Once again mea culpa. This has been a very uncomfortable week. I have had on-again off-again IBS* all week, sometimes meaning I just felt uncomfortable and bloated, sometimes meaning I needed to be within a few yards of a toilet. It is still there but I am trying to ignore it since it shows no signs of either going away or seriously interrupting things (I hope). I say hope very strongly as we have tickets for Cirque du Soleil this afternoon and I do NOT want to be heading for the ladies in the middle of a performance, but stress, even "good" stress, can really ratchet IBS up. I used to get it like clockwork every time we went up to a Swannies match just because I was excited. I also forgot to take my meds Thursday night which meant yesterday I had nausea, headache and prickly pain due to withdrawal from my antidepressants. I recently learned that the gut has many times more serotonin receptors than the rest of your body and an SRRI or lack thereof could easily affect the actions of the gut.

My usual reaction to felling like crap is the crawl into bed. Just for 5 minutes. no, 10. Maybe 30. Why don't I take a little nap? Whoops the morning is gone. So goes my life, lost in sleep, not necessarily because I'm "tired" but just because I want to push the painful world away for a little while. It works and sometimes I even feel better when I wake up but I rarely do all the things I have "planned" for whatever time I have available. Housekeeping is the first to go, hence the dust bunnies multiplying and the fridge needs a thorough clean (that I will do this long weekend). To my North American pals, Australia has a 4 day long weekend over Easter, given Good Friday and Easter Monday as public holidays. I find this very strange because there are the usual pronouncements of separation of church and state and there is none of the standard "God Bless America" type sloganeering by politicians. I am convinced the holiday remains as an excuse to eat all the chocolate one can, since chocolate in many forms is everywhere at this time of the year and they don't dye Easter eggs, and so we can have one last holiday (it's also school holidays) before winter arrives.

This also means we are on holiday from weaving class and since the instructor is also taking personal time after that we have 5 weeks without weaving class. Last week we played with different kinds of weft: fuzzy, shiny, boucle, anything including wire. It was a lot of fun and gives the mind lots to ponder. I am to bring in my inkle weaving next class which might prompt me to warp it again for my next band. We will do double weave next week which intrigues me in my design to weave a blanket from hand spun on a 30" wide loom. Then we go into projects, and I know I want to weave a red and white "dress" scarf in either twill or a colour-and-weave pattern. I might use some hand spun in the process.

I have knit nothing but socks and have almost finished the first of the 2 Opal blue socks. I plyed off another bobbin of BFL and am ready to spin some more. I continue my wrangle in trying to source Shetland from the US with many breeders eager to sell to me but refusing to believe that there are special laws regarding importing to Australia. I found a very promising site last night only to find they were in Canada and the thought of adding that to the equation made my brain hurt.

We watched Casino Royale on DVD last night and I am not fond of the new James Bond. Yes, he has a gorgeous body, but his ears stick out and I don't find him sexy. It also seemed that a requirement was that he run really fast. The opening titles were an absolute delight tho and so clever. The idea of 007 playing poker and not baccarat though. I mean really. I have been watching season 5 of Alias which for some reason our local network declined to air, so I had to buy it on DVD. I'm glad I also bought Gilmore Girls on DVD because we didn't see that either, even a shortened season or out of order. I signed up for a mail-order DVD rental service to watch DVDs I know the Bear doesn't want to watch but I do. So far they have mailed me (but they haven't popped out the other end) Ocean's 12 and 21 Grams. His tastes are those of a 14 year old boy so if there is subtlty or nuance or a love story (without car chases) he isn't interested.

*Irritable bowel syndrome