So, there we were (hubby and I) in bed lazing around one morning with Clumsy and Grace both on the bed with us (I know, I know, its horrible unhygienic to let your cats get on the bed, but its not so easy to keep them off…)
Anyway, Clumsy looks furtively at Grace, hoists his rear end off the bed and did that wiggly thing with it (cat owners will know exactly what I am talking about here) 
and made ready to pounce. Grace, peering out from under her eyelids took rapid stock of the situation and did a quick but cool assessment. As Clumsy leapt up, she swiftly grabbed hold of him, twisted him round and over in a real WWF move, pinned him down on the bed and proceeded to thoroughly wash his head.
“Ah”, said hubby proudly. “That’s my girl – she’s got a black belt in personal hygiene and has had special training in combat ablutions…"
There’s no answer to that really, is there?
That's me at the moment....in out, in out and whilst not shaking it about too much (the metalwork is not conducive to too much shaking) I seem to have had very little time to actually sit down and blog.
Last weekend I was away in Belgium with a large group of my best friends and a good time was had by all...apparently even whilst some people were lurking underground and exploring strange places. Me, I just sat in the sun, drank the BUF's cherry beer and spent time catching up with her which was fab (we've not caught up in ages). So, we brought back chocolate and beer (what else from Belgium?) and have already made mutterings about next year...
In the meantime I am off again but this time only about 2 hours drive away from home. Hubby shall be cat sitting whilst I get on with 'my other life'. I know, I know, more excuses for not updating the blog, but hey, I'll get round to it..... I promise!
Finally, to finish with the theme that I started, I saw this on J the B's t-shirt last weekend:
"what if the Hokey Cokey*1 really is what it's all about?"
...and if you want to know the answer to that, you could try looking here or here or hey - just try Googling it.....(and yes, I know Google is trying to make it illegal to use their name as a verb...)
So, I came back from the US of A to find hubby was quite excited. My first thought was that he was pleased to have me home but it wasn’t that at all…..the drain man had really been. I mean he had really, really been. He had really been here, had really lifted the cover and had really cleared the drain of all its debris. D’you know, you can see water in the bottom of it! And when it started raining (which it did for about two weeks solid) the water ran down the hill and into the drain. OMG, I cannot believe how excited I am that it’s been done and how disappointed that I can’t bake it a cake.
Now of course all I have to do is make sure I don’t drop my keys down it…*1
*1…and don’t tell me that I am the only person in the world who gets a death grip on their keys when they find that they have parked over an drain and have to unlock the car? *2
So you know I went away and you know I flew and you’re all itching to know if my metalwork sets off the arch in the airport. Right? Well, I still don’t know and that’s the truth of it. Yet again, lost in the miles and miles of passageways that are Heathrow airport, I was using my wheelchair to get around and believe me, a big lump of metal like that is bound to set of those detectors, without the added complication of any screws and stuff inside your back. In Heathrow I get waved though with just a cursory body search (which means that that there were no rubber gloves 
or little rooms involved) and that was that.
Coming home from the States, homeland security are a bit more involved, making you take your shoes off and everything so I felt certain that I’d find out something. Well, as expected the arch went off so I went for the pat down. The poor bored lady was telling me I’m going to touch you here and I’m gonna use the back of my hand here and so on and I tried to engage her in polite conversation. I asked her if she was bored with saying the same thing day in day out. I asked her if she was having a nice day and if she liked the hot weather. I really, really tried to be nice to her and then just as she told me I could go I hit her with the whammy question “ can I have the wand thingie?” and she said there was no need. No need? What about my curiosity - isn't that need enough? That is so not fair! - and I still don‘t know if I’m going to set the detectors off. Anyone got a 'Bounty Hunter'??
As an aside to all this, I had to take my shoes off. All my belongings, including my cardigan had to go through the x-ray machine. My wheelchair and cushion were swabbed for explosives and I was thoroughly patted down. Did they discover the pouch that is built into the underside of my wheelchair (and is part of the standard fittings)? The pouch that contains a small tool kit, puncture repair kit and a pump which looks remarkably like the barrel of a gun (when viewed through a steamed up window without your glasses on obviously). Did they heck…..
D’you know, there’s some spooky stuff goes on in the world and sometimes it can happen to you too. I have had 3 things happen in quick succession (well they say things always happen in threes, don’t they? *1) and so I thought I’d blog about them.
The first happened when I was away. There I was, sat on my bed in the middle of the afternoon, having a little rest before the rigors of the evening. I heard a knock at the door, so got up and went to answer it. Outside was my SPF who wanted to rearrange a meeting that we had made earlier. The only thing was, that she hadn’t yet knocked the door, having only just arrived! Somehow, I had ‘heard’ a knock, got off the bed and walked to the door (not the fastest process in the world for me) just in time to coincide with her arrival……oooo!
Then I got home and did a report for the BMB. I emailed it to him and in the ‘send and receive process’ got an email from him asking me to send the report. Scarier still, was the fact that both e-mails had been sent at the same time to the minute*2 ….wow!
Two days later, I phoned A&T to speak to A. I was on my mobile because I had free minutes that I wanted to use up and T answered the phone telling me that A was out. Within seconds of him answering, my house phone rang and I juggled the two phones (one to each ear – don’t you do it that way?) so I could answer it – it was A! Actually, I have to say at this point that I briefly entertained the idea that I could get them to talk to each other, but couldn’t figure out which way up the respective phones should be!
Anyway, all of this was very spooky and as yet I have no idea if it all means anything. In the meantime…..di dee di dee do dee di dee do ......
*2 - I didn’t check the seconds – just how sad do you think I am??
So, the FIL continues to hang on in there. Yesterday he started to take a few breaths on his own so things are looking up a bit and we all stopped holding our breath with him....It's still very early days but we just still have to wait, be patient (not my strongest point) and see how it all goes.
So, hubby and I are back from our hols. We had a week in a cottage in Cornwall and took the cats with us. Yes, I know that this may sound odd to some of you, but they travel well and I’m sure they prefer a two bed cottage to run around in to a 6ft by 4ft space in a cattery (which they’d have to share). Anyway, when we got there ‘Grace’ was straight out of the basket and tail up went running round and round the cottage investigating every little nook and cranny. ‘Clumsy’ was a bit slower to follow but settled in well.
The weather was truly kind to us (especially since I am now typing this with the rain lashing down outside and we got to see all the things that we wanted to see. For those who have the chance, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project are really well worth a visit in my opinion*1. We also explored endless pretty little fishing villages (doesn’t everyone who visits Cornwall), ate Cornish cream teas and Cornish pasties and sampled lots of the local ales. It was just the thing for a nice relaxing break.
Sadly, our week was cut short as we had to return home in an emergency. The FIL had some problems with his heart and was rushed into hospital. After a few days of things getting worse, he ended having an emergency quadruple bypass on the Friday afternoon and has been in intensive care ever since. He’s nearly 80 so it’s all very worrying and we are at the stage of keeping our fingers, toes and everything crossed and hoping for the best. If my blogging is a bit irregular over the next week or so that’ll be the reason why, so bear with us all and hold your breath with us please….
*1Both also have pretty good wheelchair access (if you need it) but take my advice and make sure you have either a power trike or a helper….some of those slopes are wicked! Oh yes, and don’t use slick tyres – they are apt to just slide straight down the hill even when your wheels aren’t going round (….you had to be there to appreciate it!!!)
Just to let you all know that I am going away for a few days so there’ll be no blogging for a bit. Don’t worry…..I’ll be back!
So, we were at the airport on our way home and needed to get a courtesy bus to get us back to the car park and our cars. I was with the SPF and the BMB and they had all our stuff between them on two trolleys because I was in my wheelchair. This is something that is really necessary at airports as its just miles between point a and point b…anyway, really speaking we weren’t in the airport any longer, but I was still in my ‘chair’ so that’s the way it was.
The bus arrived and the BMB started to load stuff into the back. It was not long before he started to wrestle with a particularly troublesome load (probably mine!) and the SPF rushed forward to help him (abandoning her trolley in the process). Now you are probably aware that these airport trolleys have an automatic braking system and that unless you pull up on the handle they won’t go anywhere. Well, the one on the SPF’s trolley was broken….and we were on a slope. I made a wild grab for the trolley and at this point realised two things:
- I was in a wheelchair (with wheels) and
- I didn’t have the brakes on.
It was just at the point that the trolley started to gather pace, that I realised that- I was in a predicament and
- I was heading for the railings.
At this point I let go the trolley with one hand and tried to brake with the other and my frenzied squeaking alerted the SPF to the fact that something was wrong. She caught up with me (and the trolley) and we slithered to a halt – predicament averted!
I did learn that you cannot stop one moving object on wheels with another similar object when there is no braking system involved…….so something positive came out of it! *1
*1SPF, please take note of my positive thinking here….
Please note, no one was harmed in the making of this blog entry. The slope was not a big slope and the SPF did not have to run at 30mph or have her arms ripped out of their sockets trying to stop either me or the trolley. It was amusing tho’…
I don’t know if you know what it’s like when you’re away with a group. You stick together and it’s not always easy to get out so you spend quite a lot of time sat in the hotel lobby at the end of a long day, chatting and waiting for bed time.
There we were again (different night from the teenagers in pyjamas) and we saw someone walking through the lobby carrying a large section of column. It was precisely the kind of thing that supports the tier of a wedding cake, but about 8 ft tall and an arm span around.
In fact it looked so much like a support for a wedding cake that someone commented to that effect and mentioned that it was funny that we hadn’t see the bride and groom. There was a general tittering at the suggestion and at that point in walks a woman in a wedding dress with a man in a tux.
That must have been some wedding, if the cake was that big…
I just realised that it’s 15 months today since I was sliced and diced. Time just vanishes so fast, doesn’t it (does this mean I’m enjoying myself or something?)
So, where am I with the back? It’s good really. I’d love to report that I have no pain with it but I would be lying if I said that. I will say that pain pills seem to work better than they used to and I assume that this is because nothing is under quite the strain it was so they have more chance to work (if you see what I mean!). Funnily enough, I still get a fair amount of discomfort from where they took my ribs out. I don’t know if it’s the ribs themselves (or the lack of them) or if it’s just that your diaphragm doesn’t like being sliced in half and then stuck back together again but whichever it is, I would cheerfully live without it. Of course being the optimistic little soul that I am, I quite cheerfully live with it too but I do wish all those people who said it was the worst bit of the operation were wrong! *1
As to the rest of it, well, I have regained none of the nerves in my stomach or leg but I guess there’s still time. My walking is just the same and I am just as happy and healthy as ever. People are still coming up to me and saying how well I look and the other day I met an old friend and discovered that the 2” I gained in height means that I could almost look her in the eye. In fact – I didn’t realise before that she was quite so short! Hubby measured me the other day too and made me 4ft 11½” which would mean I’d actually gained 2½”, not 2” but then we realised I still had my shoes on.…..still, I feel much taller than that really!
On a cosmetic note, I really do feel a lot less lopsided. I was given the all clear to do core exercises in January and between that, and the fact that I have no swelling left, I finally have a waist on both sides. I know that there are people out there who will understand just how delighted this makes me… I still have the rib hump and I can still see the fact that I have 30+ degree curves inside me but I really don’t think anyone apart from me, my surgeon and maybe some members of the scoliosis forums (takes one to know one) would ever really notice. Amazing, innit?
*1 Actually, I’m sure its not the worst bit of the op, but it does seem to have the longest lasting implications…
There we were, a large group of us, sat in the hotel lobby when a couple of teenage girls walk past us clutching pillows. They appeared to be dressed in pyjamas too, which was odd, but you never can tell with fashions these days so we shrugged our shoulders and carried on chatting. A few minutes later, another small group of girls goes past, again carrying pillows and they were followed by several teenage boys. There was no doubt that some of these youngsters were in nightwear (it was the nightdress that really gave it away*1) and they all headed off in the direction of the ballroom. Now, I’ve been to ‘that kind of party’ where its fancy dress on a theme (pyjama, roman toga, vicars and tarts, you get the picture) but in all my years of party going, I have never taken a large prop like a pillow….
So, this goes on for some time, small groups of youngsters, in nightwear, carrying pillows, on their way to the ballroom. We never counted them, but I’m guessing over the next hour or so there must have been hundreds of them*2. Eventually we cracked and as the manager of the hotel went past, we asked him what was going on – “Oh”, he said “They’re having a sleepover” and went on to explain that they were all members of a local church group.
I tell you, if I’d have known church groups were that much fun, I’d have joined one years ago…..
*1 No, not on the boy!
*2 This may be an exaggeration, but there were lots
So, there I was, away in sunny Arizona and we were out for dinner one evening. I was having fajitas – I like fajitas, all that playing with your food and wrapping up meat and peppers and stuff with all sorts of dips etc. Fajitas in blighty are very nice, but these were extra good ones so I was happy.
One of the younger members of our group had never had (or even seen) fajitas before and so was quizzing me on the nature of the red, white and green dips*1 and what each was called. Me being in a good mood was happy to help and asked her if she wanted to try any of them. “Maybe later”, she said, so I carried on eating.
A little later she asks:
“Can I try some of your Guatemala?”
I felt so mean when I fell off my chair laughing…..
*1That would be salsa, sour cream and guacamole.
Well, I’m back online properly – typing on the big machine with the proper screen and all. Turns out that unless M is right and its all a nasty Microsoft plot to get us all to buy Vista, that my crash was probably caused by little green men….umm, that means no-one has yet figured out why sh*t happens to computers.
Anyway, I called the Packard Bell helpline and expected at least 30 minutes of canned musack so was very surprised to be directed to ‘Dave’ with just a minimum of pressing the * and # keys on the phone. Dave was helpful too and didn’t ask me any stupid questions instead accepting that I knew that it wasn’t a hardware fault and had actually followed all the proper procedures to get to where I was. He diagnosed a faulty partition that even when the drive had been re-formatted hadn’t been properly removed. In order to access it I needed to access the Q: drive – I have a Q: drive I asked? Where’s that hidden? Well, seems its somewhere in my box and so I did as I was told. From there we removed all the partitions and my software and drivers started to load up just as they should.
Whole process (with Dave’s help) – about 10 minutes. So, there you go – there will be more entries later in the week – I haven’t told you about my trip yet after all…..
So, here I am, perched on the edge of the sofa with the baby laptop (which runs as fast as the average slug), on my knee. Why you may ask when I have a perfectly good desk with a nice shiny new(ish) desktop just waiting to be switched on and used. Wrong! Those of you with good memories will know just how new the desktop is so may be surprised to know that it isn't working quite the way it should.
Now I know I shouldn't name and shame, but I am seriously p'd off with Packard Bell (ooops, did I just mention their name?). A few days ago hubby turned on the PC to be met with the ominous message "config.sys is missing"! Now why this should make a hap'orth of difference I have no idea since that file isn't even used by XP, but it did and the damn machine refused to start.
I came up with the brilliant idea of using the recovery disc that came with the machine and in a foolish, fey and reckless moment stuck it in the drive and headed for the repair console. Within moments, my hard drive was being reformatted and then came a soothing message which was something like:
"Don't worry about a thing - you are just the moron who operates the machine. You know nothing but we do so we will put everything back to normal for you by transferring a few files" - actually it may have just said "copying files now", but you get the idea...
After an hour of reading this message and no lights flashing on the machine I turned it off, gave up and went to bed. In the morning in a much better mood (not) I loaded up my own version of XP but discovered it didn't have all the drivers I needed so it was back to the recovery disc to load them.. Guess what? It reformatted my hard drive again for me (so helpful...). At least this time after the soothing message ("Don't worry - we know best") it did actually copy some files. I then got anther message (hurrah!) saying "restoring operating system...this may take some time...... I was really good, I waited patiently, I resisted the temptation to throw the machine across the room, I didn't strangle anyone with the cables, I didn't even kick the cat with frustration probably 'cos I would've fallen over) - and eventually the message went, the screen went blank and then I got a dos prompt. I rebooted (thinking that XP would then start) and got...a dos prompt. I checked the contents of the hard drive....wow...an operating system...a dos one that is....
I am going back to the shop......I may be some time.....so if I don't blog for a while, you know why........
Well, here I am, back in Blighty and wondering when my jet lag is going to creep up and smack me in the face. I feel remarkably chirpy for someone who has just been travelling for 26 hours straight up. OK OK so I have some aches and pains and stuff but I’m in a good mood all the same.
The trip went, ummm well, it went, shall we just say that? I have to say that I have had better ones, but it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster so there you go. I did at least get a suntan even if it wasn’t the best way to do it.
You see, on the first day I looked at my suntan cream and thought I ought to have something stronger (having gone from a British almost winter) to the desert state sun. Now I don’t use a huge factor sunscreen, its not that I’m exactly olive, but I just don’t burn that easy so I though that rather than opting for my normal 8, I’d push the boat out and go for some 20 that I found lurking in the bottom of my case. I lathered it on and sat out all day (I have no choice in this given the nature of my sport) and by the end of the day was looking exceedingly pink on the arms. This is like the first time I have burned since well, I can’t remember when and everyone was there trying to tell me how hot it was and how I shouldn’t be surprised.
I feel stressed….. I am trying to prepare for a major trip away and before I go we are trying to get the bathroom finished. On top of that I have promised to get a coat sewn for someone before I go; the ironing pile is as tall as me; I have several family commitments that cannot be broken (unless of course I can get my brother to shift his 50th birthday); my mother is due home from Australia (and I am supposed to be picking her up from the station at silly o’clock on Thursday night*1) and I am trying to do all this with my wrist in a splint. Do you get the idea that I am trying to do too much? Moi? Would I? Surely not?
…Of course, there will be those of you who say I should be getting on with all those things rather than writing my blog, but I need a break from it all godmammit (Janet…*2)
Anyway, just in case I can’t slope away and update y’all*3 again then I shall be back in 10 days time. After a full 36 hours sleep (which I anticipate needing as a very minimum) I shall come back and tell you all about my adventures and you never know, if the bathroom has come on a bit, I may even be able to do it clean too!
*1 I guess that’s actually Friday morning in fact.
*2Just gotta love that show….
*3 This could be a clue to where I am going…
So the bathroom is coming on gradually. The new wall is up, plastered and tiled. We are ready to get the plumber in to fit the new radiator – yippee! At this point I should mention that we picked the radiator out of a catalogue as we had a particular style in mind (well, I did anyway and hubby went along with it) and they didn’t have one in stock in the shop. So, it was ordered and delivered with the rest of the bathroom (which is sitting in the study behind me as I type) – this is where it has been for the last month! Anyway, the radiator came in a great big box which we opened at one end, checked the fixing pack was inside (i.e. make sure contents were complete) and then promptly taped shut again as the cats had decided that it was nothing more than a large cardboard play tunnel and were desperate to get inside.
Actually, on a bit of an aside, what is it about cats that they feel compelled to sit in cardboard boxes? Bugalugs is, at this moment, sat inside a box (which incidentally has no bottom) looking very smug and blinking up at me*1. Why? He was in it within 20 seconds of me dropping it on the floor and will only leave it if I manage to find another box for him to try out.
Anyway, back to the radiator – we were ready for the plumber to fit it so unpacked it from its enormous box, removed all the polystyrene packing which was needed to fill such a big box and took it upstairs to the bathroom. It was at this point that we noticed that we have 9ft ceilings - well in fact we did know this before, but there’s nothing like a too-small radiator to show these things up! It looked tiny in the room – weedy I think was the expression hubby used. Worse than that – one of the legs was bent! So, that was it, I had to get on the phone and sit in an automated system listening to canned music for 20 minutes*2. Finally I got through to someone who told me that the earliest they could get a replacement to me would be at least a month as they had none in stock but if I wanted I could take it back to the shop and see if I could swap it for another model. Result!
So, that was what we did – took it back and found something else. The something else which was what hubby had fancied in the very beginning so it's alls well that ends well!
*1 All cat owners will know exactly what I mean by this blinking business…
*2 This is my personal hate, hate, hate! If they are busy, why don’t we get an engaged signal. If they are not there why don’t they just not answer? I hate having to pay to listen to their choice of, muzak and press buttons which never get me anywhere. I have taken to doing nothing when they say “if you have a touch tone phone press the star key now”. Normally it at least gets you through to a person …who will then put you on hold and make you listen to their choice of muzak….grrrrr!!! Do you sense how much I hate these things yet?
Writing my last blog entry reminded me of a couple of major splatter incidents that have happened to us over the years and somehow the memory of them is much funnier than they seemed at the time….
Firstly, many years ago, I dropped a pyrex bowl full of spaghetti sauce in the kitchen and the base of the bowl hit the floor and bounced back up (amazingly the bowl stayed intact). The contents of that bowl flew out so far that they hit the ceiling and the walls either side of the room and we ended up having to redecorate just to cover up what looked horribly like dried blood splattered all over the place.
What made matters worse, was that having redecorated (in a colour that actually looked much, much nicer on the paint chart than it ever did on the walls), we had another little mishap. We had friends down for the weekend (the BUF and her VNSO in fact) and hubby went out to the kitchen to open (another) bottle of red wine. Just as the cork came out, the bottle slipped, hit the floor and (unlike the glass bowl), exploded. Red wine went absolutely everywhere, including halfway up the nearest (newly painted) wall. That did make a mess and we wiped off the worst of it before opening (another) bottle of red wine and getting back to wherever we were in the conversation.
The next day we noticed that the wall wasn’t really very clean and tried to wash off the rest of the wine. Well, it seems that Cabernet Merlot is quite a good dye and it wouldn’t scrub off. Never mind we thought, newish paint - we’ve still got paint in the tin – we’ll just give it another coat – job done! Well, the paint went on, the wine stain bled though. Another coat of paint – it bled though again. Stain proof paint? – Nope – bled though….and in the end we half panelled the walls just to hide it.
I just hate to think what the new owners thought when they bought the house and (probably) stripped off the panelling. They’re probably looking for bodies buried in the garden as I write this….
Well, after taking the wall down, we had to put one back up – it being a bathroom - privacy being an issue without a wall there*1. We boarded out the new wall and then decided to mix up some plaster to skim the joints etc.
Hubby, being a trusting soul left the job of mixing the plaster to me while he went off to do something else. I tipped the water in the bucket and then added the plaster one dustpan worth at a time (I can’t do that thing where you lift the bag up and tip it – much too messy (and heavy)!). It is at this point I should tell you that rather that using the kitchen whisk (don’t laugh, it’s been done) I had attached our whirligig thing to the drill to make the job easy.
Now we’ve had our whirligig for a while and its getting a bit old, but over the years we’ve used it for all sorts from paint to cement to cake mix (well maybe not really cake mix – I’ve never actually needed to make a cake that big) and its coped admirably with everything so I really didn’t doubt it for one instance - even though its starting to get a bit rusty. Well, I should have doubted it, ‘cos as I stuck it in the bucket and turned it on, the whirlies came away from the gig (or at least the arms kinda parted company with the shaft) and as they flew out sideways, they produced a fountain of plaster, plaster powder and water which flew upwards and outwards at great velocity. I shrieked (well, anyone would have) and hubby came running. He came though the door (I think expecting to find me fallen over or electrocuted or something) and found me, the walls, the bath, the ceiling, the window and everything else, dripping with this gloopy mess. He laughed so much he nearly wet himself – sympathy – not a chance…..
*1OK, OK there are two sides to a wall, I admit it!
