Seriously...

...prodding buttock.

I may have just found the perfect motivational tool for 99% of my days.

I've just managed to spend an entire hour on the cross-trainer (assisted by the wondrous Lady Gaga), my legs now feel like jelly and I'm worried I may faint in the shower, but I did it.

My motivational tool is below:

This is the baby jacket that my darling sister brought me back from Canada in 2005. In fact she brought it back exactly six years ago last Monday (20th). Unfortunately that makes tomorrow exactly six years since I had my first miscarriage.

We've got an appointment with the specialist at New Cross next Tuesday. Hopefully we'll get a few questions answered and get a few pointers for the future.

But I'm thinking that making myself sad and angry so that I blast it with the cross-trainer until I fall over will be an excellent coping technique.

As for the other 1% of the time when it just makes me want to eat chocolate, hopefully the 99% will help counteract it!

Well, I'm back...

...from Milan, but only for about 10 minutes.

As much as I want to write a fabulous series of posts about the great time we had in Milan and at Monza, about the lovely tweeple that we met there (twice, once planned, once unplanned) and about the crazy man who thought I was Finnish...

These gems will all have to wait until Saturday, since today I am jumping on a train and heading off Darn Saff to visit my (recovering from an operation) mother (she's alright, just can't move her arm much) for a few days.

So you'll have to wait until Saturday (afternoon as my train home gets in at 23.57 on Friday) to hear about it.

Unless you follow me on Twitter in which case you've got some idea.

Ciao!

Reasons that my iPhone is fabulous...

...number 34598613947259735872048205345018. (no, seriously, IT IS THAT DAMN GOOD)

Ahem.

Today has been a pretty crappy day.

There's been a few of those recently and to be honest it's been an issue for a while.

But I've been avoiding it, naturally.

Today I cracked slightly and went into Tesco after work and filled a basket with stuff, paid for it and then started walking home - in the pouring rain.

Because of the rain and the shopping I could not shake my iPhone when it started playing me music I did not want to hear. I had to pick the first track and then just put up with whatever came next.

My iPhone obviously loves me.

Playlist for Kate's walk home in the pouring rain 26/08/09.

Screamager - Therapy? (I picked this)
The Dark Is Rising - Mercury Rev
Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It - Buffalo Springfield
For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield
Disco 2000 - Pulp
Beautiful Day - U2

The last track started just as I got to the doorstep and then had to hunt through 3 bags for my keys.

Fabulous, fabulous iPhone.

***************************************

Now that I have taken off my soaking jeans, stuffed my trainers full of newspaper and prevented Foley from running under a bus while I checked the gas meter (£19.64) I can actually look at what I bought in Tesco.


I didn't just buy chocolate?????? *faints with shock*

(and with discounts it actually came to under £20 - my cracked brain has turned out sensible somehow).

So tonight I shall be googling how to cook pork belly slices, drinking Bucks Fizz and eating caramel shortcake, nom.

Oh, and being hyper about the fact I've had some visor related news.

Oh, and being proud of myself for finally booking that (long) overdue doctors appointment.

I have always loved...

...mucking about with spreadsheets. That is until recently.

The changes at work resulted in two redundancies, we lost a full-time position and a part-time one. Another colleague had her hours reduced. She opted to leave and so Don has stayed, although he now only does 16 hours a week rather than full time. The three part timers that we used to have were all working overtime to do full time hours anyway since we are a full time member of management short. These changes mean that we have gone from having 4 full timers to 2 part timers and since we still have that vacancy...it's all a bit of a nightmare.

In order to free up some of Richie's valuable time I volunteered to take over doing the rotas.

I now loathe spreadsheets!

Here are some lovely photographs of what I have gotten myself into.




(sorry about the quality, had to use my phone camera - and they're not worth looking at in detail anyway as THEY MAKE NO SENSE!)

Once we have filled that vacancy the rotas will work well, in fact I have already worked out the base daily rotas. The problem at the moment is that because of the vacancy we can't use the base rotas as it would result in there being nobody there to open the shop...hence all the crossings-out and bizarre extra shifts.

Apart from me now being not so keen on spreadsheets it is also making me want to stay as far away from any type of typing as possible (and putting me behind with my OU work, but that's another (eventual) post).

So many apologies (yet again) for being a crap CRAP blogger.

I will be back with you at some point, probably once I have started sleeping properly rather than lying awake worrying about only having 4 staff on a Saturday.

(and I also spent most of this afternoon being convinced it was Wednesday...)

Lazy Sunday...

...Afternoon.

Well lazy entire weekend to be honest. But oh my goodness I NEEDED it!

Last week was one of those weeks where nothing is simple and every task takes 15 times longer than it was supposed to.

Anthony was back on the 5-1 shift for the first time in ages which meant that up until Thursday night I only got to see him at 3am when he came up to bed, and at 7am when I got up. The whole balance between wanting to see him and wanting an unbroken night of sleep made me rather ratty I must confess.

At work everything was very stop-start. By Friday I reduced my To-Do list to one thing - Rearrange the 3 for 2 tables. It took me all flipping day!

(and I didn't blog in the week because I didn't want it to turn into one big moan...oops!)

So, a Saturday with Anthony sleeping in (his night shift meant he got in at 8.30am) and me pottering about doing laundry and ptootling. Saturday evening spent sewing and watching CSI:NY while Anthony kicked ass on WoW.

Today I have been kicking ass on WoW (haven't played for ages) and got myself up to level 75. Anthony has been in charge of the TV remote and also prodded me into tidying up the bathroom and throwing out all sorts of bottles of stuff that were never gonna get used.

This weekend was very much needed. Now it's February and that's always a better month. Plus, it's only four weeks until I'm off to Center Parcs again for a week family holidayness.

Ohhh, and I'm managing to keep my list of books read in 2009 up to date - last week was a real slow reading week!

Blood...

...I still didn't have enough of it yesterday.



The doc went for my right wrist first and managed to fill four sample tubes with what he got. Then it was "a bit of blind poking about" in order to find the nice vein in my left elbow that the nurse had found before. It turned up first try and provided enough blood to fill the other nine sample tubes. Unlike the nurse before, he didn't fill each tube up straight from me. Instead he had this giant syringe and then decanted it.

Anthony was ever so sympathetic...sitting there and telling me my veins were crap while showing off the fact that his aren't.

Got my revenge when the doc decided to take some from Anthony too as part of the screening process that now kicks in as that was my third strike.

The big patch on my hand is where the catheter went for my nice general anaesthetic. That one (of course) bled like a bugger when they took it out.

------

So I'm here, and I'm ok. Not great, but ok. Thank you for all of your love and best wishes, hugs back at the lot of you.

Now I'm back to the sofa to watch more curling (love that sport) and be purred at by a possessive pussycat.

I'm still here...

...just mostly asleep.

Seriously.

I'm tired all the time at the moment and I've gone from sleeping 2-3 hours a night (as I have been for the past year) to conking out at 8pm.

Last weekend I went to bed at 10.30pm on the Saturday night (having forced myself to stay up so that I actually got to spend some time with Anthony), and I woke up at 1pm...

More blood tests tomorrow, assuming I actually BLEED this time!

In other news I have been recording Silent Witness using my lovely shiny V+ box, and today I got a bit of a shock. I was watching it when all of a sudden I recognised the guy on screen.

I couldn't remember his name at first but eventually my poor tired brain realised that it was the brother of a guy I house-shared with at uni. It was very strange to see him on tv, last time was about 10 years ago when he was starring in Hollyoaks. (Although his character Sash isn't mentioned on there at all...strange)