a picture from life's other side

The last day at work was every bit as weird as I'd expected it to be. And that's considering that I almost came to blows with a colleague the day before whilst clearing my desk

This actually involved throwing away a lot of documents that I haven't looked at in all the years I've been there. There was a lot of crap there, but some great finds including:

• A sheet with instructions about Proper Apostrophe Usage (liberated from my first real post-uni job when I left there over ten years ago)
• Inexplicable examples of work from random print agencies.

I was determined to keep it low-key - the whole situation isn't really something I want to be celebrating. I did get some nice stuff though, not least a bit of Bowie vinyl from my boss. He's a complete Bowie-nut, so we've had many conversations about Zavid's life and work over the years and particularly over the last 12 months, obviously.

So I'm sitting here on my fourth day post-work. The first day doesn't really count as it happened to be the day for my annual MS MOT. Key take-home from this was that when I mentioned I was trying out the OMS lifestyle, the nurse didn't run screaming from the room. In fact, she said that she'd read the book too, and that it contained a lot of good convincing science. Which was good to hear.

Also good was the fact that my white blood cell count had started crawling back up - I've been having monthly blood tests as this is a standard side effect of Tecfidera.

We had a chat about my perennial bladder issues which have been rearing their head recently. There wasn't much else we could do about it though, as the bladder scanner was being fixed (the physio was off too, and the nurse we were talking to was the only MS Specialist nurse in that day).

After a bit of monkeying-about with my walking sticks (they've been giving me a bad back. SPOILER ALERT - they might've been set too low) and (fingers crossed) a final monthly blood test, that was it.

Yesterday and today I've had a crash test in how bloody exhausting it can be trying to stay on top of maintaining a house.

When I picked Ms. D up from school yesterday, a friend asked me how I was getting on (she and her partner know all the details of my recent situation). I said that prior to this, the idea of being a house husband was really attractive. But right now, I'm exhausted and scouring the job pages for anything to fill my days!