave us a quiet time where we could just open ourselvs up to God and I really felt that He came and touched me. I just felt the weight lifting from me and a strong feeling that God is with me and supporting me at the moment. The feeling of support and lightness on my shoulders is still with me this morning.

I knew that I needed to go to church yesterday no matter what and now I feel it’s because God wanted me there to remind me that I just need to ask for His support and help and He’ll be there. I’m feeling so much more confident about the days and weeks ahead now, rather than worried the depression is returning.

We’ve had an interesting weekend this weekend. The munchkin has a streaming cold, she wakes up ok, but by lunchtime her nose is dripping and she’s getting very grumpy. My wrist is still giving me intermittant pain (though yesterday it was my own fault as I forget to take my tablets – I should have had 3, I forgot them all!). Mr H is very tired and trying to take some of the load from me so as not to worsen my wrist so he was a tad grumpy at times, though seeing what a difference God had made to me did perk him up a bit too.

Mr H watched Eurovision for the first time with me on Saturday, I love the pure cheesiness and Terry Wogan’s fabulous (and incrediably un PC at times) commentary but Mr H thought it would be awful, but he actually enjoyed it, mainly Mr Wogan though. I was quite shocked by how political the voting ended up being though, too many people voting for their allies and neighbours and not the songs (though the song that won was good). I’m not surprised how badly our song did though, it was too much in the 90s cheesy pop vein to do well.

Amazingly I’m even feeling positive about housework at the moment and getting back on top of it all, so today I need to (on top of my normal bits) clean the hob again, and hoover all downstairs.

My diet is back on track, I weigh in tonight and I’m hoping for a 2 lb or so loss…..it’s only been 4/5 days since last weigh in and getting myslef back on track though so maybe1 lb….anything would be good though.

I’m still a little worried about Dad. He’s going back to the doctors today (Mum’s working on him to allow her to go with him). I had my first experience of my memory loss on Friday when he rang to ask me about the trust fund money, he asked me for the same information 4/5 times in 10 minutes. Mum says he’s getting more withdrawn and he’s admitted that he’s had a bleed into his eye and he’s having a little trouble seeing out of it. Dad has blamed the bleed on the medication and has stopped taking it……we’re not thrilled with that idea….we think that the medication just hasn’t had time to kick in and the bleed is due to his high blood pressure. If Mum manages to go to the doctors with Dad then she is going to make sure the doctor knows about the bleed.

 

Murphy’s Law

That seems to have been what my life has been living by. If anything has been able to go wrong it has done.

It’s been such a frustrating week, and I can’t even work out what started it all off.

I think it may have been my mobile deciding that it wasn’t going to tell me when it was running out of battery and just dying and then deciding that actually ringing when someone called me was optional! Mr H and I spent a little time discussing what sort of phone to get me. I wanted a smartphone so I didn’t have to carry a diary/address book around with me as well as a phone. H agreed to that and then suggested I get one with a Palm operating system as we already have palm software (he’s had Palm OS PDAs for as long as I’ve known him). That left us with a Treo,unless we bought second hand from eBay with not much idea of the actual condition of the phone we were left with the 650 model from Palm’s partner that sells refurbished models. Those phone are so expensive……it’s costing us £137.50 (plus needing to buy an SD card for extra memory for books/music on there). As soon as we decided that’s what we were going to get the supplier sold out! I’ve spent the last couple of days refreshing the stock list on the web and as soon as one came in yesterday we ordered it. Hopefully it’ll arrive early next week and the crapness that is my current phone can go in the bin.

I’ve had a crap week with the diet this week, at weigh in on Wednesday (delayed because of the bank holiday) I’d put on a pound and I’m not really surprised, I half expected it to be more, I’ve eaten so badly this week. When I’m finding life hard I find myself relying on food to lift my mood and with Mr H being the skinny runt he is there’s always junk food around and I found myself snacking away again. I was better yesterday, and am erally trying hard today to get back on track.

Another nightmare has been trying to work out whether we want a new laptop, whether cheap one from Aldi was good enough for us (the advert for that prompted all the discussions) and whether we could afford it. We decided that yes we wanted one, yes the Aldi one was just about good enough and yes we could afford it. So we trooped off to Aldi yesterday, I walked in the door 5 minutes after it opened and promptly heard the manager saying to the people in the queue (8ish people) that he’d just sold the last one! There can have been no more than 7/8 laptops for the whole store! When we pulled into the car park it was just after 9 and there were 3 people just getting into cars with laptops and I saw another couple leaving the store with them. I walked back out of the store (the laptop was all we wanted) to see Mr H just leaving to go on to work. The plan had been that he’d drop me off and I’d get the bus home again complete with laptop and munchkin, but I did hope that when I came out so promptly he’d still be there and would take me home and then work from the local site for the morning….too late. I had to wait 45 minutes for the bus and head home empty handed on my own.

I was so close to crying, it’s not taken much to set me off all week (I split the munchkin’s bedtime milk on Wednesday and had to get Mr H to clean it up as I couldn’t deal with it). It’s almost as bad as I was this time last year when I was put on ADs by the doctor, I’m going to try and sort my mood out with a decent diet and more exercise and see if that helps first before going back to the GP. I’m also hoping that going away to stay in Scotland with Mr H’s sister and husband will help too. We’re setting off on Thursday, Mum’s paid for us to stop over near Birmingham so we don’t have to do 500+ miles in a day (she’s a star!), should be there by Friday tea-time. We’re there until the following Friday and then calling at Mum and Dad’s on the way home to see them and my old school friends. Hopefully I’ll get some rest, Mr H has said that he’ll try and make sure I do. If I’m not feeling better once we’re home again I think I need to see the doctor and see what he suggests.

I’ve been very lax on commenting this week…I haven’t even read most blogs I usually do, hopefully next week I’ll be a bit better. Shout at me if you think I should ahve come by and said hi!

 

Grrrrr…

…having been very relieved last week when my wrist seemed to have sorted itself out it seems I was a bit premature….

Both of my wrists gradually got more and more uncomfortable yesterday. i thought it’d all ease off again, but as today has gone on it’s got worse and worse. I couldn’t even use my right hand to push the pushchair down to the doctors earlier on. Whenever I needed to use my right hand to help steer I got shooting pains up my forearm. Frustratingly the only appointment available for the rest of the week is 5pm on Friday, so I’m just going to have to cope until then.

I’ve taken ibuprofen (made absolutely no difference…..unless the pain was going to get dramatically worse as it’s gradually worsened since I took it) and put the splint I was given at the walk in centre last week back on. Grrrr again!

I had a text from my sister this morning saying that her lastest scan had gone well and that baby was fine and due on 14 November…..I’d not realised until then that almost to the day that our baby died she can conceiving her baby. I’ve not cried about our baby for a few weeks, but that really set me off. The munchkin was lovely and just let me cuddle and hug her without wriggling to go and play. She definitely knew something was wrong (the tears dripping from my cheeks may have been a give away…). I’m so, so happy for them, but the timing for me is just horrible, I just hope baby doesn’t come 4 weeks early….

Some good news to finish off with today….another 2 1/2lb loss last night puts me 5lb down after 2 weeks on the diet. I’m quite chuffed with that, some of my trousers are already starting to fall off me…I hope I can stick at it this time, I’ve not been too good at that in the past. I did get down to 10 stone 7 a couple of years ago, but as soon as I stopped weighing and counting everything I put most of it back on again. With this diet there not so much weighing, it’s more about me changing how I eat things so I’m fairly hopeful, and even if we decide to try for a baby again and I fall pregnant then, as long as my midwife agrees, I can carry on with it and work at not putting too much weight on.

I’m going to stop there…it’s taken me the best part of an hour to type this as I keep having to stop as my wrist begins to ache again. Hopefully back tomorrow….wrist dependant! Bye!