I've been thinking about different formats which might make my blog easier to read and will enable people to go to the bit they are interested in. For example, if you're a positive-type you should go straight to the 'Getting-a-grip' section and if you're an eco-type you can skip all the self-indulgent stuff and go to the 'Being green' bit.

GRUMPINESS - Grrr, grrr, grrr. My stomach is playing up again. It meant I had to cancel my plans and spend the whole afternoon asleep. :( Also, I'm still eating things that are bad for me. Why have I got no self-control?

GETTING A GRIP - At least I had a Saturday sleeping day as although my week days are exactly the same as my weekends, they feel different. I think it's OK to spend time in bed reading and sleeping at the weekend, but in the week it just feels so bad.

On the positive side, I haven't had any really sleepy days for ages, and I have had quite a busy week (for me, anyway).

Also, I've taken a magnesium tablet to try and quell my sugar addiction.

BEING GREEN - You can't really beat the greenness of a day spent asleep.

I've just eaten a raw carrot which is sooooo much better than my earlier pure sugar snack. Ergh, ergh, ergh. I'm still disgusted with myself. Now I'm cooking a jacket potato which I'll probably have with some beans. God, I'm so glad I don't live on my own because I would never bother to cook properly. I bet you're glad too because then you might have to put up with reading even more ridiculously exciting blogs about what I'm eating and what I'm cooking. Oh, I've just realised that I always blog about cooking - but that's normally about sweet things I've created in the kitchen with my own hands, which I think is much more exciting. Well, maybe only to me.

I took Noodle out for a walk today. I thought she was going to be all sleepy and ill-like but she jumped up all over me and was her cute Noodle self. In fact, she was triple-y cuter than normal as she had one of those plastic cone things over her head to stop her from biting her stiches. After our walk she fell asleep on my lap and there's nothing that happies me up more than having a warm animal lie on me. I haven't been getting much therapy from my Noodle walks recently (maybe it's because I've been so generally grumpy that even Noodle can't ungrump me) but today was definitely a feel-good event.

Last Sunday H and I went to an urban farm near our house where we saw some really cute bunny rabbit babies. (Do they have a specific name like a cub or a kitten or are they just called bunny babies?) Anyway after watching a really sweet white one bob around and eat straw twitching its cute little pink rabbit-y noses, I saw that they were for sale and were a mere bargain at £10 each. With my best wide-eyed-little-girl-lost look I said to H: "Pleasssse can we have a baby bunny. I promise I'll never be grumpy ever again."

Um, maybe the most unlikely promise ever to be kept. But obviously we don't have a garden and I think keeping rabbits inside is cruel. Also the fact that we live in a rented house where pets are banned puts another stop to the idea. Ho hum.

Morning! H being here this week has meant I've been waking up and getting up much earlier, which I've decided is a good thing. So hurrah for him. I feel I need to praise him lots as I may have given the impression earlier in the week that he was holding a gun to my head and forcing me to tidy up. This wasn't the case at all and even if he had been, I wouldn't have minded as I finally woke up to the squalor that I was forcing us to live in!

All I need to do to remind me of this is to look around the sitting room right now (H has been away for just one night) and I can see that Lucy mess is already taking over.

Also in the last 24 hours I seem to have developed a worrying demerara sugar addiction, which I am only admitting to in the hope that it stops me from consuming the whole packet. Is this what all addiction is like? The first taste is quite nice but even though you know it's bad for you and makes you feel awful, you carry on doing it. Disgusting. I must stop now.

One good way of stopping is to leave the house. Which I am just about to do. Noodle is still recovering from having her mummy-bits removed last week so I am on dogsitting duty.

I've just seen Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. I thought it was really good and recommend it to anyone who isn't convinced that global warming is real and is happening NOW. Or to anyone and everyone for that matter.

It was a bit ironic that we saw him flying around the world delivering his speech but I suppose he's got to spread the message somehow. And he does spread it well. Although it's pretty obvious that the film is made for an American audience. But it just shows that what we need now is an Al Gore/Bob Geldof-equivalent to figurehead the climate change campaign in the UK. Any suggestions?

For more information about the film and to find out where it's being shown check out I Count and Climate Crisis.

Just think when else can you learn important stuff AND eat popcorn?

Yay! My stomach has been much better behaved today and so it enabled me to savour the delights of York. We went to the National Railway Museum which was quite good although I was doing my normal child-mimicking routine and asking if there were any engines or carriages I could play in. There weren't, which I found a bit upsetting as there's nothing I love more than experiencing a bit of real old stuff to push all my social history buttons.

Being a proud engineery-type H tried to explain to me how a steam engine works (well, I did ask) which I kind of got. At least now I understand about steam pushing pistons which make a wheel move. The wheel is then connected to the crankshaft which moves the other wheels and therefore the train. Or something like that. Are you impressed? I think that's right.

I did find some things to play with, including building a steam locomotive using wooden blocks which was very fun. H and I also played a mail sorting game which emulated what the postmen (or whatever they were called, oops obviously wasn't paying enough attention) did on the old mail sorting trains. Grrr why has Royal Mail got rid of them now? The old mail sorting trains were really cool and had baskets on the outside so mail bags could be picked up and dropped off along the route without the train having to stop.

The comedy moment of the day came when we were having some cake and a drink and I was just about to bite into my brownie (a poor, poor relative of even the not-very-good brownies I made this week). Anyway, as I bit into the chocolate, I fell on the floor. Literally. The chair just collapsed beneath me and I ended up in a crumbled heap. Luckily I wasn't hurt but it reminded me of a moment in Shallow Hal (vaguely funny film which was on TV the other week) when Gwyneth Paltrow sits on a chair in a cafe and all four chair legs splay out leaving her sitting on the ground. Oh dear, I don't think I'm doing a very good job of explaining it but it caused H to laugh for a good few minutes.

Finally, I'd just like to say a big GET WELL SOON to Emily who is currently recovering from a chemical pleuradhesis. This is a not very nice procedure which uses a special drug to make the lung stick together like it should. She needs everyone's sticky thoughts as there it only has a 50 per cent success rate.

Today was meant to be the exciting trip to York day. However my stomach is still being badly behaved and so the trip's been postponed 'til tomorrow. Fingers crossed. Luckily for me, H is very self-sufficient and can entertain himself for hours in the garage doing things like cleaning cars and stripping engines and err, I'm not sure what else but he can happily stay down there for hours.

The good thing about this is that I realise how damn annoying unhappy stomachs are and I no longer hate myself for missing so much college this time last year. (Umm, what is it about this time of year that my tummy doesn't like?) So, hurrah, I'm giving myself a break for once. I just hope I don't have to give myself too much of a break and that my self-medication of stomach-sorting stuff does the trick. I always thought those doctors where pretty much guessing anyway, after all they are essentially lung specialists.

Another good thing is that I've realised that tidiness is good for my mental health. Sitting in an unusually tidy and hoovered room is very relaxing compared with the chaos I usually have to contend with. So yay for extreme tidiness. Long may it continue...

I better go now as it's time for my next dose of medication. I'm sure that quite-hard-and-not-very-chewy-chocolate-brownie is the perfect thing to mend my tummy and that all cf doctors would prescribe it if only they knew of its secret curative powers.

H has got this week off work and I thought that we'd be going on fun day trips and exciting adventures but he's got me tidying and sorting things. It probably seems from my blogs that I spend my whole life tidying and sorting and sometimes I feel like that too. It definitely seems that I could tidy and sort from now to next year and still everything wouldn't be tidied and sorted. But I must be making some progress, surely... At least I can write things on here that, in the past, would've be written on paper so that's good for the environment too!

Despite H being off work, I'm a bit grumpy as my stomach is playing up and I'm having a not very fun day drinking lots of Klean Prep, a delightful stomach-sorting-out powder that you mix with a litre of water and have to gulp down quickly because otherwise the jug seems never-ending. And then, after you've drunk a couple of litres of this stuff, you're meant to drink loads more fluid as well. I'm not sure how that's manageable. Anyway, I should look on the bright side as, apparently, that's a good thing to do. The bright side is, is that I don't mind the taste of it. Well, not at the moment anyway, drinking it for a couple of weeks is another story altogether.

As I was feeling a bit down earlier (stomach and feeling that my life is in a not very happy groundhog day cycle), I decided to make some chocolate brownies to happy-me up (I know, another repetition activity but at least it's a fun and yummy one). Cooking brownies definitely did the trick although they're not as good as last time, which is all H's fault. H told me to make them in two tins as last time the brownie mixture spilled out the top of the ickle tin I used (although I rather liked it as it was yummy and crispy). Being an obedient girlfriend, I did what H suggested although because the mixture was thinner, it needed less cooking time which I didn't account for, obviously. Still, they're OK and baking is still classified as a top un-grumping activity.

As is having good things arrive in the post. My sister send me some really cute photos of Beale today and even some Beale fur which she'd stuck on a piece of paper. They made me smile lots.

H needed cheering up on Thursday night so decided to go to some comedy. I was going to go too, until I realised that it was the same night as a talk about an eco-house in Leeds. Obviously I couldn't miss that, and it was clear that a talk about an eco-house would happy-me up more than comedy! The talk was good, although most of the people there were in there late forties or older. Every time I go to these things I expect there to be a bunch of crazy passionate green young 'uns and each time I'm disappointed. Oh well, I guess you live in hope of these things, especially as I need some friends!

Today we saw Little Miss Sunshine which is a comedy about a dysfunctional family on a road trip and was tres funny. I thoroughly recommend it: there were just enough freaky characters for me but not too many for H's liking, and plenty of laughs for both of us.

We (well actually H) also carried out some Random Acts of Kindness (RAoK) today in the form of giving strawberries to Big Issue sellers. I'd forgotten RAOK's (being self-obsessed an' all), although I did email someone the other day about some old Ecologist magazines I'd promised them six months ago (where does the time go?). Now I've said I'll take them round, I've realised there are loads of articles I want to read and I don't really want to part with them. Oh well, hardly the end of the world. Wow! What rationality, almost like that of a normal person.

This blog is a bit weird and disjointed so I'll just end it by saying a belated get well soon to my auntie who broke her leg in the summer and is off work for three months.

I was just looking at the photo of sweet Beale in her seed tray. Then I started moving the mouse over Beale's fur as if I was stroking her. And then I realised that I will never stroke her ever again. This made me sad.

I'll never be able to stroke her fluffy tummy, or tickle her behind her ears or touch her snowy white soft paws. :(

Wednesday was a horrible day: one of exhaustion and upsetness. Yesterday was better and I was pleased that I was able to function. In fact, I was so surprised by my normalness (even more normal than normal me normal) that I think maybe it hasn't sunk in yet.

I keep going over and over in my mind that I should've done more. I looked on the internet about heart murmurs in cats only after Beale died. Why on earth didn't I do it before? Last year, I went to the vet with Beale and we learnt that she should have aspirin as heart murmurs can cause blood clots. I knew a stroke was a risk but I didn't know about, or rather think, about heart failure. The vet had also asked if she was very tired and stayed in a lot (due to low Oxygen levels, I realise now), which she wasn't and she didn't. I thought this was a silly question as cats sleep all the time anyway and then I forgot about the conversation...until Wednesday.

When I looked on the internet I found that while cats sleep for 16 hours a day when they wake up they should be energetic and running around. Why didn't I read this before? My sister told me Beale had been sleeping a lot over the weekend. I just said: "Are you sure she's alright?" I didn't tell her to go to the vet because I didn't really think twice about it, because Beale always seemed so well. I spoke to Beale on Monday too (I'd often speak to her and Mich on the phone) but I could hardly hear her. Why didn't I use my brain? Why do I never use my brain? I didn't think, why can't I hear Beale loudly tractor purring like normal? I should've made a big poster and stuck it on the wall which said: "IF BEALE SLEEPS VERY A LOT - TAKE HER TO THE VETS ASAP BECAUSE SHE MAY BE SUFFERING FROM HEART FAILURE."

I didn't because I didn't think about Beale being ill, I just thought about me. Look how many blogs I devoted to the pathetic question of whether I was going to do my course or not. Get a grip, I say to myself. Make some decisions and get on with your life. Now.

Beale in her seed tray

When I couldn't sleep last night, I was thinking about what I was going to write in my blog today and was going over and over it in my mind to the point where I almost knew it off by heart. But now it's time to write it, it almost gives me a headache - maybe because I've been thinking about it so much - even though I know I'll feel much better when I have. Writing really helped me yesterday as I was incapable of doing much else. It helped me sort out in my mind what had happened by enabling me to make sense of something which seemed pretty nonsensical but most importantly it enabled me to remember how lovely Beale was.

I feel much better today and want to say a big thank you to everyone for their lovely comments which have really helped.

I got upset last night because I couldn't remember specific details about my last time with Beale, when I said this to H he said he could, even though he hasn't seen her for months. "I remember Beale, she has a soft fluffy white tummy and a loud tractor purr and dainty paws."

***

My mum and my sister buried Beale yesterday afternoon. They chose a spot where Mich had sat down, between the apple tree and the bench at the bottom of the garden. When we walked down the garden and sat on the bench, Mich and Beale would always come and see us. They would materialise from wherever they'd been sleeping to say hello and come for a quick cuddle. Of course, Mich still will. Behind the bench is another apple tree which Beale used to like to climb. From the top she could paw her way onto the roof of next door's shed where she liked to sleep and sun herself.

My mum and sister dug a deep hole and then my sister put a soft blanket in the hole for Beale to lie on. It wasn't just any blanket, it was Mich's. You can tell it was Mich's because it has an 'M' on it. My mum, being good at starting things but not so good at finishing them (like me), started making Mich and Beale blankets before Christmas a few years ago. She sewed on the 'M' for Mich but that's as far as she got, poor Beale didn't even get a 'B'.

My sister placed Beale on the blanket and put a little knitted penguin she used to cuddle next to her. Then my sister put some Creon down as well. For anyone who doesn't know what Creon are, they're my digestive enzymes. Not a normal cat food but then Beale wasn't a normal cat. She loved Creon. If I'd dropped one on the floor and she found it, she'd chew it up while purring her loudest tractor purr and lick her lips afterwards as if she'd just had the best meal in the world. Me being a messy sort of person, I always seem to leave a trail of Creon behind me: at the bottom of bags, in pockets, in coats, down behind the sofa... And Beale would track them down and gobble them up as fast as she could. If I had some in my jeans' pocket, she would sniff them out and go crazy looking for them. Once I told my cf nurse about Beale liking Creon (Mich doesn't) and she told me they were really expensive and wasn't impressed at all. I tried to tell her that I didn't feed Beale Creon, she just found them and I wanted to know if anyone else had said that their cats liked them. I guess it was just a Beale thing.

My sister then picked lots of brightly coloured flowers from the garden and placed them all around Beale so she looked like a saint which, of course, she was. Then my mum put some soil on top and planted some bulbs which will come up in the spring and remind us of Beale forever.

What a horrible week this is turning out to be.


I was woken this morning by the phone ringing which didn't worry me as I thought it was someone who lift-shares with H. But it wasn't, it was for me. I knew as soon as H passed me the phone that it was bad news because no one rings me at 7 o'clock in the morning.

It was my sister, telling me that Beale had died.

I've just read that last sentence again and it seems so awful to see it written there in black and white. The only reason I'm able to write this at all is because my happy pills are numbing the pain a bit. It makes me feel bad though because it makes me feel that I'm cheating Beale.

My sister told me that my mum had got up at about 4am and Beale was lying on the floor in the sitting room, which is something she doesn't normally do. She was making a few un-Beale-like sounds and when my mum got closer she realised that her breathing was laboured. My mum then woke my sister, who has been at home for the past week, and they tried to give Beale some food. She wouldn't eat but she had some water which she lapped up. Then she wanted to go outside but as she got up her back legs were all wobbly and she couldn't walk properly. She managed to go outside and go to the toilet and then she lay down in the soil. Mich then went to see her. I think he knew that she was very ill and wanted to say goodbye.

Next my mum rang the vet, which luckily had a 24-hour emergency line, and after hearing about Beale's symptoms, they said she needed to come in. So at 5am this morning my mum and sister and Princess Beale (in the recycling box with blankets) drove to the animal hospital where they did all doctor-like things and took her pulse and listened to her heart and chest. She even had a little cat-sized oxygen mask to help her breathe. My sister asked the vet to take it off for a second so she could kiss Beale goodbye as they had to leave her so the vet could do some tests.

My sister said the beautiful fluffy one had tried to get out of the box in the car so she thought she was going to be alright but an hour later the vet rang to say she'd died. :( :( :( :(

Beale had been too weak to have the anesthetic she needed before having an x-ray and too weak to have any blood taken. They'd put a tube down her throat to clear her airways and had tried to resuscitate her when her heart stopped. But she was just too weak. Poor Princess Beale, she just wanted to sleep.

The special-fluffy-furry one had a heart murmur which she'd had for a few years but she hadn't been ill with it. However, over the last few days she had been sleeping a lot and hadn't been outside as much but as she slept a lot anyway it was difficult to tell that she was ill. The vet thinks that because her heart had to work harder to compensate for the murmur it made it weak. She said the reason she was having trouble walking was because her legs weren't getting enough oxygen as her heart couldn't pump the blood around her body which is why she had been sleeping more recently. But she also said that at least she'd had these past two days in a relaxing happy environment with lots of love and attention from my sister.

Beale was beautiful with fantastic colouring and tiger stripes on one side of her face and everyone who saw her said so too. (Except that is, for the first vet she ever saw who said she was half-wild but that was just because she didn't like him and was obviously taking sensible precautions by running away and hiding behind the back of the cupboard.) She was always very clean and would wash herself for hours with her sweet paws which were the cutest, softest, whitest paws you've ever see. She was so, so soft and would lie on my bed for hours and would let me tickle her gorgeous white tummy while purring loudly like a tractor at a purring decibel that only a Beale could reach. Stroking Beale's tummy could relax me like nothing else.

She'd curl right up into a ball so you could she her ginger and black and white markings on her back and my sis would call her gerbil. It'll be boring next time I go home and there won't be any pawing at the window to wake me up and no Beale to let in. She was always be finding new dens, her latest of which was in a seed tray in Doreen's (who lives next door) shed. Doreen couldn't remember Beale's name, well it is officially Kitzy Meredith Glynn (bit of a long story there)! Instead she called her Mummy Puss, which I thought was so cute, as she'd had a litter of three kittens ten years ago, just before her first birthday. We've got the seed tray from Doreen's now and are going to plant some flowers in her memory.

I'm just so glad my sis was at home for Beale's last few days as Beale always liked me and my sister best. They had lots of quality time together and cuddles and strokes and Beale got to do some more modelling, which she loved, and my sister got to take lots more photos of Beale, which she loved. I know Beale was happy going to the vets with my sister stroking her and talking to her the whole time because she knew she was adorded. I'm also pleased that I saw her only a couple of weeks ago. Here is another pic of Mich and Beale from my sister's lastest photo shoot.

Bye, bye Beale. I love you and I miss you. xxxxxxxx

I've just been doing some good tidying up and sorting out. It's quite cathartic as I'm throwing away (recycling, of course) little scraps of paper which, as anyone who's ever been to my house will know, I am very reluctant to part with. This is because these little bits of paper have sentences and words written on them either about myself - what I'm feeling at a particular time - or other people - how they make me feel. All of which are pretty negative and depression-inducing.

I'm trying to be more ruthless in my tidying up as they usually just sit around clogging up my house and my life. So, be banished negative thoughts and feelings. And be banished the continual reminder of them on tiny pieces of paper which I find (and refuse to throw away) every time I tidy up. Be gone and be recycled into something nice instead like paper flowers.

H kindly suggested yesterday that maybe if I didn't make so much mess in the first place I wouldn't have 'tidy' at the top of my 'to do' list everyday. So I'm trying to get on top of all my newspapers as well as the little scraps of paper and other paper paraphernalia I seem to collect. There is loads and loads, perhaps a whole forests worth, so I better get back to it.

Also H's cat Freddie was run over yesterday :( and he is obviously very upset about it. I am therefore trying to be extra specially good and not grumpy at all. In fact, I'm having to be almost grown-up-like which has caused a role reversal of which I am not entirely comfortable. Poor H.

Ahhh sleep glorious sleep (and a few crazy-weird dreams which I could've done without). I woke up at lunchtime today as I needed lots and lots of shut eye because I had to get up at the stupidly early time of 5.45am yesterday morning to go racing with H.

Luckily the race was at Donnington Park (near Nottingham) which is one of the nearer tracks to Leeds and it only took us an hour and a half to get there. I managed to sleep a bit in the car and some more when we got there, so was in a remarkably non-grumpy mood. H's first race went well and he was up to seventh and holding his own against supposedly faster cars, until that is, he went a bit wrong (over-steered or under-steered or something) on a corner and ended up in the gravel at the side of the track. At least he chose the corner I was standing near to perform his gymnastic move so I got to see him spinning round in all its glory!

In the second race he was doing quite well in the middle of the field until someone decided to crash and the race was red-flagged which means the race ended right there and then. It was a shame because H's godmother had come to see him but I think she had a good time and it was nice for me to have company and to have a conversation on a race day that wasn't about cars and racing and things I don't understand.

So yesterday was a good day and so was Saturday as my mum was here in the morning and in the afternoon I was able to go to a supermarket (OK, I know I'm not meant to go to them but sometimes you just have to and at least it wasn't Tesco) without finding the whole thing excruciatingly draining. Then I came home and cooked some brownies (with extra chocolate, of course) which if I do say so myself are the best things I've ever made. Afterwards I continued doing housewifery stuff by making a bolognese source for dinner which wasn't as nice as the brownies but then it didn't have chocolate in it, so how could it have been?

The really good thing about Saturday was that I had felt really tired in the morning but somehow that disappeared in the afternoon as my energy levels shot up and I was able to do normal life things like a normal person. Hurrah!

But the most, most, most, most, most important thing about last week is that sometime on Thursday, I started to think differently or maybe I should say more normally. For the first time in a very long, long time (maybe ever) I didn't feel that I was trapped in my life. Hallelujah!

Yes, I think that needs to be paused and reflected on for some time.

Pause...

Reflect...

OK, I think that's enough time for pausing and reflecting.

I started to think that I CAN do the things I want to do and also (maybe I should touch wood here) I started to believe in myself again.

I've had a headache all day because I woke up early but despite that it's been remarkably productive. I managed to leave the house before midday (well just) which seemed very early for me and went into town. I met my friend Emily and then we went to a Prescription Art group where I drew a picture of some fishes that looked like it'd been done my a four-year-old and another picture that just consisted of lots of illuminous yellow arrows. If only I could remember what my art therapist would've said about these pictures I could probably learn quite a lot about what's going on in my head right now. Ho hum, I'll just have to make do with blogging to try and sort it out.

After that, I went to see the person who runs the volunteer bureau to find out what amazing volunteer opportunities there are in Leeds. It turns out that there's quite a lot, so we shall just see what happens, or rather what I make happen. I've finally realised that I've got to make my life how I want it and that no one is going to appear out of nowhere and rescue me... Err, why has it taken me so long to realise this most basic life fact? Anyway it means there's no excuse for me staying at home and doing nothing.

I woke up at 6-something this morning. I'm not sure exactly when because my eyes were too sleepy to focus on the clock. Anyway, I woke up thinking that my course would be a GOOD idea. Yes, I know, I know. H said: "Have you ever thought of becoming a yo-yo. Up down, down up, yes no. All you need is a piece of string."

I think this whole saga should go down as proof that I should never, ever, ever, ever be allowed into any position of responsibility when decisions of an important nature have to be made on a day-to-day basis. Or any decision for that matter. If I worked in a shop: what times shall we open? Umm... What stock shall we order... Umm...

How do I ever leave the house in the morning? ...Oh yes, lots of times I don't.

Hello!

Have I enrolled? Err...no
Does anyone actually care? Err...I doubt it.
Am I doing your head in? Probably.
Am I doing my own head in? YES!
So what AM I doing? Good question, I'd love to know.
And this is erm...a good decision? Well, I'm feeling quite positive today so that's good and I don't feel like a jellyfish anymore which is a massive relief.

Last night I felt weird. Really weird. I didn't feel like me. I felt uncomfortable and awkward in my own body.

I was able to concentrate on TV which was good but when I went to bed I felt like I was a jellyfish. When I imagined my body I couldn't see it as a physical mass and instead just saw a wobbly line around it. Apart from my heart there was nothing else there: it was just see-through and jellyfish-like. God, I really think I'm losing it!

I do feel better this morning but me being me I'm having second thoughts about enrolling...

I thought I'd blog again because I'm going a bit mad (yes, even madder than I already am). I've just been sitting on the sofa staring at the wall and the bookshelves which I guess is quite a weird thing to do. I want to read but I'm having a real problem concentrating at the moment so that's making me especially grumpy.

I've even got my shoes on which is my new way of making me do stuff. I figure that if I put/keep my shoes on it's like I'm about to go out and so I busy around tidying and washing up as if I was having to do these things speedily before leaving the house. Well that's the theory anyway. It was working quite well until I forgot it (I've only just remembered).

Also, I'm quite cross with myself as I seem incapable of doing more than one thing in a day. Today I was meant to walk Noodle and do a bit of food shopping (which counts as one thing as Noodle lives near the shops) and then go to Prescription Art. I really wanted to go to Prescription Art but totally failed (again), having been so ridiculously slow this morning despite being woken up early. I put it down to forgetting my shoe rule and the general rubbishness of a me. I've only managed to go to Prescription Art twice all summer. What HAVE I been doing? I haven't even got the excuse that I've been sleeping all the time.

Tomorrow I have to walk Noodle AND enrol at college which definitely counts as two things and will require much planning and efficientness. I'm looking forward to seeing people as hanging out on my own all day with only the varying friendliness of the shopkeepers for company is driving me crazy. Also when H comes home after work he often falls asleep on the sofa (ahhhh!) which doesn't do much for my communication skills. But I bet H, the poor boy, hardly looks forward to coming home and having to deal with a grumpy me and so sleeping is probably a better option.

Roll on college (slight problem that I still haven't done that blasted summer project - mind you there's still a week until the deadline...) and roll on saving my life and H's too.

The postman woke me up early this morning. Well, 8.45am which is early for me. I don't like waking up early, I wish I was still asleep. I've just remembered that going to college means I'm going to have to get up early. I'm not sure how I'm going to achieve that. EEK! It's enrolment tomorrow. It also means I'll have to hand over a large wad of cash. Luckily we pay in installments so if I decide I want to leave the course at anytime, at least I won't have paid for the whole year. Today's my last chance to change my mind (again).

But I'm not very good at quitting courses - I see it as failing and I have enough failure in my life - so starting for me is more like committing for the whole year. And then, in a year's time, won't I just be in the same position that I'm in now? Wondering what I'm doing in my life? Asking what the point in me and my life is? Stressing, grumping, being my normal happy self. It's interesting that I wouldn't be so stressed about starting a job. That's because I'm much better at quitting jobs if I don't like them...umm, what does that tell you about me?

Yep, self-centeredness is a good subtitle for my blog. I try to think about other people and try to make the most of my life but I just find it so difficult. I wish I could be the kind of person who loves life but life for me just consumes so much effort and energy that sometimes I think that the easiest thing to do is sleep.

Last night for example, I dragged myself to a Leeds Friends of the Earth meeting. Seeing as I only have a couple of friends in Leeds and a pretty non-existent social life, I thought I'd go to meet some new people and do some good environmental-type things at the same time. Even though it was only in the centre of Leeds, H drove (which was probably illegal and would've banned us from membership) and even came too. Before coming, he had to do some deep foraging in his t-shirt drawer to find one that didn't have cars or racing on it and wasn't oil branded. In the end he settled for a Vespa t-shirt, which I hope wasn't too offensive.

The people were friendly and the meeting was fairly interesting but after one and a half hours of listening to people talking I was totally exhausted. The problem with these groups is that they always expect you to do loads of things - email and write letters, lobby MPs, organise protests, man stalls. And while I realise that this is the whole point, it just takes so much energy that I don't have.

Well, I've been trying really hard to get on with things and be happy and I think I've been doing quite well. But it's times like this when just one little thing that someone says (not about me but just about life in general) can really knock me back to where I was about six days ago.

I guess it's just how I am: too sensitive and too competitive and too...some other bad stuff.

I shouldn't complain though. I really shouldn't. Compared to Angel, I'm having a great time at the moment. She's having trouble with her pesky lung deflating again and has had to make the very difficult decision not to have her lung 'glued' as this would be a contraindication to transplant. So in the meantime she just has to hope her lung starts to behave and, of course, continue to wait...

I found out yesterday that there is an advantage to being unable to pronounce anything. Previously I always saw it as being an affliction that made me the laughing stock of my A Level History class. But how was I meant to know how to pronounce complicated Russian place names? (Cue quick internet search to find most difficultest Russian place names but fail to find bizarre-enough one to emphasis my point.)

How did everyone else know? I blame (I've always got to blame someone as it's never MY fault) my schooling. I went through primary school when it was unfashionable to learn grammar, so I barely know what a noun or a verb or an adjective is. Umm, this doesn't really help my journalism. But, hang on, everyone else in my class was the same age as me and they still knew how to pronounce these things...

Anyway I received an email last week telling me about a fund-raising event for Trade Action and Debt Injustice Leeds (TIDAL) with the Tom Havoc Ceilidh Band. However being totally unable to read, (not sure I should admit this anymore...) I did some internet research to find out what ceilidh meant and told H it was traditional Irish music which sounded like it might be quite fun. I invited Vanessa and told her it was c-e-i-d-h-l-something. It took her a while to cotton on to what I was talking about and then she said: "Oh, you mean a ceilidh!" And once it was pronounced properly, I knew what it was...I just wasn't sure I wanted to go.

However Vanessa persuaded us and we took part in a couple of dances, one of which H and I totally messed up (co-ordination isn't my strong point). It reminded me of country dancing at primary school which was much more fun than learning grammar without learning it properly.

Hurrah! I just finished some editing work for a friend and will be getting a nice cheque through the post sometime soon, which is always a BIG bonus. Recently, I've been thinking that the whole work concept is seriously over-rated but maybe I'm wrong...

Part of the reason for me making more effort to be positive yesterday was because I learnt that Mary, a 23-year-old with cf who was waiting for a transplant, had died. While I didn't know her, I knew of her and she was a good friend of Angel's. Obviously it is very sad news, especially as it could so easily have been avoided. It put my life into perspective.

I'm relentlessly blogging at the moment because I think it's important for me to write down what I'm doing and also to write down how my mood changes. Hopefully from this I can help to work out why I'm feeling 'up' one minute and 'down' the next as it all seems a bit of the mystery.

Today, I've had more energy to do things: I cycled up to the shops and didn't get in a major toddler-like grumps when I realised I'd forgotten my wallet and had to go all the way home to get it. I saw my workaholic friend from college who asked me what I'd been doing all summer. Cue embarrassed look on my face. I went to a book sale at the library and bought six books (which, obviously, I'll never read but which will look good on my bookshelves) but resisted the temptation to buy The Lock Ness Monster: The Evidence which at one pound was obviously very alluring. Probably best not to ask about the random selection of books I did buy. And finally, I emailed someone I vaguely know about volunteering at Oxfam.

Well, I feel better today than I did yesterday and I felt better yesterday that I did the day before so that must be a good thing.

The sun was even shining when I woke up this morning and I got out of bed with unknown vigour but obviously that's been superseded with my body mimicking a lead balloon, again. Yesterday I took Noodle for a walk and was so glad that she been staying at her daddy's for a few weeks because she was fascinated in every little thing on the pavement which meant very, slow, walking. She was sniffing (and trying to eat) every leaf and stick and bit of rubbish and chewing gum on the path which meant that our walk to the Old Graveyard took over 15 minutes when it usually takes less than five. After moving at snails' pace around the graveyard I did pick up my pace a bit on the way home which just proves that what everyone tells me is true, that if you go out and do stuff you do feel better.

So I'm trying to 'get a grip' as the saying goes and have even written a list of jobs (little ones, obviously) for me to do today.

Tinypoppet (If I call you different things, people might get confused and think I've got more friends ;)) says in her wonderfully wise way that I could start the course and if don't like it, I could stop it, but if I don't start it, I'll never know if I would have liked it or not.

Umm, such clarity and sensibleness. Obviously couldn't have been written by me.

Danny Wallace the originator of 'Join Me' and Random Acts of Kindness has written another book called 'Yes Man' where he said 'yes' to everything for a year and totally changed his life. I haven't read it yet but if I follow his example (and I think it's a good example to follow), I guess it means I'll be doing my course.

D'oh me. After spending all day stressing about whether I should do my course or not, I found out this evening that enrolment isn't until next week and the course doesn't start until the week after. So plenty of time to decide what to do and start the summer brief if needs be.

I did decide today that I probably would do the course, if only because the alternative is so dire. It might not seem dire to some people. I feel bad 'cos loads of people with cf are fighting for their lives and in comparison with that, I'm just making a fuss about nothing. And I'd just like to say, I am trying. I am trying not to get consumed by grumpiness and self-pity and depression because I know that H for starters is finding me very difficult to live with at the moment and because I'm fed up with being a moaning grump which is such a waste of my life.

I woke up stupidly early this morning. I can't decide what to do. Now I'm too tired to think properly. I don't think I really want to do the course. But then again, lots of times I haven't wanted to do things but when the time's arrived, I've really enjoyed them. I decided 'no' when I woke up at 5.30am, much to the shock of my body which was wondering why my brain was switched on at that time. Now I'm not so sure. I thought blogging about it might help, it doesn't. Maybe I should go and write one of those positive/negative lists.

I was meant to go to an Oxfam meeting tonight. I didn't. I was using it as a sort of me test. I failed.

I've got another test tomorrow - to go to college and enrol (apparently that's the word, not register).

I'm scared I won't go, scared I'll stay at home and morph into the sofa. I've lost the letter telling me what time to go, it's not a good start.

It's just that I don't have great memories from last year - it was quite a struggle and I'm not sure I can do it again. Last year, I started the course after everyone else as I was a reserve and then I missed a week at the beginning of term in hospital and so was even more behind. I was suffering from my mystery fatigue thing for pretty much the whole year which made everything a million times more difficult than it needed to be and then of course, there was the very stressful exhibition to conclude. Oh, what larks!

On the positive side, there might be some new people to make friends with as I felt like an outsider last year and didn't think that many people liked me. It probably didn't help that I was hardly ever there...

I'm trying not to spoil the post Hydroactive challenge party but me being me and a self-centered and grumpy me, at that, I'm afraid I have to.

I'm feeling at the moment that I don't even have proper cf as I'm hardly ill with it and yet I make so much fuss about my life you'd think I had more problems than anyone else I know. It's the same old questions: Where am I going? What am I doing? What do I want to be doing? Why am I so unhappy with my life? Where am I going wrong?

Earlier this year, I watched that Monastery Revisited programme and a key question the monks asked the participants was about what they felt they should do with their life and whether they had a vocation or calling. I'm not religious but still think there must be something that I should be doing that suits be better and makes me happier than another thing I could do.

So how do I go about finding out what my vocation is? I've got a book which tells you to 'focus' on your body to find out what your major problem/issue is and by doing this it says you can address the real problem rather than the periphery ones that you think are problems but which are just obscuring the real issue. If you do this, then you can find out what's caused you the most stress in your life, what's important to you and what you really want from life, then you can really start to move forward speedy quick. Obviously I haven't mastered the technique yet but I think I might try it again as I could do with some focus and clarity in my life. The book is a bestseller and has had some good results so it's definitely worth a try. It's seems that searching inside yourself is a good place to look to try and find out who you are and what you want to from life. (Ooh even in my grumpiness, I can be positive. :)). Btw, it's called Focusing: How To Gain Direct Access To Your Body's Knowledge by Eugene T. Gendlin. For more info see focusing.org.

I've just had a bath (at 3pm) which just shows the disastrous way today is going. Also it was a hot, deep bath which probably puts me in a league of water wasters and bans me from any ethical clubs. If I'm not already, that is, as I've probably been outlawed for taking unnecessary flights. Apparently carbon offset programmes are bad because they offer no incentive for reducing carbon emissions at source. Also, there is much uncertainty relating to tree planting being considered as a form of 'offset' because there is no guarantee that the trees concerned will ultimately provide any carbon benefit. This is because the effects of climate change could mean that the trees never mature. Mmmmm. Oh dear, the future looks bleak.

I register at college tomorrow for year two of my course. I'm really not sure it's the right thing to do but I know that the alternative is me having many more disastrous days like today when I find it almost impossible to get motivated and everything is an effort and my life just becomes a meaningless mess.

Hurrah for Emilys, that's what I say.

Firstly a big huge hurrah for Emily-Angel for doing so fantastically well in the Hydroactive Challenge yesterday. HURRAH! The fantastic little sweetiebobble trouper not only walked 530 metres to cross the finish line to massive applause but this was a stonking 130 metres MORE than she had trained for. I think of it in terms of once round a running track plus a quarter again which is a pretty damn fine distance indeed. So I think a BIG three cheers are in order. Hip Hip...

By all accounts much fun was had yesterday with over 70 angel's supporting Emily and her mammoth fundraising effort. To date, they've raised nearly £10,000 for cf! For a brilliantly written account of the day and some pretty pics (which are definitely worth looking at) see Angel's blog. (How she writes so well and so coherently when she must've been exhausted is a mystery to me. Is there anything this wonderwoman can't do?)

Secondly, I met my friend Emily from college in town today and she managed to perform the miracle task of un-grumping me. Waking up in Leeds this morning, still really tired from all my travelling, stressing about whether I should go back to college and if so (or if not), questioning what I am doing with my life. So I was in a seriously blue post-holiday mood and not a happy bunny. I kept wishing I hadn't said I'd meet up as I just wanted to say snuggled up on the sofa all day.

It would've been too easy for me not to go but I'm soooo glad I did because I felt a million times better and I know that if I'd stayed at home I would just be feeling sorry for myself in a big Lucy grump which is not a very pretty thing. So, yay for me for going out and yay for Emily for making me feel better. I think the little dog (not real) that she gave me as a Noodle-substitute definitely helped my mood. Speaking of Noodle, her mummy's now back from Japan so I think I'll give her a call and see if Noodle therapy is back on. Especially, as I appear to need all the un-grumping help I can get!