My littlest hasn't been very well today.  He's had a temperature and not wanted to do anything.  I have taken the opportunity to sit on the sofa with him.  We have watched a film, read a book, played a board game and card games.  It was all very relaxing and I probably needed it too.  My level of activity has definitely increased in the past couple of weeks and I need to be careful not to overdo it.
I had a cranial osteopath appointment two days after my previous blog post.  I went in very positive mood, but he did not seem equally positive (which he had been on my previous two visits).  Anyway, the day after the appointment I had a low level feeling of malaise which lasted about a week.  I wonder if he could already feel whatever it was that caused that in my system.
My meditation practise has slipped a little since Christmas.  I've taken this to be a good thing - that I haven't really felt like I have needed it.  Okay in the short term, but I've found this week that I've felt like I needed it.  I think it has a cumulative effect and even if I don't manage two meditations a day I'm going to try and do one.
Sleep has been pretty good, but waking early, about 5.30am.  Doesn't seem to make any difference if  I go to bed any later either.
I came across an old diary from last year recently and was pleased to read through some of the entries which detailed symptoms I was experiencing at the time.  It was just another reminder that my progress is all going in the right direction.

Still going well.  Last weekend I had another FIR sauna and this time it was much better, it didn't make me  feel weird afterwards and I had no fatigue response to it the following  day.  I'm going to start having them weekly now and if I continue with no bad responses then I shall step it up to twice and then three times a week.
On Thursday I had my first Mickel therapy session since about November I think.  It was very timely and just gave me another little boost.  More positive thinking.  Here are a few of the action points that came out of the session:
1)  I need to develop an action plan of more physical home school activities.  I carry a sense of guilt that since having this condition I cannot do as many "external" activities with the children as I had in the past - visits and workshops.  I particularly feel this with regards to the youngest as the older two have experienced many home ed trips and workshops.  Now I have more energy and feel I can get back to more of this sort of thing.  The start is to plan a half term of once a week physical activities for us, badminton, swimming, ice skating, that sort of thing.  We start tomorrow morning with all 5 of us going down to the local sports centre where we have a badminton court booked for an hour.  This will not be heavy, competitive sport, but a knock around with the children and I intend to participate.
2)  To develop my "Me-Time"  I will continue with my bassoon playing and try other new activities.  The theory is to develop a selection of activities that do not have negative connotations for my body and rewrite my body's responses to certain activities.  This has already happened with regards to cycling, because when we were in the new forest I had such a good experience on the bike (all be it a tandem) I'm not scared of doing it any more or worried about the effect it will have on my body.  I have to gradually rewrite my body's thought patterns on lots of other activities.  I contributed a little way to this yesterday when I dug over my youngests vegetable patch.   Digging is something that has brought on a really strong physical response in my body (uncontrollable midnight shakes followed by complete fatigue).  Yesterday I was only intending to dig up the last few carrots in this patch of ground, but felt good and ended up weeding the whole 3 foot by 2 foot patch with my fork.  If I can continue to do these small bits with no negative response then my body will not fear it and will begin to believe that I can do these things again.
3)  Continue to investigate the buy to let market.
4)  Continue to describe my condition more in a past tense. I have already moved from "I have ME" to "I am recovering from ME" the next step is "I have had ME and am now recovering my strength and fitness"
Now I must go to bed so I will feel good for the game, er, I mean badminton knock about tomorrow.  Not possible for me to be completely uncompetitive : )