Human Lifestyle

The day started reasonably well but both boys were unwell and off school, and due to this there was an incident which left me feeling crap.  I do my best to be a good parent but sometimes feel like a failure.

I spent quite a bit of the morning talking to various people on NHS Direct, which is a wonderful service and i felt really well looked after.  The results of the conversations may well be positive.

Later, there was another incident, to do with a misunderstanding by another family member and caused by the thoughtlessness of another, which resulted in bad vibes all round.  I was hoping for an apology from the person who caused the problem by accidentally betraying confidence, but just got rudeness and a snub.  It is true that you don't choose your family, and it's odd that I still love them all, despite everything.

I do not set out to upset, provoke and cause distress.  I am sorry that both people are feeling the way they are.  I hope communication can resume soon.

The garden was my solace... for a while, and I also popped round to help a neighbour round the corner who'd emailed me to ask me to take some wooden pallets away.  She showed me her newly built 'insect hotel' (I'd call it a hibernaculum) and then one of her neighbours offered me some pears.

I spent a considerable time inside, doing washing up, dealing with fruit, playing Scrabble on facebook and trying to manage the second situation. 

Later, I lit the front room stove for the first time this Autumn.  The first time the stove is lit after a few months cold, the dust burns off and there's a bit of an aroma.  So I lit it quite late on, after the boys went to bed, so that if we need to light it with the forecast cold snap in the next few days, no-one complains about the smell.

Woke feeling quite a bit better. Both boys feeling a bit poorly so they stayed off school. If I have had Swine 'Flu, it was very mild and just affected me for about 24 hours. I phoned my GP as I wanted to chat about whether I should be tested as I've been in indirect contact with Ali's daughter, who has a weak immune system. The NHS Direct website said I had the right range of symptoms for Swine 'Flu, and so did the GP when she rang back, and as I'm taking medication to prevent asthma, she offered me tamiflu. I declined as I was already feeling much better, and I wonder if indeed I have had this virus. The NHS are not testing people anymore, just diagnosing using a tick-list, so I was told to tell Ali that I had exposed her to Swine 'Flu. The GP also suggested looking on the Health Protection Agency website, on their page about H1N1 Influenza.
Ali rang her daughter's doctor. The advice was to wait until she had a temperature and then get some antivirals. A bit worrying, but we're all in the same boat, as even healthy people might get struck down badly.

I did quite a lot outside today, shredding the hedge clippings I chopped yesterday, collecting some garden waste from Gladys round the corner and shredding them, chopping up a huge pallet which a chap with an overfull skip gave me, posting some cardamom tea sachets to a freegan contact over in Ireland, checking the progress of the money I've sent to the Netherlands for my questionnaire, visiting Raj, and more!

Whilst on the laptop, I wrote some of my blog and checked the Feedjit widget and found several referrals from http://www.totalpolitics.com/, and I had a look through this website... it is really good. I enjoyed the blog list by party section, as this is where my blog is, but there's a lot more and I'll be going back there to check it out...

Had a lovely tea, linguine (like spaghetti but slightly thicker and flatter) with quite a bit of home grown veg, including broad beans, broccoli and spinach. Delicious.

A quiet evening, boys still feeling a bit ill, maybe they have Swine 'Flu.