Yr Afr Sanctaidd

"And that's how we get Typhoid in Aberdeen"

I went for a short walk with thelovelystick yesterday, where we both tried out our new walking poles. (They're the same poles, after thelovelystick showed the downside to one click ordering on the iPad when I was showing her the new poles I'd bought, and the cancel order button refused to work)

They certainly seem effective for distributing the work more evenly through your body, and hopefully they'll be helpful in the event of another descent down the Hay Bluff, when I had my feet slip out from under me twice, and ended up having to walk through Hay covered in mud.

I'm heading off to work shortly, as my boss phoned me at about 9 o clock last night, asking if I can come in today. Three days paid work instead of two? Of course I can. ;-) (Plus we're currently using the Bazillian Blend coffee instead of the Formula Six, and I've found I like it even more than the Formula Six which I didn't think was possible. So free coffee!)

It started really well, and involved lithiumdoll, doccy, jackiekjono and some dinosaurs. And so was pretty awesome.

Tuesday was a nothing day, neither good nor bad.

Wednesday I went into work and got told they were cutting my hours back to 4 hours a week. Effective immediately. Which complete screws me regarding money and the whole thing where my boss lied about the reason they were cutting my hours. (She said they were doing it because they needed to pay Fran to organise the community day & the openings [both fake opening for the BBC in May, and actually opening in July], only I then found out that Fran's being paid by a grant from the National Lottery) Oh and then I found out that's it's illegal to just cut my hours like that so now I've got to decide if I want to fight it and risk things getting nasty, or leave it and be screwed money wise.

I'm looking for another job, but it's going to be near nigh impossible, seeing as I need it to be within school hours, and I need them to be flexible during the holidays. (There is no way I will be able to earn enough money to pay for childcare for four children).

Thursday was good as it was Welsh, and we sang the National Anthem, and mostly got the pronunciation right.

Saturday was a Quiz Night also known as get struck by excruciating pain, spend a large part of the night led on the floor in the loos, (And may I just heartily thank Kath for keeping the pub loos so spotlessly clean) before getting taken down to Neville Hall by Ambulance Night. What sucks is that my team was in the lead, and if my attack had happened about five minutes later so I could have argued my point about the answer being Wellington, not Nelson (Thank You Georgette Heyer and related fandoms!) we would have won. ;-)

I have a tentative diagnosis of gallstones, will having an ultrasound sometime this week to confirm it, and have Tramadol in case I get another attack.

I've been getting a milder version of this pain since I was fifteen, but stopped seeing Doctors about when I was in my early twenties, due to how dismissive they were. Over the years I'd learnt what foods to avoid, (greasy foods and caffeinated tea for some reason) and the attacks were normally bearable with co-codamol and ibruprofen. For a given value of bearable.

I'm so glad to finally have (tentative!) diagnosis, and a really scared that I'm going to have the ultrasound and they going to say it's not gallstones after all and I'll be back at square one.

And I'm still really bummed about my team coming second. (We lost by two points! TWO POINTS!)