Breakfast over and time to write, it was an odd breakfast this morning, in fact, I don’t know what made me even think of having fried halloumi on rice cakes, but that was what I had, well it’s a change from porridge I suppose. I bought the halloumi to try as I had never had it but I knew it was a cheese that you can fry or grill on its own, I had tried grilling cheese onto a rice cake but it did exactly what I expected the rice cake absorbed all the liquid in the cheese and went soggy, tasty but hard to eat. There are three problems with halloumi that means I won’t be buying it again, 1) it is rather salty 2) it higher in calories than I thought and 3) it is just too nice and too easy to dive into, probably why I just had it for breakfast.

I am still fighting with my weight but on the good side the half stone I had gained has gone again and I once more at my normal far too light weight for the past few years. Having said that though I am hopeful that the fact I have got rid of the new half stone that a bit more of the rest of it will follow. My diet is down to a normally lowest calorie intake of my life, but if it has to be done, it has to be done. I know that a lot of people would think that surely it doesn’t really matter, not now that I am living on the ticking clock, but it does, being overweight now is just as important as any other time and if I can correct it, maybe I might just slow that clock a little. On top of that, well self-image doesn’t go out of the window, I might not bother with make-up, unless someone is here with a camera, or really care about if my hair is tidy or not, but to be honest I might make more of an effort if I didn’t feel like a grounded whale. Ticking clock or not, I would like to be able to walk past one of the many mirrors in this house without looking the other direction. Appearances are one of those things that are so personal but also suddenly becomes public once you are known to be ill. Every doctor who sees you judges it, if you are a mess, which lack of dexterity, fatigue and pain on lifting your arms, kind of makes you want to not bother with make up. Eyeliners and mascara became my pet hate, they are inclined to not land up where they are meant to be, but not appear as the glam person they knew and the questions about depression always appear. The same thing goes with everyone who visits you, if they haven’t seen you for a couple of months, well you can’t help noticing them looking you up and down, worse still some even mention things like the fact I haven’t cut my hair for 7 years, trust me long hair that you can just wash and forget is a million time easier to look after than short hair ever was. My tip, don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to any of them, do it for yourself, look the way you want, for me that is bright purple hair, I always wanted it and now I have had it for 6 years and it’s GREAT, so do what is right for you. Actually, my hair has been the route of something that has been amusing me for a while…

I had been confused by one of the sites I use to track the people who come to this site and how they arrive here. The normal mix is shows those who have subscribed or use this site themselves, the majority come from twitter with the odd one here and there from other places as well including Google. It always show which post they arrived to read but at times it even tells me what the people were searching for that brought them here, I have been constantly confused as several times every month it tells me they arrived by searching for “Crystal Tips and Alistair”, I wrote a post with that title but when I repeated the search it didn’t bring my post up. Yesterday the search used was showing in pink, not usual, plus it was all spelt wrong “crystaltippss” so I clicked on it to find myself yes on Google but in Google Images, I was even more confused but I scrolled down and clicked on several pics the same as I lifted and used in my post but found nothing. I was just about to scroll back up when something caught my eye, it was a picture of me from the early 80’s, with frizzed out blond hair, suddenly it all made sense, I also used that picture in the same post. Clearly, people were clicking on it because it appeared about 12 or so rows down and was totally different from any other picture shown. I then corrected the search to see what happened and the picture of Crystal an Alasdair I used was on the top row, which explains how the rest arrived, I didn’t realise the power of one bad faded picture and a link to my blog had, boy I bet they were surprised by where they landed up and I thank them for the laugh I got out of it.

I emailed the people who I did the interview for, for the new COPD site, I thought it was going to be launched in September, but it turns out that the date is now the beginning of October. They were apparently really pleased with the results even though the video camera when down half way through, they said they had enough to use, plus they have transcribed the entire two hours that were recorded and are going to use many of the things I said as “quotes” from me throughout the site and across their social media. It appears that it is more than just the one site, they will also be launching a Facebook page as well and will be on twitter, it seems to be growing and growing. I guess it is a matter of just waiting now and as soon as I get the website and Facebook addresses, I will, of course, put them on here as well as soon as I have them.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 10/09/12 – The problem with talking.

I am so far behind with everything that I normally do today, I having one of those fog days, which I am sure most of you now know about, unfortunately so do I. I have again this morning been trying to sort things out with the OT and the therapist and it seems that no one wants to talk to me today, all I get is answer phones, engaged…..