Its a Whinge

Everybody is whingeing. Everybody is tired, stressed and paranoid (except when it happens that others really are out to get them). War or some sort of hissy fit is in the air and everyone is showing their true colours, whether that's self involvement or abuse of power, or just a desire to hide under a rock and chant (or whimper) until peace is restored.

Friendships are breaking down and the trick, I suppose, is to walk away with your head high. We have no control over the behaviour of others, we can only choose whether or not to go to war or to extract revenge.

This is only me grumbling. I needed somewhere to do it, and here it is.

Peace!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Went to physio yesterday.

Its a day trip - two hours there and up to two hours in transit twice a week, plus the attendant faffing about at home before and after.

Lets just say I could really do with finding or founding a club/moaning corner for pre-menopausal women on blood thinners. Belt and braces just isn't doing it. On top of that it takes water retention to a whole new level (you haven't turned Violet, Violet), broken nights have become discomfort 'broken' by occasional sleep, oh and I found out that waving your arms about in time to the music can be a really, incredibly stupid thing to do if there isn't enough blood left to go round your system. Thank God that was in a gym, surrounded by nurses, and strapped to a heart monitor, although to be frank, if anyone suggested I 'throw my arms about' or be in any way enthusiastic about anything outside of the cardiac rehab twilight zone, they would receive the derision they deserve.

Hey, so I got that pre-med trippy sensation for free, so what; I managed to look like the weak, silly one in a gym full of comparative geriatrics (next youngest is about 20 years my senior), half of whom had heart surgery or a stroke. It also made the glands behind my ears hurt, a lot, and put me off throwing myself into anything else, which rather defeated the object of sacrificing another weekday to get there in the first place.

After an hour walking through circuit training, there came the lecture/education session. This time the video was all about cholesterol. Most of it I knew and rather disconcertingly I was already a reasonably healthy eater before this all went on, so have been frantically trying to scrabble for any idea of other things I could do to lower cholesterol, such as living off algae and sand.

Listening to these nurses, going vegan would be a good start, although to be fair most of the questions came from portly old men blinking like lost children at the thought of having to cut the fat off their meat, stop the missus doing roasties in lard every day of the week or go without Brie on the cheeseboard (the idea of 'no cheeseboard' was beyond their comprehension).

I was reminded of the granny in The Royle Family who, desperate to feed a vegetarian, refused to accept that anything with just lettuce in it counted as a proper sandwich and asked "Could she just have wafer thin ham?" Like if it was 'wafer thin' then it wouldn't really count as any ham at all....

I never meant to write a long post. My children have left the front room and gone to play and now I feel guilty again and know that I need to get off the computer.

The whole point of mentioning this medical palaver was for one fact.

Husband is like an unwilling dieter and is fixating, somewhat, on the things that have registered with him as 'forbidden'. When we were both seen together before I was let out of hospital, we were told little gems like how rarely we should eat pizza, how we should stick to plain biscuits like rich teas - general information that didn't really relate to our diet. We never used to have biscuits in the house, but now he just keeps on coming home with new varieties of plain looking biscuits. We're drowning in the damn things. The funny thing is that yes, they all look very plain and boring, but looking as appetizing as a lump of cardboard is no guarantee of a low fat content. He just cant wrap his head round the concept that less sugar generally equates to more fat and that therefore all varieties of crackers, with or without sun dried tomato flavour, are generally listed on the 'so you want to die' diet sheet under the heading 'yes now you're really asking for it'.

I have this theory that for men, standing in a supermarket aisle, in public, and being seen to turn a packet over and read the fat content is something so grossly humiliating that they can't even admit they are too embarrassed to do it, for fear of womenfolk falling on the floor with laughter. So they go (he comes) home after every independent shopping trip and performs an award winning impersonation of a total idiot who just didn't think, again...

So here I am waiting to find out if I am condemned to live on rabbit food and lentils like some antisocial walking fart machine, yet I am faced with a house full (courtesy of husband) of:

• Glossy, glamorous, beckoning biscuits ("well they looked low fat")
• Slabs of high strength cheese, tainting the fridge with a heavenly scent that screams 'toast me' ("Well I won't eat any at home, but I need it for my packed lunch". Yeah, right)
• Crisps and chocolate biscuits ("For the kids")

Bastard. And he wonders why I tear into fruit and wholemeal toast and veggies, sort of non-stop.

Doh! There was a point to this, wasn't there.

Husband has always been the most boring man I have ever known. If you want a laugh, or to get onto theories or to have a heart to heart, he's great. If you want to get off the sofa and remember what the end of your own street looks like, he's too tired. He wouldn't choose to go out at all and hasn't attempted a fairground ride for the last fifteen years that I know of, so we are more than used to not drinking at all - perhaps a single bottle of red on one night over the weekend. Heaven forbid if I started to feel like a party - if he couldn't pull the 'too tired' card he could still choose between saying he'd got a headache and saying his acid was playing up. I haven't owned nor needed a 'going out' dress since he left the last company he worked for that ran a Christmas do, about twelve years ago.

Why am I still here? I love him. And the kids. Part of the mental crisis that has come out of this heart attack is realising that I was saving up things to do, biding my time until the children were old enough, and now I have to realise that I am probably no longer physically equipped to do any of them. I doubt anyone would let me go parachuting, let alone go on some of the bigger, newer fairground rides.

Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, as far back as I can see, and now as far forward, too.

And that still wasn't the point.

The point was that his panic buying extended beyond biscuits to red wine, as we were told we could have one or two units a night up to five nights a week.

Suddenly he's after a bottle of wine 3 or 4 nights a week and a can of lager on the other nights. Still pretty moderate, many might say, but 'many' doesn't include the cardiac nurses.

Nope, the whole point of this post is that yesterday I discovered that red wine is good for you if you have a single glass, and that's a pub size glass, not a home size one, and that any more drink than that will mean the alcohol undoes all the good of the flavinoids, or whatever.

A pub glass, 125 mil.
Not a drop more, or there's no point and no benefit.
Allegedly.


I must admit even I am thinking 'fuck that, I just wont bother at all then'. I'm just not exactly looking forward to telling husband, I have a feeling he's going to flip out like I have told him to choose between me and a life.

And I don't suppose it'll help one bit to point out how he already put me through the same choice. Shame, that, really.