Warped Woman's Wonderings

Gosh, blogger how much do I love you....

2012-01-11T16:39:00.001Z

I've been with Blogger quite a long time now, in fact I think it's a very long time, when I come to think of it, in computer lifetimes anyway. You all know what computer lifetimes are - they are those short snips of time where the hardware you bought 3 weeks ago, whether it's a computer, camera, phone or fridge, is suddenly way out of date and you just must have the latest thing now!^*1

I own up to it, I'm actually a bit of a shocker when it comes to all the new stuff too - I'm not exactly what you'd call a geek, and I'm not rich enough to be an early adopter, but I love all that technology stuff. I do admit to having bought an iPad (on which I am typing at right this moment) on the day that they were released, but to be fair, I had been saving for months to do so. It took me a massive Ebay offload - selling clothes, old equipment and various other stuff (I was restrained from actually putting up a post to sell my mother!) to raise the funds but I love it. I guess I use it every day - and not just as a tea tray...and buying it on release day, was just luck that the shop I went in to had it in stock.

Getting back to Blogger, as someone who's used it for years, I rarely even look at my design page any longer. I have a design, I like it, why would I change it? It was a bit of a shock to me then recently when I was digging around thinking I needed to do something complicated and found that Blogger had made it easy. I'm not even sure what it was any more - it was that easy; I didn't have to scrape the bottom of the Internet for a solution - not like the olden days... Back in the (good?) old days, changing something on the design of your page involved 3 weeks head scratching and lots of lateral thinking in your choice of words for Google searches. No wonder that almost everyone used one of 3 or 4 basic templates which were fixed in style and colour. I was a renegade, using a template I had snaffled from somewhere and then had monkeyed around with, by learning teeny tiny bits of HTML (mostly from PTV) and then uploading them just to see what the effect would be. Sometimes I'd end up with the background in front of the text (not very readable) and other times with borders so wide that they'd cover the whole page - sometimes it just crashed and I couldn't figure out why. Easy it wasn't, but I certainly learnt a lot.

I like to write too, I use writing to get my thoughts in order and I love to tell stories. Blogger is just great for that - and even though many of my posts are quite long, it's not really like trying to get a book (or series of books - M!) out there - hats off to those who do, but blogging is just a bit more bite sized for me. Over the years as well, knowing I have some regular readers, I feel a connection to those people - in some cases, even though I've never met them. I have shared my surgery and struggles and my hysterical moments too (both good and bad). Blogger does all that for me...So, in a nutshell, I love blogger - not just because I have an outlet for my writing, have met new friends (hi WCD!) and can relay all my friends' funny stories to a wider audience for them, but because it made me learn stuff. It forced me (by being so awkward) to learn enough HTML that I'm writing this with HTML tags (because it's quicker in the package I'm using) and enough that I'm happy getting my hands dirty with website design.

Now, back to all that stuff being easier...had it been so when I started, I wouldn't know as much as I do....I shall leave it up to you to decide whether that's a good thing or not - cos I can't decide!

^*1Well, maybe not the fridge, but you get my drift!

2012 ....already???

2012-01-02T16:17:00.001Z

I just realised that I didn't send you all a happy Christmas message for 2011 yet and it's 2012 already! How remiss is that? In fact, there's not been a huge amount of blogging at all going on lately, but that's partly due to a bit of winding down at the end of the year and partly the fact that the year really was a difficult one for us.

They say that things happen in threes (I'm not sure who 'they' are!) and thinking back, that was the story of our 2011. Early in the year we lost my MIL. It was a real shock at the time, as even though she had breast cancer, it wasn't aggressive and she actually succumbed to pneumonia which caught hold within a couple of days. We then had another shock in April, when my BIL found my FIL collapsed from a stroke. He was severely affected and was in hospital from April all the way through to the end of September, never really managing to improve too much and often not knowing where he was, or who we were. In the end, he was transferred to a nursing home and passed away from a chest infection in November. In the middle of the year, hubby injured his leg. He had an infection, a haematoma, a pair of crutches and a pair of walking sticks (stolen from me and lengthened somewhat) and this resulted in twice weekly hospital visits for dressings right the way through the autumn and up to Christmas. This morning, finally, the last scab came off and for the first time in months, he is dressing free and looking forward to a bath. I'm not suggesting he hasn't at least had a shower in the intervening time, (seriously, he doesn't pong!) but he hasn't been able to have a good soak for months. The year was fraught with other small things too, I had a shoulder problem and my brother was trying to sell his house in a rotten housing market....all in all, sounds like a rough year, doesn't it?

But, to be perfectly honest with you all, the year had its high points too and mostly the people that I love were happy and healthy. There are always tough things in our lives and then there are the high points that go along with them. We had a great trip away with PTV & HLW and I went away with a bunch of really successful friends in the summer which was memorable. I made new friends and rediscovered old ones and my brother moved into his new house in the street behind mine, so I can see him often.^*1 I even managed to get Christmas organised - albeit right at the last minute!

So, now we are looking forward to 2012. It's going to be a great year, I can just feel it. I can see some amazing stuff heading our way. In Britain this year, we have the Olympic and Paralympic Games being held in London and all in a year when the Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee. Big things like that will touch us all in some way and I am looking forward to it all. I hope that you too are also looking forward to 2012 with hope, optimism and desire and that all your dreams come true this year.

Here's to a happy, healthy and successful year to you all!

*1 - He didn't buy the house just because I lived nearby ;-)

Different cultures different ideas?

2011-12-05T09:46:00.001Z

As you may havegathered if you've read my recent posts, in the kindness of strangers part 2, Ifell out my chair. Now, I know that you non chair users are all shocked and thechair users are sitting there snickering a bit in a 'been there done that' kindof way, but the truth is I wasn't hurt. Actually (in an attempt to gain somesympathy), I did end up with a bruise on my arm (from where it hit the wall)and my back was very sore the next few days. Now, before you panic, I need tobe truthful here - none of that is so out of the ordinary for me, since if I'mnot falling out my chair I'm simply falling over on a regular basis...

Anyway, hubby resistedthe temptation to laugh or take pictures of my upside down chair and me actinglike a beetle on my back and grabbed the chair to right it as I sat up andleant against the wall. I assessed my body - was did anything hurt (more thannormal), was I concussed, bleeding or shocked? My arm seemed a bit scraped fromthe wall, which was by then acting as my friendly support and a man rushed overto help. He stood and looked at me - I smiled back, which I guess reassured hima bit and then he looked on as I fussed with the chair (putting brakes on etc)ready to get it. Did he interfere? No. What he actually did was say to me"Do you need help getting in? Do you need me to lift you?" I said Iwas fine, but he stayed close by until I transferred into the chair at whichpoint I thanked him and he headed off to the bar.

It was an oddexperience for me - the perfect offer of help and it got me wondering aboutstuff - a practice that I am sure I am quite famous for, by now!

The thing is, thisfriendly helpful chap, wasn't British and my experience of this kind of thingwhile on home soil usually results in one of two things:

1. People completelyignore you, making sure they are looking the other way and 'didn't see anything(guv!)'.

2. People rush tohelp, grabbing you by the arm (please don't restrict the bits of me thatactually work fine - thank you!) and ignoring all protestations of "I'mok, please let me do it on my own!".

So, the question is,why the difference? Is there better disability awareness in other countries? Doother countries have better manners? In fact, this guy was German and theyaren't widely renowned for their good manners are they? (Although I base this observationpurely on the fact that they are famous for putting towels on sun beds early inthe morning ^*1 and don't wish to offend any Germanreaders at all) Do they have more respect for the elderly (and possiblyinfirm)? I just don't know, I simply don't know the answers to any of thesequestions. Let's face it, if I did I wouldn't be wondering about it either...

The strange thing isthat it extended further than the German guy. I was wheeling down beside thepool and as I approached a gap between the flower bed and a sunbed, the(Russian?) lady indicated 'was the gap wide enough?'

In Britain, I am moreused to:

1. People completelyignore you, making sure they are looking the other way and 'didn't see anything(guv!)'. Or

2. People leap totheir feet, moving their sunbed, their partner's sunbed and anything elsewithin a ten foot radius ignoring all protestations of "Its ok there'splenty of space"

These are just twoexamples, but I could give you many more. They all make me wonder why thingsare the way they are. I actually think with Brits, that those who ignore youmostly do it because they don't quite know what to do. They don't want toappear patronising, and so they do nothing so as to allow you to beindependent. Other people go to the opposite extreme - they are desperate tohelp, but don't know how much (or how little) to give and so go over the top.In all cases, I think that people are basically kind and helpful. Butthen...the big question is, just why are people from the continent sodifferent? Any ideas anyone?

^*1which may in fact be just due to the fact that they get up early in the morningmaybe?

A life well lived.

2011-11-24T12:38:00.001Z

I know that many of you are aware that my FIL had a stroke on Good Friday and I now have to report that he passed away. In the end, he caught yet another chest infection and just wasn't strong enough to fight this one off. We will miss him very much, but in some ways we all know just how much of a release this is for him as everything has been a struggle for him since Easter. In the end, as he needed continuing full nursing care, we found a really nice home for him and they gave him a lot of love, care and attention over the last few weeks of his life.

I was wondering just yesterday, just what an impact my FIL had on my life and the lives of the people around him and thought I'd tell you a little bit about the man behind the acronym.

My FIL was a small man, who probably only ever lied about one thing in his whole life - when he claimed that he was a whole 5ft 1.5" tall on applying to the army! He was very proud of his time in the army but apart from that, never really strayed too far from home - he never owned a car and spent all the time he could with his wife...who he adored. I sometimes think he never really got over her death in January and that's so sad to relate. His stroke took so much from him; so many times when we visited he wasn't with it at all, but through it all, he remained remarkably cheerful. From the time he saw the wild dogs running around the ward(!) to the time he was off out to get the car (when he couldn't drive) and all the other strange places that his confusion took him, he chuckled his way through most of it. In fact, all the time I've known him, if you asked me to name one thing that was the essence of him, I'd say it was his little chuckle. He'd be telling us about a TV programme and he'd give that little chuckle as something had amused him - he saw humour in many things - and that's not a bad way to be.

So, short in stature he may have been, but that didn't stop him being a loving father and the most devoted husband you could imagine. Like my MIL, he was just a really nice person and I don't think I ever met anyone who didn't like him. That's not a bad epitaph, is it...just being universally liked? Do you know, I think most people would be happy with that.

Donald

20/12/27 - 16/11/11

Aaargh, aargh....and balm to the soul.

2011-11-11T12:56:00.001Z

I've been quiet, I know, but just for once, it isn't my problem!

I'm not sure how many of you are aware, but I have an iPad and I do most of my blogging on that. I have small hands and the virtual keyboard just seems to fit me perfectly. I love the way that I can balance it on my lap, or sit almost anywhere and just write as the mood takes me.

For some time now, I have been using an app called Blogpress, not only to write with, but also to save drafts locally and then upload whenever I am happy with them (and have a wifi connection!). So, all was well in wwland and a little while ago, I had really busy time, with ideas flowing out of me and onto the screen. I am what I like to think of as a 'bash it out' writer. I write as I think as I speak...minus little things like spelling and sentence construction. I then (once I've got the initial stuff out my system) go through it, correcting it, removing people's names and adding in links etc. it's the way I like to work. Back to the busy time....

You see, there I was, creative juices flowing and away from wifi and I wrote half a dozen entries. Came home, backed up my lovely device and then discovered ios5, the new operating system was out. I installed it - the installation went perfectly and I was happy until I tried to open Blogpress. Aaargh (number 1) - it did nothing but crash and I couldn't get to my entries at all. I checked the developer's website, no mention of crashing. Checked other people online (don't you just love Google!) and found it was a common issue. Emailed the developers...no reply. Emailed the developers again....no reply....and the same response a third time too. Bad, bad support....hmmm, sorry, I meant no, no support, didn't I?^*1

Never mind I thought....I can at least work online directly through Blogger and write a new entry, just to let you know what's going on. So I did....I wrote, then I hit publish....and then got a snotty message saying they couldn't publish my work. And then...Aaaaargh (number 2).....they lost my work!

Last night, after no joy with Blogpress and the iPad problem with Blogger, I decided to download Blogsy. It won't get me my written entries back (maybe one day the upgrade will come^*1) but at least I can get blogging again. Nice app this Blogsy...and it means i can bash out all those thoughts, feelings and wonderings. As I said, balm to the soul!

^*1 The app store states that they have submitted an upgrade for ios5, but there's no sign of it yet.

The kindness of strangers (part 2)

2011-10-11T21:36:00.001+01:00

Its funny, but when a day dawns bright and sunny I always find I am full of optimism again - regardless of how many steps there are where I am staying! As long as I can get down them and have good coffee inside me, I am ready to face the world. There was only one problem that day and that was that we needed to collect some towels from the hotel next door. Hmm....remember the ramp? The one I need a hero for? Well, if I went next door to get towels, then I wouldn't be able to get back up the ramp, so hubby needed to go with me. Poor thing, with his poorly leg too...but it had to be done. It was on our way to reception of that hotel, that we discovered another (steep) up-ramp and I was determined to have a go at getting up it on my own - after all, I'm a big, strong independent girl, aren't I?

I must admit, I managed to give it a good go, if I say so myself, but a good go is sometimes not enough and about half way up I suddenly felt like I'd hit a brick wall. I know when to admit defeat (yes, I do, so stop sniggering!) and so I gripped the wheels lightly to lower myself back down the slope. I guess I gripped a bit too hard and misjudged it completely and so I found myself flipping over backwards - and landed on my back, legs in the air, showing my knickers off to the world! Hubby stood back and waited, only getting hold of the chair to stop it flying off in to the swimming pool. He knows I need a few moments to compose myself and do my own diagnostic check of my body to see what I've done now. Turns out I hit my arm on the wall on the way down, but little else - and I couldn't complain about my bruise after looking at the state of hubbys leg!

I was almost rescued anyway by some nice German man too, who offered to get me up - and who was really nice about it. Of course, I was too stubborn to take up the offer and climbed back into the chair on my own. Towels had to wait until I could a) swallow my pride and get a push, or b) find another route!

Who ever would think that just getting a few towels could be so complicated? In the absence of any other comment, I have decided to mark the occasion in points out of 10:
Accessibility 5/10 (for at least installing a ramp)
Slope angle 1/10 (since I could get halfway)
Legs in air photo opportunity 8/10 (my legs aren't that good!)
Bruise quotient 5/10 (definitely had more spectacular)
Towel colour 6/10 (orange, JIC you care!)
So...all in all, could do better...

The kindness of strangers (part 1)

2011-10-02T21:07:00.001+01:00

So, we decided to go on holiday - we needed a relaxing break after a long summer (you only have to read my last entry to know what sort of a summer it's been & we thought we were due a break). Those people who know me well (and many who don't know me that well), know that I am an organiser and a planner and so, before booking anything I checked all the facilities of the hotel online - especially those relating to accessibility. I emailed head office, I emailed the disabled help department and I emailed the resort as well as phoning the specialist helpline to let them know I was a wheelchair user before we travelled. I checked Thompson's website (oops, did I name and shame?) and I did everything within my power to make sure that we were going to have the most chilled and relaxing holiday ever, with nothing left to chance.

A week before we were due to go, the unexpected happened (I guess thats what makes it unexpected - you don't often say the expected happened, do you?) and hubby had an accident where a huge lump of timber fell on his leg. At the time, the emergency department were amazed it wasn't broken - it was that bad (I can post pictures if you like really gory stuff) and we were immediately worrying about whether to cancel the holiday or not. Well, over the next few days the leg improved a bit and so we decided we wouldn't cancel, but hubby (abandoning the crutches issued by the hospital) still needed to use a walking stick. He was (kind of) ok, but as my normal helper, was suddenly unable to help much, which was a bit of a blow.

We arrived at the hotel at stupid o'clock in the morning and discovered a ramp up to the front door. Now, this ramp, was some ramp - it looked like at least 45 degrees so I manned (womanned?) up and took a run at it. I got...um...about two thirds of the way up; ran out of steam and found myself travelling backwards at an increasing rate of knots, desperately hoping I wouldn't trash whoever was coming up the slope behind me! Hubby was struggling with a stick and 2 cases and couldn't help and so some hero just dropped his bags and ran to push me up the ramp...and the next ramp ....and the next ramp. To be truthful I probably could have managed the last one, but it was late, I was tired and he was doing a great job ;-)
Anyway, we got to our rooms (my hero went off with his wife!) and we crashed out...exhausted.

The next day hubby's leg was worse - (not good news!) and so I headed out on my own to a welcome meeting. I should have known it was a bad omen when it was up some steps, but in the little optimistic world that I live in, I just managed, with some help to get my chair up to the top, and then on the way out, just chucked my chair down the steps and climbed back in at the bottom (to be fair, a nice lady did stop it from rolling clean across the lobby...). After all, these things happen...

Back to the room, collected hubby and went to find the dining room. Guess what? It was down steps (lots of them!) - ok, so out of chair, random man carries chair down (hubby just struggling to get down on his own with his stick), get back into chair and have lunch. Decided to go to the pool. Guess what? Pool is up steps (only a few) - so, abandon pool idea, decide to go to bar instead but guess what? Yep, you got it, the bar is up steps (different ones)! Anyway, hubby struggles to the bar (probably feeling that alcohol will anaesthetise the leg a little) and gets a couple of beers - for a while, life is good. I then decide that the toilet might be an idea, but guess what? Yep, you guessed it again. The toilet is downstairs!

To be fair, I did talk to a lady who said that if I headed down past the pool and around the road (there was no drop curb to get onto the road and no footpath), that I could actually avoid most of the steps - but - remember that ramp at the front door?, well, the road took you round to that....and there's not always a hero around when you want one!

Two things came out of this start to my holiday. One was that Thompson have a load of lessons to learn about how they market their hotels (I don't expect everywhere to be accessible, but I do expect the disabled helpline to tell me if they aren't) and the other is that people generally are wonderful and helpful. From the hero who pushed me up the ramps, to the lady who caught my chair flying across the lobby and the men who carried my chair up and down steps all over the hotel - they were all fab! I just hope they come across my blog and realise I am talking about them. If you have - this is a very heartfelt thank you!

FIL

2011-09-26T18:39:00.001+01:00

I know, I know, I've been very lax lately - no funny stories, no disability rants, no wondering of any kind. I'm guessing that my followers out there in blogland are wondering things about this on my behalf, assuming of course that a) I still have any followers and b) that they are wondering about me at all.

The thing is, I have an excuse and it's something to do with what seems to have been a long summer for our family. Way back just before Easter, my FIL had a stroke. It was a bit of a shock (to say the least), as my MIL only passed away in January and we hadn't really finished getting over that. It was especially tough on my BIL as he lived in the same house as them both and suddenly found himself in the house on his own, dealing with all the paperwork, laundry and such silly things as putting the bins out on time. For us, when it happened, it was deeply unsettling and worrying, but we really didn't know what was to come or really even what had happened.

My FIL is pretty tough; a few years ago, he was rushed in to hospital with heart problems and before we knew it was having a triple heart bypass. The surgery went well, but immediately after being transferred back to the ward, he stopped breathing and ended up being ventilated for some weeks. All in all, with the visit to intensive care, high dependency, an internal bleed in his stomach and exploratory surgery and a dose of C-difficile, he was in hospital for months. It was tough, but he battled though it all and entertained us frequently with all his stories of heroic derring do (of the things he had hallucinated whilst under the influence of morphine after the op), where most often, he was a fireman rescuing children from burning buildings!

I think, after all that, that we almost expected him to pull some miraculous recovery out of the bag after his stroke. To start with, it didn't look likely - he was paralysed all down one side, and could only say yes or no (and even then not in the right places!), but his speech recovered quite quickly and he started to get the use back in his right arm. Physically things have improved, but the type of stroke that he had means that some of his brain tissue has died and even though brains are very clever and can rewrite pathways, sometimes they can't and he's pretty confused much of the time. Mostly he displays all of the symptoms of vascular dementia which is very sad for everyone. It's sad for him, it's sad for his friends and family and the people that visit, to see a man who has lost such grasp on his life.

So, here we are, many months on and now it is clear that my FIL won't be returning home. We are currently trying to find him somewhere nice to live where he can be looked after in a way that any of us would be unable to do.

Forgive me then if blogging is a bit sporadic...

Are there voices in my head?

2011-09-12T19:50:00.001+01:00

I turned up the other day to a small gaggle of people, all egging on CUB^*1...."Go on", they urged, "Tell her....tell her about the voices...." - and so she did. This is her story...

It was a Wednesday night like any other, apart from the fact that CUB was away with her team and was in a hotel. She was sharing a room with WMW^*2 and they were both in bed, having turned the lights off and were warm and cozy and just dropping off to sleep. CUB was tired and sleepy and just dozing off when she heard a rustling sound from somewhere in the room. Puzzled and half asleep, she lifted her head off the pillow and thought she heard a whisper - a whisper that sounded like someone was softly calling her name. She turned to WMW, who seemed oblivious to the noise and so she thought maybe she'd imagined it - she was after all, half asleep and so she started to settle back into bed.

It was then, that she heard her name again...a bit louder this time. She sat up wildly and put the light on. Now she really was freaked. She started throwing questions at WMW - had she heard it?...where was it coming from?...OMG...OMG. She heard her name again and was now pretty frightened. She got up...where was the noise coming from? She made WMW check the phone and she rushed over to the dressing table where she thought the noise was coming from. It seemed to be coming from her glasses case, so she picked it up and looked inside. In her sleepy and befuddled state, logic had completely deserted her...and still, she could hear her voice being called...

It was at that point that she spotted a small hole in the wall and scrambled over to it. The voice changed and suddenly told her to look at the wall and then she really panicked. She thought of peeping Toms, she thought of how she was wearing Disney pyjamas and how she looked without makeup and what had she been wearing when she came out of the shower. She was so frantic that WMW started to get really worried...........and cracked! She wandered over to CUB's bed, lifted the end, and retrieved the walkie talkie that had been hidden there!

Well, CUB was furious and screamed down the walkie talkie - "I'm gonna kill you!!!!!" - without even knowing who was on the other end....all she heard was Click! as the person the other end rapidly flicked the off switch!

Well, who was the culprit? In the end it turned out to be none other than the BMB and our new MIC^*3 and WMW had been in on it, having been the one who hid the walkie talkie. How she kept a straight face I will never know!

I am just hoping now that this isn't some kind of new hazing ritual - one where we will all be subjected to something similar in time. I must admit though that I will be checking under my bed for a bit...and I bet CUB will too...!

^*1 CUB stands for completely utterly bonkers...which she is!
^*2 WMW - Warped man's wife. WM has his own blog.
^*3 MIC - Our new Man in Charge

Priceless? No, not really...

2011-09-07T22:58:00.001+01:00

A while ago (a long while ago now, but it's been a long summer^*1), we went away with PTV and HLW. It's not the first time we've been away together and I hope it's not the last, because I, for one, had a lovely time, but it's the longest we've been away together. You always do that thing, don't you, where you'll be away for a bit, where you hope it all works out and that you're not at each others throats within three days, but I needn't have worried at all as it turned out. One of the worries with other people is that you won't agree on what to do or what to visit, what to eat or even where to eat and even in this we didn't fall out, even when we fancied a drink stop and HLW picked the closest cafe.

Now, we should have guessed it was expensive from the people we saw exiting, as we stood in line waiting to be seated (by a man in a full suit with bow tie). On his way out was Michael Keaton (at least it looked like him, but in Vegas, who can tell...!), and several very rich looking people accompanied by burly men wearing sunglasses indoors and with suspicious bulges under their armpits, where they might be carrying a perfectly legal, concealed weapon. Of course, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was beautifully decorated, real birds were swooping around the open windows and it all looked very swank to me...

Eventually, we were seated and looked at the menu. There was a sharp intake of breath as both hubby and PTV looked at the prices and did their best impression of a car mechanic/ electrician/ plumber/ builder before submitting their best estimates for work. HLW and I were captivated by the description of the cakes...a Tuile with strawberry, with ganache and fine patisserie and all sorts of other things which sounded exquisite...with or without ice cream.

I only wanted coffee, but hubby pointed out that coffee at $15 a cup and cocktails at $20 a glass almost cost the same and so, that was how we found ourselves drinking cocktails at 11 o'clock in the morning. The thing is, even though we didn't go in wanting cake, there were all the wonderful descriptions and so we decided to share 2 cakes between us - partly because we only wanted a taste and partly because they were stupidly expensive.

We went for one chocolate option and one strawberry option. PTV and I had the latter and it seems a light sponge with a soft mouse of strawberry topped with real cream ice cream and a spun sugar birds nest (complete with lots of French words I can't remember) looks very posh. The thing is, it was early and we were drinking cocktails - you just knew things were going to get silly and predictably it was PTV who started it. The thing is, our birds nest of sugar was spiky in a prickly way - the kind of prickly way that loft insulation is prickly and some conversation ensued about why there was such a need for such a spiky topping. In the end, I think we decided that it was protection for the cakes from the birds that were flying around and ended up laughing so much that the rest of the very posh clientele all turned around and looked at us.

So, is this story so funny that I had to tell you? No, not really, as it was actually one of those things where you had to be there. Was the expensive cocktail and cake worth it? Well, maybe not in themselves, but for the memories they provided, they were worth every penny and more besides. I guess sometimes it proves that if you do something unexpected, the rewards are unexpected too!

^*1 For reasons that I will tell you about at some time...I promise!

Clever car...?

2011-08-13T14:28:00.000+01:00

A few years back we went to Arizona and were heading out for the day. There were a few of us and we all piled into an MPV which had been hired for the purpose. As happens so often when anyone is going out, there was the inevitable load of questions before we could go. These questions seem to vary depending on whether you are on holiday or at home, but there's always some mix of the following:

Home (on leaving)
~~Have you turned the gas off?
~~Have you locked the door?^*1
~~Have you got your keys/ glasses/ walking stick/ teeth/ coat/ umbrella/ insert as appropriate?
Home (on leaving with children)
~~Have you been to the toilet?
~~Have you got your mobile/ iPod/ DS/ PSP?
(If visiting grandma)
~~Have you combed your hair?
~~Are you wearing the jumper you were given for Christmas?
(If going on a date)
~~Have you brushed your teeth?
~~Have you got 'something for the weekend?'
(On holiday)
~~Have you got your camera?
~~Did you shut the room door?
~~Have you got/ handed in the keycard?
~~Have you got the map?

Well, you get the picture...

...so we fired all these questions at the driver (as well of asking, of course, "Are we were there yet?"!). Something tweaked a nerve and the driver felt compelled to go back in to check and left us all in the vehicle. You know how it is...we were in a foreign country, in a new hire car we hadn't seen before with all sorts of interesting knobs and buttons that we didn't know the function of. We were bored, waiting for the driver, and since they'd taken the keys (no doubt suspecting that we might go careering round the car park on two wheels) we pressed all the buttons, trying to see what would work without keys.

Well, we were in luck, we found the radio and we thought it was pretty cool that under the radio was a little display that seemed to give you information about the car. "Open Door" it said - so we did. We then shut the door only to see that the display read the same. We tugged on all the doors - they all seemed to be shut. We opened them all and then shut them all again - it said the same! We got out and checked the boot (trunk), got back in, opened all the doors, shut all the doors, opened each door in turn, shut each one; opened them and slammed them really really hard - the display didn't change and we figured that we had somehow managed (in all the button pressing) to have broken the vehicle (or the doors at least). We started to panic since our driver was going to get back any minute and we thought we'd be in trouble...what to do....what to do?

It was at this point, that the next record was played on the radio and suddenly the offending display changed - it now read "She Loves You" and we realised that this was some new fangled radio that none of us had seen before - one that cleverly tells you what track is playing! Doh!

Well, in our defence, none of us had ever heard of Open Door - what would you have done?!

^*1 I once failed to ask hubby this, only to find out when we returned (6 hours later) that the front door was wide open and had been all day!!

What a clever postie...

2011-07-13T17:07:00.000+01:00

We have a really nice postie - his name is Nigel (yes, just for once I am using someone's real name!) and he is about 40 (or possibly a bit older - it's hard to tell and I've never asked him!). He has red hair too - not ginger, not auburn, but red - the kind of bright pillar box red ^*1 that comes out of a paint box (or more likely, a box of hair dye) and ... wait for it.... he has a Mohican!

Now I am sure that you all think that I am making all this up, but believe me, my imagination just isn't that good. Nigel is real, he's lovely, helpful and friendly and as our 'regular' postie, he knows just where to leave parcels when we are out and always leaves a note to say he has done so.

It was no surprise to me then to come home the other day to find a note from Nigel pushed through the door saying that he had left me a parcel round the.....in the..... ^*2 . I went and collected it (as you do). I was surprised to see that it was something I had ordered, but since it hadn't been delivered in time, had already been replaced by the company I'd ordered it from. I was even more surprised to see a Post Office sticker on it stating that it had an 'incomplete address' - hence the non-delivery I guess in the first place. So, I peered closely at the little box to see what was wrong and this is what I saw:

The first 2 letters of my christian name followed by half of the 3rd letter.
The next letters were missing.
The last 2 letters of my first name were there (well, sort of).
My surname was missing completely.
The address line just read:
d (I think the 'd' is the last letter of Road)
The first part of the postcode was intact so I guess they were able to tell the town and area well enough.
The second part of the postcode read:
FB

Ok, so here we have a fairly intact postcode that will give the rough area of a town, a 'd' indicating that it's a road (not an avenue or close) and 4 letters out of an 11 letter Christian name. Oh, yes, and it was actually my parcel too - not just something random that had turned up by accident!

So, forgive me for mentioning a real person by name for once on my blog - as I think our postie is amazing and you should all know!

^*1 *Very* appropriate given his occupation
^*2 Well, you didn't really think I would broadcast to the world where our parcels are left, did you?

Just how do you get tomato soup out of a speaker?

2011-07-01T14:20:00.000+01:00

I was sat at dinner this evening with SBB (secret bad boy) and ETS (I can't tell you what that stands for or I'd have to kill you!) and we were finding out more about each other. Anyway, we were talking about 'stuff in our lives' (including ETS's alleged alter ego) and I turned to the person next to me and asked him if he'd tell me a secret from his childhood.

Curiously, he said "Sure!" (how many people would do that?), and started with the tame stuff, telling us a story of when he turned the taps on and flooded the conservatory, before he moved on to juicier stuff that he had tried not to own up to and wanted to keep secret... Incidentally, although his mother claims he did it deliberately, he was only 3 at the tap-turning-on occurrence so I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt for that one...after all, I'm thinking that maybe at that age, secrecy isn't something you have a strong grasp of.

Anyway, apparently, when he was a bit older, he told us that he put a golf club through the window - also in the conservatory. He didn't say if he was still confined there as punishment for the tap issue or if he lived in the conservatory, but for sure, it's featured heavily in his early life. Actually (as a bit of an aside), I don't think he's much of a stone thrower, so I'm wondering if he did spend a lot of time in there...

...it was around this point, he paused in his storytelling and looked rather pensive. I had two choices...push him into the really juicy story, or let him be...I was very good...and did neither, but waited for someone else to push him gently into the real dirt...and dirt it turned out to be...

He drew a deep breath and asked - "Do you know how far tomato soup goes when it explodes?"

It seems, that the kitchen was being refitted and so a makeshift kitchen was set up in the living room - the fridge was there, freezer and microwave and food - everything you need. So, SBB decided he fancied tomato soup for tea. For some reason known only to himself, he decided that the microwave was not a suitable piece of equipment for reheating soup (I think this is a man thing, as hubby wouldn't use a microwave for that either), and so, as you do, decided to use his camping stove. My first thought was that camping stoves and living rooms don't really go hand in hand, but my fears about curtains and naked flames were completely unfounded as it turned out. It seems SBB put the soup into a pyrex dish and put it on the camping stove (I hear the sound of a sharp intake of female breath at this); it started to heat up nicely and was almost at the perfect temperature when...

BANG!!!

...the pyrex dish exploded!

The soup exploded outwards from the dish - onto the walls and the ceiling...and the curtains and the carpet...and onto the TV, the video cabinet and the stereo...and inside the stereo speakers, down the side of the sofa etc etc.

Now, I don't know what you'd be thinking at that point, but I guess it might revolve around the mess and how you were going to clean it up - but what did he say? He said "There I was, wondering how I was going to get out of that one....!" He really is a SBB, isn't he?

For EO’s MY

2011-07-01T14:09:00.000+01:00

So, while I’m away MY^*1tells me that he reads this blog – which surprised me a bit ‘cos I thought most people had given up on it a long time ago and I was just spouting drivel for:

my benefit and
the amusement of poor foreign people who pick up some obscure link and find themselves on another planet altogether.

Anyway, MY tells me that he not only reads the blog, but also enjoys it (strange man!) although gets a bit lost from time to time with all the acronyms so I thought I’d do an post and hope to catch you all up with my amazingly diverse friends who have such wunnerful nicknames. ^*2. Anyway, here goes:

Hubby – start with the easy one. My husband of course…
PTV - This guy. Hubby’s best friend of years ago and now a good friend and e-mail confidant to me too…
HLW - His lovely wife (PTV’s that is)
BMB - My best male buddy
BUF – The best useful friend. She called herself this so don’t blame me. She is one of my dearest and closest friends in the whole wide world.
VNSO - Very nice significant other (belongs to the BUF and is a good friend in his own right). He is also known as my dancing partner.
EO - Eeyore’s owner – obviously not Christopher Robin(!) but her Eeyore has been all over the world…
E2O - Same person as above, but her new name after she got another Eeyore for her birthday!
A & T - This referred to my best friend A and her hubby T but sadly I lost A in January 2008 to pancreatic cancer. T is still in regular contact with us.
SPF - Sports psychologist friend (yep she does and yep she is…)
BML - Bureaucratic monster lady (otherwise known as the administrator in the hospital who makes all the appointments)
M - female of the rodent variety ='.'=~~~~ Also a soon to be famous author^*3
FIL - father in law
MIL - mother in law (spot the theme here?)
BIL - brother in law (I guess you can see where this is going, can’t you?)
SIL - sister in law
Ly – lovely lady over the pond who bakes cake and had the same op as me. She had a blog.
B – Brandi, another lovely lady over the pond who had the same op as me.
P@NGD - The guy at the garage who fixes my car and doesn’t rip me off
Grace - one of my cats – not her real name, but she is graceful…
Bugalugs aka Clumsy – Grace’s brother
ND - New dad, one of our friends.
NDW - New dad's wife (and unsurprisingly mother of his children)
DG - Disaster girl - one of the most interesting drivers I know.
FNG - Friday night guy. Not surprisingly, a friend who comes round every Friday night.
MY - Master Yoda, leader of the Horde and close friend of E2O
PMB - my brother
JTG - Joe the Gym - the guy in my gym who tortures me...
MIB - Mad Irish Bird - one of the group....
DP - daft pensioner
CWP - Canadian with pipe
SBB - Secret Bad Boy
ETS - Sorry - can't tell you as then I'd have to kill you...

So, I hope I’ve remembered them all, if there are any more, that you haven’t figured out, (or want me to start using), then let me know.

^*1>* Master Yoda
^*2I shall put a link to this post too on the side bar so if you ever get confused again…..
^*3...BUY HER BOOK!

29 Ways to a Meme

2011-06-10T09:52:00.000+01:00

OK, I admit it, I stole this from Paperback Writer , but I kind of liked it, so here goes....here are 29 ways to be creative....

1. Make lists.
2. Carry a notebook everywhere.
3. Try free writing.
4. Get away from the computer.
5. Quit beating yourself up.
6. Take breaks.
7. Sing in the shower.
8. Drink coffee.
9. Listen to new music.
10.Be open.
11. Surround yourself with creative people.
12.Get feedback.
13.Collaborate.
14.Don't give up.
15.Practice, practice, practice.
16.Allow yourself to make mistakes.
17.Go somewhere new.
18.Count your blessings.
19.Get lots of rest.
20.Take risks.
21.Break the rules.
22.Don't force it.
23.Read a page of the dictionary.
24.Create a framework.
25.Stop trying to be someone else's perfect.
26.Got an idea? Write it down.
27.Clean your workspace.
28.Have fun.
29.Finish something.

Paperback writer says that Facebook and Twitter kind of killed the meme, but also suggests that if you're looking for something to blog about, copy the list, bold the items on the list that you're already doing, cross off the ones that don't work for you, and star the ones you'd like to try. Here's my meme version of the list - which I've added some comments to (in italics) ...for both your and my amusement:

1. Make lists. (...and oh boy do I do lists...!)
2. Carry a notebook everywhere. (How else am I going to write all those lists?)
3. ~~Try free writing~~. (Only because I don't know what it means...)
4. Get away from the computer.* (Actually, I'm not so sure about trying this...I love my computer really)
5. Quit beating yourself up. *(I'd truly love to be good at this)
6. Take breaks.*(and this)
7. Sing in the shower. (but only if there's no one around to hear!)
8. Drink coffee. (...by the bucket...)
9. Listen to new music. (I love to do this - it's how I discovered Green Day, Nickelback, 3
Doors Down, Shinedown, Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse & Beethoven)
10.Be open. * (Isn't this a depends who with question?)
11. Surround yourself with creative people. (Gosh - you'd have to ask them...)
12.Get feedback. (Although if it's the BMB I don't always welcome it -Lol!)
13.Collaborate. (Hubby & the BMB probably see the best of me in this...)
14.Don't give up. (Just about everyone sees this in me...)
15.Practice, practice, practice. (...and this...)
16.Allow yourself to make mistakes. * (Jeez, I'm useless at this...and I know it!)
17.Go somewhere new. (I always like to do this)
18.Count your blessings. (I like to do this too!)
19.Get lots of rest.* (However hard I try, life conspires against me....)
20.~~Take risks~~. (Just find this too scary financially - otherwise, well you tell me if I do...? I
mean, I haven't been on a big roller coaster since I had my back fused...)
21.Break the rules. (Well, I did when I was young....!)
22.~~Don't force it~~. (This doesn't really apply, I only blog when I want to - I don't have a target timescale after all)
23.Read a page of the dictionary. (Not done this for inspiration, just because I don't understand....)
24.Create a framework. (Well, it's just another kind of list, isn't it?)
25.~~Stop trying to be someone else's perfect.~~ (is that perfect or prefect? That's back to breaking the rules, I never was a good enough kid to be a prefect!)
26.Got an idea? Write it down. (Well, it's just another kind of list, isn't it?)
27.Clean your workspace.* (It's on my list...)
28.Have fun. (You only have to read my blog...)!
29.Finish something. (This!)

Although this meme is obviously aimed at writers, I feel that it could equally apply to lots of
things in life. Some of them I'm relating to my blogging, others to, well, other things in my
life. I'm sure that those of you who know me well will smile wryly at some of them, laugh at
others and hopefully just go Oh! at some of the rest. Please enjoy and feel free to
steal....just like I did !

The USOPA

2011-05-16T16:18:00.000+01:00

As promised in this blog post , here is my USOPA (Universal Scale of Pain & Agony). I can't be having with this idea that they use in hospital - please rate your pain on a scale of 1-3 where 1 is pain free and 3 is screaming agony - in whole numbers only please! So, this is what I think they should do....when you go into hospital, they should give you a little table or chart which has a listing from 1-10 and it should read something like this:

I am fine. In fact, I shouldn't even be in hospital as there is clearly nothing at all wrong with me. In fact, I am so well, that you clearly shouldn't even need to ask me how I am as I look the very picture of health!
I am fine thank you but I do have a little bit of a pain when I poke it here - I am instantly cured by not poking it.
Now this clearly is some kind of an ache. It hurts even when I don't poke it and I'm sore if I try and twist or turn it. It is pretty much cured by avoiding twisting and turning.
OK, I admit it, this is pain. It's not awful, but I think I ought to take some kind of over the counter medication. I'm sure that will make me feel well enough to be able to carry on doing whatever I want.
OK, so maybe the over the counter stuff didn't really do the trick, or maybe it was the fact that I tried to carry on doing whatever I wanted without taking a break. I am officially 'a bit achey'.
I am starting to get a bit grumpy now. My thoughts are turning to slightly stronger drugs. I don't want to move but I am stubborn enough to keep going anyway.
This is definitely 'sore'. I'm squirming when I sit stand or lie down just to try and find a comfy position. I am dreaming of my heat pack.
Right, I'm getting fed up with this now. Aren't these tablets supposed to be doing something? I am having fond memories of PCA pumps and wondering if I can mug any person in the local hospital in order to steal theirs.
I wonder just how much pain the human body can take before you thump someone out of sheer frustration - even if it would probably really hurt to do so.
I think I might actually be dying here....
Really I mean it, I really do think I am dying...

Of course, I accept with the higher numbers you may need to just point since your strangled cries might easily be misinterpreted.

Now, doesn't that make more sense that 1-3??

BADD2011 Blogging Against Disablism Day

2011-04-30T23:16:00.002+01:00

So, BADD has been going for long enough now that I feel vaguely guilty that I have never contributed and this is for 2 reasons:
A) I have a disability and
B) I have a blog

The thing is, do either of these things actually qualify me to speak 'for the disabled' - in fact, on that subject, who are 'the disabled'? Are these disabled people we are talking about, individuals, with hopes and dreams and likes and dislikes, or are the disabled some kind of sub-group of society who are all somehow rather alike - joined at the hip by a shared set of values and needs? Well, let me give you a couple of examples from my day today....

First thing that happened was that I saw a friend. He has spina bifida but you might not realise it to look at him - sure he has a bit of a limp, but it's so mild that you might out it down to poor posture. He is a great guy, loves Iron Maiden and has the maddest hair I know. Despite his disability, he helped me unload my car, which was very sweet and earned him a cwtch. Within a few minutes I was grabbed by a lovely lady I know who is deaf - she is mad keen on cars and has just had her (long) hair cut short - we spoke about her new hair and new job - her hair isn't mad in the slightest and I don't think she goes for Iron Maiden at all. After talking to a few able bodied people, I talked to someone temporarily disabled by a torn leg muscle - she was using a stick and was having to sit down a lot - we compared notes on painkillers and talked about dogs (which neither of us own) before I started chatting at lunchtime, about gardening, with a full time wheelchair user. I saw a lady I know a little and said hi - she has tunnel vision and is registered blind - I don't know a lot about her, but I am guessing she's not an Iron Maiden fan either!

So, we have different likes and dislikes and are affected by different disabilities too, disabilities which make us full time chair users, stick users, hearing aid users and guide dog owners. Its true that our common thread is that we all have a disability - we are all people with disabilities. The only thing I know that links us apart from that blanket description is that we all have good and bad days. Now I can hear you all saying that everyone has good and bad days and of course, that's true, but imagine that being completely able bodied and fit and beautiful, sexy and intelligent is 100% (nope I don't know anyone like that either!) - anyway, try and imagine it...So, if you are fit and able bodied you operate at 100% - maybe if you have a bad day, you're suddenly operating at just 80% - so not great. OK - let's take my disabled friend with the spina bifida - he's probably only 80% to start with - if he has a bad day, he drops down to 60%, which is only a bit more than halfway to great - and that doesn't sound great at all. The thing is, he's a top bloke - he helped me unload my car after all - and he doesn't complain, so he's suddenly down to 60% and he hasn't said a word about how tough that can be. So, that's what I think 'the disabled' have in common, they start on the running track with their blocks set behind everyone else's, to start the race of life. It's what is often missed by people who assume that a hearing aid or a wheelchair levels the playing field when in fact it doesn't - it doesn't make up for the 20% (or more) that you're missing - it just makes it a bit easier to catch up than it would be without it.

I hope all of this makes sense and doesn't just sound like mad ramblings. It's late after all, and I hit my 60% some hours ago...

Spiny Norman

2011-04-19T23:44:00.002+01:00

We have a hedgehog! Actually, I don't know if that's true as I am not sure if having a hedgehog visit your garden actually counts towards your ownership of it. A while back we had two hedgehogs who came in and shuffled around the base of the pond, where it's damp and full of slugs, and then disappeared again. At the time I couldn't figure out where they came from as we have quite an enclosed garden...that was until the day I came home to find one of them run over in the road outside. I guessed then that they had come from the park opposite and were just nocturnal visitors, out on a bit of a jolly - until the sad day when it all went horribly wrong for them and a tragic accident (leading to the running over of hedgehog number 1) ended their nighttime frolics. That was the end of the hedgehog visitors...or so we thought...

A week or so ago we were out in the kitchen and the security light went on out the back of the house - we looked out and there was a hedgehog, running round and round in circles, on our lawn. Why the running round in circles I don't know, it may be a hunting thing I guess, but I wondered if it was hedgehog Number 2, still distraught at the loss of hedgehog 1, still running round frantically, either trying to find it's mate, or just squeaking and wailing in grief.

That hedgehog came back the next night, and the next, and the next. He came back so frequently, running round in circles and setting off the security light every 5 minutes (and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to my neighbours on the hedgehog's behalf) that hubby started calling him Norman - after Spiny Norman don't you know! Anyway, it's funny the way your brain works sometimes (it's even funnier the way my brain works!) and somehow, I started wondering about Norman...

I was already wondering about the running around (and possible squeaking) but then I got to thinking about where Norman lives. I mean, back when they were hedgehog 1 & 2, they lived in the park, so I'm guessing Norman doesn't actually live with us, he just visits. But, and here's the mystery, how does he get into our garden at all? We have gated side access, so no entry there and we live on a hill, with walls either side of the garden. Unless Norman is about to win prizes for high jumping (can hedgehogs jump?) he's not getting over next door's fence (it's 6ft high!) or over the wall on the downhill side as the height of the wall + the change in level is definitely too much. Hubby suggested the only way he could do it, would be to jump down from the uphill side as the wall is at ground level for them and about a 3ft drop into our garden - that's definitely do-able. The thing is, he then needs to get into next door's garden so that he can do the drop down thing - and they have gated side access too. They are the end of a terrace so next door to them has no side access at all - and of course they are still on the hill, with the uphill/downhill problem thing and the same wall issue....

We thought this through....for some time. The conclusion is this - Norman is plainly very energetic. He leaves his home in the park, heads uphill for the end house, goes around the side of their house, under the gate with the convenient gap under the bottom, runs round in circles on the lawn (squeaking?), jumps down from the wall into the next garden, runs round in circles on the lawn (squeaking?), jumps down from the wall into the next garden, runs round in circles on the lawn (squeaking?), does this for 6 houses until he reaches our house where he does the same, with the added excitement of setting off the security light, then carries on down the hill, alternately jumping running and squeaking through another 10 gardens until he gets to the bottom of the hill, where he heads out of their rear access, into the lane, pops round the corner, up the pavement, across the road and back to bed for the day, too exhausted for anything else!

Of course, all this could be idle speculation and maybe Norman isn't energetic at all and just lives in the bushes at the side of our garden...what do you think?

On pain...

2011-04-08T13:59:00.001+01:00

Every so often I write a blog entry on pain or at least I think about doing so. I guess it's not surprising, since pain is a part of my life, not a pleasant part, not a good part ^*1, just a part and it's a part that I just have to get on with. Ironically, it's the 'just getting on with it' that makes it difficult for others to really see or appreciate. My normal response to "How are you?" is (as cheerily as I can manage) is "I'm fine!" Probably not the most helpful answer for hubby who is trying to judge how up for anything I am, but it's really the only answer I know how to give. I see the alternative as providing the listener with a list of my woes, which bits hurt worse today over what and just how many drugs have you taken today?!

That's one of the things that people don't see - the drugs...those wonderful little pills that keep me going day after day after day. There are the orange ones that keep the nerve pain^*2 in my leg under control and then there's the codeine based stuff without which I don't know what I would do to manage. On top of that there's all the other stuff, the heat packs, the special comfy chair and, of course, the regular physiotherapy and treatment. People don't see this behind the veneer of 'I'm fine!', but nor do I really want them to. I want them to see me as a strong capable and independent person and I don't want the almost inevitable sympathy that comes with 'Oh, it really hurts...'

Anyway, I am sure you are all wondering why I decided to write this today if I've been 'meaning to do it for ages'. Well, as in all things, something triggers you to do so and in my case it was a conversation with someone recently who was telling me what a high pain threshold they had, but a recent condition had left them in agony. They had never had a painful condition before and I couldn't understand how they could determine their level of 'pain threshold' without having a standard of comparison. I also felt that they were trying to compare our levels of pain, like schoolchildren saying that 'my dad's bigger than yours!'...'my pain's worse than yours'...By contrast, I was talking to MIB who I know struggles silently in much the way I do - both of us straying away from 'Fine' occasionally to say 'I'm just a bit sore today', or 'little bit achy, you know...'

There ought to be a universal scale of pain, didn't there, like the Beaufort Scale for wind. The only problem there is that the Beaufort Scale was designed to be used without any instrument recordings, so I guess it's all a matter of opinion then...which is all that pain is. It's a strange thing really - I can't tell you if I hurt more than you, because I can only feel my pain, I can't feel yours and, funnily enough, you can't feel mine^*3! The idea that there is a 'threshold' at all, seems an odd thing to say in circumstances where there is no way of directly comparing anything. Anyway, as I said before, it's all very strange, but I do think something needs to be done. I remember when I was in hospital, the nurses kept coming round and asking me how my pain was on a scale of 1 to 3 - with 1 being no pain, and 3 being agony - I kept saying things like, "Um, 2 and a quarter?", which was really not much help to them. I just don't think 3 levels is enough somehow .

I think this should be left with me...I'll give it some thought and come up with my very own USOPA...^*4...just watch this space...

^*1 I don't have those kinds of tendencies!
^*2 So much for being airily reassured after my surgery that that would disappear after 6 months, oops sorry we meant a year, ah, it could be two years....ad nauseum...
^*3 Ooops, that came out bitchier than intended...
^*4 - Universal Scale of Pain & Agony

Good doggy, clever doggy

2011-03-21T18:16:00.003Z

I was talking to someone I know recently (SL ^*1) and she told me a story that I just had to share. I quizzed her too about how real it was, I didn't want this to be a story that someone told someone that told someone and turned out to be something that anyone could disprove with a simple Snopes search! Anyway, she assured me it was real and I can't find it on Snopes, so let's just go with it.

SL works with a lot of athletes and one of the people she knows is a marathon runner. The marathon runner (BMR^*2) is a blind man which although not common, is more common than you might think. Let's face it, you only need to watch any Paralympic athletics event to realise that there are events for all kinds of distances for blind runners. I must admit, I always feel sorry for their partners (they have a partner who guides them) - I mean, the partner always has to cross the line second and I'm sure I'd find that really frustrating. Can you imagine me (assuming I could run at all) seeing the line and putting a sprint on in order to beat my own partner...only to realise I'd just disqualified us both...oops!

Anyway BMR went into town with his guide dog to buy a new pair of shorts for running. He went into the shop and found a really good assistant who found him the shorts, described the colour and pattern to him and he had a good feel to see if they were what he wanted - something loose and silky to keep him cool. He decided to buy them, reached into his pocket and discovered that he had forgotten his wallet and so arranged to leave the shorts there with the assistant (so that she could keep them behind the counter) until the following day when he could get back into town.

The next day he and the dog were back. They went into the shop and he found an assistant (not the same one). He explained that he was collecting the shorts and the girl said she would check behind the counter. She did but they weren't there. She asked the other assistants but they knew nothing about it either. She asked the manager - no luck there too and so Jane (name changed to protect the innocent) was blamed as she had been on duty the day before, but wasn't there on this day. The girls then tried to find which shorts he wanted (bearing in mind of course the fact that being blind, he had never seen them).

"They're blue", he said, "Blue, short and silky" - "Blue?", they questioned. "Are you sure? I don't know if we have any blue ones in our silky models." He assured them that he had been told they were blue. They were mystified. He went on to try and pin them down further "They are very soft and satiny...ideal for keeping you cool...you need that you know when you are running..." "Running?" they asked... "Yes, running", he said, "I'm a marathon runner". They huddled together and started whispering and he couldn't quite make out what they were saying. Eventually they came back to him. "Um..., we think you may be in the wrong shop". "Wrong shop? But this is where my dog brought me yesterday and he's really good about these things..." "Well, maybe he's having an off day...you see, this is Ann Summers, the sports shop is next door...!"

^*1 Ski Lady
^*2Blind marathon runner

Five years fixed...

2011-03-01T13:56:00.003Z

An anniversary just passed me by...it swam by me while I was getting on with life and even when PTV wished me a happy anniversary, it didn't quite impact on me. It's only now, 20 days later that it somehow hit me.

I think today had something to do with it. Today, I went to give a talk to the Women's Guild - a talk entitled "Nothing is Impossible". Now many of the ladies there were elderly, several of them were, apparently, deaf and some of them looked like they'd be unlikely to last the hour. In fact, the lady who booked me was so vague about the location of the hall (it was, she said, at the bottom of the hill...you know the one, well, it's there) that I was concerned about the possibility of her being senile. Considering that the talk was in a town I rarely visit, telling me that it was at the bottom of a hill that she didn't know the name of, in the church hall, she didn't know the name of, was not exactly, well ... precise and when I spoke to her husband (yes really!) he wasn't a lot better! Anyway, I digress (as per usual) - I was really going to mention the talk...and the anniversary...and why they are linked.

I got to the hall (still don't know the name of it) and by dint of trying every door on the street that looked like they might go into a church hall (the first two were locked!) I found it with (almost) no trouble and with ten minutes to spare. I did the talk, none of the ladies fell asleep (amazing - maybe I did something right?) and they laughed in all the right places. At the end, I was surrounded by a little gaggle of women, all wanting to say something or to pat me on the arm and one of them even pinched my cheek in a grandmotherly way (or possibly a great-grandmotherly way). I was a hit!

The thing is (and this is where the anniversary comes in), in my talk, I spoke about my scoliosis surgery. I also spoke about my spina bifida and a whole heap of other stuff, but it suddenly hit me what PTV was saying...good golly gosh and all that, but it's 5 years since my back was stuffed full of metal - that's FIVE YEARS!!! Blimey...

After five years, I have a failed bone graft at the top of my fusion and I have days (like last weekend) where I get seriously grumpy with the amount of pain I still get. On the other hand, as I told the ladies today, I am so straight compared to the way I was, I can breathe evenly and strongly and my stomach is no longer squashed up under my diaphragm. Yes, I'm awaiting more surgery and yes, I use my wheelchair more these days, but all in all I don't regret having my surgery for an instant. There I was today, showing those little old ladies my x-rays and how my curve was progressing over those last two years before my surgery and I realised just how lucky I have been in my life. I've been lucky to have a great surgeon and supportive friends and family and a (more or less) straight body.

Happy 5 year anniversary me...I think I'll go and buy myself a tree...

Whoa we're going to Las Vegas!

2011-02-18T22:52:00.001Z

Now we were going to Las Vegas with PTV & HLW and we got to check in where the lady was very nice.

"You'll be wanting extra leg room" she said, looking at me. Now I thought that was odd for two reasons:

A) I am very short - less than 5ft tall in fact and
B) I was sat in my chair anyway, so I have no idea how she could tell.

Anyway, I nodded and agreed that I did indeed need extra legroom, since I thought that PTV and hubby would both lynch me if I didn't agree to it!

We got on the plane and there we were, in that very first row with the bulkhead in front of you. They are the seats with the cute little pull up TV screens that get caught behind your legs and the tables in the arm of your chair. You know the ones - they always catch in your sleeve on the way out, or you break a nail trying to get them out or something. Still, it's all exciting stuff, cos there aren't many seats like it on the plane and you get various different gadgety things to play with and try to break.

One of the unusual things is the sort of flap down area in front of you and when they brought the drinks around, HLW tried to flap it down to use it as a table. She was discouraged from doing so by the steward type person (they have special names these days don't they - so trolley dolly won't do?) - "Oh no madam, that's not a table" they said before moving on the next person.

HLW turned to me - "Well, what is it?" - I started to try and explain it was something to do with small children and completely failed to remember the official name for it that (it's a carry cot support I remembered too late). I said that you put small children on it and then - having a bit of a silly moment - suggested that you then folded it back up into place until you reached your destination.

"That's right", interjected hubby helpfully, "it's a panini machine for babies!". HLW looked at him, with a vaguely shocked expression....for all of about 2 seconds! Trouble is, I'm never going to be able to remember the correct name for it ever again. I just know that somehow I'm always going to think of it as a baby panini machine....

That's two lessons...

2011-02-03T10:24:00.003Z

A little while ago, I bought some shampoo - a fact that I am sure you are all really interested in! Seriously, I bought this shampoo, used it once or twice, decided that my hair did not bounce or swish ^*1 but instead left it looking pretty dull and lifeless ^*2 and left in in the bathroom for the bottle to go dusty. Have you ever noticed that? It normally happens with the smellies that Aunty Thingy gave you for Christmas - you leave them in the packet for ages, thinking that Lavender, Honey & Lilac is not quite your thing - and eventually (usually when the packet is really dusty), you run out of whatever it is you normally use, rip open the pack in desperation (sneezing from the dust in the process), pour it in your bath, wrinkle your nose from the smell (thank goodness you can't smell too much from all that sneezing!) and then make sure you top up on your favourite next time you go shopping. Poor Aunty Thingy's bottle sits on the side of the bath, unloved and unwanted and just gets grubbier and dustier as the years go by...until maybe you move house, or in my case, until my mother comes to visit and I rush around the house trying to clean everything in a frenzy!

So, my mother was coming and I found the dusty shampoo bottle. I grabbed it with determination and took it downstairs while trying to decide what to do with it. I wondered, is it wasteful to pour it down the sink? - at least that way I can recycle the bottle - and so the decision was made! I poured the whole bottle down the sink. Actually, I poured it into the sink because the washing up bowl was in the way, but you get the idea. I then ran the tap (bet you're all riveted by this story huh?) and sloshed the foamy stuff round a bit. I then looked at my sink...it was absolutely gleaming. All that money on kitchen cleansers and my sink never came up that shiny...if I'd have thought it would be that good, I would used it a bit more sparingly!

Ah well, at least I learned two useful things:

1. Shampoo makes great sink cleaner
2. Never pour the whole bottle of something away before testing it on an inconspicuous surface of something first - you never know what will happen!

^*1 It's actually unlikely to do this anyway, since I have such short hair, but it is what all the adverts claim!
^*2 As I understand it, exactly what shampoo is not supposed to do.

Sad news

2011-01-18T14:02:00.001Z

I know its been ages since I posted, but January is a bit like that anyway, when people start back to doing things after Christmas, but we have had more than that to worry about.

Our Christmas was a little different, as the MIL had been pretty poorly and had to cancel at the last minute so we had my family over on Christmas day and just the BIL and partner on Boxing Day. It was nice and I have a great photo of the BIL peering inside an Addict-A puzzle ball and using a torch to see what to do next. It was one of those quiet, but Nice (with a capital N) Christmases.

I think at that stage none of us realised what was to come so soon after, although I guess some of the signs were there...

My MIL was diagnosed with breast cancer early last year - they treated it with tablets and TBH, it didn't change physically too much from first diagnosis. I think my MIL always saw it a little like a time bomb and feared that her days were numbered, but she carried on with life in much the way she always had. Later in the year, she had some (unrelated) problems with breathing and that affected her dramatically - even talking on the phone was a struggle and it was the reason that she hadn't been able to come Boxing Day. The doctors were looking into it, she had hospital appointments to go to and they were trying different medication. Through it all, she quietly struggled and my FIL and BIL did everything they could to make life easier for her. She carried on, being there for us all, a central point who everyone moved around - albeit at varying distances.

I guess my news for not writing, is that my MIL, the quiet lady in the corner, died last week. It was all very sudden - taken in to hospital with a chest infection one day and expected to be out in a few days, to dying of pneumonia the following day. We were there with her and just before the end, she opened her eyes and saw hubby (her eldest son) and looked so surprised to see him. She closed her eyes again and passed in just a few minutes. In common with so many other people, it seems that my MIL was just waiting until she had her family with her.

I know that I will miss her. Its not that we spent lots of time together, or talked for hours on the phone; we didn't even really have that much in common apart from hubby, but she was lovely. She was kind and nice and generous and lovely and kind and nice. Yes, I know I am repeating myself, but these were her qualities and I don't know if anyone could ever say anything bad about her - I just don't think she had a bad fibre in her body - she was NICE in the real, old-fashioned sense on the word and I think she deserves to have all capital letters!

Margaret

1928-2011

Will be greatly missed by all her family and friends.

Happy Christmas to You....

2010-12-24T23:29:00.001Z

I wanted to wish you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

At this time of year too, we should remember the nativity story.

Enjoy the link.

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

2010-12-23T22:14:00.004Z

I have had cold hands a lot recently - and I am absolutely delighted to report this to you!

Now, I'm sure that you are wondering just what on earth I am going on about (no change there then), as most people aren't actually too happy having cold anything, and that includes fingers. Me, I'm happy, because I have Raynaud's disease (also called Raynaud's syndrome). Now again, I guess there are people out there who are wondering if I've lost my marbles as plainly Raynaud's is no fun at all but don't worry, I'll get to that...in time!

Around 3 years ago (or maybe even more), I started to have problems with my hands in the cold. My fingers would go absolutely white - nails and all and they really looked odd - kind of like some of the victims' skin in episodes of CSI. This is a not good look - especially when it's your own fingers. This could happen to one finger, many fingers, or just part of a finger - there never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to it and it just looks really, really odd.

For sure, cold triggered it, but for me, rapid changes in temperature are much more important and touching cold wet metal is just the worst thing in the world. That means pushing a wheelchair in the rain without gloves is definitely not recommended! Of course, gloves are the first thing that people talk about with Raynaud's and many folks are very ready with advice - usually based around their own experiences. I've actually had quite a few women say to me that they too have Raynaud's - "Oh yes, I have very cold hands you know, I always wear gloves /feel cold etc etc", but it's hard to get across to them that it's not just cold hands. Those white fingers have no blood in them - yes, that's right, no blood - that's why they're white - it's because the blood vessels supplying them shut down. When I first heard that, I couldn't bring myself to believe it and so stuck a pin in my own white finger - well, guess what, it didn't bleed at all! What's even more freaky, is that about 20 minutes later when my finger turned blue and then red as the blood came back, it started bleeding then. The red and blue stage is really painful too - simple cold hands are a doddle to cope with by comparison.

This started out as an occasional problem, but over time, gradually got worse. I reached the point where I could be somewhere hot but going into air conditioning would trigger it; I couldn't take food out of the freezer without wearing oven gloves; walking in between the chiller cabinets in the supermarket was torture; peeling the potatoes had to be done under a running warm tap and I dreaded those summer showers which drop the ambient air temperature by a degree or so. In the end, I went to see my doctor as it was just affecting my quality of life so much...you just don't realise how wearing it can be when it's such a year round problem - you can't wear gloves all year round, just in case, after all.

Anyway, my doctor was really helpful and suggested medication - a drug called niphedipine, but there was a drawback - once I started taking it, I would have to take it forever. It's actually a drug that lowers your blood pressure (not ideal if like me, you have lowish blood pressure to start with) and so I didn't immediately agree to it, but I think there comes a point where you feel you are reaching the end of your tether with something. About 6 months later, after a particularly bad attack, where I lost several fingers for several hours (yes really!), I went back to the doctor and started taking the drugs. I continued to get attacks for a bit, but they got less and less over time, as my body adjusted to the tablets.

All of which, leads me to now. This winter has been the coldest for many years, we've had snow and minus lots in temperature and the cold has gone on day after day after day. There have been days when I've gone out and forgotten my gloves; I've thrown a snowball with my bare hands and I've opened my car door without pulling my sleeve down over my fingers. I've done all of these things without an attack and I can't tell you how good that is. What seems all the more amazing to me is that my hands actually get cold before warming up again. So, I guess that means that studies now apply to me - since I now have cold hands, then I maybe I really do have a warm heart.

One last thing, in case you are wondering about the reason for this post (apart from me being happy!) - it's just that if anyone is out there Googling Raynaud's, then maybe they will come across this post, maybe they will tap on their keyboard with their dead white fingers and just maybe make a note of the drug. Maybe they will go to their doctors and then, just maybe, they will be helped too....That's all...

Van Gogh was an archer!

2010-12-16T17:07:00.001Z

Not long ago, I was asked to give a talk to a school assembly - which is always a slightly daunting thing to do. It doesn't matter why you go to talk to the children, they always seem to have their own agenda and this never shows up until you get to the 'any questions' section.

You say your bit to them and then ask if they want to say anything to you, or ask any questions and with kids, being kids, there is always a forest of hands that go up. I admit, that I am always delighted when they ask questions about my disability - kids just don't seem to have those adult hang ups and they just come straight out and call a spade a spade. You do get some odd things asked sometimes though - I had one little boy once who asked me how fast I could run - which was sort of strange since I was sat in a wheelchair in front of him. I think he just didn't see the chair at all, he just saw me as an adult, who happened to be sat down.

Some kids put their hands up just to tell you stuff that is completely unrelated to anything that has gone before - things like "my dad is taller than Billy's dad", and you wonder why they choose that moment to tell you...

On this occasion, after a few questions about after-school clubs (one of which is an archery club), a little girl put her hand up and asked very seriously "Van Gogh wasn't a very good archer was he?" I have to be honest, that question kind of threw me rather, but I just had to know more and so (just as seriously), I asked her why she had asked. "Well," she said, "he can't have been very good if he shot his own ear off!" I was still a bit curious (actually a lot curious) and so (trying hard to keep a straight face), I asked her how she thought he could have shot his own ear off. "Well," she said, "Mr Jones said Van Gogh was an archer and he lost his ear, so I think he must have pulled the string on the bow too far back and caught it behind his ear, pulling it off!". "Hmm", I said, "Who is Mr Jones?" - "He's our art teacher", she replied. "Ah!", I said, "Did Mr Jones perhaps say Van Gogh was an artist, not an archer?" The little girl stopped and considered for a bit...."Yes, maybe that was it...but then how did he lose his ear?"

At that another forest of hands went up - all the kids wanted to know the gruesome details of how Van Gogh lost his ear...did he really cut it off? Did he send it to his girlfriend? Was there lots of blood? Has it been pickled for us all to see? Ah, kids, you just never know what they will come up with next...

Where did the bucket come from?

2010-11-20T16:58:00.002Z

Yesterday I was back in hospital for another procedure on my back - just like I was a couple of months back. This is variously referred to by the staff as 'an operation' or 'just injections', depending on how experienced and/or jaded they are. Anyway, since the last lot seem to have possibly, maybe, made some small semblance of a difference to my back, my surgeon was keen to repeat them. Of course, it could just be that he earns his money that way, although I would prefer to think that he has my best interests at heart, rather than just being on PPC^*1.

My original admission paperwork said I was having a general anaesthetic, but when I got down to theatre the anaesthetist had a quick chat with me, glossing quickly over that option before trying to find out how close to screaming I was, therefore determining whether I needed a sedative. Mind, I don't suppose he had any left from his own personal use - he was one of those tall, thin men, with a long, thin, sad face who really, honestly and truly at one point said to me "It must be wonderful to be so positive!". He was a barrel of laughs, I can tell you, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a good profession for him, as his job was normally spent dealing with people who are asleep!

Anyway, having been sliced in half in the past and at various points in my life been diced and stitched back up, I wasn't really too freaked by the whole operating theatre thing (yawn, been there, done that...) so I didn't have a sedative either and it was done under local. Given that the procedure involves needles and they are (brace yourself here) large(!), you need several more needles to give you an appropriate amount of local anaesthetic. Interestingly the variable sensation on my back made the local injections completely painful or completely painless, depending on where they were sited - my surgeon seemed to think this was some kind of game - "can you feel this? can you feel that?" - which I was hugely amused by - not!

The needle needs to go into your disc space (or in my case the place where my discs should be!), and so placement needs to be precise. Inserting the needle into your spinal cord is not exactly a desirable outcome! To this end, they use x-rays to find out where they need to be - all the staff are there with their lead aprons and shields and there's me, face down on the bed, with my arse hanging out of my gown (quite literally), getting zapped every few seconds. I was too tired last night to see if I was glowing in the dark, but I wouldn't be surprised and I'm sure I will tick very loudly if anyone sticks a Geiger counter next to me for some time to come. To be fair, they do have a special placement tool, to get them more or less in the right area - it's called a coat hanger! Yep, I'm not kidding - it's a metal coat hanger with the hook straightened - they lie it on your back, x-ray you - the coat hanger shows up on the x-ray pointing to the disc space and after they've shuffled it around a bit, they draw around the end with a felt tip pen, and that gives them their insertion point. It's actually really funny to be lying there listening to needle, check, lignocaine, check, coat hanger, check....

I then got to watch the whole thing on the x-Ray screen, like a series of stop motion images and local or no local, that needle hurts like a bugger when it hit the right spot. Personally I feel that the right spot was one that would hurt less, but I am assuming that my surgeon is not simply a sadist who likes to get his pleasure in strange ways and he did assure me that he was doing the right thing! Anyway, I now have an extra layer of 'stuff' in my joints which hopefully will cut down my pain levels and give the treated joints a little more stability. They treated T8/9, and L5/S1 which are quite a way apart and means that most of my back kicked up a fuss...

All of which leads to how I feel today, which is pretty sore...much like I've been hit around my back with a bucket in fact...

^*1 Pay-per-cut, as opposed to Pay-per-click.

Officially weird

2010-11-18T08:47:00.001Z

Hubby and I were going out the other day and we started talking about dropping in at a supermarket on the way home.

"Is that the green one?", I asked, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for a supermarket to be defined by a colour, and thus ensued a strange conversation about the various colours of supermarkets. In fact, in my mind Asda is green (I think most people would agree with this one), Sainsburys, orange; Tesco is blue and Morrisons is yellow. Spar is red and that's the way it's always been.

After a bit of discussion, I came to realise that on the whole, these colours equate to the dominant colour of the logo, and have nothing at all to do with the writing and in fact, I think Tesco is blue just because that's the colour of clubcards^*1. It's odd, but I've always thought of things as being a colour first before anything - the pink house, not number 12 or the green petrol station, not BP. After colour, then I think about shape, so I can tell you about a software icon (it's orange and looks like a Z) before I could tell you what the package is called in most cases (and certainly before I can spell it!)

Even odder, is that when I read, I look for shapes of words,^*2 rather than reading them aloud in my head. It can be handy, recognising shapes of sections in a book - if you forget who a character is, you might know that you first meet them about halfway through, on a facing page in a paragraph shaped a certain way. All this I find completely normal and hubby does not - hubby thinks I am distinctly weird! He reads words first - he recognises cars by reading the badge on the back rather than knowing the shape of the body and hears voices in his head when he reads books. I think this is weird, but then I guess anyone with voices in their head has to be a little odd ;-)

We got to wondering then why this is. Is this just a similar thing to Synesthesia where you see sounds as colours like Duke Ellington (or even colours as sound, like David Hockney)? Or is the colour thing and the shape thing completely unconnected? Hubby reckoned that maybe it was the way you were taught to read - whether if you learned a, bu, cu, (a,b,c), then you would read 'properly' (his way), but if you learned cat, sat, mat, then you would just recognise the shape of the word and that was 'just plain weird'! He seemed to be suggesting that whoever taught me to read did it all wrong.

I hotly protested that my brother taught me to read before I went to school and asked hubby if he was being so mean as to suggest that my brother was weird.

"I rest my case" he said triumphantly!

Well, I call that cheeky in the extreme and as my brother and I outnumber him 2 to 1, I think we'll go with hearing voices in your head as being more strange than seeing things!

^*1 A rewards card for the store
^*2 An odd thing about doing this is that some words look very similar - one I always have problems with is Shopfitters, which I somehow always read as Shoplifters. Always thought it was a strange business to run and not one you'd necessarily want to advertise!

Is twenty thousand a lot?

2010-11-10T22:56:00.001Z

I started something called a counter (hey, let's be precise and give them the credit, it's Statcounter ) not long after I started my blog. I'm not really sure why I decided on a counter, but I think it's because at the time (partly thanks to PTV) I decided to find out a bit about HTML and was adding all kinds of things to my blog. At the time, templates were, well ...yawn... and gadgets were unheard of - all of which makes it sound like I have been blogging forever, which is blatantly untrue. Anyway, because of this, a little bit of html went a long way in making your blog look a bit brighter and I was just curious about the mysteries of the 'stuff' behind webpages and so sought out my own gadgets (and colour changes!). Its strange that templates are now so good and blogger has changed so much, as the 5 years since I started don't seem so long ago, or does it? Hmmm, 5 years ago I don't think anyone had a touchscreen phone and the iPad was not even a twinkle in Steve Jobs eye...Ummm, maybe the pace of change is extraordinary after all, especially when it involves the Internet!

Anyway (I do say that a lot, don't I?) - despite changes, surgery, stuff and yet more stuff (all of the 'stuff' that makes up life in fact), time has ticked on and my counter has been ticking all the while. Statcounter told me this week that I have had 20,000+ hits which I thought was extraordinary. Does that actually mean that more than 20,000 people have taken it upon themselves to read my drivel? Maybe it means that I have lots of faithful friends who keep coming back, just to make me make me feel good? Maybe someone has me on RSS and I get a hit every time they turn there computer on? I don't know, but I was quite excited by the clicking round of that magic number...

I told hubby (in the way that only an optimist can) how excited I was by my enormous following...and he replied ( in the way that only a pessimist can) - "ah well, but that is over 5 years"...

...Hmmm, 4,000 a year...I'll settle for that :-)...

....and I'm still excited, either way....

Of swedes and stuff

2010-11-04T14:23:00.001Z

I mentioned swedes in a recent post and said that I really didn't like them (I suspect the word I used, was hate, in fact) and it's true, I don't like them. In fact, I don't like swedes, turnips or parsnips either and to me they all taste pretty much the same. They aren't exactly the same, but they are all close enough in flavour for me to consider them all in the same breath - swede, turnip, parsnip - nasty bitter things all.

Now, I am sure that there are lots of you out there going bitter? Bitter? What the heck is this girl going on about, but yes, bitter, that's what they taste like to me. In fact, when I was a small child, my mother painted some stuff on my fingernails to stop me biting them (Nil-bite it was called - but other products are available) and that was horrid and bitter and swede, turnip and parsnip taste like that to me.

As a small child my mother would mash the white ones in with potatoes and the orange one in with carrots in an effort to disguise them but it never worked. Why she bothered after a while I don't know, but maybe it was some new and curious game to see if she could fool my taste buds...and she never could! When I first got married the FIL was convinced that with parsnips it was because no one had ever cooked them for me properly by 'removing the hearts' and so one Christmas he did just that for me...and they tasted exactly the same - horrid!

Hubby thinks that maybe it's genetic - like a phenylthiocarbamidem (PCT) taste experiment which some people can taste and some can't. I've got no evidence to prove or disprove it and I can't find anything on the Internet- actually that's wrong, I can find lots of stuff on the Internet, just nothing about this! It does make you wonder though.....

It's my blogiversary!

2010-11-02T10:28:00.001Z

I was just trying to find an early entry on my blog and I realised that it's my blogiversary!!

It's 5 years since I started my blog in a life where I was facing major surgery and an uncertain future. Many things have changed since then (including much of the content of my blog!) but despite the prospect of more surgery, I don't feel that same uncertainty about the years to come. We can none of us know what is going to happen to us in our lives, but I just look forward in the most positive way I can. For me it's not so hard, as I'm naturally a glass half full kind of person, but to be honest, life is actually pretty good at the moment. Hubby is well, my mother's arm is out of plaster and mending; the MIL, FIL & BIL are all ticking along in their normal way and my brother's life seems to be moving forward positively. We're getting to see the BUF & VNSO soon, as well as PTV & HLW and Christmas is coming -yay! (I am still a big kid when it comes to Christmas!) - after Christmas we have an exciting trip planned too...

Of course, somewhere in this I also have to fit in a teeny bit of work on my back, which is almost, but not quite where I came in 5 years ago. More meccano in my back will wait for a bit, but I will be getting a bit of maintenance by my surgeon next week. It will at least give me something else to blog about!

I do wonder sometimes - 5 years eh? Will I still be doing this in another 5 years? More to the point, will you still be reading it?

Bananas are not the only fruit

2010-10-31T20:21:00.001Z

This is a curious thing, but I have wondered about it for some time, so here goes, I am going to share...

I have achalasia - I am sure many of you know this by now and I had surgery (a heller myotomy in case you are interested) in early 2009 to treat this condition. I think achalasia is a condition and not a disease, since it is a situation where your gullet doesn't work properly and the normal knock on implication is that the valve at the top of your stomach won't open to let food pass. As an aside, I don't really know what are conditions, what are diseases and what are merely complaints, but there you go, you could fill a book with stuff I don't know! Achalasia varies a bit in how bad it can be, but in my instance, the nerves to my oesophagus just don't work at all so I have no opening of the valve at the top of my stomach and no peristalsis (the squeezing action that pushes food down), past the initial swallow in my throat. The surgery opened the valve (so now it doesn't close) and my gullet acts like a drainpipe which I just shove food through. There is no cure for achalasia, but the surgery treats the worst symptom and I am very happy with the result that I have had. I eat fairly normally and most things are fine and nice to eat (unless they are swede or turnip - both of which I hate!).

The odd thing is, that there are some foods, which I still cannot eat at all. Now I understand that before I had the valve opened, anything lumpy was going to be a problem, but now, if a food is well cooked or soft, I don't see that there should be an issue. So, why is it that when I cooked sweet and sour chicken, I swallowed it and it just sat there, just below my throat and refused to budge? Copious quantities of water (ok, I own up, it was wine!) and it went down. Maybe it's the sour bit that does it? I understand lettuce leaves (low gravitational coefficient) and not chewing your toast properly (too lumpy) but I just didn't get the sweet and sour thing at all.

Odder still is fruit. Especially 'big' fruit. I don't really mean melons here...but apples for example. Apples are just awful! Raw apples are simply impossible and even stewed can be an issue if not mushy enough. Pineapple, orange, melon and pears - all a problem to a greater or lesser degree. Strawberries, raspberries, grapes, blueberries and prunes - all fine - but then they are little. The odd one out in this whole equation, is the banana - comes under the category of a 'big' fruit, swallows like a small fruit. So what's that about? And why fruit? Why apples especially? And even odder is that my surgeon particularly asked me about apples and if I had a problem with them. They are considered to be one of the defining questions towards helping with an achalasia diagnosis. All of which is kind of OK I guess, but I just wonder why...what is it about the humble apple which makes it such an issue? And in that bunny hopping brain way that I have, I wonder if that's what the all problem was with Snow White - that apple she had wasn't poisoned at all, she just had achalasia!

Sounds like good advice to me...

2010-10-21T22:16:00.002+01:00

I have some great friends and occasionally they tell me stuff that is just so funny (of course, this may just be to me, so you may have to forgive me), that I feel compelled to share... Now, I appreciate that some of the stuff that I pass on, may, due to the very nature of it, be embarrassing to the person concerned and so in an effort to spare their blushes, I always use acronyms instead of their real names (as you may have noticed) and this time is no exception. I was wondering though (I am by now famous for this ) if in this instance if this was appropriate as my friend is foreign and the acronym I was going to use would have given away her country of origin and therefore (to other people in our group) her identity. I have therefore decided to call her my F*F ^*1

F*F lives in a part of the country quite close to a lake and one of her favourite pastimes is to go fishing there. Now F*F is a wheelchair user and lives independently along with 2 of the most lovely cats I have seen (apart from my own of course!) but I don't know if that has anything at all to do with her love of fishing - I think she just likes being active. I know, I know, some people would say fishing isn't very active, but believe me, in her case it is, as you will soon find out.

Anyway, she went fishing on this particular day and was lucky enough to catch two fish, which she was really happy about. She then discovered why hubby always says you should put your brakes on (not that he says it to her, he says it to me - all the time!) as she was parked on a little bridge (I think she meant jetty) on the edge of the lake - and it had a slight slope. In fact, it had a slight slope towards the water and in all the excitement of getting her fish, she didn't realise that she was rolling towards it...until it was too late and, as she put it "I get to take a unintentional bath in this lake"...

She went on to say:
"It was not so deep about 1 1/2 to 2 meter, but I get very wet. It was not so fun..."

- no kidding, I thought!

So, there she was, in the water, with her wheelchair and had to get back to shore. I'm guessing that wheelchairs don't float as well as people (I can check this with E2O who went in the river with hers once) and so it must have been quite a struggle to use her best lifesaving manoeuvres on an inanimate lump of metal. She says it didn't get any easier when she actually reached the shore too, as it was really slippery and covered with shingly stuff. Anyway, she managed it eventually (she's a real hero my friend!) and finally got back to the car. It was then she realised that she was soaking wet through and still needed to drive home and did not have anything dry to change into. She recounted this tale so well, I was in hysterics "You should have seen me", she said, "I looks very fun when I swim with the wheelchair"....
She did learn something from her adventure though and I shall put this in her own words....

"I shall have bath cloths on me next time when I shall fishing or brake my wheelchair very hard"

I think that's very good advice...don't you?

Of backs and bones

2010-10-12T17:52:00.001+01:00

Time has come to update all your scoliosis people who have been following me from the beginning ... what do you mean you only ever read my blog when your search engine throws up the word scoliosis - you naughty person! Anyway, this post is for you...

I am now heading towards 5 years post op (yes really!), and some things have stayed the same, some have got worse and some things have improved so I thought I'd try and put some stuff down about it all. I have to say that it's been prompted by recent hospital visits, but I will get to that in time...

First of all, if you are reading this in the pre-op stage and are wondering what your future holds, please don't expect to be pain free. Your back is a finely interwoven mesh of nerves, muscle and bone and screwing metalwork into it is never going to make it 'normal' - you may be lucky and your pain may improve, but the surgery is to straighten you up and hold you that way so that you don't end up your ear pressed against the window when you drive your car! Anyway, my experience has been just that, I am straight but not pain free and this is what I told my surgeon when I saw him earlier this summer.

He ordered a CT scan (I blogged about it a while back) and I duly had that done. The whammy came when I went back into see him for the results. I warn you right now, I am going to get a bit technical, so stick with me! He discovered that although it is normal to still have back pain after scoliosis surgery, my pain is not exactly normal when considered in relation to that. To start with, my fusion has failed at the top - between T9 & T10 there is no bone graft - on the CT, there's just a black space - "You see that?", said my surgeon, pointing with his pen, "Thats air that is."

I have to say, that this wasn't really what I wanted to hear, and thinking that in the very middle of my back, the only thing holding the bones together was 2 screws and a bit of metal (that I stressed to bits in Disney last year) didn't actually make my tummy feel any less wobbly... He then moved on...

"You see that...?" - he indicates another black space between L5 & S1^*1 "You're supposed to have a disc in there^*2 and it really looks very unstable. In a nutshell, your fusion needs extending - top and bottom - say 2 or 3 levels (vertebrae) at the top and we should really screw the bottom bit in to your pelvis."

Oh great, thinks I - that's an interesting start to a Thursday (at least I think it was a Thursday!) but at least it might go some way to explaining why my neurological symptoms have been a bit variable. Unstable joints, changeable neuro stuff - it all seemed to fit together. Ah...dear reader (I've always wanted to say that!), I hear you poor scoliosis people getting stressed at the nerve stuff...don't be, this is particular to me....! Anyway, he suggested going in to hospital and they would inject some kind of false joint jelly stuff in the gap at the bottom to see if it would help delay the bigger surgery for a bit. I saw him on the Thursday (I remember now, it was definitely a Thursday) and I was in the following Tuesday - not the treatment I am used to on the NHS I can tell you. He told me to go away and keep a pain diary and then see him again in a month - which is kind of where I am right now...

I go back and see him in a week or so. The big question is, is my back any better for it? Well, yes and no. Yes, I think it's better, but no I don't think what he did had much effect - I think that holiday in Turkey helped more. Do you think I could get him to prescribe regular sunshine all inclusive holidays on the NHS?

^*1Technical speak for the very bottom of your back
^*2 In fact, the only disc I have, below T8!

Have I been busy or just lazy?

2010-10-07T11:42:00.001+01:00

I was just looking at my blog and realised that I haven't done much in the way of updating for awhile - so, do you think I've been busy, or am I just lazy?

Well, both are true in their way but I will deal with the second first and the first second, just because I feel like being contrary today! Let's go with lazy....how does a week, on a sun bed, in the sun, all inclusive, beer by your side, beside a nice pool, with a good supply of eminently readable books, sound? Sounds good? Sounds lazy? Yep? Well, that is my Number one excuse - hubby and I took a well earned holiday to Turkey where we relaxed and chilled and did almost nothing for a change. It was bliss...

Of course, before we went was manic and since we've come back, merely busy, but there you go, that's why I haven't done any updating recently.

OMG I can hear you all shrieking!

2010-09-13T22:09:00.004+01:00

Yes, here it is, a long overdue blog entry and in the best of the dog ate my homework traditions, I am going to tell you all why it's been so long since I updated.

The first thing is, that life has been ever so slightly hectic and although that is no excuse at all since everybody's life is hectic these days, it's my first excuse and I'm sticking to it. I do have second and third excuses planned too (so as not to disappoint you), but I shall start with the first one and move on.

My mother has been living with me recently...there, that's the truth of it and that simple statement explains a lot. Many of my friends by now will be nodding sagely and those of you who don't know her, will imagine anyway, that having your mother suddenly come to live with you, is bound to turn your life upside down a bit and they might think that its even more true, when your mother is 81.

Writing down that my mother is 81, makes it sound as if some doddery old lady has just moved in with us, dribbling down her front and spilling her tea, but it's not like that at all. It's even not like that when I tell you that she had a fall and so that's why she was here. Nope, my mother is not that kind of 81...my mother is the kind of 81 that...that...well...actually she's not like any kind of 81 in fact. I think I need an example...

A couple of years ago (just before she turned 80), she went to Cuba and then she went to
China (coming home on the Trans Siberia Express and dropping in on Mongolia on the way to stay in a yurt) and then on to Canada. Apparently she wanted as many trips as possible before her travel insurance ran out at aged 80 and she had to buy a more expensive policy - so she decided to do countries beginning with the letter C (I think). I did actually point out to her at the time that doing one letter per year at aged 80 wasn't necessarily the best plan as by my reckoning she'd be about 104 by the time she got to Zaire, but she didn't seem too bothered by the idea that she might have to tote her zimmer frame out on safari with her - just as long as she could use it to rest her camera on.

She did take a little break this year, to go to Oberammergau - a bit out of order its true, but its only on once every 10 years and wasn't going to fall in sequence next time round either... I dunno, she seems to collect countries like some old ladies collect china ornaments. Most recently she has been collecting African Mediterranean countries Libya and Morocco spring to mind and (although not in Africa) is now talking of Nepal. I'm thinking this is just a way to revert back to working her way through the alphabet, at a slightly speedier rate...but who can tell...

Anyway, all of this is by way of explaining how she isn't your typical pensioner (if there is such a thing) but doesn't really explain how she came to be here, although it's true that she had a fall. Three weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, my mother called to say she'd fallen in the night and thought she'd broken her arm. In reality she fell down the stairs - all the way down the stairs, hit the wall at the bottom, turned the corner and landed on the quarry tile floor. She explained it as "rather like doing a slinky" ... which says it all really. She then got up, dusted herself down, climbed back up the stairs, and since it was 3.30 in the morning and she didn't want to bother anyone, she went back to bed. She called us at 9.30 and we picked her up and took her to hospital where they confirmed that it was, indeed, broken. So that was it, arm in a plaster and sling, right arm (and she's right handed) and it was back home with us...I haven't had time to do a thing since then.

Aha! I can hear you all say, but what about now - how come you have time to blog now? Well, the now is that she wanted to get home and so she went home with her arm in plaster just as soon as she felt able to cope (which was last Friday). She's doing fine (thanks for asking!) and hopefully will get the plaster off in another 2 weeks. At least one good thing has come out of all of this though, as given the steepness of the stairs versus the age of the lady equation, I think she can be fairly confident she doesn't have osteoporosis!

Bees in a lift.

2010-08-20T13:45:00.005+01:00

You think you've heard it all, fish in the sea, birds in the sky, snakes on a plane...and then it happens, you've guessed it, you get bees in a lift!

There I was, minding my own business (I actually do this quite a lot - it's often safer) and was following my normal pattern of heading for my physio's office which is on the first floor. It's actually well into the bowels of the building too, and quite a long way to walk, so I tend to take my chair. Actually it's almost always simpler to do that anyway, because since they moved to the new treatment centre on the second floor, you have to go through the sports science department to get to the treatment room and so there's no waiting room. I just know that if I sit down to rest on one of those fancy exercise machines in that rehab gym, someone will probably shout at me and tell me to 'work harder' and 'stretch it out'! Waiting by simply standing around not really being an option (standing is just about the worst thing for my back), I take my chair - and all of this is just a complicated way of telling you why I always take the lift instead of the stairs!

So, this day, I got to the institute, went inside and found the lift had an out of order sign on it so went back to reception to find a member of staff to take me up in the service lift. Now, the service lift really is in the bowels of the building, it's dark, scary and full of spiders. The doors open on both sides but I've only ever seen the one side open - I think if they ever open the other side it will lead to a dark and gloomy land full of scary monsters where giant crabs roam the countryside and humans are hunted for their sweet meat...

Ugh!

Sorry - I'm back with you...

Anyway, the nice man (let's call him Bob^*1), who took me up in the service lift told me that the other lift was out of order because it was full of bees. I don't think Bob really meant full - like crammed in, like how many students you can get in a telephone box or 'tell me sir, for first prize, how many bees can you fit in this lift?'- not that kind of full! I did wonder though, how the bees got there - I mean - did they form themselves into a man shaped mass to fool the automatic door opener and then follow the sign that says 'Bees this way' to get into the lift (pressing the button to call it with many little furry legs)? Or did they come down the lift shaft and if so, how? Is the shaft open at the top? And that's another thing, why were the bees there? I am assuming that it was not to see how many they could fit in there, and for sure, they weren't trying to find a quick way to the second floor, as that lift is the slowest lift in the whole world. It was donated for the use of the disabled, and everyone knows by now that disabled people can't go fast in lifts...or their eyeballs will explode....or something... Anyway, before I ask any more questions and ramble any more, the short story is that there had been a swarm and Bob said that they had to call in the fumigators to deal with it.

I thought this was actually quite sad, the fact that they killed them, but it reminded me of the FIL who had bees in his chimney. FIL and MIL called the council, who sent a man, who killed that swarm too. I wonder if this is why the bee population is declining? Are bees trying to set up home in completely inappropriate places all around the world and then getting murdered for their efforts?

^*1 This name was MBHG's idea (Maybe blue haired girl). I expect her to heavily feature in my blog over the months to come...

Template Designer.

2010-08-06T14:06:00.002+01:00

Now, I hit a few buttons and pressed save when I meant to cancel so my blog now looks like this...

...when I have chance I will see if I can do something better - I was getting bored with the old design anyway - at least that's what I am now telling myself after I saw all my hours of coding sliding away into the ether!

Yes...before you say it, I do have a backup ...its on an external HDD - I just don't know where that is right now...

By the way - to all of you who think I am the most organised person in the whole wide world - here is the proof of what goes on behind the scenes. I am like a little duck...serene in view - legs paddling furiously below the waterline!

55 Yellow Flower Street

2010-08-06T13:46:00.005+01:00

I recently had to go to someones house to collect a wooden stand which they had made and wouldn't fit in their car. We are lucky enough to own an estate (station wagon!) and so I volunteered to get it and was given a scrap of paper with the guys address on it.

Now, I was feeling in a very brave mood that day and decided to venture out without much idea of where I was going - after all, he only lived about 5 miles from me so how hard could it be to find his house? Of course, I did have a sat nav in the glove compartment of the car but I was soon to find out that this wasn't too much use when driving along in heavy traffic with no way to pull over....

Anyway, not being completely stupid, I had checked the map on my phone before I'd left the house and I actually had quite a good idea of where I was going before I set out. In fact, I had actually set the phone to give me directions, but I started to disbelieve it quite quickly, when it kept asking me to turn left when I knew that was going to take me somewhere else entirely from where I wanted to be. I've heard those stories about sat navs, the ones where you end up in the river or something and that wasn't going to be me - no siree!

I guess, after a little while, of the phone saying turn left and me realising that actually 5 miles from my house may as well be 105 miles for all the familiarity of the area that I had, I thought that I maybe should admit defeat, stop the car and either ask for directions or turn on the real Tom Tom who (so far) has never let me down. I pulled into a side road, only to notice that it was Heather Street and Clover Street was directly opposite. Now I took notice of this, because I was looking for Daffodil street and I was starting to notice some kind of a flower trend going on here and much like Reggie Perrin's poets estate it seemed that I was certainly in the vicinity. I pulled back out of the junction, headed on up the road and there it was, the street I was looking for. I found the house number, spotted some timber in the front yard (which seemed promising given what I was collecting) and knocked on the door.

It was at this point that the trip started to get rather bizarre as a small child (SC) answered the door, rather than the 6ft something chap that I was expecting and a strange conversation ensued:

Me: "Is your dad in?"
SC: "No"
Me: "Are you sure?"
SC: "Yes.."
Me: "Oh, I'm supposed to meet him. Are you sure you are sure?"
SC: (Looks at me as if I am stupid and nods)
Me: (Thinking maybe I made a mistake - after all, I was supposed to meet the guy) "Um,is his name Mark?"
SC: "No"
Me: "Are you sure?" (don't ask me why I asked this, thinking back it was a a stupid thingto say!)
SC: "Yes" (again looking at me as if I am stupid)

He then turned on his heel and shut the door in my face - presumably having decided that I was actually a loony...
I started to head back to the car but was stopped by the sound of a woman's voice behind me - it sounded cross, in the way that only a mother who feels her child is being terrorised, can sound. I turned slowly, expecting the worst...as she demanded to know what I wanted. I started to explain and almost immediately was struck by a thought...

....I bashed my forehead with the heel of my hand...

"B*gger" This is Buttercup Street, isn't it? I wanted Daffodil!"

If you can slink, getting into a car, I did it and headed off round the corner to find Daffodil Street and Mark - who was there, as arranged.

Some time later at home, I told hubby the story of my trip and he howled with laughter. He made the point though that my head seems to be wired up in a fairly wonky fashion. After all, he said, it's not like there was a picture on the street sign to show that they were both yellow flowers - you just knew they were both yellow and so your brain made the connection without even seeing the wording on the sign - that's just weird that is!

I am dead..

2010-08-04T12:43:00.006+01:00

This isn't about me....but it made me laugh anyway...

A more mature couple awoke from a really good nights sleep...

He takes her hand and she responds:

"Don't touch me."

He asked:

"Why not?"

She answered,

"Because I'm dead"'

The husband asked...

"What are you talking about? We're both lying here in bed together and talking to one another!"

She said,

"No...

... I'm definitely dead.. "

He insisted:

"You are not dead. What in the world makes you think you're dead?"

"Because I woke up this morning and nothing hurts."

Testing with jam...

2010-07-15T14:23:00.002+01:00

I've been using computers for a very long time now - in fact I've actually been using a personal computer at home since a time when I had no idea how to use it at all! Hubby persuaded me that having a computer would be a great idea and so we spent a big chunk of my severance pay on something which was extremely whizz bang and up to the minute at the time. It really was something - it came with 3 disk drives - a 3.5, a 5.25 and a 20Mb hard drive - and yes, you read that right, it was 20 megabytes, not gigabytes ^*1. For the techies amongst you, the drive wasn't SATA, it wasn't even IDE, in fact, it was something called RLL which I think (since this was such an archaic device) probably stood for 'revolves lots and lots'. When we bought it, we also bought a copy of a new operating system called Windows, which we had seen demonstrated and a copy of Dos, which had to be installed before anything could be done at all. I famously rang hubby up in work (yes, there were phones at that time) and asked how I could get the Dos OS onto the computer, because it came with no instructions at all. Anyway, hubby said "put the disk in the drive and then type 'copy a twinkle dot twinkle c twinkle dot twinkle" - which just meant nothing at all to me! Anyway, after a bit of explaining, I managed it and after these first small steps things progressed pretty rapidly. They had to really, because the damn thing didn't work (twinkle or no twinkle) and I ended up on the phone to help desk - before I knew it I was thrust into the bowels of Edlin and on a really steep learning curve. Eventually, with our new copy of DR-Dos (not MS-Dos!) working, I installed Windows only to find that it was Windows 2 - not 3 (which was what had been demonstrated) and it mostly wasn't even in colour and so ensued another long story...

All of this is rather a long way from where I started with this entry, but you know me, never known to ramble ;-)

Its strange really, the way that your mind bunny hops from one thing to another, because all these memories came flooding back because of the new iPad. I know, I know, there's hardly any link at all between the iPad and our first PC apart from the fact that they are both a kind of computer but there you go - you are about to find out why my mind did the hopping:

I read a review recently on the iPad and about how robust it is with it's aluminium back and scratch resistant screen - heck, it even said you could spread it with jam and it would still work! Well, that reminded me of when they first started producing CDs (which was not that long before the time that we had that first PC) and I heard an interview on the news on Radio1 which was saying how amazing these new fangled shiny music discs were. It was said they were so amazing that you could even spread them with jam and they would still play. I mean, what it is with jam? Is there a special department in every new technology company where they test new things out with foodstuffs? Does some little guy with a clipboard and a white coat (with a row of pens in his top pocket of course) approach the boss and go "Mr Jobs, it's OK, you can release this one, it's withstood mashed potato and apple crumble - as soon as it's passed the jam test we're good to go!"

If you happen to work for a new technology company, please let me know why you don't use marmalade? Is it, as I suspect, that the coefficient of stickiness to lumps of peel doesn't produce precisely calculable results - or is it just that Stephen Fry only puts strawberry jam on his toast?

^*1 Huge, when most were only 10Mb!

Reading Meme

2010-07-09T10:19:00.004+01:00

This is a meme on reading which I got from arbitraryconstant (who got it from normblog and More Than Mind Games) . I haven’t done one for so long and I always think they are interesting and/or fun. If you'd like to fill it out, please do and leave a link to your blog in the comments.

Do you snack while reading? > I don't normally, but I did fancy a nibble when reading Silence of the Lambs.

What is your favourite drink while reading? > At the risk of sounding fixated on Thomas Harris, I am partial to a glass of red wine (although my real preference lies with Merlot, not Chianti).

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you? > I have occasionally pencilled marks in textbooks, but even with a pencil I feel guilty. I favour scraps of paper with added notes tucked in at the appropriate place.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat? > I love bookmarks but always seem to forget them and either use any old receipt or scrap of paper handy or (sharp intake of breath), turn the corner over. I do have bookmark with '50 books to read before you die' on it and before I die, am determined to read them all!

Fiction, non-fiction or both? > I've read both but I am a trash fiction reader first and foremost. I'm not ashamed to say that it's escapism all the way for me (as long as it's not romantic (phtew - spit!)) trash!

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere? > I love to read to the end of a chapter - it satisfies the 'completer finisher' in me but due to the nature of some of my reading time (and the type of books I read), it's not always possible.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you? > Gosh no, um, does anyone?

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away? > Um, actually the kinds of things I normally read don't have long words! Seriously, if I can't figure it out from context or derivation then I will mostly gloss over it until later. Occasionally it's unavoidable and you have to stop, in which case I'll ask hubby (who's good at words) or (if I have to), look it up.

What are you currently reading? > I just started reading The Final Reckoning by Sam Bourne only to discover I'd already read it and had forgotten it because it wasn't that great. His book The Righteous Men was superb though.

What is the last book you bought? > Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett - haven't read it yet. I've always loved his books because they are just about the only ones I've ever read that have made me laugh out loud. On the Terry P subject, I thought his Dimbleby lecture was superb ...

Do you have a favourite time/place to read? > My favourite is in my armchair - at night but I actually do most of my reading outside while waiting for other people.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? > I like both and can't decide.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over? > Not really, just about everyone I know has different taste from me; I have recommended individual books when I felt someone else would enjoy them.

How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)? > I group by Author on the whole but I have 3 'reading shelves' which contain a mix of books I haven't read yet but want to get round to. They are organised in the order in which I'd like to read them. If they weren't in any order at all I would feel pretty unnerved, but that's just me. I have so far resisted the temptation to make a list...

Is equality that simple?

2010-07-03T11:57:00.005+01:00

Using a wheelchair is an odd thing - on the one hand, it is perceived by many to be disabling, hideous and the sign of an ended life but to others it is an enabling tool that leads to a measure of equality in an unequal world. In my mind, there is no doubt that it's an unequal world and by this I don't mean simply in terms of disability - let's face it, some people are born rich and some poor - so, that's not very equal, is it? Anyway, there's lots of talk about making society more equal and disability rights (along with such things as women's rights) are among those that are high on the agenda for some people. I suspect that part of the reason for this is that these are among the more visible and measurable ways for people to express their acceptance of all those in society- for example, you can count disabled spaces, or number of female employees.

It's interesting, this idea of equality (and I will stick to being disability specific here as it's what I have most experience with), as I was brought up to try and do my very best to be just like everyone else. Funnily, this did not mean that my life was in any way equal to anyone else at all, even though that's what my parents were striving for. I went to a mainstream school and did pretty much all the things that other kids did (except ballet!) but in fact the 'equality' came at a cost. In fact, to look equal and achieve as much as others did, I had to just work harder to be as good as them. Things took longer for me and they were much more tiring and/or painful, but on the face of it, it looked like stuff was just as normal for me as the rest of the world.

It's also interesting therefore, that over the years I have come to think that equality shouldn't necessarily look the same for all - women do not has to wear men's suits to be good in business and disabled people can have an equally useful life as anyone else regardless of their differences. We all know this, it's old hat, but I was thinking about it recently when I was reading a blog entry by Bad Cripple about a recent visit to Home Depot where an employee told them to "stop speeding" in the store. BC was really upset that the employee felt that they could just chip in, bringing attention to the wheelchair and make a joke at his expense (you can read the entry here) but I wondered if there was more to it than that. In these instances, firstly, would the employee be making a joke with any of the other shoppers, the old ones or the red haired ones; in other words are they in fact just a bit socially inept? OK, maybe not, but in my experience, there are lots of very well meaning people who have no idea how to approach the disabled, but who want to connect with them in order to help, or who just want to chat to them in an equal way. They try to make jokes, offer if they can help in the oddest of situations (I once had someone offer to push me on a railway platform when I was talking to the BMB who was walking beside me!) and sometimes seem as though they have no concept of equality at all.

I wonder if they behave in this way because the alternative might be to completely ignore you - and down this route lies the whole 'does he take sugar^1*' aspect of disability. I guess the fact of it all is that you don't wish to be ignored too, as it just makes an already difficult life even harder, so human contact, if well meaning, (regardless of how clumsily it is handled), is the preferable circumstance. I have recently been in a situation where it is going to be hard for me to attend an important event because it is assumed that I will cope, because no one is talking about my disability and my personal situation is being ignored. Part of me (the well meaning part) thinks this may be that those concerned think that it is equality to treat me the same as all the other attendees when in fact it has the opposite effect on my ability to attend. I wanted to be asked if I had any needs, I didn't want to have to phone anyone or make a big fuss or insist on anything at all, I just wanted to be contacted and I wouldn't have cared if someone used the wrong language.

The fact of it all is that it's a horribly complicated life in which none of us are in any way equal to anyone else. We all look different, have different levels of intelligence and standards of education, we have different levels of ability in sport, art and practicality and some of us have disabilities. There's nothing we can do about all of this, we are all different and that's just the way it is. When society talks about equality it should be about making it easier for those whose differences make it more difficult to do the same as everyone else (if that makes sense). Drop kerbs are a simple case in point - they make it easier to get a wheelchair or kid's pushchair across the street - making it just like it is for anyone else - thus generating equality. Action needs to be taken to create equal circumstances and for action to be taken the people need to make contact with each other - however poorly...

By the way, if any of this entry seems rather rambling, then forgive me. I have been interrupted every 5 minutes by hubby who is trying to do something new on his laptop. He assumes that I know how to do what he wants to do (when all I would do it point and click and keep my fingers crossed!) and in between those 5 minutes he has been talking to himself and muttering - I've just had a few issues in keeping concentrated...!

^1* "Does He Take Sugar" was a programme (or at least part of a programme) that was first broadcast on the radio 30 or more years ago. I attempted to find out some more info on it when I wrote this entry, but despite the fact that the phrase has found it's way into society as a guide to how not to treat disabled people, there is remarkably little out there on it. If anyone can enlighten me further, I'd be grateful as this programme had a real impact on my family as I was growing up.

On plumbing and cats, sealant and printing

2010-06-23T15:47:00.002+01:00

A little while ago we had a leak from the toilet and I called the plumber. It was odd really, because (in the way of such things) I decided that it would be a good idea to make extra use of him while he was there and so I asked him to fit a new sink. I did actually have a sink that needed fitting - not something I always have just lying around, but this time I did. We had, after all, intended fitting a new sink in the downstairs cloakroom, but it had turned into one of those more complicated jobs and so we had bought the sink and taps and then had them sitting around until we got round to doing the job. I'm sure everyone knows how it goes - we need a new sink, so we need a new countertop. We couldn't get one the right depth and so we had to take the cupboard to pieces and cut it down so that the countertop would fit. The new sink was a very slightly different size to the old one so that meant new tiles for the splashback and then the new tiles looked so nice that a spot of redecoration was called for. To make matters worse, the toilet leak turned out to be a faulty cistern and so we decided to replace it with the one we took out of the upstairs bathroom when we replaced the suite up there which we hadn't got round to getting rid of and which was in perfect condition. In fact, the bathroom suite had to be replaced because the bath went and ....well, oh gosh, I think I'm getting all rather distracted here! The thing is, I was going to say, quite simply, that the plumber came to call (not on a Monday morning!).

Our plumber is a real treasure and does good quality work and so when he fitted the sink, he also applied sealant all around the outside edge as a finishing touch. He cleaned the nozzle off on his sealant with a tissue of some kind (he's very neat) and was chatting to me as he tidied away his tools. Unbeknownst to both of, the cat was sniffing around (that would be Clumsy) and (because he is clumsy) managed to trip over the tissue as he passed it. I guess this wouldn't have been a problem if only he had then gone to lie somewhere quietly out of the way but he didn't. The thing is you see, that Clumsy has an obsession with my computer printer (as I know I have mentioned before) and although it seems unrelated to plumbing, I am sure that those of you who know me will gather that you are about to discover some kind of link. The plumber needed to go on to a new customer after me - somewhere he'd never been before and so he asked me (innocently enough) if I knew where it was and I didn't but I said "I know a man who does" (or who can) …Now of course, that’s a bit of a fib as I know a machine that does, but the 'knowing a man who…' expression became rooted in our household in much the way that 'it does what it says on the tin' or even 'simples'…. In fact (at the risk of digressing), that is a constant source of amazement to me - the fact that we absorb good advertising slogans - over the years we have asked Sid (I don't know who he was or anything, I just know we should ask him), famously almost everything these days does (or doesn't) do what it says on the tin (or box or bag...) , we work rest and play and many other things too - all crept into our lives from the back of some advertising executives head. These days we have 'its only a fur wound' to go with 'simples' and that's just from one campaign. Mind some are a bit odd - I distinctly remember from my childhood 'there are two men in my life, one is my husband, the other is my wife'…but maybe I misheard it or something? That's like those records you hear isn't it - the ones that go something like 'four hundred children and a dog in the field'…? I think I'm getting distracted here..I shall go back to the plumber…

So, where was I? Ah yes, the plumber wanted directions to his next job and so I went to the AA website (a very nice man, a very, very nice man…) and typed in the address for him. It gave me directions and I pressed the print button to give a copy to the plumber. It's at this point that Clumsy comes hurtling into the room as he hears the valves warming up in our printer - he leaps up onto the desk and thrusts his arm, complete with tissue attached to it by a large gob of sealant, straight into the slot in the printer. I had visions of the sealant acting like superglue and him being glued permanently in place, completely ruining any chances of photocopying anything ever again…

…well, as it happens, we got lucky (or he did) as he timed it perfectly - thrusting his arm in as the printer thrust the paper out. The two met with a rustling tearing sound (this often happens when he meets our printer and usually involves yet another copy being done (sigh!)) - but then, there was a distinct schlopppp sound as he withdrew his arm, minus tissue and sealant and the paper emerged with the offending article firmly attached. OK so I did have to reprint, but hey, the print head was clean, the paper slot was clean and the cat was clean …you couldn't have planned for a better outcome…even my language was clean and it surely wouldn't have been with any of the other possible outcomes...

A Scoliosis surprise...

2010-06-04T11:25:00.004+01:00

I suddenly realised that I have been a little remiss in keeping you all up to date with news - instead favouring men in tutus and disability wonderings and so, I thought, since this blog started its life as some extension of the Scoliosis support forums, that I really ought to mention bendy backs from time to time. In fact, I really ought to talk about my bendy back, since this blog was supposed to be about my experiences, wasn't it?

My bendy back, despite its 30-odd degree curves, (well hidden inside my straight exterior) and held together with scaffolding and screws, serves me well. There are some who would say that I don't treat it too kindly, especially when they see how I wince when I drive over speed bumps, but there you go. Actually, I don't wince that much when I drive over speed bumps, despite the fact that I possibly drive everywhere faster than just about anyone else I know, but at least when I drive I have the steering wheel to hang on to. It's an odd thing being a passenger in a car - you have nothing to hang on to, every bump and you are tossed around like a little rag doll - to be fair, its not the getting thrown in the air I care about, it’s the coming down on the end of the rod that does the damage... in fact, several of my friends are now saying "well, you try doing that with a rod up your ar*e", before I manage to do so. Cars are kind of OK, at least my feet normally touch the floor, which helps and being able to see out the front (thus getting some advance warning) also helps, as you can boost yourself up from the seat so that the springs don't hit you in the rear end quite so hard when you land! Nope, cars are alright, its coaches and busses that are the killers. You have no idea what is coming, my little legs have no way of reaching the floor and just dangle in space until I am hurled upwards at maximum velocity, only to experience a tiny 'oh no!' moment (just like Wile.E Coyote) just before I come down to earth with a, very much unwanted, bang. This is usually followed by a string of expletives (mostly expressing the term 'ow!') and then a chorus of voices saying …"you try doing that…"!

Anyway, I digress a bit, except that speed bumps are some of the more uncomfortable (nay painful) things that go on with my back. Those of you who follow my back know that I am not pain free, but I am in a so much better place than I was when my head was increasingly moving sideways as if planning on driving with my head permanently stuck out the window ^*1. I feel that I cope with my back pretty fine, I am happy with my results and well, that's about it really. My only concern really has been that I am supposed to get an annual checkup with my consultant and I have been waiting for my latest follow up since 2007. Yes, you heard me right, 2007. To be truthful, I have actually seen my consultant once since then, but only because I paid to see him privately over a concern that my physio had! I have not seen him at his NHS clinic, even though he told me that he 'wanted to keep a close eye on me'. If this is a close eye, I hate to think what happens when you slip below his radar!

It's not like I haven't been chasing for an appointment either - oh no, every 6 months or so, I phone up and speak to the Bureaucratic monster lady and she fobs me off for a bit and so on and so on. This year I decided to create just a teeny bit more and told her that I would phone her every week until I had some news and lo and behold, she discovered, while I was on the phone(!) that she did have an appointment after all. Well, fancy that….! Hmm, if anyone else ever tells me what a wonderful healthcare system we have in this country, I shall, I shall….well, do I shall something…!

Anyway, back to the beginning, having rambled off topic for much too long. I did actually get to the clinic and after an hour and 20 minutes wait (good old NHS again!) I got to see my consultant. To be fair, he is a really nice guy and probably majorly overworked, but all the same it's still not a great system. Anyway, he had a little look at me and a chat and then gave me some news I really wasn't expecting. He said, you know how you only have one joint that moves at the bottom of your back (L5), well, I fear that it is unstable …and by the way, where do you get your pain? I pointed to there (there and there) and he went Oh. Mmm. Ah. All fairly closely followed by 'we may have to look at extending your fusion - top and bottom'. I think my eyes opened wide, and my mouth went into a little tiny O shape, and it was my time to say Oh. Mmm. Ah. It was all rather unexpected really…

Next he decided to check when I last had a full scoliogram and CT scan and discovered it was in 2006. Yes, really in 2006, the year that I had the surgery done - that 2006! That really is a 'close eye' isn't it? Anyway, that's where we are now, my appointment came through yesterday for the CT and he gave me the number of his private secretary instead of me having to contact that BML again. This is so that once the scan is done, I might hope to see him before the end of the year - maybe even before the end of the summer. I actually find all the waiting quite frightening really - what if I had had to wait for my achalasia operation (which I had done privately) - there I was diagnosis to surgery in 3 months (and would have been quicker if it was easier to diagnose) - if I had had to wait 3 year, and on a good week only lost a 1lb in weight throughout that time, well, it doesn't really bear thinking about. Anyway, watch this space for more news - I promise to be a good blog mama and write often ;-)

^*1 For you all across the pond, please remember the driver sits in the right hand side of the car …and yes I know that seems odd!

BTW, I know there are a ton of broken smiley links in the BML post, but hey, I only have so many hours today, so please ignore the pictures. Would you have time to examine all your oldest blog entries to make sure that they are all 100% intact? No? So - please give me a break!

Athletes and Dancers

2010-05-27T16:33:00.002+01:00

I often read WCD's blog and it makes me wonder about stuff. In fact I read lots of blog entries that make me wonder about stuff (as well as smile, laugh, cry and empathise and generally provoke all kinds of emotional response!) but she's amongst my favourites. Anyway she was talking about dance and injury and it made me think how true this was for athletes too. I get physio every two weeks and my physio is in the sports science department of a large sports training centre. The treatment benches are always full of athletes from table tennis players, runners, weight lifters, archers, badminton player and judo guys. Occasionally you see big rugby players and rowers - in fact, you name it - most sports have probably been represented. The nearest we get to dance I think would be the gymnasts and I don't know how many disabled ones of them that there are - is there disabled gymnastics? There should be if there is dance, surely?

Anyway injury in sport seems to be pretty common - people are trying to run faster, jump higher, lift more or push harder. All these athletes work so close to the edge so much of the time that you really get to see people who are pushing their bodies to the limit and still expect them to work perfectly. This is especially true in disability sport (and dance I guess) where those who choose not to accept their limitations require and expect their bodies to perform at their peak without question. Often, they expect them to perform at the peak performance of their able bodied counterparts which is amazing when you come to really think about it. People like Oscar Pistorius and Jody Cundy are trying to qualify for able bodied teams and they are not alone in this desire . I wonder what it is that drives people like us - is it that we are just stupid and cannot recognise that our bodies were not designed to do all of this stuff? But then what of runners like Kelly Holmes or cyclists like Chris Hoy? Are their bodies doing what they were born to do or did they get to the top by gritting their teeth and pushing through the pain. I wonder if the injuries they picked up along the way were a warning to them that their bodies were not designed to be abused in that way. In fact , do you ever wonder if pushing your body to out perform itself, and everyone else, is just another form of abuse like cigarettes alcohol or drugs. Plainly no one who looks at a top athlete sees someone who is abusing their body in any way, but day in day out, these guys are pushing and pushing, running faster, harder and longer, swimming until their lungs burst, pushing until their fingers bleed... and along the way picking up small niggles, an injury here, a fall there all of which land them back on the physio bench. All pretty deep questions eh? and ones I don't have any real answers to either.

The only thing I know for sure, is that I don't know that any of these people were born to do what they do - sure, they plainly have some kind of basic talent for what they do, but what pushes them forward is their mental approach. They see no limits to what they can try to do and they set themselves up to just try harder in pursuit of their dreams . They judge that the risk to their bodies in pushing ever onwards is an acceptable one. They are prepared to put up with the pain of injury as well as the pain of training. They see the reward (whether that be perfection of the move, accolade from an audience or a gold medal) and they decide that it is worth whatever it takes to get it.

So, there's all this talk of dancers and athletes and I guess quite a few readers out there are wondering just how an entry like this relates to them. Well maybe it doesn't at all but I think it's true that we are all faced from time to time with fairly debilitating stuff -pain, colds and flu, arthritis, stomach ache, migraine - you name it we all struggle with stuff. Sometimes we really are too ill to do anything and sometimes we just don't want to go to work and are favouring a duvet day and I guess these represent the extremes of the things that we are faced with not being able (or not wanting) to do. Assuming though that you fall somewhere in between those 2 extremes, you often find that how ill you feel depends on what you are faced with doing - i.e. what your 'reward' is. If you are going out with your friends to do something you booked tickets for ages ago and are really looking forward to then you are more inclined to push yourself to do it, compared to, say, yet another boring day in the office. Risk and reward - it's true right through life - we all have that capacity to push ourselves a little bit harder if it's for the 'right' outcome. Those disabled people who push themselves to out perform their able bodied counterparts are just the same - it's just that they are prepared to take the greater risk - even if it does mean injury along the way. You see, mentally, for them the reward is worth the risk, worth all the pain, worth all the potential for injury and worth all the time on the physio bench. I guess that it all just equates to the fact that they just figure it's always worth going in to the office (if humanly possible) if there's a pay check at the end of the month.

Emotion on show.

2010-05-12T14:05:00.004+01:00

I was at the hospital the other day and because the NHS is a slow lumbering beast I was sat for ages and ages in the waiting room. Waiting rooms generally are quite strange places, usually full of old copies of National Geographic, Hello magazine and Hamster Breeders Weekly and even if they're not, then there is often a TV to watch. Most people stare gormlessly at the TV if its on, regardless of what it is showing - that's no reflection on the type of clinic people are waiting for, its just that TV can be hypnotic like that (even if it is showing some wild daytime programme like Celebrity In The Attic Tells All To An Audience Before Auctioning It). Anyway, unusually, on this day, the TV was off and there were no magazines to sit and read and I was amazed to note that people actually started to talk to each other.

There were a couple of clinics on that afternoon and about half the waiting room (its a big room) was full of (mostly women) waiting for the breast clinic. Its an awful wonderful clinic, full of many, many people whose emotions are so close to the surface and to me, that made it even more unusual that they had started chatting. It was so busy as well, not a seat to spare and I noticed that several of the people were looking around, and it seemed to me that they were wondering who was with who. Some were obvious - the lady with the very flat chest and the wig and two friends (they looked more like friends than relatives) - each one holding a hand, like two bodyguards, one for each side. Close to her was a lady with a headscarf with a gentleman (husband?) who dropped off to sleep while she read the paper (taken out of her own handbag) and generally looked very unconcerned. I wondered about the headscarf - more people seemed to look at her, than the bald lady in the row behind who was sat next to two men who came in together. One of them was in full army fatigues and his friend was casually dressed in shorts and a t-shirt - they just didn't seem to go together at all , but they went in to the clinic together (and came out smiling). There was a family- mum, daughter, husband, child (mum and daughter looked so alike) - they also went in - en masse, and also came out smiling. That wasn't true for everyone - as I said, it was both wonderful (for those who came out smiling) and awful (for those who didn't) - so many people, so many emotions...

When people started to talk, it wasn't about the emotions though, it wasn't about their lumps and bumps or their fear, or that very British subject of the weather, no, it was about the waiting times...! Now, I know this is the NHS and so this shouldn't have been an unexpected subject, but I guess I have never been in any hospital where there seemed to be so much discussion around the room. I was with someone who had a 2pm appointment and we were sat next to a lady whose appointment was 1.35 and as the waiting room was heaving and we were all packed in like sardines, somehow the subject seemed to spread outwards in a kind of ripple. I think it was the 1.35 lady who started it all, because she had been there for a while (she was early for her appointment) and at around 2.10 she pointed out the consultant and his minions who were just crossing the waiting room having apparently just arrived (or just come from lunch). I just couldn't believe that they (there were about 4 doctors/consultants and various nurses) would ever manage to get through all the ladies (and gents) who were waiting, there were just so many patients. Its the incredible thing about the NHS targets from both a patient and doctor perspective - I mean OK they started late, but maybe they finished morning clinic late - which would have been inevitable if they had a similar number of people to see. The thing is, that targets say you have to be seen within 2 weeks if you have a lump, but the clinic is only held one day a week and there are only a finite number of doctors to go round - just how is the system supposed to cope? The way it copes we discovered, as the conversation ripple spread outwards, is that they make lots of appointments all for the same time - there were three "1.35's" that were in our immediate vicinity and four "2pms". Now if there were 4 doctors then that might have been OK, but that was just the people sitting close to us, so I'm guessing that there were more than that number of patients for each slot. I am also guessing that the 8 (yes eight!) receptionists behind the main desk were in charge of meeting the NHS targets (or at least their managers are) and they can fit all these patients in by just magically booking more and more appointments all for the same time. It all makes you wonder though - if they had fewer managers and receptionists, maybe they could afford a couple of extra doctors and the waiting room wouldn't be so crowded. But then hey, if it wasn't, then we wouldn't have started by talking about waiting times and somehow ended up talking about baby sleep patterns and politics. At the moment politics has been a hot topic in the UK so that wasn't too surprising but I can't say I really expected baby behaviour - even when we are talking emotion…after all, no one threw a tantrum because they had to wait!

What an odd place...

2010-05-03T12:44:00.002+01:00

I recently had to drive to the far side of the country and I think I encountered what is possibly the oddest stretch of road anywhere in the world (or in Britain at least). Now, it may just be that I was in a funny sort of mood and so I noticed some of these things in a bit of a different light to the way that I would another time, but all the same - wondering didn't begin to describe the way my mind was working after I saw all of this stuff.

It all started innocently enough as I saw 3 magpies on the side of the road. That was it, I thought, three for a girl, I thought...that'll be me - I'm a girl (well I used to be one anyway...I guess I'm a bit more womanly these days...) I must admit, I wonder about magpies as well. I think when I was a child (about 100 years ago) there really weren't that many magpies about and I've often thought that that was why the one for sorrow verse was invented. The strange thing is that these days, there seem to be lots and lots of magpies about -of course, plenty of single ones but also lots of 2's, 3's and more and I think if they were really so common when the verse was written, why would anyone bother to write it. Surely the point of poems like that, is because seeing five magpies (for silver) is a rarity... Or am I missing something here?

...Anyway, here I am, digressing and waffling again (I don't do that often, do I?) LOL! Anyway (I don't say that much either, do I?), shortly after that, I saw three wood pigeons together and that I really did think was odd. I mean, we get wood pigeons in our garden, but only either singly or in pairs...in fact, our pair, really looks like "a couple" - like they were married or something, but I don't think I've ever seen 3 at the same time. I guess they could have been gearing up for a menage a trois or something but its still odd. So, anyway as in the great tradition of things happening in threes, I then saw 3 long tailed tits together and I thought they were pretty rare too. So there you go, all quite a strange start to my journey really, but it didn't end there...oh no...I told you I saw a lot of odd stuff and so it carried on....and on...

It was not long past the magpies that I came across a sign indicating a layby 1 mile ahead - nothing strange there you might think except the sign said:

"Layby 1 mile. For Emergencies only" !

(They did not add the exclamation mark!)

I fell to wondering, am I going to have a breakdown in exactly one mile - is anyone going to have a breakdown in exactly one mile? How do you know you are going to break down in one mile's time - do you hear a strange noise coming from under the car and think 'Hey, I think my car is just about to break - I'll wait a mile and see what happens' - maybe you feel sick - 'Ew, yuck, I feel sick, I'll just hang on from hurling my breakfast for another 60 seconds until I get to that layby'.... Now, I know I'm labouring the point here, but I'm sure you know where I am coming from...it was kind of a strange sign to see...

It got even more surreal and bizarre after that as the next sign I was an overhead gantry sign which simply said "Animals in the road" - just that - no more information than that, even though these new matrix signs allow way more space than just for that. They could have said "Warning Animals in Road" or "Warning Cows in Road" or anything like that but just animals in road sounded like it could be anything - I wasn't far from a safari park - maybe it was lions (or tigers or bears) I even idly wondered if it was an instruction - was it compulsory? If I had a dog in the back of my car, should I put him in the road? Should animals be on the road and not in cars? Maybe it meant that only animals should be in the road - maybe it was me that was in the wrong in my little car - do humans classify as animals??.... OK OK so, you can tell, I was really rambling by this point but in my defence, I had had a late night the night before and I'd had to get up early to drive across the country - anyone's mind would be wandering...

It was about this point, when my mind had gone off on a tangent and I was thinking that I really did need to stop at the next services and as a bare minimum get caffeine inside me (and hopefully chocolate too) that I saw an even odder sight. In fact, I couldn't quite grasp it with my befuddled mind and when I did get my head around what I was looking at I really started to rue the lack of a camera. I saw ...wait for it... a man on a motorbike...not just any man though, this one was wearing a tutu....yes, a tutu....the kind of thing ballerinas wear...that kind of tutu. Hairy legs, motorbike boots, ape-hanger bars on the bike, Harley Davidson sticker on the tank and a tutu (like this one)...and in pink (of course!). OK, now get this when I say it didn't end there...he was wearing a proper bike jacket with this - black leather (no fringes though) and attached to the back of the jacket was a pair of wings. These were not the kind of typical Hell's Angel type wings you might see on such jackets - but I guess they did go with the tutu as they were pink and looked like they were a fine net stretched over a coat hanger - very fetching as they flapped around behind him in the breeze. To this day I'm not really sure if the lack of coffee was making me hallucinate but all in all, it added to quite one of the weirdest trips I have ever been on....

Warning light - the clue's in the name!

2010-04-16T16:42:00.000+01:00

Warning: "a) a sign or signal designed to instill caution in its recipient"
but also
b) an amazing album by the oh-so-talented band green day. second only to their most recent album, american idiot.

Sorry, just got a bit distracted! Anyway, I was in the car the other day and I started wondering about the oddness of some of the (many) warning lights that are on (mostly modern) cars.

A few days ago I was in the car listening to the directions that my sat nav was giving me and therefore I had to turn around in a gateway - as everyone does, eventually! Anyway, it was a gateway to a field and the ground was a little muddy, it being the time of year when tractors are pulled out of the shed and go off roaming the fields, trying to earn their supper. In the mud, I suffered a weeny bit of wheel spin and a little light lit up on the dashboard of my car - 'Warning' it flashed at me - 'your wheels are spinning'…Well no sh*t Sherlock, like I couldn't tell that from the whizzy sound they were making as I was going nowhere and the amount of mud that was flying past my rear view mirror…

Anyway, after a few seconds of whizzing, I got a bit of traction, I moved back onto the road and the light went out, but it made me wonder about all the other superfluous warning lights that there are, especially those on cars, you see... we've had a few…(warning lights and cars!)

Once, we had a Renault 5 and it didn't have a temperature gauge (as was the custom at the time) - instead it had a warning light on the dashboard for the temperature of your engine. I actually thought this was pretty nifty to have such an uncluttered display panel until one day when I was in the car waiting for hubby to come out of the dentist's. Now I know you're wondering what changed my mind at exactly that point in time, but because I was a) in the car and b) bored, I decided to read the instruction book for the car ("First find your car…") - anyway, in there I discovered that the little water warning light was intended to come on if your car boiled over - not 'you are overheating, please stop your vehicle and find liquid to pour into the engine', nope it was more along the lines of 'Caution, you have overheated, your engine is about to seize at any second, if you do not stop this car 5 minutes ago, it will go bang very loudly and your con rod will disappear out through a hole in your front wing that you didn't previously own…' Well, you get the gist…

You see once you get started on these things, there's no stopping the lunacy…and there's another one - brake warning lights. Our car has 2 of them, loosely labelled the stopped and the not stopping lights (or something like that). The one indicates that your handbrake is still on - which I always find is also indicated by the fact that I am going nowhere fast while the engine whines very VERY loudly and smoke emanates from the wheels. The other one is the one that tells you your brakes have worn away - which is also indicated by a complete lack of stopping power and of course, the noise warning of the sound of tortured metal on metal…

I wonder too about fog light warning lights - I mean, fancy labelling most of these in such a similar colour to the dashboard display that few people can actually see it. Hmmm (am I grumbling here…?)

The latest thing appears to be the engine management light that most cars nowadays seem to have. This is a little light that is set by the manufacturers to light up at a random rate in between services. Often this little light goes out by itself if you ignore it for long enough, especially if the car is giving no other signs of distress, such as not going, making grinding, drumming or bleating noises or juddering uncontrollably every time to take it out of the drive. If you are foolish enough to take hubby to the dentist (or any other family member) and therefore read the manual, it will tell you to take your car to the dealer if this little light lights up. The dealer will turn the light off for £40 and reset the random switch for you…

I suppose it could be worse as we did have one car which mysteriously used to cut out at 70mph in a random fashion (usually in the outside lane of the motorway) - which is a whole other story in fact. I'm thinking then that some kind of warning light might have been useful in that situation - one that would go 'warning, your engine is about to stop working completely, all functions will cease, you will not be assimilated, you will not pass go…' …or something…. At the very least it could have said 'Warning, let this be a reminder to you, never buy a second hand Fiat…'!

I think I should stop here, I'm getting all hot under the collar and I'm starting to wonder if I am reading way too much Jeremy Clarkson...

This should not be funny at all…

2010-04-01T13:42:00.002+01:00

I know a guy (CWP)^*1 and he recently told me a story that should not have been funny at all, but the way he told it just had us all howling with laughter…I will leave you to make up your own minds, but please don't shoot the messenger - I'm only telling you what he told me!

CWP was in China and decided to take a day trip to the Great Wall. Of course, there's nothing funny about that at all, after all, it's what you do, isn't it - Great Wall, Forbidden City, other tourist sites - not funny, nope. Anyway, CWP uses a wheelchair and owing to the fact that he was on his own, he was allocated a Chinese guide by the tour operators that he booked with. He was really pleased about that and because the Chinese are helpful and polite he had a really good time - his guide wasn't a funny man, but that suited CWP just fine.

Now at the time, the Chinese authorities had installed a lift (elevator) to get people to the top of a section of the Great Wall (I think they may have actually removed it after the incident, to stop other insane wheelchair users up there) and CWP was really excited to go up and see the view. I guess it was after he got to the top that he realised that as a wheelchair user there were a few limitations with the top of the wall that he hadn't previously expected. First off, it wasn't flat and so a certain amount of pushing by both him (and his guide) was required - especially since although CWP is a big guy, due to his disability, he's not really that strong. Anyway, he struggled and pulled on his wheels and his little guide pushed and struggled and they got him to the highest point on that section of the wall. He stopped to draw breath and to take some photos and sent his guide back down to the bottom of the slope to wait for him. It was sometime around this point that things started to go wrong, when he encountered another of the limitations of the wall - you see, hundreds of years and thousands of feet have polished the stone surface to a slick sheen, if not a high gloss. Now all the wheelchair users out there are probably just a bit ahead of me here and are all anticipating what happened next, in exactly the way you do when you hear about Paddy and the bucket but for the rest of you I will explain…

CWP started down the slope - he gripped his wheel rims to help him brake - he continued to move - he gripped harder - he continued to move - he took a death grip on the wheels and looked down at the ground - his wheels were not going round at all, but the world was moving quicker and quicker as he started to slide down the highly polished slope - gathering pace all the while, he started to go into a panic and it was at this point that he looked up….

…only to see his little Chinese guide (did I say he was little?) in a crouch position with his arms outstretched directly in CWP's path.

"I catchee you…don' worry…I catchee you…!"

Did I mention quite how big CWP is? Well, he told me that in an instant it flashed through his head about how he would clearly flatten his poor guide if he carried on in his headlong slide and so he did the only thing he could think of and stuck his arm out sideways to grab something…anything…

…up to this point we were all roaring with laughter about the poor little guide insisting he could 'catchee' - right up until the second that CWP told us he managed to catch something with his hand and stopped very, very, very suddenly and dislocated his shoulder in the process. Ooops, that had to hurt…

Ever seen a large group of people (except one) go silent, in an almost guilty way, just after they hear the punch line of a joke they don't think they should laugh at? (Anything with Adam Hills springs to mind). Well, it was like that - the only person still laughing was CWP - having had his shoulder put back in, he is going on with his daily life and is now regaling people with this tale which looking back on it, he finds hilarious from start to finish…

He snorted and chortled, "… I know it doesn't sound funny, but "I catchee you…don' worry…I catchee you…!" - well, you can just imagine it…." he roared...

^*1 Canadian with pipe

Scientific stuff...

2010-03-18T11:32:00.002Z

Queens University researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.

4 years just slipped by...

2010-03-08T11:07:00.003Z

I just realised that I have missed a very important anniversary - that of my metalwork. Yes, that's right, my surgery was over 4 years ago and in fact, exactly 4 years ago today I was struggling to even breathe without huge doses of morphine and could hardly lift a thing. I distinctly remember that I couldn't figure out the controls on my Mp3 player, my brain was that addled by large doses of narcotics and the BMB was trying to encourage me to get enough brain cells all firing in the same direction to try and read a book. It all seems so long ago and so much like it's just a story that probably happened to someone else. Funnily enough, I actually do some public speaking these days and the more of it I do, the more like a 'story' it all seems.

There is no doubt that my scoliosis surgery changed a lot for me - some things have had their down sides, but other things are nothing more than amazingly good. You know, I recently found some photos taken over the 2 years before my surgery and it was noticeable how much my curve had progressed in that short a time. In fact, when I look back (with a seasoned eye) I realise how awful my life would have been if I didn't get the surgery done. I know that this isn't true for a lot of people with scoliosis - those with stable conditions, whose curves are not progressing, have no fears for their future and even those who do have progressive curves may not to need to worry too much. It all depends on the speed of progression, the location of your curves and whether you have any other complications with your spine. My major curve was in the lumbar area with a corresponding thoracic curve in the opposite direction - and both were rotating to the right. My lumbar curve was progressing at around 6 degrees a year and had reached 75 degrees and if that wasn't enough, my spinal cord was split lengthwise (still is) and was attached (tethered) at the top and bottom of my lumbar curve. It meant that my spinal cord was getting more and more stretched, the further my curve progressed - this wasn't really too good a good plan I don't think....

Anyway, all of that background (which I know all you long term readers of my blog already know) meant that the surgery was really a no-brainer, despite how much I tried to kid myself that I didn't really need it! These days, I guess I am as recovered as I ever will be and I have the chance to look back and see what it has meant to me and the impact that such surgery has had on my life .Now, those of you who know me, know that I am a pretty positive person, so you may be surprised that I am about to give you some of the negative things^*1, but hey, you can't list all the good things honestly, without some honesty on the bad stuff too. Bear with me on this though - there isn't much bad stuff at all, anyway - here goes:

Bad stuff Number 1 - I still have back pain. I wish I didn't, but I do. Some days its not too bad and some days its horrid, but then lots of people have back pain, so that keeps me within the bounds of normality, doesn't it?
Bad stuff Number 2 - My metalwork is weird in extreme temperature. I found out that it contracts in the cold at a different rate to your interior tissues and it is just not a nice feeling at all. Last summer, in 44 degrees, I also discovered that it expands at a different rate too and so that is especially odd. When it gets cold, it also takes an age to warm up - this winter has been way too long for me but I have become an expert in vests and thermal undergarments! I now have lots of new vests (sexy!) and even a battery powered heated waistcoat - I am now an expert in a subject I previously knew nothing about! LOL!
Bad stuff Number 3 - My left leg really doesn't work in the way I'd like it to, but I have learned some control of it. I no longer move my hip and thigh forward to walk but throw my left foot forward from my calf (which sound odd but believe me it works!) and in doing so I get by just fine. It's also enabled me to get an amazing collection of very funky walking sticks (mostly bought from SwitchSticks.com) which I wouldn't have previously done. It has also meant that I make much more use of my wheelchair which has given me so much independence its not true. I find it truly liberating to be able to go into town and spend all day shopping, never worrying about how far away from the shops I have to park. Compare that to the way I used to be - parking close to where I needed to go - going to just one or two places and then having to go home, too tired or in too much pain to continue...you see, even the bad stuff really has its compensations!

Of course, in the good tradition of this blog, I'm sure a list is coming on for the good stuff...forgive me if I don't bleat on for ever though - I don't want to type my fingers down to stumps! Anyway, here goes:

I am alive !
I am straight! (well I look it anyway even if I do still have 35/30 degree curves inside me still!)
I can go to the cinema without leaning over so far that the seat arm digs in my side.
I can walk (no sniggering now...)
None of my internal organs is squashed any longer
My muscle spasms are so reduced its not true
I can breathe with both lungs!
I can wear stripy jumpers without making onlookers tip their heads on one side.
If I am on a boat the ocean no longer looks like it will all run off the right hand edge of the world.
I have no fears for my future and what will happen to me

In fact, I feel that I have the kind of future that I never thought I would and that really is amazing but as in all the great Oscar traditions, I have to acknowledge that this really has very little to do with me. I have to thank my surgeon for doing a great job and have to thank hubby for being my greatest support. There are also so many other people who helped me through, from the scoliosis forums, to friends like PTV and the BMB. Sometimes I say I cannot imagine what my future would be like if I hadn't had this surgery, but in fact I can imagine that very well and I am exceedingly grateful for all those people who helped get me through it. 4 years is quite a long time, but even though it seems more like a story sometimes, I know it happened to me and I am so happy to have my metal rod, despite its little idiosyncrasies!

^*2

^*1 Although given my last rant, you may not...!
^*2 BTW, this has nothing to do with anything in this post...I just liked it!

Those "down with disability days"

2010-02-22T12:35:00.003Z

I recently had to go to the local hospital with the MIL who's been a bit poorly and I said I would meet her over there. Now, as it happens, the hospital really isn't too far from my house, but it's just too far for me to walk and is too hilly to use my chair, so I wanted to drive and park somewhere reasonably close. I allowed half an hour to get there (which is plenty when you can actually see the hospital building from my house if you squint through the trees) and was feeling pretty smug that I was organised and ready to go.

The smugness started to wax a little as soon as I approached the car park and realised that there was a queue to get in - I followed the signs directing me up a side road to the car park, only to discover that it took you round in a big loop and joined the back of the queue which only looked to be around 6 cars long from the entrance. Sneaky blighters - there were around 24 cars in front of me and nothing was moving so I decided to try elsewhere. I headed for the disabled spaces certain in my optimism that I would find something there. In fact there are a total of 8 disabled spaces in the hospital car park^*1 which seems ludicrous since many people attending hospital are likely to have a disability…aren't they? Anyway, my sunny nature started to fail when I saw they were all full and time really started to tick by quickly - my smug half an hour seemed to be fleeing like, well, like a flung thing…!

I headed for the overflow car park - this is a big car park, across the road and runs along what used to be a railway line - it's quite a way from the hospital, but it's flat and I had my chair so didn't have to worry about the distance being too far to walk. I got down there (and of course the traffic was awful everywhere, adding to my time pressures) and discovered that there was no space there either. Of course, sunny disposition or no, by this time I was really getting steamed up…I had been putting up with traffic, insane queuing systems, no spaces, few disabled spaces and just nowhere to park at all! In fact, that isn't strictly true, there was space to park, but it was up the hill - too far for me to walk and too far up a steep hill to use my chair without help. It was at this point I did what any sane person would do and phoned hubby. The conversation went something like this:

"Aaaaarggghhhh!!!! Blurgle, scream, car, aaargh, sniffle, parking, groffle, hill, waaahhhh!!...."

Hubby was at a loss for words in the face of someone plainly displaying all the signs of having a fit of the 'screaming ad-dabs^*2'. He did his best though and tried to remain calm despite not really needing an insane woman calling him up, just to that she could yell down the phone at someone, anyone…please…?

Anyway the upshot of it was that I drove back home and then ordered a taxi to get me to the hospital (how nuts is that?). I got there fine and in time since the MIL's appointment was delayed (aren't they always?) and was there to go in with her through her tests, which she was grateful for. I also discovered that the reason the car park was so full, was not that there had been a major incident in the previous hour, but in fact, parking in the hospital car park has recently become free to all. It's intended to be great if you're a patient, but apparently its also wonderful for all the shoppers and office workers who are now using it because it's close to town…and free...

I was talking to hubby later and apologised for getting in such a strop - which plainly he didn't deserve, but as I put it, it was just a 'down with disability day'. Most of the time I am happy and optimistic and I just get on with life. I don't really think too much about having a disability (even though I do blog about it from time to time) - my life is, well, my life and I live pretty much the way I want to live. Sometimes though, just sometimes, something happens to just remind you how horrid it can be. When you can't walk the distance and you can't use your chair, then you are prevented from doing something that most other people out there just do. Most people would have parked at the top of the hill and walked down - I just couldn't, and so I was reminded of my own restrictions. I didn't like that at all, and so, it became one of my down with disability days….

^*1 That is way less than Tesco!
^*2 My mother used to say this all the time….

Hmmmm....

2010-02-20T13:35:00.002Z

...I wonder if this...

...and this....

...are connected in any way?....

...especially since my cat is a fan of pastry...

Just a quickie...

2010-02-12T14:50:00.000Z

I am just about to go away for the weekend but I thought you might like to know that now I am 5 weeks and 3 days after my procedure.

My eyes are, well, like eyes….

Suddenly I find myself trying to take my glasses off at the end of the day (since I no longer feel like I am wearing contact lenses) and my vision is really, really good. I think my right eye is definitely catching up my left one now and my only real remaining problem is the dratted haloes at night, but even they are improving. I can even read easily and comfortably without ready readers too!

Now, I seem to remember some question about would I recommend it?

The answer's a no-brainer….yes, yes, yes! ^*1

^*1 OK I only have 2 eyes so I guess two yes's would have sufficed!

Things I can do

2010-02-04T14:05:00.003Z

I am (as you may remember) a great list maker and I was reminded of this yesterday when I was stood outside in the rain. Now I am sure that you have no idea why the rain made me think of lists, but be patient (grasshopper!) and you will soon see what I am getting at.

The thing was, that I was outside, in the rain, on an almost average evening. Well, actually it wasn't that average, hubby's car had a flat tyre (long story which I won't tell you because I'm nice) and my little car was off having it's Mot. Now, there was good and bad about my poor little car - when they called me they said the brakes were sh*gged (like I couldn't tell this from the distinct lack of stopping power) and it needed welding. Well, OK, to get to 26 (and a half) years old and needing welding for the first time was a shame, but not surprising for a car of its age (and I knew that spot on the sill would catch me up sooner or later!), but that was all that needed doing. All in - less than £200 can't be bad! Anyway, because hubby's car had a flat tyre, I needed to get a taxi to get to the garage to pick up my car and so I was stood in the rain waiting for the taxi (am I boring you with my rambling yet?). I suddenly became aware of just what the raindrops looked like, falling from the sky and being lit up by the nearby streetlamp. It was really strange and I realised it was because I was looking at a wet world unencumbered by steamed up and dripped on spectacles. It was a 'whoa, like wow, like amazing man' kind of moment….and I fell to wondering about all the other things that I am starting to notice as pretty cool, now my eyes are starting to really heal up well…hence the list…

So, here it is, things I have discovered so far that I can now do, that I didn't realise I would be able to do and that are 'pretty awesome man'

I can:

Read the clock in the morning
Tell the difference between shampoo, conditioner and toothpaste in the shower
Open the oven door without being blinded for several minutes
Stir stew and see if it is just about to boil over without being so steamed up that I have to discover that by the noise the liquid makes as it trickles over the side of the pan and hits the hob
Not bother looking for glasses just so I can get out of bed^*1
Lie on my side in bed and see what is happening - I could do this before but it hurt my nose where my specs dug in!
Find the ladies changing rooms at the swimming pool (darn no excuse for going in the gent's now - maybe this isn't such a great one)
Use the steam room - I could do this before also, but blindly groping in a steam room can lead to some nasty surprises!
Feel the rain on my face (do raindrops really look like that?)

Of course, all this is great, but even now, a month on I am still having a few issues with focus fluctuation and light starbursts and haloes. Now when they've gone, I definitely will do another list!

^*1 Actually, I am still trying to do this out of habit. I look at the bedside cabinet, see that my glasses aren't there, wonder where they are and then realise that I can see that they aren't there…very odd...

Things are looking up…

2010-01-29T15:47:00.002Z

So, Saturday we went into town to do a bit of shopping and I suddenly noticed that the day was really clear. Now it's true, that it was a clear day, you know, one of those cold, crisp, clear days where everything seems to sparkle just a little bit and it was one of those days…but it seemed even clearer than that.

I suddenly realised that for the first time since the laser surgery, my eyes weren't sore and my focus was clear and even. I suddenly realised that looking at the world through grubby glasses, slightly out of focus contact lenses or (heaven forbid) the blurry world that I use to inhabit without specs is a whole different thing to what the world looks like when all you have is naked eyes to see. Everything looked so clean all of a sudden. Well, maybe that isn't strictly true, after all, it's our local town centre and I bet you know what yours is like(!) but it all looked like it does when you go to the optician, he looks at your glasses, tut tuts a bit, and proceeds to get out a bottle of cleaning stuff and a cloth. He works a few seconds of magic and when you put your glasses on the world is the clearest its been for months - only to disintegrate back into a grimy film almost immediately you leave the office! Well, my eyes are like that now (not the grimy bit, the clean bit), only its all the time. It has been the biggest revelation of all to me….

As to the rest of it, since that Saturday, day by day my focus is clearer and clearer - for a while I could read easily, see very far away, but mid distance (sort of 18 meters, 20 yards distance) was blurry - and that was both odd and annoying. Since then, that has improved too and I am getting more amazed every day by what I can see.

I am still putting in drops (not often) during the day and ointment (Yeuch!) at night and have to do that until my one month appointment next week. I am finding still that they get sore in the evenings but even that is getting better. I am much happier than my last blog entry….now let me see, am I happy I did this? Well, the answer is yes I am, but I would offer the advice to anyone thinking of getting it done that this is surgery and you need to heal. Although they occasionally can, in most cases miracles don't happen overnight - be prepared for that and you'll do just fine…

6 Days later….

2010-01-19T14:32:00.003Z

This heading has been inspired by 2 things -

We have just watched 28 Days Later (and then 28 Weeks Later) on DVD as hubby had them for Christmas and
My eyes look like something out of the same films…

6 Days after my eye surgery, I woke up and looked at the clock - it looked odd but I couldn't figure out why. I could still read it, it just looked a bit strange. I covered my right eye and looked at it - perfectly clear and a pin sharp image - no problems there then. I covered my left eye and did the same - oops, that was it, there was the problem - the vision in my right eye was distinctly blurry and very dark it seemed to me. Left eye/right eye - I double checked them - same thing - for sure, through my right eye, the pale blue wall looked to be a much darker shade and I couldn't read the clock at all. In addition, my eye was sore and I felt like I had something stuck under my top lid.

Now at this stage I started to be a little concerned - I was, after all, only 6 days after eye surgery and things can go wrong. What made it worse, as those of you who know me particularly well may have already figured, is that this was my right eye we were talking about and I really tend to favour that one! I know both eyes are important, but I'm right eye dominant and so I was more than a little bothered by it all. I decided to sit down and give myself a good talking to….and wait until my 7 day appointment!

At 7 days my eyes were a bit better and I went in for my appointment where on the whole the surgeon was quite pleased with progress. It seems my eyes have developed dryness and I needed more drops (like already putting drops in 10 times a day^*1 is not enough) and this has meant that I am healing a bit slower. In addition I seem to have been left with a small amount of astigmatism that may need retreating if it doesn't settle down on its own as my eyes heal. Time and patience (like I have much of either of those) were the order of the day…and those eye drops of course!

At 10 days I went away for the weekend and the BMB offered to drive. Now, in reality, I am sure I could have done the driving but my eyes are just getting so tired over the course of a day that I appreciated and accepted the offer. I'm guessing at this point that apart from the people who have already had their eyes fixed, most people are a bit like my mother who just can't quite grasp what its like to go through this and even suggested that I keep my glasses…just in case…! It's just not like that - once they've 'removed tissue from your eye' - you can see without glasses…it's not like wearing contacts that you slip out at the end of the day. TBH, sitting here, typing this 2 weeks on, I wish it was, as I'd love some relief from that sore gritty eye feeling that I seem to have so much of the time.

So far, I have been asked several times if I would recommend the surgery and my answer has been the same in all cases - ask me in a month! I know all the adverts tell you how cheap it is and give testimonials of how wonderful and amazing it is to be able to see and how it is all pain free and sorted within 24 hours, but that's not been my personal experience and when I questioned the surgeon about this he said that recovery largely depends on your prescription. All those people who have a wonderful experience have a mild prescription - as he put it "The more tissue we have to remove from the eye, the longer it takes to heal". So with me, being very short sighted and having a bad astigmatism, they knew it would always take longer. Add to that the unexpected dryness in my eyes and we have a situation which is really taxing my patience.

Right at the moment I feel that I have vision that is as good or slightly better than with my contacts in but not quite as good as my glasses. My eyes are tired, get sore easily and look bloodshot. My focus seems to mildly fluctuate through the day and is poor in low light and I am getting glare and haloes around lights, my phone and my computer screen - I have also spent a lot of money. All in all, in answer to the question "would you recommend it?" I know you'd think the answer would be no, but I repeat my earlier statement and suggest that you ask me in a month. You see, my eyes really do seem to be a little better day by day. I can see to do some things with amazing clarity when my focus is right and reading is comfortable and easy without reading glasses (which I was told I would need). For every day 'looking' my eyes are working fine without specs (even though I really want to be able to do more than just 'look') and I am sure they will be even better once all the tiredness and soreness goes. I'll let you know my progress in another two weeks….

^*1 Seriously..I am not exaggerating here!

The eyes have it...

2010-01-12T18:41:00.002Z

My only entry since the new year was actually written before Christmas as I have been 'out of commission' having surgery on my eyes. That's right, my days of peering myopically at everything have been brought to an end by a nice man and laser machine (or to be precise, two laser machines)!

Now, I am one of those (oops, sorry, was) one of those short sighted people who can never remember being able to see anything clearly unless it was less than 4" from my nose. In fact, when I first started school, I used to wonder what the man at the front was doing waving his arm around - I actually couldn't see the chalk on the board from the back of the class ^*1 and didn't realise that he was writing on a blackboard (how old-fashioned!)! I have never in my life been able to read a clock from in bed in the morning without shoving specs on first and I can't drive a car without them. Hell, I probably couldn't even find the car without them so driving was never on the agenda without help!

Over the years I have tried everything - hard lenses , soft lenses (the early ones were like inserting a small jellyfish into your eye), extended wear hard gas permeable (look 'em up - a truly hideous invention), monthly lenses, fortnightly lenses and what I ended up with, daily disposables for when I really didn't want to wear glasses. I still liked the lenses and live and die in them on holiday (I am a sunglasses tart and prescription Oakleys are out of my league so it's lenses and the regular Oakleys for me) but on the whole, for me, they are too much of a faff and too expensive to wear every day and so I simply wear specs the rest of the time.

For a variety of reasons, I decided to look into getting my eyes lasered - OK, I'll be truthful, there was a suggestion that I might get them done for nothing a while back under a scheme that nothing ever came of and it just sowed a seed for me. In the way that I do I started looking at the process and getting information and thought a consultation where I could ask loads of questions was the next step. The consultation went well - all my questions were answered, the price (although still requiring a sharp intake of breath and saying very quickly) was not as much as I feared and the success rate was quoted at 99.6%. So that was it, after a couple of weeks thinking and the offer of some interest free credit I signed on the dotted line.

Now I am not going to go into any gory details here (even though I know there are some of you who love a bit of gore), because I know some other people are a bit squeamish about eye things. All I will say is, to all of you who fit into this latter category, you are expressly forbidden to read any more footnotes on this entry…or if you do - don't say I didn't warn you…

That was how I found myself lying on a table and having my eyeball suctioned into place to hold it still while they create a corneal flap^*2. It didn't hurt at all - anaesthetic is a wonderful thing and its all over in less than 20 seconds. They them moved me onto another machine which did the actual business of reshaping to correct my vision^*3 and then the surgeon gently wiped over my eye^*4 and it was all over. It took less than 10 minutes in total for both eyes and that was it. I was told that my vision would look pretty steamy until the following morning and that I was to go home and rest for a couple of hours while the anaesthetic wore off.

Now, if you want my advice at this stage what they should have said was this:
"Go home, take paracetamol, take Night Nurse, take Nytol, have a slug of whisky to wash it down and then maybe add some Natrasleep into the mix. If you have any harder drugs, heck take them too…for the next two hours you'll be in agony unless you sleep though it…go with the best cocktail you can!"
But they didn't.
What they said was:
"Go home and rest, take paracetamol and try to sleep. You may have a little discomfort"

Hmmm, I wonder if I can get them on trades descriptions?

Anyway, to be fair to them, 2 hours later and the pain had eased and my eyes had stopped streaming like Niagara Falls. I went to bed and slept and when I woke up the next morning my eyes only felt like I had been to a really wild party and had left my contact lenses in all night. I went for my first post op check and discovered that apart from looking like I was peering at the world though a steamy window, my vision was now 20/20 - in fact, better than that - I could even read the bottom line on the eye chart! 24 hours later, the steam started to clear and I felt like my lenses had been in for 14 hours and my eyes needed a rest; another 24 hours and I felt like I'd had my lenses in for about 8 hours, but in a hot dry climate and this was all having a rather Benjamin Button kind of ring to it… the longer it went on, the more my eyes felt like they still had lenses in, but for a shorter period of time. At this stage now though - I still can't get my head around the fact that this is a permanent change - I think because I still feel like there is something in my eyes - I assume it is lenses. Even now, I can't believe that this is it…once everything has all healed up, that will be it, no more glasses or 'artificially' corrected vision…I will just be able to see….

^*1 I was always at the back of the class - much easier to misbehave when you are hiding behind everyone else….
^*2 Which is a very polite way of saying they cut your the cornea around the top of eyeball almost in half with a laser and fold it back to get it out the way so they can get on with the next bit!
^*3 OK, so they burn off the surface of your eye with another laser - and yes, it does smell of burning!
^*4 Well, they have to replace your cornea at some stage!

You did what with your crutches?

2010-01-08T19:17:00.003Z

Quite recently I mentioned DP and I guess he was having a really on-form weekend when I saw him. Not only did he attempt to go sideways down the steps in his wheelchair, but he managed to tell us a really funny story later of how he managed to shoot himself when he was a kid. Now shooting yourself really isn't that easy, especially with a bow and arrow (as that was what he used) but when he told us that he had not only shot himself, but that he had shot himself in the back, there really was an amazing amount of frivolity around the table. It seems that at the tender age of about ten, he made himself a bow and arrow. Now I remember making bows and arrows out of bits of twig and string, but I never made anything that would shoot an arrow (another twig) more than about 5 inches before the whole thing broke! Anyway, it seems that DP was quite the little engineer and he made something that actually worked. Of course, in his ten year old brain, he decided he needed to test it and to do so decided to shoot an arrow in the air to see how high it would go. In fairness, he decided not to shoot it straight up and stand there as that would just be silly, so he shot it up at a slight angle and started to run...He had a couple of choices of which way to run, but he just picked the wrong way and discovered that what goes up must come down! So, the arrow went up and then it came down and so there he was with an arrow stuck in his back. That's not too easy to explain to the parents....

You can imagine the atmosphere around the table by this stage after he's now recounted his recent adventure with the steps and then of how he shot himself. His eyes are twinkling (told you he looks like Santa), his cheeks are ruddy and he is chortling at everything and everyone else is in a similar mood. It was sometime around this that people started talking about how they had slept the night before and I mentioned that I had had a nightmare. Now that wasn't in any way funny, but it led on to sleep disorders and the like. Somehow another conversation started at the same time (in the way that conversations do around a table) and someone else asked DP if he could get around with out his chair. He mentioned something about sleepwalking and also that he could get by with crutches in an emergency and I completely misunderstood what was going on and thought he meant that when he was sleepwalking he used crutches. In fact, there I was eating my dinner, with a mouthful of carrots and I damn near sprayed them way up to the far end of the table. You know what its like - someone whacks your funny bone dead centre and its hard to keep your mouth shut when all you want to do is scream out loud with laughter! Eventually I managed to calm down enough to swallow(!) and then, due to the fact that I was red in the face and had tears streaming down my face, I got asked what was wrong...

"....sleepwalking with crutches...!." , I gasped and fell about laughing again...and then so did everyone else....

...it was one of those times when for ages afterwards any time we looked at each other, we started to giggle uncontrollably...as I said, DP was truly on form...!

Microsoft takes over the world! (Again…)

2009-12-31T12:44:00.001Z

I just installed Windows 7 on hubby’s laptop and overlooked the fact that (unlike me) he was using Windows mail with Vista. Now for those of you in the know, Windows 7 does not have an e-mail package built in and so at first glance the upgrade appears to have eaten all your addresses and all your email too. If I wasn’t such a level headed person I would have gone into a blind panic, but I decided not to do this because:

a) I am a level headed person who rarely panics and

b) its not my laptop or email…

Anyway, initially, since I was in the middle of Dirt2 on the Xbox and did not wish to be disturbed under any circumstances…I ignored hubby’s whimpers for a whole afternoon. This morning though I decided (before the Xbox is turned on again!) that I ought to help.

Repeated Google searches have led to much on-line whimpering by many others in a similar situation and we just stumbled across Windows Live Mail and are settling down to download and install it (yawn…why do these things take so long?). I noticed a little package called Live Writer for blogging and so, to pass the time thought I might download that too and install it on my desktop. To be fair I am also downloading Lesbian Vampire Killers, which was free from iTunes today, so that might account for the laptop’s reluctance to go at more than a slow grind but there you are…patience was never my strong point!

Anyway, in my very roundabout way, that’s why my last post said testing testing…I’m testing Live Writer….

…I’ll keep you updated on the mail situation too but in the meantime, please all think of hubby and say all together…”Ah, bless..!”

Testing testing

2009-12-31T12:27:00.001Z

Just that….

Christmas …without the grumbles?

2009-12-24T16:11:00.003Z

Last night I turned on the TV and there was some programme on about people being decidedly grumpy at Christmas. There were many famous (and quite a few not so famous) folks, who were grumbling about how it all starts too early, how its too commercial and how they really can't be ar*ed to take part …but will…albeit rather grudgingly. It reminded me of a recent visit to my in-laws where my FIL was moaning about Christmas - how 'it's only for kids' (who are all spoiled nowadays) and how when he was a boy they had nothing and used to make their own decorations^*1. In response, hubby pointed out that you can still make your own paper chains if that's what you want to do and that I actually make my own cards^*2 every year,and I tried to explain how Christmas makes me feel.

I think in that little snip, hubby managed to alight on what makes Christmas so special for me. I'm not hugely religious ( I'm not a regular church goer) and so my main focus is not on the birth of Christ (in common with much of the population I guess) but for me its on my family and the people I care about. To me Christmas is a special time which gives us all one day of the year that is set aside for spending time together. It is the ideal excuse, this one day of the year, to give presents to people to tell them how much they mean to you. Every other day of the year seems to slip by in a blur of 'other stuff' - this is one day in which families have their own traditions like leaving stockings from Santa for grown up kids, the carrot by the hearth for the reindeer, presents before lunch (or after), silly hats over lunch (or tea) and playing board games that you wouldn't at any other time. These traditions are all individual to the families and as the generations go by they are adopted and altered by children and grandchildren and added to by the addition of new partners with their own traditions. Our family is no different from anyone else's but the one common theme to most people is that they all get together and just for once they think about each other rather than themselves. What we do, when we choose to start to decorate our house (early or late), how commercial we let it be to us (make your own paper chains or buy a new tinsel tree every year) or how spoiled the children are (spend a fortune or not a lot) - all these choices are ours to make. No one makes us spend too much or reserves our traditions simply for children - these are our choices and my choice is to spend time with my family and try just for once a year to let them know just how much they mean to me….

…well, after trying to explain this, I still don't know if the FIL understood what I was trying to get at but I hope you do!

Happy Christmas to you all!

^*1 I'm not certain if this is before or after they "licked road clean wit' tongue"
^*2I do this for 2 reasons, one, because I like to do so and two, because if I want to I can make something special for someone special.

Not the MOB!

2009-12-16T14:33:00.001Z

So, I was away last week and we had a really funny time and it was mostly due to this guy that I know. I wanted to call him MOB (mad old bugger) in my blog, but he put his foot down (with his hand since his legs don't work!) and insisted that I call him daft pensioner - so DP it is….

Now its kind of odd that DP is part of our group at all, as being of pensionable age, he's quite a bit older than the rest of us. It's not even that he looks like a spry young thing, as he's a wheelchair user and if he only grew his beard a bit more he'd look just like Santa - in a tracksuit!

Anyway, there we were, having come out of dinner and faced with the usual trial of going down 3 steps to get to the door. It's true (to be fair) that there is a lift to get wheelchair users down the stairs, but it is the most grindingly slow piece of apparatus in the world. I wonder sometimes about that, I mean with slow wheelchair lifts and stair lifts - do they think the eyes of the disabled and the old will pop out if they move too fast? Don't laugh….it's a valid question you know! Anyway, more often than not people drop out their chairs, bum down the steps and drag their chairs after them since it is about 20 times faster than using the lift and we are all a supremely impatient bunch. More to the point, if we had to wait for everyone to use the lift we'd either:

never get anything done

we'd all get really fat because we just wouldn't bother leaving the dining hall

we'd die of boredom

So there we were, coming out of the dining hall. I'd gone down first and was outside when SIAM comes past me looking extremely smug having gone down the steps backwards in his chair - speedy and required no grubby backside to his trousers! Now, DP took one look at this and decided it looked like a pretty neat thing to do and decided to follow suit. He turned around so his back was to the steps, edged his back wheels to the edge, grabbed the handrail on his right hand side and started to lower himself down. It was at this point that he forgot to move his hand down the handrail and his right side stayed at the top of the slope while his left side attempted to descend. Several things happened then in quick succession, but you so knew what was bound to happen next that it all seemed to take place in slow motion…

…first, his left wheel dropped down one step so he ended up diagonally across the slope, facing away from the handrail. He still maintained a death grip on the handrail but couldn't twist his body to keep it up so he raised his arms above his head - still hanging on. This had the effect of lifting his front casters up in the air and rolling him backwards.

So, there he was, feet in the air, hanging on to the handrail (which by this time was in front of his face) with one big wheel on one step and one on the step below and guffawing (there really is no other word for it) with laughter. I guess to start with we were all useless too, as we were all so convulsed with laughter ourselves we had no chance to help him - the only person who wasn't was some new guy (waiting for the lift) who I think was so horrified at our callous natures that we will never see him again!

To be fair…within a few seconds, we had all pitched in and everybody grabbing a bit managed to get him both upright and down the bottom. Now, I bet you're all asking if he's likely to try this again…well, I suspect not, but I wouldn't put anything past him!

Sometimes you can only wish...

2009-12-08T15:12:00.000Z

I do like to take a trip on the train - I've always loved it, even when I was a child. I don't attribute this at all to the fact that my grandfather was a train driver, as he was retired for as long as I could remember, so I think it's just one of those things about trains. I mean, who doesn't love a train trip, all that clackety clack as the scenery rushes by outside; all that peering into people's back gardens as you slow down at the next station and the general excitement that you are doing something special and out of the ordinary. Of course, I am sure that the country is full of commuters and glass half empty people who wouldn't agree with me in the slightest, but for me, it fills me full of the excitement that I used to get, when as a child I read about the Famous Five heading away on their holidays...

Of course, these days, the other thing I like about the train is that since they are so hideously expensive, if you travel at a quiet time of day, they can be like an oasis of calm in the hustle and bustle of the world and when I knew I was going up to London, I was rather looking forward to the opportunity of just watching the world go by for a bit. I even packed a book and planned just to kick back and enjoy it. Of course, this didn't all quite go to plan - as to start with it was dark which I hadn't really counted on at 4pm (yes I know its winter and I shouldn't have been so stupid but I was...). Also, me being me, I didn't chill at all, because I decided to sort out my hotel details and then answer a text from a friend and then the train rushed so quickly towards it's destination that I was there before I knew it. It just turned out that I was busy all the way because the way didn't actually take that long!

Right at the moment I seem to feel busy all the time and I know that these feelings are always influenced by those 'late starts' that I seem to get. In reality life is quite normal for me, good days, bad days, quiet days and not so quiet days but I think right now that what makes all the difference is that there are a few things in my life I am worrying about at the moment and that these are things that are way out of my control. Now anyone who knows me will know that I don't really like anything being out of my control - not that I am a control freak or anything (!) but I do find it unsettling when I want to help and can't.

Talking to friends, we all seem to say the same thing at the moment, that there are people we care about going through stressful situations and because we care for them we care what happens to them. I find this hard (not the caring bit, but the being unable to help bit), because I am one of those people who in my own life, feels a need to meet problems head on, finding out all the facts and taking control of the situation as far as I can. Its how I handled my scoliosis surgery - I joined forums, read everything I could on the subject, asked every question I could of my surgeon and comprehensively planned for my recovery. In short, I did everything I felt I could to get a successful outcome from what I knew would be a pretty tough operation. I then find myself wanting to do something similar for all those people I care about. I find myself wanting to dive in and talk to their spouse, boss or doctor or any other person who I think might be able to help, even though I know in my heart of hearts that even if I could, it wouldn't help.

I guess in short, I feel rather like a fretful mother who wants to go down the school and make things right for their child when they find them going through a hard time with bullies or something similar. The big problem with this is that all too often, it doesn't help at all. I'm not saying that parents can't give children the support they need or that if their child comes home saying that they've been bullied that they should ignore them, but just that these situations need to be carefully handled. More to the point, this blog entry is not about bullies and how (or how not) to handle them but it's about how you can handle things badly by doing nothing more than being really well meaning and trying to be helpful. I guess we've all heard of kids who have ended up being picked on even more than before, because their mother went down the school trying to make things right. Sometimes, just like those times when you need to make your own mistakes^*1 you need to be left to try to stand up for yourself too.

So, in my extreme rambling way, what I am trying to say is that I know exactly what I have to do. I know that I have to let all these people make their own choices and where they need to , just stand up for themselves - all the same, it won't stop me worrying for them and wishing I could help...

^*1 This was the story of my teenage years when in answer to my question of "why?" (to anything my mother said) - she would respond "because I say so!". This didn't really work as a response to a typically moody teenager and would often result in one of those 'conversations' that teenage daughters and mothers have....one of those 'conversations' which almost always ended up in my mother getting exasperated with my lack of following orders - and ultimately resulted in her telling me that I would have to 'make my own mistakes...!'

Yes, it's all fine..

2009-12-02T13:59:00.003Z

I know, I know..smack my wrist - I am a bad blog mama...

I will get back to writing soon, I've just been getting on with stuff, life and more things (mostly outside my control) and so the blog has taken a back seat. Heck, some of my friends have had to take a back seat too and I don't like to do that as my many of my friends are like family...

Anyhoo, I am looking forward to settling down to do some more writing - I find it interesting to find all those smilies and previously undiscovered websites that help me make a point. More to the point, sometimes I just like to write and always have. My diary entries as a teenager were sporadic, but really wordy once I got going, which, I guess is rather like how I am in myself. I love my own company and own space away from everyone but then whenever I catch up with people I turn into Mrs Motormouth (making up for the time I'm alone hubby reckons!). So, I write in just the same way I guess...

...more soon - don't worry, I haven't forgotten you all..

Of Cockroaches great and small

2009-11-13T15:54:00.001Z

Over the years I have come across a few cockroaches (and some of them with only two legs!) but recently I was talking to my friend SIAM ^*1 and he told me a fairly yucky story that happened to him recently on holiday. It's funny really, isn't it - these things always happen on holiday, don't they?

Hubby and I once went on holiday to Malta at the beginning of the season on a very (and I mean very) cheap holiday. This holiday included car hire and cost only £125 each for the week - they didn't include food on the plane and our self catering accommodation was basic to say the least. I'd like to say that this price was 20 years ago and the cost of living has changed massively, but in reality it was within the last 10 years and it was just really, really cheap. Anyway, we didn't have much cash at the time and enjoyed ourselves... on the whole. The second night we were there, despite being early in the year, it was quite warm and hubby turned on the ceiling fan. If he did, something rather like a small rock flew off the fan, whacked him on the head, suddenly developed legs and started legging it off across the floor! Well, what do you do in such circumstances, when the fear of stepping out of bed onto a not so small bug in the middle of the night would be enough to glue you to the bedclothes? What we did, in a slightly drunken state (holidays are like that too) was to grab a drinking glass and up-end it over the poor creature and go back to bed. In the morning, we reported it to reception (who seemed suitably unconcerned) and trusted the cleaner to get rid of it. The cleaner also seemed 'suitably unconcerned' and left it there for the entire week. We never let it out (by now fearing some kind of cockroach revenge in the middle of the night) and there it stayed, running around in a small circle, not seeming to either eat or drink, but surviving nonetheless. To this day I feel moderately guilty about the whole episode, but cockroaches can be pretty scary and creepy so I don't know if I should.

I guess that poor lone bug wasn't too bad, but I once stayed away in a place where some of my friends were bothered by many, many 'skittering' sounds in the middle of the night. For me, I tend to sleep quite heavily, but I later found out that this wasn't the reason I wasn't bothered at all - in fact, it had nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the fact that I usually leave the bathroom light on when I am away from home. Now, I'm sure there are those of you out there thinking "Ah bless!" that I should need a night light when away from home but it actually has rather more practical applications for someone with really bad balance. My balance is so poor and the feeling in my feet so bad, that I rely on either touching something to get a reference point or I need some kind of horizon to look at. If I stand up in the middle of a room and shut my eyes, I just fall over backwards - no fun for me but very amusing for any onlooker! In fact (at the risk of digressing some more), just 2 nights ago in a vain attempt to get across the bedroom in the middle of the night and missing my normal grip on the laundry basket, I careered across the room, frightening both cats and landing on the floor with a thump that not only woke hubby but probably half the neighbours as well! Anyway back to my extraordinarily quiet room compared to the BMB's, who was complaining how he was being kept awake by insects with hobnailed boots. He later told me that on his last night there, he got up early for the trip home and stumbled into the bathroom in the dark, flipped on the light and was staggered by the sudden rush for cover by what looked like hundreds of cockroaches on the floor, walls and ceiling. It was at that point that he realised that it wasn't just a few heavy footed bugs, but that the place was literally crawling with them.

All this is a long way from poor SIAM which is where I started! Anyway, he went on holiday recently and woke up to find that his bottom lip appeared to be paralysed by a heavy weight. After an initial panic that he had Bells Palsy, the weight started to shift slightly and he realised to his horror that he had a cockroach on his lip "having a drink from that little bit of night drool..." is how he put it. Eeew!!

^*1Same initials as me

What defines me??

2009-11-06T15:58:00.003Z

I have realised that disability seems to crop up in quite a few of my blog entries and I know from a poll I did a while ago it seems that many of my readers are disabled. It was after the poll that I fell to wondering if that was what defined me as a person. I think in truth, that it isn’t, but whether I like to admit it or not, I do have a disability, and always have.

As a child, I believed that I could do anything that anyone else did and I also thought I could do it better than them but I still had spina bifida. For all my grand dreams and ambitions, for all the times that I thought that next year I would have learned to run and be able to beat everyone at school sports day, for all of those thoughts, dreams and ideas, there were also the more sobering moments. There were always the times that I realised that there was stuff I just couldn’t do, I couldn’t join ballet classes when every other girl in school did and school rounders and athletics were a no-no. Now, it may be that all you people out there reading this say well, I was useless at ballet or couldn’t hit a ball for toffee, but I think what I am getting at is that at least most people have the opportunity to try.

Now, don’t get me wrong in all this, I’ve done well and never fancied rounders anyway and I know that because I learned to walk, I managed to do all kinds of things that some other people never get chance to do but there were always limitations. In fact, just that expression, “learned to walk” speaks volumes. Why shouldn’t I learn to walk? Most parents don’t proudly state – “Oh, little Johnny is so clever, he learned to walk!” – learned to play the violin, yes, but walk? No, they just don’t expect to have to say it, do they?

So there you go, like it or not, I have a disability. It has stopped me from doing a few things but has prevented me from doing very little that I set my mind to. I believe that what therefore defines me as a person are the things I like to do, the people I like to spend time with and the way that I like to live my life – I just do all these things alongside the way I was born...

Garden of Eagan: Visual perception skills

2009-11-04T11:52:00.001Z

Garden of Eagan: Visual perception skills

You just have to do this....it's really good.

Once you have done so (and not before please!) - go and read this:

About the video

I will comment later....

I will, I will, I promise....

2009-11-03T17:13:00.003Z

...get back to blogging that is...

I have had a hectic couple of weeks (or at least that is how it has seemed to me) and so I just have neglected my duties as 'Mistress of the Blog'. In fact, I don't really know just how hectic they really have actually been in the normal sense of the word; it's just that some of my days have been shortened by a couple of late starts...I wish I could tell you that they are down to simple laziness, but sometimes stiff mornings follow on from rough days and even rougher nights. Hubby is as usual supportive and put up with me having to call all plans off last Saturday when I didn't get up until nearly lunchtime. Good grief! (As Charlie Brown used to say!)

Anyway, life seems to be settling a little and I have been spending lots of time wondering about stuff so I will get back to writing more soon....

New poll day....again (and about time too...)

2009-10-16T14:47:00.001+01:00

Here's a new poll...select as many answers as you want......!

What a handy device…

2009-10-15T16:50:00.003+01:00

Some time ago I was given a very useful present…I’m sure you’ve seen them…they are those little mats that you place on your car dashboard to stop things from sliding around.

Now, my car has a kind of flat tray on the front because it’s old. Old cars didn’t have that huge sloping thing in front of you…which is another things (excuse me if I go off course a bit here) – what is all that about? Why is it that car manufacturers suddenly think all drivers have arms the length of an average orang utan – if you put anything at all (and I mean anything from your sat nav, to a parking ticket, to a small child) it either slides off the huge slopey bit at the front, or the first time you go round a corner (maybe you wouldn’t do this with a small child) it rushes off towards the windscreen, there to languish forever because you can’t reach it. I have even considered that I might have to ask complete strangers with long arms to get into the car to retrieve things. Hey, it’s almost as bad as the day that I had to ask the postman to get into the car to get the handbrake off for me! Actually, at the risk of digressing still further, that was quite funny because we live on a hill – it was something like this:

Me: “Please Mr Postman will you climb in the car and take the handbrake off? My tough husband has pulled it up too high for me.”
Postman: “Certainly madam!”

……climbs in releases lever…
…car starts to roll down hill…

Me: “Ah, I think I see the flaw in this plan…!”

Anyhow, to get back to where I was in the first place, I don’t have to worry about any of the above in my own car as it is very old as I was saying…and I was given this ‘sticky mat’. It’s been great and so I’ve used it for quite a while but the other day I discovered what happens to them when they get old – they get even stickier…

I put my phone down and when I picked it up, it trailed a lean line of goo down to the dashboard .....and the mat. I decided to immediately try to throw the thing out only to discover that it had suddenly developed the texture of something akin to golden syrup and refused to be picked up. The closest texture I can think of to describe it was like the day that the BMB ‘stole’ my pack of jelly babies that had been out in the sun all day uneaten. Of course when he put his greedy little fingers in the bag he discovered why I hadn’t tried to eat them myself as they were just liquid jelly^*1 by that stage and were quite inedible – babies no longer, more a large warm gelatinous mass…anyway, my mat was like that.

Eventually I did get the car all cleaned up but I just wanted to tell you the cautionary tale of what will happen to you if you have one of these in the sun for too long…..!

^*1jello

The skylark

2009-10-12T15:58:00.001+01:00

I was in the countryside recently and saw and heard a skylark for the first time in my life. I was amazed by how high they fly and how loud they are. They start singing when they leave the ground and don’t stop until they land again and they are up there, just flying for ages and ages…

I had to mention it, it was just that wonderful!

Carnage....

2009-09-21T15:11:00.005+01:00

I just went away for the weekend and I came home to a disembowelled mouse in the hall...

What makes its a little worse is that my cats are house cats and so must have found the mouse in the house!

It was awful....a dreadful sight.....

...there was kapok and hessian everywhere....!

A long story about a roofer

2009-09-08T10:39:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time there was a roofer – and without naming and shaming him, let’s call him Russ!

You may remember the saga of the buckets and the collapsing ceiling a little while ago and as a result of this we decided to call next door and ask for their roofer’s number since they’d had work done and seemed happy with it.

The roofer (lets’ call him Russ, shall we?) turned up, sucked air in over his teeth (compulsory for all builders) ^*1 and told me he’d call with a price which he duly did. In fact, the price was reasonable, so there and then, I asked when he could start work and he told me he could begin work when he got back from holiday in 2 weeks time. In the end, we agreed that he would start on the Monday, 3 weeks from our conversation to give him time to get over his holiday. He told me the work would take 3 days, which suited me nicely as I was flying to the Czech Republic on the Thursday.

The Monday duly rolls round and at 11 am when there was no sign of him I called him:– “Oh no,” he assured me “I was only going to phone you today to make arrangements. I wasn’t going to start work!” I muttered a bit and complained about how my buckets were having to multiply to keep up with the drips and so the scaffolders turned up 2 days later.

I flew away.

Saturday I get an e-mail from hubby who tells me the carpenter has been and put the timbers up – we just need the tiling done. The roofer turns up on Sunday and goes away again because he doesn’t have a ladder….?!?!! (I have no words to describe how I felt about this).

I fly home 10 days later on the Sunday – exhausted. The tiles are still missing.

Monday the roofer came to call (not the gasman) – "the timbers are wrong and the whole lot needs to come off and the chippie needs to start again". He starts to tell me how it won’t add much to the price .....and it is at this point he discovers that waiting for the wife to get back was the wrong ploy – I was in the mood to play hardball!!

Funny thing was, that had he spoke to hubby, then hubby (being too nice in such matters) might have agreed to almost anything. As it was, I think he waited for the wife to come home because he thought she’s be a soft touch …wrong! .

Now, we are just a couple of days later – the carpenter has been and put the timbers right and the roofer is currently up there hammering and cutting and doing roofer type stuff. It’s going to cost us the same amount as we agreed and no – I haven’t even made him a cup of tea….

I think I like this dealing with tradesmen lark!

^*1In fact, I think they get special training in it in builders school.

Reaching the plimsoll line

2009-09-01T13:18:00.002+01:00

I was at a party recently – yes, it’s true – you see, I still have some friends…
Seriously, it was a wedding party for P& H who I hope will be very happy together. Anyway, it was a really nice evening spent with friends and I was lucky enough to catch up with a few people who I haven’t seen for ages. Almost every one of them commented on how well I looked!

You see, the thing is, I haven’t seen most of them since very early in the year – before I went into hospital to get the surgery to help deal with my achalasia symptoms (note how I don’t say it was a cure!). At that time, I was very thin (for me) and had been poorly nutritionally supported for almost a year. For 12 months, I had been eating a progressively more and more liquid diet and the last time I had seen some of these people I was living on pots of custard, soup and mashed potato (um, but not all mixed together!). I didn’t feel particularly well and plainly (judging by all the comments on Saturday) I didn’t look that well either. Heck, even my surgeon said I looked “gaunt” when I went in for my op, so I guess that’s not good!

The surgery has been a life saver (in fact, when your body is starving you to death, it quite literally was a life saver!) but as I was told beforehand, it’s not a cure. It’s true, that my stomach valve is no longer welded shut, but I still have no peristalsis and that has its own complications – as does, in fact, now having my stomach valve welded open instead. Regarding my swallow, no peristalsis means that some foods are just hopeless – apples are a non starter (or more a starter and then stick-fast) and lettuce leaves are like little parachutes that just go nowhere once they are past your throat. I am aware of hot drinks in a strange way in that they simply slide down. I don’t go swallow – thump into my stomach any longer – coffee takes a smooth passage and a mouthful takes until a count of nine before it hits bottom!

The other thing that is odd is that my stomach doesn’t stretch when it fills up – with no valve to hold it shut it simply overflows up into my oesophagus and I become very aware of the food level as it approaches my mid chest. At that point, I simply cannot eat any more as I just don’t have space. Hubby has dubbed this imaginary line that it reaches as the plimsoll line as it simply isn’t safe to overload me past this!

The upshot of all of this is that I now eat slower and can’t eat as much so my weight is not piling back on. I have however put on enough weight to stop looking gaunt and start looking well if everyone is to be believed.

Apart from the fact that all this is simply curious, something else nice (apart from the compliments) came out of the party. I actually wore a dress that I haven't even tried on for a while and it made me see how I am now rather smaller as I looked like a small child in big sister's hand me downs! Now you may not think that this is nice at all, but it is! - You see, now I have to go out and buy new clothes...just in case I get invited to any more parties...!

Selling the car on Ebay

2009-08-26T15:49:00.001+01:00

We recently sold a car on Ebay – well, actually I sold the car on Ebay but it was hubby’s car, so I guess that makes it a joint effort. This car was nearly 10 years old and it was just a car you know ^*1. It had tax and Mot and no more dents and scratches than the odd supermarket trolley could inflict. It had an average mileage, was an average colour and was fine…nothing to complain about.

I had a slew of e-mails with questions about it…some quite bizarre – does it have (insert famous brand name here) floor mats(!), are the details in the listing correct (well, duh, no, I made it all up!) – all kinds of things and then the phone calls came. People actually requested contact details from Ebay so they could call me. I thought that was a bit off, if I’d wanted them to phone, I’d have put a number!

Anyway, I had two people really interested – one who promised to pay a deposit into my Paypal account within the hour if I only removed the listing and someone else who lived 20 miles away who wanted to come and see it. I waited for my deposit to arrive before removing the listing – it didn’t come – so what was that about? They guy who lived 20 miles away phoned me 6 times telling me when he couldn’t make it before finally telling me that he couldn’t come to see it until after the listing had ended.

I rent my clothes a little and tore some hair out….

Anyway, 7 days went by, the auction ended and I had two bids out of the blue – both for an amount I was happy with. The winning bidder called:

“Can you pick me up from the train station on Monday – I’ll bring cash”.

So, I did and he did and that was that.

I guess the moral of this tale is, if you auction your car, unless the guy is there, with you, waving cash under your nose, then you’d best just sit the auction out as it’ll all come good in the end!

^*1It’s a Gag Hulfrunt quote …ish!

Quick news

2009-08-13T12:27:00.002+01:00

So, I sit here at my desk peering at my clock every 20 seconds. I am off again soon and am at that stage of packed and unpacked 3 times..once to check if it would fit in a smaller bag and twice to check everything was in there. All that and I am still not sure...

How does that happen, that's what I want to know. I don't have OCD, I am organised, thoughtful and a great list maker. In fact, I made a list and ticked everything off..twice! I know that this is not uncommon and we all fear that we have left the gas on or not locked the door, but I wish it wasn't true for me for these big trips. (Actually we once went out all day and when we got home discovered hubby had left the front door wide open so it can happen...make sure you check!!!)

On the plus side, I am excited and ready to go. I can't remember being this ready to get on with it - ever! Things haven't always gone to plan this year for me and so you might think that there would be a bit less anticipation and a bit more fear but in fact, all I'm really afraid of is that I haven't packed my knickers.............or have I?

The talents of the talentless

2009-08-06T20:58:00.002+01:00

I was reading this blog article (written by a good friend of mine) recently and I was fascinated by his thoughts. In turn, it got me wondering on exactly the same subject…

I guess, because we are both involved with high level sport, we see a lot of people with talent getting to wherever they want to go to with apparent ease. Sometimes you also cast your mind back to when you were in school - there was always the kid good at languages; the guy with the unbelievable talent for mental arithmetic; the person who could draw anything so well (that you were so jealous of); the person who always won the races on school sports day (well that was never going to be me!) and even the person who simply had the talent for looking the prettiest most demure thing who never, ever got into trouble.

In all of these things, I don’t think I showed an ounce of talent. I wasn’t stupid in school but I was never top of the class. I was useless at sports on the whole although I swam pretty well but never to an exceptional standard. In all of life I was competent, adequate and got by.

I look at those naturally gifted people though sometimes and I realise that their talent stops somewhere. They are often the people who have a meteoric rise to success but somehow can’t quite repeat it. They win until something goes just a bit wrong and then it completely derails them – when the going gets tough, they drop out because it’s no longer easy.

I guess this is where the people like me and countless others come into our own – our talent is there all right, it’s just that we don’t recognise it very often. Our talent is for sticking in there, for persevering, for being determined not to give up even when things aren’t perfect. You see, it is in this way that we continue to practice even when times are tough and in this way we are the people who come through in the end - you only have to look at Kelly Holmes to see that.

So, in answer to GOA, we are only limited by ourselves – not by our perceived talent or lack of it, but we only limit ourselves when we dream big but are not prepared to put in the work to get there….

New poll...

2009-08-03T13:33:00.003+01:00

Just that....I was doing some wondering (well, it's what it's all about you know) and decided on the subject for a new poll.

Just in case any of you are interested...I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer! Things didn't go quite according to plan there then...but hey it leads to some interesting conversations...!?!

Sorry...couldn't resist!

2009-07-31T09:42:00.005+01:00

I am worried about swine flu.
I heard that the first symptom is that you come out in rashers.
Another is that you get the trotts.
But, I woke up with pig tails this morning ... Should I be worried?

The doctor asked me how long I'd had the symptoms of Swine Flu. I said it must have been about a Weeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
Apparently my mate's got Swine Flu, I think he's just telling porkies, though.
The only known cure for Swine Flu in humans has been found to be the liberal application of oinkment.

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy had influenza A virus subtype hemagglutinin protein
1 neuraminidase protein 1

Swine flu, however, is not a problem for the pigs because they're all going to be cured anyway.

News Flash .... this just in. The world's religious leaders have issued a joint declaration that the swine Flu pandemic is the start of the aporkalypse.

Swine flu has now mixed with bird flu. Scientists say they will find a cure when pigs fly.

I just heard on the news that, "Swine Flu could potentially be a threat to
every single person in the world". Well it's a good thing I'm married then, isn't it?

You've got to hand it to the Mexicans. Even Osama Bin Laden didn't scare this many Americans

Crash bang wallop

2009-07-22T16:34:00.001+01:00

Some time ago, hubby told me that we had a leak in the bay window at the top of the house (in hubby’s hobby room^*1) and I suggested that we should get a roofer to look at it. In fact, I asked hubby to go next door and get the name of their roofer so that we could get it done. I then promptly forgot about it because:

I have been away a lot
It’s not my room and I hardly ever go in there (even when dust bunnies roll out the door when it’s opened) and
I have been away a lot.

Some time passes…

Hubby tells me that he now has a bucket in the room to catch the drips and I should go and look at it (which I duly do). I am a little concerned at this point as the ceiling appears to be sagging in exactly the way that you wouldn’t expect it to^*2 and I ask about the roofer’s number. It seems that hubby doesn’t have the number (although to be fair, he did ask for it but then his phone ‘ate’ it on saving). It was another visit to next door and then we had a visit from Russ the Roofer.

Russ sucked air in over his teeth (as they do) and quoted a price which seemed reasonable to me (not being a roofer). He told us he could start in 2 weeks (after his summer holiday) and I booked a space in my busy schedule.

Tuesday after yet more rain, hubby tells me that he “needs a bigger bucket” and the drip has now expanded to three. Wednesday I go away and come home Thursday night. Friday we go out for a while and we come in to find a smallish section of ceiling has detached itself from the rest and has landed partly in and mostly around the bucket. The weekend passes without incident and after an exhausting Sunday we go to bed after a nice glass of red.

2a.m. Sunday night there is a loud bang…..

…it’s the ceiling…

…it’s now on the floor…

…we now have 6 buckets on the floor and are awaiting the plasterer as well as the roofer …we need a new carpet and since all that’s going on I think a bit of re-decorating will be called for.. Any volunteers?

^*1Try saying that after 4 glasses of Merlot…

^*2Something akin to the way that spaceships hang in the air in exactly the way that bricks don’t…

It’s true I tell you!

2009-07-10T15:05:00.001+01:00

I was recently going to the nearest big town and (as you do) went up the slip road onto the motorway (that would be an interstate or autobahn depending on where you live in the world!)

Anyway, I pulled out into the inside lane just to see some car in front of me start to pull in to the remaining section of slip road (which was by this time starting to narrow) – and I thought maybe he was heading for the hard shoulder with a breakdown or something. He then stopped pulling in, and ended up straddling the dotted line of the inside lane and the slip road and proceeded to drive along this section, while the lane on the left got progressively narrower and narrower. Now, call me untrusting, but anyone who seemed to have so little regard to where his car was actually positioned in the carriageway always needs a wide berth in my opinion and so I pulled out into the middle lane to do just that!

I accelerated past him (my little car may be old but it can outstrip a lot of stuff on the road^*1) and as I cruised past I glanced left to see what kind of idiot was driving. I found myself looking squarely at a dog who was peering intently through the windscreen and in the left hand seat next to him was a man wearing sunglasses! Now, just stop for 2 seconds and imagine what went through my mind.....

....it took me a little while to realise that this was a left hand drive car and therefore the dog was in the passenger seat!

Mind, given the rotten driving it may be that the driver really was blind – and maybe the dog was giving him directions??

^*1 ..which is great fun at traffic lights with 17 year old boys in ‘souped up’ Vauxhall Novas thinking they can burn off the old bird in the even older car!

Some thoughts on wheelchairs.

2009-07-08T10:48:00.003+01:00

I apologise in advance for the length of this post and the philosophical nature of it all, but hey...it's been raining and somehow that gets you thinking about deep and meaningful stuff...

Last weekend, I was at an airport and it got me wondering about wheelchairs. Now, this time, I was with a single friend, but normally I am in my chair with a bunch of other people – themselves largely wheelchair users. There’s a group of us, some full time chair users (like E2O), and some not (like me), but all of us relish the freedom that a wheelchair gives us. In an airport it’s the difference between being able to go to the shops, nip to the loo, head out and look out the window, nip back for coffee and then get to the plane feeling fine. The alternative to all this is – arrive at airport, find somewhere to sit down, struggle to boarding gate picking up coffee if you pass one then sitting down at the gate to wait (probably in pain) having hopefully found somewhere to sit down on the way, if you need to be at Gate 103. Hmmm, which would you do then? Which is better, which gives you more independence – more freedom, less pain?

It sounds an easy answer doesn’t it? So why are people so determined to struggle in these situations? What is it about the human condition that makes us say ‘at least I can still walk’ – ‘I can manage!’ Manage, yes, but at what cost? This has been a really hard lesson for me to learn, but I wish I had learned it years ago and now when I look back I think that I was stupid in some of the ways that I struggled to keep up and made myself stay on my own two feet just for the sake of pride.

Wheelchair dancer wrote some stuff on this and she commented on the way that people seem to regard a wheelchair as robbing people of their independence and I hope she doesn’t mind if I cut and paste....

The saddest thing for me is, however, the bog standard wheelchairs. Have you ever noticed that no one who does not own a wheelchair to begin with ever pushes themselves? The chairs are heavy. Yes. So heavy .... I know they're industrial. They're supposed to be functional for everyone. But they aren't freedom machines. They aren't independence devices. They are transport things, designed for the pusher. Everyone in them has this kind of blanked out look.

This is so true – once in a chair people seem to expect to be pushed. They become one with the chair and not in a good way. They are the chair – the chair is a symbol of being incapable, of being abnormal and yes, that is really sad to be that way.

I find that I say to people that I hate my chair when it sits in the corner of my room and looks at me, telling me that I am disabled but I love it when I am in it. I love that freedom. I too am part of my chair (or it is part of me) but I love it. It gives me ‘legs’ that work properly, it gives me speed and balance. It helps me manage my pain – I can go further, I can go faster, I can carry things – it gives me so much I can’t begin to explain...

Another poll...what fun!

2009-07-03T10:23:00.001+01:00

Another poll for you...search it out on the right hand side.

Ooo, look at the big green pond over there...

2009-06-29T11:48:00.001+01:00

Recently hubby and I decided to clean out our pond which has got quite overgrown by plants in the last year or so. We’ve actually got a lot of fish in the pond as well – originally we had 6 goldfish and 2 ghost koi and over the years most of the goldfish have died, but not before procreating in large numbers, so now we have too many of them to count. Actually, we probably could count them, but they very inconveniently keep swimming around instead of lining up and keeping still to make the job easy – if only I could get them to behave like the miis in the Wii plaza…but still, there you go, I can’t so I’ve given up trying to count them! The koi are still there and have both grown as lot although one has grown more than the other and has (by virtue of being a bully and extremely greedy) become big enough to have earned the name ‘Monstro’!

So, we were cleaning the pond and Monstro (possibly because he could actually see out of the pond without all the plants in the way) was splashing around taking an interest in all that was going on. It was at that point that he suddenly decided to make a break for it and leapt out of the pond, landing on the grass about 4ft away. Now I know we’ve had enough algae in the pond in the past for him to maybe think that the grass might be another big lake-y type thingie, but this really was a jump too far! It was at this point (around the time that he lay there flapping and squeaking about how breathing really wasn’t as easy any more!), that hubby grabbed at him to try and get him back into the pond. Well, large fish can squirm a lot it seems and hubby had a real problem hanging on to him. Monstro was flapping and hubby was struggling and trying to turn towards the pond and Monstro made another leap for it – this time hitting the side of the pond with a thump, falling in the water with a splash and sinking without a trace.

“OMG!” I rushed to the side of the pond – only to see Monstro slowly heading back up to the surface looking a little dazed (and slightly scraped down one side). I decided to act goalie for a bit, just in case he got any other funny ideas, but he was more sensible than I gave him credit for and decided that he’d had enough adventuring for one day!

So, here we are, a couple of weeks on and his scrape has healed nicely (leaving the kind of impressive scar that he can tell the other fish how brave he was^*1) and he is back to his usual bullying greedy self. Long may he stay swimming in water...!

^*1 Reminds me of the ‘call that a scar?’ incident…

The inevitability of change

2009-06-22T10:57:00.001+01:00

After a recent conversation with hubby I began to wonder about the way that our lives change over the years.

Nothing ever stays the same, does it? Pets and people grow old (hopefully) and die (sometimes too young). Your health waxes and wanes – even if you just feel run down or pick up a cold in the winter. New technology means that we buy the new TV or camera that has made our old one obsolete and our cars get rusty and prone to breaking down. Actually, that last point isn’t strictly true with my car, it’s old but not too rusty and doesn’t break down – it does however make weird gurgling noises when it rains and the rain gets in thorough the sun roof and gets trapped in the ceiling....but I digress....

Hubby and I were talking about how your relationships change as your time together evolves. When you are young and in love you spend all your time together. For much of the time you are joined (quite literally) at the hip and even outside of that you spend every waking moment together or calling each other. Then life just seems to take over and for many people children happen. Their lives are suddenly transformed into providing a nappy changing, feeding and onwards to taxi service. The couple don’t spend so much time together, they spend it with the children...(we by-passed this and moved onto the next stage (having no kids!)). Then, the kids leave home and the couple want to do all those things that they didn’t have time for when the kids were occupying their time. Much of their time is spent with work and the social life attached to that, some of them join clubs and societies and have ‘a life of their own’ and as a couple they end up spending no more of their time together than they did when the kids were around. Maybe they even spend less as at least they did things as a family when the kids were small...

Time marches on (as it has a habit of doing), something else becomes obsolete and needs replacing and then the mortgage is paid off and it’s time to retire from work. Guess what happens....the couple end up spending every waking moment together again, just like they did in the first flush of love. Isn’t that amazing?

I suppose what I wondered the most about all of this, is that although those changes are bound to happen, sometimes we don’t like the way that time keeps moving on, forcing us to get ever older and making us continually adjust to stuff. But, it’s how we cope with that change that makes us who we are. Should we move forward kicking and screaming, should we be depressed at the passage of time or should we go forward always looking back with regret at what has passed? I don’t think we should do any of those – I think we should look to the future as an undiscovered country – yes it will always change and yes, I will get older, but life is just like that. Since purple is my favourite colour, I guess I won’t have any issues about wearing it when I get old either!

New poll day....

2009-06-15T14:38:00.002+01:00

Yes, you got it, it's a new poll day....

Please vote - I promise it will have more effect on the politics of this country than our current system!

Chatanooga ripple....

2009-06-12T10:45:00.002+01:00

We went out recently to a Glenn Miller concert. No, don’t be silly, we’re not time travellers, it was a tribute type thingie! Anyway, we took my mother out to this concert because it was her birthday and it was a significant one – one of those ones that starts with eight and ends with zero – not that I’m mentioning her age you understand...

Anyway, we were up in the balcony and (as I like to do) I looked out over the audience and decided that I was plainly the youngest person there (by about 40 years) – ignoring of course PMB, SIL and hubby. The average age in the audience was, um, well, ancient and I reckon the collective age may well have headed into the millions! These were people who probably did see Glenn Miller when he was alive and when they were young and trendy!

So, the lights dimmed and the music started and the whole audience started rippling, grey heads were nodding up and down and rocking from side to side like some mild version of the St Vitus dance – at one point one couple even got up and started jiving in the aisle (although to be fair they didn’t do too much before the gentleman stopped - visibly heaving for breath) – all the same, everybody had a really fab time. Even I had a fab time, and I’m not poking fun here, it really was great to see so many people out there enjoying themselves.

It was halfway through the concert that I looked to my right and there, about 6 seats away in my row was a young boy of about 10 years of age and he was bopping up and down in his seat, playing imaginary drums, trumpets and saxophones. He was grinning from ear to ear and thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. Now apart from the fact that he alone probably lowered the average age of the audience from ancient to merely old, it was just so refreshing to see and just proves that that Glenn Miller chappy knew good music!

In-truder alert!*

2009-06-04T10:25:00.003+01:00

MBP phoned me a few days ago and was complaining that he hadn’t had much sleep the night before and so I asked him what the problem was. He started to tell me that it was the SIL, but not quite in the way that you might think....

The SIL was woken at about 2.30 in the morning by a strange noise and she told me she thought it was a large moth. In the way that you do, she lay awake for a bit in the dark, straining to hear what was happening and then heard more noise and began to wonder if it was a mouse. It did seem odd that a mouse might have got in and climbed the stairs just to leap up and down on the spare bedroom bed in order to wake her up, but it's true that odd things do go through your mind at that time in the morning. Added to the mouse theory, was the possibility of revenge, as after mice getting into the garage and munching their way through a spare duvet that had been stored there, traps had been set...I will say no more...!

After a bit more clattering and what sounded distinctly like a meow, the SIL bravely got up to investigate and on opening the door of the spare room spotted a cat who immediately ran under the bed! Now, MBP and the SIL don’t own a cat and it wasn’t one of ours that had smuggled its way home in one of my brother’s shoes so she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She got down on her knees and peered under the bed and yes, it really was a cat! It was back to the bedroom to wake MBP who so far was oblivious to all this excitement.

“Wake up”, she said, “we have an intruder – there’s a cat under the bed...”
“Grummph, blurgle” he mumbled “do you want a hand?” – he said in a tone of voice that really meant ‘please say no and let me get back to sleep....’

The SIL is made of stronger stuff than that and so he got up to give her a hand! They both peered under the bed and she was right – there really was a cat under there. Thus ensued a certain amount of time playing ‘catch the cat’, which as any cat owner who has ever wanted to take their pet to the vet will tell you is lots of fun^*2....and eventually, the cat was outside the front door.

First a frog , next a cat ...let’s just hope they’re not working their way up to bigger animals....

^* Danger Will Robinson!
^*2 ...and is something akin to how to give your cat a pill...

Ah! The annual get-together...

2009-06-02T23:17:00.004+01:00

This year we had a party..actually, most summers we have a party and they vary in size and scale depending on whether either of us has a significant birthday! TBH I can’t actually remember how it all started, but I think it was when hubby turned 40. I may have previously mentioned that all our friends are scattered to the four corners of Britain (well, maybe not quite that far afield, but almost) and so we just don’t get to see them as often as we would like. The summer party gives us (and them) that chance - the chance for us all to meet up and just spend a bit of time together. After the first one, the next one was organised for us when the POG ^*invited a few friends to our place for the weekend and suddenly we were throwing another party!

I love it – I love to see everyone and I just wish it wasn’t for such a short period of time. The cost to us is the food (this year barbequed chicken with salad and a cooked breakfast for 15) and in return we gain a significant quantity of alcohol. The equation goes something like this:

3 chickens + salad + coleslaw (made by the VNSO – yum yum!) + sides + crisps and snacks + Pimms and punch + 12 bottles of Carslberg + cooked breakfast = at least 8 bottles of wine + 5 bottles of cider + 11 cans of beer + 5 cans of lager + 2 bottles of cava!

Seems fair to me!

Apart from the food and drink, the only other cost is the work. The preparation is tough on me for a few days before (mostly because I feel a need to clear enough floor space for all the airbeds...) but once the BUF arrives I find myself with almost nothing to do. I’d like to call her a treasure, but she might blush, so all I will do is publicly thank her via this blog! I am really lucky generally – as soon as folks arrive, I no longer have to be the hostess with the mostess – they all run around, fetching and carrying and even making me coffee while I sit down and (on this occasion) put my feet up in the sun. Can partying really get any better than this?

Now, where’s the diary, I want to set a date for next year....

^* Probation officer guy

New poll...

2009-05-28T11:56:00.002+01:00

Just that ------look right------ and down a bit.....

A body full of potential

2009-05-28T11:00:00.002+01:00

I recently ran into a friend of mine (while out shopping) and he asked me how my hand was. Now, this was because I recently had an unexpected visit to the accident and emergency department of my local hospital with a hole in my hand and whole bunch of carbon splinters decorating it. As it turns out, my hand really wasn’t so bad, but news spreads pretty quick (especially when folks think it’s gory) and he was worried.

“Look” I said, waving my hand under his nose, “it’s not so bad, I’ve just got a sticking plaster, that’s all.”
“Dur”, he said (please note the local dialect!) “you’re hard you are....but then I guess you’ve got to be, living in your body!”

Now, that got me to wondering about this body of mine and how good or bad it is. Now, I don’t mean how beautiful (or not) that it is – after all, like most women, there’s bits of my body I like (my nose is OK) and bits I don’t (who dished out those knees for goodness sake!) but what I mean is the working-ness of it (if there is even such a word!).

There are some times when I don’t like my body at all – the times when I wake up and it doesn’t work properly, the times when I have to lift my leg into the car rather than merely helping it in because its quicker and the times when it just hurts way too much and I think that it isn’t really fair. It’s those times when I guess you do have to be just a bit ‘hard’ to live inside it and put up with all those things you’d rather not.

But (and here’s the thing) most of the time I actually think my body is rather wonderful. My wiring in my legs is all wonky and when I was born my parents had no way of knowing if I would ever walk. Doctors are still amazed that I ever learned to do so and despite the fact that many things have gone wrong with it over the years, it recovers and mends and gets on with stuff. More than anything else this funny body has helped me reach for the stars and has achieved amazing things. It has allowed me to explore a future I never thought I would have and has allowed me to fulfil my dreams and even has potential to achieve even more in the years to come.

So, am I hard? Or has my body really helped make it rather easy for me?

Why is walking so important to us?

2009-05-13T13:01:00.002+01:00

I recently heard about Major Phil Packer who crossed the London Marathon finish line two weeks after starting and I began to wonder about his amazing achievement from which he’s managed to raise an astounding amount of money for Help for Heroes.

I spoke to hubby about it as I wondered what it was about walking especially that people see as so essential to life – what it is that makes people so frightened about becoming disabled and not being able to walk. Hubby tried to explain to me that most people can just walk. It’s not a struggle and they learn so young that they can never remember not being able to do so. This is hard for me to grasp. I remember learning to walk and it has never been especially natural for me so I can’t really ‘get’ what it is, that is then so scary about losing the skill. For me it’s that, a skill, like learning to knit or something, and I see that there are alternatives, but I guess for most non-disabled people they cannot imagine a life before walking and therefore can’t imagine one after...

I actually think that in all of this and in Major Packer’s great achievement, I think what impresses me the most (and I suspect many other people as well) is that it’s not that the walking really is the wonderful thing about what he has done, but it’s the fact that it’s a measure of his determination and perseverance. It’s that that I admire the most – walking may be more useful on hills than wheeling, but the fact that he has set out to do something so difficult to raise money for such a special cause is the most important thing in all of this.