I slept last night, not one disturbance of any sort, just as always happens for the first two nights after I have cleared my insides. I was worried at around 8pm that it wasn’t going to happen as I had thrown my routine out the window yesterday afternoon, for two very good reasons. The first was simple, I was shattered so I moved my nap from 3pm to 2pm, but even though I knew I could have slept a couple of hours, I restricted it to an hour and half, for the second reason. I decided to take the plunge and to get my overly grey hair, back to being purple as I am expecting visitors over the Easter weekend. I have been putting it off over and over again as it had turned into my head from a simple quick job, into a nightmare of a scale that was just out of this universe. I know it’s silly, I have been dying my hair since I was 11, when I managed whilst my parents were on holiday and I was staying with my aunt, it sneakily dye my hair a deep chocolate brown. Well when I say my hair, I also managed to dye the white cotton mats that were sat on the dressing table and some dots on the carpet, while managing not to dye a large disc at the back of my head, to say the least, I was in trouble. Luckily my aunt saw the funny side and sorted my hair out for me, but my parents didn’t find it funny at all as they hated women dying their hair and I wasn’t even a woman, I was just a stupid child. Yesterday, well it was a better result, but I did have a lot of cleaning up to do, especially all around my face, in my desperation to ensure that this time the whispy bits I missed the last time, were going actually going to match the rest, I kind of got carried away. Luckily, I had remembered to use my trick of covering my face and ears in a thick layer of moisturiser before I started, that way I have the time to clean up, before it dyed my skin. These days I have one other prep action to take, I take a booster pill and wait for it to kick in before I even start, when your arms ache just sitting typing, you haven’t the slightest chance of spending half an hour with them above your head without causing pain.

Every simple task just grows, a half hour prediction on a box and the declaration of how easy it is, has to be taken with a pinch of salt then doubled, before you even think about the cleaning up and showering, or the time it just takes to recover enough to be able to get on with the rest of your day. It takes so long and has so many pitfalls that yes, as time goes on, every single task you once took in your stride turns into a monster looming over you. Especially when you have already tried the alternatives, help from amateurs who don’t know what they are doing, or professionals who cost a fortune. The worst thing is that it also takes away that feeling you used to get when you would proudly stand in front of the mirror afterwards admiring your work, now, I give it a quick look, pleased to see no grey but too tired to care about letting the light catch it or to run my fingers through it and watching as the light plays through the strands, lifting the colour to new levels. You would expect that my pride in having actually completed something would be greater, but somehow the pride no longer exists, all I feel is a relief that it’s over and done with. I hate feeling that way, I was a person who took pride in everything I did, it didn’t matter if it was just cleaning something, I would stand and look at it with pride, move around it to see the shine and check it again and again throughout that day, because I could see the full beauty of it, just as it should be in my head forever. When you are too tired to care, too tired to even think about caring, it makes every task somehow flat, without that pride, it is just something that has to be done. Life shouldn’t be like that, but it is just the way it is, yes I have shifted it in some ways to other things and I do praise myself for what I do manage when I feel like managing nothing, but that instant pride, that feeling that I want to look and look again has got lost somewhere along the line. I know some will say that that is because I have no one but Adam to see the things I have done, but that I know isn’t true, as most of the things I took such pride in where things that no one on this planet other than me, would ever know I had even touched.

I was clearly out on my timings for everything I should have been doing, it was nearly 5pm before I started going through the tweets for the previous 12 hours, counting the retweets for the quotes and PSMyWords, a full hour late. It was 6 pm before I remembered I hadn’t had my soup after my nap and I headed to the kitchen to heat it up, something I realised later was totally the wrong thing to have done, wrong because I was then full and sitting on the settee. Posture is something I know without a doubt does make a difference when it comes to how I react to food, sitting here at my PC means I am reasonably upright, something that isn’t really possible on the settee. To make things worse, I decided to treat myself with some coconut rum and milk, something that is filling on its own so I was over full and crushing it all by being slumped. To breath with ease on the settee, I either have to sit forward, hunched over my knees, that way for some reason the pain in my diaphragm seems to lessen at the front, but it slowly builds in my back, so then I have to move back against the cushions with my hand behind me, pushing my ribcage forwards. It lasts for a few minutes then forward I have to go again and so the whole evening is spent, on the move most of the time, but constantly sat where I am without ever being totally upright. Normally on the evening after I have cleared my bowels, is usually more comfortable but my mistake of eating late, left me in as much discomfort as I had been in the night before. I headed to bed with apprehension, sitting on the edge of the mattress undressing them putting in my earplugs, all I could feel was my diaphragm. I don’t know why I did it, but I suddenly put my arms above my head with my palms facing the ceiling and pushed them as far from me as I could. I am telling you now it is something I will never do again, the pain was totally blinding and how I didn’t actually make a noise loud enough to bring Adam running I don’t know, it was like someone had shoved several red hot pokers into my lungs and was twisting them, whilst crushing my ribs just for the fun of it. It did make my cramped up arms feel better, which is why I think I tried it, but even that didn’t make it worth it, as what replaced it was far worse. It something I know from experience that what you gain in one part of you, is normally counterbalanced by something else. Almost every trick there is for breaking spasms or relieving aching muscles will make you pay in some other way, but that is one thing that I will never do again. I sat there for a few minutes as it subsided and returned to the exact pain I had before I tried it. I was so in need of a good nights sleep so like I have done many times before I took a booster before I lay down.

I woke this morning as close to rested as I ever feel and on my way to being organised for Teressa and John to be here on both Thursday and Sunday. I haven’t seen my daughter and son in law since Christmas so we will have our usual day of catch up and with them having both been on a two week flit around part of Europe and also a week in Goa for a wedding, I guess this time we will have a lot to talk about. I still find it odd that all I have to do when someone is coming to visit, is to dye my hair and think about a little makeup, when it used to involve a full spring clean of anywhere they might go, along with hours of cooking. I really do live in a different world these days, in some ways I now do see that I used to go OTT but you don’t know how I wish I could be OTT right now.

Read my blog from 2 years ago today – 1/04/13 – There is a duck in the room. > http://bit.ly/XA9LpI

My legs are bad today, Adam noticed it on Friday as he asked if I was OK as I seemed to be more wobbly, his polite way of describing what feels to me as a good imitation of a duck. I am often like that late in the evening. I just noticed what I wrote there, “late in the evening”, otherwise known as just after 7:30pm. lol Anyway as I get tireder and towards my…..