In Like a Lion, Out Like A Lamb in Scottish Meanderings

I’m getting a haircut in a month’s time! Never did I think I would be starting a diary entry with that as the excitement of the month :) Although the question really is whether I'm going to last another four weeks without pulling the whole lot out because it's driving me absolutely potty. First world problems.

The wee man had his second birthday on the 5th. Nikki did one of her videos.


He’s a right little character. Speech is still a problem so there’s frustration when he can’t express himself or make himself understood but his vocabulary has expanded a lot this month I’ve noticed so I’m hoping it’ll all sort itself out eventually. He goes to a childminder for part of Wednesday and all of Thursday and she’s really patient with him - she has a little girl of her own and they both get on like a house on fire so that’s probably helped a lot.

He gives this massively excited squeal every time he sees me which does my heart no end of good - I gave him pride of place in my calendar (in my bedroom) for this month so I get to see his cute wee face every morning when I wake up :)


Love my little Roo Bear❤️


I got my first jab (AstraZeneca) on Thursday evening last week and had a bad reaction almost immediately. It was actually a bit embarrassing because it wasn't the usual allergic reaction they look for - it was a racing heart which became slightly alarming and showed no signs of abating after 15 minutes plus a very marked shakiness which meant I didn't feel comfortable walking the long way to the car (the vaccinations were being held in a large new exhibition centre and it was quite a walk from the car park to the actual arena) without mentioning it to someone.

I was taken over to what they called the Wobble Room which was just a cubicle with a bit of extra room and a bed to lie down on. The name I suppose is cute but I actually found it a bit patronising- if someone was having an actual allergic reaction (which can be frightening) I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want it called a 'wobble'. Anyway I got my blood pressure, temperature and heart rate taken and everything was a bit high but apparently not to a worrying extent so I toddled off home. I'd cleared the following two days just in case but realised I'd forgotten to get orange juice with the shopping - every time I have a temperature I absolutely crave Tesco's fresh orange juice so I managed to pop in on the way home and get some.

Sooooooooo glad I did. The chills/burning up started that night and carried on for the next two days along with the fatigue. That orange juice was like nectar I can tell you! I felt really rubbish on Friday and Saturday but better on Sunday so went out to Pitmedden but in hindsight I should have probably given that a miss because I was pretty beaten up when I got home.

Do you know the worst part though? The very worst part was when I started to get over it, I felt really really well. The kind of well I hadn't felt for literally months. And although I tried desperately hard for my mind not to go there, I couldn't help wondering if it had reset something or provided something which was missing for the last 5 years and I would miraculously become okay again. The thought of that was just overwhelming but oh God I would have given anything for it to be true.

And then by Tuesday I was back to the shit show :(

Oh well. The reaction kinda makes perfect sense to me though. If you have a body which struggles with the very basics of life and you stick something in it which makes it fight something big off, it's gonna struggle a lot more isn't it? So it wasn't too much of a surprise.

Speaking of which I’m very intrigued by long tail Covid. I was listening to a talk about it yesterday and they’re realising there are many more people affected by it than first thought and of course as time goes on, that number is very likely to increase. The reason I’m intrigued is because most, if not all, of the symptoms appear to resemble chronic fatigue (in fact many people think they now have chronic fatigue as a result of Covid) so I’m interested to see how this plays out - and whether this invisible illness is going to be treated any better because there are larger numbers (and more influential people) suffering from it. I'll be a bit pissed off if it is but at the same time it would certainly be nice to see it more recognised than it is now.


With the increase of so much Zoom, Teams, Messenger video, House Party etc. participation in the last year, my Internet connection just wasn't cutting it. I had major problems with audio being out of sync, freezing and other glitches and I knew that having the computer up in the bedroom so far away from the router probably wasn't helping plus my broadband package was really rubbish. So I upgraded to fibre broadband, lugged the pc downstairs, bought a wee stand for the monitor which meant the Mac Mini could sit underneath it and set it all up in the sitting room. I wasn't sure I would like it at first but it's kind of grown on me now.


But just that one act seemed to set a chain of decluttering events in motion!

Suddenly there was a big space on the desk in my bedroom so I had to turn the desk into more of a dressing table and put my earrings and jewellery box on it which, in turn, created a space on top of the bookcase so stuff got moved up to there which created ..... you get the gist. And then it became a pain not having the printer beside the computer so I tried taking it down to the sitting room as well but that created a space on top of a chest of drawers so I reorganised stuff to put on there but then I needed paper, labels, envelopes etc to be in the same place as the printer so that required another whole chest of drawers to come downstairs too - which created a hole in the spare bedroom so stuff was reorganised in there which meant things were in the wrong place suddenly so I had to clear drawers out and shift things into different places to be more practical - and so it went on like a giant snowball!

However I think it's helped to start the badly needed decluttering process in a tiny way. I need to make this house work for me in a better way than it is just now. And one thing I'm definitely looking forward to doing is clearing space in the spare room wardrobe which has hosted a pile of clothes I've been hanging onto to 'sell one day'. I've decided that I'm just going to put the whole lot to charity shops instead because that 'one day' is just never materialising. We get charity bags through the door every now and then which we can put out in the street on a particular morning and they're collected so I'm eagerly awaiting the next one coming because it's going to be stuffed to the brim :)


I finally started counselling in November last year and am about to start with my third client on Tuesday. The jury's out as to whether or not the telephone counselling works well or not just yet. For me there's a lot of the story missing - facial expressions, eye contact, body language, meaningful silences etc. - I feel that gets in the way of the process and hinders it somewhat - but I have to admit it's a great way for me to get back into the fray once more without the energy needed to drive to the Agency and stay there for the duration of a face to face meeting then drive back home again.

The calls are shorter duration than face to face - 30-40 minutes speaking time rather than 50 minutes for face to face - as telephone counselling is supposed to be more draining overall. I would certainly agree with that. We have the opportunity to do Zoom training and do Zoom calls instead now but I'm still having problems with glitchy or out of sync audio and freezing sometimes when we do the family video call on a Tuesday and I don't know if it's my computer or because we're using Messenger. I use Zoom for Italian but I can't say it's totally glitch-free either although it's a lot better. I just can't risk that happening in the middle of a counselling session though - sometimes timing can be so significant and you only need a freeze or delayed audio to happen at a crucial moment and it could potentially ruin the whole session.


And just for a bit of fun, I'll finish with some doctored photos which Nikki did using an app and which had us all in fits. Not even the cats escaped - but the best two I thought were Lilah and I - Lilah has just the right expressive face for it and my one cracks me up because it looks like the settee is joining in! (Which of course it totally would because that settee has personality :)



March certainly did come in like a lion - in Aberdeen anyway - but we're definitely seeing more springlike days now although I'm still wearing my heavy jacket when out walking. But my scarf is off, my gloves are off, and the crocuses and daffies are sprouting everywhere bringing very welcome colour to the world we've been living in - so I think it's definitely going out like a lamb - a lamb gambolling joyously in the fields at the thought of restrictions lifting soon, safety resuming and normal life returning :)