"And how do you feel?" MindReader says, on his daily lunchtime phone call to me.
"Tired," I said.
"What type?"
I smile.
For there is the type of tired when I haven't had enough sleep. Where thinking feels like wading through mud and waves of sleepiness sweep across me.
There is the type of tired where I have overdone it the previous day and my body feels three times heavier. That's the crawling-to-the-toilet type of tiredness.
There's the tiredness where I feel drunk, where I manage to stumble, unseeing to the kettle. Often results in sitting on the floor while it boils.
There's the constant head-rush feeling that lasts til 3pm on a bad day and then mysteriously disappears. What are you trying to tell me, body?
There's good old chronic fatigue, feeling normal until those warning signs kick in, my vision shifts, and I
have to lie down there and then. Even in Sainsburys.
And then there's - today. When I rolled over in bed this morning and the room span, and continued spinning.
I describe it to MindReader.
"I hope it passes..." he says.
"No, I hope it's not flu," I say. I don't know what happens to people with chronic illnesses who get flu?
I close my eyes, and try to hope.
Labels: illness, MindReader
"What can we do tomorrow?" I say to MindReader's brother's girlfriend. It is late on Saturday night. MindReader and I are lying on the sofa, him on his back, me between the back of the sofa and him, my head on his chest. Our earlier debacle in the car is long forgotten.
"Hm," she says. "You could go on a boat tour along the Thames, or you could go to the V&A, they have a war exhibition on."
I wrinkle my nose.
"Or you could go to Hamstead heath, and wonder around."
"Hm," I say.
"Or - Battersea children's zoo's really near here, they let you pet the animals."
MindReader's eyes met mine. I squeezed my hand very tightly on his stomach and my toes curled.
So that is what we did.
Labels: illness, MindReader
It is Saturday morning, and we are in London.
I am being Neurotic, in the way that only someone whose body has broken in the past can be.
"There is no other way I can do it," MindReader is saying, his face red and his eyes very blue. "If you want a lift I
have to drop you early."
I know he is being reasonable. And it is better than walking to the tube. But
what if my body... what if I collapse in Central London... thoughts whir around my head, even though nothing of the sort has happened for months. If only because I know the warning signs.
"Fine," I huff. "I'll just go now then shall I? No problem." The words come out full pelt, a hiss, a tantrum, and MindReader grips the steering wheel rather tightly.
"No," he says. "It
is a problem, because I love you and I want to spend my life with you. So can we sort this out?"
The words sooth my burning rage like an ointment.
You're beautiful, I want to say. Only I can't, so I settle for saying nothing and letting myself be held.
Labels: illness, MindReader
"That was a very nice cup of coffee," MindReader says. "Thank you."
"Oh, I stirred it."
"What a treat."
Labels: living in sin, MindReader
MindReader and I are in disagreement about cats. Ideally, I would like 4 or 5. He would like none for the first 6 months and one thereafter.
"Please please please," I say, as we chop red onions.
"I just think we should live in a flat for a while before we get one..." he says. "Plus I don't want to have to move it if we move after a few months."
I roll my eyes. He is being
far too rational for me. "I
want a cat," I say. "I
need to nurture a cat."
"Right."
"I can't think of anything more than I want that lots of cats running around."
"Er - a boyfriend?"
Labels: cats, living in sin, MindReader
"I'm going to tell you something which you're not going to like," I say to MindReader as he sips his toffee nut latte (hurrah for Starbucks Christmas drinks!).
"Right," he says. Somebody unaccustomed to me might feel their stomach jolt, their face get hot, but MindReader is reasonably used to the drama of Billygean.
"What is it?"
"I've booked us tickets to the
NEC Festive Fair! I
love Christmas!"
He licks some cream off his stubble. "The
what?"
"Oh it's amazing. You can buy Christmas gifts and baubles and Christmas ornaments..."
"It's a Christmas...
fair?"
"Yes."
"Sounds pretty horrendous."
"Oh their website is amazingly garish."
"Okay, well, that's fine, we'll go."
"Good! How was your day?"
"Fine - I wanted to ask you something actually, you know confidentiality clauses?"
I laugh.
"What?" he says.
"When you say clauses I just keep thinking of Santa Claus!"
Labels: law, MindReader
It's been ten months since I last saw a train.
The weather is just the same, but the station is totally different. The signs are now
digitial - the next train will be appearing in 5 minutes. Baffling.
The train pulls up. It is pink, and not a Virgin train. Four people next to the windows have laptops. I feel a little like I have been in a coma. Which, in a sense, I have.
I catch the train to Birmingham (and the bus to the station before that), and all the shops have moved. I am a tourist, a visitor as I wander down the dark streets lined with unfamiliar shops. And, if familiar, somehow glossier, more efficient, selling things I hadn't thought of yet.
I see MindReader's blond head coming out of his office. I stride towards him, bags in hand. "Hello!" I say.
"Billygean," he says, his face crinkling up. "You're in
Birmingham."
We get a coffee, holding hands at the venue of our first date, and shop until we
want to stop.
Labels: illness, MindReader
"Make sure you check on the spuds, too," MindReader says, about to close the door. I love that he calls potatoes
spuds.
I am cooking
on my own. My ability to stand up for a while, combined with the restless boredom that only the end of a chronic illness can bring, means I have - shock horror - taught myself to cook a bit.
I say a bit.
"I can't," I yelp.
It's true. The barbecue sauce (containing fennel seeds!
Fennel seeds.) is very complicated. I am chopping fresh garlic, measuring out soy sauce and simultaneously frying onion. I am also de-seeding a chili and roasting vegetables.
Suddenly I am very hot.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the misted-up window. My hair is huge and full of humidity.
"You can," he says. "Just check them every five minutes or so to check they're not - you know - burning." A slight pause, just long enough to indicate perhaps he doesn't like burnt dinners.
"Okay," I say. "Every time itunes selects a new song, I'll check the potatoes."
"Okay. And then toss them a bit, in the olive oil?"
"No. I can check them; I can't guarantee I'll act on it. Okay?" I frantically crush the garlic and throw it in a pan.
He smirks slightly. "But then they might go funny..."
"So I just - toss them?" I say.
"Yeah - just - " he gestures tossing a pan.
"You would toss them. I might turn them all very slowly and autistically. Which I don't have time for."
Radiohead comes on.
"Fair enough."
Labels: baking disasters, illness, living in sin, MindReader
Last night, I went to a
house party. With alcohol and other people and not always available chairs! Plus, we "popped into" Asda on the way there. Popped in! Not: went to Asda and lay down all day but: went to Asda
on the way to a house party.
Hurrah!
Me, as a half hearted cat, in that I wore what I wanted to, but added ears and whiskers.
A friend, MindReader and I
I thought you might enjoy a shot of MindReader and I interacting (about why he can't smile for photos)
Labels: illness, MindReader
"How are you doing?" I say, walking back into MindReader's bedroom as my bath is running. I wrap a dressing gown tightly around my waist.
"Okay," he says, lying on his bed and throwing a tennis ball up and down. MindReader - a Sport Person - almost always has a ball in his hand, at his feet.
"It will get better," I say, curling up next to him. His hand moves fractionally towards the tie on my dressing gown.
The noise of the rest of his house drowns out as I move closer to him.
And, in the immortal words of Audrey Niffenegger, we flip the lock, and the bath overflows.
Labels: MindReader
A yellow leaf slaps onto the car window. MindReader peers round it, turns on the wipers and squashes it.
He sighs next to me, and I look over and am surprised by how old he sometimes looks.
His hand drifts to my thigh after he changes gear and squeezes gently.
The rain picks up, and the prickling sound of the car's tyres on the gravel fades away, leaving only hammering rain on the metal roof and the odd brief sigh of the wind and MindReader.
His house comes into view as we turn the corner, the car's headlights sweeping across dead leaves and shrubs.
The car coasts up the drive, the security light comes on, and I brace myself.
Labels: MindReader
WELL. I am sorry about that. I have no idea what happened. I, too, got the random blank page and began contacting my hosts (who were RUBBISH). MadFather put my ftp details into an ftp thingy (technical term) and it all worked and last night I woke up at 5am and decided to try just... republishing. Et voila! Cheers, blogger.
I have had 66 emails from readers telling me it was down. It's nice to know how much I matter. But WHAT are you going to do when I have to stop blogging?!
My recovery continues. I have now successfully trained body into sitting up most days from about 7pm which means pubs! restaurants! bowling! late night coffees! Most days I can also do one or two things in the day, so, yesterday, I walked to the shop, baked and then went out for a quick shop and a coffee. Some days I feel
almost normal. Some days I don't get it right and my body responds by vomiting. But there you are.
MindReader has some stuff going on that I don't really want to talk about on here, maybe not yet anyway, and it has resulted in a few tearful nights (mostly me, because I am a selfish girlfriend!). It seems as if it has been one thing after another since we started out. Firstly Mike was
quite upset about the whole thing, and then I moved in with housemates and I was unhappy, and then MindReader had surgery, and then I got sick, and then MadFather lost his job and got depressed, and then ... well, I was still in bed ten months later. Life hey? But enough of that, because MindReader is mostly still smiling lots and being sarcastic, I just wish I could wrap him in cotton wool, away from the storms.
I think you're probably up to speed.
Labels: illness, MindReader
I am wearing my
beautiful new skirt and standing in a bar that is playing thumping music. It appears I cannot quite get enough of socialising now I can do it (a bit).
"Billygean!" one of MindReader's friends says. "It's so good to see you."
"I know," I smile, as he hugs me and I remember what people other than MindReader and my very close circle of visitors smell like.
"What
happened?" he says.
I give him a
don't you know? look.
"Oh MindReader's told me bits and pieces - glandular fever - but fuck's sake, ten months!"
I smile. "It knocks some people about a bit. I had to lie down for 6 months. Now I lie down a bit less."
"God. I had skin cancer ages ago. They thought it had spread, but it hadn't."
And I realised it is exactly as
Dooce said. Every crisis you go through can be summed up in three seconds.
I got really sick, and then I started getting better.
And it's true.
Labels: illness, MindReader
"I am not going to leave you," MindReader says, "but I don't want to be in a relationship where we fight like this."
"What does
that mean," I say, my voice sharp, like lemons.
His eyes snap open and then close again, a venus fly trap. "Nothing," he says. "Just that I hate this."
"There is a difference," I say, days later, lying in the unusually warm October sun, "between knowing you have to do a good job at work and being warned that you have to do a good job."
"I know," he says, his blue eyes looking dark and velvety. "I didn't mean it like that. I was very upset."
But MindReader doesn't
do upset.
I took a walk today, in the amber, slanting autumnal sunshine. It has been 6 days since I snapped, griped, or guilt tripped. I have been deep breathing, remembering MindReader's scrunched up face, realising it is the illness I am angry with.
All the leaves are turning. Red ones, like flags against the sharp blue sky, yellow ones with singed red edges like embers glowing.
And, as they change, it is exactly as if I am slowly changing with them.
Labels: illness, MindReader
HomeFriend's daughter is chatting away. She has been travelling, and wears associated
pashmina, bracelets that tinkle, and baggy trousers. Oh to be 18 again.
Her friend apparently fell off a waterfall in Nepal and broke her leg.
"Plus we went to a rave last week in Cambridge," she is saying. "My friend went on her crutches."
"I thought she wasn't weight bearing?"
HomeFriend says, sipping her tea.
"She's not. But it was - like - not
sidetrance, it was more jungle so more chilled out. So she just held on to the speakers."
I glance sideways at
MindReader. "I feel old," I whisper, and he squeezes my knee.
"
MindReader did law,"
HomeFriend says, and I feel my spine stiffen.
"Oh yeah?"
HomeFriend's Daughter says. "How is the whole law thing? I'm not exactly looking forward to it."
I open my mouth, and then I look from her to him, and back again, and close it. My neck goes bright red, and the red creeps into my face.
"Oh," he says. "It's okay, peaks and troughs."
I sit next to him in silence, looking at nobody, my eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance. Tears prick my eyes.
MindReader says something more about the workload but I have stopped listening. There is something in his shoulders, his very still hand on my leg that understands.
But still.
"
Erm, excuse me," I say, and leave the room.
Labels: illness, MindReader
"I can't
believe how many people are getting married," Friend says to me.
"I know. 8 of my friends have announced it in the past few months. I didn't think we were that old."
"I think 23, 24 is quite young," she says. "But you'll probably be next."
I make an
exaggerated wave of my hand. "
No."
"No, you're not ready?"
I cannot stop the creeping blush that starts at my neck and slowly reaches my hair line. "Of
course not."
Labels: MindReader
"So what was the best bit of your weekend?"
MindReader says. We went our separate ways for the weekend in aid of football and
girly chats respectively.
He rolls over and pulls me towards him. Behind him, the sun is setting, gingery-pink. We may or may not have been in bed for the last three hours.
"The best bit was at the Safari park..." I say. "A huge deer stuck its head in the car.
MadFather had been telling me to keep the food box away from the animals cos they'd eat it. So I stuck it between my legs and the deer - like - lunged at me and grabbed the box from between my legs. So then
MadFather yelled
noooo and started a tug of war, and drool was going all over my legs and ears were flapping around the
rear view mirror..." I start laughing.
"
MadFather's ears?"
MindReader says.
Me (with newly dark hair!) and BestFriend
Labels: illness, living in sin, MindReader
"Sorry," MindReader says, after calling me back. "My phone died
again."
"Hm," I say. "I'm upgrading soon to an IPHONE, you can have my old phone."
"Thanks," he says.
"I don't love you enough to give you my iPhone."
"No, I know."
Labels: MindReader
"And what did you have for lunch?" I say to MindReader on the phone. He is driving home from work to Shrewsbury for the weekend.
"I had a duck wrap," he says.
"And what did you eat?" I giggle.
MindReader laughs, and then quacks and claps a kind of rap to me which is
impossible to type.
"God I'm on handsfree," he says, "I look
insane."
Labels: MindReader
"What are you doing?" I say as I come out of the steamy bathroom, wrapped in a towel.
MindReader is wearing jeans, a t shirt, and a tie.
"I'm trying to tie a
Windsor knot," he says, as he wraps the tie around and around a knot.
"I see," I say. "When I bought that
neck scarf I asked
youtube how to do it."
"I tried that this morning," he says, revealing the extent of his obsession with
Windsor knots, "it was way too complicated."
"I'll help," I say. "I'll go and get Larry."
Larry is our laptop. It's probably best not to ask.
A few minutes later I have paused the
youtube video 60 times. "Now just go up and under the left knot again - no no, take it
under - ooh!"
"Ooh have I done it?" he says.
"I think so?"
He looks at me and Larry for a moment, in his t shirt and tie combination. "We're getting weirder," he says.
Labels: living in sin, MindReader
"What the -?" MindReader says, walking into the kitchen in his Beautiful Suit.
"I went to a garden centre!" I say, fondling my chili medusa plant. "I bought herbs and things we can cook with!"
"Er..." he says, which, considering I didn't know how to chop a garlic clove, is fair.
"Please help," I say, picking up a rosemary plant and thrusting it in his face. "It's therapeautic to grow things, it might help my recovery."
"We'll need to repot them," he says. Because he cannot resist the idea of growing food.
"Oh?"
"Maybe if we buy a window box? So we can take it with us when we move out?" He says.
My toes curl. "I think I just came," I say.
And so we did. Buy a window box, that is.
Labels: living in sin, MindReader, our seedlings
"Mmm," I say, spooning another mouthful of yoghurt, raspberries, chopped banana and sultanas into my mouth.
MadFather raises his eyebrows and resumed watching his film.
"You eating again?!" MindReader says, coming into the front room with the ironing board. It is true we had a roast and pudding about two hours earlier.
"Yep, I'm a growing girl," I say, pinching the teeny tiny new layer of fat that lies along my belly. "I think sultanas are my favourite fruit."
"So grapes, then," he says. He turns to MadFather. "I think you'll need to pause your film."
Labels: MindReader
That's the thing about being ill. People find it interesting.
MindReader and I are on our first night out with his friends since December. He is parking the car whilst I totter down an alleyway with his friend.
We have been to three pubs.
Three pubs! I am wearing stilettos, and make up and do a pretty good job of impersonating a human for four hours a day.
"You gonna come out with us more now then?"
MindReader's friend says.
"Yep," I nod, trying to convey 8 months of wanting to in a single gesture.
"Been a bit of a nightmare, has it?" he says, in typical boy fashion.
I nod again.
We are at the bar now. A man brushes past me and tells me I'm "fucking leggy", which is strange because I'm not.
I normally tell blokes like this to fuck off. But, you know, I still enjoy getting caught in the rain; it's been too long.
"Are you glad - in hindsight - that you got ill?"
MindReader's friend says as he passes me my orange juice (yes).
I stir my drink.
Some chronic illness sufferers, or former chronic illness sufferers, smile and glibly say they are glad, because they gained new perspective, because they learned X Y and Z. And so on.
To be fair to it, it's made me more interesting, less obsessed with what percentage I got in my Geography
GCSE, and unable to imagine working past 6pm. I've written half a novel, started to learn Italian, cemented my relationship with the love of my life.
But I missed all of March's cold rains and May's blossoms. I was too sick to eat Christmas dinner. It sometimes feels I missed a lifetime of possibilities; of lost handbags and misunderstandings, of tequila and all
nighters, of the spray of sprinklers on my legs.
We sit outside, the last of the summer fireflies dancing on the
Shrewsbury river. It is a spectacular backdrop.
I learnt what true despair is. Not moping, not wallowing. Of clutching my hair, of not stopping myself falling, of feeling time sweep past and pull me under. I have cried a thousand tears for this illness. And I know there will be more. We have come some of the way, but not all of it.
These lessons - they are not worth that. Was there no easier way to learn them?
Eventually, I snort. "Of course I'm not glad," I say. "Would you be?"
Labels: illness, MindReader
"We have
got to do something about these lights," MindReader says to me.
It is midnight and we are spooning in bed. I roll over and see that MindReader has a glowing leaf on his left eye.
The leaf lights are a tacky and treasured addition to our bedroom. I bought them in Portobello market (before I got attacked by glandular fever, obviously) and will haughtily maintain that add an air of ambiance to the bedroom. That is, when they're not falling off the wall and onto our pillows.
MindReader sits up and picks a leaf off the his pillow.
"Do you like finding leaves in our bed?" I say, smirking.
"What's weirder is that they're
synthetic leaves," he says.
We sit up and pull the lights off the pillows. MindReader finds some blutack and we try to stick the leaves back up. For every bit we stick, another bit falls on one of our heads.
"Is this how you imagined living with me?" I say, as an orange leaf drifts down onto my hand.
"You know, it totally is."
Labels: living in sin, MindReader
"I've had enough," I say irrationally as MindReader walks in through the door.
He makes an mmming noise and presses his lips to mine.
"I've done washing, made meatballs, done ironing and I'm
still bored," I say. "Meanwhile everyone at my law firm are going to court and meeting clients."
He nods, an arm around my shoulders.
"I'm
not having babies. I've done my year's maternity leave. Just - without a baby."
"Okay," he says, slightly unnerved. "I know."
I take a deep breath and ask him about his day. It is getting easier, to hear the familiar legal terms roll off his tongue and not mine. But it is not yet easy.
"Fine," he says. "I got you this."
He hands me a red package.
"Because you said - you said you'd like to learn Italian," he says, "and then maybe we could go there when we're well and you could show me what you've learnt?"
I smile as I unwrap the
Take off in Italian! book and CD set.
"Thank you," I say, unbelievably touched. "This is why I love you."
And slowly, I feel less left behind, and more - on a different path.
Labels: illness, MindReader
It has been quite a week. After 3 months of misery and unemployement, MadFather has finally found a job. It's temporary and it doesn't quite pay enough, but we're thinking about that in December.
MindReader moved in (good) and started his job (good. for him.). I conveniently forgot what an effect MindReader becoming a lawyer would have on me. It has, selfishly, only served to remind me that my life is not going in the direction it's supposed to be going in. Or indeed any direction.
We went out with MadFather last night, to the pub. As we were leaving, MindReader dropped back and got my bag, because I am forgetful. He handed it to me and slipped an arm around my waist.
"You okay?" He said, pulling me towards him in the middle of the pub.
And for a moment, nothing had changed.
Labels: illness, living in sin, MindReader
It is Sunday evening. MindReader and I are in
our room, surrounded by boxes of his things. And a mini champagne bottle that he brought.
"I can't believe you no longer do admin for the NHS," I say, looking at his good luck gifts: ties and cider.
"It's weird," he says. "I worked there the whole time through the law conversion and the LPC. They got me this," he says, handing me a card.
"Ooh," I say opening it. "How nice." I begin reading. "Good luck and nice bum, love Carol?!" I say.
"Oh," he says, going red.
"Nice bum! She's been looking at your bum! I mean you bum is very nice but it's not
hers to look at!"
"Billygean," he says, kissing my forehead. "She's 63."
Labels: blonde moments, living in sin, MindReader
The room is filled with people and laughter. A half full bottle of red wine is on the table next to empty glasses, a huge bar of dairy milk and left over
MindReader's homemade curry.
It has been an eventful evening.
"To you on your engagement," I say to my good friend, clinking my glass with everyone. We toast and sip the wine, it runs, heavy, down my throat. I have missed wine.
I snuggle closer to
MindReader and feel a vague lump in my throat. My life is standing still.
"How's your sister, by the way?" I ask after a moment.
"Oh she's okay, a bit better. She's dumped the twat..."
"That's good," I say.
"I keep telling her she just needs to find someone who's not - fiery - like her. Someone who'll calm her down."
I smirk at
MindReader.
"You know,"
GoodFriend continues, "someone who'll mellow her out and will just take it if she shouts at him."
MindReader clears his throat.
"Sorry," I say. "It's just - you're basically describing our relationship."
Everybody laughs and I escape to the kitchen for a moment to provide more drinks.
MindReader opens a can of cider and pulls me into his arms. "Hello," he says, kissing my nose, my eyelids.
"I'm not sure I've been in love before," I blurt. Such is my way. "Have you?"
He is quiet for a while. I shouldn't have asked. Of course he has.
"Not like this," he says eventually.
And - even including the mind numbingly frustrating illness - I feel like everything in my life is as it should be.
Labels: illness, MindReader
"Just one more thing," I say on the phone to MindReader. "How many cuddly toys is okay in
our room?"
"Umm, I would say... one," he says.
"Oh," I say. "I have narrowed it down to seven but they are scattered around... Tell you what, you can bring as many cuddly toys as you like!"
"That's what I call compromising."
Labels: living in sin, MindReader
So.
MindReader is moving in.
You may have known this.He starts his Proper Lawyer Job on 1st September which was when we were supposed to get a flat in the City together.
My Body is spoilt brat and has prevented this.
Since MindReader lives in Shropshire, commuting to work is not really okay, he is moving in here!
On Sunday.
There has been over a year of horrible long distance and it's about to end, hurrah!
He's been moving stuff over slowly for the past few weeks. It is nice, to merge lives, to find mysterious hair gelling products and odd clothes all over my room that smell of him. He will see me cut my toe nails and jumping in the shower with him will no longer be something I do on weekends. Eee!
Last night I (scarily) watched him sleep, and as I looked at the hairs on his chest (strangely dark, not blond), the lopsided smile he wears in his sleep, an arm strewn lazily across his body, I thought
I could look at him forever. This, I thought, is love.
So I used today's and tomorrow's energy, sorting our room out. OUR room!!
Our bed!
His and hers cosmetics (more hers than his...)
What MindReader is currently reading
Labels: living in sin, MindReader
"Oh Lady," MindReader says, rubbing my belly. Ever since I made him watch Lady and the Tramp on one rainy Monday we have taken to imitating it.
"He's lost his sense of smell," MindReader says, miming scratching his ears. "Aye Laddy," he says, switching to imitating the Scottish dog.
"Have you considered being a Lady and the Tramp imitator?" I say.
"I can't do them all," MindReader says. "I can't do - what's his name - scamp?"
"Which one?"
"The one Lady end up with?"
I giggle. "Tramp?"
I pause. "There's a clue in the question," I say.
"Oh my God," he says, "so there is."
Labels: blonde moments, MindReader
This weekend I have:
* Been to the CINEMA. And, it was such a foreign experience for me that I had to look around to see if normal people sat up straight or rested their heads on the headrests. I don't know what's normal!
* Been to the PUB. For an hour.
* Been SHOPPING and got stuck in a dress. That I then bought. Because I realised it had a zip you could undo.
This is the sort of picture text message
MindReader receives. He was smirking rather a lot when I emerged and bought the dress.
At the pub
At the cinema :)
Labels: illness, MindReader
"So," I say to MindReader. We are lying in bed. Post coital conversations are my speciality. "What's going on with Russia?"
He had mentioned Russia when having a Serious Discussion with MadFather earlier.
"Well," he says, as I shift closer to him, my head on his shoulder. He wraps an arm around my shoulders. "This mole - freckle -"
"I think it's a
cafe au lait," I say.
"Okay," he says, pointing to my upper arm again. "This - mark - is Ossetia. North Ossetia is in Russia and South Ossetia is in Georgia," he says, drawing a line across my skin.
He continues talking, making complicated patterns on my arm.
He is my family, I think.
***
"Morning," MadFather says.
"Hello," I say, flopping onto the sofa. "Ah," I say, nodding to the news, "Russia."
"Yep," he says. "Know what's going on?"
"Yes," I say, rolling up my sleeve.
"What are you doing?"
Labels: MindReader
MindReader and I are sitting on bales of hay that are probably full of spiders. I am maintaining that while it was me who suggested a day (40 minutes) out at a petting zoo, it was him who saw the lambs were being bottle fed and suggested we go and join in.
"So which boys and girls want to feed the lambs?" the loud and annoying farm lady says.
I exchange a wry smile with MindReader. The phrase
boys and girls makes it slightly difficult to go and join in.
And then. And THEN -
"Who wants to sing a song?"
I am dying inside. This is probably not what MindReader wanted to spend his annual leave doing. What will all the other lawyers say?
"Baa baa black sheep -"
"There's only one thing for it," I say, pulling MindReader up and dashing out of the barn, negotiating lambs and sheep and pushing past toddlers.
Labels: embarrassing, illness, MindReader
"We were watching Australia's next top model the other night and
MindReader said he thought I was gay," I say down the phone to
BestFriend.
"Gay?!"
"Yes. A 16 year old girl came on and I said 'ooh she looks lovely,' meaning, of course, that I'd like to look like her.
MindReader nudged me and asked me if I like them young."
BestFriend bursts out laughing. "I love him," she says. "He's amazing."
"I know, but he thinks I'm gay!"
She
hmms.
"I'm not," I say. "Women like to critique women. And they form unusually close bonds with other women. Everyone knows this."
"I didn't ever think you
were gay
Billygean,"
BestFriend says, sounding amused.
We chatter some more. About inconsequential things, and about death and religion, about whether I have a brain tumour, why BestFriend's face is sometimes red for no reason, those sorts of things. For two hours.
"I'd better go," I sigh.
"Yes,"
BestFriend says, "I need to sleep. And so should you."
"I'm in the bath actually, I'll wash hair then sleep," I say.
"You're in the bath?!"
"Yes. I can be very covert about running a bath."
"Have you been in the bath the whole time?"
"No," I say, "but it was when we were debating whether I'm gay that I was running it and I could hardly say I was just removing all of my clothes."
"I see," she says. "Night then!"
Labels: MindReader
MindReader and Sally the dog playing keepy uppies.
MindReader playing frisbee
Bedtime
Cuddles
Usurping my sofa/bed
On a forty minute walk!!!
The man I want to marry
Looks like the 3kgs have gone onto my stomach. Damn empire waist lines
Labels: illness, MindReader
MindReader and I are in my local shop. Having WALKED there.
The sole purpose of our visit is to buy me a bar of Galaxy. That's right. It's been 6 weeks, I accidentally consumed some ham with milk in (ham!) and lived, and it's about time I reintroduced something. Besides, my Doctor, having seen my weight gain, thinks it might be gluten. He then did go on to say he wanted me to be 60kg instead of 50kg which I think since I have gained 2kg in 7 months of eating four meals a day and sleeping 13 hours a night, is a bit ambitious.
Anyway. I get to the counter and the woman says, "that's three pounds sixty seven please."
(Okay, I didn't
just buy Galaxy. I also bought other boring things. Like ground almonds.)
I fiddle around with my bag. The problem is not that my bag is huge and all important things drop to the bottom. Nor is it the old chronic fatigue dizziness (which I am pleased about, Glands, please do not think I am getting ungrateful). It was the simple fact that -
It has been about six months since I used money!
I thought for about 8 seconds. Which is a long time when you're at a till, performing a simple task. I gave her £3.50. And then
MindReader had to take it back and add to it. But
from my money so the problem clearly wasn't that I was poor. Which I would prefer.
So that was embarrassing. But OH MY GOD the Galaxy was worth it. Sod my intestines. I'm buying a can of condensed milk next. With
exact change.
Labels: blonde moments, embarrassing, illness, MindReader
"What are you reading at the moment?" I say to DoctorSister.
It is Friday night, and I am surrounded by family and candles and MindReader. Perfect.
"Oh this book - it's a bit Judy Blume," she says, and I wrinkle my nose.
"Judy Blume wrote some really weird books."
"She wrote
Deennie, which I enjoyed," DoctorSister says. Of course she did. It's about a girl with a medical condition. And if that's not enough it's the same medical condition DoctorSister had, and why she has rods in her back today. There's something you didn't know?
"She
did," I say, and glance at MindReader. It is somewhat of an in-joke between us that I have forgotten how to behave in public. He raises his eyebrows at me. I start again. "She
did write weird books. Deennie used to masturbate with a flannel!"
His head sinks into his hands as DoctorSister's mouth drops open. "I - I don't remember that bit," she says.
Labels: illness, MindReader
Some text messages between MindReader and myself:
MindReader: I'm on my way to yours xx I'm going to the shop on the way to buy cider, do you need anything? xx
Me: Onions is the only think I can think of xx
MindReader: Try to think of something else xx is there anything you want at the shop? xx ;o)
Labels: MindReader
"Well I need to buy shoe ties and new razor blades,"
MindReader says over the top of his car, and I stare blankly at him, still in the euphoric stage of appreciating the wind on my neck, and not quite knowing what shoe ties are.
"Okay," I say. "Shall I meet you back at the car in a bit?"
I can tell he's surprised. The last time I went out entirely alone, with nobody to catch me when my legs stopped working, was February the seventeenth.
"Alright," he says, tossing the keys to me which I, of course, miss and drop. The day cannot be completely perfect.
Except it is. I must look like a normal shopper. And then I stop and think that that perhaps means, for this half an hour moment, that I am.
I finger spines of books I'd like to buy and - thank God - gone is the impulse that just because I am sick I can hemorrhage money in order to keep me entertained. Normality is slowly coming back. I do however buy gluten free crisps at a check out because I will never change entirely.
I am feeling audacious, or not sick, so I walk on round to Next, and look at bras and lacy tops that I still imagine wearing to summer parties, a thousand candles glowing like fireflies in my garden as I toast all those who visited me, who let me shout at them, who fended off my emails with graphs attached analysing how long I'd been ill for. A
