blamebrampton | My kingdom for a cold change ...

It is stinking hot here in Sydney, again. Which is unfair, because we the few decent days we've had recently were all workdays. A moderate weekend, is it too much to ask? Happily a cold change is promised tonight. Fingers crossed!

The hugely sweet and very thoughtful

arineat is running an h/d anon love meme over at her journal and I have had loads of fun this afternoon leaving bits of love for loads of people. I'm still only halfway through, but I had to stop for today because being sick makes me profoundly tired and therefore a bit useless. Darling

lokifan has a list of links to particular names here for your loving ease. Er, I meant that less pervily than it sounds. Go and cheer some people up!

A lovely person left a thread for me (thank you!) and one comment has me thinking. It was a kind comment, but said in passing that we used to be friends but aren't any more and that person wonders what happened. To which I have to say: probably nothing! We probably still are in my head!

I don't tend to defriend people, even those who defriend me, so if I did defriend you, it's almost certainly an accident. And if we used to chat a lot and no longer do, that's just because I practically never have time to chat these days, and especially not at the moment, alas. I am well behind with my RL friends, and online ones are generally prioritised just behind my RL nearest and dearest for the simple reason that you are less likely to turn up on my doorstep and shake your head at me in a disappointed though understanding fashion. (My friends who just ring now and then to say 'God you're crap!' are the ones who know me best ...)

It's also possible that I just flaked halfway through an ongoing conversation. I hate to say it, but this is one of my flaws. I inherited it from my parents (both giant flakes), and although I struggle against it, whenever I have too much on, I tend to forget things that I was in the middle of. I've always been bad at this, and since the taxi to the head incident, I'm worse. Sometimes I legitimately think we spoke just the other day, only to find out it was six months ago. I'm having to knit a new hat for

oceaxe 's baby, because I realised that having not posted her parcel for what I thought was a fortnight, I have now left it so long that the original hat will be too small for the growing baby.

So please be assured that it's almost certainly me, not you! This is why I live with Mr Brammers the staggeringly oblivious, because he can cope with my attention span of a mayfly when it comes to things that are not words, craft or gardening. Which reminds me that I owe three emails and four PMs to people on my flist ... and it's after 2am. Buggeration ...

The reason I am mostly physically and almost wholly mentally absent at the moment is that I inherited more than flakiness from my mother, I also inherited her dodgy gallbladder. You would not believe how annoyed I am about this. Could it not have been her dainty narrow feet?

It's particularly galling* because I believe I am invincible. This is demonstrably untrue, but every single other malady I have ever had has an obvious cause -- catching planes with sick people, eating cheese by accident, cycling in Sydney -- and I just get better afterwards. This bugger seemed to come out of nowhere, though, looking back, much of the generalised malaise of late can be explained away by this one cause rather than the chronic sleep deprivation I had ascribed it to.

Naturally I discovered it with high drama, spending last Tuesday night waking around clutching a hot water bottle to my side and grumping -- less from the pain, which wasn't that bad, really, and more from the lack of sleep, because I was already eight years behind. Wednesday was the festival of scanning and prodding, with follow-ups on Thursday. In good news, I am almost entirely perfectly healthy. Save for the gallstones. Which are multiple but well behaved.

And look, compared to everything else that could have been, this is by far the best option. Moreover, all those tests were otherwise very encouraging: my liver is splendid, my kidneys exemplary, my aorta a thing of beauty, my blood very good on the short work-up, though we are waiting for the more exciting results this Wednesday, and my blood pressure the type that suggests I ought to be saving more for a very long retirement.

Although I have to say that it would all be a little bit easier to deal with had my chocolate and ice-cream comsumption been high enough to have brought this on myself, rather, as seems the case, being the victim of bad luck and genetics. And it would have been nice to know in advance that being pale, a woman, over 40, with a family history of long fertility and a mother who had gallstones, I should be keeping an eye out for warning signs. And what those warning signs were ...

It's just ... annoying. And middle-aged. And I haven't been able to run or dance all week but have just been having epic nanna naps instead. And I cannot eat any fat! Which will do wonders for getting me down to ballet weight from my current 1950s Italian curves, but means no chocolate, no ice-cream and no hummus. Thank goodness I adore fruit, vegetables and salmon -- which is apparently The Thing. The alternative is surgery, but I loathe hospitals and would like to keep my remaining bits as intact as possible -- too many emergency modifications over the years, I am through with surgery, unless it's unavoidable!

So, I apologise in advance, but I will be extra flakey for the next little while, as I am now behind on everything I cannot afford to be behind on at this time of year in magland, and the housework needs addressing, at the same time as I suddenly have to start cooking almost all of my meals rather than relying on the hundreds of restaurants and cafes nearby -- in which I can be sure of finding a suitable meal in at about six. At least that should help with the retirement savings ...

Obviously, the first thing I did aside from being poked and prodded and having a good long sleep was went and bought a stack of books to cheer myself up. And then I thought, what would my flist do? So I also bought shoes.

No sympathy is required, helpful tips are welcome, and no, I have not told my mum it's her fault, because this month is already set aside for her scandalising me with her infant girlfriend (I strongly suspect she is still in her 20s) at her (Mum's) birthday party next weekend (plus the American girlfriend, and the two ex-girlfriends she is now seeing again, and somewhere between one and three others, I tuned out for a second and couldn't backtrack over that part of the conversation**). She has been looking forward to my comedic tutting at her wantoness for months, so this will have to wait until March.

* You would not believe how often I have made that bad joke this week. Actually, you would.
** How she keeps track of that many names is utterly beyond me!