Monday

This morning I ducked out to get a newspaper, smoke a cigarette and buy some phone credit.  I fell ill on the way back, on the brink of vomiting, sweating, and I could feel my face going pale.  I sat myself down on a concrete wall just as my vision went fuzzy around the edges.  Dipped  my head down towards my knees and took deep breath.  It was a cool morning, which helped.  It passed after about 10 minutes, during which time I had sussed out an acceptable portion of the hotel flowerbed that I could vomit into without causing too much trouble.  

The thing is, this has happened to me nearly every day for about 5 days.  I don’t know what the problem is.

I know what you’re thinking.  "She’s pregnant!"

I can assure you, I am not.  I haven’t had sex in over 2 months.  Not for M’s lack of trying, but I have just been stressed and anxious, and prior to that, I was just feeling fat and unattractive. 

Dr Google hints at my problem being a kidney or bladder infection, which could be possible.  I am also having urgency to pee, and waking up at night to pee, but there is no pain and my pee is normal. 

When I had my ultrasound the other week the nurse noted that I still had over 100ml in it, despite me peeing like a racehorse, having had to drink 1L of water and hold it for 2 hrs.  The bladder holds between 500ml and 750ml, so it was a fair amount left in there.  She asked me if I was susceptible to UTIs and I said that I was not.  

Then, when we moved house, I drank barely anything and was just craving water for the next week.  I never drink water.  I would average 3 glasses of water per week, and the rest of the time I have juice or soft drink, and even then it’s not much.  I am constantly dehydrated (obviously not to a serious level, but will daily have a parched throat).  So now I am thinking that I have probably damaged my kidneys by not drinking water for pretty much my whole life (save for my anorexic years, where 2L of water was dinner – once I settled into bulimia water wasn’t so useful). 

I guess I need to get it checked out. 

Anyway, so we hung out at the hotel for a little while, then trundled ourselves off to Chinatown.  Stopped at the bakery and bought a bag of stuff.  We have to leave the hotel early tomorrow for my interview, so we figured we would get some stuff to eat for breakfast.  I am extremely excited about the GIANT wedge of vanilla sponge cake, and also the deep fried beef roll.

So we wandered around and wandered around and wandered around, before stopping in at a restaurant for some yum cha.  It was alright, I picked one serve of dumplings that was a bit of a dud, but everything else was nice.  I think the nicest part was to sit in a restaurant together and enjoy a meal.  We are trying to be so cheap, so we always get cheap lunch specials, or $2 hamburgers, or cheap footlongs from Subway, but never get to sit down to a nice meal together.  That’s something I am looking forward to doing in the US.  It is just so much more affordable there, even when we only had M’s modest salary to live on. 

We are back at the hotel now to rest our tired legs (neither of us are used to any sort of physical activity) and we will meet up with M’s friend again tonight for dinner.  Pretty sure we are going to a Jamaican restaurant, which I am looking forward to. 

We are both missing our Ernie terribly.  Is this what it is like to have kids?

By the way, we decided to use a pet export service to get him to the US.  Over TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS, it will cost.  We have weighed it up, though, and the stress on us is not worth it, it is also not worth the risk having us idiots try and get the paperwork right and Ernie being denied entry to the US.  Then we looked at the price for M to fly straight to LA and then on to New Mexico, and it was $1,000 cheaper than sending him via Hawaii with Ernie.  That was pretty much the clincher.  We had budgeted $2,500 for M’s dozen flights, so it really only meant adding another $1,000 to the travel budget, and I am happy to pay that if it means that it runs smoothly.