A contract, a project, a trip to the dermatologist, and wanting a baby badly!

I received my shiny new contract in the mail today, and it has that magical word on it: permanent. Yay! :)  So I will be teaching graphics and web design for a bit longer :D

The annoying thing is I will have to fill out all the new employee forms again, for payroll and HR, and do the staff induction, again! Could be worse I 'spose! :P

My current students are nearing the end of their courses, and being visual artists they are all freaking out about their end-of-year exhibition. I have spent the week chasing students who are on the brink of burn-out, and coaxing them to get their final projects finished.

I've also taught ALL of the technology teachers from the local high schools. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen: I was given 6 hours to teach 18 teachers (some of whom taught me!) how to use Photoshop and build a website in DreamWeaver, to a level that would mean they could confidently teach their students! What?! Oh, and no extra pay either. But even with that ridiculous expectation, the teachers all seemed pleased with what they had learned. Even if they were noisier than students! haha :P

In my freelance work, I've nearly completed my first web design project for the brand new client I just landed. She runs a boutique print-design agency (where my lil sis works! Yes, a family of designers), and has been on the hunt for a new contract web designer. Woohoo!! :D My new tutoring contract won't start until February, so that means I will have over 2 months unemployed over Christmas. Hopefully this new client will be able to feed me enough work to um, keep me fed!

There are not many photos of me on this blog, mainly because I'm often the one behind the camera, but also because I'm not happy with my skin. I often get breakouts, and being very fair with freckles, having a sore red nose and spots is not ideal! So I took my snout off to the dermatologist, and I am very glad I did. Dr Derm is very nice, and after asking me why I was there, he immediately examined my skin with a magnifying glass and made an immediate diagnosis. Yes, it's adult acne, no it's not too bad, yes he is quite confident he can do something to help me. Hooray! It will be lovely to have clear skin and not have to worry about makeup making it worse!

He prescribed me a course of Roaccutane which seems to be made of vitamin A. The Dr showed me many before and after photos of people with much worse acne than me, and the improvement they got with the treatment - quite amazing. Dr Derm is very confident he can help me, and knew exactly what to do. I will start with a cream-version of the drug, and then swap to pills once they arrive. I take those for about 12 weeks, at which stage he said my skin should be pretty clear, then take another 12 weeks to "set" the result. The effect should be permanent.

I've used the cream for two nights now, and although I was warned to only use it very sparingly as it can cause redness and irritation, I've not experienced that yet. Because it's vitamin A, I have to be very careful now about staying out of the sun, so I've got a good sunscreen (we have the ozone hole right above us here, so I burn like a lobster in about 10 - 15mins), and hubby is muttering that I need a wide brimmed hat for gardening.

The whole experience* was really good, about as good as visiting a doctor can get. You go in with a problem, and he pretty much says "I know exactly what condition you have, and how to cure it!" Amazing! As a diabetic I've gotten used to going to the doctor to "manage" my condition, and as an IFfer I'm starting to realise that I now have another long term relationship with doctors on the horizon, so it's nice to have a doctor say, hey, I can cure that, no worries! :)

*almost:

Well, I left the appointment both happy that I had a solution to try for the acne, and a bit hazy and shaky because of an unfortunate blunder on the part of the dermatologist. To his credit, he was incredibly smiley and friendly, but I quickly learned that he did not understand what he was saying and how it was affecting me. Here's what happened:

Because Roaccutane can cause fetal abnormalities, it's not allowed during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant. Fair enough, no-one wants that. I made the choice before attending the appointment that if any medication I was offered had an anti-pregnancy warning, I would still take it because I can't sit around and wait for IVF funding to magically appear. I have to get on with my life! But the doctor had to warn me of this risk, and then he had to make sure I wasn't even trying to get pregnant. He's an Indian man, so his English was softly-spoken and a bit hard for me to understand. But he clearly asked me what contraception I was using, and I replied that it wasn't an issue since hubby has a vasectomy.  I have no trouble telling a doctor that. It was what he said next which floored me: "How many children do you have?" I must have looked like I was about to choke, cos he looked worriedly at me, and followed up with something that I think was "and when did you decide to do that?" I spluttered out, that no, I was wife number two, and I had no children. He was so kind about it, but it affected me deeply. I left feeling really upset and had to work hard to push the thought from my mind. I guess most people don't make that mistake when they see me with my step-kids, because I don't look old enough to be their Mum. But out of context like this, it was horrible. He thought he was being nice asking about my family. But I don't have kids. And I am still training myself to say "I have 3 step-kids".

I was so upset I finished up at work early and went to my Mum's house, for a cup of tea and some comfort. We ended up speaking at length about infertility and what I've been through, and what possibilities exist for a future including children (IVF, ICSI, The Cost, fighting the CPAC score we got which denied us public funding, how long we could wait with our varied ages, etc...) . It was really nice to be able to almost speak easily about it, as I spend most all of my waking time thinking about it, and many of my sleeping hours dreaming/nightmaring about it. I feel I need to talk in depth like this with Hubby soon, make some decision on how we can proceed. I realise that I have been feeling a bit alone in this, and it may just be because it IS hard to talk about it. It basically ruins any quite moment we have to ourselves, and any other moment just seems inappropriate. Ah well... I'm reading through Navigating the Land of IF at the moment, and it's really helpful stuff. I wish I'd known about some of it a year ago! I am slowly working my way through my stack of IF and IVF books.

So the journey is not over yet. It's just kind of stalled. I still really want to have kids. Babies are absolutely everywhere. One of my best friends from primary school just had her second baby on Thursday. I see bellies wherever I go. I stop at the traffic lights and stare into space while I wait for the green, and lo! A belly will walk across in front of my car and jolt me back into a mire of emotions: longing, wanting, frustration, grief, sadness, and fear that it may not ever happen. At lunch with the in-laws today, MIL chucks in a remark about a family that have just had their firstborn. Every time we visit she manages to say something about babies. Grr. I try really hard to tell myself that no one means anything by it. But when babies and family-building are so entrenched in the human culture, it's really hard to just switch off from it, because it's everywhere, reminding me that I cannot have a child unless I stump up $12K for some of the most advanced medical technology on the planet.

On the diabetes front, I am having an unusual pattern emerging where I go low just before bed, and often low again during the night, and often also wake up slightly lower than ideal. I am thinking I need to drop my nighttime Lantus (I'm on split dose because I'm so sensitive to it). I'm a bit scared to tamper with the Lantus dose, but I also know that I cannot keep going low all the time, as I develop hypo unawareness quite quickly. I also cannot keep eating all the emergency food all the time, it's not a healthy diet! Bah! I will get this sorted, diabetes always throws down the gauntlet every now and then. I must get a new log book and do some tracking. I know the stress of the work I'm doing has a major impact on my diabetes control (ie it gets worse), but not having a two week snapshot of test results is not helping me right now. This is the longest time since, like, ever that I haven't kept a log book! MUST GET NEW LOGBOOK!

Hope you're having a good weekend, are you going trick or treating? :)

In denial

I saw read about Eilish yesterday. But it did not hit home.

Today, the blog posts are flooding in. This sad story is all over the DOC:

TuDiabetes
Six Until Me
The Diabetic's Corner Booth
Talking Blood Glucose
Diabetesaliciousness
Sugabetic

I was once a thirteen year old girl with diabetes. It makes me feel numb and a bit terrified to think that any of us can be taken in the night like this. :(

It's only thursday and I am knackered!

I taught 5 classes in 4 days, wrote 5 lesson plans, went to my job interview (Tuesday), wrote 5 quotes for web designs and visited a new client I'm hoping to land, designed 3 web sites, made one logo, got the job (today: yay!), reviewed a student's dissertation, landed that client (yesterday: yay!), went to a staff meeting, finished my exhibition, made a booking at the dermatologist, and did the grocery shopping. I need a nap.

:)

It was a bit funny, I took unofficial time off my current job, which is a short term contract until the end of the year, to attend an interview with my boss, to get a job which is identical to my current job. Talk about a paradox. Anyway, HR will be HR eh? :P

Rollerblading and ducks

After my first week back to work after the holidays I've had a really good relaxing weekend.

I've read a few books. I have had a couple of "Aha!" moments, which I will explain in another post :)

I went rollerblading with Hubby and a selection of kids, at the local roller rink's family skate night. There nothing like flying round and round the rink listening to badly distorted emo music at full blast to make you feel 13 again! haha

Hubby and I had the kids to stay this weekend, so we went to collect them on Friday night. We were early, so they weren't all at their home yet. Olivia was busy finishing off her horse ride, so we drove down to the fields the pony club uses and watched her riding her horse, then washing and feeding her (the horse, not Olivia - although she [Olivia] did admit to taste-testing the horse feed!) As we drove back to the kids house the road passes over a small creek, and there, walking merrily in the middle of the road, was a mother duck and her five ducklings! How cute! Traffic was stopped on both directions, with orange hazard lights on. A lady walking her dog came out and shepherded the ducks off the road so it all turned out happy. :)

I tried skate-boarding for the first time! Well, I didn't go very far, but I didn't fall off either! Very pleased with myself. Ok, I will admit I had Hubby standing beside me letting me cling to his shoulder, but it was still lots of fun! :) It was cool to have most of the kids (and some mates) skating down the seaside walkway together. We ended up at the local skate park, where suddenly parents became V-E-R-Y uncool. Ha! Anyway that's where we got the idea to go to the family skate night, cos the roller rink is right next door.

We dropped Eldest Step Son off at his Grandparents, and took Two Youngest plus Loud-Mouth Friend home and made dinner - I tried making "Jerk Chicken" (Question: why is it called "Jerk"??) which was very tasty and met with silence - a good sign meaning kids are eating! :)

Here is my recipe:

700g chicken nibbles (small chicken wings and mini-drumsticks)
1 onion
2 - 3 Tablespoons of olive oil
portuguese chicken seasoning (mix of paprika, salt, chilli, oregano, lemon)
finely chopped fresh thyme (from my freshly replanted herb garden :D )
2 - 5 Tablespoons of your favourite dark soy sauce
1 Table spoon cornflour/cornstarch

Mix everything (except the soy and cornflour) together. I just put it all into the glass roasting dish and massaged it together with my hands. Messy but fun. Wash hands. Cover the dish with tin foil and put it in the oven at 200 degrees C.

Leave it for about 20 mins, or until the chicken is no longer pink. The tinfoil should keep all the moisture in, and the onion should mix with the oil to create a runny liquid.

Take the dish out of the oven and put it on a heatproof surface. Remove the tinfoil. Add the soy, more if you like saltier things, and make sure the liquid level is about half way up each piece of chicken, so they are half-submerged. This will let the top half go nice and crispy in the air. Mix up the cornflour in a little water and mix it into the sauce.

Return to the oven for another ten minutes, and put it to fan bake/fan-forced to speed up the crispy-ization. :) Serve with mini-roast potatoes, pumpkin, carrots, and fresh baby peas. Yummy!

Books I'm reading

So I toddled over to www.stirrup-queens.com and found this book written by Melissa Ford:

http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/

I read the first chapter on amazon.com, so I've decided to order it. It will take over a month to get here to New Zealand! What!? It's almost like we live on the moon! :P

That got me thinking, maybe the local library has some books on dealing with infertility. It's been a hard thing to come to terms with this second diagnosis, but in reading Melissa's book (bits of it) I've already discovered things that are helpful to me. So I gathered my parking meter money and headed off to the library in search of more information.

I took all the interesting looking books, as follows:

The IVF Revolution, by Prof. Robert Winston

Why me? The Real Life Guide to Infertility by Loraine Brown

What to Expect When You're Experiencing Infertility by Debby Peoples and Harriette Rovner Ferguson 

Unsung Lullabies, Understanding and Coping with Infertility by Jaffe, Diamond, and Diamond

IVF & Ever After by Nicola Bedos

Infertility, A Guide for New Zealanders by Sue Saunders. No link, as I couldn't find anywhere selling it!

Looks like I have a lot of reading to get through! I've started with the last one on the list, as it's written by  Sue Saunders who is currently working as a counsellor at the fertility clinic that's we've had dealings with - how's that for irony! Anyway, even though it was written before the turn of the millennium, the information about emotional stuff seems sound.

Here's a bit of depressing news: GST has gone up. GST is Goods and Services Tax, and it applies to most everything you buy in NZ. It went from 12.5% up to 15%. "Why is that interesting to me?" you say, well, it affects the cost of IVF treatment. What was once around about $11K has just jumped to over $12.5K!!! :(  I sat down with a calculator last night and worked out the cost. I suppose it doesn't really matter if I reveal the name of the clinic, it's not like there are many to choose from in New Zealand: Fertility Associates. (P.S I really really think they should consider changing the photo on their homepage - a big pic of a baby is just insulting!) Yeah, so at least the cost of everything is on their website.

I'm trying to decide what to do, how to progress things a bit. On one hand, I've already written to www.fertilitynz.org asking for their help, and they have said they will be advocates for us and forward our letter of complaint on to the fertility clinic. However that was over a month ago. Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't just complain directly to the clinic. What do you think?

The other thing I'm trying to decide is whether or not I should approach the Health and Disability Commissioner. Here in NZ there is quite a good system where patient/consumers can easily make complaints about health providers. I've made use of them once before when my endocrinologist did a shoddy job of switching me over to Lantus (he got the dosing all messed up, which meant I had a bad hypo and broke my back, then he blamed me. Yes, he's my current endo - I live in a small town!) and the folks there were quite helpful and very clear about my rights. I know they probably can't do much in the way of getting us the access to public funding we require, but it would be good to stop a similar thing happening to other couples. It's totally changed my life. The more I think about what happened, I become convinced that we are being discriminated against. Just because Hubby has a vasectomy from a previous marriage, that should have nothing whatsoever to do with our marriage. Our marriage is infertile, with 0% chance of conception and over 7 years of trying. In any way you look at it, telling us to wait 3 years feels like a penalty that neither of us could have ever done anything to avoid. I read a couple of government reports by a chap called Wayne Gillett, in which he noted the feelings of grief and devastation are just as great in a couple who are "situationally infertile". I must get a copy of those reports (also quite old) and post interesting parts up here. Getting them may be hard though, as they are at the library at work, and I DO NOT want my co-workers to see me getting them out of the library. Maybe I will just photocopy them...

Anyway, I'm feeling tired and high and hungry. Want to eat, need to drink (water), and do a test. Until another day, have a great Thursday/Friday in your part of the world. :)

Exhibition opening

The opening to the tutor exhibition went really well. I was a bit worried because the other tutors were quite late installing their work, and then of course I was worried about showing my work next to theirs! We are spread across two rooms, and at one stage no one else had installed into my room, I was all on my lonesome! There was some talk of getting me to move my artwork to the other room - so not fair, since I was first to install out of everyone! So I chased the remaining artists to get them into my room, and it all worked out well.

The opening went off without a hitch, and it looked (and sounded) great. We had about 30 people come along, and for a lunchtime opening I thought that was quite good. The institute CEO came down and wanted to meet all the artists and talk to us about our works, which I thought was a really nice guesture as he's really busy.

I got some really good feedback from both the other artists and our students. It's great to see the look on their faces when they realise you are actually a practising artist, and this is a professional show. It's cool to see them see you in a whole new light :) Actually I think they were a bit surprised by how passionately each of us tutors could speak about our works, completely unprompted (students need to be poked with a hot stick before they will get up in front of people and talk about their work!!).

The other artists showed prints, paintings, digital artworks on computer, video, sculptures, photos, installations, and drawings. All in all it seems to be a great cross-section of different artistic disciplines and I'm very pleased I took part. I've had some great feedback so far, and everyone really wants to know what the words mean. That gives me a great chance to explain a bit more about diabetes, and several of my colleagues were very surprised to find I had diabetes - I certainly don't hide it!

Hopefully I will have some photos for you all by the end of the week :)

A sort of anniversary

So this will be short and sweet, but I just wanted to mark the start of October since it's roughly one year since we started this journey of diabetes and infertility. My bloggiversary occurs next April - I can't believe it's so far away, I feel like I've been writing for ever! haha  I will have to think up a special celebration for it.

Oh well, to mark the day, here is one of my favourite paintings. I actually made a reproduction of this work, in my student days (no, you can't see it!)   :)

Girl with a Pearl Earring - c.1665 -  Johannes Vermeer

My lovely hubby took me out for Indian for dinner tonight. Yum yum! Butter chicken my favourite (predictable, I know - but I only choose it about 50% of the time I eat Indian, honest!) Lots of poppa dams, naan bread, white rice, and fried tandoori things on a hot stone. Ooh food heaven!

I have to say, I am a very useful person to take out to dinner. You see, whenever I take out my test kit, the wait staff ALWAYS come over. It might be coincidence, but it's happened so many times (more than 100) that I think the waiters are just curious! What is she doing? hehe - anyway the upshot is that we get served pretty quickly!

The downside, with indian food, is I have no idea how to carb count it. :(

Actually, it would be helpful if I knew exactly how much I ate :P  But I just wolf it down, so hungry!

I had my first day back at work today after mid-semester break, and with a good breakfast test, and not much food (no grazing at the biscuit tin today!), and plenty of walking between classrooms, I went quite low during a staff meeting this afternoon. After treating that, then eating Indian for dinner meant a nice high just now. Ah well. Bolus. Then the painful part - staying awake long enough to know if it's "just right" and not going to send me plummeting overnight.

I also don't want to be high all night, as that will ruin me for the exhibition opening tomorrow (so excited!) Oh, question for you: do you get incredibly hungry when you are high sometimes? Like, ravenous? It's weird, my symptoms seem to have done a flip-flop over the last couple of months. I just want to eat the cupboards bare when I'm high, and (TMI warning, advance apologies, avert your eyes etc) I need to pee like a racehorse when I'm low. Weird I know - I've never been one to do things by the book :P

My diabetes artwork - installation complete! Hooray!

Five posters, two ladders, and four lows later, I'm done! Yay! What a day! :D

Here are the posters, see which words you recognise:

DOC: the diabetes online community, a wonderful bunch of bloggers who encourage and support each other :)

SUM: six until me, the first diabetes blog I read, and the one that inspired me to create my own blog.

BASAL: refers to insulin basal rates, a word that diabetes folk will understand, but other people might not necessarily.

SWAG: stupid wild-arsed guess, for when a diabetic takes an unscientific amount of insulin, rather than working it out.

BOLUS: the insulin a diabetic takes with each meal, or to correct a high blood sugar. Another word that non-diabetics may be puzzled by.

By now you are probably scratching your head, wondering why on earth I've made these posters. Well dear friends, I will tell you :) I'm a tertiary tutor at the local college, and I work in the art department teaching typography, design, web, and digital media. It's good fun. Once a year the art tutors get together and put on a little exhibition to show the students and the local community what we've been up to.

At first I didn't know what to make my artwork about, but then I thought what better subject than diabetes? But how to portray it in a way which is both useful to diabetics (ie, improves knowlege and understanding of T1 diabetes) and sympathetic to diabetics (ie, not crass or gross, using obvious imagery like needles, blood, or the horrors that get repeated in the media about diabetes).

This artwork, although not large, is my first foray into making diabetes related art. And so far it's getting a good reception by those who've seen it. The exhibition opens on Tuesday and I can't wait!

It's made of ink on watercolour paper, on cotton printed fabric. Each piece is hung separately from a bamboo pole, perpendicular to the wall:

The first thing the viewer will see when they step into the gallery.

The five posters are hung perpendicular to the wall, to obscure the straight view onto the images.

I love the shadows created by the pieces, and how they become a floating sculpture, rather than just flat pictures on a wall.

Kitch floral prints were chosen for the backing, to tie the pieces into my home.

The viewer will have to come up really close and stick their head in the 40cm gap between each poster to view them properly.  I like that!

The posters depict words created by, specific to, or repurposed by the diabetes community. The underlying themes in this work include diabetes, community, language, and the interplay between secret and public. I chose this visual style to work as a visual pun on the idea of embroidery samplers, sometimes called needlepoint samplers. I've turned my posters into graphic samplers dealing with words related to diabetes, which is synonymous with needles. :)

Here's a short timelapse video of the making-of one of the posters:

And here's some shots from the installation of the work:

Tying tiny knots in fishing nylon line, to hang each poster.

The day was like a aerobic step-class from hell. I went up and down the ladder soooo many times! Ah, we must suffer for out art! :P

Final touches, straightening and checking the pieces before tidying up the room and setting the lighting.

It's been a mad day, with a crazy rush to get everything done and put together. A couple of lows interrupted my day, and I couldn't get above 5.2mmol/L until about 6pm. Oh, they've all caught up with me now though, I'm 17.2! Bah! :P

Roll on Saturday! :D

If all goes according to plan...

...I will be installing my artwork tomorrow. I PROMISE to post up some photos soon!

I've made five posters, all hand drawn. I haven't done so much "manual" graphic design work for about 6 years, so now when I look at the plain white sheet of paper I see spots! haha. Eyes are getting pretty tired. That mild headache I mentioned yesterday is still here, and I think it's just a combination of eye strain and naughty hayfever medication being a monkey.

Hubby and I have just been for a lovely walk along the seaside walkway here in town. He made a wonderful steak dinner, and then we did the dishes together :) Awwwww :)

Finishing off my drawings this week has been hard, not only because I started to get a little impatient (I'm used to working in Adobe Illustrator software, so goin' old skool with pen and paper seems to take forever!), but because our kitchen table looks straight into the neighbour's backyard. And they have two little girls, toddlers, and all morning when I'm trying to work I hear them laughing or crying or eating dirt or chasing their kitten or whatever, and it it just so hard to work while that constant reminder is there. No. You can't have kids unless you either a) wait for 3 years or b) stump up the cash for private IVF. Bah.

I can't seem to find a "healthy" focus in my life right now. Every second thought is about either how we could have a baby, or what I will do if we can't. Actually, I also think about how I should stop from going MAD because of how I'm thinking! Seriously, it's getting me mighty depressed, made worse by the fact that I don't really fell comfortable talking about it with anyone. No one wants to hear me talk about this. It's not happy conversation. And a talk won't fix it so why bother? I have thought on a couple of occasions that perhaps I should consult a counsellor. And then I go and buy a lotto ticket instead, as I see that as being slightly more practical.

Yesterday I saw 3 baby-bump-bellies, 2 strollers, and had to work through the neighbours having what was practically an at-home creche for 3 - 4 babies. I just can't think of anything else. It is driving me insane. I can't be happy. Even out on our lovely walk, it was all going well when we met eldest step-son with a goodly-chunk of his family out also for a walk. Nice to see them, yes. Did it remind me that hubby already has kids, and that I am the only "parent" of his kids (they have four: mum, step-dad, dad, step-mum) who isn't actually a bona-fide parent?

In other, slightly related news/ramblings, I got the quote back for doing over the back garden. It's way too expensive, about double what I was willing to part with. So maybe we will look at doing it ourselves. But honestly, the first thought when I opened the quote was "ok, so I can't have that either, I can't have any of my dreams!" I know, a bit melo-dramantic, sorry! But I have my good days and my bad days. Days where I see a bazillion kid-related things are tough. I just want to shout at them "stop bloody torturing me!" Other days it's almost like I'm normal, pre-infertility label.

Yeah, so I began thinking, if I can look at spending money on landscaping, why not put some serious effort into saving up for IVF myself? I just reapplied for my teaching job, for next year, and I'm pretty sure I will get it. And it pays not too bad, so I will start saving like mad and living like a pauper. hehe, we'll see. Really, 11K would stretch us. We would have enough for treatment, but no money to feed/clothe a baby afterwards! :P

I have not heard back from nzfertility.org (could be because their site is down, perhaps?). A while back I wrote a letter which they said they would pass on to the clinic that treated us badly. Maybe after writing this post I will email them and see what's happening. Last time I spoke to the nice ladies there, they seemed to understand, and be sympathetic to our case.

I just feel like I now have no purpose in life. Hubby is much older, I love him, but I need to know that when I'm old, I have kids of my own to look after me. I really don't want to be alone in this world. And I don't want to miss out on being a mum, being a grand-mother, seeing my kids take their first steps, or burp all over me, or skin their knees and need a hug. From their mum: ME! I hate to think that my life is diverging from it's intended path, from my dreams, from what I always thought it would be. I know some people actively choose not to have kids. That's fine. But I have made the discovery that I do want kids badly, so not being able to fulfill that is really hard to deal with. Way harder than anything I've ever faced before, as I have to face it every day. Babies are everywhere in the media, and in town, and the step-kids come every second weekend so I can't even escape to my own home. :(

Sorry to be such a downer, but I'm stuck. I feel I have no direction in my life, and the little goals I'm setting myself just aren't cutting it. Once upon a time something like an exhibition would have ruled my life for months, I would have poured my heart and soul into it. Now, I just feel I have nothing to give. I feel empty because I'm just drifting. Don't get me wrong, my life is very comfortable. There is just no aim to what I do. And that scares me. I don't want to waste life, because I've fought so hard to be healthy and happy up til now.

Anyway, pictures for you tomorrow, I promise. :)

Dreaming of a patio, would you believe

Well, I decided I had to have something to take my mind of things. So a great garden adventure it is! I've been measuring the back garden, driving out to paving/cobblestone wholesalers, and I've even called a landscape architect round to view the property and get a quote ready! I know, you will call me mad as soon as you read the next line. We are only renting. But wait! This was my grandmother's house, and she used to have a beautiful garden here. My parents own it now and we rent it from them. Seriously, I plan to live here for quite some time, and I want somewhere to have a bbq out the back. :)

I'm on what would be called "spring break" in America, I guess. Just two weeks off in the middle of the semester, but I've not been lazing about. I'm actually getting ready for an exhibition!

I will post some pics of the artwork up here when they are finished. They deal with ideas around diabetes, typography, language and community. The exhibition itself is just for art tutors, and I got to design the "branding" for it too, which is cool. I am quite chuffed to be exhibiting again, my last job sucked all the creativity out of me, but now I'm actively encouraged to make art/design, so it feels great. I've been sitting at the sunny kitchen table every morning drawing and inking and growling at the cat for walking over all the nice clean paper. It will be a challenge to see my work up there alongside that of the other tutors, as not so long ago they were my tutors! I hope mine will be good enough! :D The exhibition starts next Tuesday, so hopefully I will have the artwork finished and ready to install tomorrow or Friday. Fingers crossed.

My diabetes control has been a bit higgeldy piggeldy over the hols, due to the facts that I am getting up much later, not working to a schedule, eating more, and doing less exercise. Ah, holidays. :P Oh and hayfever tablets are also in that mix, making me soooo sleeeeeepy. I didn't take mine today, and have been given a headache in return. Thanks, hayfever!

It also looks like I've picked up quite a substantial lead for some freelance web design. My sister works for a local boutique design house, and they need a web monkey to make sites... so I've been sending out quote after quote this week, and I have a meeting with the boss tomorrow - wish me luck!

Well, that's all for now. Must, quite literally, get back to the drawing board. Have a great week. :)