In an effort to make as many of my friends jealous as possible I am going away again.
This time, after having taking 10 days to escape the nightmare that is now Heathrow airport, I am heading off for another expedition. I am going to scale the mountain of unattended baggage, encounter the hairy hands of the body searcher and try and decipher the lost rules of what to take for hand luggage (if indeed anything). It may take some time and I am instructing hubby to send out search parties if there is no sight of me by the 7th of September (ready to report on my 7 month update on my back!).
Given my brief visit to home, I have lulled the cats into a false sense of security *1 and checked that hubby still has food in the freezer and enough petrol in the car to get to the supermarket. I have also washed everything that I took away with me last week since I need it again next week*2. I have caught up on my (eeeek, how many??) messages in my in-box, taxed and insured the car and even tried to catch up on my sleep. In the midst of it all, I even remembered my (faithful) readership and updated my blog. So, bear with me, I’ll be back….
*1 Hooray, mummy’s home, we can get fussed during the day….
oh, miaouw!, 
she’s gone again…
*2 Now there’s something I don’t understand.
- You go away
- Everything fits in your suitcase
- You wear your clothes and they get (slightly) dirty
- On the way home, your suitcase will not shut.
What is that about? I mean, just how big is dirt, when it is attached to clothes?
One final thing, I just checked the weather forecast for where I am going (umm that’ll be Heathrow won’t it?). It’s due to be 35ºC in the day (nice and warm) and 27ºC in the night (gasp!) and (wait for it) – a whopping 90% humidity at all times. Given the sporting activities that I’m supposed to be doing, I think I’m about to find out what it’ll be like to do them in a warm bath…..
Some time ago, hubby went out and when he came home he was a bit on the merry side having had a good evening with his mates at several pubs…need I say more. In he comes *1 discarding clothing and tripping over the coffee table. *2
Me: (Tapping rolling pin against leg*3) “You’re drunk!”
Hubby: “No I’m not although I will admit to not being sober.”
If anyone can tell me the difference, please put the answer on the back of a postage stamp and send it to me. Ta!*4
*1 Lurches? Staggers? – You decide…
*2 Actually he didn’t do this – I just thought he was going to at one point so have put it in for comic effect. Now please imagine he did and go back to where you were reading last.
*3 Of course, anyone who knows me will know that I’m not a great lover of using the rolling pin – not when I have to go out to the kitchen to fetch it anyway…Seriously, I was glad hubby had a good evening out – he works too hard earning enough money to keep me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed and has had a pretty rough time of it over the past few months what with all the looking after me and the worry of me and the running around driving me everywhere (hey this is all me, me, me and I was supposed to be praising hubby!). Of course, I can’t be too mad at hubby for getting tipsy as I expect him to be just as laid back when I am finally allowed to drink copious quantities of alcohol and do my own staggering. OK OK, I know I stagger around enough without the booze but hey, stop being critical…
*4 I am hoping that this is a good way of getting free postage stamps as I think without the postcard they will be too small to go through the franking machine at the Post Office.
I just realised that this post is more footnote than post. I blame PTV myself for introducing me to the perils of HTML.
Some time ago, my physio set me up with a walking programme. She said it would trim my (ever expanding) waistline and hopefully get my little legs toddling a bit better.
“Off you go” she said, “today the first lamppost and tomorrow the world!” Of course she didn’t actually say this, what she really said was –“this week try and walk to the first lamppost and next week try and get to the second one.” Well, I’m not one to do things by halves and decided that since we live opposite a park I could do ‘today 1st tree’ and then by the next day I’d be walking to the other side of the park. This of course is a blatant lie – the first time I tried I only got as far as crossing the road and I am still nowhere near getting to the other side of the park. I get as far as the building that the council are renovating (coming on very nicely now) and to two trees just a little bit further on. I have ‘stuck’ at this for a few weeks and for the moment seemed to have reached my limit.
Well, where was I – oh yes, the title of the post was about the bench. One day I was getting to my ‘just a bit further’ two trees and I looked up (I normally watch my feet when I walk, it seems to make them work better) and I saw a bench. I’m sure I saw it, in fact, I know I did. It was on the big bend, just out of my reach and I thought tomorrow, I will try and get to it (and then I thought, I can sit down, groaning with pleasure at taking the weight off). So, the next day, I rushed (
don’t laugh, it’s not nice to mock the afflicted), to the two trees and looked up. The bench was gone – I couldn’t see it anywhere and so I blamed the whole thing on a surfeit of drugs (or indeed the opposite) and tried to forget the whole thing.
That evening, hubby, who walks to the station through the park said, “I see they’re preparing the ground for a bench on the big bend”. “That’s right” I said, “I saw the bench yesterday”. Hubby said nothing, just looked at me very oddly (as he often does in fact) and I put the whole thing down to a deja vue moment (or indeed some kind of interesting hallucination) and that (as they say ) was that.
The next day I walked to the two trees again – looked up and saw the bench – but this time, it was not on the side of the path, but nestled up in the trees. It looked very menacing. I don’t know how it got there, or how it moved by itself*1 but I found myself mentally calling it Christine and despite my tired little legs, I didn’t want to sit on it at all….
I shall see where it is when I go to the park tomorrow, but if you don’t hear from me, call Stephen King, he has a lot of experience of this kind of thing…
*1 Logic tells me that due to a shift in light or some-such, the bench has always been in the trees but not always visible due to minute changes in angle and seeing it through the bushes etc. It never was on the bend, it was just an optical illusion etc etc – even so, I am glad they shut the park gates at night. It may be able to move around but I doubt it can climb over the railings….
I shall be away for a little while doing exciting things with my life. Having discovered that supermarket trolleys are interesting to cope with I thought I’d try out some airport ones just for a comparison test*1 and will report back when I escape the maze of Heathrow airport. I anticipate that this will be in approximately 10 days time. In the meantime, hubby will be cat sitting and earning enough money so that I can gad about around the world at much expense*2. If you want details of my trip, hubby will have a URL for those of you who ask….for everyone else – see you soon!
*1This will have an added frisson since I am taking my wheelchair too!
*2 although not strictly his!
I just realised I haven’t made a list on my blog recently and so in order to preserve my sanity *1 here’s one. It’s a list of things you really shouldn’t do whilst recovering from spinal surgery – not that I’ve tried them or anything – oh no, everyone knows that I would never try to do too much or anything at all like that…- Getting down on your hands and knees to wash the kitchen floor is not advisable. The floor can stay dirty or, if you are clever, you can flick cat food all over it and hopefully the cats will wash it for you.
- Trying to put on your sandal whist stood on one leg will result in you crashing to the floor. It makes a very loud noise when the floor is wooden and any cat in the vicinity is unlikely to come out from under the bed for some hours.
- Shopping for food for a party for 40 people with a supermarket trolley is interesting. Things to note:
- All supermarket trolleys have wonky wheels
- All supermarket car parks run downhill in the wrong direction
- Yanking a supermarket trolley is fun with no ribs (not!)
- Supermarket trolleys are too deep to reach the things in the bottom – even when you’ve been surgically stretched. Remember, you can’t bend either.
- Baskets full of wet laundry are hard to balance when you are walking with two sticks. They’re heavy too. I think maybe we need a new laundry fairy as ours is still sipping margaritas!
- Forget coughing, or sneezing. If you want to do either, umm, well, just don’t.
- Don’t tell your friends that it only hurts when you poke it here – if it hurts, don’t poke it!
- Driving very fast over dips in the road at speed will make you feel like your rod is
- a. Trying to escape through your throat…
- .....Closely followed by…
- b. trying to escape through your a**e
I'm sure there are many other things that could be added to this list, but I will stop here for now. I'm open to suggestions tho'....*1 and I know some of you think I’m nuts and just merely tolerate this part of my personality. BMB & K, you can stop laughing; BUF, thanks for being an addict too!
I didn’t tell you, did I, that we went away last week? Well, we did, hubby, me and the cats took a short break away with friends, A&T*1 in order to get some R& R after hubby’s party.
We piled into the car (hubby’s new big and boring one that I gave him 
) with the cats ‘basketed’ on the back seat. It wasn’t too long before we were on to unfamiliar roads and ‘Bugalugs’*2 started to chirrup, burble and miaow.
Me: “Can you see, why’s he making such a fuss? Is he OK?”
Hubby: (turning round to check and seeing said cat sat up in basket apparently unworried) “He’s fine – I suspect he’s trying to help me navigate by sonar!”
Well, navigating goes on for a while and finally hubby says those words that no driver likes to hear from their navigator*3 – “I don’t know where we are...”
“OK”, says I, “We just came through Tincling, there’s a signpost to Rincling off to the left and Crincling off to the right (or something like that, all these weird local names confuse me) and there’s a yellow car ahead in the distance.” “Well, that yellow car pins it down,” says hubby, “we are currently 12 miles from our destination*4 and by the time you catch up with the yellow car, we will be 8 miles away!”. D’you know, I have no idea how he does it, but with directions like these we still managed to find our cottage just fine. (Well we managed to find a country cottage and they gave us the key so I’m assuming it was the right one!)
So, there we were in an idyllic country setting in exactly the kind of place where (as hubby says) you might expect the boon to keep his docks. The cottage was several hundred years old (and with several hundred years worth of woodworm damage too) and was very ‘chocolate box’ even down to the ancient open hearth and range with bread oven. The lure of an open chimney was just too much for one of our cats who went up it to investigate and came down in a cloud of soot! I wouldn’t have minded, but then, finding the taste of soot far too distasteful to clean off her paws, tramped through the whole cottage marking every white surface including (horror of horrors) a white duvet cover. I just hope the cottage owner doesn’t read this blog – I was going to blame it on mice, or a visiting rabbit or something (or even A&T) *5
*2 this is not hubby – this is hubby’s pet name for one of the cats.
*3 there are people out there who should be really horrified at this….
*4 I don’t call him Tom-tom either…
*5 OJ guys – I have to pay you back for making me lose my cherry after all!
It seems hard to believe that 6 months ago I was sitting on a hospital bed waiting to go down to the operating theatre and less than 24 hours later (ahead of all expectations) I was out of intensive care and back in the same ward. OK it’s true, I was flat on my back and feeling rather groggy, but the operation was over and had been a great success.
So, here I am 6 months on and I feel pretty great. I’d be lying if I said that I am completely healed (so I won’t) and it’s true I’m still getting some pain from my rib removal site (but maybe wouldn’t do if I was a bit kinder to my body), but mostly I feel, well, great actually. Just recently I’ve been feeling fitter than I have for years too – my lung function had decreased so gradually I had no idea it wasn’t perfect, until they made a bit more space in me for my lungs to work properly. You wouldn’t believe how much fun breathing is these days!!
Of course I'm sure that there will be those people who tell you that since I now use 2 sticks to walk outside that things are worse, but my major lurching limp has gone so in fact I think my walking is much better – and anyway, my physio says 2 sticks or none, so it looks like I’ve been doing it all wrong for the last few years anyway. There will also be people who say that because I am now using my wheelchair more, this means that things are worse but in reality, I am just being more sensible! So – all you pessimists out there – don’t listen to yourselves, listen to me instead – things are so much better for me it isn’t true!
So, as updates go, in many ways there’s nothing to report except that life is good – and oh yes, am I happy I had it done? Well, I have an amazing (nearly) straight body and I am wearing clothes I would have felt uncomfortable in before. My pain levels have much decreased and my surgeon has given me the kind of future I feared I might never have.
You bet I’m glad I had it done! 
*1 Including those that have actually crossed the road
I have a nice new car. Actually, that statement doesn’t really say it at all as in fact the car is most definitely not new, it is actually very old, its just finally come to me (just like it was always meant to).
Now, you have to realise that I like cars. I mean I really like cars, really, really like them. I always liked cars, right from when I was little and (although I know its not a very girlie thing to do) I thought there was nothing better than getting out in the garage with my daddy and taking the car to pieces. Of course the being with my (fabulous) dad might have had something to do with it, but it left me with a love of the things. Long car journeys were filled with spotting different makes and models and I almost managed to completely fill my I-Spy car number plates. I can even remember most of the makes and models that my parents owned, let alone the ones that hubby and I have had.
When hubby and I got married, we couldn’t afford a second car and this went on for years. At one point we found ourselves with a 2+2 sports coupe which I had bought from a young lad up the road and as our only car, it was used for everything - even deliveries for hubby’s job. It just wasn’t big enough and finally we got a big car for hubby but I kept ‘my’ Deidre for some time until she fell to pieces with rust. Ever since, I have fancied another one or possibly an ‘upgrade’ to the ones they made a year later (which had a bigger engine among other things). You don’t see them very often, most of them have long since died, but there I was idly browsing through Ebay (classic auto*) and I saw one*1 and it looked perfect (to me!).
Hubby came home that night and said “I’ve been thinking we might get a second car again” – which I took as fate! There was one slight problem, it was on the far edge of the country, right around where if you kept going, you’d have to stop driving and start sailing! 
This is where PTV and his lovely wife came into my fiendish plan - I asked PTV to go and check it out for me as there is no-one whose opinion I value more when it comes to cars*2 and he sent me a text which said simply “Buy it!” – so I did (well truthfully, he did, and then he checked it out some more, and then he got the tyres done and so on – so I owe him big time…!). Anyway, he and his lovely wife came down to ours for hubby’s birthday party and they drove it down for me. These are seriously good friends, aren’t they? Everyone please, big round of applause.
Anyway, since hubby’s birthday was one of those significant ones (the ones that end in a big fat O) - he complained that it was his birthday, but I got a car. I gave him my (big but boring) car in exchange, what more does he want??
*1I do this whilst listening to canned musack on those hideous automated phone services. I sit there and look at the Cobras, Vipers and Ponies (for the uninitiated these are cars, not animals) and dream about empty roads and being able to reach the pedals.
*2This is the absolute truth.
