0800 P-I-G-S-I-T-T-E-R-S

"You need a baby-sitter?!  I'm on my way!"

Today I feel too ill to do anything.  Putting a plate in the dishwasher just made me nearly pass out.  Can you imagine what would happen if I washed them by hand?!  Ha!  This morning Dulcie spent an hour watching episodes of Peppa Pig back-to-back on YouTube while I lay comatose beside her.  I think she would quite happily have watched more but (get ready to stone me as a terrible mother) she told me her neck was getting sore (sob) so I wrestled her away from it.  Now (having had lunch - I'm not starving her, at least) she's watching Raa Raa The Noisy Lion on the TV rather than the computer, just to give her day a bit of variety...  And she's still in her pyjamas at 1pm.  But let me reassure you, Dulcie (if no-one else) is more than happy about all of the above!

I know that television as a baby-sitter is universally frowned upon, but my goodness, it's a piggin' lifesaver at times.  I don't know what I would do on a day like today if Dulcie didn't long to have square eyes.  I try to console myself with how much she learns from programmes like Peppa Pig.  She'll watch an episode once and then days later she'll suddenly start talking about everything that happened in it, so it must be good for her language development and her general understanding of the world, I think, and I do generally watch with her and chat about what we're watching etc.  I'll really start to worry when she wonders why all her friends at nursery are the same species as her rather than a curious mixture of domesticated and wild animals who are all the same size as one another...

I'm so fed up of being ill and fed up in so many ways.  I think November to January are always going to be tough months now, thinking about the anniversary of my diagnosis and that end-of-year feeling with nothing too positive to look forward to in the year ahead.  It's probably not helpful to think how many tablets I took in 2013 (that would be around 2,000, fact lovers) or the horrible procedure I went through or the fact that none of it has helped, but I can't help looking at things that way sometimes and, in all honesty, that is less depressing than looking at the likely road ahead at the moment.  The point I'm at now is bad enough.  Dulcie has needed new shoes for weeks and I can't even fathom the energy to get her into town to get her feet measured.  Maybe just as well she's not getting dressed today.  At least her toes can wriggle freely!

Oh, dear.  Now she's watching Mr Tumble and I've just spotted a raisin nestling in her matted hair.  I should go and remove that before trying to persuade her to join me for a nap under the covers.