January | 2015 | Maintain cadence with MS

I must be feeling better. Made pizza for the first time today and trying to cope, in an adult way, with the fact it’s gone wrong.
Five- year olds make pizza on tv – it’s an easy introduction to cooking. I watch my deep pan horror swelling in the oven and wonder where I went wrong. I blame Jamie Oliver, whose ‘easy pizza dough’ I used.
Nigel Slater, sound as a pound, never goes wrong. Whereas Jamie is a little bit ooh, a little bit arhh… A bit how much flour do I need to add?
I had to ‘Knock it back’ from a liquid to a solid…
Ah well, we can pick the bits off..,
Let’s remember the good thing was I was motivated to give it a go. And I’ve
been swimming today too.. And Ikea (the pizza was a thank you to Ben for building the chest if drawers)
Not ‘better’ – never ‘better’ as such – but feeling better. It is a subtle reawakening of the mind, of the desire to just ‘do’ without making an effort all the time. Still need my naps and rests and ultimate caution handling breakables, but feeling better. And that’s nice – hope does spring eternal.

At least when wide awake at 3am I was able to enjoy Suspicion, directed by Hitchcock and starring Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant. Iplayer and iPads are wonderful things. I was contemplating a drama in Gaelic before spotting this thriller, which I’d never seen before. What starts as a rom-com, with Grant a fast-quipping and kissable rogue, slides into an unsettling mind game where it is impossible to tell if he is telling the truth. Because he does lie, a lot – or is it all the time?
Joan Fontaine won an Oscar (the only one for a Hitchcock film) for her affecting performance – passionate, smart, silly, confused, smart and ultimately, suspicious. And she is quite beautiful throughout – in a fascinating timeless 1940s way that you could never dream of replicating. Which made it an unthreatening watch from my pyjamas and bundle of pillows, with Roger the cat trying to find his niche on my feet.
This has happened before when I’ve had a course of IV steroids to speed up a relapse, as is happening right now. I feel really tired, stay up as long as possible, get into bed and stay wide awake. Run-of-the mill side effect…
I try to go with the flow – enjoyed an hour of an Inspector Maigret audio book (I am also hooked on Audible) before the film, and tried hard with my mindfulness meditation app afterwards, before being foiled by random leg spasms. What’s that all about, eh? Roger didn’t know either.
Of course, sleep came two hours before my alarm went off, to get me back here in the day unit by 8am, to watch the drip for an hour and listen to a bit more Simenon.
I’ll let you know how it goes tonight.