It appears the gods weren't too impressed by Friday's facetious approach to ambulances and hospitals and gut-wrenching agony because, bugger me days, it happened again in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The pain woke me at 1:50am. After staggering around the living-room clutching my abdomen for half an hour, I finally gave in and woke the Dreamboat. By around 3:20am, I was in the ambulance sucking on the fun gas for all I was worth. It didn't work as well this time, so I managed to be almost still in pain by the time I got to the hospital.

We -- ambos, nurses, doctor, the Dreamboat, me -- all decided we're getting fucking sick of this shit. So I donated some bodily fluids and they said thanks and gave me a pathology form. I've had one ultrasound scan already and the second's scheduled for Thursday morning.

Yee-frigging-ha. Let's move on to Step Two, shall we?

Step Two: Celebrate the Festive Season
Given that our last couple of Christmases were bleak affairs, this time we thought we'd pull out all the stops and invite other people around to share our misery.

While I was agonising over what to cook for Christmas dinner, the Dreamboat sighed and reminded me of the First Rule of Entertaining: Never Make Something You Haven't Made Before.

What he actually meant was: I Want Roast Chicken.

Given that:
a) I've always considered the First Rule of Entertaining to be stupid and un-fun, and
b) roast chicken is boring,
I decided the entire Christmas dinner should be Something I Haven't Made Before.

So we had gazpacho for the first course (too much onion, not a huge success). The wildly fantastic main course was roast duckling, and gravy infused with home-made cherry molasses. To accompany this extravagance we had fancy roast potatoes with an equally fancy name I can't recall right now, a green salad and brussels sprouts with honey and seeded mustard. For dessert we had individual champagne jellies. One of our guests supplied home-made, coffee-flavoured ice-cream. (Wow. All those hyphens.) And, just to indulge his love of the old and familiar, the Dreamboat got to make garlic and chilli prawns while I whipped up the best pavlova in the known universe.

Yummo!

But none of this has anything to do with why I neglected the blog over the holiday season. Nah, all that food stuff was just about showing off.

The real reason you didn't hear from me for almost a month was one of my Christmas presents from the Dreamboat: a boxed DVD set of every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer ever made. Ever.

We're talking about a mere 39 disks -- 115 hours of pure viewing pleasure, plus extras.

I watched every episode. And I forced the Dreamboat to watch as well.

I rest my geekish case.

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Step 1: Land Up in Hospital ... Again
Yep, back in mid-December, for the second time in ten months, Your Correspondent found herself putt-putting along to hospital in an ambulance. At least this time the Dreamboat saved me the trouble of ringing for the damned thing myself. After arriving home to find me carked out on the dunny floor, he concluded I probably couldn't be bothered.

The ambulance ladies were very nice. They gave me an inhaler thing to stop the pain and make me believe I could fly. I even got oxygen and everything! It was as if Santa had thought to himself, Fuck it! I think I'll come early to that sweet little love-nest in charming suburban Karratha and give that nice lady lots of great pharmaceutical gifts! And then, when the ambulance left the house, all the little Outback marsupials gathered in our driveway to wave lacy pocket handkerchiefs and bid me farewell!

Sometimes I wonder if that inhaler shit ever completely wore off.

Anyway, the hospital part itself was boring -- just more of the usual pee-in-a-cup action, then the scratching of heads and finally the all-clear to go home.

I went straight to bed and was a very wonderful patient. Well-mannered and stuff. No trouble at all.

Dreamboat: Can I get you anything?
Poor Sick Niki: No, thanks. I'm fine.
Dreamboat: Okay (turns to go).
Poor Sick Niki: Actually, I wouldn't mind some anchovy-stuffed olives.
Dreamboat: Uhh ... alright (turns to go).
Poor Sick Niki: And a cup of tea.

To be continued.

P.S. Happy Australia Day!

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