phantym_56: (ed - this big!)

Maybe the reason I'm feeling a bit sick is that I need something to eat.

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phantym_56: (ed - reunited - squash)
I'm not feeling so good and there's no one to whine to at home so...

Been feeling hot all morning. Bit sick and dizzy around 11 but a bit better now. Keep getting the shivers. Would like to curl up right here and go to sleep but I've got to be back at work in half an hour. I suspect it's a combination of it being an obscenely hot day, the fact that I finished taking the hormone pills a few days ago and torture will shortly be upon me again and possibly even tiredness, although I've slept like the dead these past two nights - oh, blessed darkness! Tonight, I will not go snowboarding. Tonight I will drag a blanket downstairs and curl up in front of the TV. Parents are abroad, sister will be spending the evening with her Useless Fiance. Home alone. Bliss.

(Despite wanting to whine to someone, I am the sort of person who prefers to be left alone when I'm not feeling well. I don't like "being looked after". So I'm more than happy to have an empty house.)
phantym_56: (ed - red)
Eeesh, missing an entire night's sleep really takes it out of you! I deliberately (and stupidly) didn't bother even trying to sleep Friday night and it's now Monday and I could still curl up and go to sleep right now.

My immune system is still playing am-I-amn't-I with me. I've been fine for several days now but it had me all full of cough this morning and feeling really unnaturally hot for a bit. That's gone again now. It teases me.

I bought some new glasses when I was going through a phase back in the autumn. That was when I discovered the concept of coloured overlays and lenses. I used the overlays for a while but I've stopped now and I don't think I'm any worse without them. But I had vague intentions of getting coloured lenses, so I bought some cheap glasses from the internet. And it would be foolish to spend that amount of money on getting them coloured, especially when I don't think I need them now, so they've gone into circulation as normal glasses. I didn't bother with the anti-reflection coating, all it seems to do is attract fingerprints but... actually, I've had it for so long that I'm struggling with these ones because they do reflect things. And they're not fitted to my face. I have quite a small head and glasses tend to be too big. That's why black-framed ones, even relatively delicate ones, always look ludicrous on me. And it's why they all have to have their arms bent in peculiar ways, to try and keep them on my ears. They've been slipping off all weekend and it's driving me crazy.

I have taken advice and am watching Boardwalk Empire. Can't put my finger on why but I'm quite enjoying it. Only two episodes in but I've got four sitting waiting to be watched later. Generally, if I'm not in a series at the beginning I don't bother, it's too much effort and commitment and just takes too much time to catch up (see my unwatched Battlestar Galactica boxset) but this is only twelve episodes. I'm still very much having trouble keeping who's who straight - I mix up Nucky and Jimmy occasionally at the moment and there's still a lot of people I haven't learnt to recognise yet. Hopefully I'll get there.

As well as that, I've finally picked up a book that I'm really enjoying - oh, I can see its faults, both in story and in style, but it's fun and that's all that's important, frankly. Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding. I'm not going to pretend that it's fine literature. But stories are stories.

Speaking of which, I've spent the last ten days feeling vaguely that April would be a great time to knuckle down on the books I'm trying to write. The Sequel just isn't as much fun as the original Big Book Project. I don't know if that's because I've got something of a plot laid out, whereas the original was total "throw everything I can dream of in there and we'll sort it out later!". I don't know if it's because I'm trying to shoehorn in a couple of new characters who just aren't gelling or if it's suffering from lack of Nat but it's a pig to write. I love Alex and Joey. I love this brotherly/motherly relationship they seem to have slipped into. They're poppets. I guess the real problem is that Joey is coming across as a nerd who'd rather be on his computer and neither of them seems particularly good at the secret agent bit. Arrggh. Boys!
This entry was originally posted at http://phantym.dreamwidth.org/910.html. There are comment count unavailable comments there. I prefer Livejournal but feel free to comment at Dreamwidth if you like.
phantym_56: (ed - different class)

*shivers pathetically*

*doesn't feel very well*

Ok, that was at lunchtime. I had the shivers all morning, along with the feeling miserable.

I went to Brownies feeling a bit urgh and with an irritatingly croaky voice, felt better while I was there (a pack of small girls is brilliant distraction therapy; they're a cure for all ills) but I've come back all limp and with a really sore throat.

It's frustrating! You know when you feel like you're coming down with something? It's immensely frustrating to feel like that for a week, when the "something" still hasn't actually made an appearance. I'm not ill (at least not yet, and possibly not at all) but I feel pretty rough anyway.

phantym_56: (bryan - bunk bed boys)
Wish my body'd make up its mind. The coldy symptoms have been on hold most of the weekend to make way for the Usual Pains, which pretty much kept me out of it (ie whimpering and crying, doubled up in pain, in my bed) until gone midday today. By late afternoon I was starting to feel positively perky. But this evening I've been really tired. Lay on my bed and watched Wrath of Khan but much as I enjoyed Next Generation, Voyager and what little I saw of Enterprise, I really couldn't get into it and by the time Terrell shot himself, I was feeling so drowsy I put the laptop away, turned off the light and slept for an hour. Well, tried to sleep. The moment I was settled in bed I started coughing. I wouldn't mind so much if I knew one way or the other but it's frustrating to feel ill one day, ok the next, ill the next etc etc. Because despite feeling ok cold-wise most of today, I've had a croaky voice which I suspect is a way of telling me it's not over yet and that I may yet wake up with no voice whatsoever. I just wish I knew for certain which way this is heading. I do remember that last time I had two days, the Sunday and Monday, when I felt much better before it really hit badly on the Tuesday and Wednesday.
If I'm going to be ill, I want it to get a move on. I want to spend a few days feeling like death warmed up and then start to feel better, not least because I have Big Plans for Friday and Saturday. If I'm not going to be ill, then I want the croaky voice and occasional bouts of lung-scouring coughing to go away and stop scaring me.
*feels a little bit rubbish*
phantym_56: (ed - reunited - squash)
I feel ick tonight. The cold's gone quiet - I was coughing a fair bit this morning, thought I was about to get Phase 2 but it doesn't seem to have come to much. My visions of being sent home from work by 10am on Monday have vanished. I've spent the day either dozing in my blankets or in the bath and it seems the rest has done me good. I've watched Round Ireland with a Fridge - dire film, too short, no time to fully show anything, full of little sequences that don't go anywhere, endless fades-to-next-scene-halfway-through-current-scene and Tony Hawks is an appalling actor. I've rewatched Zemanovaload, which has the potential to be a bit nasty-hearted and yet somehow isn't - can't decide how much is down to Ed Byrne being naturally very likeable and how much is down to the soundtrack. I'm feeling better, cold-wise. Seems I've escaped a second round of Flu-Bug From Hell after all. Yay immune system!
 
I do have The Usual to contend with however, so stomach pains, backache, mild fever and desire for surgical intervention to end this hell, which is why I'm feeling grotty even though I'm not technically "ill". But I'm completely tired out, could close my eyes and sleep for a thousand years. Except no. My body's waking me up at 7.30 every morning without fail, even today when I'd vowed to spend the day asleep, or at the very least not wake up until 10. I... I suppose it's nice to be surprised at what this bizarre shell of mine decides to do every day.
phantym_56: (ed - different class)
Friday, thank God. I've been feeling pretty not-brilliant all week. I've almost definitely got the same thing I had in October. I'm not as miserable with it this time round though. Not sure whether that's because I'm more used to it now or because I haven't hit the really nasty bit yet. Phase One seems to be done. Phase One is the "I think it's just a cold" stage, with the sore throat followed by runny nose. Phase Two is starting. I've now got the sexy voice, the deeper-than-usual, slightly hoarse one and I can feel that the cough is on its way - yes, the one that drags on for the best part of a month and makes my muscles ache for a week. Oh, how I'm looking forward to that! And that means my voice may well vanish altogether either tonight or tomorrow night.

Sunday, I think, will be make or break. If it's a cold I'll be pretty much better by then. If it's not, I'll probably be curled up on the sofa without the energy to so much as watch a DVD. It's the latter. I pretty much know that already.

I'm going to spend the weekend doing as little as humanly possible. I've sort of got to get Mum a Mother's Day something and I've got to get some foam Easter eggs for the Brownies for Monday but y'know. Sleep in late tomorrow and go out in the afternoon, maybe.

(I'd like to point out that despite the tag, I'm feeling sort of ok at the moment. It's the lull between feeling icky and full of cold and feeling half-dead of flu)
phantym_56: (bryan - pioneer)

I am thoroughly sick again. I've felt horrible all day, hot, headachey, sore throat, eyes hurt, sinuses hurt etc. I'm hoping it's just a cold but so far it sort of feels more like a repeat of the flu-bug from hell I had in October. Most tellingly, plain colds don't generally make me want to put my head down on my desk and cry. I'm spending the evening on the sofa under my beloved blanket and blowing my nose every five minutes. And when I'm not feeling well I whine lots and lots. Sorry about that. I need my whining space to let off steam because I don't get to whine in real life. I want to lie down but lying down makes it harder to breathe than standing up. Oh, sleeping in this state is going to be fun tonight. If it's not a cold, then the cough is due to start on Friday night, I reckon.

phantym_56: (ed - reunited - hug)
I'm not feeling so brilliant this evening. I'm tired almost to the point of collapse - this, I suspect, is what comes of a fortnight like this:

Brownies - Rangers - get up at 4am and spent 16 hours travelling - two hours time difference - five solid days on my feet, walking until I'm too exhausted to do anything more than collapse each evening, without enough proper food and waking up too early - very late night - two hours time difference - Rangers - snowboarding - two late nights in a row - one early morning - clocks change - Brownies - Rangers.

I am not going snowboarding tomorrow. I need a day off, I need some sleep, I need some time to just not do anything for once. My throat hurts - well, hurts isn't quite the right word. I think the best way to describe it is that I'm constantly aware that I still have tonsils at the moment. I can feel them. Tomorrow I'm likely to wake up with a very runny nose. Hopefully it's just a cold - three days of runny nose and the occasional intense tickle in my throat, then nothing. But I'm uncomfortably aware that this is sort of how my throat felt in October. I'm also aware that hydrocortisone weakens your immune system and that this started two days after I started putting it on my hands.

I texted Silver last week to say now we're back in the same country (he survived Afghanistan! Yay!) we should meet up and I only discovered today that he'd answered. I've been thinking he's ignoring me - wondering what I've done, wondering if maybe he's lost his phone. No. My phone didn't tell me he'd replied. I'd love to text back and arrange to meet up this weekend but I'm not sure if I'm going to be feeling up to it. I think I'd like to spend the entire weekend wrapped in a blanket, sleeping on the sofa. On the other hand, there is a certain appeal in having someone like him around to hug me and talk to me and make me feel better. On the other hand (and I'm too tired to care that that makes three hands) I know that in real life I don't like being around other people when I'm not feeling well. I had some fluey thing in Switzerland five or six years ago and my friend Angie dragged me to her appartement and fed me, which was lovely of her, and made me stay the night and that... was not so lovely. I need to be left in peace to suffer on my own. I'm apparently utterly incapable of coughing in front of other people which can be extremely uncomfortable sometimes, like at work or at your best friend's appartement (we really mangled our pidgin French, hence the use of "appartement" in an otherwise English sentence. We also "ratted" our exams - from the French transitive verb rater, meaning to not pass)

I need to go to bed.
phantym_56: (ed - desert)

Today is a better day than yesterday, for two reasons which probably should't be but are equally important to me.

1) Following Sunday night's epic tooth pain, I woke up yesterday with a horrible miserable ache throughout the entire left side of my head. Never did work out whether it was in my jaw (and therefore caused by toothache), ear (and therefore possibly caused by underwater attempts at earclearing in the pool on Sunday) or in my entire head. The only thing I was sure about was that it wasn't actually in the teeth anymore. But it was horrible and miserable and hurt and I spent the entire day at work wishing I could put my head down on the desk and groan. We have some so-called "drawing" software at work which contains hundreds of ready-made graphic illustrations of everything from dentistry to sales maps and it includes a section on headaches, with pictures of unhappy-looking heads and grey patches showing where the pain typically is. One of them had a sad-looking person with a big grey patch over one eye and I have never ever felt more like a picture summed me up.
I went to Brownies regardless of the pain - they are an excellent distraction, we should bottle them and sell them as a cure-all but when I got home, I just lay down on the floor in front of the fire and slept for an hour and then went to bed early. I did wake up a couple of times in the night, convinced I couldn't sleep, tossing and turning but considering I was asleep at 9, I stayed asleep remarkably well and joy of joys, woke up headache-free this morning.

2) Woke up late this morning, got up late, didn't even venture downstairs until five minutes before I was supposed to leave for work, to find the post had already arrived. There was an odd-looking letter, covered in strange symbols. Addressed in handwriting - this was no bill or junk mail or anything from a bank. And- and that's my name on it, in handwriting that looks like it belongs to a fourteen-year-old boy. And a very familiar surname in the top corner... it's a reply from Silver in Afghanistan! Cue something between squee attack and panic attack. I told him some far more personal things than I usually would in my last letter to him and I was a little bit concerned about how he might respond to them.

He's glad to hear from me, glad we're going to become BFF again since "it would never work out between us" and thanks for the marshmallows. The rest I haven't managed to decipher yet. I have no idea what they've done to the letter but it looks like it's been written and then photocopied onto a piece of card which is folded and sealed so you rip three edges off to open it and it's difficult to read. I am delighted. I have a letter from my mate Silver! We're going to remain friends! I'm going to see him again! Doesn't mean I'm not still hopelessly in love with him but many years ago I resigned myself to the fact that we could never be more than friends and I'm perfectly satisfied with that - for now.

In other news, the land behind our office has been bought. We've known that for some time and we've always known that someone would built on it eventually, thus blocking out the light from the only windows in the room. No one's really been looking forward to that. I don't know if I'm the only stupid one but it hadn't occurred to me that before the light was blocked out, we'd have a few weeks/months of building work. I am pleased. My inner four-year-old (who wanted to be a digger driver) still loves watching heavy construction vehicles digging and doing whatever work they do. I've got a scene from my imaginary future playing out in front of me every day, so I certainly won't be joining the chorus of "Oh no! It's noisy and it's horrible!" Also, because they're digging up damp earth, they're wafting a delicious smell of... well, damp earth across the estate. It smells like a field just after it's rained and that I like also. So I'm perfectly contented with the building works.

In fact, other than the fact that my Dearly Beloved Boss arrived ten minutes before I came home for lunch and is therefore going to be in the office all afternoon, I'm pretty contented with my entire Tuesday.


phantym_56: (ed - curled up)
Happy Easter, everyone! (My granny's traditional greeting when she arrives for Christmas dinner)

I had a lovely Christmas Day. I have a ghost speaker for my iPod, a guidebook to New Zealand - time to start planning my trip - DVDs of Dara O Briain (particularly enjoyed the extras!) and Andrew Maxwell (who's a bit of a poppet) and my grandad gave us a remote-control helicopter and randomly numbered envelopes. Number 1 gets to put the thing together and get it working and give it a test flight, then Number 2 gets to play, then Number 3 etc. Took 18 hours to figure out how to charge it - a lot of Christmas evening was spent believing it was faulty.

Boxing Day morning consisted of a lot of helicopter flying. It has attacked the tree, it has shredded some poinsetta, it has scratched the TV and it has given my grandmother a fit of something between hysterical laughter and terror as I buzzed it around her head. Obviously we don't have a great deal of control over the thing. I accidentally but beautifully crash-landed it nose-first in a glass vase this morning. I recommend toy helicopters, they're great fun.

Then a sleepy afternoon not feeling so good )
phantym_56: (maxwell - dark lord)
Can't do great detail. There's only been nine days of it. It's been cold, it's snowed, I've made snow chains for my boots and apart from that, not done a lot. Soon it will be Christmas and I haven't finished shopping yet. One parcel seems to have gone missing in the post. Godless Christmas next week, spa day the week after. Maybe seeing Jess & Annie the week after. I don't have any enthusiasm for writing about "this month".

I'm sorry I've been miserable again the last couple of days. Life. People. This is a war and every day is a battle and I can't win every battle. Sometimes maybe I'll be sad, sometimes I'll be frustrated, sometimes I'll be upset. I've lost a couple of battles this week but I still think I'm winning the war.

I didn't sleep well last night. I've spent most of the last week working on the profit & loss account at work and every time I closed my eyes, I just saw my bed as a series of twelve boxes and I didn't know what numbers to put in them. Then I'd open my eyes and tell myself my bed is my bed, it's just one thing and it's right here but... eyes closed, back come the boxes. The surrealness of it stopped me getting too upset with it. Imagining some loving boyfriend making me warm and comfortable and giving me drinks and rubbing away my headache was nice but if anything, made it harder to get to sleep. (I have a cold. Just a lovely ordinary one with a bit of added headachiness for the fun of it, nothing like the flu bug from hell I had in October. No sneezing or coughing, just a misbehaving nose and mild lingering headaches. It's so nice to be back to ordinary non-miserable illness!)

Another thing that made me happy today was my boss. I generally give the impression that I hate him. I'm not keen on him; he's capricious and unpredictable and frequently moody but quite often he's in a good mood and sometimes he's just weird. We've got a water machine which used to be up in the main office but on his orders was moved yesterday to reception (Stupid place to put it. Walk all the way to the front door for a cup of water?!). It's just a stand that holds up a massive 9l bottle of water and you can have it room temperature or icy-cold. Anyway, he was talking to his Feisty Mother on the phone last night. Conversation went as so:

Boss: I'm a bit worried about where you've put the water machine.
Mother: [Boss], I didn't put it there. It was your orders to move it.
Boss: Well, I'm a bit worried about where it is. People might pee in the bottles.

...I don't even know. Have I mentioned that he's weird?

This is my elephant table, by the way. He's cracked on the tabletop and on one of his ears but he's still adorable. Even Mum likes him; says the cracks add to his character. There were half a dozen elephant tables but I fell in love with the cracked one. He's going in my house one day. I was going to make a winter project of him, try to repair the cracks, clean him up etc but I'm not going to. He's cute enough how he is.

My elephant table )Isn't he cuuuuute?

Now the pressure's off, I'm going to start playing with Alex and Joey again. I want 100,000 words of serviceable Draft Zero of The Sequel by the end of March and as of the end of NaNoWriMo I had just under 31,000. I'm very fond of my boys.

I've got the house to myself for a few hours tonight so I've got a blanket and some cheesy biscuits and I'm watching Zemanovaload, which I haven't seen for far too long. I like it. It's a good-hearted film and I genuinely can't decide whether my favourite thing about it is Ed Byrne, all short spiky hair and dark eyes and shirts over bright-coloured t-shirts, or the soundtrack. I may picspam this film at some point.

For now, I'm warm and sniffly and contented. I think I'm winning today.
phantym_56: (ed - lawnmower)
Five and a half weeks on and I'm still prone to the occasional fit of coughing under the right circumstances. Also had a headache the size of the Albert Hall for half this afternoon. I don't know how much any of this is related to the fact that I haven't slept well for the last two nights. Last night was at least the peaceful kind of insomnia where I was only half aware that I was still awake and didn't really care as long as I was warm and comfortable but the night before was horrendous. I don't say all this because I'm feeling whiny. It's just an observation since I've just had another attack of coughing. Idle interest, you might say.

It's been nice and warm in the office today. The main office is always freezing in winter, not enough radiators, so the Newest of New Boys went and turned the heating up to 25. Boss's Feisty Mother doesn't know it was him but it's meant we've actually felt ok for the first time since it got chilly. Tomorrow it can snow to its heart's content. Then we can come home early and I won't have to worry about going out in the snow. I will also check my tyre size and order snowchains. I meant to do it back in June/July (being cunning and thinking of being clever) but of course, put it off for so long it's now snowing and I haven't done it.

Tonight when I get back, or more likely tomorrow, I want to rewrite that letter to Silver. It's not right. It needs the emphasis shifting a little. I consider the one already sealed in an envelope to be a first draft. May also collect up some stuff, put it in a box and send it to him. Does anyone know if there's anything in particular a soldier might appreciate? My experience of Christmas boxes is for orphans in Romania and things like that but I'm not sure Silver would be so appreciative of a toothbrush and some soap etc. Polos, definitely. I don't know if he even remembers but they used to be a bit of an in-joke between us. Some nibbly bits, I guess. Reasonably long shelf-life, not too melty, not too big or heavy... any suggestions?
phantym_56: (ed - 6music protest)
Aww, Jesus. I thought I'd got rid of the last lingering effects of this virus nearly a week ago but the cough's flared up again this evening. Good thing I'm out tonight, it'll hopefully take my mind off it and then when I get back I'll have plenty to catch up with on iPlayer. I think I'll quickly do today's meme before I have to run.


And it's a difficult one! Great! I don't know what my definition of love is. No one does, do they? I know it's supposed to be a big deal, that people occasionally freak out if someone tells them they love them. I guess it involves feeling a great deal of affection for someone and a lot of trust and a lot of being completely comfortable with them. I don't think love really involves roses or chocolates or diamonds - I mean, sometimes it does but they're not a necessary part. I would probably go so far as to say that my odd little heart loves Silver. I suppose there should be a certain amount of being able to imagine being around them for a very long time as well, shared interests and passions but also not being completely dependent on each other.

(Can you tell I'm not hugely comfortable with the concept of romantic relationships)

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