Spend spend spend

What happens to a girl who's been deprived of shopping for 6 months? I'm sure I do not need to spell it out. One long brown 'coatigan', one deliciously soft knitted dress, several presents for the kids and a North Face ski jacket later I am in self imposed house arrest.

I must be feeling better as my little barometer boy has reverted to type and spent half an hour before bedtime shouting that he hated me because I wouldn't let him play on the computer and Emily burst into tears this morning when I said she couldn't go to youth club tonight as she is too tired. Isn't life wonderful.

Great time with my sister Helen - it is a shame that it takes a life crisis for us to realise how much the ordinary, everyday pleasures mean to us. I vow to spend far more time doing things I enjoy and far less time trying to please everyone around me. I seem to have been given a new set of priorities which I always knew existed, but didn't have the motivation to enforce. So much of what I did until this point in my life was based on fear - fear of failing, fear of being judged etc. I wouldn't say that I am now not afraid of anything, but the list is pretty damned short.

I was asking a fellow sufferer yesterday about the impact of radiotherapy, and she said it was fine but left her incredibly tired. Not sick, ill, terror tired - just normal tired - the kind of tired where you're asleep before your head touches the pillow......I can't wait.

And Francois has insisted that we spend a week in the mountains in April - an old French remedy for all things convalescent, Snow or no snow - I will be more than content to walk around breathing fresh fresh air and wearing my lovely new jacket...