Saturday 30th October - make like an ostrich...

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/do-ostriches-really-bury-their-head-in-the-sand/

 I've been a bit pre-occupied this week, even though it was half-term and supposedly clear from all engagements (hahaha, remembering the old joke 'if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans').

I've a red spot on my shin, which has been slowly increasing from a small, negligible mark to a circle heading for an inch in diameter. So, back in September, the consultant looked at it while doing a routine rheumatology check up and thought I ought to be referred to a dermatology clinic. 

However, it took four weeks for her letter to reach my GP. They referred it on promptly, but I was getting a little anxious. I looked on the website to discover 'most patients are seen within 15 weeks'. What?!? I rang the clinic 'have you received the referral from the GP?' After a couple of calls, they found the referral and added me to the list. 

Learning Point number 1; it's always worth making a pleasant and non-argumentative enquiry of the clinic admin staff! 

While on the phone I did let them know that I was very happy to be offered a last-minute cancellation - half an hour's notice would be enough. Well, they rand back ten minutes later - was I free tomorrow afternoon? - was I indeed!

Learning Point number 2; it's always worth offering to take a cancellation!

The result is that the malevolent-looking patch is nothing serious; the sort of thing that people with fair skin and spend too much tie in the sun are liable to. Very occasionally the patch can develop into skin cancer, but there's no suspicion of this in my case. I have been prescribed some cream to apply which will make it much worse before it gets better, and 'I'll see you again in about 5 or 6 months.'

I had no idea how much this had been bothering me until we got back home after the appointment, and sagged into the armchairs with a coffee and chocolate biscuit apiece.

So; if you have fair skin, and have been exposed to the sun (I lived in the tropics for a few years), and have a funny red scaly patch on your leg, get it looked at, rather than worrying!

I do tend to play the ostrich game over things that are over-facing me. Like, 

finishing my tax return, (not done)

sorting out the boxes of stuff brought down from the loft which need the keep/chuck/donate decisions, 

working out packaging and posting and customs declaration for parcel to be sent to 'foreign parts'

I'd much rather create a little holder using an empty box and pictures from a bulb catalogue to store my glasses in overnight to stop them falling to the floor when I will tread on them in the morning

 or scroll through twitter looking for jokes

Today, however, there has been progress; the parcel has been packaged up, several keep/chuck/donate boxes have been sorted so that two crates have been emptied and three more bags have been filled for a charity shop run (poor devils - I always feel a bit sorry for whoever is on the receiving end at the shop to do the 'keep/mend/chuck process all over again).

The heap does look a whole lot worse, but it is actually a whole lot better, and will improve further once the parcel is posted, the contents of the green bucket handed over to the charity shop and the orange bag taken to church for adding to the Great Christmas Shoebox Packing event tomorrow. Then we'll justs be down to the blue 'pending' crate, and several crates of photographs. With any luck it will be clear by Christmas...

Oh, and ostriches really do stick their heads in the sand....

Happy Days!  . 

Catching up - Barometric Pressure?

My grandmother, called Oma (as opposed to my mother, called Oma by my children - pay attention now), My Oma trained as a doctor around the time just after the 1st World War. She would have been appalled, back then, having lost BOTH her younger brothers in the fighting, to hear it called the 1st World War. Back then it was known as the Great War, never to be repeated.

But as usual, I'm heading down a different path... what am I on about? Oh yes, Barometric Pressure.

On Sunday I was suddenly enveloped in a black cloud, a fog of gloom and despair. I was supposed to be playing the organ at church, but when I got there I couldn't see or speak for unexpected tearfullness, so just handed the music to the other organist, turned round and came home.

What was all that about?

It's hard to know what was the trigger, or even the final straw.

Too many 'incoming' events, demands, requests? Maybe.
A couple of wakeful nights? Possibly.
An upcoming school assembly weighing on my mind?

And, almost certainly, the aftermath of a routine clinic appointment earlier in  the week. ('No change, although the distance you walked was considerably less than usual', any reason for that?' 'Yes, I'm feeling tired having just yomped up the hill to thw hospital.' ' Oh, well, that explains it'.)

 I am usually cheered up by a clinic visit - the 'no change' keeps me very happy, but not this time.

Barometric pressure, Oma would have said, nodding slowly and blinking at you though her thick lenses like an ancient owl. The weather was pretty appalling on Sunday, storm Freya and whatnot. Anyway, I came home and had a day of tv and knitting and reading and doing precious little, and the next day felt less fragile. On Tuesday I woke up feeling 'normal'. Howzat!

The usual me is mostly cheerful, mostly pragmatic, mostly happy, sometimes joyous, even. It's always a bit of a surprise to find oneself inside one's own personal thundercloud. But with family and friends all around (and sunshine and chocolate, don't forget the chocolate) normal self can usually be resumed fairly swiftly.

Meanwhile, I have finished one book, started another, and added many many many more rows to the various bits of knitting I am engaged upon.

It's Friday today, and I've been fine all week. Whatever it was that descended upon me last weekend seems to be gone.

I'm having to tap this post out on my tablet, as Leo has taken up residence in the computer chair.

We've provided her with a suitable box

but she likes to pick and choose.  (Honestly, she does fit in that box!)

Tuesday 13th May - Sunset - photograph

We have had the most beautiful pale pink-and-blue-and-grey sunset sky, visible from our sitting room window, looking towards the North West.

And a brighter, silver and gold and duck-egg-blue sunset, visible from our west-facing dining room window. Something along these lines, but alive and vivid. My mobile phone camera really doesn't have much of a hope at capturing what I can see.

Watching the sky was a huge solace during the long months following my mother's stroke, back in October 2012. It  was a great source of - not sure what, exactly. Space. Peace, Breadth. Perspective.

I remember last year, when I was nearing the end of a course of cyclophosphamide treatment, and beginning to feel quite tired and run down, all I wanted was to be driven somewhere where I could sit in a warm, sheltered spot, and look at a wide, expansive view, of sky, or sea, or even better, both at the same time.

Right now, that's what I feel in need of. Space, Peace, Breadth, Perspective.

It's because my diary, from now until the beginning of August, has suddenly become crammed with a whole load of dates. There are routine hospital appointments and blood tests, and dates when we need to do things for my family, and dates and times when we need to do things for Best Beloved's family.
Not to mention the way that the Summer Term teaching always gets disrupted by SATS tests, schools trips, Inset days and Sports Days, so that I am continually altering and updating my calendar. (And I also need to remember that they want the school music reports completed before half term if possible).

It will be OK once I get my head around all the dates and events and deadlines. It's this interim state, when I'm still not clear in my mind about everything, that I get anxious that I will miss a crucial deadline, or appointment.

So, what shall I do? Just look at the sky, and breathe. See, feeling better already!     

Wednesday 20th November - Standing start

Another post that somehow stayed as a draft - or got turned back into a draft, or now appears as a draft anyway (It's now Saturday 23rd November)

So, this morning, I'm pottering on the computer after breakfast before getting dressed. Looking at this, printing that, just investigating a few ideas for music lessons...

Then I amble into the kitchen and put the final few bits and pieces into my lunchbox, and fiddle around trying to close it without flat-packing the banana...

And I hear the alarm sound from my phone and I think HOLY MOSES - BLOOD TEST

Flip! That was a fifteen minute pop-up alarm!



I made it to the hospital, fully dressed, just in time, without speeding. The ice on the car had melted, thanks to the weather changing from freezing cold to just rain. All the traffic lights were green. I was able to park in one of the free 20 minutes "drop-off, pick-up" bay. The only hold up was caused by a couple of people ambling along the corridor to their appointment in front of me.

My word - it took no time at all to get the little test-tubes filled, the way my heart was pumping.

So then I drove steadily home to brush my hair, brush my teeth, and finish getting ready for work.

Oh, by the way, "yesterday's" post was another "here's one I prepared earlier" one. After I took the pictures, I moved the Christmas Cactus to another room, where a guest was staying for a few days, just to brighten things up. The flowers promptly died, the buds shrivelled and fell off, and I just have the basic green cactus back on the kitchen windowsill. I guess I'll have to wait for next year to see if it will flower again.

Tuesday 19th December - EXPLOSION!

My husband tells the story of what happened, many, many years ago when they let one of those "boil-in-the-tin" chocolate sponge puddings boil dry in a friend's kitchen.





Apparently it sprayed a fine dusting of chocolate sponge all over everywhere. Things were worse than they might have been, because it was an old-fashioned farmhouse kitchen, with an old-fashioned Oxford airer, fully loaded with clean washing, over the old-fashioned Aga.  



My father tells the story of what happened, many, many years ago, when they decided to make beef stew with dumplings in the pressure cooker.


Apparently the dumplings combined themselves into a giant dumpling, filling every available space inside the cooker, including the safety valve, until finally everything gave way and the kitchen was coated in dumpling-ness.






I can now add a new story; what happens when you don't drink your raspberry and cranberry juice drink which you bought last week sometime,

and carried around in your backpack all week,

and then shake up to mix the contents,

before deciding NOT to drink it after all,

and putting it, unopened, in the kitchen sink. They say that a picture contains a thousand words...


but this only gives half the picture. The rest of the fermented slurry was on the floor, on the cupboards behind me, on the back door to the right of the window, on the door to the hall to the left of the window, in the fruit basket; in short, everywhere. There were no witnesses, as the explosion was sudden and silent.

It didn't take that long to clear up as the splodges were still liquid. The person with the longest arms (that let me off) dealt with it. The tricky bit was finding the last splodge. There's always another last splodge after you thought you've mopped the last splodge.

Pressure builds up, and some kind of slow release system is an important part of many safety systems. We are all feeling pressured in the family at the moment. My mother is desperate to be better. Not being able to fend for herself, and being reliant on the nurses for everything is proving frustrating and depressing in equal measures. And the rest of the family is also feeling pressure; organising who is visiting when, remembering clean clothes, thinking of things to take in, like paper handkerchiefs, hand cream, delicious snacks, magazines...

We are all responding to the pressure in different ways. I have been leaving bits and pieces in schools all over the county; my speaker system is at one school and I might manage to remember it tomorrow. Or not. A warm and welcoming staffroom in a village school ten miles away is harbouring, all unawares, my half-eaten lunch in a lunch bag. I really, really hope there was no meat or banana in it, as I'm not due at that school until 15th January. I do know that I had soup in one flask, and porridge in another flask for lunch that day .....

Pressure as exerted by particle collisions inside a
closed container, from Wikipedia article on pressure

Emotional fragility, tiredness, crabbiness, forgetfulness - all these have to be coped with, kept under control during visits, and then released in a safe space, at a safe time, in a safe way. It's no good trying to keep everything contained all the time.

We mopped up the raspberry and cranberry juice with paper towels, and the evidence is almost gone - just a few suspiciously extra-clean patches on the ceiling. Our individual pressure releases can mostly be mopped up too, leaving a few suspiciously bright remarks,
some over-cheerful smiles, slightly shiny eyes.