What with me having been grumpy all week and veering wildly between wanting to bite people’s heads off, bursting into tears and yesterday, engaging in melodramatic groaning while doped up with painkillers (some of the mildly amusing consequences of having entered my twenties), we had the following conversation today:

Him (concerned): How are you feeling this morning?
Me: Fat.

Today I have learnt (among more important but less interesting things) that one should not wear fishnet stockings (especially new ones, because it tugs more on the heartstrings) with boots that have zips on the back of them.

Shabby chic anyone?

During the post-Christmas sales, Him (upon instruction, poor man) bought me a box set of 20 children’s classics.

So far I have rediscovered my youth through The Little Prince, The Railway Children, The Secret Garden, Black Beauty and Anne of Green Gables, and tonight The Water Babies awaits me.

Most days they’ve been allowing me to escape into some alternative existence, where really (really) I am far from the madding crowd waist-deep in sunshine and somebody else’s life.

Today’s copy of the Times Higher states that “most notable among a handful of reported demands from members of the public under the 2000 Act has been a round-robin request to veterinary schools for information regarding ‘vets and dog food and urinary blockage in male cats’, from a veteran pet nutrition campaigner”.

Ours haven’t been quite so entertaining, but there’s plenty of time yet (before the Tories get into power and decide the Act is riddled with practical difficulties and peremptorily consign it to the annals of history*).

On a related note, the same column in the Higher is slightly misleading when it writes: “Liverpool John Moores University must be hoping it does not receive any similar queries. The Act requires institutions to respond to requests within 20 days. But the University’s key FoI contact is on leave until January 17 – 17 days into the Act.”, because it’s actually 20 working days – so Liverpool John Moores University’s FoI officer can heave a sigh of relief that they’ve only lost a paltry 9 days..

*Purely personal tongue-in-cheek.

I’ve just managed to do what I thought I would never be able to do.

Put the laundry in the washing machine, merrily turn it on, potter about upstairs – and suddenly realise: ‘hang on a minute, did I put detergent in the machine?’

(No.)

My only defence is that at least I realised early enough to drain and restart the machine without having waited patiently for the cycle to finish – see, I still have some mental faculties left.

And I’m still ITCHY.

“$%%$&”^&(&)*

Okay, okay, I know this is puerile. But I can’t resist.

The last one is my favourite

Can’t quite see that happening at Warwick somehow…

I’m itchy. All over.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh.

Being itchy is terrible for being able to go to sleep. Having any sort of nails is also a Very Bad Idea because when you scratch furiously you inevitably not only scratch your skin off but leave yourself with unsightly petechiae.

It (probably) all started two days ago when my skin decided it didn’t like the body moisturiser I’d been using for eons (Him says I put too much on and my body is finally rebelling through the build-up of chemical poison, but that’s another story altogether). Having perused the ingredient list the prime suspect is lanolin (Nivea, are you listening? ‘Proven to be gentle towards all types of skin’ my foot/other body part). First it was a little patch of skin on my stomach (on Friday afternoon). By Saturday it had spread to both arms, both legs, torso, blah blah blah. (Growl.) Saturday night was a nightmare – woke up every hour having scratched myself raw and finally found blessed relief in a hot shower. On hindsight it was a rather bad idea to plop more moisturiser on in the mistaken belief that it was dry skin that was causing the itching.

Sunday night was another nightmare, but this time I resorted to the hot shower trick earlier (plus calamine lotion and antihistamine). Was still kept awake till way past my bedtime though, with the result that today I was a total zombie at work, had developed a splitting headache by mid-afternoon and had to leave work early (because it would most likely have turned into a migraine had I continued to look at the computer screen). Several hours sleep and painkillers later I’m much better, hence the blogging.

I seem to have been getting allergic reactions to a lot more things than usual. Well, ‘a lot more’ in that two things in the space of a month is very unusual – I can’t recall having reacted to anything in all my years apart from cow’s milk when I was the tender age of one/two/Mum, fill in the blank.

Bah. I’m off to take another Zirtek and try to catch up on the work I couldn’t do this afternoon.

My sister has met the man she’d previously only known in her dreams – someone who is making her ‘begin to see that it might just be worth the risk’ (my sister, the pragmatic, is clearly no longer cornering the market on youthful cynicism). On her blog she recently asked: When do you know that you love someone?

I told her this:

As for when you know that you love someone (and love them in the right way): it’s when you can let them go if it would be the right thing to do; if it would give them happiness, even if you’re breaking inside. It’s when they are not lessened in your company but are encouraged to grow (and do). It’s when you value and respect all the things that make up them. It’s when they come first and you are not diminished. It’s when they (and you) understand, without a word, without a sign. And love isn’t a feeling. It is a decision.

In response she wrote a poem, inspired by my words. It made me very happy.