Good Things Come...

At Steve's at the moment. I woke up this morning at about 7:30am in quite a bit of pain, and also rather hungry. I spent half an hour stretching, rolled myself off the bed and wobbled out of the bedroom to the bathroom.

Mistake. It's suddenly got very cold. Our bedroom was warm enough - two warm people sleeping in it all night with the doors and windows closed will do that - but as soon as I opened the bedroom door, the chill hit me and my already sore, inadequately stretched muscles just slammed tense. My plans of morning-routine-ness dissolved, I went to the loo (*waves at people doing dodgy google searches*) and then back into bed as fast as I could.

In bed, and gently stretching to not much avail, I considered the options. I must take painkillers. To take painkillers, I must eat something. To eat something, I must go downstairs (this is the big benefit of the flat). To go downstairs, I will have to deal with the cold again, so I must put some clothes on. To put some clothes on, I need a certain amount of movement, of flexibility. I carried on stretching as best I could for about an hour, by which point things were as good as they were getting. Time to get dressed.

I got dressed carefully, which goes like this: Socks first, done sitting on the floor, and an outsize thick cotton t-shirt (easier than anything tight or anything with buttons), arms first, in front of me rather than in the air, and then gently over my head. Then sit on the edge of the bed, and dangle my pants from one hand while using the other hand to pull my leg up and hook my foot into the appropriate leg-hole. Repeat for the other side. Still sitting, attempt the same manoeuver for my jeans. Fail miserably. Fall off bed. Wrench already-sore back. Yelp. Steve wakes. Reassure Steve, and clamber back onto the bed, pause to get head together, and try again. Succeed. Half-roll along the edge of the bed to a standing position, supporting myself with hands on the bed. Stand properly, pull up pants and jeans. Deep breath. Check for mobile phone (in case of emergency) and painkillers and I'm good to go.

Dressed, the next task was to get down the stairs. There was no way I could safely walk it, so sliding down on my bum it was. Each stair I bumped down jarred my back and I had to stop three times before I reached the bottom. My walking stick and slippers were there waiting and I levered myself up without too much trouble, and on into the kitchen.

The first thing I did was flick on the heating. Then I got myself a glass of Innocent smoothie, my favourite strawberry and banana one. A glassfull contains 19 grapes, 10 strawberries, half a banana, and a squeeze of orange and lemon juice. That's got to be a couple of the five-a-day, and it tastes nice too. Highly recommended. To combat the health, I spread a slice of bread with Nutella, which I also recommend, and sat down to eat. Mostly this went well, until I dropped a piece of chocolate-smeared bread onto my jeans. Sticky side down, obviously. Still, it's easier to put jeans in the wash than to clean a carpet, so no harm done.

Thus fed, I swallowed the painkillers and wondered what came next - this was as far as my planning had got. I couldn't curl up on the sofa because of the chocolate spread on my jeans. I looked at the kettle, but although I really wanted a cuppa, I didn't like my chances for not pouring boiling water all over myself. My books and laptop and so on were all upstairs, so climbing it would have to be. Ouch. That is all. By the time I was halfway up, all ideas of laptops and books were gone from my head. I got to the top and lay on the carpet for a while, waiting for the throbbing to stop. Then I pushed off the jeans and crawled back into bed.

Steve is a wonderful, wonderful man. He was half-asleep still, but he wrapped me up in warmness and put lovely hot hands on the worst bits of pain, my neck and my back. The first stage of the painkillers began to take effect and I honestly felt that I was just going to evaporate away like a cloud of steam from a kettle (I still had that cuppa on my mind). All the cold and hard and struggle started to be slowly but surely replaced by warmth and soft and relaxy goodness. The pain was still extremely present, but it just didn't matter quite so much. Being "looked after" like that doesn't make me any less ill, but it makes it much easier for me to manage.

Of course, it couldn't last, it never does. After a while I simply HAD to start moving and stretching again. I don't want to wake him up, so I've come through here. But, I'm all happy in a haze of codiene and cuddles.

I reserve the right to come back and edit this post when I'm not quite so out of my tree.