hmmm

Feel dizzy, lightheaded. I've taken to keeping a bag of sweets or a bar of chocolate near me to stop me shaking. Had fun yesterday when I tried to go for a blood test. Found out that the only way they could eventually get blood to flow from my arm (after trying to warm me up with blankets and a heat pack) was to lie me down and dangle my arm off the edge of the bed and hope that gravity did all the work. Fun? Not really.

Also feel just one step away from tears. Constantly, they're always there and I know that if someone just looks at me the wrong way at the wrong time they're going to just flow out of me. Sometimes they do anyway (and the double episode of How I Met Your Mother dealing with pregnancy tests, fertility issues and then the sudden loss of one character's father did not help in the slightest).

Need to call doctor next week and be reassured even though I think that these are fairly common symptoms of my medication. Still, in the meantime I did what any normal person would do and googled the facts and side effects of my medication. Of course.

Found something that amused me greatly. On a page headed 'Clomid facts and comparisons' I found the following under the warnings:

"Avoid becoming pregnant while you are taking it"

For those of you who don't know, Clomid is given to those women who are having trouble conceiving. It's supposed to boost your system to help you get pregnant. Somehow, this isn't really reassuring me.

Houses

I am obsessed with househunting. My husband can't understand why I go through the real estate part of the weekend paper. Every weekend. I'm not at the point where I go to open houses (unless, of course, it's the neighbour's place...) just for fun but sometimes, just sometimes, I'm very very tempted.

It's normally just an idle curiousity that drives me. A 'what kind of place would we buy if we could afford to' sort of thing. It drives me crazy, however, when I'm looking at the price range that we could buy in and finding houses that look really good and could be absolute bargains for us but know that we can't put in any offers or do anything until this place is fixed and we can sell it. So, at present, I'm a bit cranky with slow insurance companies. And the body corporate.

There are some sorts of houses from some areas that I would just love to live in and I think that's what I keep looking for. If I was in Britain, it would be an older house, possibly full of little corridors and rooms that surprise you when you walk round the corner because you really didn't there would be a room there. One with character, anyway (and, for the record, that doesn't necessarily mean beams and tiny rooms). Oh, and a big fireplace.

If I was in Melbourne, it would definitely be a house similar to the one my sister lives in. A single story wooden slatted house, with a veranda and wrought iron decorations. There are suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney that have houses just like that on wide, tree lined street. Street after street of them.

Here, in the tropics, it would be a Queenslander. For those not from around here, it's quite simple. This is a hot, wet climate. Prone (in case you hadn't noticed) to flooding. The original people who settled here knew this and they designed a house to cope with it. Also, crocodiles can't climb. So, a typical Queenslander is a single story house on stilts. Usually the floor of the house is high enough that you can walk under it. They are usually designed around some central rooms with a wide veranda that goes around the entire house. Sometimes this is enclosed, or at least partially, with old fashioned casement windows from wall to wall so you can open up any part of the house to let the breeze flow through. They are open, airy houses perfectly suited for the tropics.

I love houses. One day...