Sniff sniff ...

Oh, did you notice me sniffing? No, I don't have swine flu ... I've started sniffing synarel! So far no side effects (this is day 3) except it stings my nose for a while. Like when you accidentally snort pool water up your nose and it hurts right at the junction of ears/nose/throat. Other than that I don't think I'm side-effected.

Except maybe for the misery-guts mood I'm in. But I was like that before, so who knows.

Today's tidbit - when you go clothes shopping make sure you go into the really unlikely stores. I had a look-see and a poke through my favourite stores today, then through the stores I love but can't justify spending at (found a lovely ducktail skirt that almost made me wish I wish I wore heels and worked in a corporate environment). Was leaving the megaplex that is now Chadstone and on the way to the car I walked past the body-piercing place where three teenage boys were lounging around behind the counter listening to metal rap. I was dressed so incredibly inappropriately for that particular store. I'd just finished testing at a nursing home and was looking all demure and mumsy (hang on, there's a better word for that ... I looked FRUMPY). So in I walked because I had spotted a skivvy while walking past. I collected the skivvy and saw the most delicious dress on a sale rack. So I tried it on! And it mostly fit!

I wandered out of the changeroom looking decidedly less frumpy as asked the lounging counter boys whether I was too lumpy to wear the dress and they said I wasn't! So I chose to believe them and bought the wonderful-non-frumpy-little-bit-gothy dress for (are you ready) $14.95!!! The Big Guy says it looks gorgeous and I choose to believe him too. Yay!

And I got a packet of magic pills (extra birth control) from a dear EB friend today. She sent a card along with the packet and I am so touched by her thoughts and kind wishes. You rock Ali!

Sleep

If I sleep all night and then wake up to take The Little Guy to school then come back home and go back to bed for another 4 hours am I ok? (Oh, and hello 1:30pm I love to see you when I open my eyes, I wish school started at 2pm, that would suit me so much better.) I mean, why the fuck am I so incredibly tired all the time. I'm figuring it's a combination of stress, 4 days working and fibromyalgia. What a rotten cocktail that is. I'd prefer a Blue Hawaiian thank you very much.

Anyhoo, all I want to do is sleep and I haven't finished writing my goddamn lit review because if there was a medal for procrastination I'd be procrastinating about going to the ceremony to accept it. I absolutely rock at procrastinating. If there was a So You Think You Can Procrastinate I wouldn't even turn up for the audition because I'd be too busy - I don't know, tending my Farm Town or cleaning my desk up (oooh I love a clean desk when I'm supposed to be writing) or trawling through the time-waster extraordinaire that is Essential Baby. Or maybe just maybe I'd be in here writing a post. Oops.

I had a massage tonight. It was my birthday present from May last year (because, you know, I procrastinated using my voucher til this year's birthday). She was good, mostly. I am incredibly sensitive (thankyou fibro) and have all these weird sore bone spots I wasn't fully aware of until the woman began rubbing them. I had to keep telling her to go softer until eventually towards the end I was embarrassed to say "please, a bit softer" and I lay there tolerating the pain. How dumb is that? I really wish I had been clearer. Mind you, how much clearer could I have been? I told her what was wrong at the outset and then repeatedly for the first 15 minutes. I think massage people in general don't actually believe me. Or they think the pain is therapeutic. Hello lady I have a pain condition. Pain is not therapeutic. The Big Guy thinks that when a masseuse gets me they think to themselves "I shall be the amazing masseuse that fixes this poor soul". I wish massage fixed fibro.

I dropped a tab ...

... and it wasn't acid or ecstacy! And dropping it is bad. I popped birth control pill day 9 out of it's popper packet and promptly dropped it under my desk. Which is a dangerous place for an unsuspecting and teeny tiny pill. Under my desk is storage - which may sound all organised and boxy but is in fact piles and piles of old uni work and kid-artwork, a multitude of photo albums and enough dust to make 3 rather large bunnies.

Image via Wikipedia

The pill is officially MIA and I am wondering how necessary it is to take exactly 21 of the little buggers. Can I get away with 20 of them or will I have to buy more birth control? Cause I don't wanna!

Banana cake

I always end up with far too many bananas going black at once and so we end up with cake. I usually make my Mum's banana bread recipe but tonight I decided to find a moister, cake-y version. After much hunting and subsequent cursing at American recipes requiring buttermilk or all-purpose flour, I found one at www.cheap-and-easy-recipes.com

Ingredients:
2 big eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 big mashed bananas
1 and 1/2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method: Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Beat eggs and add in the oil. Beat well.

Add sugar, vanilla and bananas and beat again.

Sift and then slowly fold in the flour and bi carb.

Tip mixture into greased 20 cm cake tin.

Cook for 35 - 40 minutes. Cool and ice if desired.

Icing:
whatever you like best, I prefer this one ...
2 cups of icing mixture, 2 tbsp soft butter, 1.5 tsp of vanilla and a 1.5 tsp of milk or so - mix together, adjust for taste and consistency and then spread it on thick!

The batter tasted good and the cake will be cooked in a few minutes! And then I'll start writing because, of course, baking is way more fun than writing.

I was supposed to spend all day writing today but I had a nap after a little while and set my alarm to wake me after an hour. However I set it to AM not PM and so the alarm won't go off until midnight tonight. So at 1:21pm I woke naturally and freaked out at my waste of a day. I was supposed to be writing not sleeping.


Supposed to, should have, ought to - my litany of guilt words. I wish I was supposed to be sleeping.

Synarel starts next Monday. Doing my best not to think about it at all.




P.S. the cake is good.

(P.P.S editing to add that it is still good for the next few days and everyone lerves it!).

The pill

It has begun with the smallest of steps. I swallowed my pill and thus our journey has begun. Bizarrely, it has begun with birth control. I swear that that is the biggest ironic joke in the history of irony.

"Oh, you'd like to get pregnant using assistance? Here, take some BIRTH CONTROL. That'll do the trick!"

Zemanta and swine flu

I'm trying out Zemanta to see what it's like on my blog. Do I want this optimiser???? How will I even figure out how to work it. Hmmm, seems I have figured it out because it's ridiculously easy to use. I'll keep it for a while and see how it goes. If you think it's annoying, do let me know.

Image by Dan Queiroz via Flickr

Victoria now has over 200 cases of the swine flu and it's interesting watching this virus spread. We started stockpiling food a while ago but haven't got much organised so far. My sister-in-law has N95 masks and is contemplating wearing one on the train tomorrow - will she protect herself or merely freak out the other passengers. Will she start a trend??




Are we going to end up with a 40% infection rate and have a substantial number of our workers out of commission (whether through their own illness or tending to others with it)? Will it mutate and get worse through the winter (we have 3 months of winter ahead of us). So many questions. Only some answers.