It never rains but it pours.

After postponing our departure for Seattle by two weeks, so that I could recover properly from my appendicitis, my sister-in-law announced a few days ago that she no longer wants to carry out the fulfilment for mirrormirror while we’re in Seattle.

So now we’ve got two weeks (two weeks!) to find someone else. 

Is it you?  Or someone you know?

The ideal person will be thorough and organised, enjoy working with beautiful things, have enough spare space for a packing table and some storage space for stock (surprisingly little as most of our products are quite small), have a couple of hours spare a day and probably live in London or the Home Counties (the UK at the very least!)

It would be a perfect for someone who is freelancing or building up their own business and who would like to have a solid and predictable wodge of cash coming in each month, or else a mother at home with a young family.  By its very nature, the job is extremely flexible and would fit round all sorts of other activities.

I think I might have some people lined up from January onwards, so my most pressing need is for someone to cover the two months up until Christmas – though obviously someone who wanted to do it long term would be even better.  And if they wanted to get involved in other aspects of the mirrormirror business then that would be the icing on the cake.

Please email me if you think you might be able to help, and I can send you a more detailed job spec.

The Chinese characters above supposedly reflect the old adage that the Chinese pictogram for ‘crisis’  is a combination of the characters for ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. However, knowing my luck at the moment the characters above are probably saying something like ‘fuckity fuckity fuck’!

If you look down the toolbar on the right hand side you’ll see some stuff about  the freshly-fledged mirrormirror Charitable Foundation, together with a very tiny ad. (Someone’s buying links to get themselves to the top of the search engines).

Since I am very occasionally asked to advertise things on the blog, I thought it might be a good idea to donate any advertising proceeds to charity.  In this way the mirrormirror Foundation will of course soon be rivalling The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in its philanthropic endeavours.

Seriously though, I thought it would be a good idea to donate to causes empowering women in the Third World.  The proceeds of the current tiny ad will be donated to the Campaign to End Fistula – an eminently curable condition where women are left horribly incontinent after a long and traumatic labour.  The sad part is that the smell of leaking urine and faeces means that these women are often ostracised by their communities and are left unable to lead a normal life.

If anyone else would like to advertise on the blog, please email me and we’ll sort something out.  I’d be happy to accept bigger and gaudier ads than the one currently in place as long as you pay enough!  (Rates will, however, be very reasonable.)  I will of course reject any ads in questionable taste and, unfortunately, any submitted by people with shops similar to mirrormirror.

A lesser woman sits before you today.

As of Saturday I am minus one of these, though I’ve been told that my own appendix  looked ‘rather unhappy’ and was surrounded by an abscess.

On Thursday morning I called my GP.  ‘Do you remember that pain we spoke about on Monday? Well, it’s better, but not exactly gone. Just a dull ache in my right side. That hurts when I eat. Should I be worried?’

It turns out that I did indeed need to be worried.  Two hours after making the call I was in the Rapid Assessment Unit of St Mary’s Hospital (the same hospital which had tortured me in all sorts of imaginative ways when my daughter was born.)

After lots of prodding and poking, ultrasounds, CAT scans and huge amounts of worrying on my part, as I thought of my friend Camilla, it was announced that I had acute appendicitis, with the further complication of an abscess on the appendix.  Though the pain was lessening and I was feeling better than I had in days,  I needed an immediate emergency appendectomy to lessen the risk of life-threatening peritonitis (or in layman’s terms, the appendix or abscess exploding and leaking toxic pus everywhere).

So I was put on a drip and told that I’d be ‘nil by mouth’ until the operation had taken place.  At this point, you must bear in mind that I had eaten hardly anything since the Saturday night, had vomited or diarrhoeaed out everything else left in my system and was now RAVENOUS in a way that even I have never been ravenous before. 

Later that evening I was told that due to other more pressing emergency operations, my operation would now take place the following morning.  I could eat something very light, but would again be ‘nil by mouth’ from midnight onwards.

On Friday I lay in my bed with an extremely painful cannula delivering the IV fluids waiting for my op. And starving. And waiting.  And starving.  By lunchtime I could stand it no more and had to cause an almighty fuss in order to try and get some information.  After two and half hours of complaining (I was hungry, remember?) I ascertained that my operation would probably take place around 8pm.  So I waited.  And starved. And starved. And waited.  And at 8 pm I was told that my operation would now be postponed until the following day (Saturday).  I could eat something light, but would be ‘nil by mouth’ from midnight onwards.

It appears that one of London’s premier teaching hospitals and flagship of the NHS only has one emergency surgery theatre.  I considered somehow puncturing the abscess in my abdomen to see if life-threatening peritonitis might make things move along more quickly, but decided not to take the risk – I’d probably end up being operated on by the tea-lady.

Finally, late on Saturday morning, I had the operation.  Only 44 hours after being admitted as an emergency patient. And on my seventh day of not eating.

I came back home yesterday and am currently feeling rather weak and feeble since I still can’t eat very much.  The wound is like a one-sided caesarean, so I can still hardly walk, though I’m assured this will get better very soon.  And I have to wait six weeks before picking up the Minx to allow the section through my muscular wall to heal, which is going to be very easy. Not.

The one upside of all this is that I appear to have lost 8lbs in a week. I shall be releasing the best-selling diet book forthwith.

Feeling poor?  More month left than money?

I was too, until I discovered that this very blog is valued at a whopping $14,113.50.

Some person with too much time on their hands has analysed AOL’s acquisition of the Weblogs Inc stable of blogs, worked out how much they paid per inbound link (according to Technorati) and then applies that formula to different blogs.

Sadly my new-found riches pale into insignificance beside the $230,332.32 which Petite Anglaise is sitting on, or the $582,605 asset of the Go Fug Yourself girls; and even they are as nothing against the awesome $1,907,580.66 that Pink Is The New Blog is supposedly worth. 

Thanks for all your kind comments. I’m feeling a bit better today – my temperature has gone down and the sharp pain in my side has turned into a dull ache. Still feeling wobbly though, mostly because I’ve had hardly anything to eat since Saturday night, but hoping that I’ve now turned the corner and will be able to start eating properly again.

Wish I knew what this thing was though, as I’m terrified it’s going to strike again.

Am feeling VERY sorry for myself.  It was my birthday on Monday and I spent the whole day in bed with a terrible stomach pain, temperature, vomiting and diarrhoea, just like I had a month ago.

The doctor seems to think that it’s most likely the recurrence of a stomach virus, but can’t rule out something appendix-related, which is a bit scary.

So I’m feeling very miserable indeed, and it’s just what we needed when our departure date for Seattle is now so close.

Normal blogging service will hopefully be resumed shortly.

Two videos. Both mesmerising. 

Look here.

And here.

From Amy Ruppel via Lola Is Beauty. 

Have a lovely weekend.