This one’s from the heart

So yesterday, yesterday was a funny day.

Maybe, as an initial point I should tell you where I am at? A LOT has happened.

Well, you already know from my last post, that I had both my eyes operated on on the same day. Yes? Yes!!! I still shudder at the thought of it! But anyway, the past few weeks I was actually banned from reading and WRITING from the doctor at the hospital, because he saw a little something, which could have potentially ended up becoming a bigger something, so my life was again curtailed and I sat about twiddling my thumbs for a few weeks. Well, I ate crisps and watched Netflix. I also cleaned a little bit. And played with the dog.

During those strange days I came upon an opportunity: to be nominated by a local party to join a political committee as an expert. You would be quite right in thinking that I’m not an expert in anything. Well, to be fair, I could probably give you some fairly top notch cooking advice and I could prattle on about various Netflix shows (full disclosure: this post is NOT sponsored by Netflix, no money has changed hands – not from them to me anyway, I have paid my Netflix bill, I promise). But apparently I am an expert on being me. That means, I’m an expert on being an immigrant. It never occurred to me before that that was a thing.

I do like politics and I am very opinionated on, well, pretty much everything so I thought I’d seize the opportunity. But there was one major problem. I needed to send in a CV. The last time I used a CV, I lived in Scotland so that meant preparing a CV in German while I couldn’t read or write. Oh deary me.

Lovely husband to the rescue. The man is nearly a saint, I tell you. I dictated and he typed and we debated a little bit about it and then we carried on. Then we sent it off.

Having thought over my own qualifications and experience I thought, I probably don’t fit the bill and, to be honest I didn’t expect to hear back. But I did! The party actually nominated me. And I was invited to a meeting.

In the meantime I’d been playing with the dog and watching Netflix (still no payments, the buggers). Then I went to the eye doctor, paid a fortune for an examination that was deemed necessary and I was told, I could, in principle, have my life back. I should have been overjoyed, but I felt really queasy that day and I kept wondering what ‘in principle’ meant. My eye doctor is a man of little words, so I can’t help but think that those words were important.

And then I decided to leave the house by myself.

This might sound strange to you, but I could hardly see for well over a year. And in that year I’d fallen down stairs and smashed glass and walked over it in my socks and talked to an empty dog basket thinking it was the actual dog.

Those weren’t the reasons I stopped leaving the house though. I’d stopped leaving the house because if the light caught my eye squintly then people, vehicles, even whole buildings several storeys high just completely disappeared from my view and were replaced by blackness.

So as I said, two weeks ago, for the first time in over a year I left the house, all by myself!

I thought I would have been triumphant.

I thought I would have felt free. Like I was floating or something.

But what I actually felt was quite anxious. Even though I could see. Which shocked me quite a bit. I admit.

But I’m stubborn. So I strode on. I walked 2km to the butcher’s and I bought some mince. Then I attempted a different way back, took quite a few wrong turns, but eventually I made it home.

I was still shocked at how low my confidence was.

The day before my youngest had taken me to a school festival. We’d gone on the bus together. I’d been fine, until my child left me alone at a table and another parent had popped over for a ‘chat’. I couldn’t chat. I couldn’t think of anything at all to say. And I felt nervous.

If you know me, you know the thing I do is chat. I always have something to say. Later on, when sat with a group of teenagers, I was just myself again.

The two events shook me a little, I have to admit. I know I found the past year tough, but I had pretty much expected to grab life with both hands once I got it back.

Wind forward to yesterday. I went to the meeting and to accurately describe me you’d have to say I was a nervous wreck! I’d realized, the week before, that I have only had a conversation in German a few times in the past year! So I’d practiced speaking German all weekend with my husband. And by Sunday evening I was getting back into it somewhat. But at the meeting, I just lost all my confidence completely. I am sure it was definitely made worse by the fact that I had believed that the post meant just three or four meetings a year, listening to some ideas and giving my viewpoint. But as I sat there, a politician explained the post was time intensive, and daunting, that I’d have to trust myself to speak to seasoned politicians in the debate chamber, potentially in front of the public!

I couldn’t remember words, my pronunciation was completely off. Bumbling and stumbling around, I felt like a deer in headlights. And I kept thinking, they are looking for a confident, competent expert! They asked me if I had any questions and my mind was completely blank. So I just idiotically asked them if they could imagine working with me (had it been an interview – it would have been a ridiculous question anyway). But of course I was nominated, so they would have to work with me!

Those poor women, they must have gone home and poured themselves a stiff vodka and thought how on earth is that ‘expert’ going to help us?

So I wandered around the town and here’s the strange thing: instead of crumpling up and feeling like a complete failure, I started to feel oddly proud of myself. I thought: your social skills have gone right downhill. Right down, all the way to the bottom. But it’s not surprising. You’ve had very little social contact in the past year, you’ve hardly spoken German, and actually right before that you were hibernating because of Covid. Which means you’ve had very little contact with the outside world for three and a half years! It’s no wonder you’ve lost your confidence and you feel nervous. But look, despite that, you went and you tried!!! You were a disaster, but you tried! So what you need to do now is build up your confidence. So I went from shop to shop, and I tried to strike up conversation wherever I could. Germans aren’t big on small talk, so the attempt had to come from me.

With each conversation my confidence grew a little and I noticed I felt a little better. Despite my isolation lately, I am actually a very social person. So I’ve really missed it.

Then, as I was walking up the precinct, a woman caught my eye and she started to approach me! She asked me if I had a moment and if I could answer a few questions. Of course, I jumped at the chance, given my state of mind.

Suddenly a microphone and a TV camera were shoved in my face and I was asked a series of bizarre questions.

I answered, calmly, in a very together manner, and in my best possible German!

Afterwards, I joked with my son that maybe I should just get myself on the telly!!

♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠

I have thought about it! And I’m going to give the committee a whirl. As I’m replacing someone, I only have to actually take part for a few months anyway. After that, there’s a new legislative term. They last five years! So if I can’t get past my nerves, I’ll know it’s not for me and I can step back.

Because I have my sight back (yippee), I can also now start teaching again. And I can get back into writing too. So, I’ve set myself a writing challenge. 90,000 words by the end of December. I know, I’m crazy write right? But I have all these words going through my head all of the time. They need to come out!!

I’m not including stuff I write for work, of course, just the creative stuff I’m working on. Finishing my novel (my main character has had to wait for more than a year for her ending and she keeps popping up in my head and telling me her ideas), a murder mystery dinner I’m writing, this blog (yay!!) and other creative bits and bobs that pop up along the way.

My youngest (who uses the pronoun they) came up with the idea that I could reuse the turtle they created for me a few years ago for my NaNoWriMo challenge. I want to know what you think!

De-Piratisation

Imagine. Just imagine.

You wake up one day, about 18 months ago, with a smudge on your eye and your eye doctor tells you, you have a fast evolving cataract.

That cataract evolves and encompasses your whole eye, and even somehow manages to infect your other eye and your smudge grows, not just in size, but from one smudge into two and you rub and rub, but no matter how much you try to clear the blurriness from your eyes, your eyes become a fog and you really are the “Gorilla in the Mist.” Except you’re not actually a gorilla, and the mist is of your own body’s making.

Things start to disappear. Letters. Road signs. Your dog. Steps. Whole buildings.

So you go to your cataract operation in all faith. Repeatedly having been told that the procedure is so routine, it’s a doddle. As simple as removing a bogey from your nose in the morning. So you merrily allow a doctor to stab a needle into your face and tap, tap, tap on your cataract, until it breaks. Hoover it up and replace your damaged lens with a shiny new one.

He piratises you with an appropriate eye patch and shouts, ‘Next!’ while you shuffle out of the building.

Imagine you return to your eye doctor and discover, actually you still can’t see steps, or number plates, or loved ones’ faces or buses or almost anything at all because your simple eye operation has gone absolutely sideways.

So, you go to a different hospital, try to save your sight, get a gas bubble purposely inserted into your eye and realise everyone is in a slight panic about what to do with your other foggy eye.

Months go by and your first eye attempts to heal, but can’t quite get there, and you discover, the charlatan first doctor replaced your old dodgy lens with a new completely wrongly calculated lens (not by a single dioptre, or a mere couple of dioptres but by 8.5 dioptres).

So, you go to your new, competent, awesome doctor, with your very dodgy lens and your somewhat damaged retina and your other by now white eye, and he takes you in his capable hands. Tells you to be brave and doesn’t give you a shot in your eye or even a chill pill to help you along your journey. Instead, he decides, on what seems an impulse, to operate on both wayward eyes simultaneously through your clenched teeth and fists and buttocks.

He doesn’t tap, but he cuts and pulls and he pokes. And you feel more than slightly nauseous.

Imagine, the next day when he tells you, bandage removed, with a light pair of glasses you’ll be back to 100% vision in your now ‘good’ eye and 80 in your ‘bad’ one.

Imagine the elation, the joy, the tears, the ranting thanks, the unclenching of buttocks as you float back to your room.

Then imagine: you re-enter your room, go into the bathroom and glance up towards the mirror where you are greeted by the face that you haven’t actually properly seen for 18 months.

Just imagine the shrieks, the “oh my fucking gods”, the shock, the despair as you discover wrinkle after wrinkle, grey hair after grey hair.
Including a wiry fucker growing out of the centre of your face.

Handy husbands can be somewhat electrifying

We’ve been renovating our house, a bit here, a bit there, as you do. My husband is one of those lucky people who can follow a YouTube video and turn his hand to almost anything. I can slap some paint on the wall and kind of smother it in with a brush. And finally, I can now hammer out an only slightly squint drawstring bag on the sewing machine. As long as I watch and rewatch and pause and play and then rewatch again the said instructional video. But that’s about it. I’m not particularly handy. Handy then that I have a husband who is. And really, a drawstring bag, although pretty as a gift bag if you use nice material, is not a very useful tool for renovating.

I’m more the ideas person. I tell my husband my idea and then I boss him around until it comes to fruition. He’s an engineer so he loves taking an idea and making it into something concrete. He might tell you the story somewhat differently. He might, just possibly tell you that I badger him with an idea and he then scratches his head, I badger him some more, he has nightmares about it and then finally comes up with a way to shut me up fulfill my dreams.

So, we’ve been renovating and during those renovations my husband has dabbled, amongst other things, with the electrics. He’s moved lighting. Installed sockets. He’s even installed electric motors to run shutters, all by himself. He’s a very competent engineer and as I said very handy. I have loads of faith in him; that he knows what he’s doing. OK; I did question him a couple of times. Maybe a little more than a couple of times. OK; I did ask him if the house could burn down and if it was even safe to live here any more. So finally, he took me all around our property and tried to ease my concerns and showed me that it’s all safe and sound. What I really got from the whole experience was that he’s a very efficient and capable engineer and I’m just a bossy ideas person and all of my wishes had been fulfilled and everything looks great, so it didn’t matter if I had no clue what he was going on about. The lights go on and off. The shutters go up and down. All is good in our world.

Then he read somewhere that he’s not even allowed to install a light. Only a fully qualified electrician is. A competent engineer he may be but an electrician is something he definitely is not.

Germany is a country of very orderly rules. There are so many rules nobody really seems to know what the rules really are. We have been trying to find out rules with regard to what we are allowed to plant at the side of the garden. There are rules about it. But no bugger can tell us what they are. Not the workers at the garden centre. Not the staff at the ‘appropriate’ council offices. Not even the legal hotline people knew what the hell the rules were when we called them.

Germany is also a country of training. If you don’t have any training, it just means you’re useless. I don’t have any training. I don’t think I’m useless and the German strangers who ask me about my training tend to stumble on my answer when I tell them. Then there are a few quiet moments while they try to think what to say next. Luckily I’m British, so I’m particularly nuanced in the art of small talk, so I quickly change the subject.

Once I was at a coffee morning with the group I normally exercise with. We don’t talk much when we exercise. Just grunt and sweat. So we thought we’d sit together for a coffee after class. One ‘friendly’ woman was eager to tell me that she had lived in England for a short time. She really was quite excited about it and was insistent in telling me all about her experiences. She told my friend and I (we’re genuine friends, we didn’t just start talking at the coffee morning) how awesomely friendly the Brits are. How chatty (to be honest, I think she’d been infected, just saying) and then she fucked it up completely. She really did. She informed us that as a race we’re completely incompetent. She said none of us has any training and we can’t do shit.

I hadn’t even told her about my handy, competent, German engineer husband who illegally moved lights and installed sockets. Neither had I mentioned that even with a YouTube video, I really couldn’t do diddly squat. Neither had I been forced into the admission, that, actually, I had absolutely no bloody training at all.

Instead, a little agitated I inferred that the Germans may be somewhat overqualified and I asked if it was really necessary to have training to fill a supermarket shelf? Ouch. To be fair, she started it and she really kept going on, what with examples and the like. Even my friend, who’s German had looked uncomfortable for me, before I snapped.

This week I read a news article that two electric car chargers have been stolen locally. Now, those electric car chargers use high powered electricity, not your usual, run of the mill household electricity. Even my very handy husband hadn’t attempted to install our charger. I exclaimed my surprise as I read out the tale to my husband and he exclaimed, “Well, it must have been professionals who did it!”

I am outtrumped and anguished

I know, I know, nothing for ages and then I bombard you with one article after another!!

Most of my readers are from the US and I’d like to understand. Because, quite frankly, I just don’t.

So last night I watched, in depth, the opinions of various people on the news telling me that Trump, despite now having been arrested and charged with 34 felony counts relating to business fraud, will probably still receive the next presidential nomination for the Republican Party. Additionally, I learned that he could even be elected President of the United States of America and serve as President from a prison cell, rather than the Oval Office.

Sometimes I have quite vivid dreams and I wake up in the morning and believe they really happened. As the minutes go by, I think, hang on, that doesn’t quite make sense… And I realize it was just a dream (a real relief sometimes, I can tell you) and then I continue about my day.

But this time it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t even a nightmare. I checked. I looked at the news and it says Donald Trump has been charged and the Republicans are standing by him.

I listened to Alvin Bragg’s speech in full and I thought the charges were horrendous. Now I understand the importance of being considered innocent until proven guilty, BUT if I were vying for the highest office in the land, let’s be honest: highest office in the world, shouldn’t I need to prove my integrity?

I understand that some of the Republicans will stand by him. There are a few weird Trump puppets out there. But from what the pundits were saying, it seems to me like the whole party is supporting him.

I feel like I have to give myself a good shake to try and deduce the conundrum. A party that represents roughly half of the electorate, so not a novelty party, but a party that has historically been elected more times than the Democrats, apparently wants to choose a candidate who stands for corruption?

While I agree that the current indictment feels rather less than the pending charges of him: taking Top Secret documents home with him and then obstructing the arising investigation, or pressurizing officials to change elections results or inciting the Capitol riots, just the doubt thrown over him should make the party wince and turn their backs in shame.

That’s without including the aforementioned pending charges. Those pending charges make it 100% clear to me that he’s not fit to be a president, even of his own shell company.

To top all of that, we know that at least some of the charges are true. We heard his rhetoric. We read his tweets.

So I want to ask my friends in America: Is it really true that this monster man can really go on to lead the Republican Party in the 2024 election? And if it’s true do you really believe he could actually win? Can he really run the country from a prison cell? And if he can, are we all just doomed? Because, it seems to me, that for a very long time America has been King of the World and Fighter of Justice. What happens now if Batman is replaced by the Joker? Does mass corruption become our new ideology?

A little luxury for little Lexi

It’s Lexi’s birthday today so I promised her a day of treats and an extra long walk. She made me keep my promise on the treats. She’s walked between various ‘sweetie’ storage areas and whipped her tail excitedly. When that didn’t suffice, she let out little yelps which would rather too quickly for my liking, turn into loud barks. I’ve tried telling her I didn’t mean that many sweeties when I said she’d be treated today. But she seems determined to make the most of my promise.
Don’t worry, they are proper dog treats. We keep having to change the word because if she hears it in general conversation she becomes so energized, it’s just insane.

I’m still enthralled with the fact that I can be the one now to take her on a walk. All by myself. I am still staying on my side of the road, in case my dodgy eyesight means that I misjudge the traffic. But the opportunities near my house aren’t too bad because we live on the edge of the green belt, right at the river.

I fulfilled my promise of the extra long walk. I included a walk along the river bank which is quite narrow and at one point, Lexi got herself tangled up with a very large branch! I was reminded of the days when Lawrence used to drag branches everywhere. Along beach fronts. Through forests. He even brought a massive one home with him on the school bus! His sister pretended not to know him…

It strikes me that Lexi does actually understand quite a lot. At some point when the river bank seemed particularly precarious I said to her , “Let’s go home.”
She about turned and yanked me the couple of kilometres back. She only weighs about 7kg and for her size she’s incredibly strong!! She paused just three times: once for a quick pee, as you do; once to take a glance at some gaggling geese and once to sniff something particularly potent. That was in stark contrast to the way there, which was filled with excited meanders here and there and back again. Sticking her nose in molehills, distributing her scent and generally just acting like a wild puppy, having a delightful birthday. Although she’s no puppy. Today she’s 10 years old.

Happy Birthday Lexi!!
Thank you for bringing us all so much fun and laughter.
Thank you for noticing when I feel down and snuggling up to my foot.
Thank you for cocking your little head to the side and listening when I am rambling on.
And thank you for gurgling little noises of contentment last night when I gave you that head and neck massage!

An early start….

The crazy dog braved the stairs again. I say braved because she’s small and doesn’t like stairs. She also doesn’t like ‘dry tomatoes’, you know the ones that haven’t first been rinsed before they’re given to her (don’t wash and dry them – she won’t eat them, they must still be wet), similarly, or should I say, contrastingly, she can’t stand wet cucumbers, they must be dry cucumbers, or she’ll turn her nose up and refuse point blank to eat them. Even if she’s hungry. I heard my husband telling her the other day, cucumbers are 90-odd percent water! He’d accidentally wet the cucumber instead of the tomato and the dog was peeved.

This morning, the crazy dog braved the stairs again. Then I heard her tiny paws pitter-patter over the landing excitedly, after all she’d achieved her feat. Then she knocked on the door. Really. I think she’s not developed far enough to actually scratch the door with her claws, so the scratch stops at a polite tap, or knock. Normally two or three ‘knocks’, truth be told. Then she pauses, and waits to see if you have been paying attention.

I had been paying attention for about five minutes because before all of that the dog had barked. I’d looked at my watch, it was only 4.52am and I was like, what the fuck? What the fuck was the dog doing in the entrance hall? Headlights had flashed by and awoken her from her blissful sleep and her day had started. And ours. I said, quite calmly considering, to my husband, “Why did you leave the dog sleeping in the front hall?” I may have had a slight waily note in my tone, I can hear it now, as I remember back. I felt him blink repeatedly. Me and my better half are pretty in sync, so stuff like that happens, even in the dark and without glasses on. Then as he answered, I could feel a huge apology on the edge of his tongue, “Was it..? Was it me who came to bed last?” His voice was all uncertain. Oh bugger, nope it was me. I hate the bloody menopause. My brain is like holey cheese. I can’t remember anything any more.

By that time the brave dog had reached the door. Pretty much simultaneously, both hubby and myself noticed our bladders awakening. And as I was the blame bearer, I strode off to the very excited-to-see-me dog, picked her up and carried her back downstairs. I was relegated, naturally, to the downstairs loo. The dog drank a ton of water, having been locked out from her bowl all night, and then of course needed to pee. I opened the door to a horde of birds chattering, which further excited the dog. By the time she re-entered the house, she was in full bounce around mode. Not only had she been a very brave dog and again mastered the stairs, step after scary step, but she’d been greeted by a celebratory choir while doing her first business of the day.

I’m recovering well. But I can’t look at the screen for too long as my eye starts to hurt and then my head starts to hurt. Hence I haven’t got back to you re my eye surgery. I can see, but something is still not right. It might be that they inserted the wrong lens the first time round. It may be something else. I have to wait until my eye is fully recovered to know for sure, which takes six to 12 months. Then it’ll be decided where we go from here. So, still a way to go. They won’t start on the left eye until the right eye is finished and it’s clear I have the same fault on the left eye so there’s a good chance things will go wrong during the cataract surgery then too. But, as long as I wear really strong glasses, I can see stuff again. I can see my beautiful husband, and my beautiful kids and my crazy bouncy dog. I can’t chop onions yet. But I’m heading in the right direction.

A bit more info…

I want to thank you for your for your kind responses to my last post. Several readers wrote and asked me about the surgery.
Here’s what I understand:
I have a mechanical fault in my eye. It was discovered after cataract surgery I had last year. After the surgery I couldn’t see any better and then things started to get worse, so various doctors did lots of tests. The mechanical fault had caused my retina to tear during the cataract surgery. The tear is now a hole in my retina.
My surgeon’s plan is to do keyhole surgery in my eye. They’ll remove the fault and the liquid from my eye and fill my eye with gas bubbles. The removal of the fault stops the pulling of the tear and hopefully stops it tearing even more. The gas bubbles apply pressure so the hole may try and heal itself. I will have to stay in hospital for a couple of days so they can monitor the level of pressure in my eye.
After about two weeks, the natural liquids should refill the eye and the gas should dissipate. Hopefully the hole will heal, but I need to be prepared that it can be a lengthy process.

After all of that, then they can start working on the other cataract in my left eye. They now know in advance that that eye has the same mechanical fault. Therefore the same thing could happen again.

But I’m keeping all of my fingers and toes crossed that it won’t!!

Again, thank you for your kind words after my last post. They were much appreciated.

A wobble is not always a bad thing

I’m a little nervous about my upcoming operation, next week. Over Christmas it was easy to find good distraction techniques. There were lots of people around for one thing. My husband had quite a lot of leave due to him and so we spent a lot of time together.

But on Monday he went back to work. Actually, I was absolutely fine on Monday. I got to Tuesday before it hit me and I had a bit of a wobble. Of course, it’s not nice getting any kind of operation. But I think it’s the uncertainty really. I have no idea how much I’ll be able to see after the my keyhole surgery and even if there’s improvement, it will take time. Weeks, maybe even months. And then there’s a good chance I’ll have to go through the same thing all over again with the other eye, once the cataract is removed, because they’ve found it has the same mechanical defect. And the surgeon told me even if it doesn’t happen during the cataract operation, it’s a ticking time bomb, and could just happen at any other time. Well, he didn’t actually say the words “ticking time bomb”. But you know what I mean.

Then again, when I was in my very early 20’s my left lung collapsed, three times over a period of 10 months. I had some cysts on the lung and they would pop, I’d feel them, and then the lung would just collapse. I almost got to the operating table for a medical intervention to try and stop the cycle, but the anaesthetist asked me a whole bunch of questions. I’d done a whole bunch of pregnancy tests prior to my admittance. Five to be exact. Four were negative. But they stacked the odds on the positive one being the correct one. So they did a blood test and sure enough Joni saved the day. She was only a little bunch of cells. But she still managed to be a superhero and save me from the scalpel. It wasn’t that the operation would have harmed the cells, they said, it was just that I would have required lots of x-rays and x-rays and foetuses, as we all know, don’t mix well.

The purpose of this tale is not to ramble on about my near-scalpel experience. No. It’s to tell you this: that doctor, who, by the way, was one of those super-duper, highly regarded specialists, told me that what happens to the left lung usually happens to the right lung. That was after Joni was born and I’d miraculously had no more collapsed lungs. So the postponed operation stopped being postponed and just got cancelled. However, the whole appointment didn’t carry an excited air of optimism, more one of doom and gloom. But it didn’t happen!!! My right lung and my left lung, from that day on, stayed fully inflated. The only real consequence I had was that I wasn’t allowed to push any of my four babies out of, what seems to me, like a very small hole. Instead I had my tummy literally cut open four whole times in a pre-planned, quite orderly manner, with a bed reserved each time in intensive care because no matter which hospital I went to, doctors always assumed that’s where I’d end up, after the big cut. I never did though. I always just healed surprisingly well.

Given that I now have an autoimmune disorder, I’ve figured that my body just gets really excited when there is something to fix and it tends to do a splendid job. It’s when it has nothing to fight against, that’s when I have a problem. I think it gets bored easily and creates itself a task to deal with.

I’m trying not to be too optimistic about the operation. I know it won’t be a walk in the park. And I need to be in a mentally ‘safe place’ in case it’s more difficult than I hope, so I can cope. But my natural instinct also tells me not to be too pessimistic. The doctor at the hospital told me there’s not a choice really, if I don’t do the operation, chances are, I will lose my sight completely. Maybe it’s strange, but that feels a bit like a safety net. Like, by doing the operation, I’m giving myself the best opportunity possible.

My husband has been great. I told him on Tuesday evening about my wobble. He responded that it’s fair enough to have a wobble. That what I’m going through is a big deal. And that I should have a wobble. And he told me not to block it and push it down, but to let it through, and let it out, it needs to be.

He’s a wise man my husband. He really is.

2023. I wrote the date for the first time the other day and I actually wrote the year correctly. Normally, at the start of the year, I’m all confused and keep filling the previous year in. You could be mistaken for thinking I was somehow trying to hold on to it. Nowadays, I’m really not. For more than a decade I’ve always been quite fed up with the year we were in, long before Christmas. I’ve been particularly keen on a fresh start. A reset.

2023:
I would like to see: peace in and the start of the rebuilding of Ukraine.
I would like to see: governments pulling together and working on answers to our climate crisis.
I would like to see: the Corona virus become something harmless, like a mild cold.
I would like to see: various politicians finally get their comeuppance! Huge losses, defeat, and criminal charges where appropriate.
I would like to see: properly again.

Christmas is coming!!!

Ready or not, it’s just around the corner now. So I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry one.

My presents are all wrapped. Our tree is up. As are our penguins. I know that’s a somewhat bizarre thing to say. My friend told me the other day, she said, “It sounds really weird when you say that!!” So for clarity, some people have snowmen lit up (or perhaps snowladies), others have reindeer. We have penguins. You can actually see them again now too. A couple of days ago they were nearly buried in snow. Then I said odd things like, “The penguins are buried!” Or after a windy night, “A penguin is face down in the snow!!” But I digress…

It may seem like I’m very organized. I even have my exact menu planned for the three Christmas days. And an exact list of last minute ingredients to buy. But that’s all superficial. The rest of the house is upside down, as when my son moved out, we didn’t even sneeze, we just jumped straight into the renovations.

Little did we know, which next crisis was heading straight towards us. To be fair, had we known, I, at least, would have been organized. I suppose, really, that’s one of the reasons it was/still is such a crisis.

Earlier in the year, I was diagnosed with a cataract. Nothing too serious. Considering I live in Germany and cataract operations are successfully implemented like a million times a day. Plus, normal people take ages to need surgery. So I bobbed along. Drove my car. Yanked up carpets. Made plans. And then suddenly it just got much worse. As in much worse. As in I could no longer drive my car. No longer leave my house alone. No longer see the faces of my family members. So the good doctor rushed me off for surgery.

My cataract had, however, grown so thick, so quickly (all down to last year’s Crohn meds apparently) that they could no longer take accurate scans of my eye. So they were going in blindly, so to say. The blind leading the blind could also be said… Anyway… They removed my pirate eye patch the next day, and I could see bugger all. Well I could see a blurry mess. But that was it. To cut a long story short, they have now discovered that due to a medical condition, which they hadn’t been able to see during the scan, I now have a hole in my retina and only 20% vision in my right eye. My left eye felt left out (ha!) so it grew its own cataract. It’s a fast growing one too, but by hook and by crook they managed to get a scan done and discovered that I have the same condition in that eye too. So I could also have the same problems when that cataract is removed. It’s a dilemma for everyone involved. But now the executive decision has been made at a special, specialist eye hospital that I should leave the left eye well alone for the time being and that they will operate on the right eye and hopefully in a few weeks or months my eye will finally get better. But it’s by no means clear (though for me, nothing is at the moment!) that there will be any improvement. So I’m just keeping all my fingers and toes crossed. Though not when I’m walking about. I was already prone to falling over while fully sighted. I am even more prone now with a minuscule amount of vision. Hence my hand is also bandaged after miss-seeing the step and taking a tumble.

Luckily my husband is amazing. He is running about doing various jobs at 100 miles an hour. I hope he gets to slow down somewhat over Christmas. And laugh. And feast. And sing. Or at least play his guitar a bit.

Are you a sublime hot flusher or in need of refrigeration?

I was watching a TV show with my youngest the other day when I yelled, rather over enthusiastically, “She’s having a hot flush, I swear it!” I think I may have been rather consumed by the camaraderie of it all, to be honest. And I was somewhat in awe. The woman, despite her predicament didn’t have a hair out of place.

My offspring looked at me (I’d like to say in awe also, but the look was more, well, sceptical), “What makes you say that?”
By that time I was already clicking on my phone, scanning through the omniscient Wikipedia for further info. “Yes”, I fist-bumped the air. “She’s 48!” I stated, “Definitely at least perimenopausal!”

“But what makes you think she’s having a hot flush?” My child looked challengingly at me. The way a teenager just needs to.

“Because she left the building to go outside and removed her coat!” I concluded.

The expression on my young one’s face revealed that she still required some convincing. But I know I was right. The history documentary couldn’t have been filmed on a hot day otherwise, why was she wearing a long coat?

I jubilated at my own cleverness for a while and the fact that I AM NOT ALONE. But I can understand my child’s unconvinced stance. The presenter is an absolute consummate professional. Who knows what she did right after they said CUT! Maybe she threw herself into the nearest lake? But for the shot, she managed to keep her composure and simply removed her jacket, which was a signal only to those of us ‘in the know’.

In contrast, my child witnesses scenes like this:

Yesterday I hardly slept. I woke up time and time again, sweating. I thought I had a fever at some point, which made me think I might have Covid. Although I am almost the only person in my suburb still wearing a mask voluntarily and I am avoiding contact with actual people, so I will be able to go on holiday. And my warning app hasn’t turned bright red and sung “You were standing next to an infected person on such and such a date.” Leading to me puzzling away for half a day exactly where I was a week ago.
I tossed and I turned and I took my socks off. I always wear socks. Always. I have bad circulation and they prevent cramps. Well, I don’t wear them in the shower. Or in the pool. Or when I wear those red shoes. I also wear them during sex. Unless it’s a special occasion.

Anyway, the socks came off and I dangled my feet out of my side of the bed. I threw my quilt over my man. Who’s a naked sleeper by the way. I always wonder what will happen if he has to go into hospital as he doesn’t own any pyjamas… Then I clearly remember whining somewhat. My man does as well. He doesn’t get much sleep once I finally climb into bed nowadays. We are travelling through my trauma together.

Morning arrived. Dishevelled, I looked for my socks. Then decided on a fresh pair. I staggered downstairs to the tap and the Covid tests.

And then it started. What I like to call my ‘rolling flushes’.

A brief explanation: a ‘rolling flush’ is when you have one hot flush, which subsides after a few minutes, but you go straight into another one.
After a ‘normal hot flush’ you can take a little time to properly cool down, you may even get to feel cold, as the sweat on your skin chills you. That never happens during a rolling flush, as you never quite make it back to normal temperature before the next wave comes. In my experience this can go on for as long as an hour or more.

I got my little battery operated fan out but it just wasn’t up to the job. I overheated my cooling scarf. I entered a self imposed bra ban – no need at all for extra items of clothing. My son advised me to go out in the cold rain, so I ran out onto the terrace, my half open linen shirt flapping around, but I only contributed to global warming. In a supportive attempt my poor son joined me, battery operated fan in hand. But neither the wind nor the rain nor a well meaning son could help me. I re-entered my hot-house, soggy socked and moaning. And raced to the fridge. I opened both doors (it’s a French double door fridge – the French are wise people) and I shoved my head in there for a bit. To no avail. But while I was there opportunity struck: I spotted a ready chilled bottle and I had the glorious epiphany to hold that to my naked skin. The flavoured water inside even contained some ice crystals. Hooray!!
Suddenly my linen top, hanging by then off shoulder, revealed a kind of hammock shaped carrier and I realised I could actually lie the icy bottle in there, directly against my naked boob and perhaps, finally, find some relief.

Me, my shirt and bottle wandered around for a while. Coexisting. Cooling. Occasionally wailing. My damp thinning hair made the word dishevelled feel tidy.
Then the bottle got fed up and threw itself to the floor. I grabbed it, quickly, and thrust it’s icy loveliness to the nape of my neck. Sticky, sugary flavoured water trickled all the way down my back.

I’ll finish with two points.

One: thank fuck for HRT gel.
Two: I understand exactly why my baby didn’t associate that incredible woman removing her long coat with a hot flush.