Normal service has been resumed

And I'm back.  Normal me has arrived.  This week has been such a total write-off as far as I'm concerned that it feels like it should be Tuesday rather than Friday.  No matter, it's good to be back no matter what day it is.

In fact, I'm feeling so normal that I went out for a run, my first one for exactly a week.  And seeing as how, for the rest of the month, I've been going out more or less every other day, not being able to go out for a week was rather unfortunate, especially as I've only got a week to go until my first ever 'proper' run.

But, I'm pleased to say, it actually looks as if the unwelcome week off from running has done some good - I decided to just do 3 miles today and even with a couple of walking intervals I was thrilled to see when I got back that I'd done it in the fastest time yet - 15:08 mins per mile.  Considering that when I restarted running again this year back in February I was doing about 17 mins per mile, I'm pretty pleased with this improvement.

The run on Saturday 21 April is only 4km/2.5 miles and I'm confident that I can do that in under 40 mins, Inshallah.  After that I'll start looking for another race.  It'll probably be a 5k and as they're more common than 4k races, I shouldn't have much difficulty in finding one to join.  I know there's one in Godalming for the Queen's Jubilee on 4 June but I checked the website and it said the ominous words 'hilly' and 'undulating'.  Now I like going for a run but I'm not a masochist - you can keep your hills, so I think I'll give that one a miss.  The furthest distance I have gone so far, when just out for a run on my own, is 4 miles/6.5km, so I may start looking for 7k races as well.  But we'll see, I don't want to push anything and end up injured.

And while I'm here I'll give you an update on the broad bean scenario - I took the wise advice of the eminently sensible Alienne and got myself some growbags, picked them up in the middle and created two smaller, rounder bags from each one, and planted the broad bean seedlings into them.  They've been there about a week now and seem to be very happy:

I've got about two dozen Sugar Snap Pea seedlings that I need to plant out as well when they're a bit bigger.  They're a little wee still:

I have some quite large pots that I can put these in, or I may get more growbags.

Also, this morning I rang the local Adult Education Centre and discovered there were two spaces left on the Beginners' Drawing and Painting Class so I've enrolled!  Hooray!  I love taking classes and it's been absolutely far too long since I did.  I need to get an A3 pad of cartridge paper (I already have one of watercolour paper but I don't think that will do), some pencils (I'll have to dig my ones out from when I did my archaeological illustration course about 10 years ago - blimey, ten years ago already....) and a 'graphite stick'.  I'm not sure what that is but I think it's what they use these days instead of charcoal.  No matter, Godalming has a fantastic little art supplies shop so I'll find all I need there.

Finally, we've had a series of extraordinary weathery things happening this week.  Yesterday we had the most tremendous hailstorm with thunder and lightening, that left at least an inch of hailstones in about 30 seconds!  It was amazing.  But a couple of days before that we had a rain shower of monsoon proportions that left us with a rainbow that started in the garden of the house opposite me and a sky that looked like it was on fire:

It was fantastic and all completely gone in about 15 minutes, just leaving the sky dull and overcast.

Well, I can do without this....

(Starting this post I see that Blogger has changed again *sigh* I wonder how long it'll take me to get the hang of it again)

Please take this past week away.  Do what you wish with it, I do not want it.  I'm emerging from another menopausally-induced depressive state and it fucking sucks.  I have cried more over the last 3 days than I have done over the previous 3 years at the very least (probably longer - I'm not a crier).

I've felt miserable and so, so sad.  And so full of self-pity that I was disgusted with myself while bawling my eyes out about how I've wasted my life and no-one loves me.  Because it's bollocks but the emotions become so overwhelming that you just can't ignore them.

I was recently reading on a board I frequent that tears shed from emotional stress are different to those shed at other times (although what other times they would be I don't know...physical pain maybe?) and scientific testing of the actual liquid in those tears show they contain stress hormones.  So, in effect, one of the reasons you feel better for having had a good cry when you're depressed and upset is because you're ridding yourself of some of these hormones via your tears.  I dunno.  I'm not a scientist but I remembered this while in the depths of despair yesterday morning and just decided to let it all out, in the hope that I could get rid of it.  So I ended up curled foetally on the bathroom floor, sobbing my heart out into a towel and hoping the neighbours couldn't hear me.

I'm not sure I felt much better because I ended up with a thumping headache on top of still feeling tearful and miserable.

Arse.

I woke this morning actually feeling quite a lot more like me, at least up until about an hour ago, when a wave of misery overcame me again and I ended up having a little weep while sitting in the bath (I was actually having a bath, I wasn't just sitting in an empty bath with my clothes on, you understand).  Seems I'm not quite out of the woods yet.  This malarkey all started on Monday with the arrival of a 2-day late period which also left me extremely bloated and nauseous (so much so I thought I'd got a stomach bug) as well as headachey.  And then the misery started.

Good grief.

This week has been a complete and utter write-off, and it's all down to my stupid, stupid, bloody hormones.  If I can get my act together, I think it might be wise to visit my Traditional Chinese Medicine man and see what he can suggest because I'm going to go absolutely doolally if every month ends up being like this.

However one good thing has come out of it.  While I was pondering the uselessness of my life and the fact that I'm an enormous waste of space, for some reason the thought of finding a local adult education art class came to mind.  I like to think of myself as being a bit on the arty side, I've dabbled here and there, and always enjoyed doing art at school but haven't had a 'proper' class since then (and we're talking late 1970s here).  So yesterday, once I'd stopped crying enough to be able to see the computer screen properly, I got online and found a 10-week beginner's drawing class on Thursday afternoons for a couple of hours starting a week today in nearby Guildford.  I emailed for further details and have just had a reply that there is space on the course so tomorrow I'm going to phone up and book it.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Who'd be female, eh?

As predicted, the second day of Shark Week is fulfilling its promise in every way.  2.45am today saw me staggering, bleary-eyed and cramping, to the kitchen in the dark in order to shovel Paracetamol down my neck so I could try and get some sleep.  It worked, fortunately, until the alarm went off at 5.30am, as it does every weekday morning.  So now I'm bloated, crampy and dang tired.  Plus over the last year or so I seem to have developed hormonal headaches which is a mightily unwelcome development, especially as no amount of painkillers seem to shift them.  And I've got one now.

I'm almost 49, goddamit.  When's this all going to stop, eh?

This means that I made the right decision in going for a run yesterday because I correctly surmised that today I'd be good for nothing.  Which is a pity because it's turned into a gorgeous day out there - warm sunshine but cool air.   I had every intention, though, of not going out there at all - even though the allotment needs attending to and there are seeds to be sown - because of Shark Week (why 'Shark Week'?  Because there's lots of blood and frequently violence, that's why....), and just curling up on the sofa with my book and/or knitting and/or telly.  But this most sensible of plans was thwarted because the bloody car wouldn't start.  I had an errand to run in the village and, being the occasionally lazy sod I am - and due to the cramping and headache - I decided to get it over with quickly by driving the 5 mins to the shop so I could get back to the sofa and painkillers.  But the bloody car wouldn't start.  It's on its last legs, really it is.  There are many little things wrong with it - the windscreen buzzes loudly when you hit 70mph or it's a bit windy, there's a leak somewhere that occasionally drips into the front passenger footwell, the air conditioning is very hit and miss these days, it takes forever for the windscreen to demist in the winter - and quite a big thing that looks like is going wrong again, to do with the hydraulic system that made me feel sea-sick for 3 days the last time it went wrong.  I'm getting very wary of driving it now, to be honest, just waiting for the hydraulics to go again.  So imagine my (non-)surprise when I turned the key in the ignition and got the message 'gearbox fault' instead of the engine turning over.  Bugger.

Hopefully the battery is just flat but I seem to recall we had this problem the last time the hydraulics went - it kept draining the battery so we were having to charge it all the time.  And we're meant to be going to TLH's native homeland to visit his mum this weekend (what with it being Mother's Day 'n' all....) which is a long old drive.  Well, I suppose we've got the little car for that if necessary, but I'd rather drive 300 miles in a day in a Range Rover than a Smart Car, if at all possible.  (And, yes, I'm fully aware that this is an appalling First World Problem but it's Shark Week so argue with me at your peril.....!)

The upshot of this is that I had to walk - yes, walk! - down into the village but, luckily, the errand was a rather lovely one so it wasn't all misery and gloom.

A few years back I wrote a post about the 2010 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition with quite a lot of photos that I, illicitly, took.  TLH and I decided that our favourite picture there that year was a large oil painting of a grumpy looking cat in a stetson called 'Cowboy Joe from Mexico' by Angela Lizon:

About a week ago I got a comment on that post from a company called Coates and Scarry letting me know that they now had signed limited edition prints of Cowboy Joe available, so I ordered one!  How could I not!

It arrived a couple of days ago and today's errand was to trot down to our local framers with it.  It'll take about 2-3 weeks to be done, but when it is and is installed at home, I'll show you all.

Hmm, it's now almost 12.30pm, lunchtime.  Shark Week = carbs in abundance, so it's mashed potatoes with cheese and spring onions for me, followed by an apricot danish (I'll run it off at the weekend!).

Toodle-pip!

Don't panic - I'm still here

I wasn't sure that I was going to post about this, and I still may not press 'post' at the end but I'm just going to write about it anyway.

Last Friday night was interesting.  In a way I could have done without.  I would have much preferred that it had involved lots of wine, good food, friends and laughing so much I nearly pee.  What I ended up with was my brain trying to kill me.

It's the fucking menopause again.

I thought I'd managed to avoid the pathetic crying at stupid sentimental schlock this month but, once again, it crept up on me throughout Thursday and Friday, albeit not as bad as in previous months.  It was fine, honestly.  Didn't stop me doing what needed to get done in preparation for our visit back to TLH's native homeland on Saturday to visit his mum.  She'd phoned us on the Thursday with a list of things she wanted us to do/bring with us and I decided I might as well get them during the day on Friday so we didn't have to stop anywhere on the journey to see her.  Good thinking, huh?  I was feeling quite proud of myself for deciding to do this off my own bat, and thought TLH would be pleased that I'd saved him a job or two.  Plus I'd also started doing some of the Christmas food shopping (especially Christmas morning breakfast stuff) which I was feeling very pleased about.

Unfortunately, TLH wasn't exactly in a receptive frame of mind when he got home at 7.15pm.  Then we had a stupid misunderstanding involving the mishearing of bellini/blini and eventually he decided he might as well go to bed.  On his own.  At 8.30pm. *sigh*.

I sat stewing on the sofa, laptop on, er, lap, cat snuggled up next to me and rubbish on the telly until about 11pm, when I decided I might as well call it a day.  I went to the spare bedroom so that I could read a bit without disturbing TLH.  A few pages were read, the light was put out and I went to sleep.

I woke with a start some time later and thought it might have been about 5am, which is, more or less, the time we stir in this house during the week.  I was horrified then to see that it was 2am.  I'd been asleep for all of three hours.  I rolled over, closed my eyes, and tried to find my way back to the Land of Nod.

And that's when the little voice in my head started up.  The nasty, insidious, hateful little voice that tells lies wrapped in a veneer of truth.  Except that at that time in the morning, and in my menopausal-hormone filled mind, it's all truth.  It was telling me what an idiot I was for thinking anyone would appreciate me.  It was telling me how nobody cared and no-one truly loved me except for Sylvester the cat and he's 15 years old and will probably die soon so then there'll be no-one.  It was reminding me that I don't have many friends and those that I do don't really give that much of a toss because they never call me, never suggest I go round and hang out.  My brother has his own life and family so there's no reason why he should be even the slightest bit interested in my life.

Lies, all of it, but wrapped in the thinnest veneer of truth, and it wouldn't. shut. the. fuck. up.  And I was getting more and more upset.  Rolling over and trying to think of other things didn't help, as my brain just roiled around and returned to the same thought over and over.  No-one would notice if you were gone, so why don't you just disappear.

I knew this was complete bollocks but turning the voice off was not happening.  It was a proper long, dark night of the soul.  I figured there was nothing for it but to just get up again, and beat the voice into submission with a cup of tea and a wander around the backwaters of the interweb, in the hope that I could distract myself enough to feel sleepy and away from the razor blades and/or paracetamol (don't worry, that was never going to happen).  But I just managed to give myself a headache on top of it all because I'd been crying into my pillow so much and didn't manage to feel sleepy.

TLH came downstairs at about 6am and was astonished  to see that I'd, pretty much, been up all night.  And I felt like shit, understandably.  But at least I hadn't killed myself, right?

I survived the following day in Wales pretty well, considering.  I had a couple of weird turns that were rectified with coffee and cake, and I managed to grab a few Zs in the car on the way there and back (yes, we went for the day, so there was at least 5 hours of driving in total).

And today, Sunday, I've been fine, and I'm typing this while chortling along to 'Elf' on the telly.  But I can't help thinking that the approaching menopause is to blame for self-loathing and suicidal thoughts of Friday night/Saturday morning and if that's the case, it's a most unwelcome development.  I did plan to try and get through this oncoming change of life without medical intervention as best as I can, but if this is going to become a common occurrence then I might seriously have to consider talking to the doctor about investigating HRT.

You know what?  To hell with it, I'm going to publish this post.  It's part of my life and others reading it may understand what the fuck was going on and can understand.

But, don't worry, folks, I have no plans on going anywhere just yet so no need to panic!