Hello everyone!  I’m sorry it’s been a while since I updated this, and I’m also sorry for not updating at Christmas.  It's actually starting to feel like Spring here in Edinburgh.  You know it’s not going to be long until Spring when you see more dry than wet in the roads and pavements.  The air quality has changed too - it's more fragrant and less biting, and that bit more hazy to look at as well. 

Anyway, to business.  We were all asked to answer some questions on our blogs about Christmas, and though I will be doing this SHAMEFULLY late, I would like to do so, thinking in retrospect about what Christmas was like:

The bad weather did not affect me really, because I was at home with my family.  We had snow that came halfway up our legs, and by all accounts this was not nearly as bad as what some people in the central belt had.  On the news they showed cars along the sides of the streets and even in the middle of the road, piled high.  It was a little eerie to see…great, white mounds – like tombs almost.  An odd contrast to the chipper, but also rather resigned people in the streets.  My partner was worse off than I was for a while.  Luckily he made it up for Christmas, but there was a period of time during the snow when he was down there and I was up here.  He said it was so cold that he brought a mattress through to the living room of the flat and slept there, with three duvets on.  According to him it felt like being crushed.  More seriously, the Tesco deliveries and buses were cancelled, and the ice on the roads made it difficult for him to get to any shops that sold a good variety of things.  He managed to survive relatively unscathed though. 

I can imagine the bad weather could be a real problem for some other families on this blog, and in some cases life threatening:  Whether it’s products failing to get delivered, or power cuts, or inability to get to a hospital/GP.  I follow several families on the site CaringBridge, who have children with life-threatening illnesses, and it’s always a worry going into winter, because you know there is a significant chance for each family that this could be their child’s last winter with them.  I’m glad Spring has come round.  That doesn’t mean the families let down their guard at all, but it does mean that they can feel a little relieved that the season where colds and flu are rife is starting to hopefully depart. 

As to my three Christmas wishes.  Well, my first one, as long as I am in Edinburgh, will always be a constant:  I want to be with my partner, and my hamster (although we’ll be lucky if we get another Christmas with him, given he’s seventeen months old now), and my family.  Sounds simple enough, and it is, but there’s always the question of bad weather preventing this by blocking roads and railways.  My second one:  Hmmm.  Probably the money to get people the presents they want, and the organisation to plan ahead enough to get them good things, instead of giving them IOUs.  And my third Christmas wish…having trouble thinking of a third one.  Ah yes.  The self restraint not to put my own health in danger by picking at high protein foods when nobody’s looking.  To elaborate:  Normally I am fairly good about not going over my protein limit, but naturally because I don’t eat much natural protein my body craves it nearly all the time – even when I drink my amino acid supplement.  And Christmas is the WORST time for that.  There are ‘piggies in blankets’ (chipolatas wrapped in bacon), roast turkey, sausages, stuffing and, worst of all, the turkey.  And given the amount of food there is always plenty left over after the meal, which people can take home in storage tubs to eat over the next few days.  During the festivities the remains are just left out on the table, which means if I sneak through alone I am sorely tempted. 

The bacon and the turkey are the most difficult to resist.  Fat from meat has far less protein in it than the lean meat, and turkey skin is very fatty.  Therefore me and my sister can have a good chunk of it with our meal, which is lovely, but it also makes it very tough to resist pulling little bits off the turkey and eating them when left alone with it after the meal.  I have once before pushed my protein tolerance right to the LIMIT by doing this.  Also that yellowy fat off bacon which tastes like bacon but melts in the mouth.  So tempting to pick bits off.  The best solution I have found is to avoid the kitchen after the meal and help clear up in some other way, but also to warn someone that I am liable to pick at protein foods, and ask them to keep an eye on me.  I’m much less likely to fall to temptation if someone else knows that I am likely to fall to temptation…paradoxically.

So what has happened since then?  I’ve been in a play!  First one since 2009, I think.  And my first professional one.  And my first touring one!  It was a set of loosely linked scenes (each of which could be performed on its own), about loosely linked characters dealing with the isolating issues of having a stammer and being transgendered.  It played in Glasgow (four performances, gaining a total of nine audience members altogether!!), and Edinburgh (with considerably more success!).  I played a really horrible, provocative, bitchy, self-obsessed shop assistant.  A completely new experience for me to play that kind of character, but arguably not a completely new experience for me to be like that.  Hopefully we’ll perform it again at the Fringe Festival, along with some other things.  There’ll be a meeting about that this Sunday.  Really excited!

And jobs…still no luck, although I am doing voluntary shifts two hours a week(!) in a charity shop, which has taught me how to use a till and shown me that I CAN be helpful to customers!  I applied for a post grad in dietetics, but unfortunately was not offered a place – though I am on the waiting list should anyone pull out before September.  Also applying for a Brain Imaging course, as well as a few drama training courses.  We’ll see how those go – the brain imaging one I keep putting off, but that is the subject for another blog (which I will write sooner than I wrote this one).  And also I am contacting back a Garden Centre who I first contacted about work in Autumn.  They kept my records and said that they would love to employ someone with my attitude and experience (yey!!), but that they were down staffing, and they up-staff in Spring.  So since they said they would keep my records and that I should watch that space, which is why I am contacting them back, so they don’t forget. 

So that’s all my news and views just now, but my next blog post is planned this time, and concerns MSUD and the liver transplantation treatment.  And there’s also another one planned about being independent.