I turned to Marla

Difficult day it was.

I don't feel like I am getting enough oxygen often but if it keeps getting worse I will be in a right pickle!  I am too breathless, dizzy and slow to be able to do anything unless I went at one step every five minutes so every single task I perform is taking longer and longer and longer.  Today's example was a doozy.  I've been putting off going to Coles to get meat and stuff but especially coffee.  I had borrowed 3 days worth of coffee from Flora again and I ran out of that too.  If S was still here I could have sent him but he went home yesterday after taking Connor fishing and I was asleep when he got back from that.  Apparently I slept through the AFL grand final but Collingwood wasn't in it so I did not care.  Scott and I watched a movie together earlier in the day and it was a last minute phone call that got the surprise response of "yes" after the day before's "I hate you".  I could not have coped with Connor and would have had to go to bed anyway so it worked out OK for all in the end.

His Mum and Connor are living at the other grandmother's house in town here these days - she was feeling isolated and before that she was not coping with Connor herself so handed him back to Y for a few weeks.  He gets tossed around now and he is a bit miserable S says; no friends at school.  S would have passed the time here with flying colours had he not said one illogical thing about the dog's collar with the kercheif neck.  He wanted me to take it off Milo immediately because it was making her stick her boobs out and rub them all over him.  It wasn't logical and later I found that he had taken the collar off since I had refused.  He's just got into Shangri La Meditation and he meant to bring me a little shrine and meditation on CD but he forgot to.  He goes to group meditations.  He did remember to bring the mulberry jam he made himself so he's one up on you and me Zena although I for one have made jam at some stage...just not mulberry.  A good job too it was, a nice set. Not too sweet.

Sitting under and arch of greenery getting bitten by mosquitoes

Lots of big birds in here - mainly Noisy Friar birds and Rainbow Lorikeets today.

Getting back to today, I woke up with one thing on my mind, getting food especially beef mince and coffee.  I started getting ready to go up to the shops but I could hardly walk today so I phoned an able-bodied friend first but she was not answering so I phoned Marla.  I have run errands for her plenty of times since her leg/foot/hip stopped working properly and she after years now is out and about with her wheelie walker because she has the energy to pack it in the car and get it out and walk slowly though.  Painfully slow, like me today.  I was in the process of heading to the car with my walker for the first time in public but I did not have the energy and I felt down right dangerous being on my feet because I did not have enough oxygen to make things work.  One step, one breath, one step, one breath kind of thing and I had to go so slowly in order not to make myself feel worse, it was going to take me all day to even get ready to go so I gave up and made the phonecall to a disabled lady to please come and help.  Up until now she has been expecting me to come to her because it is all too hard to deal with the walker even for her unless she has some motivation.  She makes noises about coming over here but she does not come and then gets up me for not remembering her stuck at home.  That's a joke, what does she think my life is all about?  I am way sicker than she is and she is supposed to get the exercise with her walker.  After all the rigmarole today she ended up saying it was good to get the exercise but she would have sat at home instead so you could say I did her a favour but the way it worked out was fraught with problems and delays so that I did not actually get to eat some protein until 3 oclock when finally I got my groceries delivered by Marla in my driveway for the second time.

It looks so bare out the front of Flora's now.  She managed to get some topsoil which makes mud for Milo.

 Fun hey?

Because of her gammy foot, I could not expect her to get out of the car so I took the list and money to her after staggering my way along with Milo on a lead.  That was all so hard that while she was gone I set a chair up at the front letterbox and the hose became an extra tether for the dog and I sat there waiting for her to come back when I thought the time was right but that's right, that didn't happen until after the first phonecall I got from her at Pelican Waters.  Had the credit card fallen out in the driveway because she didn't have it. She put it in her zip section but it wasn't there.  Out I went again to check the drive.  I could barely walk remember?  No it wasn't there.  I had a premonition of this before it actually happened, her losing my card I mean, while I was in front of the computer it just popped into my head so that when I heard her voice on the phone I knew.  It was an hour later by the time she actually had found the card down the side of the car and went into the supermarket.  I was feeling bad because she had had to hobble on her walker back in and out of the shopping centre in a panic about the card. 

Anyway back to sitting out the front waiting for her to come back with my food I was so desperate for.  It was after lunch time by now and I have been able to eat my safe foods ever since the day before my x-ray (which was all clear and so too was the poo sample PCR etc) and everything switched from autonomic stomach problems to autonomic heart-rate and breathing problems.  I've still been getting bowel cramps though and now after all these years I might have to suspect what I thought were safe bowel milky smoothies and whey protein.  I hope not but when a milky coffee makes me feel erky then something is wrong.  Naturally I am using lactose-free milk.  So I quit the liquid nutrition and wanted to get back to my beef mince and egg yolk and went without for the last few days already.  I did alright on that fried rice again when S was here on Friday night so carbs are being friendly to my gut but you know they are not good for the blood glucose levels.  Always having to juggle between 2 evils is not fun at all.

Marla got back with the groceries which I had to get out of the boot etc while she sat in her car but they were not what I had on the list in a couple of cases and since one was a $14 tin of coffee I can't stand, I begged her to go back to the shop while she sat in her car and Milo and I sat on the chair at the letterbox.  She had also bought regular milk and a big 2 litre at that.  She chats for ages too!  She did agree to go back though but by that time i was out of coffee so I did not sip and wait like I would normally have done.  I had the beef mince by then so I got the rissole mostly cooked but had to turn it off in case she turned up and I got stuck outside with her for another half an hour when she came back perhaps with the rissole burning inside.  It takes her 20 minutes to get from my pace and into the shopping centre because everything takes so long when you have a disability.  It slows both of us down so much that together we are a disaster and that is why I raved on Facebook about the wrongness of the disabled helping the disabled.  An able bodied friend would have saved me so much energy in even just getting set up out the front to communicate without having to stand let alone having to carry the groceries.  They could have delivered right to the door!!!  But where are the able-bodied friends?

Finally after I ate, I could have the sleep I so desperately needed.