The good ... and the bad

The good is a beautiful weekend down the beach. I wasn't in the mood to do much of anything (after the recent sewing disasters I have lost my mojo a little bit) except read, eat and go for long walks. So that is what I did! The sea sparkled and sparkled in the sun.



I went for a drive-by of a house which I really shouldn't do. We are planning to retire to acreage down the coast; I have a real estate weekly search that emails me properties within my parameters, and there is always something wrong with them. Except for this one, that looks just perfect, so of course I had to drive by and check it out to see what the flaw was. Except there isn't one, at least not from the road, so now we have to decide whether to call the agent and have a proper look or just accept that we can't quite afford it at the moment, and we should Stop Looking. Retirement is still a few years off yet.



But the drive meant I stopped and strolled along other beaches, which was lovely on a crisp and largely deserted winter weekend. I can just sit and watch the sea with no other entertainment. I think I might have been a whale in a previous life (no blubber comments thank you very much).



Unfortunately there was also a bad - Sunday morning I noticed a couple of red dots on my arm, like insect bites, but ignored it and went for a five-mile walk, pottered about, packed up the house and drove back to Canberra ... and when I got home my whole arm was covered in a red rash, and swollen and hot. By the time I got to a doctor at 8 pm that night I was sick and shivery and in pain - I thought it was cellulitis and I was right, and it was horrible! I have no lymph nodes on that side, and I'd had a mild graze on my elbow (putting on a t-shirt in the corridor, oops) which was enough to let the bacteria in and result in a runaway infection.



This is the arm two days later when the antibiotics had finally started to kick in. I had three days at home, and am fully recovered now but it was very scary how quickly it took hold and how rotten I felt. I am SO grateful for antibiotics, I would be completely dead without them. And I will pay more attention to disinfecting even the tiniest cut in future!