Current Eating/Treatment Regime

PWCF need to eat a lot to stay at their current weight. I think I'm lucky in that I don't have to eat as much as some, but still, in the last 6 months, I've somehow lost about half a stone without my appetite dropping or without eating any less so I have had to add a scandishake to the mix. I had a meeting with the dietician the other week at my annual and she suggested adding another scandishake at the end of tbe day.

Food / Med Diary (Week)

• 6.30AM Get up
• 6.45 Azithromycin and Flucloxacillin
• 6.50 do Dnase on INeb
• 7.00 Breakfast Scandishake with full-fat milk and cereal
• 7.00 Vitamins, uniphyllin, calcium chew
• 7.45 Drive to work, drop off kid(s), do some physio in car, spit into empty creon pot in car. (Timing is everything in this ;-))
  
• 8.30 Arrive at work.
• 8.30 Do Colymycin Neb in car at work
• 10.30 Apple, banana
• 11.00 2 Pork Pies
• 1.00PM Lunch (Sandwich, Mayonaise, Meat Filling, Crisps, Tango or Tea)
• 3.00 Chocolate bar (note: Boost is 300 calories!)
• 5PM Leave work, pick up kids.
  
• 6PM Dinner with kids (have to play it safe so kids have something to eat so we normally have chicken, brocolli, peas and mash, or bangers brocolli and mash, or Lloyd Grossman's Tomatoe Chicken Balti and Rice, or Spagetti Bolognaise or Pasta and Roast vegetables which the kids will actually eat.
• 8PM Kids in bed. And relax. Either go for a run/bike ride or get the wine out, depending on how healthy/lazy I'm feeling.
  
• 9-10PM Colymycin Neb

What an exciting life I lead. Need to try and squeeze in another Scandishake at the end of the day but at the moment it's a struggle, my tum needs a rest ;-)

Tumbles day

A tumbles day is a day to forget, and I've just had one. Yesterday I decided to work from home to make it easier to drop off Abby today and sods law; one of the big bosses decided to pay a visit to the office to see me, so I missed him. He also dropped off a request list that I should have had in May for a dealine at the end of the THIS month. Grump, grump, grump! ;-) And to top it off Abby threw a mega strop at the cricket club on the way back from the school summer fair because we wouldn't buy her any more sweets. Does anyone have a manual on how to be a firm parent? Because I seem to be made of mush when it comes to discipline.....anyway, I've got the wine out and I'm sulking. With three hours of Glastonbury I taped from last week.

Turkey Break in Pictures

Lost: The Bad

OK, We've had the good, now this is the bad (I still liked it though) :

1. Episodes where nothing happens in the plot and you get a boring flash back. The interminable episodes of Hurley's flashbacks (The Dharma VW van episode "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead") and virtually any episode with Charlie's band in the flashback. Fast forward material!

2. Jack's a bit boring. Maybe it's a flaw in the script, but his over-earnest acting started to get annoying by the third season. Particularly when compared to Sawyer; he never really changed throughout the series whereas Sawyer had definite character development.

3. Kate's a bit of a lightweight as well. OK, we get it, it's a love triangle! Just make your choice freckles, and get on with the plot ;-)

4. Locke vs Jack / Fate vs Free will / Man of science vs Man of Faith. Interesting at first, but became a bit tedious towards the end.

5. Llana, the french woman, Alex, Walt and all the other under-developed characters that the writers obviously planned to do something with but ran out of episodes to do it in so wrote them off! Naughty, lazy writing boys! ;-)

6. * New! Claire abandoning Aaron then disappearing and then reappearing as a mad women. I just never bought it. Also, Kate deciding to adopt Aaron for 3 years forming an emotional attachment and then abandoning him to go back to the island. Also, what happened to the two kids in the tail section? Kids in general were given a raw deal by the script writers

Lost: The Good

So LOST is over, what do I watch now? Well before I watch anything else I need to find some closure, before I can properly move on ;-). I have decided that Lost is, was, and always will be 50% Brilliant and 50% Bollox. So with that I'm going to list the things I liked and disliked about the series.

The Good

1. Episodes like "The Constant". Desmond flips through time desperately searching for his Lost love Penny like "The Time Travellors Wife" and finally contacts her. One of the best episodes IMHO.

2. "The Looking Glass." All the season finale's were exciting, but this closer for Season Three was so good it actually gave me heart palpitations for a few hours after I saw it. Poor Charlie; I'd spent most of the time being annoyed by his Mancunian-druggy-rocker character, so it was a total surprise how gutted I was when he sacrificed himself for Desmond.



3. Sawyers nicknames/one liners. Son of a bitch ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WurBi2yQeI

4. Hurley. Dude ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOk9pIbM-T4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZErJDc6978

5. Sawyer grows up, becomes a leader after Jack and Locke disappear, and settles down with Juliet in the 70s. And why not? ;-)

6. They killed Juliet. You bastards!



7. The ambiguous mysteries of the island. The thing about mysteries is that not knowing what they are is always better than the explanation. Explanations are always a bit of a let-down.

Lost: spinoff series...?

No, I haven't seen the final episodes yet, so I'll thank you not to post any spoilers please!

In the meantime, how about a spinoff series with Sawyer?
:-)

Manchester Run

On the day, I woke up really early, I was a bit nervous. I kept waking up too early, then forcing myself to go back to sleep where I would wake up dreaming of running, or being late for the run. Needless to say, I ended up having a rubbish nights sleep and then had so many butterflies that I found it hard to eat anything in the morning. Oscar was still a bit poorly (he'd been sick the day before, once in his cot and once in the car. R's in-laws had very kindly offered to look after the kids while me and R took part in the 10K run. So once we'd packed them off we were all set.

We arrived in the car park super-early; last year we were in the last (pink) wave and Manchester seemed packed at the later time, this time with us being in the early (white) wave Manchester seemed eerily empty. We went down to the start, got some free isotonic drinks and waited. The bit before the start is a bit rubbish, you just want to turn up and run really and you always get too cold waiting around in your shorts before the run, and if you take a fleece or a coat or something then you will be lumbered with carrying it for the run, which will be a bit of a pain. What they are now doing is encouraging you to take your old jumble clothes to keep you warm before the race and discard them on the side of the street to be collected by the scouts for charity when the race starts. Which sounds like a good idea, if only we had known ;-)

Anyway, after huddling up with the other runners trying to get warm like penguins in the Antarctic, we were off. R soon peeled away from me; I think I stayed with her for the first 1KM, but my chest was giving me jip so I basically eased off and ran at my own pace, which generally involved running for 10 minutes, then getting out of breath and walking for a bit, then starting again. If only I could figure out a way to run without stopping, I'd be sorted! Anyway, before I knew it, I had gone past the first 5K; halfway, and then the real work starts! Unfortunately, my muscles started to ache, and I started to feel a bit low on energy...but I basically gritted my teeth and slogged my way to the finish, thankfully my chest had more or less been sorted itself out by then after the first half of coughing, so I could concentrate on trying to ignore my aching legs.

When I got to the final 500M, I actually really wanted to stop and take a breath before a sprint finish, but by that time there were crowds all around watching and cheering as the runners came to the finish, so I then pushed myself through a horrible bit where my lungs, heart and stomach felt like they were all thumping in unison, screaming for me to stop, and I wanted to puke! There was a guy with a mike on the finish line, I kept thinking "don't talk to me, I feel like I'm going to throw up...." Thankfully he ignored me. If it seems like I'm moaning, I'm not; It was a slog, but at the same time it was a great experience, and the crowds were wonderful, always doing their best to cheer us on...if my body holds up, I'll be back next year :-)

For the last week before the 10K I had been feeling a bit poo because a cold / sore throat I'd caught from Abby/Oscar had moved onto my chest and it was making me produce loads more mucus at night; this is always a big pointer for me when my LF starts to slip, when I produce so much mucus that it builds up during the night and interrupts my sleep by making me cough. When I'm on top of my health I don't produce enough in the night to wake me up. Anyway, I had kept up with a little bit of running just to keep me ticking over and I'd even cheated by injecting some left over Ceftazadine for a 4 day period, just to try and keep the mucus at bay really. Thankfully my chest seems to be a lot better since the run. Although at the outpatients on Wednesday my FEV1 was an average 2.675 / 3.8; so I am on 2 weeks oral antibiotics Ciprofloxacin and Augmentin, and we'll see how it goes.

Lakes Bike Trail In Pictures