April 13, 2008

An update …

I think I have an infection where my cannula was.  My arm hurts, is swollen and it’s a bit ‘gunky’.  I feel fairly awful.  My temperature was 38.1 this morning, and I felt sick and faint.  I also have a splitting headache which just won’t shift.  My breathing is a bit weird too.  I feel like I can’t catch my breath.  I’m getting out of breath doing nothing.

I’m working a late shift tomorrow so will have to try and get to see my GP in the morning.

I hate being ill and having a non-existent immune system!

21 July 2007 July 21, 2007

The job is going well. I’m not making too many mistakes, and I’m gradually learning and remembering things. Every day something new crops up that I don’t know how to handle, but everyone is nice and patient with me. I have officially finished my two weeks of training now, and next week I am opening up one of the branches.  I think the situation is that I’m based at one branch, but will be sent to others as I am needed.

I got to choose the new dvds for the branch I’m based at.  It was good fun spending the Council’s money on films.  I think it must have been the selection for the month, but I’m not certain.

I’m exhausted all of the time, and my feet hurt a lot. Of course with the new job came new germs and my immune system is so compromised that I now have a cold which is making everything that little bit harder.

I’m eating quite well: lots of organic stuff, homemade bread (the breadmaker from Amazon still hasn’t arrived though), fruit and so on. I must be getting a fair amount of exercise. I’m on my feet all day from when I arrive at about 8.30am until I leave at 5pm (on an early shift), with just an hour at lunch to take the weight off. I’ve been lucky that so far I’ve had lifts in and out most days, but I’ve had to take the bus a few times which means a 20 minute walk each way.

There are perks to working in a library. I’m not entirely sure I’m supposed to, but I waived the fees on some dvds I rented for this weekend, thus saving myself a few quid. I’ve got Babel, Good Night and Good Luck a CSI: NY boxset - should keep me entertained for a wee while. The other perk of the job is free books. I get my pick of the withdrawn stock. Most of the books don’t appeal, but I did pick up Raw Spirit by Iain Banks. It’s his non-fiction, whisky trail book, and I’ve heard it’s good.

I’m learning what I like about library work, and it’s giving me a good insight into the sorts of things I want out of a library job.  I’ve learned that I quite like customer service, this surprises me as I’ve never been a very social person, and I’m quite shy.  On the other hand, I’ve learned that I really don’t know how to talk to children and that I know nothing about children’s books.  I don’t think I could be a school librarian for example.  I know now that I love information enquiries.  Things where I have to actually use my searching skills.  I don’t get to do much of this at the moment though.  The work is mostly issuing and discharging books/CDs/dvds, signing up new members, renewing leisure cards and straightening stock.

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I watched Capote during the week.  I have very little to say about it.  It was good, but didn’t do much for me - maybe I was just too tired to appreciate it.  I think Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor, and he’s clearly a pretty good impersonator of Truman Capote - yes, he really did speak like that - just take a look at (or a ‘listen to’) him in Murder by Death!

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New companion set arrived and is very comfy, but I’ve not had much chance to use it because of the dreadful weather. We also got our new suite. It looks odd in the living room, but I suppose that’s just because I’m not accustomed to it yet. I’m not convinced that it’s as comfortable as our old suite, but that’s probably just because it hasn’t been broken in yet.

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Dolly is being allowed out now she is all vaccinated. She has gone from being a sweet little thing to a torturer of voles. Every morning she brings one in and plays with it until it dies or I take it away from her. It’s not an attractive trait.

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Last week on my day off, Mum and I went to the Finzean Farm Shop. It is a great little place. We had a lovely lunch made from local produce and the tastiest organic bread, then filled a basket with even more food, including some Craigmyle cheese. They had all the different varieties, but I opted for the Morven. It was pretty expensive for a bit of cheese, but it’s tasty. We also drove past the Craigmyle Creamery, and it turns out Mum and Dad almost bought the house opposite and (we think) the land it is on.

30 May 2007 May 30, 2007

Well, now I feel bad (and rather embarrassed). Julia Hailes commented on my last post. I guess my response is that I don’t want the people I look to for advice to be less than perfect. I want them to be model greenies. After all, if Julia Hailes can’t be green, then how can I? I suppose I am idealistic and overzealous as only a newbie can be. As for the plastic bag thing, it just goes against all my instincts. The statistics are shocking and go against everything I believed. The Worldwatch Institute also notes that neither plastic nor paper bags are good for the environment, backing up Hailes’s assertions.

I imagine that the ideal solution is to use neither, but rather to opt for almost infinitely reusable hessian / cloth / string bags. Anyway, I am going to get hold of the book, and I will read what she says … and I will try to keep an open mind. I promise.

The mere mention of plastic bags brings on feelings of guilt for me. I do the household weekly shopping online from Tesco (yes, that evil corporate monster that is destroying local communities - I feel guilt over that too), and every week my shopping is delivered in gazillions (quite possibly not an exaggeration!) of plastic bags many of which contain just a single item. I just don’t understand why they do this. The plastic bags themselves are transported in plastic pallets. I do return the previous week’s bags for recycling, but there must be a better way of doing things. We plan on ordering our first veggie box next week, so hopefully we’ll gradually wean ourselves off the convenience of Tesco home delivery.

I’ve been doing a little, informal, uneducated eco-audit of my life. I’ve used online carbon-footprint calculators to figure things out, and I am suitably disgusted by my household results. My Dad flies a lot for business and refuses to off-set, because he claims that off-set schemes are seriously flawed. He may be right, but doing something is better than nothing surely? The house I live in is an environmental nightmare. It’s old and poorly insulated for a start. We have an Aga that has two settings: very hot or off. About 90% of the light bulbs we use are not low-energy. Electrical equipment regularly gets left on standby (not by me though). On the plus side, we recycle like maniacs. I’m not sure whether our wood-burning stove is a good or a bad thing. It heats the house well, and the wood is from well managed sources. My understanding is that wood is a carbon neutral fuel, but a quick search reveals some debate on the pros and cons of wood-burning. I don’t drive, nor do I fly. I use buses, trains and my own two feet. I do get driven places though, like my weekly lunch out with Mum or my occasional trip to the pictures or garden centre with Dad. There is plenty of scope for improvement!

Changing the subject: I slapped on the Marshmallow Vanishing Creme last night. It’s quite solid in the pot, and then when I put it on it seemed like there was an oily part to it which smoothed on well, then a solid part which sat on my skin and was trickier to get rubbed in and absorbed. That’s not a very good explanation, but it’s the best I can muster. My skin didn’t feel especially moisturised afterwards. I think I might have to look for a moisturising lotion rather than cream, my skin must be drier than I thought. Suggestions are welcome.

I lieu of doing any exercise today (because it was peeing down outside and the dog was being awkward … and to be honest I was feeling lazy), I vacuumed. It’s so silly that something so small drains me of all energy. These drugs and this illness are a pain. I woke up with more blisters on my legs. This is getting me down a bit. It did cross my mind that my new healthier lifestyle may be boosting my immune system (not good). Alternatively it could be stress or something totally random.

Dad has me doing some unofficial research on natural disasters in South East Asia. It too is depressing me. It’s so much easier to live in ignorance.

BP: 112/91 (am)

29 May 2007 May 29, 2007

Today’s post brought tainted joy and outright disappointment. I got my NCIS dvds (woo!), this was marred by the customs fee I had to pay (grr!). Serves me right for ordering dvds from the US with a massive carbon footprint. I also got my Burt’s Bees Marshmallow Vanishing Creme that I bought via eBay. Instead of the regular sized pot that was shown on the auction listing I got a teeny tiny sample pot that is probably enough for one use. Serves me right for ordering moisturiser from Hong Kong with a massive carbon footprint. I’ve never done it before, but this time I left negative feedback, the listing was deliberately misleading imho, so I don’t feel too guilty about it. I am slightly worried about retaliatory negative feedback though - it would spoil my 6+ years of perfect, whiter-than-white feedback.  Ooh, I received an email from the seller offering me a free lip balm if I withdrew my negative feedback … um, no I have plenty of lip balm and not enough moisturiser!

Now my problem is whether to buy a bigger pot of the Marshmallow Vanishing Creme or to find a different facial moisturiser. I bought a wee pot of ‘base’ moisturiser to add essential oils to from Naturallythinking, but I’m not keen on it. It doesn’t seem very moisturising for a start. Also, looking at the ingredients list for it - it doesn’t look all that natural to me! It works quite well as a mattifying cream, but I’ve had to go back to my chemical-filled No7 Hydration Day Cream, until I can find something natural that actually works.

I’ve been looking for a book - or books - which give advice on environmentally friendly living and came across The New Green Consumer Guide by Julia Hailes.  It’s an updated version of a book written in 1988 by Hailes and John Elkington.  It looked like it might be a book worth borrowing from the library, but then I looked at Julia Hailes’s website.   She is supposedly an expert, but she does seem to be a bit of a fair-weather greenie.  Plastic bags aren’t really all that bad and she’s fine with being green so long as it doesn’t cost her anything.  I was disappointed.  I want my green-leaders to be beyond reproach.  I still might look out for the book, and I’ve added her blog to my blogroll, but I’m not convinced.

Today is a bad day with regards to the pemphie.  I have blisters.  I noticed last night that I had little blisters at the sides of my boobs where my bra underwires had been rubbing.  This morning I woke to find one on the inside of my right forearm and one on my right knee.  These are all places where I seem to be particularly prone to getting blisters.  I’m not going to put on any steroid cream, instead I’ve burst the blisters and put on some witch-hazel hydolat.  Prompted by this latest flare up and my lack of anything natural to put on the blisters that would target them more specifically than the witch-hazel, I did some Googling and found no natural alternatives to steroid creams.

While Googling I did come across something called colostrum, which as far as I can tell is found in breast milk (human and animal), and which helps strengthen and balance the immune system.  I’m going to have a bit of a root around and see if I can find out a bit more about it and whether it really does work.

BP: 130/80 (pm)