How to Turn 40

Easter has past me by without much more than a nod. There was no colourful Easter egg hunt at my home. There were no baskets overflowing with candy. There was no glazed ham dinner complete with all the trimmings. I was a woman in the depths of PMS...So much so that even my DH realized, a day after the actual holiday, that I had been denied something so easily available at this time of year, and essential to HIS well being during times of PMS...chocolate. Not that this fact escaped me, my DH trotted off to the store to purchase some 1/2 off chocolate...he found a darling little bear with "Love Bear" printed on the box. Proudly he came in the door and presented me with his little treat...I looked at him. I looked at the box. I looked at him while I opened the box...I smashed that little bear's smiling chocolate face into a dozen little pieces and nibbled happily away with a fiendish smile on my face. My DH slowly backed out of the room. Husbands, please remember, for your own safety, that holidays that involve chocolate should always be observed...and they must be observed with pomp and ceremony during times of PMS!!! Not only must they be observed with pomp and ceremony during these times, but they must be lead by YOU...You CAN make a dinner (or better yet, take your loved one out to enjoy someone elses cooking), you CAN colour eggs with the kids, and you MUST remember that a basket filled with high quality chocolates can be used as credit when next you mess up big time - and you KNOW you will mess up! Never let it be said that you have not been warned!!!

OK, Life Lesson Number 1: NEVER, under any circumstances, try to keep up drinking with a Brit on holiday.

Brits can drink. I learned that when I went to London a few years ago. I showed up, sober as a judge, and managed to stay that way for approximately two hours (as long as it took to get out of the airport, dump my bags and be whisked away to the local for 'a pint'). I stayed drunk for the next three weeks. I would wake up in the morning and before I could wipe the blur from my eyes and check for the level of hung-overness I'd managed to obtain from the night before, I would find myself sitting in a pub laughing over another pint of bitter and something deep fried for brunch, um, lunch...What do you call a pint and a mass of grease at 10am??? I'm not complaining mind. If I'd had the chance to assess my degree of hangover, I'm sure I'd have stayed in moaning for the remaining portion of my vacation...This was a far better way to spend the time...I'm just saying, I know that Brits can drink.

I was not, however, prepared for the amount they can drink when they are on holiday! Seems that through my haze in London, I failed to recognize that those escorting me from pub to pub where continuing to live their daily lives. They had work to attend, loved ones to look after, football teams to obsess over. When they leave all of that behind (well, they never do leave their football team obsession behind, do they...as a matter of fact, holidays usually consist of following said team away - calling that a holiday), they leave behind the need to remain coherent - or so it seems!

I met up with a group of six who were in North America to follow around some of their favourite teams...We met in a pub. Where else would you find them? It was just after noon. Being the "local", I was to show them the sites. Where would I take them? What would I want to do if I were on holiday here to see my team from home? No need to panic...seems that as long as there is a pint handy, they don't much care WHERE they go!!! We went from the pub to a touristy part of town...forget the fancy clothes boutiques, we found the brew pub! After a few rounds there, we decided to get back closer to the hotel (which was conveniently locate

My whole life has been one lung problem after another. I was the kid that always had the booming cough. I was the kid who would run out of wind, no matter how good a shape I was in. I was the teen that couldn't keep up with the others when they ran along the beach. I was the teen that had trouble breathing out of her nose enough for a really good snog. I am the adult whose cough fills the rink from end to end. I am the adult who has other shrinking away in fear of catching some awful disease. I am the adult who, at almost 40 just found out that all these years I've been suffering from borderline asthma...enough to keep me less active than my peers, enough to have me convinced that my immune system was poorly at the best of times. How does that happen? How do you make it through so many years, showing the same signs over and over again, without a single diagnosis for asthma???

I'm hoping to be able to breath again next week, for the first time in, well, for the first time in my life!!! No longer will dusty ball fields and cold rinks send my bronchiole tubes shrinking and shrieking in horror...I wonder what that feels like? I wonder what it's like to be able to breath like normal people...when all along I thought I was normal people????