a splendid duck-billed platypus

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( needs a rewrite )

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( old friending policy )

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( Flashy slideshow of my photos )

30 days. Not bad but not good either.

Also, period started with a tiny little tiny little, which is awfully familiar.

I am on holiday. Marie is upstairs asleep - I told her I'd wake her with coffee at 10:30. Stepdog is Being Good waiting for me to tell him he can have his breakfast. Then we'll go out for a walk (and I'll stop by the GP office to get my prescriptions renewed.)

You might enjoy: 33 Animals Who Are Extremely Disappointed In You.

(Stepdog is looking at me Very Hopefully, so I guess I should let him.)

Also: a nice police story. About a blind novelist.

Today I took the last capsule of EPO. Twenty days since my last period. If things are completely back to normal, I will have my next period on Monday or Tuesday, and two periods in May at the beginning and the end of the month. But if by 31st May I haven't had three showings of squid (Squid, Return of the Squid, Revenge of the Squid?) then something's gone at least slightly weird. Will start taking EPO again on or about 1st July if between now and then I haven't had at least four periods: I have six months supply so that will last me till December.

Hm. Not bad. 26 days!

Seriously. This is the third time in a row I have had a normal period.

There are two possible reasons for this.

One of them is that the reason my periods were getting far and far apart was that my body was having a delayed reaction to the broken bones in my foot (NHS24 suggested this when I talked to them about it). Now it's been a year since it happened and my body is recovering.

The other reason is that I was / am heading towards menopause, and when I doubled-up on Evening Primrose Oil (2 1000mg capsules instead of 1) this provided just enough extra prostaglandin to kick my body back into normal squid pattern.

I have 10 days supply left in the opened jar. I have 180 days supply in two unopened jars. I'm going to finish taking what I have, and then stop taking EPO til the period after the next one.

If my periods stay normal, then my cycle just needed a bit of help restarting. If my periods go back to the long gap pattern - ie 30-40 days - then the EPO is providing some kind of consistent support, and it's something I should get medical advice on.

(Apparently it is possible to OD on prostaglandin, but it is very difficult to do so by taking evening primrose oil - I'm taking 2000mg in one dose once a day, and people routinely take as much as 4000mg in a day.)

New set of lenses in. Must call optician and book appointment.

A story told in emails set in the Aliens universe: Killing Elvis

I was led there by reading the Bechdel Test: mechanical approaches by the author of the story above.

And I was led there because I read a loving championship of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and liked it so much I checked what else interesting might be in that community.

If I can just figure out a way of tying the three together, I can write another feministsf blog post soon.

*insomniac*

*sleep now*

Jazz is not speaking to me. I don't really blame her.

It was sort of about lunchtime and I realised I'd forgotten to take my mobile phone when I left the house. Home is only 20 minutes walk away, if that. I stopped on the way there to buy a pint of milk and a packet of cat biscuit. Jazz was outside, I let her back in, and filled the holding box with cat biscuit. Then I got up on the stool to put the bag with the remaining biscuit back on the high shelf.

Then I got down off the stool. I wasn't looking at my feet. I felt my foot come down on cat - moving, turning cat: although I tried to bring most of my weight down on the other foot, if Jazz hadn't reacted so fast I would have crunched her. But, she got away, and I figured she probably couldn't be too badly hurt if she'd run like that.

As far as I can tell - and I may never get down off the stool without looking again - I would have stepped right in the middle of Jazz. She was curling round the feet of the stool, I suppose. Anyway. She ran, and I wondered if I should locate her and get her to the vet. I was pretty sure the yell had been fear and outrage rather than mortal agony (I'd definitely trodden on her tail).

There was a letter that had been meant for the people who live at number 14 across the road. It is our neighbourly practice just to redeliver the mail when this happens, so I left the front door open (thinking Jazz might come out) and nipped across the road to put the letter through their box.

When I came back, Jazz was sitting at the top of the steps. She looked okay. The tip of her tail was twitching as I climbed the steps. The landing at the top and the steps have a waist-high metal bars fence: cats can slip between the bars. Tail twitching, Jazz used this to step directly from the landing to the stair just below me when I was nearly at the top, and ran on down the stairs. She stopped in the garden and looked up at me. Her tail was still twitching. Then she ran across the grass to the shrub that grows in the corner by the house, where Wolf hides his little corpses when he hunts. and she went into the hollow of the shrub and I couldn't see her any more.

I'm pretty sure she's fine. Just royally, felinely pissed at me. And with reason. Really not fair to be just disposing of yourself in catlike abandon and suddenly Previously Trustworthy Owner acts like she wants to crush you.

Of course I didn't. Wolf was sitting on the landing eyeing Jazz and me with a kind of big-brother detachment. I told him to go tell Jazz I didn't mean it. I hope she's forgotten about it by tomorrow.

Lens record; new in today.

Exactly one pair left.

(18th was the last day I wore lenses successfully. 19th, blurred. 20th, same.)

I cannot find my OTHER mobile phone.

This is annoying, because my NEW mobile phone isn't working.

Potentially, this is because my ancient SIM card has finally quit on me. (Though I can still read contacts off it.) But it is entirely possible that my brand new Nokia 100 has decided not to work. That the battery won't re-charge makes it more than plausible.

I have a pac code to transfer my number from Orange to O2, and I guess I can take my phone down to the O2 shop and give them my number and ask them to switch SIM cards. And then I have to unlock the bloody phone of course. Meh.

Ho hum.

Well, yes.

25 days.

The only thing that's really changed is I doubled-up on the evening primrose oil.

That and a small supply of sleeping pills for when the insomnia gets really persistent.

Yesterday I quit wearing my lenses, because they were getting blurry, which meant one of them (but I can no longer remember which one) lasted me a fortnight: the other one lasted much less long but I had a spare lens from the mess I made of my last box.

So anyway. Putting in my fourth pair of lenses from the box I bought on 20th January. Presuming that they each last 10 days to a fortnight, I will be buying a new box in April... or of course quitting to the cheaper option on account of being seriously unemployed.

Update, 10th March (8th was the last day I wore this pair successfully). Left eye not-likey-lens, vision slightly blurred. Think this counts as 22nd-8th inclusive, or 15 days, which makes sense.

Yesterday, I met whatho, and we had tea and pizza, not at the same time, and we walked - eventually, me having totally forgotten (shame on me) that the People's Story and the Edinburgh Museum are only open on Sundays during the festival) all the way down to Leith, where we had coffee in Relish. I was still full of pizza. (We had had pizza in Mamas and it was excellent as ever.) This was in total rather more than five miles. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Then I located the appropriate bus stop for whatho and went to Trespass, where I bought a new pair of walking boots, as my feet had been telling me crossly I should have done weeks ago. Shut up, feet.

Please don't break Internet while I'm gone. Or paint it purple.

Actually it might look quite good purple.

I am on a 100+ streak on 750 words and now I can schedule time off so that when I come back I will still be on a streak.

Work continues crap.

New lenses in.

9 days, meaning the lenses costed me a bit more than £1 per day.

(9th/10th - wearing 1-day lenses: lenses that went in on the 7th are in the lens container by the keyboard in Optifresh.)

Unexpected, to say the least.



20 days. Perfectly normal cycle. When I was 14.

Blurred vision, etc. So: new lenses. At this rate with these lenses my eyes will cost me £600 a year, which is approximately 2.5 times what my glasses used to cost me.

It's a bugger. I feel poor.

(To people reacting with "My lenses don't cost that much!" yeah, but your glasses probably don't cost that much either. I am extremely short-sighted. You're almost certainly not as short-sighted as I am, and frankly being reminded of how expensive this is really annoying. I'm about due for another visit to the optician, and I think I'm just going to tell him frankly - I can't wear the monthlies - not for a month, anyway: I can't afford the weeklies - £520 a year plus all the other expenses of contact lenses.)

Of course there is the option of telling my optician I want to stick to glasses and getting a fresh pair (which goodness knows I need, it makes me feel uncomfortable to have one pair usable and a rescue pair with my gym kit) and buying lenses via contactlens.co.uk - if I'm right about this I can get a years' supply of dailies for £232, which is not so far off what a pair of glasses costs me.

But. I like my optician. I like the personal connection. I want them to stay open, to stay viable, to go on getting eye tests there where they've been checking my current prescription since I was 7.

Do I value them enough to pay them that extra? The answer is beginning to feel like no, I don't, I'd rather just get contact lenses much more cheaply by post.

Yesterday, with Bee and Ajay, I cleared out the downstairs bedroom, from henceforth to be "the lodger's room". Ajay mistressminded the whole thing, as I knew she would (that's why I asked her) and Bee helpfully took three car loads of Stuff away - one load to a charity shop, two loads to the dump. (Some of the stuff that went to the dump was stuff that I'd been crossly saving up for a special uplift FOR WHICH YOU NOW HAVE TO PAY, but at least one full car load was stuff that as we sorted out the room, I realised there was no reason to keep.)

It took us seven and a half hours, from time of their arrival (whem we drank coffee and Bee drank Irn Bru and we planned out the order of the day) til when we were all three sitting down with strawberry wine (Bee was still drinking Irn Bru) and ate delicious curry from Ocean Spice, the nearest curry house to me. As far as I can tell, being run by a small team of enthusiastic young men who bought a large multi-coloured tiger to sit on the floor in front of the food counter. A tiger model, I mean. Painted like the planet facing the sun.

The room is now completely clear but for one box of fragile stuff that I'll take along to the charity shop next week. There is also a cabinet in the kitchen that's clear, and a cupboard in the bathroom (that we cleared and moved out of my upstairs study) that can be lodger-space for the bathroom. It's big enough for her to store towels and facecloths and such there.

The lodger's rent will pay for a weekly cleaner, which is fab, and still leave nice amounts over to make a cushion for a rainy day.

But. The other thing. Almost the first thing I told Ajay I wanted her to do.

I've got Bob's ashes in a casket. I have got to the point (seven years after Cally died) when I'm ready to bury Cally and Gallus's ashes in the garden. But I realised that whenever I thought about it, I was deeply unhappy at ever burying Bob outside. She loved the garden, sure, she loved being petted and fussed over by everyone on the street, but she was so happy to come into the house again, always. I couldn't bear for her to be outside. Which I said, rather embarrassed, and bursting into tears in the middle of it (Ajay and Bee, bless them, completely unphased). So Ajay transferred Bob's ashes to a pretty wooden box I'd bought some time ago, and put them in the cupboard that has the water heater in it that I don't use (and the door opens only with immense difficulty because of the heavy carpet). It occurs to me that if I get the carpet up in the hall and do something with the floor, then that would be a time to put the box under the floorboards before they're re-sealed.

In other news, while the official temperature is 5 above zero, it felt really bloody cold last night.