Some things I want to Bring To Your Attention. And a meme. Thank you.

Yes, well. We're now four days into 2008, and what have I achieved? Nothing! This week has involved a simply fabulous flare-within-flare incident where first I had a serious attack of the nauseas (which are still keeping me running to the loo - a curse upon tramadol and all its minions), then there was a truly stunning migraine, and now I'm exhausted. I was due to go swimming with my PA this morning, but on waking it occurred to me that not being able to move wasn't a good omen for that, so I postponed her and went back to sleep. I have managed to move out of bed exactly three times today, twice for tea and once to make a cheese salad. It's at times like these that I'm very glad I still have the ability to open packets of leaves and spinach and mix them together to fall back on. It means I can pretend that I still know how to be independent. Isn't that nice. On the plus side, my pre-New-Year bad mood went away, thanks to a lovely, chilled NYE with two friends. At which I drank more than I really should have done, hence all the migraine-y stuff, but hey ho, I enjoyed it a lot. More socialising to be done in 2008, yes indeed. If I can just get out of bed for long enough. Hmm, that might be a New Year's Resolution. That, and making it to church on Sunday, and writing a sodding Ouch blog post, and watching the DVDs my friends have lent me, and eating less chocolate, and...

Onto serious matters. Since I have utterly failed to come up with the proper traditional New Year post, either of the 'review of the year' or the 'resolutions' type, largely because I've been busy throwing up, I thought I would highlight a few things I've found while I've been entertaining myself with posting boards and suchlike today.

1) If you have a mental health problem, or have a close connection with someone who does, take the 'Moving People' survey and make me a happy bunny. This is a consultation on behalf of Mind, Rethink and the Mental Health Alliance, who are planning an awareness campaign aimed at breaking down the stigma associated with mental illness. I would like to see a political, rights-focused campaign. While there have been some interesting ones in the past, they've all been a bit fluffy and 'one-in-four' - and although there's nothing wrong with that, I think it's time to shock and engage people with the facts of how appalling prejudice and discrimination against people with mental health problems still is. But the important thing is that service users have a voice in the campaign. So get surveying and get your views heard, people.

2) My lovely friend Linz has highlighted two petitions, which will soon be closing, relating to the research and treatment of M.E. and Fibromyalgia. Both of which are political/rights issues. These are hugely under-funded and under-resourced conditions, and NICE (an ironic name if there ever was one) is restricting and harming the ways in which people with these conditions receive treatment. This is the relevant post. Go sign the petitions, if you're in the UK (and if you agree with the premise of each, obviously). Cheers!

And talking of my lovely friend Linz, she has tagged me in something called the Meme Challenge. So here's that.

Here are the rules:

1-Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog
2-Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
3-Tag 6 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4- Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Facts About Me:

1. Most of my life, I thought I was 5'3". Then a nurse measured me a couple of years ago and said "Sorry dear, you're 5' 2-and-a-half." I was devastated.
2. My mother has 22 cousins. Between them they have so many children that we've lost count of the second cousins, but we know there are more than 40. She's Irish.
3. I am one in 15,000. (Guess.)
4. For the first twenty-two - or so - years of my life I was a seriously dedicated fundamentalist (and not among the least narrow-minded of those). And I thought being gay was a terrible sin. Ah, how things change. Thank God. Possibly literally...
5. I have an overwhelming compulsion to name inanimate objects. You've met Marvin and Luna. My current laptop is Mr Crashy IV. His predecessors lived up to their names.
6. For a couple of years I lived in a house with a swimming pool in the back garden. I went skinny-dipping once or twice. Well, you have to, don't you?
7. I had about ten teeth removed in my teens, due to overcrowding (it was sort of a cull). Since I now have twenty-nine left, that means I once, theoretically, had a total of thirty-nine teeth. I'd love to get my hands on my dental records and find out exactly how many there were. As you can imagine, I was an odd-looking teenager.

I’m tagging: Jemma at Diary of a Monkey, Grace at Jesus Wept, Ellie at Life, Not Just Existence, Giraffe-a-licious at Ponderings and Ruminations, Batsgirl at This Is My Blog, sparklya at Trivial Pursuits, and my Girl at The Audioblog from Purgatory (mostly because I want to see how she copes with this through the power of rambling). I was going to tag Lisy Babe, but I think Linz already did. And if any of you don't like memes, you can threaten me with something nasty and I'll bug you to do it anyway.

That's it. I'm off back into hibernation. Wake me when Spring gets here...