Laura and the 37th birthday

I am a year older since I last wrote this. I can think of no good things associated with being 37, so I will gloss over this and move swiftly on to describing my special day.I awoke at 5am on the day of my birth. This was not because I was excited about the postman coming, or the bumper haul of gifts I was expecting. No, I was stricken with hideous side effects from my injections. For those of you who do not know, I was struck down with a ghastly rare blood disorder in 1998. for which there is no cure. Doctors have never discovered the reason why I was chosen to receive this terrible affliction, it simply seems I am destined to suffer in life. To stop myself venturing into deadly infectious terrain, I must inject myself with GCSF 48 million units 3 times every 2 weeks.So I lay in my bed at 5am, sleep eluding me, wondering what my next course of action should be. I opted to ingest a couple of Anadin Extra for my aching muscles and then decided to have a few snacks. I went online and discovered to my disappointment that none of my friends were on Facebook at 5am. I checked my emails and replied to one sent by my Mum and one by my American pen pal Tracie.My Mum had sent some details of a magazine that was looking for contributions about Liverpool. At 6am, I plucked up the courage to send them my Belle Vale and County Rd blogs. I hope they like them and if not, then that is their hard cheese.At 8am I heard the postman battering on my front door, so I raced down and answered in my fleece leopard skin print dressing gown. I had to sign for a recorded delivery and I was astonished to discover it was an exceptionally large cash gift from my little brother and his girlfriend. It was a dream come true, as only the day before I had been fondling footwear in Schuh and wondering when I would ever have any disposable income to dispose of on shoes. I was going to phone my bro straight away but then I remembered he does not surface easily before noon at weekends.I spent the rest of the morning receiving birthday texts and Facebook greetings. I went back to sleep at 10am and then got up at lunchtime and watched the Apprentice on catch up TV. Alan came round in the afternoon. He had brought me a surprise present of a yellow beaded curtain and made me wait upstairs while he installed it in the kitchen doorway. It was a most delighful gift that was not any less delightful for the fact that Mum 2 had also bought me the exact same beaded curtain in orange for the kitchen doorway. You may be wondering what I was intending to do about the problem of 2 beaded curtains and only one doorway requiring such an item. I was luckily able to call upon my presence of mind to look around the house for other areas which may benefit from a beaded curtain. With Alan's help, we deduced that the doorway dividing the front and living rooms could be enhanced, but would require the purchase of yet another beaded curtain to fully cover the space.As well as my beaded curtain, he bought a Dirty Dancing workout DVD, which I had requested as I cannot bear my muffin top a moment longer.Of course, everything has to be undertaken in its correct and logical order. Before commencing the DVD, I had to engage in the eating of a chinese meal and large slab of birthday cake. Then I was too tired to even unwrap the DVD, so we watched an episode of the OC and then Alan watched 'Locks and Quays'. I could hardly keep my eyes open through such a tedious example of televisual viewing. I am a big fan of the countryside and canal boats, but the last thing I want is to watch a bunch of whoppers chugging along the country's waterways and stopping off for a spot of fishing.I opted to have an early night and was in bed by 10pm.I decided to continue having my birthday today as I did not feel that with my injections I had achieved full value for money. However I am still suffering fron side effects today, so it looks like it will have to continue on into next week, or until some point where I am sated with the birthday experience.