My week in review

                                

This post is coming a little late today, for a few reasons, the first is I completely forgot that I was meant to make the banner for this yesterday, which meant I then had to rush to do it this morning.

The second reason is I've strained something in the back of my neck and sitting at the computer too long aggravates it and makes it quite sore, so I had to take a break,  between the making of the banner and the writing of the post.

So what's been going on in the Solheim house, this week? 

Kye is still doing a great job dragging his heels when it comes to his work.

 This week he has been primarily working on his times tables and he's not a fan of those and I don't blame him really, I loathed them too when I was younger. So I can understand why he's dragging it out. That said this is an area the hubby feels is really important for him to learn and so I'm giving it my all to help Kye get to grips with it. 

If you have any tips for making the learning process easier, with regards to times tables, please let me know in the comments below, both Kye and I would really appreciate it. 

Talking of comments, I have been so bad this week at getting around everyone's blogs and responding to your lovely comments here on my own blog. I will get to it, don't worry about that, you're just going to have to bear with me till I'm feeling a bit better. 

Now, I already told you about my neck, but sadly that's not the only health issue I have this week. In fact, it feels as if my body is well and truly out to get me, right now. 

My back has been kicking out pain in a really bad way for most of this week. It's not fun, but I find I cope better with that than other things, I guess because I've become used to, it over time. 

What I haven't been coping very well with is my chest. All through December, I had a cold that would be bad for a few days then would seem to get better and even go away completely for a few days before coming back again. It was driving me mad, but I put it down to being worn out as I was having trouble sleeping at the time. 

When my sleep patterns got back to normal, I figured that would sort itself out too. Sadly it didn't and throughout this month, I have had problems with mucus building up in my chest that has got so bad that it has been making me very short of breath and my chest very tight. I had a doctors appointment yesterday and have now been put on antibiotics to try and clear my chest. The doctor seemed very concerned because normally in a situation like this you would be coughing up mucus and I haven't, it just isn't clearing out at all. 

When I was 16, I was rushed to hospital, where doctors told my mother that they didn't think I would survive the night. Turned out, I had double pneumonia. Now clearly, I did survive the night, but ever since I've been warned that because I have had such serious pneumonia before that I am more at risk of getting it again and this was the doctors main concern when I spoke to him yesterday. 

I've now been put on antibiotics, but if that doesn't clear the mucus I have to go straight back to the doctors because if it sits on my chest too long I could end up very unwell indeed. So at the moment I am keeping everything crossed that the antibiotics work. 

In other news, my darling husband broke the LCD screen on my IPad last night. Then sheepishly put off telling me, until he couldn't any longer because I was asking for it. I guess he figured I'd go spare, I'm pleased to say he was wrong, because I was very calm about the whole thing, even if I did tease him the rest of the night. His wallets now £40 lighter, as he's had to buy an LCD screen replacement, but thankfully he's a very handy sort of guy and can repair it himself. 

I couldn't be too tough of him though, because this week he got me a pretty early valentines/anniversary gift, in the form of my new kindle and case. My old kindles been black screening on me and though the black does seem to disappear after a while, it was incredibly frustrating. My kindle has done well though I brought it back when kindles first came out and I know a lot of kindles have been broken or died a lot quicker than my old one, so I'm pretty proud of it. 

I love the touch screen on my new kindle which I wasn't sure that I would as well as the way that you can touch a word for a definition, which is great for my son, and also keep a record on the kindle itself of new words you come across, what a great way to improve your vocabulary. 

All in all this week,  I've actually been feeling pretty happy. Between the downs, there has still been a lot of giggles and laughs that's helped to keep my spirits up and although in some areas I have fallen behind a little, in others I have managed to stay on track and actually get ahead of where I intended to be. 

For example:

My planner set up is really working for me at the moment and is looking really nice, plus seeing everything laid out so clearly, really helps to keep me motivated. 

As you can see from my monthly tracker for January, I've really been keeping busy. 

Note the big forgot to record on blog commenting. The few times I was hoping around blogs, I totally forgot I was meant to be marking it down. 

As for my word counts, I also keep them in my dodo pad. So don't tend to write them in here till mid month or the end of the month. 

Another area where I'm really proud of myself is my reading. I am well ahead of where I intended to be at this point and have already managed to get through 10 of the books I intended to read and review this month. Look at all those shades in hearts! 

                                       

Which reminds me, I've always thought of pukka pads, as pretty good pads. That said, the pukka pad I am using at the moment is anything but, check out the bleed through...

                                           

And that's from a pen that doesn't normally bleed through too badly. Even when I switched to a basic Biro, the bleed through was terrible. Meaning if I use a pen, I have to tape quotes to the back of the pages to hide all the bleed through.

The result, I've taken to writing in pencil most of the time. It's the only thing that doesn't bleed through. Not happy!!! 

I'm not going to waste money replacing it, mainly because I am trying not to just spend, spend, spend all the time, but I will be glad to reach the end of this pad because it's really annoying me. 

So what else has been going on Thai week, well, we've signed up for our first steam rally of the year. It's not till April but it's something to get excited about. 

And I signed up to probably the best app I have ever had. It's called Babylon and for £4:99 a month, you can have as many consultations with a real doctor as you want, via a phone or video call consultation. If it wasn't for this app I probably wouldn't have done anything about my chest. Instead. I booked a consultation that took seconds and was able to talk to a doctor the same day. Being able to talk to a doctor in my own home was great and my Perscription will even be delivered to my door although you have the option to collect it from a pharmacy of your choice too. 

Now naturally, if you need a physical examination you need to go and see your regular doctor at your local practice, but for minor things or if your not sure if your health issues warrant a trip to the doctors, this service is great. 

With my chest he was able to diagnose me through the app; however, if the antibiotics don't help I will need to go into my local practice so that my chest can be listened to and the next course of action be taken. 

Having anxiety disorder this app is brilliant for me, it means I know longer have to sit around worrying when something is wrong because I am too scared to go to the doctors and I think should the Babylon doctor feel that I do need to go in, knowing that it could be something to worry about that needs to be looked at further will help me fight my anxiety and get it done. 

Well that's it from me for now. I hope you've had a good week and I look forward to reading your comments below. 

Love and hugs

Joss xx 

P.s. If this is a bit rambling, I apologise, but my poor health at the minute is wearing me out and I'm a bit blah this evening. 

Organised chaos

My approach to being organised has always been a bit half hearted. There just always seemed to be better thing that I could be doing than plotting out a daily/weekly todo and filling my calendar with future plans for birthdays to come and appointments to make.

We had a very Cornish approach to life my husband and I. We lived by the "dreckly" mantra. Which essentially means "Some point in the future." Word of warning, if my lovely hubby ever tells you "I'll get to it dreckly," you may be in for a very long wait, like a year,two, ten or...

At any rate it was decided that I needed to get more organised and although I can kinda see why lol, I have begun the process some what grudgingly. 

I am now the not so proud owner of a planner! In which I have two calendars. One for writing and blogging and one for everyday life stuff. Yikes! 

The only good thing about this, is that it's pink!!!!!!

So here is how I intend to attempt to get organised:

1) plan all blog posts in advance by at least a week. 

2) write all blog posts for a week, on the Monday leaving the rest of the week free for commenting on blogs and working on my current WIP. 

3) writing at least a 1000 words but hopefully far more each day. I'm keeping it simple so it doesn't seem such a big task. 

4) planning everything out in advance, so that I am able to adapt my schedule when required due to other commitments or appointments. 

5)planning everyone's gifts for birthdays and such in advance and purchasing them throughout the year to avoid huge expense in the busy birthday months and at Christmas. 

6)keeping all my notes, lists, todo's, appointments ect in one place. 

7) remebeing to breath and trying not to panic when all this organisation seems to scary or to hard lol. 

Do you keep planners? Prefer the organised approached or the more haphazard? Whatever the case let me know and if you have any tips, they'll be happily received. 

Love and hugs 

Joss xx