Hot Doctors + Poorly Tummy = No Fair

This past week I’ve been feeling somewhat delicate in my tummy area. I won’t go into details, because that would be gross. After looking up my symptoms on the internet (note, don’t do this, it is almost always cancer) I decided to go to a NHS walk in centre, just to make sure everything was ok, and so as not to bother my GP if it was nothing to worry about. The nurse was lovely and said most likely it was gastroenteritis. Score. But he wanted to rule some things out and so hey yo, go pee in this cup for me, k? And I had high levels of ketones in my pee, and he suggested I go see my doc, just to be on the safe side.

I felt pretty rough last night, so I made an executive decision not to go to work today. It seemed wise to stay away from people (I seem to have already infected one colleague), and close to my own bathroom. So I spent the morning curled up in bed with Sam and Dean Winchester. Oh if only. I blame the watching of Supernatural for my being happy to sell my soul to the devil if he’d take away my tummy ache. This afternoon I went to the doctor.

I’m sitting there waiting to go in, wondering who this doctor is, because I don’t recognise the name and will I ever see a doctor more than once? (Probably help if I went more often, to be fair.) Then someone sticks their head around the corner and calls my name.

Oh. F*ck.

I could have had the old man doctor. I could have had the lady doctor. But no no no, I get Hot Doctor. What am I, in a frickin episode of ER?! Do they keep the hot doctors on call especially for this sort of thing?

‘So what seems to be the problem?’ Don’t make me say it, don’t make me say it…I swear I didn’t look him in the eye the whole time I was there. So I tell him the gist and the thing about the ketones (which I really want to call keynotes for some reason), and he said it was most likely caused by dehydration. But we’ll just check that out to be sure. So I go and pee in a cup, again. And I met the President of the United States, again. Oh wait, that wasn’t me, that was Forrest Gump. And, also, can they not give you something to carry the pee around in? I had to walk through the waiting room with the thing, I might as well have had a neon sign on my head reading ‘GOING TO PEE IN A CUP NOW!’ And of course on the way back…oh well, anyway.

I hand my pee to Hot Doctor. Seriously, just kill me. And he checks it and all is fine and dandy in Carrie Pee Land. No ketones. Dehydration wins. So yes, I have gastroenteritis. It shouldn’t last longer than a week, but it can last two (oh frickin joy).

So that’s that. I said thank you and a hasty goodbye to Hot Doctor, and my cheeks burned all the way home. Pretty boys should not be allowed to be doctors. Fact.

P.S. Mum, if you happen to read this before you speak to me, chill. I’m fine. I saw a doctor and everything. I feel better today. No worries.

Chicken Soup for the…Uh, Cold

Pfft, I am poorly. I am hoping it’s one of those ‘yes it’s a scratchy throat and snotty nose but it will be gone in the morning oh yes it will’ miraculous but annoying colds that appear every now and again just to keep you on your toes. I am not yet convinced. I am in maybe hour twelve of this cold and I am fed up already. I’m fed up of the painful throat that feels like I’m swallowing razor blades, I’m fed up of the constant runny nose and that irritating ‘I need to sneeze-I want to sneeze-please oh lord in heaven let me sneeze god damn it!’ crap. Achoo. I am also fairly hot but hopefully that’s just the heating. See, I am still optimistic.

I spent most of my day at work in a total fog and my desk was buried under tissue, and not the good kind with balsam, oh no, the horrible scratchy kind that gives you a horrible sore, red nose. Such times call for desperate measures of procrastination. Go make a cup of tea. Better yet, ask the entire office if they want one too. They will. Then you can idle in the kitchen while the kettle boils and ooh, look, we are out of milk, off to the shops! Wander around Tesco for a bit trying to decide if you can get away with adding biscuits to purchase. Maybe not.

Come back and make tea, scroll through emails for a bit and separate them into nice, colour coordinated sections (yes, I actually do this, you try having three bosses), do some photocopying, yell at the photocopier as it eats your copies and beeps at you. Do a bit of filing. Usually I will ignore my filing until there’s so much of it that it’s impossible to hide, but it’s a good job to do when you’ve cold a coldy brain. Hmmm, is it time for more tea? Must be. And ooh, nice colleague brought chocolate back from their holiday, I can have some seeing as I am poorly…SOMEONE ATE THE LAST OF THE MILKA!

Damn it, should have bought biscuits.

Now I’m going to make chicken soup, because that’s what you do when you’re poorly. Not that I can taste it anyway.  All right, I’m done feeling sorry for myself, soup I say!

Shameless Plug

I am back at work today. The thought of all those emails piling up in my inbox was making me sweat more than my cold and I felt guilt ridden even though I am, in fact, poorly. I feel like a skiver. Of course I’ve come in and there isn’t actually anything in urgent need of attention so I could technically have slept some more. Oh well. I do feel a bit better, although I had a slight panic last night when I thought I’d developed a rash and even went so far as to roll a tumbler over it just in case. Turns out it wasn’t Meningitis. Or a rash for that matter. I must have been sat funny. I am such a hypochondriac.

Anyway, I can get through one day can’t I? I can make it to 5 pm I’m sure.

On to the plug:

Marcia has created an excellent website/pop culture blog concerned with all things tv related. It’s full of news and brilliant commentary and I can’t remotely do it justice so why don’t you pop on over to Pop Vultures and have a look yourself?

Continuing with things internet related, as of yesterday I am addicted to Stumble Upon, a website that lets you click through different pages by adding a button to your internet tool bar. Click, and you’re onto someone’s blog. Click and it’s news. Click and a crafts page. I get lots of those. My favourite stumble from yesterday was this bizarre thing. You click the horses and they sing. Or they do if you have Flash installed which I don’t seem to have so it’s not quite as fun at work.

Right, onto some work. Maybe.

How Not to Bake

I am home! Woot! I am still poorly. No woot. My Tonsillitis has evolved into a full on cold which is just crap. I woke up at 10 am after not great sleep but figured it was time to get my arse up anyway. But of course it wasn’t 10 am it was 9 am, seeing as the bloody clocks went back. Huh. I couldn’t sleep anyway. Not being able to breathe makes it rather difficult. But my Mommy is looking after me (a bit) with hot honey and lemon drinks, and I am getting cuddles from Lucy, who is just the cutest dog ever, must be said.

I had promised Jenna I would make her a cheesecake for today as we are going to theirs for Sunday dinner. So, I gave Mum the list of what was needed and we went shopping. Here’s a little fact about my mother. She cannot bake. At all really. She can do many things, baking is just not one of them. I guess the baking gene skips a generation or something, seeing as Nin is fabulous at it. I am ok. I can follow a recipe and most of the time it comes out looking and tasting as it should. With Mum it’s rather more hit and miss. Plus, she has no patience, so when it comes time to put it in the oven and leave it there, she can’t, so constantly opens the oven door so nothing rises. You get very flat cakes when Mum is in charge.

This is all me setting the scene for yesterday. So, we went shopping. We needed a cheesecake tin and a Parkin tin. We went to Dunelm. And Tesco. And back to Dunelm. Because Mum refuses to pay 3.49 (I cannot make the pound key work on this computer) for a tin. Anyway, in Tesco we get a tin and our ingredients. Only this was a bit dangerous too, seeing as Mum hadn’t written down the quantities of what we needed, even though I’d given them to her. Eventually we trundle home with everything we need, have a cup of tea and then I get started. I did all the main bit and then set to making the base. This is butter and smashed up digestive biscuits, not hard, and my favourite bit is smashing the biscuits. Only the tin we bought was quite big so I needed more than the recipe said to fill it. Fine. But this is where it went wrong. Mum said she would melt the butter while I broke up the biscuits. I’d put the scale in the sink and couldn’t be bothered to wash it to measure, so I said three scoops of butter should be fine. ‘Three scoops like this?’ she says. I eyed the huge scoop with suspicion. ‘Two scoops’ I said with caution. Not enough it turns out.

And then I made the fatal mistake. I turned my back. When I came back the pan was awash with butter. Here’s another thing about my mother. She has a thing about butter. She uses it like it’s going to be the last butter she ever has. When making a sandwich or toast it’s spread on as thick as a door stop. It’s pretty gross.

Anyway, I added the biscuits…what we had here was digestive soup. Huh. I made more crumbs to add. Not the right consistency at all. I used the rest of the packet. Not a digestive was left in the house and it still wasn’t right. So what were we to do? Well, us being us, we fell about in fits of giggles for ten minutes, unable to do anything except make jokes. When we had calmed down Mum went to the co-op for more biscuits. Eventually I managed to make it something like it should have been, but it was still a bit mushy. God knows what it will taste like. Bless my mum.

I’m sitting here now listening to her scold the dog because Lucy is demanding attention and love, which usually means sticking her nose in the way of what you need. So I’m home, and still feeling sorry for myself, though loving that I am not at work tomorrow. I get to eat a lovely dinner later, let’s hope I can taste it, and then tonight it’s The Long Way Down which I’m really looking forward to. The lovely Ewan McGregor off on his travels. Though it’ll only make me want to do the same. Well, not on a bike, but you get the idea.