So a priest, a nun and a shepherd go into a bar...

It's about as good an opener as I can do today. Ain't no jokes this week.

Am on the precipice of slipping back into old habits (of feeling like a tonne of bricks is on me and I can't shift it no matter what I do, there's always bricks to be shoved) I had at the last place and I don't want to be in that space again. I need organisation. I need inspiration. I need.... Grease Lightnin'. Okay, maybe not the latter. But surely one of you reader(s) knows what I mean?

Work is piling up and I only just started back last week for another year. The business is chugging away nicely, year-long, and I get all flustered when any unusual amount of work comes flooding in. Then I stepped back and looked at just why that might be - aside from the fact that I have always seen any work under the business name as pertaining to Ella (and then it goes without saying that I look on it as the replacement for physically 'raising' her), my clients seem to have an uncanny knack of piggy-backing their big site overhauls or yearly stationery orders or whatever else it's time for. So it's no wonder I feel snowed (but not all the time) with it. If only it would space out. But it doesn't.

It wasn't like this to begin with. In the first year, I had a steady amount of work and it was ace. Now, four years later (wow! our little venture is four in March!) and I can see there are great slabs of work - renewals and the likes - in various months, as if they are our hot-months that will need quite some co-ordination particularly now Lolly is here, and then other months where there's nothing much doing. In terms of the yearly/regular requirements, that is.

So I've just hit a surprisingly busy January, is all. And I've felt it more keenly because we only moved in here not two weeks ago.

Add to all this that last week was a rather hair-raising one for the LGBB. On Tuesday, she came down with a mysterious skin reaction to "something" - the doctor saw the welts, they were all appearing and morphing and merging and then shrinking, in her hot spots (forehead, cheeks, hips, shoulders and top of arms) - so after a dose of Claratyne it all appeared to be gone by next morning. Wednesday night, she was off her food. In fact, didn't eat at all. Managed to give her some fruit and yoghurt after her bath and before bed, so I didn't feel so bad sending her to bed when she hadn't eaten.

By Friday, she had had only a handful of sultanas, a bit more yoghurt and a sandwich for lunch on Thursday - no dinner at all, not interested in breakfast or any snacks - and she'd slept overnight for 15 hours. I woke her at 10.30 because I couldn't stand the rising doubt in my mind that something was up. To cut a long(er) story short, she ended up in the local A&E after not being able to sit up - she fell twice, was so lethargic and listless, wouldn't properly wake up and was virtually non-responsive, just laying wherever I put her, very pale and sleepy and not communicating with me at all. After seven hours there, a failed urine sample (damn, those bags are so useless), three more hours' sleep and a blood test that turned up no more than some dehydration and a slightly elevated white cell count, all of a sudden our limp wan little BB wanted to sit up, turned very pointedly to her Dad and said "HI...Dad" and then to me, "HI, Mummy". We didn't quite know what to say, other than a quiet thank God to each other over her head. She then went on to sit there virtually haggle all the passers by - "hi peepool" - and called her doctor a "noose" (nurse).

Bit of a mystery, to say the least. A follow-up appointment with her doctor today confirmed that she's probably had some sort of virus pass through her system. But the lack of any obvious signs - like a temperature or any signs of fever, infection, coughing, any of that - is dubious. On Saturday, she had a full day of the runs. Sorry to anyone eating while reading. But they went as suddenly as they came on. She seems to be pretty much back to her normal self today, aside from bags under her eyes that have been there for a week now. Oh and I'm not allowed more than a metre out of her reach just for the time being. Most draining. Especially when I can't get anything else done. Unless Play School is on (hence this update and grab of time for myself today).

To rule out a UTI, I have to try and collect another sample from her - today, so far has proven a write-off and now the place is closed - and we have a referral to a Paed because we also cannot rule out some sort of seizure apparently, because of the lack of any observations that were usual for a viral or gastric "thing".

Anywho... I am remaining just ahead of the crest of the crashing wave. Getting good at this surfing thing. Feel guilty and/or exhausted from quite possibly overly worrying. When I talked it over with Steve, he said "well, the world will just have to get used to it - we are always going to be overly cautious and careful about these sorts of things now." Makes sense when he says it. But when I feel or think it, I just come to the conclusion that I sound like I'm complaining about my "lot" and that's not it at all.

I was thinking on all this as things getting in the way. In the way of what though? Life. But I see now, after going back over this post, life can't "get in the way" of itself. That, dear reader, would be a vicious circle. This is not that. This is life. And so it only depends how you look on it.

Ok! *emphatic head nod* Point taken.