… for the first time in a week. I’ve had a rotten stinking cold that may or may not have been exacerbated by hayfever. It was hard to tell - neither decongestant or anti-histamines seemed to be doing the trick to start with, although thankfully Sudafed is doing its stuff now. There have definitely been cold-elements, a sore throat and cough amongst them, but I do get hayfever this early in the year as I’m allergic to some tree pollen, and the willow in my garden is covered in highly-sexed catkins at the moment.

Anyway, I finally made it up to Belfast today after a few days of cowering at home, being way too full of snot to want to inflict it on other people. I’m still very snotty (and some sod had used up the box of tisses I’d left in work) but it’s under control at last. Especially since I got some very nice soft tissues at lunchtime - I actually went for a bit of a walk in the sunshine, and bought 2 second-hand books and some Mexican takeaway. Not that I could taste my lunch though apart from, weirdly, the cheese. Oh well.

It’s been a really quiet week anyway. I did very little on the weekend except watch the last matches of this year’s 6 Nations. I was disappointed that Wales didn’t manage to win their match, of course, but it was quite sweet to see Ireland get their first Grand Slam in 61 years. I can afford to be magnanimous as well, seeing as Wales have had 2 in the past 5 years…

I’ve mostly been watching an awful lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 4 or 5 episodes a day. I’m up to the start of Season 3 now, thanks to the box set of DVDs I splurged on last month (well, they were ridiculously cheap). Watching Buffy has taken the place of reading for me for a while, which feels a bit weird - but not that much, since watching it is almost the equivalent of reading a favourite novel. Character development, plot points, and wanting to experience what happens next even though I know what is going to happen…

Speaking of TV, of course, it was the last ever episode of Battlestar Galactica on Tuesday. I watched by myself since Colin was in work, and I’m glad I did since I unashamedly cried myself to a headache. I was about 90% satisfied with what happened, which isn’t a bad percentage. And that’s another box set I’ll need to buy…

… for oh-so-many reasons, of which the biggest for me is that it’s where I live. I moved here in 2000, when the peace process was already well underway, and things have improved steadily here year on year.

And apart from a stupid, brain-dead, ignorant, violent few (many of whom are in their teens and early 20s and can’t even remember the Troubles), most of the people in Northern Ireland want things to just stay peaceful, thank you very much.

To that end, yesterday there were peace rallies in several towns and cities across NI. And since I was in Belfast yesterday, I went down to the one at City Hall. Couldn’t hear the speakers very well; could hear the piper (although his high notes sounded a bit wrong); could definitely hear how several thousand people can all be silent at once.

Things might get a bit fucked-up again. (Note that I don’t normally swear on this blog, but this is something that calls for strong language.) I really really really hope not.

Also today, I am mostly … not being a wimp

… while getting more of my skin tags removed, since the doctor went straight for the liquid nitrogen this time. No scalpels involved. On the downside, he was poking some of the smaller ones, which meant the surrounding skin got scalded as well, and will probably be painful for quite a while.

So I have multiple pains in the neck at the moment. It’ll all be worth it though. One more visit should see the majority of them gone for good.

… and even more of one than I already knew I was, in fact.

I can’t handle injections - even the thought of maybe having to need one makes me turn pale and feel faint. The only time I’ve been to try and give blood, I went so white and shaky after the finger-prick (to test type and quality) that the nurse told me to go away and never come back.

(At least I tried - most of my colleagues wouldn’t even do that.)

Anyway, I thought my twenty-year phobia was limited to injections, since I’ve had my ears and even my navel pierced quite happily. (Dad, if you’re reading, it was years ago, and I took it out fairly soon because the skin wore thin.)

So, after deciding it was time to get the crop of harmless skin tags removed from my neck, when I went to my doctor’s appointment today, I thought I’d be fine. My GP was going to nick the damn things off with a scalpel - minimal bleeding and no fuss, although I have so many that I’d need a couple of appointments. Still, it would all be over quickly enough today.

And yes, in the event, it was over quickly. My doctor carefully and quickly removed the first of the tags from the back of my neck - I couldn’t even see what he did. It hurt, but not even as much as burning my fingers on a hot plate had done the night before. The silver nitrate tab he touched to the wound stung a lot too, but it was still just a small pain. It didn’t even bother me to look at the little lump of my skin now lying on a piece of tissue on the table.

But the low level of ouch didn’t stop me from going white and starting to shake, not did it stop the irrational and involuntary tears. A few sniffles later, and we decided not to carry on with cutting the tags off.

Thankfully, the other option was to have them frozen witha dab of liquid nitrogen, which kills the cells so that they drop off in a week or so. Although this actually hurt a lot more than the slicing, it didn’t bother me in the slightest, and my GP successfully attacked at least half a dozen. (And on the plus side, I didn’t have to have black marks all over my neck from the silver nitrate.) And I’ll be going back in a few weeks to get another batch done.

But I was still rather embarrassed to realise what a wimp I can be…

Also today, I am mostly … cooking yesterday’s leftover asparagus

… into a very tasty omelette with ham and cheese. I’d do that again - not that I have leftover asparagus very often in the first place. But it was good. And the asparagus counted as one of my 5-a-day… I’m desperately trying to eat more fruit and veg at the moment as I haven’t been getting enough this winter.

I did quite a bit of cooking over the weekend, and made sure we both got our greens though. I hadn’t been going to bother on Saturday; I couldn’t have cared less about Valentine’s Day and anyway, the rugby was on (Wales beat England, thankfully - I hate it when we’re favourites for that match; it makes me nervous of hubris). I did cook dinner on Saturday in the end though - a two-course candlelit dinner with wine, no less - and I’m glad I did, since I’d barely seen Colin for a week or more. We crashed out on the sofa afterwards with the cats to watch Tropic Thunder, and all-in-all, I had a good weekend. And I’m looking forward to a peaceful and productive one next week too.

… thankfully. Not perfectly, but well enough to sit at the computer and work as long as I swill my eyes with Optrex every few hours (and use my medicated drops in the bad eye, of course). Boredom over, hurrah.

Just as well, because it’s raining. A lot. Nothing new, of course, in Northern Ireland, but it look as if our summer has been and gone already with the warm, sunny weather we had in May and early June. Again, nothing new. That’s usually when we get our summer; then once the kids are off school at the end of June, it rains nonstop till they go back at the start of September. Keeps them out of our garden, at least…

… due to an infection in my right eye. Luckily, I was fine all last week when we were in Wales; we got back on Saturday and on Sunday morning I woke up to find that I couldn’t see properly out of my right eye. I didn’t get anything for it till Monday (stupid closed pharmacists) but it’s been getting better since I got the antibiotic eye drops. Yay.

I shouldn’t really be on the computer/watching TV/reading, in case I strain my good eye - the bad one is of course covered up - but what else is there to do when it’s raining, aside from housework?

Also today, I am mostly … pretending that it isn’t more than three months since I last blogged

… because that doesn’t really bear thinking about. Well, I have been blogging - just on Sharp Words, not here.

Too much personal crap has happened anyway for me to want to write up or even really remember. The salient points are probably:

• We had a round of redundancies in work including my junior though my job is safe even if I am now managed by someone in Canada.
• Colin’s stepdad passed away at the beginning of May after many weeks in hospital/hospice and finally home; the leukaemia and the other cancers finally caught up with him.
• We’re getting married on Friday 12th September this year.

.. with work, with my lack of weekend, with my general lack of motivation, with my lingering cold.

Well, that last isn’t too bad compared to the week before. I finally made it back into the office on Tuesday, and although I’m still coughing a lot and getting through way too many tissues and menthol lozenges, I’m functional. Mostly. I’m still really really tired as I haven’t had a proper convalescence, but I managed to stay in bed till after noon today which has helped.

I have a lot of work to do though, including yesterday and today. I was in the office yesterday, which meant listening to Wales beat Italy via internet TV streaming, and then a lot of listening to the radio on the way home for the Ireland v Scotland match. 3 out of 3 for Wales so far though… but with our toughest matches to come (Ireland and France), I don’t think we’ll get the Grand Slam this year. We’re in with a good shot at the overall Championship though.

Although my work deadline is this coming Friday, I have a suspicion that things won’t be over by then. Although I wouldn’t say no to a couple of extra days to get everything done in…. Argh. Tired. Fed up. Can’t wait till my time off in March…