Week 7 of Recovery

I started week 7 with the cutest present you've ever seen. My friend, Maddy, made me this adorable felt owl phone case - she really ought to set up an Etsy shop for the things she makes because they're all incredible.

Me and Mom took the dogs for a walk up to the viewpoint at Kinver Edge and took some chip-shop chips to eat on a bench. It doesn't get better than that does it? I could really feel the difference in ease of breathing when we were walking uphill. When my teeth were wired together I found that I felt really breathless very quickly whenever I was doing any form of gentle exercise such as walking but now my jaws are free it's immeasurably easier to breathe!

I finally got a much-needed haircut this week and I have to say I love it! Normally I hate having my hair cut as I always leave it too long and then my hair needs a really good chop to get rid of all the dead ends (and I love the length of my hair). Invariably I end up having at least a couple of inches off and then my hair just feels so short, which I hate. This time though I decided to embrace the shorter cut by having my hair softly feathered around my face (although not too short as I like to be able to scrape back all my hair into a ponytail without faffing about with clips and grips) and having "long graduated layers" put in. Somehow I feel like the cut has made me hair look blonder and I just love the shape she put in as it has so much movement whereas my usual straight-across trim looks positively flat in comparison now. All in all I'm a very happy bunny and it's even got me considering chopping more off in a Taylor Swift-esque style although I'm not sure I have the guts to go quite that short just yet.

I'm getting more and more movement back in my jaw now and if I really strain (which, strictly speaking, I shouldn't be doing) I can open my mouth three fingers wide. In real terms this means that it's starting to feel a lot easier eating now as I'm not just crashing my fork into my teeth while fondly imagining that my mouth is wide open. I'm trying not to overly stretch my jaw as much as possible though as I've heard a couple of stories of people bringing on really awful jaw ache because they've strained their muscles.

Couldn't resist including a selfie with my new haircut!

I've taken a few more photos of my new facial profile and put them in below to show my progress...

Another dog walk filled with photos below - Me and Mom took Shep and Charlie round some woods near our house and of course Charlie found the biggest stick he could and doggedly (ha!) dragged it round with him.

For tea I cooked up some soft-shell tacos as they were one of the foods I'd really been craving during the lock-jawed purgatory of recovery. I love to put loads of peppers in my taco filling as I'm a real vegetable lover and then you just have to put grated cheese on top; there is literally no meal that cannot be improved by cheese! I really enjoyed the soft tacos though as even ordinarily I find regular tacos quite difficult to eat and these were more like a taco-tortilla hybrid.

I spent one evening this week catching up with my friends at a local Wetherspoons and it was just so nice to hang out and talk like a normal human again!

I booked up my flights to visit Fi in Munich and now that I've set up a countdown on my phone I'm getting really excited! It's going to be amazing to travel and see the sights of Germany but I'm mainly just looking forward to spending loads of time with Fi as I've really missed her this year.

Ate some lemon cake - it was delicious. No further caption necessary ;)

Not to be picky or anything but I just wondered why you need a freezer to bake fresh goods, Tesco? I'm pretty sure the latest appliance to hit the baking scene is this thing called an oven...

Is there any quicker, easier (well maybe not easy - don't you just hate having to wrestle the duvet cover on?) boost to your mood than putting fresh bedding on?

I went along to Shep's dog agility class this weekend and couldn't resist sharing this photo of Shep and Charlie with his almost mirror image!

For lunch on Monday I picked up the £1 pizza from our local Domino's. I took along my own code and Mom's and picked up one chicken pizza and one tikka chicken pizza; of the two I definitely prefer the tikka chicken as it was much more flavoursome. Just a heads up if any of you are on O2 because the Monday £1 lunches really are great value!

So that was week 7 of my recovery! I'll be back next week with my next weekly update post!