Bleeeeeech

 

In the first place I'm having a melodramatically awful ME day.  The ME gods clearly don't like me talking in public about coping.*  How melodramatically?  CateK in response to last night's blog says 'What has really helped me live with ME/CFS is finding ways to engage in my passions.'  Yes.  I still want to write a blog post about staying sane with ME, but the bottom line for me is building a life I can have.  Building as much of a life as possible that doesn't constantly ram me up against the things I can't do.  This is why I don't ride any more;  I'm only interested in the kind of riding that involves a relationship with a specific horse, and horses need regular work.  This is why I don't ring quarter peals;**  I never know till the day, and sometimes the half day, whether I'm going to be capable of that kind of effort or not.  And so on.*** 

            There are one or two markers of Really Bad Days that I can't fudge.  One of them is hurtling hellhounds.  It's been a bad day for hurtling hellhounds.  One of those days where I need a double-yoke travois so they can take me home.† 

            So I decided to record myself singing.  While we're on the subject of, cough cough cough, engageable passions. . . .

            AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.††

            Well, you knew that was coming, right?  But before you all fall on me in a body and say What was I thinking of . . . believe it or not there was at least a little method in this madness.  Nadia had said some weeks ago that a number of her students are sorry later that they didn't record themselves at the very beginning so they can glory in their progress.  Very nice, I said, I can see that.  But not for me.  Noooooooooo.  And that remains true—I am nothing but grateful that I did not record myself last February.

            But I have begun to think that I might like a benchmark from now.  It's a pretty grim thought that now represents an advance—that it's not last February†††—that this is the new improved me.  Which is where my cleverness in deciding to record myself when I know I'm not at my best comes in.  It's wiggle room.  I suspect that if I recorded myself when I was feeling at the top of such game as I have I would be so appalled by the playback that I would give up singing forever.  And, as I keep saying, I like singing.  Monday afternoons are a highlight. 

            So I went and propped myself up beside the piano tonight and warmed up for a bit.‡  And then I fished around for my poor neglected little palm-top video camera and discovered that it was, of course, deader than a Precambrian fossil, so while I plugged it in to (I hope) recharge I had a look at Pooka.  Yes, she has a video- as well as a still-camera option.  So then I propped both of us up at the piano and . . .

            I may still never sing again.  No, no, no, it's not that bad.‡‡  The first try we deleted hastily.‡‡‡  The second try . . . ah well.  We deleted that too.  By the third . . . well, I was calming down a little§ so what I was attempting to perform was almost recognisable.   Almost.  For variety I switched over to Astarte for a trial.  Oh dear.  No, the big screen is a mistake.  Back to Pooka.  Gah.  No, wait, I have an idea:  Astarte again, and I'll sing while I'm making supper, which I do a lot anyway.  I might almost forget the soundless whirring and the little beady eye. . . .

            Okay.  I kept two recordings, one per gizmo.  As benchmarks for future reference.  This had better be worth it.  After all I don't know but what Astarte's is less threatening, glorying, as it does, in three minutes of the corner of the kitchen with the cooker in it, adorned by the occasional blur of black jeans and pink-and-white pullover passing by, thumps, clatters, crashes, the sound of boiling water and the clang of pots, and a faint reedy voice, occasionally audible, singing Gypsy Rover.  I hadn't actually meant to be deliberately facing away from the thing the whole time, but this ploy was certainly effective.  I have hidden less well from Pooka, singing the first two verses of She's Like a Swallow . . . but I can always delete it later.

            And no, you can't pay me enough, so don't bother to ask.§§

            Ask me in a year.§§§  

* * *

* I'm tempted to say 'sod off, scumsuckers' but I don't dare piss them off too much.  

** My plan for 'practise' quarters crashed and burned, chiefly because there isn't really a big enough pool of local ringers.  I may try to resurrect it some day. 

*** There's the tiny additional whammy that I think some of what I've been calling an unusually bad go of weather-related rheumatism is a chest infection.  Oh gee.  Thanks.  Thanks ever so.  But it would explain why I can't seem to get rid of this probably-never-was-a-head-cold, and why there is still so much of it in my . . . duh . . . chest.  I'm bashing it with homeopathy at the moment, and if that doesn't work, yes, I'll go to the nice medical doctor and mangle myself with antibiotics. 

† Given how irresistible/immovable they are when having a head-to-head over their idea of the best spot on the sofa^ they are totally strong enough merely to drag me around town a little.  

^ Guys.  I need to be able to see, and I need to be able to move both hands.      

†† Etc. 

††† Or, worse, when I first went to poor Blondel.  He has a great future in politics as judged by his ability to keep a straight face in response to the seriously delusional.  

‡ And my new exercises are huge fun. 

‡‡ Yes it is. 

‡‡‡ One of the reasons I bought a dedicated video camera in the first place was because the aggressiveness of social networking makes me nervous.  And my video camera is a couple of years old and the social networking monster has meanwhile got bigger and meaner.   The vidcam predates Pooka, let alone Astarte:  I still had my old Blackberry clone when I bought it, and the Blackberry didn't channel its soul and essential being through a galactic consortium the way i-creatures Pooka and Astarte do.  You want to update your aps and your podcasts and so on and what you get is a knife-to-your-throat invitation to join the on line community.  I was playing Fruit Ninja^ the other day and apparently you can't turn off your connection to the great outer world^^, you can only choose which great bullying competitive gang of thugs you want to be oppressed by.  Meh.  Everything out there wants to drag you kicking and screaming onto the net . . . and the tools with which to do this are way too efficient, as evidenced by the gratuitously, the prodigiously ghastly YouTube recordings for anyone to watch and listen to.  I have a terror of accidentally pressing the wrong button and . . .  

^ Clearly I'm missing something because it rouses in me a great agonising sense of 'Unh, what?' 

^^ Which means our happy relationship was going to be short anyway. 

§ McKinley . . . it's true she has a name (and a gender), but you can still turn Pooka off.^ 

^ Well . . . I think.  See above, about inadvertently pressing the wrong button.  

§§ Oh, you could.  But I'd expect to get a new car out of the deal. 

§§§ Or three.  Or maybe six.   Or twelve.  Or . . .