Little Coloured Pills

I scared myself this week. I got sick. One minute I was making dinner for myself (Callum being in France for a few days) and the next I was overcome with the need to pay homage to the white bowl. Suddenly I went from someone who is rarely ill to a complete hypochondriac, my mind battered with possible doomsday predictions. I hate going to the GP as 1) I hate waiting for anything and 2) he wasn’t there when Tony needed him most but I did wonder whether I should have taken up that offer of a health check. Since this sudden life in limbo nausea had decided to manifest itself outside of GP working hours however, I did the next best thing. Ginger tea and bed. And a whole lot of hairy pillows. Sleep has the most amazing health properties especially when one is cosseted by woofers and I was well enough yesterday to polish off a packet of M&M’s, the ultimate medicine.

I suppose my sudden obsession about my lurgy stems from losing Macgyver, Tony and Pop to silent killers. Whilst Pop had been ill for some time, none of us thought he wasn’t going to recover and both Tony and Macgyver fell victim to the invisibility cloak so many cancers wear. And being on one’s own doesn’t help either, my thoughts varied from “who will know if I collapse into unconsciousness?” to “can one give oneself CPR?”. My positivity resolution had shot out the door. Thank God for little coloured chocolates.

It struck my mind a few days later that the possible cause of the queasiness was my decision to ‘fix’ the half-finished little bedroom upstairs . With most of the feedback from the viewings being about the rooms upstairs needing work (I mean who moves into a house that doesn’t need some personalising?), I decided to paint the walls, fill in the remaining cracks and sand the floors. Only Steven who had plastered the walls had seemingly jammed the window closed and me, being me, opted to do all the above anyway despite the obvious health and safety warning. Those who know me will say, of course you did because you’re impatient and when you decide to do something, a little thing like lack of ventilation isn’t going to stop you.

I suppose learning to cope on your own is part of a widow’s journey but that doesn’t make it any easier. And even though I’m nearly two years in, there are still times when I scream about the unfairness of it all. Actually I scream at Tony a lot, especially when I drip paint on the newly sanded floor or get bits of floor on the newly painted skirting board. Mind you I’m just a little bit pleased with myself for those magnolia accented walls although a friend of mine said you should always call the colour Sussex Cream, it sounds much classier…

“When an eighty-five pound mammal licks your tears away, then tries to sit on your lap, it’s hard to feel sad” ( Kristan Higgins. Author)