As usual my absence can be explained by the continuing medical dramas in my life and me generally feeling crap. My medical adventures over the last few months have involved scans, ultrasounds, x-rays, cystoscopies, urodynamics testing, being hooked up to the mains for neurological tests…as usual with my body that hates me, just when I think nothing else can go wrong with it, something else does.

On the positive side, finally, earlier this year (I think it was around April time) we finally got the go-ahead from the PCT for getting the testing strips for my INR prescribed on the NHS, so finally I was able to start with the self-testing. This has made a huge difference, cutting down the amount of appointments I need and the time I’ve been needing off work for medical appointments, and of course associated sitting around in waiting rooms. Recently I went away for 10 days, and as my INR’s been going haywire recently after I was given some antibiotics before a medical procedure I’ve been needing to test my INR most weeks, I was able to test my INR while I was away without the hassle of having to register with a local doctor and going for blood tests etc. It takes only a few minutes to set up and test my INR, and then I just phone my GP to get my warfarin dosage. I’m getting pretty good though at guessing what the dosage is going to be and how long before re-testing, and mostly I guess right what my GP’s going to say. I did have a bit of a panic before my trip away when I ran out of testing strips and it turned out the prescription I’d got was for the strips for the old version of my testing machine, which aren’t compatible with my machine. When I couldn’t get the right strips from any of the local chemists before I went, fortunately the practice manager at the surgery saved the day, letting me borrow some of the surgery’s test strips until mine arrived.

In the midst of all the medical dramas Bliss had a couple of months of practising getting back into writing mode (not that we’ve made much progress on that front), I had a long and frustrating battle with beauocrasy, and I’ve had the usual battle with managing to keep my hours up at work. Other than that things are pretty much the same except that I’ve started to put my “getting things back on track” plan into action, and I’ve given up the support forum. This means I’ve actually got time now to do things that don’t involve being glued to the keyboard all day every day, and I’ve actually started watching TV again – yay!

Normal service shall now resume.

I’ve never really been much into new year’s resolutions, but this year decided that I shall make a list of my aims and goals for the year. It goes something like this…

1. I aim to spend absolutely no time in hospital this year. None. Zero days. In 2007 I managed a grand total of 1 month in hospital, which is a bit excessive, even for me! 2008 I fared better and spent only 4 days as a resident of one of the NHS’s best establishments. For 2009 I’m aiming to get that down to 0 days, on the grounds that one of these years it’s got to happen! Routine clinic appointments and such like obviously don’t count, but we’re aiming for no time as an inpatient.
2. I shall be aiming to write something here every day.
3. (Bliss will like this one) Possibly doing some form of writing on one of my various creative projects every day is asking a bit much, and some days time commitments, prior engagements, and falling asleep at strange times due to the damned buprenorphine, make committing to creative writing every day a bit of a tall order. Instead I shall say that I will commit to doing some form of creative writing on a weekly basis. As I have a habit of starting off new projects before I’ve finished previous ones, I shall start no more until all my current projects are finished. So that I make some progress on all of them, I’m going to be trying to do some word on each every week. Every year for the past four years I’ve said “This is the year for Fallen Angel” (long term novel project first started when I was in college, rather a long time ago now), but this year, though I’m not committing to finishing it (a couple of shorter projects that require less research will probably get finished first), I shall make significant in-roads into getting it well on the way to getting there.
4. I will make time to read every day. I did make significant progress on this towards the end of 2008 after I drew up a list of “must read” books and went shopping at Amazon, and am pleased to report I actually managed to finish two books in the space of a month, which is a first since IIH struck. Reading’s still pretty hard going at times (it’s a lot easier to read on screen where you can resize text as necessary), but I’m determined to keep up with reading, as not only is it good for the soul, but it’s also a prerequisite for successful writing – read a lot, and write a lot.
5. I shall not ignore emails in my inbox and let them pile up so it takes hours to wade through them all and to reply to them where appropriate, file as necessary, or otherwise dispose of (as I ended up doing yesterday, trying to clear the backlog going back to October!
6. Finally, I’m going to be me. Not the me everyone thinks I ought to be, or thinks I am, but the me I know I am, and that means no more hiding behind stuff and actually getting back to being what I want to be. Again, I made significant in-roads in progress on that in 2008, and I shall continue that in 2009. If everyone else doesn’t like it – tough!

And finally…

So where have we been? Well we’ve not been anywhere, and are firmly of the opinion that it’s you, dear reader, who’s been away. We’ve been right here working our little socks off, apart from when we’ve been off out wobbling around and falling over and stuffs, and generally getting into mischief. Well, Rachel’s been working her little socks off. On the whole Bliss has been sitting around bitching about why we’re not writing, damn it! That and wanting to know when we shall be commencing with our creative output again. Rachel’s response was something along the lines of, “you can do whatever you damn well like, but I’ve got work to do!” Hence, Bliss is still sulking.

So, what’s been going on? Well first Rachel was going into hospital so the docs could find out if she’s still got a brain in her head or not, then she wasn’t, then she wasn’t, then she was again, and finally she wasn’t…at least not yet. The jury’s still out on that one. Then we commenced with working totally insane hours, partly due to OU work, but mainly due to rather foolishly deciding to set up a charity a couple of years back and combining the launch of that with taking forum inhabitants away for a little holiday. We’re talking seriously insane hours that saw us glued to the keyboard for upwards of 15 hours a day, and getting 5 hours sleep on a good night while frantically trying to do 4 things at once while simultaneously designing and building a site in a week with nothing but a roll of sticky tape and a ball of string. By some small miracle we managed to pull it off, and both the site, the charity launch, and the forum trip were a great success, though it took a good few weeks to recover afterwards.

After all this followed another brief burst of activity on OU work, more frantic work on trying to get a national charity well and truly off the ground, and some serious forum maintenance. All of this has meant that we haven’t been anywhere much online and have been very busy being sensible, which simply won’t do! In the midst of all this, Father decided to go and have a pulmonary embolism (I shall have to do something about that competitive nature of his! Just because I had one….*sigh*) and then followed that up with a heart attack. He’s now to be found cluttering up the house for the next 6 weeks until he can go back to work, which simply won’t do! We’ll have to find something useful for him to do rather than just making the place look untidy!

Currently we should be working on a site, on the grounds that clients don’t usually pay you until you’ve done the work, and we’re going to have an action packed summer working on two website re-vamps and commencing work on “The Next Big Thing”, which is all rather exciting, as well as a couple of trips away to the more civilised parts of Europe.

The really big news however that we’ve gone and got ourself…a Linux box! Yay! Yep, we now has a totally lovely little laptop running Linux Xandros, and the nasty, horrid Windoze is reserved for things that only run on Microsh1te rubbish and when we’re working from home, as connection to employer’s servers only works with Win XP. No waiting 5 minutes for the damned thing to load umpteen different bits of totally unnecessary stuff, and it’s much more stable than Win XP. The only downside is that Rachel has become rather addicted to a game called ‘Frozen Bubble’… Bliss meanwhile is still bitching.

Oh, and in the middle of all that, Rachel went and got herself her first tattoo. <grin>

So, who knows the whereabouts of the month of May? And can I have it back please?

Is it a game of tag where the one tagged is now “it” and races around the playground madly, looking for someone else to tag? Sort of, but with blogs – and it’s like tag on steroids because you have to tag 6 people. Phew! That’s a lot of madly racing around the playground. My friend Michelle has taken it into her head to “tag” me, so now I have a number of duties to perform…

Right, so here’s the ‘rules’…
1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your blog entry.
5. Let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs.

Okay, so I’ve done 1 and 2, so now onto 3…

1. My left foot’s half a shoe size bigger than my right one.

2. When I was at college in my vegetarian experimentation phase, my favourite snack was lettuce sandwiches with chocolate spread (nicer than it sounds, really!)

3. My all time most favourite meal is a kind of corned beef and potato hash-type concoction my mum makes on top of pancakes. The first time I remember having it was coming home after play school when I was three years old or thereabouts.

4. The first album I ever bought with my own money was Duran Duran’s “Arena”

5. The novel I co-wrote with my then manager James, a few years ago, “Womble Casserole” was inspired largely by lyrics from songs by the 80s depressives The Smiths’ songs, and the title “Womble Casserole” was a compromise – he wanted to call it “Rugrat Ratatouille” (and if it kills me one of these days I’ll drag him kicking and screaming back to the keyboard to finish off his final chapters! Resistance is futile!)

6. My favourite quote is a lyric from a Faithless song, ‘Bluegrass’:

…no matter how hard you try
You’re still in prison,
If ya born with wings and you never flyFaithless: Maxi Jazz

And so, having completed steps 1 to 4, I’m now going to tag Tamashii, Marjolein, Gill, Jem, JackP, Louie, the cutest little penguin on the IconBuffet.

I’d better nip off now and let you all know you’re tagged!