Well, hello!
Nice to see you here, too. Thanks for all the good wishes.

There's an ancient chinese curse, possibly apocryphal, that says:

"May you live in interesting times;
May you come to the attention of those in authority;
May you find what you are looking for."

It seems apt because I just had a couple of very "interesting" weeks. It’s been rather like the perfect storm! So it’s entirely possible my body and mind decided to abdicate and flee reality by getting me checked into a hospital or sanitarium.

I sprained my ankle pretty badly on some ice a couple of weeks ago, so I was housebound for a while. Then just when I could safely get around again, I developed an infection and was put on a 2-week course of antibiotics. Meanwhile I’m stressed from swimming with sharks (aka the property developers who want to buy our house and build condos) and the shifty contract they put together that essentially would let them reclaim their deposit almost on a whim, and though I have a good lawyer, all the correspondence and wrangling back and forth can be tricky while having a fever and pain and therefore no concentration.

But the guano really hit the proverbial fan around here last week when our bedroom ceiling leaked and then crumbled by my side of the bed around midnight last Monday. We had to let it dry, which was not a speedy thing, given the wet sort of weather we've been having in the last week. This past Monday night, my handy neighbour came over and helped us put in a new piece of drywall. I suspect our 2004 roofer screwed up (or perhaps left a hole deliberately), but we can’t find him anymore - the company doesn't seem to exist. Anyway, there is no point in replacing the roof because the house will be demolished in ~ 18 months. We will just have to patch the roof a bit in the spring.

So, thanks to the stress and all the crap in the air from the wet building materials and the formerly squirrel-&-raccoon infested attic, I spent several days with bronchitis, as well as the awful side-effects from the antibiotics, which included GI spasms and a blood pressure spike.

I've had maybe half a nerve left, it was always getting trampled and poor Richard was continually caught in the crossfire. He has been amazing, taking very good care of me, not to mention being possibly more worried about my condition than I've been. But thanks to my health challenges, my temper's been hair-trigger for all of February so far (please don't poke the wounded bear), and he’s been walking around like a shell-shocked war veteran.

I kept feeling worse and worse, but I thought it was just a tenacious bug and I should soldier on until the end of the prescribed course of treatment. WRONG! I went back to the doctor yesterday and now we know that it was a case of the cure being worse than the disease: apparently, I am allergic to the antibiotics I was taking for 12 days!

Now that I've stopped taking the offending drugs and started popping Benadryl like candy, I feel much better already and should be absolutely fine after a couple of days. Whew!

It will be nice to sing again. I've missed singing. And knitting. And sleeping well. And thinking clearly...