Katy’s rambles about life

Jane and Ben came round today to drop off pressies. Now I’d assumed that it was just pressies for the kids but she gave me something too. 3 books on the GI diet. Um, thanks, I think. I know I said I was taking a serious look at eating habits after Christmas 9no point trying before - way too much junk food in the house) but diet books for pressies?????? (no, i’m not ungrateful, I was with her when she bought them for her own reference before “Lighter Life” came along and made her wallet lighter by £40 a week for 6 months….)

I sat and read the intro to one of the 3 and I’m sorry, I don’t care how good the diet is, any book that tells you that eating fat doesn’t make you fat unless you eat it with carbs cos carbs make you release insulin which makes you absorb the fat but without the carbs no insulin is released (so the fat goes…… where?) is not staying on my bookshelf thank you very much. Any book that says that insulin metabolises glucose into fat is also not staying, insulin doesn’t metabolise anything, it’s a hormone, it makes other bits of the body do the work under it’s control (hey, I think I’d like to be a hormone….)

I’m not saying the diet won’t work, obviously eating foods that release energy slowly is going to be better for you that boom and bust of high sugar foods as you will stay full longer so not pick between meals and therefore EAT LESS CALORIES but please, don’t dress it up as anything other than sensible eating.

Some of the recipes look nice though…… damn it, I don’t need more recipes, I know how to make healthy food, I just don’t know how to not open the snax drawer!!!!

Okay, some of you know I’m adopted and have very, very little info about my birth mother other than a name and place of birth. Well, some time ago I joined Genes Reunited and put myself on there in my “real” name with just my birth mother’s name, Tim and Becca on there in the vain hope that she may join, spot me and hey presto tentative contact made. Now, someone else has put up a person with the same birth year and name as her and I sort of want to contact her and compare notes but then a) I’d have to pay the joining fee of nearly £10 on the off chance she’s related and b) what if I’m some dirty little secret? What if this person is my half-sister who doesn’t even know that her mum gave up her first-born, miles from home and probably under a huge ammount of pressure to do so? it’s a lot of money to find out it’s someone completely different or worse to trash someone’s Christmas by dusting off a skeleton but I sort of feel like well, I’ve got rights too, I’m sick of having to do the “I have no idea” bit when medics ask is there a family history of….

….Nah, I let her slep late today…

I have no idea why but today I have felt 1 step removed from life all day. When I hve been in the same room as my body I’ve been alternately morose and snappy. At one point I was fractions away from grabbing all the damp (clean) washing and throwing it out into the muddy yard just so I didn’t ahve to see it any more, half an hour later I was cleaning and tidying like a mad woman to vent the anger safely before I threw things.

Becca has lolled miserably although I’m not sure if it’s her mood infecting me or the other way round. Mind you, she’s been lolling for days now - growth spurt? Brain spurt? Hitting her teens early? Oh God, she’s going to be liek this permenantly when she hits her teens isn’t she?????

The guinea pigs have even been squabbling ffs!!!! Honest! I put 2 big chunks of cucumber in for them and they both fought over 1 bit. Curly actually seems quite a bit bigger than Whirly but Whirly seemed to be the one flashing her gnashers and getting stroppy (until Curly sort of headbutted her, squeeked a bit and made off with the food!)

On teh other hand, I did a bit more of my crochet (nice simple shrug with a rather silly frilly bit that will look really daft on me but I don’t care cos I think it looks great) and Becca did a bit on Starfall and a bit on StudyDog (but melted down when she had to differentiate between “c” as in call and “c” as in circus etc.) and she’s just sneaked in to me half an hour after Tim put her to bed with a card she’s made which is a big heart surrounded by kisses and her name written beutifully and gave it me saying the heart was because she didn’t know how to write I love you. So… I apologised for being so grumpy today and she said it was okay, we were both grumpy because we were tired and tomorrow we will have a nice quiet day and feel much better. Gulp, what did I do to deserve a little girl this lovely?

I didn’t fail the medical assessment yesterday although I was told that I had. He was not allowed to fail me as I had done exactly the right thing by passing the offending “epipen” onto someone who was trained to use it and in fact had I used it without training that would have been a more serious issue. So I only failed the trauma after all. Which I wouldn’t have failed if I wasn’t so angry/upset about failing the medical one.

In a spirit of reflective learning…..

I am a perfectly able and competent ambi aider. I am more than able to do the “job” and neither of the assessments should have given me a moments trouble. What I have a problem with is managing myself. I need to learn to deal with failure/anger/upset better. I need to be able to ignore prats when they go out to “push buttons”, wind me up etc or if not ignore it to say “f it” and move on. I have no idea sadly how to even start to deal with that. But I need to work it out before the end of November when I re-sit.

So… do I edge it in plain red or leave it alone? Still can’t decide! It curls in at the sides which I think edging it would cure but then who care? it’s lovely for keeping my shoulders warm on chilly mornings (yikes, I’m sliding down that slippery slope to Muffin-dom again…)

Went to music group with Becca this evening, took another lady with us who doesn’t drive so doesn’t go once the nights draw in unless someone can pick her up, pleasant time had by all then we all packed up and headed for home… got to half way up the track from the church to the road…noticed that the track was totally blocked by shiney whte cars with pretty blue lights on the top and flippantly commented that Santa was obviously going upmarket this year and trying out something a bit warmer than his normal sleigh (they were seriously lit up like Christmas trees!!!)…. got stopped by one police officer whilst another walked with purpose the way I had just come with an firearm cuddled to his chest and full protective gear on.

“Who’s in the car please Madam? Is it just the two of you?”
(me) “yes, er, no, there’s my daughter in the back too”
(him) “no-one in the boot then?”
(me) “take a look if you want”
(him) “thanks, I intend to. Turn the engine off please.”

He looked in the boot, he shone his torch in the side windows, he looked at us again, he moved onto the next car…..obviously we didn’t look like criminals then

Some time later someone shifted the patrol cars that were blocking the track adn off we all went.

I shall now be pouncing on teh local papers to find out what on earth was going on!!!! Did concern me though taht we had all just come out of an un-locked building (so anyone could have walked in on us) and into an unlit carpark (so anyone could have been lurking and we would never have seen them) to be greated by a ***** armed response team!!!! I mean, I know there has been a lot of vandalism round there - they torched the portacabin we use for Sunday School, have smashed a lot of the windows with (we think) air rifle pellets and generally tried to make a mess of the place - but turning out armed officers makes it all seem a bit eeek!

I’m guessing any old socks will do this but with a bit of fabric paint to make up for not having a red heel…

How to make a sock monkey
could this be the way to reuse/recycle last year’s very shrunk wooly tights that Becca can’t bear to part with???