My Diabetes Diary – Monday will have to wait

I wrote a blog on Monday, but I haven’t uploaded it. I have censored it, like Freud and many of his patients. I will think about whether I want to be that open about my mood on this blog.

Meanwhile, today is Wednesday, so this is Wednesday’s blog and I will include Tuesday as well, or I won’t get any creative writing done.

Today, I woke up feeling a little down. I am recording this because I have realised that my moods are affected by my diet. I may have known once that a good diet was important. In fact I know I did because I made sure that I home-cooked home made pasta and home made liver pate for my children, as well as not allowing them to eat sweets until they were two years old, and baking home made cakes and Italian biscuits for them and reducing the sugar on the recipe, which I later taught them to do. I also used to make us all muesli, which consisted of grated apple, dates and porridge soaked in fruit juice or tinned peaches overnight.

Still, I must face up to the fact that all that is in the past.

Tuesday is in the past, yet this blog would be uneven without it, so I will attempt to record what I remember about the day and my diet and moods.

I noticed that yesterday I was in a very low mood at around 2 pm. It was my day off and I was preparing a manuscript for submission to an agency and the same manuscript for a first novel competition. This is not my first novel, although I suspect that I fit the criteria for first novels in this competition as I am classed an indie writer for the novels that I have self and jointly published. I cannot find anything that contradicts this on the website so I go ahead and write my synopsis and covering letter. I do this in the coffee shop, and after around two hours I return home. The coffee shop is becoming noisy and is not conducive to good concentration.

I realised that I had skipped breakfast.

At home I make myself some lunch: two jacket potatoes with mild cheddar cheese and butter. I am disappointed to discover that my partner has thrown away the lettuce. I was looking forward to it.

I am keen to get back to my writing so I don’t cook the cabbage today. I do eat a beetroot and a stick of celery.

An hour later I am hungry again. I stave off this hunger with two cups of milky tea. At this point I succumb to a biscuit.

I notice that after one biscuit I have had enough but there is a voice in my head telling me to eat the other three which are in the packet. I am pleased with myself for avoiding these biscuits for 5 days and decide that one sweet treat will be OK.

I don’t feel good after eating the four biscuits. I feel tired and I curl up on the sofa and try not to sleep. I decide to have a third cup of tea. This wakes me up and I am able to continue to edit, although I feel very sleepy and I notice that I haven’t felt like this in a long while. In fact the last time I was unwell and decided to cut out carbohydrates such as potatoes was the last time I felt this wave of tiredness. I am wondering whether the potatoes are making me unwell.

I skip my usual 10 to 20 kilometer bike ride.

For dinner we all eat a Thai curry. I do not check the ingredients and have no idea whether this takeaway ready meal has sugar in it, but I suspect that it has.

Wednesday

For breakfast I ate an apple.

Last night we went to see that film Wild Rose. It has put me in a bad mood because there are some similarities between me and that character. 1. She is a mum. 2. She has a mother. 3. She is creative. That is where the similarities end. I have a degree. I have trained to teach and have supported teaching in colleges and schools for over a year. I was married for 21 years, a stay-at-home mum, supported by a husband and supporting a husband in the 1980s when it was fashionable here in England not to work if you were a woman with a husband and children. I was a volunteer for various charities. I started a gardening business aged 11 years. I became a manager at 19 years. I bought my first house at 19 years. I married at 22 years, and did not have my first child until the following year. Wild Rose is not me and I am not her.

Still, I must face up to the fact that this is in the past.

Right now I am working in a low paid job and not earning enough to eat what I want. That is the truth of the matter. I am also not earning enough to live as I want to. What I am doing is writing and not getting paid for it. I write every morning for two hours and I research and edit on other days. Today is one of those editing days. After lunch I continue editing my manuscript so that it is suitable for publication and is of the correct word count. There is always a word count. This is an essential part of the job of being a writer, being able to edit, to cut out the first paragraph, and if need be, the adverbs, to build tension, to choose good names for your characters, and all this before you get paid.

I went into the coffee shop to write for the usual 2 hours. I slept in until 7 am, because I was up in the middle of the night at 1 am editing for that competition. Most creative writing competitions require anonymous entries so I cannot tell you which one. Still I arrived at the coffee shop just after 7.30 am, which is my preferred and usual time for writing.

At work, I am feeling a little low. There is not much to do, and I like to be busy. I thrive on being busy. I continue with a project for organising something. I manage to drink three cups of herb tea, which is a good thing. I have bought two packs of strawberries in the Coop and I eat a whole packet of these.

I am feeling hungry at around midday so I eat a banana. I notice that my mind is telling me to go for another milky coffee after work. I remind my mind that I have a lovely cabbage waiting for me at home, and think about the omelette I can make myself with the lovely cheese I bought yesterday.

I arrive home and open the fridge door. There is a very tempting trifle the size of a yogurt right at the front of the fridge. It is the first thing I see. I ignore it and take out the cabbage. I used to make home made trifle for the children and a special desert with cream and raspberries. I start to think about that, and remind myself that if I get a sweet tooth there is the rice and the sugar free jam I have bought myself that I can eat. I didn’t buy the trifle.

After I eat the omelette I notice a pain in my intestine. I get these occasionally, but have never noted when.

I make myself a milky cup of tea and drink that while I begin this blog.

My mood is much better than it was on Monday and Tuesday, so I pick up the letter from the GP and ring the number.

I get through to an automated machine, which I don’t like. The recorded message tells me:

Thank you for calling the “healthy you diabetes prevention programme, delivered by rementor” (it sounds like – I must look that up). I then have several options for areas and I choose one. I am put on hold again. The kettle is boiling so I choose the option to have a call back.

It is not almost 3 pm and I have typed all that I am going to type for today. The sun is shining, my phone is on charge and I might just be able to record a 9k ride….

Bye for now – wishing you success,

Hermione

 

 

 

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