I'm a little bit...

...fed up with the fact I've caught the flurgy twice in the last four weeks.

Partly cos it nearly killed me yesterday morning.

I was nicely asleep and having a surreal dream about Grandma Mazur (reading too much Stephanie Plum methinks) when I was woken up by a sneeze.
I reached down to the box of tissues...empty.
I woke up Anthony to check his side for tissues...nada.
So I hauled myself out of bed to go downstairs to the bathroom and grab some toilet roll.

Except the fact I was still rather sleepy meant that I didn't put my left foot where I should have done at the top of the stairs.

This resulted in me sliding down the stairs on my right side and landing in a heap at the bottom. (Anthony was out of bed and nearly at the top of the stairs before I hit the bottom).

Ow.

Ow, ow, ow, ow, OW!

These are the stairs that I went sliding down (note the white marks on the edges of the bottom seven stairs).

Below you can see what my right calf and right thigh looked like just afterwards (those white marks on the stairs...the skin from my calf). The swelling on my thigh just kept growing, it was a B cup size before any bruising started to come though.





I trotted off to the doctor (ie Anthony gave me a lift there and then I took 20 mins to do the 5 min walk home) since I'd also banged my head (no bruising there, sorry) and he was quite amazed that I hadn't broken anything (as was I). I just had to wait for the swelling to subside before I tried to spend a large amount of time on my feet. He also said "You'll probably have a little bit of colour change around that swelling in the next few days".

He wasn't wrong.

So for your viewing hilarity I present to you.

Kate's Rainbow Leg (over the course of yesterday afternoon)




The bit above the crescent shape is where it is still swollen (although probably only an A cup now) from a haematoma that is "probably going to take a few weeks to come out properly" - as in the swelling to go and that bit of bruise to come out. Since this is me...the folks in the Center Parcs Spa will probably be wondering how I got that bruise when I go there in March!

Sometimes...

...I should quit while I'm ahead.

After seeing this story about the huge British Gas price rises, I thought I'd better look at my pre-payment meters to see what they say at the moment. That way (like a grown-up) I can keep track of how much my gas and electric actually are, rather than just thinking "Blimey, that £10 went quick".

So I looked at the electric one first. It says that I have £5.84 on there (good) and that my standing charge is 82p and that I am paying 11.89p per kWh. (I will find another grown-up to explain to me if that is good or bad).

Lulled into a false sense of security by my lovely electricity meter (where I just pressed one button a few times and it gave me those numbers), I decided to look at the gas one too.

Biggest mistake of the day.

For the gas one you have to put the card in, and you have to press the two buttons in sequence, and then you have to go through millions of tiny hard-to-read screens before you find one that looks as if it makes sense.

Also, if you try to just crouch down to do this, forgetting about your dodgy ankle, your ankle will give way and you'll start to fall over. So you'll grab at the gas box, and it will pull away from the wall (just the box, none of the piping - don't panic about that).
Then you will fall over onto your back like a drunken beetle. In front of people.

Luckily I missed cracking the back of my head on the wall, I hit the bin instead. The graze on my hand has almost stopped bleeding now too.

Of course, after I'd hauled myself upright again the meter had gone back to the original screen so I had to press buttons randomly again.

My evil gas meter says:
credit £12.67 (good)
tariff 4 7.501 (uh-huh)
tariff 5 2.865 (errm)
wid4 7.34 (wid4? wtf???)
C.V. 41 (??????????)

If anyone knows what the fuck that all means - I don't care anymore.

I shall be aware of the rate on my lovely electricity meter and ignore the evil gas meter.

And I shall continue looking for a new place to rent. Somewhere without big gaps round the doors, with double-glazing that is actually effective, and where the gas meter is not of the evil pre-payment type.