B is for Beautiful

I often like to pretend that no one I know actually reads this blog thing and that it is more of anonymous bit of whinging and reminiscing. Though more and more I'm realizing that most everyone who knows me in the real world has tracked this blog down (though you never comment! eh hem!) and I thought it was time I actually acknowledged that you're probably interested in what I've really been up to. Not all this making this and baking that mumbo jumbo.

So here's a photo my sister sent me recently that has knocked my socks off. How gorgeous are they?! Does anyone else find it a little strange that Zoe looks more like me than my sister does?

What else can I tell you? I'm leaving tomorrow for Tucson - Woo Hoo! I'll be there through the 1st and then head off to Seattle to catch up in a long overdue trip to my old stomping grounds. There's an old school BBQ revival planned, so if anyone got missed in the e-vites, please contact me and get yerself over there on Friday night!!

My surgery went well, I'm recuperating for the most part though a bit achy breaky here and there and, quite frankly, amazed by the amount of sunshine poo one girl can produce. That's right, I'm talking about my bowel movements online. AGAIN. Geesh. Sunshine poo, I mean it, it's bright yellow. It's amazing. I guess that's where all the bile goes without a gallbladder to store it in anymore....? I'm finding that I can eat foods that I haven't been able to eat in years. Tomatoes? Oh yeah! Cheese? Yum. Carrots, peas, pineapple and grapes? So far so good! It's a liberation of sorts. Can't wait to hit the mexicana cucinas in Tucson and have salsa and guacamole for the first time in years! Yee Haw!

Bisbee is also making a strong recovery. Crazy Legs has begun joining us in bed at night again and is stretching out in front of the fire in the evenings instead of hiding under beds or refusing to leave the safety his cage. We hope to let him back out to freedom when we return from our trip. A big thanks to Zoe next door for looking out for him while we're gone.

Things will probably be quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks, though I will try to post a postcard or two. And I'm afraid I've sort of fallen behind with project 52. The week in the hospital and the last week of house-arrest have kept me away from our dear oak tree. Now that I'll be abroad for the next couple of weeks I'm afraid I'll completely miss out the spring time exuberance of the oilseed rape fields in the background. But I'll make an effort to get a photo at least once a month from here on out......

So long. xx Bee

A is for Ambivalence

I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that anymore. Dorothy Parker, Here Lies (1939), "The Little Hours"

I'm feeling a little bit disappointed in myself for my complete lack of follow through. I have about a million and one unfinished projects and nary a plan nor inclination to finish any of them. I'm in a bit of a lull, truth be told. Spring is flirting with me, giving me hope that tomorrow will find me more accomplished.

((A note about project 52.... I've been having some trouble uploading new photos from my camera to either of our pc's. I think it's a problem with my USB cable and my camera's a bit old school with one of those massive memory cards that doesn't fit into modern laptop card readers. Sigh... I've been taking the photos as promised and according to schedule, just bear with me to figure out a new way to upload them!!))

xx Bee

F is for Flare-up

I want to formally apologize to a certain dear friend of mine who has suffered from IBS long before I ever even dreamed it could happen to me too. I can recall a certain incident involving an emergency shit in someone's unsuspecting hedge in Wallingford on our way down to see the fireworks at Gasworks Park for the 4th of July and my obvious and insensitive annoyance of having to take you back home. There were other occasions too when you complained that you didn't feel well enough to make our dinner date or to come over to some party or another that I was throwing and I sighed in exasperation.

Vengeance is upon me now, and how! All of my eye-rolling and mutterings of 'it can't really be that bad....' started to wane when I began having emergency shits myself, mostly on holiday when dietary indiscretions are inevitable. (Forgive me please for my demarcation of that construction site in Krakow as I was stumbling back to my flat from a late night out with friends, near that pretty little alpine lake in Spain where we just enjoyed a picnic of chorizo and goat's cheese, and that poor little struedel house in Berlin, I enjoyed my wienerschnitzel very much until it turned on me.)

As I'm writing this, I'm writhing in pain from yet another flare up of this weird disorder. I, like many of you I'm sure, thought that IBS was something that was a psychological problem created by stressed out people who if they would just calm down they would feel healthy again like the rest of us. It really wasn't such a big deal, what's the fuss all about? After more than a year of suffering alternating bouts of diarrhea that strikes with cruel precision and often without warning when you're standing in line at the bank, in the car and on a long road trip or going for a run outside Coombe Abbey Country Park and there's not a toilet for 3 miles. And then there's the following weeks of constipation and the painful bloating and discomfort that comes with that and the time spent looking like Hiro from Heroes, stopping time. And then came the medical investigations - some of them invasive, but all of them time consuming, anxiety creating, and ultimately unnecessary.


Why am I going on about this? For one thing, I feel like an ass for being so insensitive (though I don't think ever directly) and not taking the time to understand what a dear friend was going through. It's embarrassing, to say the least, to sheepishly explain that you have to leave the movie cinema immediately or you might explode. I get that now. I also hope to be some kind of advocate for raising awareness about IBS, it's likely that you know someone who has it - they say 1 in 5 Americans will have it at some point in their lifetimes. Some 4 million Brits are affected.

From Heather Van Vorous, IBS expert "IBS is indisputably a physical problem. Simply put, the brain-gut interaction of people with IBS influences their bowel pain perception and motility. In a nutshell, the processing of pain information within the central nervous system varies between normal individuals and those of us with IBS, with the result that we can experience even normal GI contractions as painful. The interactions between our brains, central nervous systems and GI systems are just not functioning properly. We have colons that react to stimuli that do not affect normal colons, and our reactions are much more severe."

This morning, I measured my amazing bloated girth. Even my husband is suspicious that I'm 5 months pregnant, and he knows better. My waist is normally large at 35 inches, but it has today expanded to an incredible 43 inches. I can't bend at the waist. I don't have any clothes that I can wear comfortably, and with the painful contractions from being so blocked up that drop me to my knees on occasion, I'm really not able to leave the house today.

G is for Goat Goodness

Go on... make your best goat sound. You know you want to. Nobody's looking. Go on.

Alphabet Soup. I'm embarking on a new photo project that will follow from the alphabet, in no particular order, even though I work in a library and that's hard for me. This photo was taken on a hike in the mountains of northern Spain last August. Los Picos de Europa to be exact. Here's hoping the new project will give me impetus to take my camera with me more often. Keep checking back for more!