Thursday and I wake early and get brought coffee and toast in bed, which I am thankful for. Once again I check my cyber litter and other bits on my phone. Once up I am not quite sure what I want to be doing, I feel listless. I do odd chores like emptying the waste paper baskets in the house and try to settle. In the end I decide to give Oscar and Lucinda another go. I try, really try to appreciate the quality of writing, the detail, the fine observation and the delicacy of the way the two main characters stories develop before they meet. Its no good, I go to the end of the book and start to read it backwards, which strangely makes it marginally better. By lunchtime have given up and own up to the friend who sent it to me that I can no longer go on with it. In fact my summary was ” I’d sum it up as addicted gambling priest meets too tightly wrapped feminist factory owner who both fuck their lives up and of course their friends and innocent bystanders. Just another couple of personality disordered twats really.”
My partner and I go for a walk to the village pharmacist to pick up prescriptions, my partner’s is ready but I will have to return tomorrow to collect mine. We slip into the co-op next door where I pick up cash and we add some food to the basket. Back home I make myself soup and start the cross words. A friend rings who I have not talked to for a while adn we compare notes about family, Christmas and how we are. My friend goes off to continue her Christmas organising and I return to my soup and crosswords. Crosswords done I start to investigate Christmas and my timetable running up to it. There are things I want to fit in like a visit to my mentor which I can combine with a Christmas shopping trip, December is already looking cramped with the the various things in the diary, my chemo reviews and injections. I listen to an Infinite Monkey Cage and then decide to train. It will be a 45 minute session with a bit more “vim” to it that the gentle 60 minutes previously that did not gain me the necessary PAI points to get me to a 100 for the day. I get my training kit on and make my way to the garage, strap onto the rower and get going in the chilly atmosphere.
I put some effort into the session with a very pleasing result, for the first time in a long time I get past the 10,000 meter mark and burn over 650 calories in the 45 minute time slot. This is more like it, I now need to keep this up consistently. I go the sofa and record the session in my journal before getting out of my kit.
Returning to the sofa I start to draft the blog and a little later eat tea while watching the early European football match. I am finding that a modicum of chocolate settles my stomach as I think an unsettled gut is one of my chemo drugs side effects. My partner goes off to the office to do her singing lesson and I continue to draft the blog to the background of football. I am hoping that my good session sets me up for a spoonful day tomorrow. I would just like a day when I wake up feeling like I have energy enough to get out and about and do some of the normal things. For this evening I shall content myself with easing towards my bedtime with its night meds and rituals.
