Yelly Writes

Migraine malaise

Since late Saturday night I have had a constant companion.

Nope, am not talking about Alan.  I wouldn’t mind having Alan around all the time at all!  If anything, if he wasn’t around I don’t think I’d have survived the last few days.  I’ve been visited by quite a mean migraine.  It started late Saturday night.  I didn’t really think of it as a migraine, as such.  I thought it was just a headache.  I thought that if I went to bed, it would go by the time I woke up on Sunday.  No such thing happened!

I woke up with a stonking-make-me-cry-buckets-like-a-baby headache.  I moved, my headache pounded.  I shifted, I felt nauseated.  Even a faraway neighbour’s dog barking was causing me torturous pain!  Everything looked intensely bright, like everything was a huge, over-exposed photograph.  I felt like my head was going to explode!  I blubbered whilst I was talking to my parents and sister, occasionally asking them not to talk to loudly (I don’t think they were talking too loud though).  So finally, I took massively strong pain killers and burrowed under the duvet and slept.  I woke up nearly 3 hours later feeling like my head had been hit by a sledgehammer then wrapped in a turban.  I was not well.

I stupidly thought that I would be able to manage work on Monday.  I pushed myself, despite the throbbing head, to finish an entire day of work.  I went home barely able to make it up the steps without crying out for someone to carry me up to the train platform.  For the first time in a very long time, I actually enjoyed sitting in the cold wind because the cold helped ease my headache!  But I got home and I was a useless shell of a human being (I probably wasn’t but I certainly felt like it!  I felt absolutely spent!).  I didn’t go to work the following day and then took myself off to the doctors’ to get checked.

I got signed off from work for a week, but did I stay home?  Nooooo!  I got up the following day, got ready for work despite the massive headache and took the hour-long train ride to work because my sick note said “until migraine settles” and I thought that if I worked, my migraine would settle.  But I got sent home!  Mostly because I was signed off and wasn’t fit to work and my firm wasn’t insured in case anything happened to me at work on account of my current state of unfitness.

Fast forward 48 hours and I am climbing the walls a tiny bit bored.  It’s weird because I can definitely say I feel much better because my headache isn’t as bad, but it hasn’t left.  My head doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode anytime soon though.  That’s a vast improvement!

I have my fingers crossed that I am going to get better soon.  I am a bit tired of this headache…and a bit annoyed with it now.

Yelly Writes

Mothers Day

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”- Washington Irving

She held me when I needed to be held, when I needed to feel safe. She dried my tears when my heart broke and told me everything would be okay in the end. She taught me how to read and write and made sure I treasured books so that I would learn, and never be bored on my own. She taught me how to speak so that I would find the right words to express myself. She told me the harsh realities so that I wouldn’t walk the world with rose-coloured glasses, so that I could be pragmatic too. She also taught me that kindness should always be my guiding principle. She walked with me as I grew in faith…it would take me forever to write down how much my mum has guided me and held my hand as I was growing up so that I could be independent when I grew up. I cannot say thank you enough Mama. I love you.

I am glad that I get to celebrate this amazing woman I call “Mother” twice.  Happy Mothers Day Ma!

Happy Mothers Day

Yelly Writes

It’s a girl!

So the UK celebrated the much anticipated birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s second child.  The UK has a new princess and she is to be called Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge (queue strings of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely).

Princess Charlotte

Yelly Writes

The perfect Sunny Afternoon

So I apparently love the music of the Kinks!  Who knew?

Alan has brilliant taste in musicals and he’s always challenged me (in his own quiet way) to watch something different each time.  I didn’t think I was going to love Rock of Ages, but he won tickets, we went and I was standing up and jumping up and down like a mad thing towards the end of the musical.  I thought I was going to hat We Will Rock you, but I was bopping my head to each song.  I didn’t think I knew a lot of Queen song, but apparently I did!  I didn’t know what The Commitments was about.  Alan got the movie, we watched it and I fell in love with the songs.  The theatre version was even better!  I was up there dancing like a woman crazed whilst Mustang Sally was sung!

One musical I was totally unsure about Sunny Afternoon.  I wasn’t entirely sure I liked the Kinks so I wasn’t sure I’d love the musical.  But Alan had already booked tickets so we were going.  But guess what, I apparently knew more songs by The Kinks that I thought I did.  And I loved the musical.  So much so that I agreed to watch it again!

Sunny Afternoon - Stage

I was so pleased that Sunny Afternoon won Best New Musical in the 2015 Laurence Olivier awards.  Because it was well-deserved.  If you get the chance to (I think they’ve added more dates – don’t quote me as I could be very mistaken!), go and see it.  If you don’t, at least buy the CD of the London cast performing.  My favourite of favourites is the a cappella version of Days.  It will tug at your heart strings!

Harold Pinter Theatre - Sunny Afternoon

Yelly Writes

Easter Love

Amidst all the posts about Easter egg hunts, chocolate eggs and bunnies, I allow myself to wallow in the real meaning of Easter.  I rarely write about my faith.  But I get through all the difficult situations in my life by clinging to my faith.

I love the commercial celebration of Easter.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love all the Easter themed cakes, chocolates and all the food that people normally serve during Easter.  But to me, first and foremost, Easter is a celebration of God’s love for us.  Because God loved us so much that He allowed his son Jesus Christ to die in our place for our sins.  Easter is God’s gift to us, because through Christ’s death we are saved from eternal death, and through Christ’s resurrection, there is the hope that one day, we will be with God the Father, just as Jesus Christ rose to ascend to heaven to sit at God the Father’s right hand.

One of my favourite Easter quotes is from Basil Hume: “The great gift of Easter is hope – Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in His ultimate triumph, and in His goodness and love, which nothing can shake.” 

So HAPPY EASTER everyone!

Easter is LOVE

Yelly Writes

Be careful what you wish for!

I remember myself saying this several times during a conversation whilst I was making tea at work:  “I wish I’d get properly sick just so that I can get over it!”

I did just that.  Get properly ill.  Could not get up out of bed, had no energy, had a massive headache and just felt like death.  I still feel that way today but as I’ve been off work properly for a week (I went to work on Tuesday, but went home after 3 hours!) I need to go to work on Monday.  Although, if I’m honest, I don’t feel like I am actually well already.

Be careful what you wish for.  Because sometimes when you get what you want, it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to.  That being said, I’d love the win the lottery.  Properly.

Yes please!

Yelly Writes

Quotable Mother Goose

I am a worrier and I had to smile when I read this quote in the book that I am currently reading (Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman).  It was so apt and so what I needed to read!

Serendipity!

This is going into my worry journal!

Mother Goose quotable

Yelly Writes

Sometimes you just need rest!

I have been quite stressed lately…and I think it’s because I’ve been working too hard and I’ve been dealing with…issues.  I’ve had a reflective look back at my life and during the most stressful situations, I’ve noticed that I read a lot of books, fiction mostly.  And during the past 12 months, I’ve been reading up a storm!  My fiction reading is directly proportional to my stress levels (15 books in 6 months is a lot – more than a book every 2 weeks!).  I think I’m this close to a burnout.  I’ve also been reading loads about stress coping strategies and burnouts and how to spot them.  It’s not helping though because I know intrinsically, something’s got to change.

What I really need is a change of place, a change of pace, and…a change.  But tonight I’m going to go to bed and just rest!

nuh-night!

Yelly Writes

Life was made for lazy Saturdays

The trains are buggered today.  Well, they’re not exactly buggered.  Train services are suspended because Network Rail are “improving” current rail infrastructure.  They have suspended train services between Manningtree and Shenfield, so basically, I’m stuck in Harwich.  My question: why couldn’t they let the trains get to Colchester, at least?  But c’est la vie!  It’s cold anyway.

So I shall be couch potato, pretend I’m a Nigella-esque and cook delicious food (baked chicken with gravy and rice for lunch today, roast pork shoulder and roast vegetables for supper tonight, corned beef hash for lunch tomorrow and leftovers for supper) this weekend, read a book (probably that new Julia Quinn book, if I can be bothered to download it) and bake (I have chocolate cake in mind…mmmmm fudge!).

Oh and I’ve got to iron.

Yelly Writes

What snow?

I love snow.  But only when I don’t have to walk in it.

There’s something magical about fluffy precipitation.  And only if you don’t want to walk in it!  As I discovered this morning, as I trudged very carefully in the melting slush that was falling snow last night!  I let out a few panicked yelps as I discovered that my choice of footwear did not have any proper traction!

The next thing on my to-do list: find boots that I can wear to work that has traction!

And, yes, despite its obvious dangers, I still love snow.

Snow bench

P.S.  Harwich has not had any snow worth mentioning though.  I can’t help feeling that I’ve been left out by Mother Nature!