I am borrowing my format from the amazing May today, whom I believe will not mind because she is the most share-y person I know (that’s a good word, right? Share-y? Instead of generous, I mean, share-y will work?) but because it’s the best way to sum things up.
Item – It has not stopped raining here for weeks. That’s not actually an exaggeration. We are allegedly still living in drought restrictions with a hosepipe ban. The truth is it’s raining so goddamn much that a small playing field by the twins has been taken over by a puddle and said puddle is so large that ducks have moved into it. I really wish I were making that up. It hasn’t stopped raining for ages. I know you’re probably thinking “Hey, lady, you chose to move to a country renown for its rain!” (or maybe you don’t either think that or talk like a trucker, I don’t know). I just didn’t really realize it would be years before we had a summer.
Item – That above “Hi, I’m British!” type of paragraph is relevant here. Yes, everyone here talks about the weather. But for the first time, the weather is really, really dragging me down. I don’t have SAD (which I think is the go-to disorder to have these days (absolutely no disrespect to you if you have it)) as I bloody love the Autumn and Winter, when most people have it. I feel lethargic, grumpy, and apathetic. Or I would feel apathetic if I gave a shit*.
Item – Alastair and I are under such incredible work stress that it’s surreal. We are having trouble sleeping. We have prescription sleeping tablets, which so far only I have broken down and have taken (one).
Item – The hay fever clinical trial appears to be working. Sure, I have mouth ulcers, a burned esophagus and my tongue swells so badly I have to lean forward for a while lest I puke or suffocate, but still. Improvements had there as I’m not bleeding from the eyes and we are in hay fever season. Maybe it’s working, although I struggle a bit with the treatment – apparently the side effects I have are listed as “extremely rare”, although the consultant said one-third of us on the trial have these severe side effects. How can the side effects be “extremely rare” then? If 4 our of 5 dentists recommend Crest toothpaste, then are they the “extremely rare” minority in dentistry? I’ve been put on two crazy ass strong anti-histamines, which apparently are so strong that they can tranquilize and make docile horses. I am not only not tired to the point of needing sleeping pills, I am certainly not feeling docile. Clearly I am not Mr. Ed either.
Item – The bad news is, two weeks on from India and we are still suffering gastro-intestinal effects. “IreallyloveyoubabybutpleasegetoutIneedthetoiletrightnow” has become a legitimate vocabulary entry in the dictionary of our marriage.
Item – It’s a bank holiday today, so we’ve a day off. We had huge designs on garden, house, tidying…in the end, I think we just slogged through the weekend. We even went to B&Q (the UK equivalent of Home Depot) for it’s 20% off sale, and managed to find some brilliant Japanese screen doors for the garden, which we paid £8 each for (down from £50), but due to the weather and our sheer exhaustion, they’re just hanging around outside. We survived the rainy weekend (just) but our motivations are low in everything from DIY to painting our nails (that would be me on that one, not Alastair) to writing on the blog (again, that one is me). I need to stick a rocket up my backside.
Item – Then again last Saturday night I was home alone with two snoozing babies upstairs. In one hour, I wrote 34 pages. That may not surprise anyone who reads here and is familiar with my inability to shut the fuck up to limit my verbosity.
Right. Enough stealing my blog formatting from May and moaning about irrelevant shit. If you need me, I’ll be facedown on the carpet, probably covered with moss.
-S.
* See what I did there?
The forecast for tomorrow says that it will be sunny here. I can’t wait, I’m sick of unending grey. We don’t have a hosepipe ban because we had enough rain already so this extra stuff can go where it’s needed, not in my back yard.
I tell myself that at least I don’t have to shovel it but that’s all the upside that I can see apart from it’s a fantastic excuse for not cutting the grass, that’s not been dry for weeks. Low pollen count though.
Its been doing nothing but raining and just generally being gloomy for the last week or so. Last night was a wicked lightening storm, and while I generally don’t enjoy storms, I figured hey, at least its something different.
My daughter often wishes for nothing but sunny days. I tell her that too much of anything is bad. I hope it stops raining soon. I also hope this means your drought is over.
Perhaps what they mean by “rare” side effects is “we’d really, really like them to be rare, or else we won’t be able to sell our product.”
Perhaps you picked up a parasite?
In Texas we LOVE rain (we’re supposed to get about 48 inches/year in Houston) – had a big drought last year so now we’re celebrating every storm that rolls in. I ADORE thunder and lightening so this morning at 2:00 I was laying in bed watching the latest action. However – if it went on forever (as yours is) I’d probably reconsider the whole thing.
I had ‘rare’, fairly debilitating side effects from 5 different brands of cholesterol meds – like you, the doctor told me it was ‘fairly common’. Altho I’ve always known I’m not that special, ‘common’ was hardly what I expected to hear. Just goes to show you that docs aren’t as smart as we think they are.
I hope life improves soon! I suspect it will. I send love and hugs.
I thought that said horsepipe ban and you can’t imagine all the images I had going through my mind. I’m still giggling over here.
I am in Oregon and have lived here my entire life (42 years ((I whispered that ;) )) This year we have had the most HORRIBLE rain!! I sympathize with you and your rainy blues! It is hard to go out day after day and forget that the sky is not normally a charcoal color of gray.
I’m sending you wishes that the miserable side effects go, go, go AWAY!
The India thing that seems to keep dragging on? When you have gastritis to the point you had, your intestinal tract sloughs off the cilia that moves your food along, and it can take up to a month for those little fingers to grow back, so just hang in there, it takes time.
As for the apathy, um, I got nothin.
Send some of your rain to me, it hasn’t rained here for months.
I’m actually depressed right now because the rain keeps bypassing us. Very little winter here, and virtually no spring – almost straight into summer. What tends to depress me are endless days of 90+ heat and humidity – and going to work in those conditions. Fortunately we had a bit of a cold front move through, so it’s a much more tolerable 80, quite breezy, and absent of much humidity. The sad thing is, it won’t last more than a week.
And seriously, the two of you should get checked out for your malingering Delhi belly issues. Always the chance you two might have gotten something really nasty that insists on sticking around.
I’m sure I have at least 20 so-called friends back in SA who are *smirking* at our stinky weather that we’ve had for the past month. It hasn’t gotten me down yet (still loving the safety, the shopping and the great broadband/tv/firstworldstuff too much), but I could use some sunshine – oooh look – apparently it’s supposed to happen this weekend!!
*Looks up from scraping her own layer of moss off*
Oh, hiya.
Not bleeding from the eyes – good.
Ulcers and swollen tongue – bad.
Work stress extreme edition – bad.
Tummy still upset – bad.
Horrible wet apathetic Bank Holiday (we had one of those too) – bad.
34 pages – good!
Which given your medication’s logic, would make ‘good’ an extremely rare side-effect. Bugger.
Well, I suppose sticking a rocket up your backside would clear up the gastro issue and probably land you in a hospital bed with some great drugs. Then again, it might disqualify you from the allergy trial.
I’m curious, could your improved allergy symptoms be from all the rain? I know mine tend to clear up when it rains, because the pollen and other airborne “stuff” gets washed out.
Since you’re dealing with the extremely rare side effects everyone seems to get, I hope it’s the drugs that are helping. : )
The “Ireallyloveyoubaby” phrase has acquired some odd slang in our household—”quality time.” It stems from that phase in which they started saying that the quantity of time spent with your kids didn’t matter as long as the tiny amount of time you spent was “quality time”—so we started making cracks about how we were spending quality time with the kitchen, or the bed, or the toilet. Only the last one stuck, for some reason. “Excuse me, I’m going to go spend some quality time.”