This morning started at 10° C and that seemed good. I don't think I can remember black clouds for the first couple of hours, but it was cloudy. Later on we may, or may not, get some sunny spells, and even sunshine. The afternoon temperature should reach 12° C. Apparently that is supposed to be good for this time of year, although I have known better. Tonight the temperature will drop a lot, but tomorrow should see it up to 11° C after a cool start. There might even be some sunny spells, but from 5pm we may get drizzle and light rain. All the clouds should keep the temperature steady at 11° C for the rest of the day.

  Yesterday I did two important things, but overall it was not a very productive day except to somehow keep my blood glucose very high. That seems to have been a very productive, or strictly speaking a counter productive, thing, and the worst thing is that I am unsure how I did it.

  One I didn't do yesterday, and which I am sure I said I would be doing, was to wash my hair, and have a shower. After I had finished writing, and having my usual rest for half an hour (or sometimes more), I had a more important task to do. It was quite a big task because it involved moving a lot of boxes in my bedroom. Three plastic boxes containing things like shorts for the summer, and spare pairs of jeans, were easy to move.

  Behind those plastic boxes were a couple of cardboard boxes that were both very heavy, and difficult to pick up. That was made worse by having a pile of assorted boots and shoes on the floor in front of them. I could have moved those shoes and boots, but chose to work over them. I ended up sorting enough stuff to fill two carrier bags to dispose of from those cardboard boxes. Everything would then fit in one, and so the other box went into the recycling bin.

  After lifting out that last box I found what I was looking for. It was an obvious hole under the skirting board, and maybe a small one next to it. I also found a pile of mouse droppings, and from the placement of the droppings it was easy to see where the mouse would get into my bedroom through a narrow gap between the boxes and the side of my computer desk. I never did catch any sight of the mouse, but it is now obvious why some crumbs, I know I dropped, seemed to have vanished without me clearing them up.

  I used sealant to fill the cavity under the skirting board, and then started putting all the stuff back. With just one cardboard box I seemed to be able to push the plastic boxes back as much as an extra 3 inches, and make some extra space. I improved on that even more by putting away all but one pair of walking boots. It was all quite hot and sweaty work, and a good reason for a shower - which I didn't have.

  Instead of a shower I had some lunch. With hindsight it was not a good choice when my blood glucose was already on a knife edge in the morning. My lunch was two baps - bigger than breakfast rolls, and also quite malty, and malt = sugar. Once I seemed to manage those baps, but not recently. The filling was almost safe, just sliced tomato, sliced corned beef, and horseradish sauce. They were really delicious, although maybe a bit spoiled by guilt.

  Before lunch I did stop to put some laundry in to soak in detergent. It was two t-shirts, and maybe six pairs of underpants. I came back to them, intending to finish the job at least half an hour after eating my lunch. It was almost nice working with the bathroom window open. Even with that fresh air I was starting to build up a sweat as I wrung out all the clothes after every stage of of the washing.

  I should have finished the job in one go, but after getting the clothes in the last rinse water I decided to take a break. It was quite a long break because I think I got distracted by doing some reading. It was almost 4pm when I went back and finished that laundry. I hung it on the big clothes horse in the dining room, and help it dry by using a fan heater on low. That was the only time I had any heating on for most of the daylight hours. My bedroom seemed quite comfortable with no heating until after dark.

  It was not long until it was dinnertime. I almost had an all fruit dinner, but I had two small packets of crisps as a sort of dessert. My main course was just two small apples, a medium sized orange and a single nectarine. I was worried that nectarines can be very sweet when very ripe, but despite the packet saying "ripe and ready to eat" it was still very firm a day or two after buying them.

  There was not a lot of TV entertainment on last night, and I ended up watching some recent repeats of episodes of The Simpsons - but not always paying much attention to them. I would often start reading stuff on the internet while partially listening to the TV sound. I think I continued doing that until 9pm when I headed for bed.

  I was not sure how well I would sleep. I knew that I would have to put the heater on low during the night because it was already too cool to sleep mostly undressed. That made it too warm to sleep under the duvet, but I am well practised at pulling the duvet over me when it starts getting cool. My main source of apprehension is whether I would hear that mouse gnawing away at something under the floorboards.

  I can happily report that I had a very peaceful night. I only woke up to pee, and as is now usual, that was every 2 to 3 hours. I even had a really good sleep in to catch up with more of my lost sleep from the night before. I can remember having a lot of dreams, and most of them seemed pleasant as far as I know. One was not so good because it was a dream about being lost in West London, although "lost" is a bit of a misnomer. It was more the matter of not knowing the best bus to get to take me towards home or tube/railway station.

  One dream was another in a series of dreams where I was back at work (or maybe hadn't retired at that point) but I was already drawing two pensions, and was really only working for something to do. It meant I didn't really care if I was sacked for instance. In the dream I was calling my boss "poop face" to a co-worker without realising the boss was standing behind me. I treated it with the levity I thought it demanded, and somehow, in doing so, my boss thought it was all a joke in the style of a Carry On movie.

  I didn't poop when I got up, but I have no. I did have quite a big pee, and sometimes during the night I was back to having what seemed a large pee. When I weighed myself I seemed to have lost an entire kilogram in the last 24 hours. That seemed very good, and I wondered if it would reflect in my blood glucose readings. In theory eating to lose weight, which I evidently did, should also reduce my blood glucose level.

  On yet another occasion it was the exact opposite. This morning my blood glucose was back up into the danger zone. The Contour meter read a terrible 10.2mmol/l. The GlucoRX meter wasn't quite as bad at 10.0mmol/l. That is right on the red line. The Sinocare meter read a slightly better, but still very undesirable 9.7mmol/l. One of the more obvious (to me) bad things about days of high blood glucose is the growth of boils on the inner thigh. They can be quite sore sometimes, but the worst thing is the mess when they finally explode. I am sure I am getting hints of an old one regrowing on my left inner thigh.

  The rest of my health seems OK. My temperature is about normal for this time of day. My blood pressure is a bit better than usual - assuming the lower the better (although there must be a lower limit, but with doctors always going on about high pressure, they never seem to say another about the lower pressures). This morning, on my first try, I got 100/51, and that seems to be very good. Even my pulse Oximeter says my blood is 98% saturated with Oxygen, and that is plenty when doing no more when sitting at my computer keyboard.

  One thing I will definitely do before the morning is over, is to shave, wash my hair, and have a shower. I am feeling very grubby at the moment, and being clean will feel good.  It is possible that if it is mild, and sunny later, I may go out for a walk - maybe just to the shops, but ideally further. That will also depend on finishing some more laundry. I still have a bit of a backlog, but there are a few things that it would be good to get done first. I'll start them soaking in detergent after my shower.

  Ideally I shouldn't have any lunch today, and particularly not another two baps like yesterday. However I may get away with one if I am careful about dinner. I will probably give in to having just one because they are starting to go a bit stale and need using up before they deteriorate too much. The trouble is that I think there are still three left from a packet of 6. If I though I could get away with no dinner I guess it would be safe to have two, but I am not sure I have the willpower to even have just two apples and nothing else except for a little chunk of cheese. I will be a lot happier when my pancreas starts producing more insulin again.



 





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