Apart from the temperature being 9° C until it starts to cool off a degree at 5pm, the forecast for today is not that different to yesterday. I wonder if we will get a surprise clap of thunder today ? It would not surprise me if we didn't get a few sunny spells today despite none being forecast. Apart from a general feeling that any forecast recently must be wrong, I can see a few small, tiny, patches of near blue among the clouds at the moment. Tomorrow may be colder, with temperatures around between 5 and 7° C, but the morning is shown as featuring some sunny spells. Earlier versions of the forecast showed the sunny spells to finish at 1pm, and for rain to start immediately, but now it says the rain may not start until 4pm. Tomorrow may almost feel like some of it could be a nice, albeit cold, day.
 
  Yesterday was almost a semi good day, and maybe bits of it were good. I had a few things to do, and I had some success in what I was doing. I also seemed to have more success than I thought I was going to have when it came to eating carefully.

  One thing I was going to do yesterday was to wash my hair and have a shower. By the time I had finished writing, and had my traditional rest afterwards, the weather was looking bad, although not awful, but certainly bad enough, or should I say wet enough, that I had no desire to go out, and I was very sure I would have no visitors. Being clean and fragrant was not essential, and I skipped cleaning me, but I did do some laundry.

  It was not exactly the greatest load of washing - just two pairs of long lounge pants and 4 pairs of underpants. I had other stuff I could have added to that, but I still ache a bit, particularly my arm muscles, and I didn't want to push my luck too far. In fact it was not as uncomfortable as I expected. I still took a break after the third rinse. I think I rested for over an hour before I wrung everything out after the third rinse, and then after the fabric conditioner.

  I hung all that washing on the big clothes horse with a fan heater blowing on low. The fan heater had been on high earlier on, mostly because I had thought I might finish that laundry a lot earlier. The extra heat in the dining room did not go to waste. I spent some time in there investigating a few, and only a few, of my failed solar garden lamps. I did get all but a couple working OK.

  One of the bigger lamps had a strange problem. It seems something like a tiny spider had built a nest/egg sac around the positive terminal of the AA rechargeable battery. Somehow it had seemed to do the impossible and get web between the battery and the contact. After cleaning the gunk out I fitted a new, but old battery with a far higher capacity, and which was fully charged. With the solar cell covered the lamp lit up brightly. It was alight all through the night, and looked as bright as ever until there was enough daylight to switch it off. I hope that the battery will remain charged, although on grey days like today it can't generate much charge.

  There were two other lights that responded to freshly charged batteries, although the charge on one didn't make it through the night. I have suspicions about the battery I used in it. I looked inside two more solar garden lights, and I could not fix them, although I may be able to do so one day. I expected them to use the 2/3rds AAA cells that I ordered. I know that I have seen those in some of my solar lights, but the two I checked yesterday used an even smaller, almost big pill sized batteries. There seems to be enough room inside for something bigger, and maybe I will repair and upgrade them with bigger batteries one day.

  I was on a sort of mission (as some would say) to be extra careful about what I ate yesterday. For lunch I just had 3 pieces of fruit - a plum, a Persimmon, and a big orange. I still find it odd that such a meal can feel useful. I didn't feel the need for a snack until maybe 3 hours later. It was the last Tiger roll I had. I filled that roll with just ham and mustard, and it was delicious. That was probably around 3.30pm.

  I almost held out to dinner time before eating again. It must have been past 4pm when I had another snack. This one was not so good. It was about the last 5 cookies from a packet of sugar free choc chip cookies. The packet had been opened for as much as a week, but maybe because they had no sugar in them, they did not go soft and stale like normal biscuits. I also had a single small (25gm) packet of Hula Hoops.

  At 6pm, a little later than usual, I had my full dinner, and it was bigger than I thought it would be. It was the stewed beef I had part cooked the day before yesterday. I added some sliced leek, and a fair bit of broccoli before microwaving it for another 15 minutes. I thought it was going to be very big, and so I ladled out about half of it into my favourite soup bowl. In that bowl it did not look big at all (a lot less than a typical can of soup), and so when I had finished that I ate the other half too.

  Once again I indulged in a dessert, and once again it was a small, approx 100gm, serving of ice cream. Having tried the new flavours I went back to the cheap tub of ice palm oil cream. That stuff is OK, almost nice, but it just doesn't taste quite right enough to be really enjoyable. The only real plus point is that it's modestly low sugar content. That is everything I ate listed, or at least all I remember. I didn't even have any beers last night, although I did come close to having a few whiskies, but the desire was not strong enough to go up and down the stairs every time I wanted a refill.

  Without a great deal of enthusiasm, except for one or two bits of a programme or two, I watched a fair bit of TV last night. The last thing ended at 9pm, and I was looking forward to bed, but before bed I did something I very rarely do. I am not sure why, and it was a bit stupid because it could have ruined my night. I checked my blood glucose level (using just the Contour meter). I was shocked to get a reading of 7.2mmol/l. I would have expected a lot more so soon after eating my dinner.

  I guess that made me feel good. I have not started a new book yet, although I have chosen one, and for the first time in ages I got into bed, turned out the light, and it seemed I fell asleep really quickly. I think I slept until just after 11pm when I got up to go for a pee (although if I remember correctly it wasn't enough to wake me up - it may have just been habit). I then fell asleep, but it seemed less than the typical 2 hours before I woke again. It may have been for another reason that I could not have anticipated.

  At about 11:30am yesterday I sent a message to Angela. I was basically asking if the had had any improvement in her assorted after effects of her cancer treatments. It must have been at least a fortnight since I had heard any news, and she was suffering quite badly then. I never got any reply, and I wondered if I had offended her in any way, or maybe she just didn't want to communicate with me. After her marriage we didn't communicate at all until she started to message me about her cancer treatments.

  The other possibility, and maybe probability, is that she just doesn't communicate with me when her husband is around. It was 12 minutes past midnight, when presumably her husband was fast asleep, when she did reply to me. She said there was no improvement, but I think there may have been. The symptoms she described were bad enough, but I'm sure they were not as bad as she was describing weeks ago. I suspect she is going to do what I have done many times in the past.

  Admittedly her symptoms are pretty severe, but I have had things, even as simple as 'flu that seemed like they will never get better, but one day you wake up and find you are cured, and didn't even realise it was happening until it happened. Anyway, her next fear is that next Monday she has a dentist appointment at Guys Hospital. She will/my have one or more extractions, and eventually will end up with dentures.

  I can quite understand her fear of the dentistry, and the prospect of wearing false teeth. I can imagine that her fear of false teeth is mostly for cosmetic reasons, and maybe nearer the time I will do my best to reassure her that unless she draws attention to it, no one will probably know she is wearing false teeth, and that she should concentrate on getting them to feel comfortable rather than fretting about what she thinks others may feel.

  I made my reply at 7am this morning because I wanted to get back to sleep last night. I am sure it is adjustable, but in the dark my phone display is so dim that I can barely read it. I did not want to turn the lights on and disturb my sleep, and after reading her message I turned over and went back to sleep again. I did seem to sleep well last night, and as far as I can remember, I didn't seem to dream last night, although I feel sure I did.

  Before replying to Angela I went for my morning pee, and this morning, my morning poo as well. In fact I did two poos with about 5 minutes between them. I would not be surprised if I did one or two more before the day is over. When I weighed myself I found I had managed to lose 400gm this morning, and once again, for the umpteenth time so far this year, I seem to be on a probably temporary downward trend again.

  My blood glucose is also on a downward trend. As I mentioned earlier, last night it read 7.2mmol/l. This morning that Contour meter read 7.4mmol/l, and that is still very good. The GlucoRX meter read 7.3mmol/l, and that is even better. Even the Sinocare meter was on my side this morning, also reading a very good 7.3mmol/l. I must admit that adding sweet fruit, and ice cream to my my diet seems to be having the opposite effect to expected.

  It was only about 10 minutes later that I got a reply to my 7am message to Angela. It was very brief, but very touching, It said "Thank you my dear dear friend xxxxx". The timing just reinforces my idea that Angela only communicates with me when her husband is not in the vicinity. Maybe he hadn't got up, or was having a shower or something.

  For the last 15 or 20 minutes the sun has been shining. The sky to the north is a sort of mottled white and grey. To the south the clouds seem thicker, but I cans see patches of blue. Maybe not big patches, but they are there, and it still seems possible we may have a very tiny chance of more sunny spells, and less rain for a while. This sunny spell seems to be possibly fading now, but it almost wants to tempt me to go out.

  I don't think I will go out today unless I go to the shops. I definitely want to have a shower, and to wash my hair this morning. Washing my hair is well over due now. I have turned the gas down to the water heater, and the water temperature is far better for pouring on my head. Before it would probably have been marginally too hot to be comfortable.  I think I may do a bit more laundry today. I have a selection of t-shirts that might deserve a wash. Most have only been worn for a few hours at a time, but even those get to the point where a freshen up is rather important.