Not drowning but waving - oink, oink?

Well, here I am after what has felt like an eternity away from blogging, managing to stay afloat now and even wave at everyone. And I'm looking forward to catching up with all my tags and awards, this all looks great fun, thanks folks for choosing me!! In the interim here's a bit about what's been going on.....

My first reason for being absent is that I spent most of June sinking a huge amount of effort into my shops, not all of which is apparent as yet because there are still lots of photos to replace and titles and descriptions to tweak and new items to list. (Well, to be more precise the Folksy shop's pretty much been "done" but there's still a way to go with the Etsy shop.)

My second reason is that four weeks ago I succumbed to an extremely unpleasant virus which with the benefit of hindsight and the input of our practise nurse I now realise was very possibly swine flu. I certainly didn't clock it as such at the time, especially as it started with what I put down to being a combination of asthma and a panic attack. Over the next week I experienced diarrhoea such as I've never had before and a fever that took a couple of days to subside, plus a cough, chest pains, nausea and resulting total lack of appetite, aching in every limb and a seriously nasty headache. I also felt (still do, to a certain extent) totally and absolutely exhausted. I still didn't twig what it might be, though, until I spoke to our practise nurse about it this week, when I went to get a new peak flow meter to replace the one that fell apart on me.

I think I was thinking "I don't have a sore throat so it can't be swine flu!" And of course it may not have been swine flu, only a blood test would tell and that's not going to happen! But I literally felt so ill, particularly when I had the fever, that I thought I was dying. I can still remember the shock when I first took my temperature and the seriously unpleasant feeling of lying in bed and feeling perspiration running all over me.

I went to the doctor after the asthma/panic attack but before the other symptoms appeared and then again when I was feeling better but both times we spoke more about my concerns regarding my wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels and how best to manage my asthma and panic attacks than about the virus I'd had. I think I was just fixated on the possibility of something in my system being permanently out of kilter, fortunately the blood tests have all come back fine - I'm not anaemic, I don't have hypoglaecemia and I don't have thyroid problems, hooray!!

One day I remember thinking, "I'll have a poke around in the forums and see if that makes me feel any better" but I didn't get very far, I just sat staring at the screen felling sick and shaky and with perspiration literally pouring down me, so much so that when I'd managed to cool my self down a little bit with wet flannels I had to change every single thing I was wearing. Yuck and double yuck.

Roger didn't catch it from me, thank goodness, but then we very rarely catch things from each other. We must have mutually exclusive immune systems, lol!

Well, whatever it was I'm extremely glad it's gone, I just wish I could stop feeling so very tired. I'm trying to pace myself but I'm getting impatient now, I've so many things I want to be doing!! But it is good each day to be feeling a little bit better.

I don't think I've any photos of piggies in my huge collection but here are a couple of interesting Whitby photos!

We call this the Bates Motel - it's a view from the West Beach of an early twentieth century house that used to be called Viking Lodge and which at one time was a hotel. We found a lovely drawing of it in a nineteen-thirties guidebook.












This is the view from Hudson's Folly on the West Cliff across to the best pub in Whitby, the Duke of York. I can't believe it's five years since we were there, I really do hope it's still in the same hands and is still as good. You want haddock and chips? They do great chips and they have haddocks that are so huge they loll over the side of your plate just begging to be eaten!

And Roger says the beer is great (I don't do beer, only Chardonnay but that's good, too!)