Newness

I have been procrastinating like mad.

I should have started writing this ages ago, but somehow I just didn’t. There were all sorts of things to be done that were somehow far more interesting and important. The bread maker needed filling and the pots needed to go into the dishwasher and Oliver had a video on YouTube that he wanted to show me, and somehow it is already almost eleven o’clock and I have not even begun to start writing.

Also I have now had a glass of wine and can’t think of anything to say either.

I don’t quite know why I should be so short of things to tell you about, because we have been rushing about all day. I am rushing about rather well at the moment. This has been something of a new revelation, as it is because I have stopped taking the stupid statin tablets that the doctor prescribed for Hard To Spell Disease.

I think I mentioned a while ago that I had a sore shoulder. In the end it hurt so much that it was waking me up in the night, and one morning it hurt so much that I woke up and cried. It was not just my shoulder. It was my hips and my knees and my fingers and my ankles and everything, and they have been hurting for a long time now.

After much more procrastinating I rang the doctor. I expected the usual clinician-waffle about X rays and blood tests and things that they would look at which would take lots of trailing into Kendal to the hospital, and months and months of prolonged sore-shoulderiness, probably with no difference to speak of in the end anyway, but instead he said, rather unexpectedly, that probably it was the statins, and to stop taking them.

That was just over a week ago and to my complete astonishment, over the week my aches and pains have faded so much that they almost do not count any more.

Not only do I not have aching legs and shoulders, I feel as though I have had an injection of new energy.

It is a happiness beyond anything I can tell you about. Let me tell you right now, there is no joy, no perfection in the world, to beat not being in pain. It is the nicest possible thing, and makes every minute a sweet satisfaction.

Also I had thought that I was becoming a crumbly old gidget and my good days were over and gone and I was just on a miserable downhill stagger to the knackers’ yard.

This turns out not to be so at all.

I am never taking another statin again. I would rather die young than have aches the whole time. I have had a new lease of life, and it is nothing short of miraculous.

Hence I have been busily beavering away all day, singing occasionally, and getting on with things. We have now almost completed our upstairs renovation.

There are still some underfloor pipes to be installed, but there will not be very much disruption, because mostly they will be in the bathroom. The hugely dusty nuisance, which was dismantling the bedroom and the hall, is over.

The bedroom is newly painted. The hall is newly painted, although I have not attempted any new colour scheme here. I have stuck to my current favourite of bright orange and yellow. It is very bright, and very lovely. The stairs have been painted, and Oliver’s bedroom door has been painted, and although there are lots of other things still to do, they are bits and pieces and can just be done when we feel like it.

Today we cleaned up after ourselves..

We have done so many messy things that there was a lot of cleaning. Picture frames, for instance, were not just a little black on the top. I wiped them and wiped them and wiped them, and the cloth still came away so black that I began to wonder if it was just the picture frame slowly wearing away. We scrubbed mahogany sawdust out of the bath and scraped paint splashes off everything.

By the time we had finished everything looked so fresh and clean that it almost hurt. I am floating about my newly-tidy house with all the happiness imaginable.

I have taken a ‘finished’ picture of the bathroom for you to compare with yesterday’s.

I have a new lease of life.