The art of procrastination (in a morning nutshell)

I woke up knowing that I have some forms to fill out. Once I get Orla's packed lunch made and her breakfast out, and roll into bed with Hamish for his morning cuddle while she eats, then it'll be time to get her dressed and off out the door, and get Hamish fed and dressed. Only once that's done, and usually once Hamish is off to Kita (but not today) then my day starts. And I remember that I have to get these forms filled out.

I am walking from the kitchen to the living room when I glance at the table and see what I was working on last night. It wouldn't hurt to just paint a little more in while I am still in the mood and feeling enthused. It's the sort of thing that you can paint in small amounts anyway, so maybe just a little bit. You know what? I should really take some photos of this. I should send something to Sarah because all she's had is that teeny sketch, and it might have been hard to visualise. Ah, my battery needs charging. I should sort that out now while I remember. Which reminds me that I need to charge my phone as well. Where have I left it. Must be in my bag.

I'll just charge my camera battery for a short time while I make coffee so that I can take a quick photo to upload. Oh, is that some Schoko leibniz in the cupboard. Gaarrgh...yes it is, but they've been sitting since last summer, and gone all soft.I might as well clear out this cupboard first. Ok, so, coffee. Then I'll just get this photo done and uploaded, and then I can do those forms.

Should I just do those flags? I should. probably. Because it's going to annoy me not knowing if that red is going to work or not. I should just do it. Ok, so upload and get it into the secret album on Facebook. I'll just check my notifications and emails first. Let's see if there's anything happening on my Fionagray.paints facebook page. Ugh. Nothing. No wonder I haven't posted on the blog for ages. Might as well just do a quick one with this picture while I know where it is. Just a quick one. It will take no time at all. Oh, my stats are up! I wonder why? Oh there are links from Pinterest, I wonder if it's anyone I know, I'll just take a look and see and quickly check if there's anything new that catches my eye.

20 minutes later. I should get on to those forms, but I should just check my email first. Orla needs 'national dress and food' for International Day on the 30th. I bet that Tam O'Shanter hat is in a drawer in her room. Maybe later I should take Hamish down to Idee and see if I can buy some tartan fabric to make her a kilt. Snack time. Which means peeling a cucumber and chopping it into lumps for Hamish. I'll have some of that nice cheese that Lynne recommended. I should send her a quick text and thank her for Sunday. Which reminds me, I need to wrap Ofek's birthday present and see if I have a card somewhere. Really should go to Idee after I fill out these forms, because I am pretty sure I'll need a card.

Interlude to make a track for Hamish and his trains. Back to the table to finish the ribbon on the present. Those flag poles are going to annoy me. I must at least get rid of all the white space on this picture. Then I'll be able to put it out of my head until this evening. I consider whether I should outline everything in pen once this is finished or just leave it. I would do it now except for the fact that I know I am going to rework the hill sections so that they look more blended. I might need a finer nib pen because didn't all of mine run out before Christmas when i was trying to draw on some surface that just sucked the ink out of them? i must get to Idee later. Or maybe a grey pen would work better than black. I check how fine the ones I bought in that chemists are. That would be great actually. Right. Flag poles and then forms.

My blood sugar feels a bit low. How can it be lunch time already? I'll get Hamish ready and we can nip round to Nah und Gut for something for the lunch. God, my blood sugar is really low. I might peg out before we get there. I eat a bar of chocolate and then decide just to make ham sandwiches. We can go out in a bit. I haven't even put on any make-up yet. I'll do that now. And then sort those clouds. And put on a DVD for Hamish. And maybe get those forms done. I should blog about this. It'll only take a minute and he's watching  Thomas the Tank Engine anyway. I could do those forms when he has a nap. If he has a nap. Or I could do a bit of painting. While there's a bit of light.

2011: The year I wanted to lick my son.

Farewell to longish lie-ins on Christmas.
I was woken at 5am by someone shouting "I need the front door open!"
For it is Nikolaus, the 6th of December, fill your boots with chocolate, don't confuse him with Santa, time.

Marek? Who is Marek??? Who cares. You had me at "hello".

I believe in Nikolaus. Mostly because this year he seemed to have been thinking of me too. The kids put their boots out just before they went to bed, and just before I went to bed I handily remembered that I had forgotten to fill them. That would have been a bummer for the early risers this morning. I would have had to have said that patently their behaviour hadn't been deemed good enough this year and empty boots meant that they were in for a darn good spanking. However, when I opened the door last night to my delight, the boots had already been filled! With Lindt Santas. And not just that. But 'Marek' above was sitting on the doormat. In true Cinderella style, I know Marek was left for me, because he fits in my boot. And as for all this sharing nonsense the kids are coming away with, well, it's funny how I only hear that word when they're not the ones skipping in circles up and down the hall, cradling their Santa-shaped-built-for-diabetics-who'll-happily-take-another-zillion-units-of-insulin-just-to-cover-this-breakfast. Uh-huh, you want to share? You can have the ribbon at the top. 


Orla, who seems to have inherited Stevie's self-control has gone off to school with a small chocolate hippo (that would have been from me obviously - totally off-theme) which she's keeping until lunchtime. Hamish on the other hand, sat in a huff because he wanted to eat all the chocolate for breakfast and was being forced to eat at-least-some-toast before being let loose on a Lindt Santa. I don't know who he takes after to be honest. Must be some distant relation on Stevie's side...

There goes at least 50 cents worth down the drain.

And I can honestly say, this is the first time ever that I have thought "I'd quite like to lick your hands clean" and had to steel myself to say "Let's get you to the bathroom without touching ANYTHING on the way".

Links:
'The Local' gives the lowdown on Nikolaus (http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111206-15915.html)

Advent calendars galore!!!

Have you noticed the sudden glut of advent calendars on the market? When I was a kid you just got one where you opened the little doors each day and there was a different picture behind. That was pretty exciting. It was especially exciting if the door for the 24th was extra big. I could barely contain myself. As I was growing up I remember the introduction of advent calendars with chocolate in them. In fact I can still taste the horrid cardboardy taste of that awful brand Kinnerton. To give them their due, it says on their website that they offer a 'dairy-free' chocolate filled advent calendar (you can find a downloadable order form on their site). As I recall even way back in the 80's you'd be hard pressed to taste any dairy in that chocolate. Now maybe their recipe has changed since then and it takes much better, but I am in no rush to try. Especially when there are Milka advent calendars on the market. (Kids ones too - here)

Hello, I am made for mummies. Oh yes I am! That's why I am priced at Euro 13.99 - no way you're spending that on a kid. Plus I have more child-friendly versions for them. Cheaper too. Look you could hang me right beside your side of the bed. I have a lovely satin ribbon. Why not buy one for both sides of the bed to balance the room? He doesn't like chocolate anyway....

See? This is the one to get the kids (or maybe store under your pillow). It's only  Euro 5.49. Not as pretty as the mummy one, but not as much chocolate either. 200g versus 329g...

Of course nowadays it is possible to even order your own branded advent calendars with chocolate in. And when I say 'branded' I mean YOUR OWN brand. You might need to order 1000 of them to get a good price £1.76 each per 1000 I saw somewhere, but you could sell them on to your friends, hand them out to promote ..eh...diabetes.... or just eat them all yourself. That would be 24,000 chocolates. You could build a little cairn around yourself and eat your way out.

Anyway, prepare yourself for some pretty awful photographs. I was in the toyshop and I wanted to sneakily take some photos of the new breed of advent calendar - those with gifts! Last year, we had 2 Playmobil advent calendars but I saw the range of alternate advent calendars on sale this year and I was very tempted.

Here we have a car construction one, followed by  two Star Wars ones. 

 I have also saw a Hot Wheels one (ah, it's in the photo below) which I thought gave you a car behind each door but it's one car with lots of bits you can interchange. Not that great for the overall cost in my opinion, and no use really for anyone under 5 really.

Here we have some of the Lego advent calendars on the top (Hamish rather fancies the Lego Police one) and then the Hot Wheels one. On the second row you can see a couple of the Playmobil ones, followed by something to do with volcanoes and jungles and then the girl version with a unicorn. I have no idea what's in these. Bottom row: more Playmobil and the My Little Pony & Filly ones you can see better below...

 I like the Lego ones, but what puts me off is the fact that they say "Other sets will be required to create this scene" or very similar wording to that effect. Really? Well, that seems like a bit of a swizz. Cause I would like to think that what you see on the box is what you get in the box. So what are you getting? A brick behind each door? Probably not much more than that. If it takes you longer than one day to create say the Christmas tree then that's just too much waiting for a child I'd say.

I am a big fan of the Playmobil ones, though I have noticed that they are a fair bit more expensive in the UK. At the moment you can get these for around Euro 12.99 in places like Kaufland. The toy shops are a bit more expensive at around Euro 14.99. This years' Playmobil themes are: Princess Wedding; Santa & Woodland Animals; Pirates; Dinosaur Expedition; Santa's Post Office; and the Knights one. In fact, I've just seen that most of these are reduced on the Playmobil.de website to Euro 11.99. Which is good, but if you add on the delivery charge you are back to the original price...might as well wait until after Christmas then buy one for next year in the Karstadt sale.

Finally here we have the My Little Pony and the Filly advent calendars.

Orla would love both of these. I did think about getting her the Filly one but it was Euro 19.99 (which seems to be the more or less standard price for these gift filled advent calendars) and it was just too expensive. Especially if I think about the fact that I would need to buy one for Hamish too. Euro 40 makes me kind of choke. Orla would probably also really like the Barbie one or the Littlest Pet Shop one (Both not pictured), but I thought they were kind of dear too.

So there's a lot of choice out there. Of course looking at these I can't help but think I should buy a nice wooden one with little drawers and fill it myself and use it year after year. There are loads of them here and they're all very pretty. So what would you choose?



Guardian article on advent calendars v selection boxes
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/poll/2011/nov/17/advent-chocolates-calendars-or-selection-boxes)

Advent calendars for cats (I know, this is truly mental, isn't it?):
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=advent+calendar+for+cats&x=0&y=0)

Gawd-awful Kinnerton advent chocolate:
(http://www.kinnerton.com/Products/Seasonal/ThisChristmas/CharacterConfectionery.aspx)

pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 2

'pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 1' is here.

So last week at my diabetes consultant appointment I just said 'yes' to going on one of these sessions. It just popped out as a standard German response without me thinking. And so today I turned up, full of dread to see what they had in store for me. Except that when I turned up, it wasn't a group thing, it was just me and sitting down I was asked "So, what would you like to talk to me about?". I could barely get beyond the thought blaring in my head, which of course was "Nothing". But I managed to come up with something that I thought might avoid too many difficult talking points. So I said I was interested in hearing about the insulin pump. That it had been many years since I'd been talked through it and that maybe it would be a good option to consider.

And that is how I have ended up sat here tonight with a canula stuck into my stomach with a metre's worth of clear (narrow) plastic tubing hanging off it. Seriously, even I know I deserve all I get. And it's quite uncomfortable. I haven't even got a pump attached to it, just tubing which I have to say I am feeling squeamish about snagging on my clothes.

I felt squeamish enough just inserting the thing in, to the point that on the way home there were a couple of moments where I thought I might just faint rather than think about my bag knocking against it as I walked. I'm sure you don't want to hear all the in's and out's of insulin pumps, but here's some bit's you might be interested in. They are about the size of a mobile phone and as a woman they suggest that you wear it in your bra. You have to sleep with it, and when I queried that it would be like sleeping on top of your mobile phone which sounded slightly uncomfortable, it was scoffed at. I am tempted to sellotape an old similar shaped mobile on to my side and see if it wakes me up when I roll on to it.

Similarly to a mobile phone it makes noise: it beeps when it is running low on batteries and when it is running low on insulin. Great, but I don't want it telling me that there's 20 units left at 4am. My normal 'pen' manages to keep that to itself until I take the lid off in the morning. Apparently, it also makes audible clicks as it is releasing insulin into you, which can be a bit of a pain if you are in a quiet environment.

From what I have read people seem to love their pumps, but I am not convinced it is the thing for me. You need to be testing your blood glucose 4 times a day and while it provides a constant release of a small amount of insulin into your system, you still need to carb count and pump in the amount of insulin units you need for each meal. I had assumed that they would have the technology to be able to have it take it's own reading of your blood glucose and adjust the insulin accordingly, but apparently not. So for the moment I think that I will pass on the pump and stick with my pens, but don't be over surprised if at some point in the future you see me rooting around in my underwear while we're out for dinner as I administer my insulin. Just don't mirror my action and want to chat about it, that's all.

pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 1

Did you ever read 'Yes Man' by Danny Wallace (pal of Dave Gorman and author of various other things)? There was also a film I think. Anyway, the premise of 'Yes Man' is that Danny Wallace decided to say yes to every invitation, opportunity, favour, etc, etc, that came his way. I've been thinking about that over the past week - mostly that I should probably read it - as I seem to have the problem of not being able to say 'no' to enough things.

I made an error last week, one that has haunted my dreams on a number of occasions since. I have noticed that I am more open to experiencing different things since moving to Berlin, but I hadn't been as aware of how often I just agree to things particularly when the requests are made to me in German. It's because it's just easier. To say 'no' often involves having to give a valid explanation of why you are saying no, and that can be just too much hard work in a foreign language.

Anyway, last week I got caught out. I had an appointment with my diabetes consultant to discuss my latest blood results, and following a quick blah-be-blah about post-exercise hypos, I stupidly agreed to attend a session which I shall call 'How to be a good diabetic'. These things normally involve sitting around with a Diabetes Specialist Nurse (or Consultant Nurse) and a bunch of diabetics and talking about carb counting, healthy eating, foot care, blood testing, and so on.

I have been invited to attend these sessions for the past 26 years and to date I have managed to avoid them. When I was a child and first became a diabetic I had to attend a children's diabetic clinic probably once every 6 months and the appointment would last almost a full day. It would involve all the standard stuff: getting weighed, height measured, blood taken, blood pressure checked, and a visit with the consultant. But all of that if you are lucky takes maybe an hour to complete, give or take waiting times. The rest of the day was spent sitting miserably in a circle with other diabetics and being encouraged to talk about issues. Aside from that being nurse-led torture, there were three things that I particularly hated about these sessions.

The first was that there was usually a child who had been salvaged from the grips of death. They would have gone undiagnosed by parents who hadn't known what the symptoms of diabetes were, and didn't think about going to the doctor with their child until the weight loss, extreme liquid intake and lethargy, etc, etc were hard to ignore. And even then, most times it wasn't even eventual realisation by the parents that something was wrong that that got them there. Usually, these kids were in-patients who had arrived at the hospital by ambulance. Hearing about the failed kidneys and serious health malfunctions of near-skeletal 10 year olds never really made me feel positive about my diabetes.

There was inevitably another child who I would have classed as a 'good diabetic'. Someone whose life revolved around achieving perfect control, and for whom diabetes was the major focus of their life. They always enjoyed talking about best practice in rotating injection sites or some such stuff, and even in my youth I recognised the fact that I didn't want diabetes to rule my life to such a degree. I have it, but I don't want it invading into every aspect of my life. I certainly don't want to be talking about it all the time. And so, my life-long avoidance of other diabetics began. Because as soon as another diabetic clocks you as a fellow injector, then it's like an invitation to give you their medical history in all it's marvellously uninteresting detail.

But the thing I really hated about these sessions was that without fail the nurse or diabetic sister would lead the discussion on to diabetic expeditions. I'm sure that's not what they were really called, but they were forever trying to get you to agree to go on a 'holiday' (I can barely bring myself to use that word) with other diabetics (hold me back) and they would try and entice you into going by showing you brochures which depicted children testing their blood glucose halfway up a mountain. And they were smiling while they were doing it. So patently they were mental as well as diabetic. Poor souls. NOTHING could have persuaded me to go on one of these trips. NOTHING!

It was at this time that I began honing my talent for creating excuses as to why I wouldn't be able to go. Nowadays (in the UK at least), I believe I am leading the way in the field of 'instantaneous fabricated reasons to get out of diabetes-related situations that I am not much partial to'. But here, I just can't think fast enough, and lack the vocabulary to make lying easy. It's a bit of a bummer.

[Gosh it's a bit long this isn't it? If you're still with me, I'll split it into a second part. That'll be 'pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 2'...]