Rebel yell(ow)

Gardeners of a delicate disposition should turn away now. Go on, toddle off to your potting shed.

I love dandelions. I love their shaggy yellow heads which are the harbingers of spring, I love the leaves which give the plant its name - dents de lion ... lion's teeth, and I love the fluffy pom-pom seed heads most of all. As a child I launched countless thousands of tiny parachutes towards unsuspecting neighbourhood lawns as I counted off the time.

Did you know you can make an ersatz coffee from the roots?

I know I'm a disgrace to my green-fingered sisterhood, I should hate dandelions, eradicate them, wrench them wriggling and screaming from between the genetically modified delicate specimens that we choose to put in the garden.

But I don't. I'm doing my bit for conservation, I'm saving the planet one weed at a time.

Meep meep

Can I have a big round of applause for Staff Nurse Spill Me, one of my nurses who ran the London Marathon for the first time - she finished in 5 hours 57 minutes. She's an absolute star, one of my favourites; she's only been training since Christmas but has never really run much prior to this and was running to raise money for MacMillan Nurses and for the dialysis unit.

Knights of the Road

Definitely not Knights Who Say Ni, but some jolly nice ambulance driver chaps and I believe some chapesses who are raising money for the Richard House Trust - the children's hospice in London.

Read more about the mission on Tom Reynolds' blog here or click on this widget (keep your fingers crossed that it works as this is my first time with a widget - yes I truly am a widget virgin). Oh yes and please spread the word.

Size matters

I now have an official fluid restriction of 800 mls (or just over a pint and a half) per day because quite frankly I don't pee very much these days. This allowance includes drinks and fluid found in foods such as fruit, rice, pasta, yoghurt, etc. A bit stingy isn't it and needless to say almost impossible to stick to whilst maintaining some kind of quality of life, so I tend to aim for it but overshoot by about 50%.

One of the tricks I have found useful is to use smaller cups and glasses - sounds obvious but psychologically a full small cup is more satisfying that half a large cup - not to mention more accurate. So to that end I have commenced a quest for dinky cups that hold no more than 150 mls, preferably less.

I have some glasses that are 100 ml or to put it into some kind of perspective, 20 teaspoons full. I've had them for years and countless times they been on the verge of being chucked out but saved such ignominy due to the fact that they were given to me by my Granny which curiously enough is also the reason for them potentially being thrown out in the first place. Hmmm, my life is full of such conundrums (or is that conundra?).

Another little trick I discovered is to suck ice chips. Not being in possession of an ice-chip maker I armed myself with an icecube tray and a hammer at work and if I'm feeling thirsty I will pop out a couple of ice cubes, smash them to pieces and scoop them into one of said tiny glasses just to ensure that I'm not having too much. Sucking 100 mls of ice is almost as satisfyig as chugging 500 mls of water. Almost.

On a related note I have lost 3 kgs or almost half a stone. I've given up that dratted Xenical so it's all down to me not some stupid drug that gives you diahorrea. I'm so frustrated because I'm losing weight from my boobs, ribs and waist but not my hips or thighs. My trousers droop down over my hips but I can't get into a smaller size yet.

Oh yes size matters, on so many levels it matters.

Jane's addiction

I'm on a high. There's white powder everywhere - all over my trousers, all over the laptop. There was a hole in the bottom of the packet. I'm going to go over everything with a clean bag in the vacuum cleaner to retrieve what I've lost.

Later though, I need to delay the gratification for a while otherwise I'll be wanting my fixes more often.

They've started selling it in Budgen's in the next town over. Tesco despite their desire to rule the world haven't yet figured out how lucrative the local market can be.

The cashier looked askance at me when I paid for my precious - 5 packets all in one go. I found myself having to justify myself to her, "It's for the kids" I stuttered, "it's half-term" - she nodded knowingly, thinking "Suuure, it's for the kids".

I haven't got any kids.

That was 3 days ago and I've just had my last pack. I've broken out in a sweat just thinking about not having any. I don't know what I will do, it's ages until we go over there again!

I'm going mad! I know I shouldn't be having the stuff but I can't help myself. The yellow tubes, the licorice straw, the white fizzy yumminess of Bassett's Sherbet Fountains just keeps calling my name "... Jane ... Jane ... Jane"

Re-entry in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...

Cooee - I'm back in the blogosphere. I'd like to say that I've been quiet 'cos I had a kidney transplant but the truth is I've been floating around in another dimension - you know the one I mean, the one where you have to go to work, the one where Dull Stuff Happens.

Unfortunately in that dimension fathers-in-law fall off ladders and have heart attacks, internet connections fail, work and hospital treatments absorb all the hours in the day, Easter eggs have to be hand delivered to distant relatives.

It's a scary place and I'd much rather be in the company of pole dancers, drama queens, goths, Dane lovers and geekettes.

My email server appears to have found a worm hole and gone off on its own little adventure somewhere - I can neither send nor receive anything and am stuck with a Yahoo account, for which no-one appears to have been able to decipher the address.

Now you know what's been happening. Sort of.