Can't start a fire without a spark...

"I wake up in the morning, and I aint got much to say
I go to bed in the evening, feeling the same way
I aint nothing but tired, tired and bored with myself
Hey baby, I could use just a little help"

-Bruce Springsteen, Dancing in the Dark

God, I must be ill if I'm singing Springsteen in my head (I don't even like Springsteen, apart from his Glastonbury show the other year). I got a cold last week and it doesn't seem to be shifting...I keep waking up tired with my nose and lungs blocked up, it's a bad virus alright. Oscar has the same cold as well (think he caught it from nursery and gave it to me) and he's got a violent cough too, especially when we're all sat together eating...I've ordered some oral antibiotics from the hospital (they faxed them through to my GP) so hopefully these will do the trick, otherwise it could be time for some more IVs. At my last clinic they said (after some probing questions by me) that the resistance vector of my pseudo to Ceftazadine had increased, so it may be time to try one of the scary IVs, like Meropenum...here's hoping I don't need to...

My Dad's house is now under offer; so me and my sister (and HMRC ;-)) may be getting some money through some time soon. I don't know, I just feel so empty at the moment, I'd give all the money away if it'd bring my dad back. Although it's nice to know there's some security there with which to look after the kids in case anything happens.

Work is just not inspiring me at the moment, part of the problem is that the two mates who I was working with every day when I first started the IT developers job a couple of years ago have left, so I'm a billy no mates in the office on my own (there are some guys upstairs, but it's not the same as having someone to talk shit to all day ;-)) Part of the problem I think is that the HQ of the business is down in Norwich so although I get fired up when I go down there for meetings about business strategy and all the work were going to do, I am inevitably forgotten about and left to my own devices when I return back to Manchester and the work seems very slow in arriving at my desk. The business is also taking on a lot of contractors in Norwich (at great expense) to do jobs that I'm pretty sure I could do, especially if I was in a half-decent team. I think it may be time for a change; a new challenge, I'm starting to get jealous of my mates when they talk about how busy they are in their jobs...

The Polecat

Abby: "Mummy, there's an animal under the shed, it's cute!" It certainly is.
The little critter has been nosing around underneath the shed for the last few days. I love seeing the world through kids eyes. I get so wrapped up in my own trivial little dramas that I forget how fascinating the world can be.

Centre Parks with the Willow Foundation

Busy busy busy! my blog is so out of date I forgot to post about this holiday, and I'm off to Tunisia this weekend as well...anyway:
Last month we went to Centre Parks in Nottingham thanks to the lovely people at the Willow foundation. I did feel guilty because there is no way I am as ill as a lot of people who are granted their special day; but as my CF social worker said, I am fast approaching my 40th birthday, and after that I am no longer eligable, so it was a case of now or never this year really. I also thought I should give my kids a nice holiday just in case the shit hits the fan (whether through cf or work or whatever), and I'm not able to give them a decent holiday for a while. We had a great time, especially the kids, centre parks is taylor made for familes really, with lots of stuff for the kids to do. Seriously, I don't think they've slept so well before or since. I enjoyed it too, apart from the rowing which looks easy but is actually really hard ;-)

Work and other four letter words ;-)

Work is really frustrating the hell out of me at the moment; I'm a software developer who works on mobile apps but basically I haven't got anything challenging to do at the moment; just the usual day to day mundane stuff. I think I need a change, but I'm not sure what to try next. I wish my dad was here, he was good with career advise. Maybe you guys can help? I will write more when I get a minute.

Anyway, here's some pics from the Manchester Run, I enjoyed it, the crowd was fantastic as usual, but I'm a bit disappointed in my time -1:07- that's no improvement on last year although I was on IVs up until the day before the race so maybe they tired me out? I certainly found it a struggle after the first 5K. Rachel ran a good race and finished in 58 minutes although she was disappointed too, we're never happy ;-)

Breakthrough! and Sods Law...

As you may or may not know for the last two-three years I have decided to start doing more exercise in a bid to help improve/stabilise my lung function and to hopefully stop it declining between IVs.

This is now my 3rd year entering the Manchester Run and for the training I have been going for runs about 2-3 times a week without much enjoyment because I always got out of breath and had to stop every 2 minutes. But last week I discovered why: I had been breathing the wrong way (while I was running) I had been breathing the way I imagined athletes should breath -holding the stomach in and puffing out my chest, breathing through the top of my lungs (a bit like David Hasslehoff running across the beach in Baywatch ;-)) what happened was I would run for about 2 minutes then I would have to stop and catch my breath and start again.

Anyway, I read somewhere (embarrassing ;-)) that breathing through the diaphramatic or tummy breathing is more efficient for getting oxygen, and well, it seemed to work, all of a sudden, I had much more energy when I was running. Maybe now I can I can actually start to enjoy running and improve my running times?

Unfortunately, not at the moment because the entire family has caught a rubbish cold and I have had to go on IVs. I've also got a partial gastric blockage so running is too painful. There is also 9 days to go before the Manchester run, doh!

At the outpatients my FEV1 was 2.45. I was put on Ceftazadine, Tobtramycin IVs and Movicol for the blockage. Boo!...

Homage to Catalonia

Well, here's a book by George Orwell I should definitely read, all about the Spanish Civil war; the socialists, the communists, the fascists, the anarcho-syndicalists et al. The birth and death of political idealism...looks like powerful stuff. If I ever get around to reading it that is ;-)

Orwell served as a private in the Spanish civil war and it was these experiences that inspired his later books Animal Farm and 1984. Here's a quote, what's perhaps surprising is how relevant it still is today:

"He had learned a hard lesson,especially about the new political Europe. Totalitarianism, the new creed of 'the streamlined men' of Fascism and Communism, was a new manifestation of Orwell's old Catholic enemy, the doctrine of Absolutism" ^[21] - "the ghost of Torquemada had arisen, imprisonment without trial, confessions extracted under torture with summary executions to follow." ^[22] "The essential fact about a totalitarian regime is that it has no laws. People are not punished for specific offences, but because they are considered to be politically or intellectually undesirable. What they have done or not done is irrelevant."

Manchester 10K run

Oooer. Time is getting very close (5 weeks!) to the next Manchester 10K run. I was getting really stressed about things (mainly to do with my dad's house and the delays in getting it on the market as well as the usual crappy work stress) and it was affecting my sleep. So my misses told me to have a run at dinner to relive the stress. It worked, although I felt awful at times while I was running. Coughing, spitting, burping (get awful gas in the top of my stomach while running sometimes) but it was worth it; certainly sorted my stress levels out for the time being.

I've spoken to my sister about the house and I think we're going to get the house on the market by the end of the month; there's just some stuff to move from the house to the garage, to tidy it up before the photos, and a complicated potential-death-trap ceiling-rose light system to install. So as long as I don't get electrocuted, I think we'll be alright ;-)

http://connect.garmin.com/page/activity/activity.faces?activityId=78953233

My word, you do look Queer !

I found an old 78 record belonging to my gran (In the olden days records would be played at 78 RPM rather than 45 RPM for singles and 33 RPM for albums) in my dad's record collection. I can't play it because I recently sold my record player, but I did find it on Youtube; it's from a set of funny monologues from the 1930s (originally performed on the radio or on stage in a vaudeville show) by Stanley Holloway and it has a particularly black sense of humour; it's hilarious ;-)