Tuesday 12 June 2012

Spooning


I often write very short lists of what I want to try to get done that current day or the next. I don't always do everything on the lists, but I remain firm in my belief that it's better to have those tasks on lists than not bother trying to do anything, or to have any aims, no matter how small they may be. Today's list: Ironing; 30mins Gym ball and/or Theraband; Bird food. The picture on the left is the ACTUAL list I wrote for myself on Sunday night. That's my writing, that is. Yeah. It features three tasks for me to attempt to complete. I woke at a good time, i.e. before 9 o'clock (in the morning), and, although I had some heavy pains, felt good "in myself", for want of a much better phrase.

When I came downstairs this morning, I was ready to fulfill at least one thing on the list. The exercise! After the mostly horrible-because-of-a-period week, today has been mostly pain-free, not least because of the dihydrocodeine. Usually after taking two of those tablets, I laugh in what can really only be described as a thoroughly stupid giggly and drunken manner. And the pain stops. Most of the time. This morning, I took them, drank my lovely sugarless Assam tea, plonked my heavy legs (and feet) upstairs, and pulled on my old clothes for decorating after deciding to help my hero Dad strip the wallpaper in the kitchen. (Incidentally, the jeans I wore were a size 12 and, for years, were quite baggy. Today, I struggled to do them up as my bum has grown out of size 10 jeans. Or stretches them to their limits, at least. I laughed and cheered loudly. On my own. I really did. They were tight as HELLFIRE is HOT. So, another point to Duloxetine for the weight gain. HOO. RAH.)

When we moved to this house (twenty years ago this year), we couldn't possibly have thought that only now we'd be having the kitchen WE have chosen, or, more specifically, the kitchen Mum and Dad have chosen. I know I'm not alone in being a person full of endless and passionate praise for their parents, for thinking them magnificent, so caring, generous, loving, and, frankly, really fucking amazing. For all these years of exceptional hardship, whether because of lack of money, bad health of one or more of us at any time, grief from losing a member of our family, my troubles at school - my Mum AND Dad have never, ever let me down. They have always been there, no matter what's happening. Again, that's not unique to me or my family, but it remains a brilliant thing, so I celebrate it whenever I can with hugs and tea and more hugs and more tea. I know: adventure even Bear Grylls can not imagine.

This house was built in the mid-1960s. There were BROWN tiles ALL OVER the walls, with randomly placed line "drawing" tiles variously featuring *cue Tony Hart's gallery music* an iron-shaped cheese dish, some kind of mill thing with a draw, and a partly-melted candle. *End of music* Brown. Brown brown brown. Cupboards, worktop, floor, walls. The cupboards had been removed the Sunday night before by my Dad and brother, revealing green woodchip wallpaper. Not just one green. No, no. THREE greens. THREE. GREEN. WOODCHIP.


Think about those words, dear Feasible reader. To temporarily adopt Jimmy Cricket's catchphrase, there's more. Whoever "decorated" the kitchen to its now-dead "style", whether the same person or different people, used a total of FOUR wallpapers in one very small area behind one of the cupboards. Two florals, with one featuring a geometric hell. And two colours of paint on to blown plaster. One of them was a green, you'll be flabbergasted to know.



The ceiling, where not painted its most recent shade of bright white, is a rather fetching [retching] brown, but more the kind achieved with years of fatty cooking and smoking. Nice.
This was all here before we moved in, and before the people who lived here before us, too which dates the decor to pre-1985. Ish. The standard of workmanship in this house, from wallpapering to plastering, from 49° mitred angle doorframes to the asbestos elbow-destroyer on the walls, is shocking. It's awful. Really. So bad.


That's one of the reasons I wanted to help my Dad with stripping the wallpaper. He's not in the best of health, either, with arthritis ruining his hip and back. It should have been fairly easy to remove the very offensive wall attire. It wasn't. There were TWO layers of green woodchip paper! Different greens. And ANOTHER layer of woodchip. It was YELLOW! I lost count of the times we had to soak and score the paper...s...



It took about four hours to remove a very small area of paper but remove it we did, and we had our respective aches and twinges and stiff backs and heavy legs. And it was all worth it. I finally said hello to the bathroom in the middle of the afternoon. I turned on the radio in there to hear the Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance Marches" and I grinned and bopped and grinned some more as the magic of what seemed like every instrument ever devised and created combined in the most perfect of ways to produce glorious majesty in music form.


What surprised me about me really very ambitious efforts considering I'd only just eaten the dihydrocodeine, is that I felt awake and eager and not spaced out in the least! Having said that, however, I do now feel... not broken, as I did on Saturday after the Friday night out before it, but... perhaps slightly cracked. My back feels stiff, my legs are aching, my shoulders, elbows and wrists feel as though all the nerves have been pinched, and my nose is snotting more than I've known for years. Lovely. But, like I said in the last post, these pains are good to feel because they're the result of something I have done, because I chose to, because I felt I could. It's not the endometriosis pain stopping me from doing things. I've not fed the birds, nor have I ironed any clothes, and nor have I done any exercise. Although, I did climb on the worktops, and stretch to soak and scrape the paper off the walls, and twist, and turn, and I think that might be all right for "exercise", such as it is.


I would like to have done more today, I would like to have done at least one thing on my list, but I haven't. I just didn't have enough spoons. Previously, I may well have felt guilty about that. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I would have felt guilty! But, tonight, I don't. I put a lot of effort in to helping make the kitchen another step closer to being ready for its new face. And I'm pleased with that. Dad would have taken a lot longer to do it all without my help, he'd be in more pain than he is already, and he'd be even more tired than he is now. That's more than enough for me to be pleased with, especially as I woke up in quite a lot of pelvic pain, which needed painkillers to stop it getting my day off to a bad start. But I think my new way of thinking was a large part of that happening. I don't take enough credit for my achievements, be it the money raised from my 100%-for-charity eBay auctions, the improved way I look at life, or the help I give friends when they need me. I just don't want to disappear up my ever-growing arse is all, I suppose.


Tonight was about relaxing with tea, a hot water bottle, friends on the texts, and more tea. And food. Wherever it is now. In that box, probably. No, not that one; that's the Tupperware. This could take a while...


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1 comment:

  1. Just read this article, it is very honest, I applaud you, keep cracking on :)

    ReplyDelete

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