20/21

what a week... tony called me Thursday lunch time, letting me chat first for two seconds before saying "now don't panic..." well thats sure a trigger for panic for me, especially when tony calls from home in the middle of the week! mom had been taken into hospital, she pulled her emergency cord from her home and the services said to wait till the morning and call her doctors, which she did, and they said go to hospital! she is home now, had some tests and more this week coming to find out what was wrong, she says she feels ok now, and the symptoms have all cleared up, but i am worried her trip could be a bad idea, i don't know, two flights, a road trip of over 1'500 kilometers, she says one minute she wants to come, just not do much walking, well thats ok, i can cope with not too much walking, then the next minute she says about cancelling or using the trip without her! she is seeing her specialist on Monday 3rd, two days before her due date out here, so will see then anyway...

i suppose with worrying about mom i haven't had a good last few days either, but then i never really got over last week, after, or rather during Tonys call i got an immediate head ache, how come they don't go so quickly as they come, so i stayed at work where i could keep my mind busy, and Friday was my last day at Bajondillo Estanco, i just kept on taking the tablets as they say, worrying now if they will make me sick as the week before, during my lunch break a bad head i was trying to cope with went after i had eaten at burger king(!) although my face has now come out in a bit of a rash, maybe the BBQ sauce has MSG? don't know, but i felt better anyway for the rest of day, which made waking up yesterday, Saturday, with a terrible head ache took migraine tablet and went back to bed getting up late afternoon, feeling weak and horrible again, and this morning the same, headache through the night, every time i woke up it hurt more, and although i tried to get again this morning just ended up going back to bed... got up about two, i still had my head ache, from the pain in my neck this is, feel like some one has got hold of it and wrenched it off! anyway, i have pottered and moved about, sweeping floors, ironing (!) and washed my hair to try to get my neck working again... feeling very sorry for myself which is bad i know. i have to make it through this my last week the 21st, and the nearer i get the less sure i am of doing so.

at the beginning of this promo i made a little diagram sort of thing in my notebook which stays with me all day for notes and details for work etc, the diagram looks like a mountain and was my mountain of the weeks to get through, there are 6 steps, 4 lots of 4, the weeks and days therein, then 1 of 3 weeks and finally 1 of 2 weeks, crossing off the mornings and afternoons... no wonder it has seemed like a long time eh! and only week to go of being ignored and blanked by the few but always remembered visitors to our beautiful country, and still after 20 weeks its horrible and annoying!

we had one evening i think maybe Monday, cannot remember now where the cloud was so low over the mountain road from de la Torre to Alhaurín i really had trouble seeing more than 50 meters ahead of me, i have driven through cloud before but never this dense, it was like good old English fog!

and we have had lots of rain, again, i cant remember it raining so much in other September/Octobers? again, maybe because i wasn't out in it every day! the last couple of days of the week for fine, just sun and cloud, with beautiful colored sky's morning and evening. one of the nice days i ended up on the old bench from 2 years ago, ah ha, maybe thats why i got a bad neck, those benches are impossible to sit comfortable on, they they lean back to far and really hurt those already hurting!

and the paseo road right at the end where Torremolinos meets Malaga the beach has sort of reclaimed the road, it always gets bad there, but the road had turned into a river so they ended up moving the road around the new, or probably old river route!

once every other week or so i have found myself behind a police car following a big van thats come from the de la Torre prison, i sometime find myself wondering if it were the same police if they think, hey, why is she behind us again?!?

ok, I'm off now all typed out...

God always offers us a second chance in life.
By the River Piedra
I Sat Down and Wept
TTFN
Marian

its late on Sunday... first time i have even turned on my computer this weekend... un like me... the photos firstly... above and below very blurred i am sorry to say, and this windows vista does not seem to have the same facility as our old windows to help un blurr! but i think you can just make out the street that turned into a river on Tuesday morning past!


i had on a pair of wellington boots... yes really! but walking up this steep hill to our car the water came in over the top! and my friend didn't like the idea of me driving in this torrent and she said that it would stop in a half hour although i was adamant, that was until i started the car and the warning lights wouldn't go out and i didn't want to drive all the way to torremolinos with them flashing! so we stood on the doorstep watching this rain and the river road, had coffee and it stopped raining! oh the lights worked again ok when i tried again too!?


this is the view from where i park the car at work every other week, i have zoomed in of course... but that looks quite pretty doesn't it, looks like a small castle on top of the hill there....


and, above Friday, bit different from Tuesday eh! but thats what its like here, just cos it rains like crazy one day, or even morning, does not mean it wont be hot and dry later! and also Friday was probably the last day on the beach for me as this week coming i only have the one hour break and i think even less the week after, my last! cant believe, and after the week i have had this past, still not certain i will make it!

Wednesday woke up with bad neck and head, i wish my fibromyalgia could have picked a different worse joint to be, not my neck, hip or foot or elbow, why my neck, if my necks get bad i get a bad head ache.. so i took after my usual anti inflammatory a strong ish pain killer, but only one, an hour and half later, and outside work, i took another... i used to back in the UK take the full quote of paracetamol every day, of 2 every four hours, and that was for years to keep the pain level down, and the doctor said it was ok, checked out my bits and pieces every year to make sure i wasn't destroying anything inside! so taking another seems ok to me... anyway, i struggled through the morning and at break, after lunch took a migraine tablet... now i really am not sure what happened next or why, but the head ache went, in fact quite quickly, but then i felt very ill, and had an awful pain kind of high up in my stomach, almost under my ribs really, i went back into work at 4.30, and keeping details outta here for the weak stomachs among you... things did not turn out well and had to leave my post a couple of times, until i decided i had to try and get home, not a great prospect a 40 minute drive on a good day when your stomach is turning over and over, and it wasn't a good drive, i was ill again before i even got the engine started and it was just like my London courier driving days of migraine Thursdays and being ill while i drove! ok sorry folks... anyway i did get home in a bit of a sorry state and went to bed.

Thursday i couldn't go into work i was just sick all day, and the pain was/is excruciating, but hey, no headache!?! and although i went into work Friday i still have this awful pain when i take my tablets and eat, so i didn't eat much at all on Friday and am just eating little bits when i can.

yesterday, Saturday i had to make myself get in the car and go food shopping, i only got a bit, but really did not want to go out in case i was sick again, it was only the strange thought that this could be a trigger for some people to become agoraphobic, not me, but you could see how something like this could do it, fear of something happening outside, and then just not risking it again! and so, after shopping in Coín and unloading my purchases, i then took just a small walk into town and home, didn't even made bar rosa (still closed!).

today, washed the car and Pippa had a good walk around the trocha market, it was quite late when we got there and too many people for her, my poor baby was so nervous walking around, couldn't even see her tail. and we some lots friends... then home again.

and really today i havent done much at all, just watched tv and tried not to think about the pain in my stomach, or wherever it is! and thats it, have to wait now to have my dinner, Franco is eating his i have a tablet to take half hour before dinner and didnt time things right...

At every moment of our lives,
we have one foot in a fairy tale
and the other in the abyss.
Eleven Minutes

TTFN
Marian

Columbus Day

Christopher Columbus Day today.... although all the shops are open, at least down on the coast, the big malls, la cañada and miramar and ikea! and tomorrow everything is closed up tight, including the estanco i will be working in this week... ye ha! another day off for me! fantastic, sorry for my opposition friend who is at another estanco who is open, at least until 2pm i guess, and then hopefully she can go home, although two weeks ago she had to go to another shop for the afternoon!? and her company is Spanish who, as i believe are supposed to honour holy days, and otherwise double pay or a day off in lieu! or is it loo (in Cornwall? used to be a long way to go when i lived in England, to have a day trip there, from here would be down right silly!!!).

OK notes... am getting so tired now cant remember anything, could have fallen asleep driving home Friday evening, and it hadn't been an especially crazy day, just normal but so tired.

OK, something i missed last week to tell you that i was reminded about on Monday by a van i saw behind me, it was a people carrier type van and 'mom' had a small child on her lap, wrong side of her seat belt, all the way from de la torre to and through churriana!?! see a lot of it here, but i still don't understand the mentality of it, one wrong move and baby is through the windshield... and what it reminded me of was Friday evening going home i was at a set of lights on a big main road in torremolinos and a big pulled up beside me to scoot across the lights at the first opportunity, there was dad in front, mom behind and between her and his back was a small baby squished in... again, up here we see it alot, and here the traffic doesn't get to move as quick as down there on the big dual carriage ways, then... aghast... i saw a small hand holding on to the front of the bike... from the foot well between 'dads' legs... un believable, a small child down there also!?! crazy!

this week was pretty normal... usual people ignoring me, or looking straight through me, it has certainly made me think next time some poor promotions girl is trying to talk to me to at least hello and see what she is offering me, before my normal "no thank you" that i usually mutter! i don't ever blank them, manners don't cost anything. and a smile is free too! there were a lot of people with children this week, is it holidays in the UK again already? i am not supposed to approach people with children under 16, so i wait to be asked for info...

there was a man in shop who sounded just like my uncle chuck, and i asked him where he was from, he said Denver Colorado... i said oh! you sound just like my uncle but he was from New York City!? then he said, oh but i was born and brought up in the Bronx... so that made sense!

also a woman came in who was going to a convention in benalmadena on criminality! sounded great, the type of books i have been reading for the past 18 weeks have all been on the subject... strange how i have gone from the Stephen king type of book to the Patricia Cornwall etc stuff, i couldn't tell you who most of the books have even been written by which is bad i know, they are just all crime fiction! this lady told me to try Jeffery Deaver, so i am, cant wait to see what he is like!

it was windy on Friday down on the coast, and this is an understatement! we had rain and lots of it the day before, i was worried which way to get home, but it had stopped an hour before and the roads were almost dry by the time i left, then yesterday, Saturday i got blown down town, but coming home i almost got blown over! i was weighted down with far too many carrier bags to cope with, but i am glad i had them, as i crossed over by banco de andalucia at the top of the high street i nearly lost my footing, someone said we were having 70 mph gusts, i quite believe it! the town and surrounding mountains were covered in a heavy cloud or mist all day and the sun hardly got through, but i hung up two lots of hand washed clothes and a machine load, each was dried before the next got pegged up, and didn't even need ironing? even better! today is about the same...

this morning we had the singing in the street just before dawn, i actually thought it was usually later in the month... its so somber and beautiful... our small street full of people in the dark with only candles and singing so hauntingly....

we went for a walk down into town and back again, Pippa didn't know what hit her, she went out three times yesterday and then again today! the first walk yesterday it was still dark, to check the rental car, as ours had been broken into, again... messed up the bits of nothing in the glove box, and took an apple! they used a metal bar or wrench or something to jemmy it open and dented possibly the last of the undented section of our car! had have a car stolen in England, a long long time ago, but i have never had so much vandalism before, or heard so many stories from friends etc of so much robbery, thieving, mugging and car crime in my whole life, they say its the foreigners? who us? i am sorry i don't so... and when you report it, no report is taken, why because we are foreigners too! has this been what its like back in the UK for foreigners?

well 3 weeks to go, cant believe it, do you think i can make it now? may be in will be possible after all...

and as usual Paulo Coelho has come up with the answer with today's quote.. i just turn the page and copy here the next one, no picking out the ones i think relevant, it happens sometimes all by itself...

Love gives us the strength
to perform impossible tasks.
By the River Piedra
I sat down at wept

TTFN
Marian

October already, i just cant believe it... above is the month of September photo i took that went into our alhaurín calender, taken about about this time last year... we are having more rain than last year for sure over the last couple of weeks, this week was lots better i managed to get my siesta on the beach every day (!) this week unlike the one before! but today as i was about to walk into town i did an about turn for home as big drops of rain started falling, it didn't come to anything and the washing has dried... but some big storm clouds are looming over the horizon ominously...

yesterday we had a strange thing on the beach... millions, not exaggerating here, but really at least millions of small dragonflys, about 2 or 3 inches long all flying in from the direction of the sea? and not just ground level as you looked up they were well above ground too, and to add to that lots of small spiders? so the birds were having a field day, usually they just grab little bits from people eating on the beach but they had a feast of the two above as well! i was really worrying about getting them in my hair... either the dragonflys or the spiders, don't mind them in general but didn't want an infestation!

Monday... San Miguel, i went into town and chatted to friends over cafe con leche and mooched about the shops before going home and going a bit of much needed house work! but all day i felt like i was playing hooky, i kept expecting my supervisor to come along and put her hand on my shoulder... very weird feeling, Tuesday was ok, as i say weather good, but then i woke up Wednesday with a migraine?! real bad, and didn't get up until the Thursday morning when i went back to work, very shaky and disorientated... not sure if the car hadn't known the way that i would have even arrived down in torremolinos! felt bit better Friday, yesterday, but still a bit strange(er than normal)!

now i am also seeing lots of people who are on their 2nd or even 3rd trips over since this promo began in June... they're third holiday! what!

When you want something, the whole Universe
conspires to help you realize your desire.
The Alchemist

TTFN
Marian