A Bit of Whitter For Ya.

There was a bit of an accident down the Rabbit Hole. Our great and benevolent Queen, rather squiffy after an evening of quaffing margaritas, tripped up on her way from the royal throne to the …um … other "royal throne" and bumped rather clumsily into Norman, the Royal Executioner and Baseball Bat Wielder, who lost his grip on his ax.

You'll be relieved to know it was quick. Janey, Queen of Hearts shall be missed by all, just as soon as kingdomwide celebration mourning is over. In about 10 years or so. Her rule was torturously long but in the end her coffin was quite short.

The upside is that whinging is very much back on the agenda. Whine away folks! Whine away!

OK then - I'll go first! Since I fell prey to the dreaded lurgi in December I've not really been myself. Obviously the whole back saga has been aired here already so the update on that is that the chiropractor sessions are helping enormously but then I go to my job where the average height of the clientelle is three feet and the furniture is about 18 inches off the floor. The upshot was that I kept undoing all the good of the back cracking by hobnobbing with the elves. So finally I had to face the fact that I was going to have to stay off work to get better. My resistance to this piece of common sense is because it's really hard to manage in a school when staff are absent. Teaching and special needs assistants like myself, don't get covered. The class just has to do without which places an extra burden on the, already over-worked, other members of staff. However it was clear to me that I wasn't going to get better as long as I kept going into work so I packed myself off to the GP yesterday. I'm now off on the doctor's orders for a minimum of a week, although she reckons that 10 days is a fairly conservative estimate. While I was there I mentioned this annoying cough I've had since mid December that only seems to bother me in the evening. Having had a quick check and answering a pile of questions it was established that I was running a temperature of about 100ºF and that nasally feeling I had is because I had a sinus infection. For the last 6 weeks. Now I will admit that I've been unusually warm recently, given that I normally have the core temperature of the Snow Queen, but actually that's been quite nice. I do realise that I've been a bit off but it's amazing how you get used to it. One day in to the antibiotics and I actually feel a whole lot more chipper. My hands are freezing again though. Still it's a small price to pay for being able to breathe again.

So on my first day off work I walked the dog twice (not only OK but recommended for back probs) and I started a new short story. My public humiliation challenge is doing well too (see top right) so all in all I'm a happy little Janey.