I am a walking, stumbling slapstick comedy.
I’m desperately trying to see the funny side but yesterday took the biscuit (or courgette, now I’ve gone over to the Paleo side).
The shelves in my kitchen are groaning under the weight of vegetables so yesterday I decided to tidy them into neat heaps, reds/purples to one side and greens on the other with mushrooms and onions somewhere in between.
I found myself with a courgette in each hand and paused momentarily to give them a gentle squeeze – ‘cook tonight? Can I bear another courgette spiralized into tasty noodles?’
Having made my decision, ‘nah, not tonight’, I turned to pop them on the green pile. However, my left leg decided to stay where it was (such is the contrary, tantrum-y behaviour of MS), next to a curtain hanging over the back door to keep out the Welsh damp and random mice entrails dumped by the cat – a rather fetching print of bookshelves. Anyway, the last thought that went through my mind was, ‘must save the courgettes’.
I twisted, pesky leg still refusing to behave, caught my other leg in the curtain, spun in a circle and landed face down on my kitchen floor, courgettes held aloft. I lay there, gazing at the ceiling before hurling the courgettes against the fridge, where they bounced off and landed on the kitchen table, knocking my coffee over and scattering post-it notes.
Courgettes are dangerous.
It wasn’t the best MS day yesterday – a lot of my symptoms are ramping up and it’s getting harder to keep them under control. After the Courgette Incident, I had to go to the surgery for my monthly Alemtuzumab blood test. Perhaps sensing I had a day off work, my feet decided to do a little American line dance rather than behave. I jigged into the surgery, danced in front of the electronic booking-in computer, took a seat and watched as my feet twitched and jerked. Fun.
It was also, of course, my first day back in Uni after the Christmas break. We were a packed class, rapt as we listened to the history of the Flâneur (basically a nosy people-watcher from the last century who then writes about it). Trying to look semi-intelligent, I rested my face on my hand, elbow on the desk. Out of nowhere, my fingers started to twitch so badly it looked like I was sending dodgy signals to the tutor.
I sat on them. Wish I’d done the same to the courgettes.