2012 will be the year of the back

gripping, i know, but bear with.

due to being a pasty faced crip who spends all day on a chaise longue trying to win at twitter, i have rather wasted away over the past coupla years.  now, because of chronic migraine, i take pain killers every day, and recently a doc decided to give me even more pain killers to take all day long. gentle reader, i rattled.

on a whim, i decided to give up the entire hoopla of preventative painkillers, and like a crazyperson, went cold turkey and decided that i would take pain killers when i got pain LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE DO. so now, at about three or four in the morning i get up and take drugs.

Christina Bothwell.

what i have noticed is that i get a lot of pain from carrying even really light things, like a bag of dog poo for five minutes. (that’s good in imperial as well as metric, right?) and i know that in the past the best thing for that is to have some muscle around to take the strain.

now, since i moved to the tottenham riviera, i have made myself not so handy for facilities in general, but if i can get to and from the swimming pool here, i could start doing lengths, and i know that this is going to be the best way to support my wretched back. and all this is made more likely by the helpfully arranged poolside steam and sauna stuff. so i am guessing i can pace my exercise (including the walk there) with a bit of well timed loafing.

this is less by the way of a new year’s resolution, and more like a serious attempt to get on top of what has become unmanageable. i mean, not taking painkillers prophylactically and also having halved my sleep medications means i get up in the night and move around, which is arguably good, and the pain in my back is driving me to my yoga mat which is also good. i mean, nobody does yoga if they don’t have to.

my real new year’s resolution is for @tenyen to go on a massage course. i’m not stupid, i don’t make resolutions for myself. that’s just asking for disappointment.

i had hoped to get my neighbour, @StephenChristos , roped in for the ride to the pool and for the company, but needs must when the devil drives, and it is more important for me to get on with this stuff than to hang around waiting to see who’s in. if i accrue chums along the way, all well and good, but i am perfectly capable of going swimming on my own. I AM.

so while i am not making new year’s resolutions for myself what else am i planning for next year? well, i want to get to know my camera better. i was a fool to myself when i got it, because i prioritized pocketability over lens. i am living to regret this. it’s like i had this big epiphany about how important lenses are and now i hate my camera. but that’s okay, when you are not in love with your camera you hate it, and so that’s alright. i am just doing the hating the camera, that’s all.

damn thing is complicated though. and i know if i actually learned how to use it i’d get more out of it. i am swithering about getting a blipfoto account, like @lahikmajoe but i can’t decide whether the ‘photo a day’ thing would be helpful or just one of those things which you give up sometime around mid february.

like all those people who start the year with a gym membership who i am already trying hard not to look like, thankyou.

stuff and cyberstuff

i mean, really. awwwwwwwww.…. no? well, *i* think so, but then poppet is my furry baby, not yours, so if you don’t get it, not to worry, the whole post isn’t about her. she’s been on her holidays to my friend ian’s for a few days and he took this photo with his iphone because he is a hipsta, YO. well. he might not like being called a hipsta, even though i spelled it the iphone way and not the regular way, but nevertheless he took her to camden and she went in a car and i think she went on a train as well, and i think she at least went inside a pub, which was one of her ambitions. she also had massive walks and she came home less huffy with me than just plain pooped.

poppet at ian’s. taken with his iphone.

now. during my long derailment with cystitis from hell i could do literally nothing except lying down and things involving laptop. this means that i am now winning at twitter as witnessed by the fact that i have finally customized my page @elaine4queen with a nice bit of tiling involving no grout, and my favourite biscuit. and i changed the colours for the rest of it as well because i was on a ROLL.

so, anyway, another thing is that i got very excited this morning reading this post travelswithpain.com/2011/11/11/yotel-experience/ i mean, look at THIS!

you can play moon or space oddesey or, if you like, alien. or you can pretend you are japanese and you are in a love hotel – you could actually do that last one very easily since you don’t even need to book a whole night, just units of four hours at a time.

heathrow is a good couple of hours away from here no matter how you cut it. i might not bother with it on the outward leg, but somehow coming back from anywhere is draining. and it also depends what time you get in. like, when i went to spain a couple of years ago it was all adventurey and nice on the way out, even though it was a long trip, and it was all daytime. but on the way back we had turbulence, it seemed to take longer, and we arrived back in london in time for drunk people to be on the tube at night. i mean, i don’t even do night. and i do still want to go to america again, and that is really killer on the return flight.

so, because this is a site for criptastic* travelers, she also mentions a site for autistic travelers www.autisticglobetrotting.com/ which looks pretty good. and, you know autistic spectrum people are kind of picky, so if you’re not autistic but you are a picky bastard, then i think you’re still allowed to read.

what else? well, i have been mostly eating alkaline forming foods www.a1-natural-beauty.com/acid-alkaline-rebalance.html in my efforts to minimize the heinous attack of cystitis that i have had for the past couple of weeks. and ten says i am not allowed ANY chips until i am completely better. hence the dog going on holiday – i couldn’t exactly put a lead on her and take her to the toilet and call it a walk. anyway, i’ve been the doctor’s and it was my first time with someone at that practice, and i was quite heartened by his general efficiency and also by the fact that he was unfazed by me asking for a thrush treatment to follow on from the antibiotics. i think after a fortnight of cystitis we can leave out the bit where i get thrush next. thanks.

*don’t repeat this word in front of people unless you are prepared to trail blaze – some people like it when i’ve said it, but i don’t know if it’s “allowed”. i’m not sure if i made it up or not, but whatever. you don’t want to be all reviled like ricky gervais. use your skill and judgement.