Back in the Running

I've decided it's high time I dusted off my running shoes and got my fitness levels up to scratch. I've not done any real exercise since the Hydroactive Women's Challenge 2006 when I was 5 weeks pregnant. Pregnancy more or less destroyed my energy levels and since Francis was born I haven't really had the time to devote to exercise. Now Francis is only breastfeeding on waking and before bed I don't have to worry about leaving his side so may be able to squeeze some exercise in at weekends. Anyone up for a jog around Sefton Park? Rob?

As when I first started exercising I have decided I need an incentive to get me going so have entered this years Race for Life. I did my first Race for Life in 2005 in under 30 minutes and would like to repeat that performance. Actually I'd love to beat my 5k personal best of 27m 52s but maybe that's pushing my luck a bit!

I've set up a webpage so that people can sponsor me easily (hint hint...) and hope to raise as much money as possible as it will probably be the only run I do this year. Please dig deep and help me reach my target!

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/lissythornton

Thank you!

Lisa xxx

The Tooth Comes Out

On Tuesday I went for the first leg of my marathon run of dental treatment. I had a consultation several weeks ago when I was told in no uncertain terms that my bottom wisdom teeth had to come out. Having decided on a local anasthetic for reasons I will never understand, I went back to the Dental Hospital to have the first tooth removed.

I arrived in good time for my appointment and was surprised to go in slightly early. After making myself comfortable in the chair, I agreed with the dentist that they would remove my lower right wisdom tooth first, the lower left to be removed in four weeks time. After having the proceedure explained to me and going through my medical history for the umpteenth time, I lay back in the chair and braced myself for an unpleasant experience.

I was handed over to a student who administered the anasthetic using an alarmingly large needle. Once satisfied that my mouth was numb, the dentist and student moved in to do their stuff. I'm not entirely sure who did what to start with as, when I saw the student moving towards my mouth with a large scalpel, I promptly shut my eyes and kept them tightly closed for the next 10 minutes or so!

Cutting over, the drilling began. This is by far my least favourite part about visiting the dentist. Having said that, I didn't find it too unpleasant to start with. It wasn't until the dentist said she needed to remove the crown from the tooth that I started to feel a little stressed. I convinced myself that the anasthetic would wear off and that I'd soon be screaming in pain and I became very tense, even crossing my fingers underneath the paper shroud they had draped over me. Thankfully my fears were unfounded and the crown was removed without incident but with a very loud crunching sound.

After what felt like an eternity it was finally time to remove the roots, one at a time. Although I couldn't feel any pain, I could feel the root grinding around in my jaw and I found this rather disquieting. I was relieved when I heard them clank into the tray behind me as it meant my ordeal was almost over. The student finished the job with a couple of stitches and I was given a piece of gauze to chomp down on to stop the bleeding while he explained the post-op care to me. With that, I was on my way, my face still numb and feeling like it had been wolloped with a frying pan.

Graeme picked me up and we went to ASDA for our shopping. About halfway through our shop the anasthetic started to wear off and by the time we got home I was in quite a bit of pain so I took some paracetamol. I was pretty miserable at the thought that this pain would last for any length of time, but within an hour or so the pain had given way to a dull throbbing ache. This was also when my face started to swell up. I had a definite lump appearing on my jaw before I went to bed.

By the time I got up this morning I didn't need to look in the mirror to know that the swelling had grown; my face felt bigger and strangely heavy. A quick look in the mirror revealed that my face was now swollen from my cheekbone to the top of my neck and the swelling seems to have got worse throughout the day. Thankfully, although tender, I'm not in any real pain and even managed to eat a jacket potato for my tea. I'm guessing that the worst is over and things will only improve over the next few days.

In the end, having a wisdom tooth out was nowhere near as bad as I expected. It was certainly an unpleasant experience, but I wouldn't describe it as horrible or frightening (though I do wish the dentist hadn't divulged that she was going to drill my crown off; there are some things you really don't need to know). By far the worst part was having to keep my mouth open unnaturally wide for the best part of half an hour. Now I just have to prepare myself to go through it all over again in four weeks time. Yay.

Lisa xxx

Friday Night Report

The main headline tonight is that my hands feel like I've spent the week madly rubbing a cheese grater. I'm fairly sure I'll end up in A&E at somepoint when they go septic. I must remember to get some good working gloves next time, rather than ripping out wood and brick with my bear hands, manly as that may be.

Anyway, to business. Over the past 3 days, I've plastered up all the holes in the room, and put down most of the new flooring. At least one day of that was lost to time wasting and unexpected B&Q runs. Oh yes, and a swift coffee round Kieran's place took a couple of hours as well... nose to the grindstone and all that.

So I now have one day left to finish the flooring and stick the architrave and skirting on. It might happen, but at least if it doesn't, it should be mostly done. So here's hoping tomorrow is a productive day! On a side note, thursdays high point was the sausage, mushroom and egg toastie I made myself. Yum!

Tuesday Progress Report

I'm 2 days into my week long intensive DIY session in the dining room, and so far things are going well. I'm a little behind where I expected to be, but this is just because my expectations of progress were a bit stupid in the first place.

Yesterday, I spent the day stripping out the room, removing all the stuff I didn't like the look of. This involved the flooring, the skirting board, and the minging fireplace which we hated. Our back yard is now choc-a-bloc with bags of rubble and piles of wood.

I punctuated all my hard work that day by going out in the evening for a 3k run over to the powerleague 5-a-side pitches in Everton for the weekly kickabout with some guys from work, and then a nice walk back afterwards. Feeling refreshed (ha), I then spent half an hour mixing cement to fill in the old hearth. Given that I've never made cement before, I woefully underestimated how far cement actually goes, and ended up making enough to fill one small corner. I did manage another batch before bed which mostly filled it, but by that time I was bored, and called it a day.

Tuesday started with making another batch of cement to finish the previous nights work, followed by ripping out all the crap wiring around where the old burglar alarm used to be, and replacing it with a nice modern junction box, and probably half the amount of wire. The next job was to drain the central heating system, disconnect the big double radiator in the living room, and plumb that into position in the dining room. Then, I fitted the new single radiator I bought in the living room. Fortunately, when I turned the water back on, I only had one leak in the dining room, which turned out to by one connection which I'd forgotten to tighten. God bless compression fittings! If I'd done that with a soldered joint, I may well have lost the will to live...

So it's been a reasonably productive day. I've just rounded it off with a trip to Anfield to see the 5-0 drubbing of Luton in the FA cup. Tomorrow I'll be going out in the morning to buy some flooring, so I can leave it to settle in before I fit it. Then, I'll be starting to plaster up the holes in the wall. There's a bit more of this to do than I expected, given that removing door frames and the like tends to bring half the wall with it. Never mind though, it'll all be sorted by this time tomorrow I hope!

On a side note, I decided to cancel the estate agent valuation I'd arranged for tomorrow as I didn't think the house would be in a reasonable state by then. Outside of the dining room, which is actually quite tidy, the rest of the house is a dump. Stuff is piled up everywhere out of the way, and there's just nowhere for me to move it to make it look tidier. We've now got an extra week to get the place respectable before they come to value it for us!

Doing It Myself

In a continued effort to get our house ready for sale, we've decided that the time has come to pick up the hammer and paintbrush again, and sort out the dining room, stairs and upstairs hallway.

To make this as quick and painless as possible, I've packed Lisa and Francis off to South Shields, and the cats are on holiday at my brothers house in Salford. I've got one week off work, and a quiet house in which to work my magic.

Given that my previous average time for decorating a room was more like 6 months, 1 week is quite ambitious, but I think I can get most of the dirty noisy stuff done this week, just leaving the painting and decorating for when Lisa comes back next weekend.

I'll be posting up some work-in-progress pictures as I go along, mostly just so that Lisa can see them, and make sure I'm not just destroying the house in her absense.

Check out the photos here:
Dining Room DIY

Christmas with a Difference

On Saturday we returned from a 2-week stint in South Shields where we stayed with Graeme's parents for the Christmas and New Year celebrations. It was certainly different this year, not least because it was our first with Francis.

It was the first Christmas we'd stayed with Graeme's parents. In previous years we have always stayed with my folks as they had ample room in their 6-bedroom house. Sadly, my parents went their separate ways in 2007 and neither really has the space to put us all up. While it was nice to see my parents getting on reasonably well over the festive season, I did find things a bit emotionally stressful and hope the dust will have well and truly settled by next Christmas.

It was also the first time in a few years that Paul and Becky did not spend Christmas with us. They were in cornwall staying with Becky's sister Helen and baby Isabella. Paul and Becky were a big miss on Christmas Day and, although they came to visit the following weekend, it wasn't quite the same. It's a shame everyone lives so far apart, as I'm a big beleiver that family should be together at Christmas.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting from Christmas Day, but I was certainly not expecting Francis to start cutting two teeth! I'd had visions of this lovely, exciting, serene day, with Francis playing with lots of new toys. What I got was Francis being a complete grump and crying at alrmingly regular intervals. I know it wasn't Francis's fault, but after the umpteenth time of Francis crying after being given a new present, I couldn't help but feel stressed and demoralised; I was convinced he didn't like anything we'd bought him. Once his teeth had cut through a few days later, Francis was finally able to enjoy his presents.

Other than the teething, the day went pretty smoothly. After Francis had opened his presents, Graeme and I took Francis to my Mam's flat for a few hours to see my family. I only see my brother David at Christmas so I always make sure I spend some time with him. Afterwards, it was time to head to Graeme's parents for lunch. Francis had more or less what we had, minus the gravy. It was great watching him shovelling vegetables and yorkshire pudding into his mouth; little did I realise at the time that Francis's interest in solid food was really going to take off, big time!

As we do every year, in the evening we went to Auntie Val's for tea. Val and Allan never fail to put on a fantastic spread of food and always seem to have whichever alcoholic beverage you ask for. They moved house recently, so that was something else different about Christmas and another reminder about how desperately I want to move out of Anfield. Francis was really able to join in with the tea, munching his way through breadsticks and cucumber; I even gave him a mini chocolate eclair as a treat (which he devoured pretty quickly!). We'd usually stay at Val and Allan's until about 11, but having Francis meant we had to say our goodbyes early so we could get Francis to bed before he got narky.

As we were back for two weeks we had the chance to meet up with some friends who we'd not seen in years. Richard and Rachel had recently moved back to South Shields and I was thrilled to be able to see them again. We met them, along with another friend (who we'd not seen for 10 years!) Emma, for lunch and did some serious catching up. A few days later we visited Richard and Rachel at their new house, which I fell completely in love with (mainly because of the number of storage cupboards... how sad am I?) and which made me even more desperate to get on with our own house move. Watch this space.

New Years Eve was a quiet affair. Neither Graeme or I are big fans of December 31st and prefer to spend the evening in front of the telly, going to bed pretty much as soon as thr clock has struck 12. The end of 2007 was not much different. We had the house to ourselves as Graeme's parents had gone out so we elected to watch a DVD and glug on a few bottles of Smirnoff Ice (I swear that stuff is just lemonade). Unfortunately, thanks to Francis's new teeth, we'd had very little sleep the previous night and Graeme fell asleep about 10 minutes into the Jimmy Carr DVD he'd got me for Christmas. We were in bed well before the turn of the year and wished each other "Happy New Year" when we could hear all the fireworks exploding outside.

On our last night in South Shields Graeme and I thought we'd take advantage of having family around to finally have a night out together. I'd ummed and ahhed about doing this for a while as I really didn't like the idea of leaving Francis. However, after talking to my Mam, I realised I was being silly; Francis would be in bed so wouldn't even know we were gone. So, on Friday night, I put Francis to bed, and, once we were sure he was settled, left him in the capable hands of Graeme's Mam Sandra and went out for a meal. The culinary choice is a bit restricted in South Shields, but if you love curry, you're in for a treat. We went to our favourite Indian restaurant, Cafe India, where the service is always fantastic, and spent a very reasonable £22. It's just a shame we didn't go midweek for their special offer menu because it would have only been about £6 a head! Afterwards we went elsewhere for a drink, which turned out to be a very quick drink once we realised that it was karaoke night... We got back after 2 hours to be told that Francis hadn't even stirred. Even so, I'm not sure I'm ready for the full babysitting experience yet.

We headed back to Liverpool the following day, with the intention of havinf Paul and Becky over for tea, but Becky was ill and Graeme and I were too tired, so we cancelled. Hopefully we can do that soon though. Saturday evening was spent watching telly and eating chips as there was a serious lack of food in the house. This meant that Sunday involved a stressful trip to ASDA to spend a ridiculous amout of money replenishing the cupboards.

So that's it for another year. Next year will be different again as we'll be in a new house and maybe Francis will be at a stage where he will actualy want to open presents. At least he'll have all his teeth by then so we won't get any nasty surprises!

Lisa xxx