Well, well, well

Today’s post brought to you by: the makers of Gatorade

Grateful for: power of denial

Trying hard to accept: power of reality

BREAKING NEWS!!! Drinking water till you look and feel like the Michelin Man actually makes dehydration worse. I. Give. Up.

Found this out from the lovely southern belle nurse Ashley when we went back to the clinic to pick up my reports. (Turned to Ben in horror as the receptionist handed me a form on a clipboard, “Sign here and go wait in room 3.” She thought we were there to start the whole nightmare all over again. Was she just bored? Or crazy? Or been told to get profits up?)

The answer to all my life’s problems is … (“Told ya so” is so unattractive, Stephen) … Gatorade! The most sickly sweet, strangely coloured, overpriced drink ever to grace the shelves. Electrolytes are king, apparently.

To get over the trauma of the visit to the trauma centre, we had to find some southern comfort food. Stat.

Every home needs a Cracker Barrel in its back yard. They give you a breakfast menu, a lunch menu and a holiday season menu.

By page 1 of the breakfast menu you’re already doing an impressively complicated mathematical formula in your brain to calculate calories eaten already, calories about to be eaten, exercise done today (none), exercise planned for tomorrow (none), fat percentages, anything carb-free on this menu?, get real, % of recommended daily intake of electrolytes, enough sodium, too much sodium, should really eat some green veg, nah, how many biscuits is too many biscuits? so you can work out what to order. There are still 15 pages to go.

Cracker Barrel: the only restaurant and gift store where you can shoot deer between courses and build your house on Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll piles.

16 hours later. Strongly suspect connected to mysteriously absent willpower at Cracker Barrel.

You know how they say the older you are the less you sleep? Well, from the patio villas of The Villages a vampire has emerged.

Note to brain: I AM ON HOLIDAY. I DO NOT NEED TO WAKE UP AT 5AM ANY MORE.

Or 1am. Or 2am. Or 3am … I’m writing this at 6am after waking up every hour on the dot. What do you call a cross between a vampire and a Swiss watch?

You know those dreams that are very cleverly like movies? There’s a set, a cast (depending on whether you’ve had a good, bad or anxiety-filled day you’re either the hero, villain or victim), a storyline, a beginning, middle and sometimes an end.

You wake up and think, wow, my brain’s so clever, it just created a whole movie. You lie there and go over the whole thing (smiling, frowning or quietly weeping, as appropriate).

You think that given the complexity of the movie it would’ve been at least 3 hours long.

Fool. Instead of the full-length feature film with half an hour of adverts, trailers and opening credits included, I get the made-for-TV version.

One hour maximum. On the dot.

Oh no. … how’s that for timing. Scary email from travel insurance co just popped up: “Dear Ms Wilson, our US agent would like to know …”

As much chance of getting back to sleep now as running a marathon. Actually, in current state of disrepair, as much chance as running to the end of the bed.