I've been tagged by Rabbit to tell you 8 random things about me. I remember doing this last year (23 things!), and I had to go back to that post to make sure that I didn't repeat any of them! Hard, but here goes:

1. I have very strong, agile toes. They can lift things that most people's can't. Like a mug of tea, a book, etc..
2. You wouldn't know from my online persona, but I am not a very articulate person in reality. It's only when it comes to writing things down that I have things to say.. I'm actually quite shy and quiet.
3. I won a book-writing competition when I was 6 years old. My book was about a little girl who got lost in a forest. It was fully illustrated, and I still have it somewhere.
4. I am an urban girl, having lived in the London all my life, but I do love growing my own fruit and veg - there's nothing tastier than picking an apple off the tree as you leave for work or watching little seeds grow into courgettes!
5. As a kid, my parents bought me a piano because I could sit down at a keyboard and play back any tune I'd heard, without a single mistake. My fingers just instinctively knew where to go.
6. I do a killer sudoku in the Times everyday, as well as the crossword and codeword. I think it keeps my mind supple and active.
7. I recently lost 16lbs and almost one dress size, just by not snacking! Shows you how much I snacked!
8. I love baking and cooking, but most of all, making desserts. In fact, I bought this book yesterday, and am now off to make profiteroles with a gorgeous chocolate sauce! I might post pics if you're lucky ;)

I am going to be boring and just tag whoever wants to join in - I think a few bloggers have aleady done this tag!

The Rules:
1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

Quite literally!

My hayfever was quite bad on Monday and I pulled a muscle in my neck/shoulder in a particularly big sneeze! It was bloody painful on Monday, but I could still move without crying. Yesterday, I woke up to excruciating pain, and I couldn't move my neck, head or upper torso at all! Not only that, but my head was stuck at a peculiar angle - angled towards my left shoulder and chin tilted towards my chest! Lol, sounds like a bad sitcom, doesn't it?!

Imagine the difficulty I had trying to manoeuvre my body out of bed from a lying down position to a sitting one! It literally took me 20 minutes, and crying with pain. It was too painful to sit at a computer, so I called in sick. I think I spent the rest of the morning attempting to get dressed and brush my teeth - no small feat when every little movement bring tears to your eyes. As for the unruly afro curls - I had to leave them as they were, because there was no way I could move my arms that far up to do anything about them!

I had no idea how much one muscle could affect movement! To view anything on any level other than eye-level, I had to more my entire body to that level. Spitting out toothpaste was a pain! I automatically went and stood on the scales, until I realised that there was no point, as I couldn't bend my neck to see the result anyway! Lol..

I know I’ve neglected my blog of late, sorry little blog. I miss blogging, but I’ve been having a bad patch in terms of energy with the ME/CFS lately, especially with concentration, and I have to choose between work and play.

My ‘bad patches’, better known as relapses, aren’t as bad as they used to be. Since I’ve been attending the CFS course at the hospital, I’ve implemented lots of little changes in everyday life, such as daily exercises. Now I know how to recognise and manage my symptoms better, my bad patches aren’t a complete ‘crash’, i.e. I’m not holed up in bed for 2 weeks. I’m still in pain, exhausted, tired and all the rest, but life can still go on, albeit more slowly, which is a blessing. That’s the idea of pacing therapy – knowing how to stabilise the peaks and troughs of energy, so that the lows aren’t as low. Does that make sense?

Anyway, I didn’t mean to warble on, but I just wanted to blog something, however small, so that my little blog, and all you lovely bloggers, know that I haven’t forgotten you. I had a lovely birthday 2 weekends ago, and I shall try and post photos soon. Thanks for all your birthday messages though, they put a great big smile on my face :D see?

Hope you’re all well, I shall be back soon.

Love Pandy
xxxxxxxxx

This:

• week, I signed up to Facebook and have become a little bit addicted to it. Is there such a thing as Facebook anonymous?
• morning, I was woken at 8am by my neighbour mowing his lawn. Surely there is a law against mowing your lawn in unsocial hours?
• afternoon, I have a CFS clinic session, and am worried because I haven't done my homework of daily exercises, relaxation techniques and keeping a thoughts diary. The cute doctor will be unhappy with me..
• weekend, I feel well enough to do some shopping :)
• weekend, I hope it's sunny so I can sit in the garden and read
• morning, I am wearing glasses with a new prescription and they make me feel a bit dizzy
• week, I have gotten over my resp. tract infection, but my voice is still husky, and not in a sexy way.
• week, I have spent too long faffing around and getting nothing done
• week, I have thought about what I want to do in the future
• week, I have asked myself why I always feel so self-conscious and uptight, and have actively been trying to be more laid back and relaxed
• week, I have celebrated a friend's good news, although it reminded me about an event in the past and made me feel sad.
• week, my workplace have set up a monitoring system to see how much we get done. Less time for blogging/reading blogs/faffing around on the internet
• week, I haven't had any chocolate or crisps - shocking!
• week, I went into the office after a month of being away and couldn't find my desk because we'd been moved around
• weekend, I aim to relax in the knowledge that things aren't so bad at the moment :)

What's been going on with YOU lately..?

Yes, tis me! I hope you didn't think I'd deserted you; after all, so many people have left blogging recently, but fear not, I'm not one of them! I do owe you guys an explanation though - as you know, I was in Hong Kong in the first week of April, and ever since I've been back, I've been ill with vile respiratory tract infections. It's been a horrid two weeks, and probably the most ill I've been in years, but am starting to come out of the daze of painkillers and antibiotics. I can breathe, talk, laugh without coughing, and eat again (hurray!), and the dizziness has abated enough for me to see the words I'm typing - woohoo!

Hong Kong was fun - it seems so long ago that I hardly remember it now. Actually, the weirdest thing was seeing my lab partner from uni when I landed at HK airport, getting on the same bus as me, and again at the airport on my way back - she was on the flight after mine. Small world, huh..? Anyway, I ate loads, and put on a few pounds, as I usually do when I go over there. I actually wanted to talk about weight - I just finished watching the Channel 4 documentary, SuperSkinny Me: The Race to Size Double Zero. It focused on two journalists trying to slim down from a UK size 12 to a size 2 (US size 00) in just five weeks. I watched with horror but not without fascination, as I'm sure most women watching did. Because, lets face it, who doesn't think that they could stand to lose a few lbs or an inch off the spare tyre?

During the program, I found, worryingly, that I shared a lot of the feelings and symptoms the women had during the experiment. You see, before I went to Hong Kong, I had been trying to lose some weight. I'd put on a few lbs, and it was becoming noticeable. I've pretty much been the same weight since I was 17 (aside from losing and regaining 10lbs when I was ill in 2002), but since I've had ME/CFS, I've been a lot less active, and although it didn't really show hugely on the scales, it's started to show on my body shape. As I'm not really able to do any cardiac exercise because of CFS 'flare-ups', the only thing I can control is what I eat. Just by eating slightly smaller portions and cutting out unhealthy snacks, I lost half a stone in 3 weeks (which shows you how much I snacked!), but strangely, I don't look any skinnier at all! Anyway, the women in the experiment reported constantly thinking about and becoming obsessed with food, which is exactly how I felt during weeks two and three of my 'diet'. Week one was fine - I didn't change what I ate, just chewed slowly and savoured flavours and textures, stopping when my stomach started to become full. I was thinking, 'Gosh, this isn't so hard'. But after mid week 2, every day just got harder and harder. I craved EVERYTHING, and was constantly talking and thinking about food pretty much every moment I wasn't eating, as well as evaluating how full/empty my stomach felt every other second. Food was my every thought. It wasn't very nice for me or the people around me, just as in the experiment.

Of course, being ill these two weeks and not being able to eat, I lost the holiday weight from HK and a little bit more. In the words of Emily from The Devil Wears Prada, 'I'm one stomach flu away from my goal weight' Just kidding :) Now that I've regained my appetite, I'm finding that I'm constantly starving to the point of dizziness, and consequently eating like a heifer. I have a feeling that all my suffering will have come to nothing if I carry on like this!

The difference between me and the women in the experiment was that with me, the weight needed to be lost - I had a BMI of 26 (overweight) and now have a more respectable BMI of 25 and don't feel as bloated as before. Watching the documentary though, and seeing what the two women went through to achieve a skinny body shape, I can tell you that I would never ever go to those lengths to lose weight or look good. For one, I love eating too much; two, I don't like getting sweaty; and three, who finds a bag of bones attractive anyway? I think I'll just eat normally but a little more healthier from now on, I'm not cut out for this dieting lark! :)

I hope you've all been well, and I shall definitely spend a few hours catching up on blogs tomorrow. Be good!

Love Panda xx

Tarepanda - he makes me smile with his pudgy cuteness. He's my mascot for several reasons:

1. 1. He's a panda, which matches my blog name
2. 2. Pandas are Chinese, as am I
3. You often see him looking tired, lazing about or being clumsy, just like me :)
4. He's just tOO cute, and so lovable!

I'm a bit ashamed of my previous post. Its not often I get that low, and I would like to stress that in between these times, i.e. normal day-to-day life, I'm okay, and not depressed all the time. I'm still learning about how to cope, this is relatively new for me, as I hadn't fully accepted the diagnosis until it was confirmed a few weeks ago. I guess I shouldn't blog during those low points, but you guys really REALLY helped a LOT, and it gives me great comfort to know that I have your support.

Anyway, moving on, I found a cool site recently that I wanted to share with you: videojug.com. What is it? Life explained. On film. Whether you're looking for how to make a chocolate and orange cake, how to change a tyre, or other more amusing ones such as How to get our of a car without showing your knickers and How to chat someone up on the train, this site has it all!

Here's a few of my faves from there:

How to insult someone using British Sign Language
How to make spring rolls
How to make a pina colada
How to eat sushi
and bizarrely, How to undo a bra with one hand.

Enjoy!

Less than two weeks after I packed up my blogging keyboard, here I am again. I miss it - writing down my random thoughts, having the occasional rant, wasting work-time :) I stopped because I didn't really have anything of consequence to say - who really cares about my boring little life? It was also starting to become a bit of a chore, and there's no point in doing something unless you enjoy doing it, right? And yet, here I am again.

Yep, I've missed this little place. I started blogging back in May last year, mostly because I was bored in my job, and wanted to somewhere to put my thoughts. I'm glad I did, because I've made many friends; you're all very dear to me now :) I used to be very cynical, but you guys have proved that there are lots of nice, genuine people out there, and I'm glad that blogging has opened up this world to me.

So I guess my little stint away from blogging has been harder than I thought it would be. I have found myself smiling at something and thinking 'I could blog about that', and automatically structuring a sentence in my head to describe it. So I guess it's actually harder for me NOT to blog, rather than just waffle away every now and again.

So it's got me thinking I guess. Why do you blog? What made you start, and what keeps you going? And who is reading this? Stop and say hi!