happy new year – gawd bless us everyone!

well, it’s 2003 (yes, I know I’m late, but there’s no time limit on joyful tidings, is there?). happy new year to you all, may 2003 bring only wondrous things and groovy happenings-a-plenty.

kitschbitch has been sadly neglected: usually it’s because it’s termtime and Real Life is getting in the way of weblife (sad, but true). recently (by which I mean several months), however, Real Life has been decidedly less active and fun-packed and has been dominated by the whole crap-back-I-have-a-tail-chronic-back-pain-cannot-walk-without-crutches issue. regular readers may remember the whole tail extravaganza, and it’s been operations-a-go-go over the last year (some documented, a couple not, I think). anyway, the upshot of it all is that I’m now deferring my finals at uni: so instead of doing them this summer, I’m now repeating my third year next year, and will be sitting my finals next summer (2004). christmas has been a fun-packed bonanza of opiated painkillers and their various side effects (some pleasant, lots not so nice), various back supports, hypermobile shoulders (because being on crutches for three months has apparently buggered my shoulders too) and having bits of my back cracked by an osteopath to rememdy this. hence it’s been mostly resting, as little sitting as possible, and hence little time at the computer and little time to blog. ironic, really: normally I’m too busy rushing about doing stuff to blog – now that I have all the time in the world on my hands I can’t sit down at the PC to do the actual blogging!! but now, the Big News. as of today I now have a date for the Big Bad Operation which will hopefully sort this whole mess out. the 20th feb is now d-day – when I will go into hospital to have the whole bottom of my spine removed – the whole of the messed-up coccyx plus the bits of my sacrum that don’t work either. this coccygectomy (say that one fast, eh?) has been what I’ve been building up to since I was 13, ever since I’ve had back pain (coccydynia). I can’t wait, though at the same time I’m bricking it – as we just don’t know how long it’ll take to recover, how well/if at all it’ll work and what the post-operative pain/mobility/complications will be. but, no time to think about all that now – I’m back to university in oxford tomorrow – the next 6 weeks are choc-ful of dissertation, the reading, writing and handing in thereof, before I leave uni for this year to come back home for the op. so, if kitschbitch is silent for a long time (as it very often is), it’s not dead – just sleeping….