God what a tedious week it has been. We were supposed to be in London on Monday, meeting Helen on her boat on Tuesday, at home ed book club Wednesday, working yesterday and meeting friends today. Instead with the exception of Tuesday, two trips to the doctors and several outings in sunglasses to various chemists and supermarkets we’ve had a whole five days at home. Pah!
Today was day six of the rash / puffiness / itchy / whatever the hell it was and thanks to steroids / a change in the wind / the third lot of antihistimines / someone somewhere getting fed up with hearing about it and performing acts of black magic it is finally on the way out. More about that in a minute though.
So Thursday, I woke with a definite improvement to my face, the itchiness abated but incredibly puffy eyes. I certainly could not have gone to work and stood at the counter for fear of scaring the public / explaining 322 times just what was the matter with me. It rained most of the morning so I couldn’t even feel useful by getting laundry done. Scarlett put the ducklings out for a bit to see whether they agreed with the ‘nice weather for ducks’ saying. It turned out they didn’t and so she brought them back in again looking all miserable and wet and shivery. I’d had a chat with Davies and Scarlett in the morning to thank them for being so patient and understanding about all the cancelled plans this week and to explain that it was going to be another day at home, that I was feeling bad tempered and irritable and they would be best off finding something to entertain themselves for the day. They rose to the challenge and spent most of the morning in Davies’ room creating a Viva Pinata garden with various scraps of material, cardboard and coloured paper. I didn’t actually see it but they were very happily amused and chose to stay home and carry on playing while I nipped out for baking essentials.
We had lunch and then the weather cheered right up and the sun came out again. That was all the motivation we all needed and Davies and Scarlett scooped up the ducklings and went out into the garden while I cracked on with the laundry and some baking. I made three cheese, egg and bacon quiches, a chocolate orange cake and some macaroons with the egg whites from the quiches. The moving about seemed to help with my puffy face too and it was definitely looking much less swollen by the evening which was a relief as I was intending to go back to the doctors again this morning if there was not a marked improvement as of course it will be Tuesday at the earliest before I’d be able to get attention if things hadn’t improved.
Ady cooked dinner and I moisturised lots.
Today I woke and the difference was really marked, although far from back to normal. My skin is now very flaky, dry and tight and definitely still on the puffy side. My eyes have gone right down but the cost of that is loads of baggy skin all around upper and lower eyelids. Also as that skin is so delicate and was clearly under lots of stress for 6 days it is very sore and red and tender. Focussing on the positive at least it has all gone down and stopped reacting to whatever had flared it all up, on the negative I will be living in fear of it happening again and will probably have rough skin for the next week or so – no close ups this weekend ;). Just as well Im not vain eh? 😉
We had a big pile of library books to go back and I’d had email notifications of more things arrive so we decided to nip into town to take stuff back / collect new stuff, call in to say I would be back to work tomorrow (I needed to ring to let them know, so it was as easy to pop in) and get some cocoa as I seemed to have run out. Everyone at the library was gratifyingly horrified at my face which made me feel justified in not having been there yesterday and backed up my ringing in with proof. Quite nice to be flocked round actually, I don’t normally have that level of novelty value ;). We collected the next lot of audio books which were what had come in for the kids and then did a quick charity shop trawl and got a few bits in the CoOp for lunch before coming back home. By then it was lunchtime so we had lunch and Davies, Scarlett and the ducklings headed outside while I got busy in the kitchen. I iced the chocolate orange cake, mixed up batter for a malterser cake and put some pizza dough on for dinner, made the icing for the malteser cake and did some washing.
I then decided a sun hat might be a good plan for the weekend and remembered having seen some cheap ones at The Range so we nipped along there where I got a sunhat and so did Tarly, Davies got some sunglasses in their half price sale and we picked up some toffee bon-bons which are a Goddard family essential for long car journeys (we even have a jingle for them – ask us, we’ll perform it for you this weekend 😆 see we can do musical showing off too!).
Back home we were greeted by the lovely smell of fresh baked bread – Oops I’d put the breadmaker on loaf setting rather than pizza dough. On the plus side we have a lovely fresh loaf to bring tomorrow, on the down side it was too late to make more dough in time for Davies’ dinner. More apologising to the nine year old from me :(. I finished decorating cakes, put more pizza dough on and made the kids alternative dinner. Ady arrived home and did some bits in the garden, sorted out the ducklings for the weekend and tidied up while the kids and I packed up clothes etc for the weekend.
I had a bath and made pizzas for Ady and I and we watched Million Pound Drop while different bits of Harry Potter audio books drifted from the childrens’ bedrooms. Should really go to bed, work in the morning and I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t be an early night tomorrow ;).