Tummy ache

Last night Grace developed a tummy ache, it was the one with 'the waves'. Oh no I thought, we are in for a restless night.

She has complained a few times on and off lately so I decided to give her some tummy massages and extra lactulose. Eventually she was so tired that she drifted off to a somewhat restless sleep. Mark commented that her tummy had probably settled and that she would probably sleep for the night. No sooner said than she coughed and I had the amazing speed of a gazelle and bolted across the room with potty in hand (always there for emergencies when Grace is unwell) in time to catch what was following the cough, except for a little bit that splattered on her nighty, which we changed and cleaned her up a bit and she didn't even wake up.

This morning when we told her, she had no idea(very strange) and also she was pretty much very restless for the whole night, and didn't really relax until around 3am. I actually watched Big Brother until they had all gone to bed, there was nothing else on but horror films.

This morning she was still feeling a little nauseus and still hadn't been to the loo, so we have given her 50ml of gastrografin and we are on emergency alert, she has been once but nothing major, so we are prepared......

Meanwhile Mark has been shopping for a present big enough to compensate for 50ml of gastrografin....

Weather and horses

I've been to the gym this morning. 'M' wasn't there so I took advantage of a long run and did a 5k. I tried putting my headphones in (normally because I am chatting with my running partner I have no need for them) and watched a little of the golf, but they get on my nerves and I feel like I'm not running to my full capacity as I am trying to keep my ear plugs in. I may purchase some of the really old fashioned type that go over your head and sit snugly over your ears.

After my lovely long run I did lots of arm work and abs and waist. When I left the gym it was raining (again)although judging by what I have seen in the news all of this week, I am glad I live at the top of the hill. A river runs across the bottom of our Cul-de-sac (always wanted to write that!) which divides us from the golf course. Bizarrely, there are people playing today and its not flooded.

Yesterday we went to Warwick racecourse for an afternoon meeting on account that we didn't get to the special 300Th anniversary one last Sunday due to, yes you've guessed it, the weather.

As I am normally in partnership with my Mother-in-law on such days out, we pool our money together and then we would normally have more winners (or so you would think). I hate backing short odds favourites but Marks Mum loves them, hence she had two winners and I had one, but my 11-2 winner paid out far more than her two put together. Unfortunately I couldn't pick my nose for the rest of the afternoon and luckily broke even. Mark had a better day than me, but mainly because he bets away from the course as well.

Our plans have been drawn up for the extension to the kitchen and are now with the department at the council that gives planning permission and building regulations. We don't need planning permission but we need to have the building regs in place and also another detail with regard to the design being built right to the boundary so that the neighbours can't contest when they realise that we have to dig out all of the concrete on their side of the fence.

I have sort of made a rough plan of the kitchen on the Ikea Kitchen planner, and I will try and post a picture of it. Its not to scale because I'm not a maths genius by any stretch of the imagination (there must be something that I am good at?)..... actually I do make a mean fairy cake.

Grace is due in clinic on Tuesday and she seems to be developing her cough in time for clinic. She is also due to have her port flushed on Monday. She is still feeling a bit 'pooped' and a little breathless but not really feeling unwell. Still I think she maybe harbouring something and might benefit from a change in antibiotic.

This weekends plans are ballet presentation tomorrow evening and possible going to see Shrek on Sunday and lunch out... not even the weather can spoil that.

Blog titled Wednesday

Went to the gym this morning and did a 30 minute run and some abs work. Thats as much as I could do because I had a 'funny tummy' all bloated and stuff (it must be my age) or I could still be recovering from how much alcohol I consumed on Friday, probably the latter.

Anyway 'M' and I (no Mark not the one from 007) had coffee and toast and put the whole world to right and then I went home and did a big blog on coping with Cf and having children after already having a child with cf and then deleted it all because it just winds me up sometimes.

Time capsule event to be logged for this month - Tony Blair resigns from Office and is replaced by Gordon Brown as PM.

I have downloaded an application form from the Make a Wish Foundation today. I would like to enlist their help in getting Grace to a pop festival. I know that it is virtually impossible for her to do a weekend, but after Glastonbury this week she has talked of nothing else. She is a huge music fan and the idea of watching all of her favourite bands in a weekend just blew her away. So how would we manage her meds and nebulisers in a tent in all that mud just so that she could see Fall out Boy? she doesn't even want to meet them, just attend and watch the gig. She's such a funny old girl......

Grace remains breathless this week, although she is quite dry she has struggled to get her breath back after exerting herself and she has been hoarse and croaky again, but generally she is well. A post on the adult forum discussing tobi and colomycin brought to my attention that Grace had complained of a lot of headaches last month and hasn't recently. I will take note this month whilst back on tobi of her headache complaints.

Take That

Yesterday I went to the gym, I did a 30 minute run and it was very hot even with the air conditioning right over head. Also my hay fever has been bad for the last couple of days, my eyes have been itchy beyond belief, and I get some tightness in my chest which was apparent whilst I was running. I wasn't going to let it defeat me though and did my full run. I decided to skip any floor work today though and instead had a nice swim and half an hour in the jacuzzi.

This week at the gym I have taken to having coffee and lunch upstairs afterwards whilst reading the paper and choosing my horses for Ascot. So far though I have had no winners, not even a place. I must try harder today and win back some money as I am going out tonight, to the Hilton Hotel to see a Take That tribute band. Not entirely my cup of tea as anyone who knows me would know I'd probably prefer to see a Sex Pistols or Black Sabbath tribute band, but I was lured by food and alcohol and generally a good giggly night out with the girls.

I've had my hair cut again today and coloured, its quite a dark brown this time, but with some bronzey sun kissed highlights (so I am reliably informed by the hairdresser). So I am sympathising with a friend today who hates female hairdressers. Today's haircut was a spur of the moment thing which meant any of my favourite stylists were not available. I prefer men to cut my hair as a rule, I just think they are better. But today it was cut by a little girl that I had never seen before, she was tiny, at one point she went to get a stool to kneel up to finish the back! but did she waffle on, crikey, she knows where I'm going tonight, where I'm going Sunday, where I'm going for my holiday, what my husband does for a living.... she would be perfect for the Spanish inquisition.

Anyway during this time she was blow drying my hair bigger and bigger and bigger, I began to look like Sue Ellen from Dallas. All could think was if I don't get out of here and get another appointment somewhere else to sort it out I'm not going out this evening. I left the salon with sunglasses on and put my hair band straight in as soon as I got out of view of them. I went to get a coffee to take home and switched on the straighteners on to see what I could do with it. Thankfully after calming it down with some straightening and a bit of wax (a piece of string and a flux capacitor) it was a very nice cut underneath...... now I just need to decide which of the three tops that I have bought to wear.

Grace is very excited that I am going out tonight, she and Mark have a written out itinerary of what they are going to do to fill up their evening. She has been a bit strange over the last few weeks.

Firstly as it is national walk to school week (which we do everyday anyway) to mark the last day they laid on breakfast at 8.15 for pupils, it consisted of rice crispies, toast and jam and orange juice or milk. Grace signed up immediately, but the bottled it half way through the week. I don't know if its because she hears Mark and myself talking about how difficult it is to manage things like that - getting all routines done in the morning and then taking meds in with her, but I thought we could cope.

Also she is being a bridesmaid Nov 2008 for Marks brother, they just told us that she was one of the bridesmaids and never really asked us and didn't even stop to consider if it would be feasible, wedding day schedules are tight, no room for sitting on the toilet for half an hour or waiting 20 minutes for the feeling of sickness to go off after scoffing your breakfast down really fast when you have just done physio, or leaving you in a house full of bridesmaids with the Mother of the Bride who is in panic mode anyway let alone trying to work out how many creon to give Grace and that's if they allow her to eat anything once inside her bridesmaid dress (Grace you will have to have your funny turn after the ceremony and not overshadow the bride).....

OK, maybe I am over reacting, but it would have been nice for it to be discussed first whether it could be done and how to get around it. This all seems to have had quite an adverse effect on Grace and now she refuses point blank to be a bridesmaid or do anything that might involve a bit of juggling and preparation, that's why I feel she bottled the breakfast this morning. I really need to think through how I approach things like this in the future, but how?

Royal Ascot

The Golf courseGraces umbilical cord

When you are drunk and you have more than one blog, its very difficult to keep track of where you are.

My Royal Ascot attempt today was rubbish. What I thought was second favourite was actually second to last, and the rest were long shots..... very long shots. Note to self, must do better tomorrow.

Went to the gym this morning and did a 4.22k run (i've taken a liking to measuring my runs in k's). It took 30 minutes. I stopped there because I was with 'M', she always does a 10 minute warm up and a 20 minute run and so that we can do the gym together, I always comply with this. We did some arms and abs and showered and then had a coffee and a very long chat about the weekend and stuff.

Strangely we both went to see Fantastic 4 at the same time and didn't even know we were in the same cinema audience. Very good film indeed and Grace didn't need to go to the toilet once, although we both had fish food and cookie dough and were both wearing white t'shirts (not good in the dark) anyway vanish took out the stains.


Anyway because I couldn't get to Ascot this week, I decided that champagne was very much called for, hence the wandery post. Next is big hat day, so watch this space for photos. Whilst on the subject of photos, I have taken some pictures as promised from previous posts.

Grace has been swimming today and she said that she found it very difficult, and to be honest when I came down to the pool side to collect her, I could see how she was struggling to get her breath even from a distance. I assured her though that it was very good exercise and she agreed with me.

She asked me when I was born today, when I replied "1962" she said " thats quite near to the great fire of London"!!!!!.......Kids!

5K

I went to the gym yesterday morning. I wanted to go Thursday, but Tescos decided that it was the day they were going to deliver my new garden furniture.

I normally meet 'M' on Thursdays and she is always there before me so in order to catch up with her my run on the treadmill needs to be shorter. So today I thought I would go for a good 30 minute run and set the countdown on the treadmill for 33 minutes to include warm up, on what the hell I thought, lets put 40 minutes in.

Well I ran the full 40 minutes and had done 4.64k at this stage so I decided to speed up the cool down for 3 minutes to get a true reading of 40 minutes. After that time I wasn't quite at 5k so did another minute of running which took me well and truly over 5k! Thats the first time I have done it non stop, I could probably have done it long ago but never tried. Anyway it was easy, so I am going to attempt it on the road tomorrow although my legs were useless last night, they were stiff beyond belief every time I tried to get out of the chair, and its not for lack of cool down and stretches, I even had a leisurely swim and a blast in the jacuzzi (its lovely to get the jets of water pummeling your achy muscles).

After my run I did some abs and arms work and of course the swim.

Grace continues to have a good spell at the moment and I do think its because she can get out in the garden and on the trampoline and able to go swimming lots at the moment.

I read a post on the forum about low sats and lung function and someone said that they thought diet attributed to better lung functions and energy levels.

The poster commented that he eats healthily and doesn't dwell too much on the high fat issue. I have always given Grace a balanced healthy diet as opposed to a high fat content. We are lucky that Grace is a good eater generally and has a good appetite, I understand that lots of CF sufferers have virtually no appetite and struggle to weight gain, but so far have never had this problem with Grace and she continues to eat well really.

There has been a period up until this week that she has been off her food but now she has regained it we have made sure she has had lots of pasta and fish and vegetables and she takes masses of fruit to school everyday and she eats it as a rule. Grace loves mashed potato but we tend not to put any extra butter in than we serve ourselves, maybe its because she just doesn't like extra fatty stuff, who knows? one thing I know is that I couldn't eat loads of extra fatty things, my Mum always puts enough butter on a sandwich to grout the bathroom tiles with and have some left over, and I've always had to inspect in before she puts the filling on and scrape it back off again (no wonder she has high blood pressure and has to take pills for her cholesterol) but at 83 I don't think she really cares.

Anyway we are making the most of this good spell whilst it lasts, its just a shame the weather has gone a bit down hill, you should the see the golf course at the rear of our home, I can't imagine they have many annual members, they would never get a full years play.

Yesterday was a gym day (well by gym day I just mean treadmill day). I had an awful day the day before and I took it out on the treadmill. I ran for a long time and did nothing else other than a shower and a coffee.

I was with my friend 'M' and we totally agreed that exercise is amazing for stress release. I had a bit of a stressful Monday and running really helps to forget about it.

On Sunday a good day at stratford racecourse gave me the opportunity to purchase a new vacuum cleaner so today I am like a kid with a new toy and have gone beserk with it. I've used every attachement on it. I just need to be as enthusiastic about the ironing now.

Grace lost her first tooth on Monday night. Its amazing how excited she got about having a hole in her smile. Infact she was so excited that she struggled to stay asleep all night and consequently found the money left by the fairies at 3am and came in with a big toothless grin to show me. I was polite and told her to go back to bad until a reasonable hour. Emilys most recent post about keepsakes of childhood memories, which is something I believe strongly in after my Mother threw away everything I ever posessed when I lived at home with my parents. Grace has files with her age or Reception, year 1 etc written on them and we have kept virtually every picture she has ever brought home. But this sparked us to start rumaging through the bin looking for her tooth! It looked awful and bloody and quite grubby inside, so we thought better of it and put it back in the bin.

What crazy parents we are. Infact if I can find it, I will photograph and post a picture of Graces umbillicol cord which we still have in a box with her hospital wrist band that says 'baby Lombard' on it. (what were we thinking?).........

Bit of a blip

I went to the gym yesterday morning. I ran for 28 minutes (that just reminded me of a song? 'I ran' by 'A flock of seagulls') and then skipped any weights or floor work and went right on to the swimming pool. I also did 28 lengths of the pool, was aiming for 30 but the pool just got ridiculously full and I decided the jacuzzi, as it was empty, was far more appealing.

Grace went to her friends for tea after school. I said that I would pick her up at 6.00pm and to 'get a move on' as she needed to get Dnase done in time to fit in physio and meds before bed.

So we skipped dnase last night, because it was 6.55 before I actually got her out of there. They were covered in make up and had to wash that off and tidy up before we left. They have both been invited to a fancy dress party on 6 July and the plan is to go as Goths!! So I managed to get Grace out of there with the bribe that she could choose her outfit when we got home.

So the outfit is a sort of black netted skirt with lacey tights, she has some black Diesel studded boots and a black rock 'n' roll t'shirt and Faye is going to help her with the makeup and I am in charge of looking for some lacey black gloves, but the girls have decided that they also want a hint of pink so Grace has a studded pink sweatband for her wrist and a studded pink belt. I really will have to blog photos on the day.

Anyway physio got done and meds on time and she was in bed for 8.30 and very excited about the party. She is very well presently, no coughing and very dry whilst doing physio. She is about to come to the end of her tobi nebs for the month and will go back to promixen for a month. It will be interesting to see what sort of difference it will make, but hopefully this is the start of the good spell we were waiting for. She had her first swimming lesson on Tuesday (well her first lesson this year) and she really enjoyed it. She also blow dried her own hair and put cream on and generally pampered herself etc, but we will have to speed things up a bit next week otherwise swimming lessons will take up a whole evening.

I am off to Towcester this evening for an evening race meeting so I am looking forward to that and hopefully it won't rain.

The blip I was referring to in the title was because Wanadoo seemed to have crashed and this is the first time I have been able to access the Internet since Tuesday evening.... I did try to phone them but the 24 hour help line had no reply on any occasion that I rang, but luckily today its back, I don't know what I would have done if I couldn't have blogged this rubbish?

Weirdo

I have been to the gym this morning, but never had a swim today, infact it was too busy to get in the pool. It must be all this nice weather bringing everyone to the gym so they look good when they strip off on the beach maybe.

I did around 28 minutes on the treadmill and 3 minutes either side warm up and cool down. I worked on upper arms and abs, I hadn't planned on doing much more because I was going to have a swim. Instead 'M' and I had a coffee and a chat and then I enrolled Grace for swimming lessons. In order to do that she had to become a member at the gym (aaahhh!) she's now a member (£12 per month) she can use all of the facilities (well not the big stuff) but she can use the play area and she can go to tennis and badminton classes if she wants to and she is able to attend any of the many childrens functions and term end discos and stuff, but for now we will concentrate on swimming. She starts this evening at 4.30 and I haven't told her yet so that will be a nice surprise on a hot day, and I will get to have another coffee whilst waiting for her.

Yesterday and the day before I was a bit 'weird' I had to take an antihystamine on Sunday morning after my run, I hate taking them as every single one I have tried doesn't really agree with me, they upset my tummy and make me feel a bit 'foggy'. I completely conked out for about 2 hours on Sunday evening and I spent most of Monday forgetting peoples names and generally very lethargic. I have now gone back to my beconase and eye drops and hope that will now keep it under control. The most weird thing was that I kept bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. I was watching a Harrison Ford film called FireWall last night (full of action and chases and twists and turns) but you would have thought I was watching a romantic love story the amount of times I burst into tears. What a strange hormonal person I am lately and apparently it will last for atleast another 5 years yet..... What a weirdo!

Early Bird not Classy bird though

I could not sleep last night. I woke at 4.39 and went to the toilet, I had already been awake on two other occasions. It was so hot that I opened the window, well that was fatal, I then started to sneeze and sneeze and woke Mark up also which wasn't good because he had to leave to play golf at six.

I'm useless in the summer, my hayfever dictates that the windows stay shut during the night and then I am too hot and Mark gets too hot. I lye awake and then think about my knee and for some reason it seems to hurt more when I think about it. Well anyway Mark decided to get up and check out how the golf was doing (baring in mind this all before 5.am) he made me a cup of tea and told me to try and get back to sleep.

We didn't go to bed until well after midnight either. I tossed and turned for another half an hour and Mark had a shower and got ready for golf so I read for a while.

After he left I decided that if I couldn't sleep I may aswell go for a run. I ran my usual circuit taking in a bit of 'off road', I like off road its a bit more of a challenge and in the morning there is lots of dew on the grass and it makes my feet wet right through my trainers. I managed 23 minutes straight run before my hayfever got the better of me, I did a 2 minute walk and then did another 5 minutes followed by a cool down walk. Back at home I did some abs work and arms work and lots of stretches. I had a shower and some breakfast, the breakfast was mainly so that I could take an anti hystamine as the pollen seemed to have pelted at my eyes whilst running. I put some washing on and sat on the bed having a cup of tea and reading again by 7.35.

I was told last night that I didn't sound like a classy bird,but atleast I'm an early bird.

We are going to out for the day today and taking a picnic. Grace is really excited so I am off to do her physio now so that we can get out nice and early.