Those "down with disability days"

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....

...I wonder if this...






...and this....





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


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

Just a quickie...

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

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…

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….

This heading has been inspired by 2 things -

1. We have just watched 28 Days Later (and then 28 Weeks Later) on DVD as hubby had them for Christmas and
2. 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...

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?

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…)

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

Just that….

Christmas …without the grumbles?

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!

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

or

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

or

• 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...

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..

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

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??

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

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....

...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...)

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

What a handy device…

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…..!

^*1 jello