I Have the Coolest Mum Ever!

Yay! I love my mum :-D

I have had a terrible day, first the debacle with the doctors, then I found out that Virgin Media have continued charging me even though the account was cancelled on 2nd December. Bloody rip of merchants!

Anyway, anyone who knows me knows I am partial to the odd glass of bubbly. I love cava and champagne (when I can afford it) and most especially a sparkling pink pinot grigio by La Certosa. I have, however, had awful luck with champagne flutes. Nearly every single one I own has been smashed- excluding the 2 beautiful swarovski flutes Anabee bought us for our wedding but they are hardly for everyday use! Other than those I have one single solitary champagne flute left out of possibly hundreds - I know I "borrowed" 30 from work for a New Year's Eve celebration many moons ago and every one of them was broken within a week. My hubby has bought and replaced many of them for me as he has been known to be a little clumsy on occasion and no matter how many I have I always end up with just the one.


However my mum came back from her shopping earlier and told me she had a present for me and gave me a pack of 4 champagne flutes and a bottle of pink cava - joy! She knows exactly how to cheer me up. I suppose that's what mums are best at and despite the fact that I am all grown up and moved out she will still do that kind of thing which I find amazing.

Yay for mums!

So very very angry.

Be warned, I am about to rant….

Our doctor’s surgery in Newcastle (that’s Donard Group Practise for anyone looking to avoid them too) is utterly utterly useless. I made an appointment for this morning it was supposed to be at 9:40am with Doc B who is not only our doctor but a friend of the family and is someone I can trust. When I arrived at the surgery I typed my details into their automatic sign in machine but it kept coming up with the wrong appointment so I went to the receptionist. She checked her computer and according to their system my appointment was for 10am with a doctor I had never even heard of before. I asked to speak to Doc B when she told me that he wasn’t in that surgery today and wasn’t supposed to be there at all this week – I mean to say what the f*ck!? Am I going mad or something??

When I made the appointment I double checked it before hanging up – what happened to that appointment? Apparently it just vanished into thin air since my appointment was changed to a new doctor and a new time without my knowledge.

I now have to wait another 12 days before I can see my doctor which is just outrageous since I’ve already had to wait more than a week for this appointment.

I have had so many problems in the past with this surgery giving me the wrong prescription or not passing my prescription on to the chemists at all, not knowing what to do when I came in to get my staples out after my operation, having to wait for, on average, 2 weeks to get an appointment. I am just completely and utterly fed up with them so I am seriously considering switching doctors. I think there is another surgery in Newcastle so I am going to investigate further and see if they are supposed to be any better – they can’t be any bloody worse.

So tired

I've mentioned in my fitness blog a couple of times about how tired I've been recently. I don't know exactly what's wrong but it's really started to get me down. I wake up in the morning feeling exhausted and it's a real effort to pull myself out of bed and face the walk to work never mind the actual work day itself.


Last week I went to my local health food shop and asked if they had anything that would either help me sleep better or boost my day time energy levels a bit and I left with a tincture of valerian and hops and a serious mega booster vitamin tablet that should hopefully help a bit. I've noticed I'm sleeping a bit better. I take the valerian hops in a glass of water about a half an hour before before bed - the taste is vile but it does seem to make me sleepy and I now fall asleep relatively easily whereas before I would be tossing and turning for hours before I would eventually nod off. I'm still having all sorts of strange dreams and nightmares that I'm sure do nothing to help me rest when I actually am asleep.

I hope that if I continue to take my supplements, get plenty of exercise and try to keep eating healthily my sleeping and exhaustion problems will ease off a bit. I'm sure some of the reason I'm so tired is to do with recovering from surgery but it's depressing how worn out I feel from just having a reasonably active life. I'm still not doing all the things I was doing before the operation and it's really frustrating that I can't. I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday as I was off for all that time and forgot to get a sick line (oops!) so I think I will have to discuss things with him and see if he's got any ideas for how I can get back on track otherwise I'll be spending most of my free time in bed ...zzz...

What a great weekend!

I had the best fun this weekend. Friday night was a bit of a non-event; the hubby & I stayed in, watched some crap tv and went to bed early. Saturday saw me having a monster cleaning session in preparation for an invasion of relatives! We had invited my parents, his parents my sister and her hubby for a feast of epic proportions. Thank goodness I didn’t have to prepare it all myself otherwise I’d not have had time for a quick gym session before everyone arrived

We started nibbling on bowls of olives, spicy pepadew peppers, gerkhins (yuck – I don’t see the appeal of these myself!) and we had bread to dip in some fabulous olive oil that my parents brought back from Italy and 12 year old balsamic vinegar that was so thick and goopy it may as well have been treacle.

My big sis made a fab beetroot soup as a starter which you crumble feta cheese into. I’m going to have to get the recipe for that from her as it was absolutely delicious even if it is so chock full of beetroot that it makes your pee turn pink – that’s quite alarming the first time it happens!! My hubby made a spicy goose stew with cannelloni beans and I made 2 pheasant, leek & mushroom pies for our main course all served with an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes and not forgetting some lovely 2005 Lussac St. Emillion that I’ve been saving for ages. It was definitely well worth the wait.

Finally we finished it all off with a lovely lemon meringue pie & a boozy cake courtesy of my mother-in-law and a glass of bubbly out of one of our remaining stock of wedding champagne! We had a really lovely evening with good food and good company – couldn’t ask for anything better!

The following day my sis & her hubby scarpered at an ungodly hour of Sunday morning. Although they did help tidy quite a bit of the debris from the previous night away before they left for which I am eternally grateful. Most of the morning I lounged around feeling very hungover until I could stand it no longer and went back to bed for a couple of hours for a bit of R&R and didn’t surface again until the early afternoon! I managed a few little bits and pieces (most importantly getting some greasy food in to help with the hangover) before having to head off again.

I went up to the big smoke of Belfast to stay with Annabee and to go to watch Ame du Pole (or the soul of the pole in English) which was a mammoth show put on by Polercise Ltd in the Empire Bar. I was completely flabbergasted by the show. The girls & guys who performed were of the highest standard and the show was so well put together it really did take my breath away. I’ve added a few photos from the night so you can have an idea of what went on!






Oh, and of course! I forgot to mention that we got a new chicken. I think she’s a suffolk but she’s much bigger than all the rest of them so hopefully that means that she’ll be able to hold her own against the rest of the flock until they finally accept her in.