Not sleeping

It's been 4 whole nights now that I haven't slept, and I'm feeling pretty exhausted. Unfortunately when I'm like that I then get ill. The last few days I've been suffering with abdo pains, diarrhoea, asthma and now I've got a bad throat. I know it could be a LOT worse however, so I musn't grumble. I think some of the my not sleeping is due to me worrying about stuff, which I need to stop. I really need to eliminate worrying from my life! (yeah, right). But it's true that whenever I have adopted the attitude "what will be, will be" then everything is better in a way, because I then just go with the flow, and do my best to make the best possible decisions I can at the time. And change is good too. I have made lots of good changes this year, and I think that probably is one of the things I'm scared of - going back to how I was and the old situation and the old me. But I guess as long as I keep my eyes and ears open and always am aware of what I am doing, then I should be ok, and shouldn't make the same mistakes again. At least that's the idea! (fingers crossed). I'm trying to find a place of peace and quiet in my head right now. Think I will go and use my angel cards. I always find they help me when my head's all in a muddle xx

Offer fallen through

After all that whittering on in my last post about getting an offer on our place, it's now fallen through and the buyers have pulled out. It was apparently a very young guy, only 21 and he got cold feet. Nevermind though, I'm trying to remain positive and hopeful that another offer will come our way very soon, and with any luck it might even be a better one!

Selling up and moving on

The cute maisonette in England which I jointly own has been on the market now for several months, and we have now had an offer, which we have accepted. I have had mixed emotions about letting it go because I put a lot of time, energy and love into the place, decorating it and making it a home, plus I have a lot of memories there and so seeing it go is really quite hard. I'm sure there are lots of you out there who feel the same, if for whatever reason, you too need to sell up your home. However, I am trying to be philosophical about it, and realise that change is so often positive, and if by selling it, it allows me to make a fresh start if/when I return to england, then that's gotta be a good thing. Mr W has also pointed out that sometimes having a mortgage can be such a tie, as it means you can't go anywhere else and you are more or less tied to that one place (unless you are rich of course), but sometimes if you let it go, it can open up lots of new opportunities for you. I think he's right, plus I've already made so many changes in my life last year, one more shouldn't make much difference. And in fact I'm now finding the idea increasingly exciting, as now I believe the possibilities are endless.

Snow fun

The above photos are:
Top = The snow plough which pushed a car down the hill as it was stuck in the snow
Middle = Me cross-country skiing (ski de fond)
Bottom = A very cute dog peeping out of it's owner's rucksack on the bus

It has been snowing heavily on and off the last few days. Sometimes its so heavy that you can hardly see (like the top photo). At the weekend Mr W and I went cross-country skiing for the first time. We had a very long ski-walk before we even reached the "proper" ski de fond place which has tracks made out in the snow to make it easier to slide. We found out that the walk was actually graded a red for ski de fond, so we actually did pretty well to make it. It was really tough as it was uneven, plus it went up and down hill and round bends. I have to admit that when it went downhill, I was a bit of a scaredy-cat as there seemed to be hardly no control with the skis, and I didn't like the feeling of hurtling down a hill and not being able to stop! When I was more brave I fell over a lot, but at other times when it seemed just too steep I decided to slide on my bum to avoid hurting myself, which certainly amused some of the people watching me! (I have never liked the thought of breaking my bones but now I am more scared because I have osteoporosis and I don't want to spend the rest of the ski season in plaster). However, I was relieved that we made it, and that I didn't need the loo (this was a bit of a worry as we only saw one portaloo the whole day). I'm so grateful that presently my health is better enough to allow me to experience such wonderful things as before even though I might still have given it a try, I would have been anxious the whole time incase there was an emergency. I know how lucky I am.

A little something I drew

I think I'm a bit obsessed with flowers and hearts, and so draw them quite a lot. I'm sorry for the very poor quality of photo. I've got a bit of camera-shake today as got a thumping headache. Have got a few other drawings similar to this that I'm in the middle of, so hopefully when I'm feeling a bit better I will finish them.

Some Christmas things

Ok, I know christmas has now passed, but seeing as I hadn't started my blog then, I thought I would just post the above two photos anyway. As you can see the first one are some funky santa slippers which I totally adore and were a totally unexpected but very welcome pressie, and the second are apple and jam tarts that I made. The tarts were a bit experimental for me as it was the first time I tried making them without lard as I've been finding that the pig's lard (I cannot find vegetable lard here, which I normally use alongside hard margarine) was making me ill. So this time I tried it with just hard margarine. The texture wasn't as good, and I think the taste was compromised slightly, but overall they weren't too bad, and definitely were edible. I also made an apple pie, which Mr W certainly took a liking to and ate with gusto, along with chocolate ice cream! I have to make my pastry without eggs (or nuts, not that you put nuts in pastry!) as I'm seriously allergic to them, and go into anaphylactic shock if I have just the teeniest trace. I'm used to it now, as have had my allergies since I was about 3 years old. Thankfully my mum was very good at baking pies and tarts, and flap jacks so I didn't really lose out that way, I just could never have shop-bought ones or ones that other people have made. And when it came to my birthday parties, I only once could actually eat the cake, when my mum decided to make me a special cat "cake" which I totally adored and was made out of chocolate covered rice krispies and had liquorice all-sorts for eyes and whiskers. (All the other birthdays my mum still bought cake for everyone else at my party, I think partly for show and so that no-one missed out).

Living amongst the clouds

The above photo was taken high up on one of the pistes. You can just about see the small figure in the distance skiing down. To me it looks like he/she will be skiing on the clouds soon. I am very lucky to live so high up that often it does seem as if we are floating on the clouds, and it rather suits me as my head is often high up in the clouds, dreaming away!

L'hopital

The above photo is of a tram at night, around christmas time.

Well, the docs finally decided to give me my treatment yesterday after all, which I'm pretty grateful for. I'm feeling pretty wiped out now, have the runs and also a few aches and pains, but it's all normal. I just need to rest. I know this will sound a bit nasty, but at least if I get ill it was the docs decision to give it to me and I haven't hidden anything from them. Oh except one thing which I simply forgot to mention and which probably I should have done, and which I will have to keep an eye on as it is starting to worry me a bit (I won't mention it here in case anyone is a bit squeamish!).

Unfortunately my favourite french nurse wasn't there yesterday so I had someone else, but he was still very pleasant and so I can't complain. In fact they are all lovely there and all try to make an effort to speak english when I can't understand what they are saying. Although of course I speak as much french as I can possibly manage. It is frustrating for me sometimes as being a chatter box, I would like to say a lot more than I know how to, but at least they get some peace.

We (me and the lovely guy I live with with, who I will call Mr W from now on), decided to park the car in the Park and Ride and get the tram to the hospital. It cost only 1,50 euros which included the car and us, so I thought that was a pretty great deal. I still get excited travelling on the trams, because I find them so fascinating and also because they go all over the place, you get to see a lot of places that you might not normally. The hospital itself is a very large concrete structure, which is not very pretty to look at and reminds me of The Royal Free hospital in Hamsptead, London (where I used to be a patient) which I always used to think imposed on it's lovely surroundings. However, I can't complain as when you are inside the french hospital you get some amazing views of the snow-capped mountains, so really I'm spoilt.

A day at the hospital tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be at the hospital, hopefully having some treatment for my Crohn's. At the moment, I have this every 7 weeks and it is an infusion (medication given through a vein) which aims to zap some of the T-cells which make inflammation. I'm hoping I will be able to have it tomorrow, although fear that I may not as I haven't been very well for the past few weeks, and normally it is not safe to have the treatment when you are fighting a germ or an infection. But anyway, will see what the docs say!

Even though I'm not very well, I still have a wonderful view of people taking the ski lifts up to the top of the mountain and skiing down again. Although today its snowing so hard, visibility is reduced somewhat.

Snowy trees

This is a photo of some of the trees in the arboretum outside the building. It is a peaceful place to be, where most of the time you can hear nothing except maybe birdsong.

Why am I here?

You may wonder what I'm doing in France. Well I can't answer all of that question as it would mean giving away personal details of some of the people close to me, but I'm basically taking a break. I'm sure many of us would like to do that at some point or other in our lives, and perhaps some or many of us do. I know sometimes it doesn't seem like there is an opportunity to just take off and almost re-invent yourself, and so when the opportunity was there for me, I took it.

I was struggling in all areas of my life and my physical and emotional health were suffering majorly as a result. After having my 6th operation (for crohn's disease) and having a very difficult and exhausting prolonged recovery, on top of the other problems/difficulties that were sapping my life energy, I decided to take up the offer of a friend and come and live in the alps for a while. At that point, I did not know what life had planned for me (none of us do!) but instead of being overly scared (of course I was a little), I was more excited at what might happen, and I embraced the huge change gratefully.

So here I am, and I don't regret one moment of coming here. Of course you may read this and think, well of course she's not going to regret living in the alps! And you will partly be right. But living here high up in the mountains, does pose challenges that you might never need to think about, if living in "normal" society. But thankfully, I have overcome most of them, and although there are still things that scare me about living here, I am getting more bold at giving them a go.

Bonjour et Bienvenue! Hello and Welcome!

The above photo is just part of the view (I get many different views according to the weather) from the apartment balcony. As you can see there are icicles hanging down from above, about to drop, and hopefully will not injure anyone below.