Just in time...................

I felt much better on Saturday, just in time to begin stripping out the bed and mattress from our master bedroom. The first thing I had to do was to move the contents of the drawers under the bed to a place of safety. This took a lot longer than we had anticipated as we had filled them up quite a bit in the last twenty years or so. Then, on to the big stuff. I did the heavy moving at our end then Hazel took the stuff to the dump on her own as then, the men at the dump would take over and move it out of the car and into the various skips. This all worked a treat, and, by the end of Sunday, we had everything but the carpet removed. On Monday, we helped our friend Martin to remove his desk from the uni in time for his move to Northampton and then we took up the carpet and whilst Hazel took that to the dump, I cleaned up the floor of the bedroom and moved all the things on the floor so that we can work in there. This looks great on the screen but, there is a down side. My back, arms, knees and hips were burning by the time I finished. After my shower, I had to liberally plaster myself with Ibuprofen gel in order to get a comfortable nights sleep. I awoke feeling much better this morning but my lower back was still painful. Another gel coat sorted me out and I now feel a lot better. Until next time..............................

Tramadol

is not a very nice drug.

I was prescribed the stuff once before and it messed with my body for a few days so I stopped it.

This time around, I stuck it for two weeks and it has wrecked me. On Sunday evening, I stopped taking it and Monday wasn't too bad but I was still suffering from the fairly strong effects of the thing. On Tuesday, I began to get clear of it and, for a time, felt better. Later though I actually felt worse. Wednesday was not great either but a lot of the wrongs seem to have now been righted as I am able to eat again. I still feel very week today but, by returning to work, I am hoping my body will pick up the traces again.

My problems with Tramadol were, constipation, water retention, sinus issues and all of the knock on effects from these main problems. As I also take plenty of other heavy duty medicine for my heart condition, I must assume that the combination of the two is what caused my problems. Never again!

As numb as .................

I have been sitting down all morning staring at a screen and moving logs around. I seem to have done a lot of work but for very little return. I still have this afternoon and all of tomorrow to go as well. What am I doing? I am taking the raw data in from users and pushing it out in a more coherent and usable form. Well, that's what it says on the tin anyway. In reality, I spend a lot of my time trying to make sense of the emails sent in by a bunch of technical tyros and then pass it to the clever ones to do the work. It's called the support desk and it's brain numbingly dull. Nonetheless, we all have to do the training to be ready for when we all take on the might of the ignorant ones and take a job from beginning to end. The only people looking forward to that time are the current support desk permanent staff who can't wait to get out in the field. And who can blame them!

Imagine, if you will,

a weekend so tiring that everyone involved has to go to bed early and is still tired on the Monday. Well, that's about half of our weekend. Lulu came out of hospital on Sunday late afternoon. Her mum collected her and brought her to us. So Wendy and Lulu are tired. Ian was late finishing and had to get a taxi to our house and was so tired that he all but collapsed as he got through the front door. Hazel stayed up and saw him in so she was tired. I went to bed at ten completely knackered from my weekend of fun and frolics with the boys so I was tired. Corey and Samuel had wakened early and neither had a nap during the day so they were both tired. On Monday, Ian and Lulu walked around looking for the runaway Molly and, lo and behold, she crawled out from under a car and went straight to Ian for a cuddle. She seems none the worse for her lost ten days apart from a tick and being very hungry. 

Call me a liar but,

I was nearly right in my predictions. They are pretty certain they know what the problem is with Lulu now. Several options were offered but it looks as though she was dehydrated due to her saline drip being removed too soon. So she has been re-hydrated and should be coming back to us for the weekend just to be certain. Needless to say, Corey and Hazel have been having a good time.

Three deep holes in the ground............

Well, Well, Well!

It looks like we will be entertaining Corey again this weekend. Lulu is still not well and has been re-admitted to hospital for observation over the weekend, or whatever.... They don't tell you very much do they? So unless things change in a big way between now and Saturday, Ian and Corey will be moving back in with us until Lulu is out of hospital again.

As weekends go,

the traditional curates egg would apply.

It's always good to see the boys and have them to stay but.................it's so much easier in smaller chunks.

Samuel is usually as good as gold and behaves like a gentleman but, he sometimes gets carried away with the fact that he is the older brother. Cory is very well behaved for a toddler but, he sometimes gets carried away when his brother treats him like a baby. All weekend!!! It's far from bad behaviour, just mild sibling rivalry. It's also very tiring for aging grandparents.

I told you so..............

is an expression I hate using as the implication is that something has already gone wrong! When I, mildly, objected to being prescribed Tramadol for my painful hip I was told to take it anyway. So I did. And it made me feel bad. So bad, in fact, that I had to take two days off work to sort myself out. My body has now reached some sort of compromise with the awful drug and is just about tolerating it whilst nearly killing the pain. It took me four days to get this far though. I don't want to go into details but Tuesday was not a nice day for my stomach. Wednesday was spent adjusting times of taking tablets and recovering from Tuesday. Thursday I was back to work but somewhat fragile and today I'm beginning to feel better again. We have the boys for most of this weekend as Lulu in in hospital for her second operation and Ian will be running between his job and Derriford for most of the next five days or so.