Just call me…..

Julie, or do I mean Julia??

Dear Diary,

Life moves on apace and like all circles of friends once one has been incommunicado for a while the harder it is to get in touch!

I have lost count of the half written entries, discarded at the time or when I next log in…..some of them even I cannot remember what I was wittering on about!

Due to a pleasant bout of vomiting on Friday I am allowed to ignore all housework as I am yet again staggering around like there happens to be an 8 at the front of my decades!  

One knows life has become a little surreal when one finds oneself telling the hunk that one would like to be able to do normal things in life…..like puke!

So, how is the back.  

Well thanks for asking.  As you all know I am the Queen Slut of housework but there tends to be one room that is the exception….the kitchen.  Currently my kitchen has clean dishes in the dishwasher (including my incredibly sexy new saucepans) which have been there fore four days, dirty dishes piled up on the side and a rather funky smell…….

That’s how good my back is.  

Grump!

Ok on the up side, I now move more like I am middle aged instead of old aged and they did an MRI scan last week which means we may soon at least know what is wrong…..and therefore what to do about it.  I also had the pleasure, I DO mean pleasure (imagine that said in throaty voice) of seeing the most Delectable Dr Tim on Friday.  

*phew*  *Fans face*  Just the thought of him makes me all of a dither! 😉

Super long story cut ever so slightly shorter is that he is as ever wonderful.  Told me not to worry about a slightly (as in still within normal bounds) rise in my blood pressure – to be expected when someone is in pain and has the test done before pain killers or coffee in the morning!  He has also upped the dose of one of my drugs, and merrily written scripts for all the others.

You see I have become the world’s biggest legal druggie…..I may exaggerate ever so slightly.

I forget how kick arse some of these things are because, well because I’ve been taking the majority for 8 months now… that’s almost as long as it takes to cook a baby and there were times I forgot I was pregnant…..or was trying to forget or something 😉

I did get one of those fabulously hypochondriac pill counter thingies.  You know! (and No, I do not mean a pretty Victorian pill box)  A box with the days of the week across the top and then times of the day down the side and corresponding little boxes.  I was most upset.  For my amount of junk I had to get the boring white one.  If you just needed the pills once a day you could have a rainbow coloured one! 

Anyone who happens to find a rainbow coloured one that I need please feel free to post it to me!  *grin*

Anyway…..I’m sure there was a plot to this entry…..however tangential there was a plot.

So currently taking my forever drugs……no mad and no baby.  Other wise known as 40mg Citalopram and a Yasmin tablet once every day (please note I withhold the right to make the later a no longer forever drug at some point!!)

Then I guzzle some lovely pink bruffen tabs three times a day.  Bruffen sounds so wonderfully old fashioned.  I know the Navy used to dish out bruffen for everything from a sore throat to a multiple amputations.  Old fashioned it may be but the newer fangled diclofenac isn’t so wonderful.  Newer is not always better!  To be fair , as I now imagine the whole of diclofenac cowering unloved in a corner, the normal stuff is fine but they gave me slow release.  Slow release pain relief comes with fast release poo.  

Try running for the loo when you actually can’t walk properly….

I’ll just leave you with that enticing thought for a moment……

…..

Yes.  In Bruffen we Trust!

Then there are the funky co-codamol.  30/500 no less.  I take…..hmm well.  I am prescribed to take 2 every 4 hours, not exceeding 8 in any given period of 24 hours.  But as the Delicious Dr Tim has yet to start reading my blog I can be honest and say that actually I take them every four hours when the pain is fucking bad.  

Yeah yeah.  I know!  It is bad for me.  

It’s actually not the codiene that is the really scary bit.  Paracetomol is a vile drug.  Even it’s use as an analgesic is now being questioned.  I only found that out because I was ranting about how shit its pain relieving qualities were to my nursey sister.  That was in regard to the children.  Fabulous anti pyretic but crap analgesic, was pretty much my conclusion and she enlightened me.  It appears I am not the first to have thought this (Really??!) And there have now been a number of studies published saying it is shite at killing pain and that its only real use is in reducing temperatures.  

Odd how a normal mummy from Normalsville could have told them that.  

But, it is still prescribed/suggested because the alternatives have nasty side effects and because Joe Public are apparently thick and won’t notice, or that the change would be too scary or that…..oh I don’t know.

And hey, the placebo effect is well documented.

Anyhow.  I am not a fan of paracetomol unless I am trying to reduce a temperature.  

So this co-codamol malarkey…..

Apparently one can become addicted.  

Quite how long it takes or how one is supposed to know one is addicted is another matter and one that I suspect I’ll deal with somewhere along the line….

Perhaps I’ll appear on the Jeremy Kyle Show (Think Jerry Springer in the US) with a prescription med addiction.

Alternatively perhaps I’ll start selling them on the streets to make a few pennies.  Can just see me now.  I could buy a tracksuit from Primani, a baseball cap from….wherever one gets baseball caps.  Wear three inches of orange foundation and an awful lot of gold jewellery.  Don’t even need to go out of my way as I pick the kids up from school so hanging around the school gates won’t cause any suspicion.

Hush.  I am joking!

The worst that can be said of co-codamol is that it makes me a little floaty at times.  It does however work…in part at least.  

It’s that last bit that leads me on to the tablets that scare the fucking shite out of me.  

Because they’re pretty convinced that it is nerve pain I am suffering they looked at what other little jollies they could stick in my pill box.

First of all they wanted to prescribe me amatriptyline.  I think it was when the Back man turned around to find me backing out of the door slowly with a cross held in front of me that he realised that might not be a goer.  

Evil stuff.  Had it once when I got a lot of nightmares….Trip is right.  Yuk

The fact they also make me suicidal, unable to function at all and generally a lump of miserable jelly also swayed them.  

And anyway I already pop an anti mad pill.  

So then they came up with the scary drug.  Something called Pregabalin.  Known in a former li

fe as Gaberpentin.  

Actually an anti epileptic drug but they found it was good for neuralgic pain.  

It has big red letters across the box that say,

"DO NOT STOP TAKING THIS MEDICINE WITHOUT SPEAKING TO YOUR PRACTITIONER"

Now this is me we are talking about.  I didn’t deliberately stop taking them….I just ran out.

This is sleepy TF, repeat scripts can only be delivered in person or posted with a return SAE and they take at least 48 of their working hours to complete and they have two half days a week, don’t open weekends or bank holidays.  

Not that I would change my surgery for all the tea in china because it is also personal and first names and cosy and caring and delightful.  Not one of these hideous mini hospital monstrosities.

Anyway I missed about three days of these tabs.

Fuck me if the world didn’t implode and explode at the same time.  And I know that is not possible and yes they should employ me in withdrawal from Pregabalin at the Hadron collider.  

Sweats like you just wouldn’t believe possible from someone who other than a bit of a wonky back is in ok health, especually as they were accompanied by shivering in extreme.  And then it was like I had been transported to the desert….I don’t think I have ever been so thirsty in all of my life.  

Shits, not shits.  Vomiting, not vomiting just feeling sick.  hungry, not hungry.

But worst by far was the mental effect.  

So sure I suffer from reasonably serious and rather chronic depressions – that sucks.  However normal depression doesn’t just happen all of a sudden.  It is progressive.  Things happen over a period of time.  Even a bad episode doesn’t result in you going to bed hale and hearty and happy one night only to wake up the next morning believing we would all be better off dead.  It just does not work like that.  

Well at least that’s how I knew life to be pre pregabalin.  

And this isn’t just me saying this – everyone around me agreed I was well before I ran out.  

I shall not be running out again.  

In fact they are increasing my dose.  Whatever is in this scary red and white teeny tiny capsule is scary as hell because the dose they have decided I need will take three months to gradually build me up to.  

On the grounds that one should not dwell on things one cannot change I am not thinking about how nasty it is!

So in answer to your kind enquiry my back is fucked.  And something as small as a long (for me – only 8 hrs) day at work and a night of being sick kill it totally.  

I also sleep lots now.

Or at least doze.

I spent a lot of time laid down. 

It is frustrating

But it does excuse the housework

Every cloud…..does indeed have a silver lining! 🙂

And all of the gardening more exerting than planting seeds or harvesting anything from waist height up.

My childerbeasts and the Hunk are extremely tolerant and helpful.

My family are also very sympathetic and helpful but up until the point that I happen to hit publish probably don’t know how bad it is.  

Another side effect of the drugs is that I dream a LOT, and the dreams are incredibly vivid and occasionally real – to the point that something I have dreamt I have then referred to as if it really happened.  Most of my dream involve food.

Glorious food.

I’m also getting fat but my mother worries enough about that for me not to have to worry! 🙂

So when I left home I could not cook. 

I could boil an egg, or open a packet and follow the instructions.

Had you given me some mince I would known that it would most likely appear in a spag bol or cottage pie and would also have known roughly what other components were required.  I would most likely have presented you with almost raw mince and crunchy carrots 🙂

I did on occasion present the maggot with such meals…..what a shame the mince wasn’t further undercooked!!

I was blessed with a reasonably foody upbringing.  

I think big sis will laugh when she reads that.  

But big sis hasn’t met my daughter’s friends!

We were taken out to eat reasonably often given that the UK must be the worst place on earth to take children out to eat.  We were introduced to lots of different types and cuts of meat, oddles of different fruit and veg and nuts.  Lots of flavours. 

In fact the only real food group I can think of as missing from my childhood is pulses.  Other than baked beans and the odd kidney bean we didn’t really do pulses like that.  

Things like lentils have been a revelation to me.  I quite like the red ones and use them to bulk out oodles of meals.  The green ones are a faff and so I tend to not use.  

Beans wise – I am just not a fan.  Wasn’t that keen on baked beans growing up and oddly that has stayed with me – I’ll eat them but I wouldn’t choose them unless I had nothing else in the cupboard and only if I could douse them in either Woucestershire sauce or Brown Sauce.  (I believe there just isn’t a Brown Sauce equivalent in the US – you poor deprived people)

I still put kidney beans in a chilli, despite the fact I really despise them.  

I still put canellini beans in minestrone, despite the fact I really despise them

I still serve up the disgusting Broad Bean, when in season, wearing its horrible grey coat that squeaks between your teeth before you hit the mush.

And that’s the rub.  The texture.  

Beans all have a horrible texture.  

To fair broad beans caught very early or de-skinned and barely cooked can be ok.  

I think my utter nemesis was one of the recipes on a programme I watch on Sunday mornings called, "Something for the Weekend".  e-fried bean quesidillas.  

Refried beans – OMG that is yuksome.  The aren’t even fried or refired, just cooked until that are and undistinguishable stodge.  YUK

Damn plot thingy has got lost again.  

Basically V called me a foody…..I am not sure if that is a compliment or not.  But I do dream about food, I think about food when I am listening to a boring client and need to make appropriate soothing noises.  I soothe with food and I congratulate with food.  I mend with food and I guess my life just resolves around the stuff.  

V has suggested we set up a food blog..

Problem is I am not clever or original or even very different with food.  

Her side would be eating out in NYC.  My side is meant to be country kitchen sytlee.

I can just about get away with saying I live in a village……whether I can get away with saying I live properly in the country is another thing.

So anyway after months of it being mentioned today I finally watched Julie & Julia.  

The Hunk described me as the missing link between them…..I’m not all one or all the other just a good sprinkling off both!

Would this work???

V thinks I could earn money through food eventually.  I’m not sure.  M

ostly because I love food and cooking.  It is my thing.  It is what I do when I am stressed.  Give me Radio 4 and my kitchen and I am a happy bunny.   I could get qualified here to do something.  I think about it occasionally…..

Like when Choo brings home a child that has no idea what a courgette is or indeed whether a melon is sweet.

But again.  You can find out anything on the net – anything you like.  Is reading about a bog standard brisket roast really going to flip anyone’s switch?

I guess one can only suck it and see.  

So the last dream, early this morning involved pasta in Spain.  I had to cook a large meal for a group of children (no idea who) and decided it would have to be a pasta dish.  Found a fabulous market for fresh produce but all the pasta was around E6 (about £5.65) a packet.  With plain lasagne sheets being the most expensive of all at E8. 

So I decided we would make the pasta which was fine apart from I don’t know the Spanish word for flour, let alone 00 flour.  I can ask for eggs – Huevos but flour was stumping me and I could’t convey what I meant to the grocer.  

I woke up mumbling about flour to the Hunk.  

I think I ought to go but before I do….a home made sweetie, born of a mistake.  

I was aiming for home dried bananas.  I made home made banana sweeties.  The boy child loves me!

Take some blackening bananas…you know, the ones you thought would be eaten and then weren’t.  The ones that sit making the rest of your fruit rot…..

 

 Some a bit like these… 

You want to peel them and slice them – about hmmm two pound coins thickness – not a two pound coin but two pound coins – think Euros or um….not sure what the US equivalent is – do you have dollar coins?

Dip them in lemon juice – both sides, it stops the worst of the discolouration and adds to the sweetness.  No extra sugar here

Lay them out on a baking sheet covered in baking paper……not that much apart, I had to remind myself, the are going to shrink not expand!!

 

Lowest setting you have – mine is 50C as above…then leave them for 8 hours…..but don’t forget to turn after 2 – I forgot, and check after 6 – I forgot. Doing both of these should make you dried bananas….but I wasn’t making dried bananas after all…..

 

This is what my mess looked like after 8 hours.  

Now they weren’t dried bananas…I didn’t turn them and actually you would probably get away with 75c or even 100c to dry – or of course a proper dehydrator….worth it if you plan on dehydrating lots.

I’m not, hence it isn’t on my letter to Father Christmas!  Before I threw these out I peeled off those that I could and the boychild (fussiest of the lot) tried one.  

They are banana caramels or toffees essentially.  They’ll keep forever – like jam. All the natural sugar brought out and they are chewy and bananary and apparently yummy – I hate bananas…

I’d recommend the recipe I would however go for 6.5 hours cooking at 50C or 7 hrs if they are still soft.  Some of these were beyond the point of return.

But hey, tried and failed at drying the sods, made what are being referred to as very nice sweet which can top porridge or wheetabix this winter! 🙂

Fi