Tag: life

If you don’t ask…

Raining again...

…you don’t get. Sometimes you can ask and you still don’t get, but if you don’t do the asking in the first place, you’ll never know.

I’ve always had a hard time asking for things. Always expected other people to somehow magically know what I wanted, which of course led to disappointment when they inevitably didn’t. I thought asking for things was bad. Greedy. Selfish. Needy. Rude. And so I rarely got what I wanted (sometimes, needed), and so I was sad a lot. My husband likes to remind me that he does not in fact have psychic powers, and that if I want him to do something, I actually need to remember to tell him. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I forget. But it’s always better to ask and be told no, than is it not to ask and to never know.

January is always the time of year for Resolutions. I used to be a great resolution-maker, very serious, and then always very cross with myself when things didn’t work out exactly as I’d Resolved. This year, I’m making a change. I’m doing two things: 1) choosing a word that I want to embody this new year, and 2) making a great big list of WANTS instead of Resolutions.

The word part was easy for me this year, and the word is action! 

I spent so much of last year waiting, hibernating, feeling ill, that I just allowed my life to happen around me, for the most part. Clearly that can’t continue – I’ve done far more than my fair share of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and it’s time to move on. I decided to treat myself to Honey & Ollie’s One Word bracelet, which Rain will be making for me with the word action! stamped right across the middle. Any time I feel inclined to moan and feel sorry for myself about things not going the way I want, I can look at the bracelet and be reminded that there’s always something, no matter how small; there will always be an action I can take that will change things.

(Sometimes, yes, the action will be go to the shop and buy a giant bar of chocolate and sit in a nice hot bubble bath whilst eating it, because fibromyalgia sucks and I need a tiny bit of luxury right now. But an action’s an action, no matter how small.)

The other part, the I WANT part, still feels a bit weird, a bit selfish. But the important thing to remember is that just because I WANT something, there is nothing and nobody out there in the universe that is obliged to leap up and simply give that thing to me. If I WANT something, I have to WORK for it. And there will always, always be an action! I can take that will move me one tiny step closer.

So, these are a few of the things that I WANT for 2014.

1) I WANT a lovely garden
I have the bones of a lovely garden, but it will take a lot of work to turn it into the garden that’s in my head, and I’m going to need help. Fortunately my Mum loves gardening, and she’s offered to come over with books to help us identify what some of the giant overgrown shrubs are supposed to be. We have one friend who can help us to design and landscape the space, and another who can help me to keep on top of looking after it all. (We’ll pay them for that, of course, as that’s how they earn a living.) For now I’m reading Gardeners World magazine, and doing a bit of pruning when I feel up to it. I can do more when it’s not raining all the time!

2) I WANT to be more healthy
Well, my doctor’s pretty much given up on me with this one (long story, very dull), and acupuncture’s beyond my budget at the moment, even though I know it would help. So, it’s up to me to try and keep the fibromyalgia a little more under control. I’ve started by giving up coffee and caffeinated fizzy drinks. I kind of want to give up caffeine altogether, but I don’t think I could survive without tea! So I’m taking things a step at a time. I’m giving up dairy, because I already know it doesn’t agree with me, which I need to keep reminding myself means NO MILK CHOCOLATE.  I also need to do more exercise. This can be a tricky one with fibromyalgia, because the increased blood flow through the body can make the pain much, much worse, which then makes the fatigue much, much worse, which isn’t terribly helpful! But, I’m walking a mile home from the bus stop most days, and when the weather stops being quite so revolting I want to start catching the bus a little further away from work, so these little bits will all start to add up.

3) I WANT a pair of silver shoes
Yes, that went from very serious to rather frivolous quite quickly, I know! I’ve spent the past couple of years building up my shoe collection, and the only gap left in it is for a pair of silver shoes that I can wear in summer. I have a moneybox which collects all my spare change as I save up for the pair I want… but that rather depends on whether Ren at Fairysteps decides to make any silver shoes this year! If not, then I’ll order a pair from Conker instead. I figure that the weather won’t be nice enough for summer shoes until at least May, so I’ve got a while to save up!

4) I WANT an instant camera
I recently acquired two boxes of Instax Wide film to go with a Fuji 200 or 210 instant camera. I have a friend who thinks she has the right model of camera and is willing to lend it to me, I just need to wait until our paths next cross at work. If my two boxes of film come out well, and I actually do something with the pictures, then I’ll decide whether to buy an instant camera of my own.

5) I WANT to run my own business again 
Well, that part’s easy. On April 6th, the beginning of the new tax year, I’ll set myself up as a Sole Trader again, and start running Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium as a formal business arrangement. The difficult part will be deciding what I want to make, and how to sell it! As I’ve said before, the past year has been spent doing a lot of research, and I’ll be carrying over most things that are currently in the Etsy store. There will also be new things, once my hat blocks arrive, so I’ll just have to wait and see how they’re received.

There’s more, of course, but I think that’s plenty for now!

I have made one Resolution, which is to do something towards the business every single day, no matter how small. As it turns out I’ve been ill for the past few days (since I went back to work!), so the actions have been very small indeed. I’ve sewn some experimental bootlaces, sent out a parcel, re-listed some items on Etsy, and not much else! Once I’m feeling better (stupid tonsils) I can get back to doing more again.

Pseudo Sunday

Italian Eucalyptus Honey

Today is one of those days when I’m extremely grateful to be able to work part time. The fibromyalgia and the endometriosis have got together, and invited some germs round to play. As a result I’m sitting on the sofa wrapped in a quilt, scoffing painkillers, doing a bit of very simple knitting, and falling asleep every five minutes. Not an ideal state of being for welcoming visitors to a museum.

To make the germs a little less welcome, I’m drinking Earl Grey tea sweetened with this incredible bright green honey! A friend brought it back from a trip to Italy, and the colour is from eucalyptus. That means it soothes and eases congestion in one go, and the flavour works amazingly well with the already-fragrant Earl Grey.

During the brief moments I’m awake, I’m plotting a knitting pattern for a new pair of mittens. Tight fitting cuffs, quite long, to keep the wrists warm. A row of holes for a pretty ribbon. I need to knit a test pair, during which I can make up the rest of the details as I go along – and then try and make a second one to match. Now the weather’s decided that it’s autumn, I’m definitely going to need some new gloves for those early mornings at the bus stop.

Snowed under at work…

MERL Garden

Not literally, thank goodness, although this is a picture of the garden at work when it was very frosty just before Christmas! But there have been a lot of changes going on, which has meant a lot of meetings, which has meant going into work on my days off, which has added up to nothing getting done! And this week’s half term, so I’m working extra days for that, so nothing’s going to get done until next week now.

Shortly after that I start a new shift pattern, which doubles the hours of one of my roles, and means working half days and different days each week. All very confusing at the moment, but all we can do is see how it all settles down in time. The best part about this change is that I no longer have to work every weekend, just one in four! So I’ll be able to spend some time with my husband again, and we can hopefully start taking our cameras out and about.

All this is a very long-winded way of saying that I have no idea when I’ll next be able to sit down at the computer and write something, but I hope it won’t be too long!

An old lady and a wet rabbit.

Old Lady moth (Mormo Maura)

Today, the rabbit escaped. He lives indoors, but I must have left his gate ajar, because he managed to make a dash for it into the garden. Paul came home from work to help me capture him, and while he was moving some pieces of wood around (Paul, not the rabbit), I spotted this great big moth.

It turned out to be an Old Lady (Mormo maura), and I took this photo of it while we were waiting for the rabbit to decide whether he was going to stay underneath my Shed all afternoon.

Eventually Paul managed to capture Mister Stinkyface (real name Johnny Depp, long story, not our fault!), and we took advantage of his captivity to unceremoniously dump him in the bath and give him a wash.

After more than an hour of wrestling with an angry, wet rabbit, we eventually decided he was as clean as he was ever going to be, and let him go.

Johnny after his bath.

As you can see, he is NOT IMPRESSED by this outrageous treatment.

Perhaps that’ll teach him not to go around escaping in future!

Arthroscopy

Monkey slippers!

My monkey slippers are having a bit of an outing today. By the time you read this I’ll be in hospital, waiting to have an arthroscopy on my right hip.

Way back in February 2009, it snowed. I had a doctor’s appointment that I couldn’t miss, so I put on my army boots and walked. In the space of two and a half miles I fell down, hard, not once but three times. Naturally, this hurt. I ignored the pain for quite a while, thinking that of course my hip would hurt after I’d fallen down on it. But during the course of 2009, I became slower and slower. Walking is my primary form of transport, so this became a bit of a problem.

In the summer I bought a new bike with lots of gears, but it was still painful to ride it very far. In the autumn I took up clog dancing, and that’s when things really started to hurt. I carried on ignoring the pain, partly because I was really enjoying the dancing, but mostly because I was getting married in October, and I was so busy that I didn’t have time to think about anything as trivial as a sore hip!

Our honeymoon was very active – we spent a week hiking and swimming at Center Parcs, and another week walking all over London. Some days I was in so much pain that I’d be in tears by the time we made it (slowly) back to the apartment. That made the holiday much less fun than it ought to have been.

So when we got home, I made an appointment to see the doctor. She sent me to a physiotherapist, who frightened me by telling me that he thought I had a crack in my femur that I’d been walking about on all year! I was rapidly sent off to hospital for x-rays, which showed nothing. Thank goodness! It did show the deformity in my left hip, but the right one definitely wasn’t broken. Then it was off for an arthrogram – a singularly unpleasant experience which I won’t describe and wouldn’t recommend! This was immediately followed by an MRI scan, to try and see inside the joint.

The MRI revealed a tear in the cartilage, and today I’m in hospital for the keyhole surgery which will fix it.

The down side of the surgery is that for several months my hip will actually be much worse than it is at the moment. This is extremely frustrating, as I want to be better as soon as I can! But hopefully, once the joint has settled down, my hip will be fine and I can get back to walking and hiking and cycling again.