My intention was to post this on Friday — this is what greeted me on my desk when I arrived back at work on Wednesday (courtesy of my crappy ancient phone since I forgot to take my camera):



Such a nice gesture and a soothing sight as I struggled through the pain. Sadly I had to say goodbye to them today becuase they were well and truly wilted.

Wow.

I know I’ve said before that it’s when there’s lots of bloggable things going on in my life I’m too busy doing those things to actually take time to write about them, but this is ridiculous.

So, since my last post way back there in January (for crying out loud), I have:

• been to Egypt — where I lazed on the beach, read books, snorkeled for the first time, and generally developed a serious crush on the Sinai peninsula that may have displaced my previous love for Morocco — and took an unforgettable day-trip to Jerusalem;
  
• uploaded and organised all my photos from said trip, which can be found at my Flickr account;
  
• run around places like Homebase and Ikea and done various odd jobs I’d been putting off for, er, years, before Chi-town Girl came;
  
• gone with Chi-town Girl to Rome for a whirlwind weekend where I mostly waited for her to actually leave the hotel room;
  
• tested the effect of two days of eating nothing but pizza, pasta, and gelato on endometriosis (not good, but so worth it…I can’t stop thinking about gelato)
  
• uploaded pictures of the few things we did see in Rome in the fading light here;
  
• played tour guide after work for the following week Chi-town Girl was in London;
  
• paid for another year of domain ownership and still forgotten to post on my own blogiversary, 3rd March — six years of inconsistent blogging, whooo!
  
• spent three days/two nights in hospital for a laser laparoscopy to remove my endometriosis;
  
• been to my mother’s for a week to have her cook and bring me drinks and generally wait on me;
  
• spent the last two and a half weeks since the surgery unsuccessfully trying to find a comfortable position (especially one where I could actually type on my laptop);
  
• watched every episode of Gossip Girl since there was nothing else to do;
  
• bought a 320GB external hard drive that allows me to do stuff like download series 2 of Gossip Girl now that I have more than a few hundred megs of free space at my disposal;
  
• opened my Feedreader for the first time in months to start catching up on my non-Secretary of State-related reading — seriously my post-inauguration daily surfing has mostly consisted of state.gov for my video fix (even if it is one minute clips of Hillary beaming adorably and shaking hands with various foreign ministers) and transcripts, the Hillary Daily LiveJournal, Foreign Policy’s Madame Secretary blog, and Hillary searches on Daylife and Google News.

So, like I said, I’ve had a lot going on and I would’ve loved to have blogged about each of those things in their own right. At this point the important thing was to start posting again, hence this entry brought to you by bullet points. But I will have more to say about the surgery.

Passing through Trafalgar Square on Saturday after seeing the Turner watercolour exhibition at the Courthauld Institute. It was a horribly cold day, but still a surprise to see the fountains frozen over.

Two weeks in, and 2009 hasn’t got off to the most auspicious start. First there was some cramping and sciatic uncomfortableness that has made for some interminable afternoons in the office, then last week my purse disappeared — cards and all — just as I was in the process of making travel bookings, and then Island Girl had to finally admit defeat in getting our schedules to work for a girls’ week away to soak up some winter sun.

But, those travel plans are also where things are looking up. Although it would’ve been great to have a companion, I’m determined not to pass up an opportunity due to circumstances beyond my control. For the first time in recent years I have money in the bank and almost two weeks of paid holiday to be taken by the end of the month.

So I booked myself an all-inclusive package to Sharm el Sheikh for a week. My flight leaves next Thursday morning.

To say I’m not a little apprehensive about going alone would be dishonest, but more than that I’m excited, and relieved that after months of talking about going I’m finally making it happen. And it’s a new experience for me that I have booked a whole trip and still have money left over in my bank account, with just a week to go before payday. I like it.

So a week from now I will be packed and pulling my customary pre-flight all-nighter for fear I’ll oversleep. I’m anticipating 7 days of leisurely reading on the beach, dipping into the Red Sea, and a dream day-trip hiking up Mt. Sinai. There will be many photos.

And when I come back I have another trip to look forward to — at the end of February, Chi-town Girl is fulfilling a long-time dream to see London, and we’re off to Rome for a whirlwind weekend. Rome has been on my must-visit list since junior school and it’s hard to believe it’s actually coming true. I’ve booked our hotel and once Chi-town Girl has booked our flights, hopefully this week, I’ll be able to relax.

And beyond that there are my tentative plans to visit friends in New York and Toronto and see Chi-town Girl back in Chicago. In one of our multitude of emails over the past couple of weeks, she designated 2009 “the year of travel.” Right there is all my resolutions wrapped into one pretty-sounding package. It’s off to a great start.

I usually approach the passing of another year with a sense of melancholy, but I’m sure I’m not the only one more than happy to watch 2008 skitter to an end. It’s been a year of swooping highs and crashing lows — the emotional rollercoaster that was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s historic presidential campaign; an almost-trip to India and the loss of my work-from-home-all-you-like job; rebounding into a better job that on one hand eased my financial woes and on the other requires me to haul my aching body to the office daily; and now, at the end of the year, the beginning of a new cycle of hospital appointments. The return to an office full-time means I can no longer put off treating the endometriosis that I largely avoided dealing with for most of the year, curled up with my laptop.

There were smaller things too — new friendships, new shoes, hours spent screaming with glee in concerts, quietly pondering in theatres, and strolling through art galleries. I became addicted to Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and several musicians that I was also probably the last person to discover. Case in point: my new favourite song this week is Skinny Love by Bon Iver, who by all accounts released one of the albums of the year.

What bothers me most about 2008 is that I never left the country… in fact come to think of it I never left London all year (shock, horror!!)… this is something we call a First World Problem. As far as my mother is concerned it’s more of a Rich People Problem. But the itch to travel is incessant and uncomfortable and looking back on my shortlist for last year is depressing. So my only solid “resolution” for 2009 is to experience as many different cities and countries as financially possible. At the moment I’m dreaming of trips to Egypt, Rome, New York, Toronto, Chicago, and India, in that order, but after this year’s debacle I’m hesistant to predict they’ll become anything more than daydreams. At least my bank account is much healthier this time around.

So as I type this, with the sound of random fireworks going off down the road as if in practice, I’m looking to 2009 with an eagerness and conviction that next year will be better. I plan to see out 2008 and welcome the new year with a glass of Prosecco pressed to my lips. Start as you mean to go on.

The scent of warm cinnamony dough wafts through the cold air, taunting and enticing me on what feels like a daily basis. In the past the arrival of a Cinnabon in my neighbourhood would’ve been met with unrestrained glee and the piling on of calories, but in the wheat-free world of an endometriosis sufferer, it almost feels like a cruel punishment. The irony that on my last trip to Toronto I was rhapsodic over the ready availability of freshly baked cinnamon rolls from the ubiquitious Tim Hortons is not lost on me. Be careful what you wish for…

I’ve been sneaking in exceptions to the wheat-free directive lately — I haven’t had the time or energy or inclination to prepare lunches to take into work — and I’ve been paying the price with stabby abdominal pains. But with each craving for stuffed-crust pepperoni pizza (a craving I’ve so far held off indulging) I’m toying with the idea of taking a temporary break from the no-wheat/meat/dairy diet.

I signed the forms today to get on the waiting list for a laser laparoscopy to remove the endometriosis. So the idea of stuffing myself silly with pizza and pasta and cheeses of every variety not long before the big day holds some appeal. Because after it is removed I don’t exactly want to encourage its return.

I’m caught up in a mixture of anticipation and trepidation at the idea of an another surgery — that it’ll work, that it won’t, that the pain of recovery will be worse than last year’s diagnostic laparoscopy. But after more than a year of putting off the follow-up to that diagnosis, I am ready for the next phase.

In a moment of randomness this afternoon (well, yesterday now, since it’s after 1am), I checked the Ticketmaster website to find that tickets had been released for the Coldplay concert at the O2 Arena. I immediately picked up my phone and fired off a text message to Island Girl. A few hours later we were in our prime aisle location singing along as Chris Martin bounded across the stage.

The one downside to such a display of spontaneity is that I’ve been remiss in carrying around my camera lately. And as giant yellow confetti-filled balloons descended from the ceiling and bounced off the hands and heads of the crowd during Yellow, I composed shots in my mind and whined again about all the great photos I was missing.

I’m wrong, there is another downside… footwear. When I pulled on my high-heeled boots in the morning, the same boots I foolishly wore on Friday despite knowing there would be serious dancing going on that night, it was under the assumption I’d be walking from home to station, station to office, and back again. Those are not concert-going boots. They are certainly not stand on the Underground to North Greenwich, walk around looking for friend and then our seats, stand and/or dance all concert-long, get stuck in crowds trying to catch public transport home boots. Those babies have turned my feet into bundles of stinging, throbbing nerve endings.

It’s a trade-off, I suppose. My aching body may be cursing me now, but there’s nothing quite like finding yourself standing in a darkened arena bathed in light from the stage, watching bands you never epected to see live, surrounded by roaring crowds who can identify all the melodies from their opening notes and know all the words. Especially when you assumed the evening held out nothing more than some hastily-thrown-together food and the Sex and the City DVD.

I never could’ve imagined I’d get to see Deacon Blue live, let alone Simple Minds, who they opened for, but this seems to be the year of the reunion tour. I ran this through Photoshop to minimize some of the noise and it isn’t bad considering we were in the very top row halfway along Wembley Arena.

President-elect Obama taps Sen. Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state.

Mixed feelings about this. I still can’t quite imagine Hillary leaving the Senate, but this is a new adventure…

In an effort to shrug off the early winter melancolia that has me adopting Recoil as my theme song, I suddenly find myself in a flurry of social activity. I briefly emerged from unintentional weekend hibernation (read: oversleeping) on Saturday evening to go to a small dinner party, and a couple of glasses of wine and plenty of laughs later I’d received the kick up the backside I needed.

So, I picked up my neglected initiative and arranged tickets for a few friends to go to the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I’d been sitting on a group text from an acquaintance I haven’t seen for ages inviting people to go salsa dancing at the weekend so I took on my indecisiveness and spread the word to a couple of friends, who invited friends, and now I’m counting the days until I can get out on the dancefloor. The guy at work who has established himself as the unofficial social coordinator gave me a heads up on the shortlist of locations for an “alternative” company party before sending out the email (suddenly I’m in the know at work and as of today no longer the newbie on my team). The Bookworm said today that she has a spare ticket to see Simple Minds at Wembley. Why not, said I.

And now I belatedly realise it’s the London Jazz Festival this week, so that’s Saturday afternoon accounted for.

There have rarely been so many little triangles lined up in a row on my phone calendar. I’m already thinking about how I can add more — dim sum and cocktails at Ping Pong, gluten-free pizza in Fulham, a long overdue meetup with former colleagues. The list goes on, and should carry me through to a gathering of old friends at the end of the year.