Light and Shadow

Our living room faces south and has a deep bay with windows all round and french doors into the garden. In the summer the room gets unbearably hot and so bright you can't see the TV or computer screens without shutting the sun out with blinds.

When the weather turns colder, however, the sun generates a lot of heat and the dogs love to sunbathe on the carpet there. Sometimes I join them.

The blinds cast vertical shadows that move around the room with the sun. Light and shadow.

On Tuesday afternoon I got three steroid injections - in both elbows and my right shoulder - to ease the pain from tennis elbow and tendonitis. The elbow shots were easy but the shoulder injection was a bit ouchie. I seem to be having less post-injection pain than usual and I'm sleeping better already.

Light and shadow.

Sometimes it's easy to sit here feeling very sorry for myself and despairing at what the future might bring if my health doesn't improve. I feel useless and unable to do all the normal domestic chores I once took for granted. I get angry with myself, push on when I really should rest and then make myself ill for a week.

But on a day like today when the sun makes me squint at the screen; when my daughter makes me a card and tells me she loves me; when my dogs cover my face with poodle spit; when I find an old anniversary card from my husband and read that he loves me more now than on the day we married, that's when I know that it's all just a game of light and shadow.