Went out for a friends hen night on saturday – 10 more sleeps Kylie! – and stayed out way too late. Got home right as Aidan was demanding his 4AM bottie. I didn’t drink much so I wasn’t battling any hangovers, but it seems my immune system is a tad fragile at the mo. I didn’t get the opportunity to catch up any sleep on Sunday, and the resultant breach in the immune defenses has left me with a fiery throat, post nasal drip and ringing ears – with the accompanying light headedness. Not fun. Rather annoying in fact.

But now, one day later it seems like Aidan is coming down with the same thing. Not enough of a gap there for me to have given it to him, I suspect we both picked it up from the same place. Thing is, I can’t recall us being around any sick people 3-5 days ago. We did visit my SIL and Aidans cousins on sunday but they were all in good health…

It’s so frustrating. It seems to me like my boy gets sick from every sick person he encounters. When is his immune system gonna strengthen up? He’s a well fed boy, I have him on a multi-vit designed especially for respiratory tract support and it’s still summer! What more can I do without barricading us in the house 24-7-365?

Argh. Imagine what we’d be like if he were still in daycare?

Kay, I’ll stop whining now and get my sorry arse to bed. Maybe we’ll all wake up healthy in the morning.

When I was just a little baby my sister would stare at me in my crib until I cried.
When I was three years old, and my sister was six, she gave me a haircut. She also gave my dolls haircuts.
We fought often: she always won. She fought dirty: biting, kicking, pulling hair and pinching, whatever would give her the upper hand.
We shared a room as children and she’d always insist on total darkness at bedtime, even though she knew I was afraid of the dark
When she learnt how to French plait hair, she would teach anyone else who asked except me.
We attended the same high school for 5 years. In that time she barely said 20 words to me. We never played or socialized together at all if we could help it.
Once when I accidentally bumped her and caused her to spill her cup of cocoa, she poured the whole cup on me.

I thought I’d always hate my sister as much as I did back then, which is why is still surprises me just how close we have become now. I’m sure I did and said things that hurt her too, but I wasn’t very good at seeing things from any perspective but my own back then.

As chance would have it, we ended up studying the same course at the same time when we started our tertiary studies. We drove together to save on petrol. Mutual introversion banded us together in the early days, and as a result we ended up in the same friend group. Convenience resulted in us doing our major projects together.

Six years later we work at the same company – Sis submitted my CV here when I was thoroughly fed up of my old job. We live in the same neighborhood: it fitted into the required price range and was suitably close to my parent’s house, as we both go there several times a week to ride our respective horses. These days we may even share a horse on occasion, my sister doing the dressage training and me the jumping training, something totally unheard of in the past.

We’re both quite private people (say I, broadcasting it to the world on a blog!) who don’t volunteer much about what’s affecting or upsetting us when the hurt is deep. You need to know us well before we’ll tell you what’s really going on, and even then, you need to know that what we might mention in passing is a huge hurt in our lives. So when my sister mentioned a few months ago a certain difficulty she’s been going through for a while, I knew it was no small thing.

I’m amazed at how much I feel for her in this time, there is nothing much that I can do but be there for her while she acts all strong, and it breaks me apart that I can’t do more for her. To my sis: who would have thought we’d ever become so close? I love you and I’m praying that everything works out for you, and soon.

I think that’s a viable headline, don’t you?

The phones are driving me crazy today. It seems to me that half the people in my office are away from their desks at any given point in time today. Coincidentally it’s the same half of the people that are getting mutiple phone calls each during that time. Few things bug me more than incessantly ringing phones. It brings out a pathological rage in me that I can barely control, I think it’s a throwback to my days on the switchboard.

It doesn’t help that our phones here don’t have an automatic answering service on them, so if someone dialed in directly (ie, not through switchboard) they’ll ring forever. I try to ignore if for a bit, then just when my frustration reaches it’s peak (as my face starts turning crimson and moments before I throttle someone) I walk the full length of the office to answer the offending phone. Past several other people who are closer and could have answered that instrument of the devil, but just as I get there it gives me one final taunt by stopping ringing!

Or scenario two - nearly as bad: I get there in the nick of time, answer it almost begging the person to leave a message and the caller, thinking they are doing me a favour, says “Oh don’t worry, I’ll try her later”. I’m sure you will! And no doubt she won’t at her desk then either!

The only thing worse than the two above scenarios is when I have just gotten back to my desk after missing / answering the phone and that person’s cellphone starts to ring, sitting pretty next to their portal to hell desk phone… Makes me want to fetch said cellphone, find its owner and beat their head in with it.

*deep breaths*

Okay, I admit I’m having a particularly raw day today. You know the kind of day when everything seems to get on your nerves? My skin itches from the inside, my legs feel like they are burning and even neighboring cubicle conversations rub on my exposed brain nerves.

Perhaps I should just go home and play some Wii… yeah, that’s the ticket

When I was a teenager mood rings were all the rage, along with Doc Martins, laddered stockings and auburn hair die. I still die my hair auburn from time to time, but my stockings stay intact these days, and I haven’t seen Docs in any stores form quite a few years now. I did see toe mood rings in my local chemist the other day, and I almost bought one, but well, toe rings kinda went out of fashion with the nineties too.
 I have one of two problems: either I have no emotional intelligence whatsoever, or I’m way over stimulated in that department. I think it’s the second, but if it were the first I wouldn’t know, would I?
So what am I getting at with this? I have trouble knowing where I stand with people. I spend a lot of time analyzing people’s behavior and reactions towards me, trying to figure out how they feel about/towards me. So like I said, perhaps this means that I’m totally out of tune with other people’s emotions, or I read to much into what people say and do. The most difficult person in my life for me to read is probably my husband. He’ll testify to the number of times I ask him if he’s okay. If he goes quiet for a bit I start thinking something is wrong. Then I ask him what’s wrong, and he says “nothing”. Then I start thinking “oh crap, must be something big”, meantime the poor bloke was probably just mulling over something about work. I have learnt one thing though: he goes quiet when he’s hungry, so I only start worrying now if he turns down food
Which gets me back to mood rings: it’d suit me well if I could stick something like a piece of mood litmus paper on my Hunny (and a few other folks) that’d just give me a overall status to how I’m fairing: Red means I screwed up big time, Green means we’re all dandy, and a couple colours in-between that say “watch out, heading for trouble”, ” just plodding along” and “it’s not you it’s me” …
It’d free up a bit of my brain capacity for sure …