I feel like a two-year-old.

My mouth hurts. Ha, boy is that the understatement of the century.

Several weeks ago, as I reported here, I had a tooth extracted. At the time, the damn bugger didn't want to come out, it was happy where it was thank you very much. The poor dentist-lass was yanking at it for a good 15 minutes before it would even budge, and in the end, some bits of the roots broke off rather than leave their comfortable home.

The dentist couldn't remove the pieces, or perhaps didn't want to given I was already white and shaking all over, as there was too much blood etc in the way. She told me that the pieces would eventually erupt on their own, like any new tooth. I thought, fair enough, they must know what they're doing, I'll go along with that.

Idiot.

Well the first piece erupted successfully, although it spent a good five days cutting my tongue to ribbons before it would dislodge itself. Enamel - the stuff that coats your tooth - is the hardest substance in the body, and this was a very sharp, broken shard of enamel.

But the second shard would seem to be a lot bigger than the first and it has somehow managed to migrate under the skin to lie along the inside of my jaw in a prime position to get bumped every time I move my tongue. It has started to erupt and has got to the point of cutting up my tongue, but will go no further. It is making my mouth bleed daily, but it won't come out. It's been nine days now, and I am sick to death of it.

I can't eat, I can't talk, I can't swallow, I can't drink and I can't sleep on that side without causing myself excruciating pain and tasting copper.

If this is what a kid feels when her teeth come through, I can totally sympathise with and understand all the screaming. Please feel free to scream your head off kiddo, I wish I could, because I know it f***ing HURTS!

Edit to add: Not copper; Iron. Blood tastes like iron. I honestly don't know why I said it tasted like copper, except that that's the commonly held belief. I'm not common. It tastes like iron.

Core of my heart...

I have a lurgy. I have no energy. So a Poem it is...

It was T's Birthday yesterday (Happy Birthday T!) and I got homesick, so here is one for the home I miss. Apparently it was originally called 'Core of My Heart', hence the blog title, and also that the last line of the third stanza used to read 'And ferns the crimson soil' which I like much better - but here is the currently accepted version thereof:


My Country
by Dorothea Mackellar (1885 - 1968)

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Black Ice - Ouch!

I discovered what Black Ice looks like this morning. It masquerades deceptively as just normal ground but is incredibly slippery.

I took an inelegant tumble.

Only minor damage to one knee but still a very painful shock to the system and now my body is aching in strange places from muscles that were contorted in weird ways.

The thing is, my work trousers were undamaged, my thermals likewise excepting a few blood stains, but my epidermis is peppered with holes and currently leaking!

I don't get it.

Hello, I'm Moby!

Pleased to meetcha!

Let me explain:

When the guy who sits next to me saw me this morning, he said "You're moby, aren't you?"

This took me aback. Initially I thought he said mopey, but then processed what he'd actually said and, since he's worked with me for four months now and knows my name's not moby, I intelligently said "What?"

"Moby. Moby Dick."

This statement, still illiciting confusion on my behalf, I shook my head.

"Moby Dick. You know, Sick."

Oh.

Yeah. Ok, so this rhyming slang thing is still not really what I'm used to. And since I am indeed 'Moby' I had to agree with him.

My first cold of the year, and it's a very visible one. I'm white and shaking and running a temperature. Oh joy.

But at least I can say I'm also a character from a classic novel so life isn't all bad! :)

Gah!

I am an IDIOT. Certifiable. You’d think I’d learn wouldn’t you? I know my body, I know its limits, I know its quirks and its quibbles, and yet I ignore all the warning signs for what?

All this last week I’ve been battling a cold. Now, I know that the best thing for me when in the middle of a cold is lots of rest and relaxation. Most of the time I am good and obey this rule and come out of it quite cleanly with only a few days of foulness to deal with. But when I don’t, then I can often find myself completely bed-ridden for days with a nasty fever and wracking cough – you know the kind I mean? The type that makes it feel like you’re hammering a spike into your head every time you splutter? Yeah, one of those.

So, what have I been doing every day this week? Walking to and from work in the cold and the wind (45mins each way) and spending 8 hours concentrating. And Friday, warning of all warnings, I was falling asleep at my computer – literally! I had something like six cups of coffee and I still wasn’t staying awake. But did I go home early? No, I battled on.

And even with all that, did I take it easy? Did I rest? Today what did I do? Get up early and go shopping, is what! Stupid, Stupid girl.

I got halfway to the shops and the shakes started. I ignored them, got some chocolate and a coffee and kept going. The cough became the spike-hammering kind half-way to Sainsburys but I went and did the food shop anyway.

Now the shakes won’t stop, the cough has settled in and I feel so rotten I want to cry. And Bonus: I have a fever.

And I am supposed to be starting NaNo tomorrow. Oh what a complete and utter, utter, utter, utter Idiot am I. Someone hit me will you? I assure you, the punch you give me will feel better than my head does right now.

Sleep, I implore you, come and take me away from my stupid self.

Oi Vay!

I have finally had a little relax time this weekend, enforced by some sort of wicked bug, but nice none the less. And even nicer that I have Richard and Hillary's flat to doss in whilst resting - and I have it to myself too, as they are away on a Whisky Tour of Scotland at the moment. It has been a very hectic few weeks. I still haven't blogged about the Hong Kong part of the trip, nor Helen's Hens Night - which was a lot of fun - and I've missed a lot else. Will eventually catch up when I get some down time, but that is in short supply at the moment, so this isn't going to be an accurate up-to-date kind of blog, but more of an occasional when-I-have-time-for-it blog.

I am still getting to grips with all this new technology - blogs, digital camera, wireless networks and all. For someone who hasn't been able to do a lot of really hands on IT for the last five years, it is a little confronting but also a lot of fun. The only problem is that I'm spending so much time playing, I'm getting further and further behind in blogging and archiving photos and all that gaff... ah well. It's all interesting so I'm happy and too bad if no-one else is!! :)

The weather has also conspired to keep me away from the computer until now - it had been lovely and sunny all last week. I even got a little sunburned on one of my days out! But now it is pouring with rain and has done so since yesterday afternoon. So all-in-all, good weather to stay indoors, recover health, and catch up on sleep.

I will try to do another backwards looking blog in a little while - am still trying to sort out how to publish photos to the web and get them into the blog effectively. The first program I tried called picasa2 - which is assocaited with Google and so would have been good to use as my email address and this blog are both Google based - crashed my computer every time I tried to upload photos to the web. The first time(s) I have ever had the blue screen of death on this laptop, and it is from a trusted company! Grrr... So am now trying Flickr - but I am not sure how to connect from Yahoo to Google... am having fun playing!

So, until then - adios!