Monday 18 February 2013

An anticipated but nervous move

So you all know I twitter on about my manky hands and I may or may not have (because I have a brain made of mush and aliens) alluded to having special equipment at work.  I have a bulging disc at C5/C6 which gets lazy and leans against a nerve or two when it feels like it sending weird and not so wonderful pains down my arms and hands.  

Anyhoo, I have a specialist desk, chair, keyboard, mouse and voice activated equipment at work. The only problem is that I am a touch typist and can type faster than the voice activated equipment wants to work.  As for excel work, we the voice activated equipment may as well go on strike.  If it was an actual person it would be sacked for being about as useful as ice-cream in hell.  In a room with other people it just flat out sulks.

I am in a little room of my own which does get lonely but I have some wonderful photos of Beautiful B and Damon from The Vampire Diaries on the wall and a nice magnetic white board with fridge magnets on that say things such as "It's been Monday all week" and "Real women don't have hot flushes - they have power surges".  

These buildings are being closed and we are moving to an office which is open plan with very few cellular rooms.  This means I have to move to a room full of people and today I moved to a room full of people to prepare the voice activated equipment to pull up its socks, suck it up and just do it's job.  Maybe with more memory and better microphone and sound card but that is what this initial move is for.

Except I hate talking in a room full of people - it's embarrassing and that doesn't count the frustration I am going to feel when the voice activated equipment doesn't work as I want it to.  

I spend too much time typing, it is too tempting for me to type when busy, which at the moment is ALL THE TIME so being in a room sat next to my boss who is going to remind me to use the right equipment will be good for me.

I need to suck it up and get on with it and accept if it slows my productivity.  The pain I experience is affecting home life and that sucks.  I have had 6 inches chopped off my hair as I couldn't brush it after a shower, I use special equipment to chop vegetables, Hubby does the ironing because using the strength needed causes pain for days.  To top it off now I can't play my beloved computer games and do my cross-stitch which leave me the TV and reading.  I am hoping that using the voice-activated equipment as I should, even though it will make me slow (which I already know I will find so hard to swallow) will allow me to do more housework at home and be able to stitch again as well as play computer games.  

Time will tell.  In the meantime, until the rest of the people in this room learn to tune my voice out, I am off to annoy each and every single one of them while I lose my temper with the voice activated equipment.

Wish me luck......

Saturday 16 February 2013

My wonderful brother and his wonderful fiance

So, today is Friday (but it's been published the day after) and I am so excited.  Hubby and I are visiting my brother C and his fiance A tonight.  He has already prepared my dinner and texted me a photo of it last night (he is a wonderful cook) because he is so good to me.  

We are out for a couple of cocktails, well A and I will be; Hubby and C will be on lager before we return for dinner and more alcohol.  I am being spoiled and we are staying overnight so I can drink and be even merrier and not worry about driving home or getting a taxi (at extortionate prices).

I am excited because as well as being wonderful, I did not speak to my brother for 18 months.  Technically he is my ex-brother in law and when he split from my sister I refused to talk to him for a while.  I was hurt that she was hurt and also, if I am honest, I was hurt that I lost a brother.

He was patient, waited for me to forgive him and we have picked up where we left off.  C and Hubby are so alike, like two peas in a pod, and are best friends and I have become best friends with his fiance, A which some might think is a bit weird but it isn't.

I love that he loves me, I love that he loves my nuttiness, I love that he looks forward to seeing me as much as I him, I love the huge bear hugs I get every time I see him, I love that when in one particular bar he drags me on the dance floor to dance and sing loudly (and badly) to our favourite 80's music.

I love that although he said he would never marry again, A broke down his defenses and he loves her enough to want to risk breaking his heart again.  I love that A loves me, I love that we are best friends, I love that she has asked me to be her matron of honour (though admittedly my sister is going to hate that), I love that she wants me involved in planning every aspect of the wedding.  I love that I can get over my bruised feelings about how my sister and C broke up to accept A and she me.

Anyhoo, I may not be in a fit state to post on Saturday, hence setting this one up early.

My little aliens and I are off now, to dance around my office chair in muted excitement all day waiting desperately for 3pm.

 

Friday 15 February 2013

Five things Friday

I read a wonderful blog called "From Inmates to Playdates" every day.  Julie sounds as nutty as me and I am sure if I met her I would love her.  Go on, go and read her blog and then come back - I'll wait.

See?  Told you she was wonderful.

In the meantime, I am going to do a post today that Julie started - Five things Friday - and today it is all about Beautiful B.

Beautiful B has been ill for five weeks now! After an enforced week off work she returned determined to continue to help her patients even though she got a cold on the back of the severe chest infection.  Turns out it was not such a good thing....as we found out when test results came back and the GP called her in to see her.  She has:

  1. still got a chest infection so received even stronger antibiotics because the bacteria which should be susceptible to 500mg of amoxycillin 4 times a day, let alone 1g 4 times daily decided it didn't want to be;
  2. exacerbated her asthma, for which she hasn't had an attack since she was 8 so now has 2 different inhalers to use;
  3. has a severe ear infection causing her to be almost deaf in her right ear;
  4. has a severely inflamed throat infection; and
  5. has completely lost her voice other than the odd squeak but still insists on trying to speak.
So we came out of the GP surgery nearly £25 lighter because of the meds and an enforced sick note for a week as the GP was scared Beautiful B would defy her advice and try and go back to work and an instruction to see her in another week to ensure the infection has cleared up.

Beautiful B is not overly impressed at having to be off work, though lets face it, she works on an orthopedic ward with a lot of old frail people - with the infection she has she could inadvertently pass an illness on that could kill one of them.  Home is the best place for her. 

I'm guessing that the manta "you do not go to the doctors unless you feel like you are dying" throughout my childhood rubbed off onto me and now Beautiful B as she has plodded on feeling breathless on the slightest exertion thinking she would eventually get better.  Sometimes, my mum and I have a lot to answer for!



Thursday 14 February 2013

What I learned this week


The first thing I learned was that I blinked and this week was over!

  • Wearing a plastic splint on my little finger makes it awkward to touch type and is most annoying.  Being awkward, I will persevere though because I am like that.
  • The NHS Walk in Centre which is in the same building as my GP and the hospital are not very good at communicating with each other.  A call to see the GP was a wasted appointment as they were made aware of my broken finger but not that it had already been splinted and I had endured a trip to the fracture clinic 3 days before.
  • Everyone else is more concerned than me about the number of falls I have; personally I think I am careless.  Having said that, I did not trip over my own feet or slip on anything to break this finger – one minute I was falling and the next I was trying, unsuccessfully, to stop myself falling and smacking my head on the security pass reader as well as breaking a finger.
  • According to Hubby who helps disabled people across the country, I would be eligible for disability benefit based on the number of falls I have in a year – if only I had a legitimate reason for falling; in my opinion not being very good at being a weeble does not constitute sufficient reason for benefit.   Let’s also not forget that I would not claim disability benefit unless I was confined to a wheelchair!
  • A GP may not be concerned about my falls (rightly so in my humble opinion) but a pharmacist innocently going through my shopping list of medications for numerous conditions will innocently tell me while we discuss reducing dosages for a specific medication that I could reduce 3 pills to 2 throughout the day.  Apparently, innocently asking whether I should be taking all 3 in the morning because I forget to take the other 2 during the day as I get distracted by, well anything, will cause her to almost fall off her chair.  Taking 3 in one hit drops my blood pressure through the floor which more than likely explains the number of falls.  Problem sorted.
  • When Hubby calls to find out if the GP is going to send me for all sorts of unnecessary tests to determine if I have a life threatening condition that would cause falls (you know, because he just has to find something to worry about when it comes to me) you can see him shaking his head when you explain the most likely reason for falls.  It does give him sufficient reason to ask “Have you taken your pills today?” frequently – who needs an alarm clock to remind me when I have my own personal walking reminder system?
  • In other news, I still get over excited when household appliances arrive and work as wonderfully as they say on the TV.  Hubby will not be impressed at the “best present you have ever bought him” when he sees what it is – well, he does do all the ironing because my cervical discs, arms and hands refuse to co-operate with each other.  Mum and Dad thought it was hilarious! The truly brilliant steam function does mean that I can actually help him with the ironing and that means the world to me.
  • When I tell Hubby that I have bought him a present and that he will think it is the best present ever, his response of pointing to his wedding ring and saying “This is the best present you have ever bought me” will make my heart melt.

Friday 1 February 2013

Sink or basin

Yesterday after a hard long day at work Hubby and I arrived at my mum and dad's house for tea.  Apparently roast dinners don't taste the same if not eaten on a Sunday (in my mum's world - and people wonder why I am strange....) but she made a roast dinner on a Thursday just for Hubby who loves them.  What does this have to do with sinks and basins I hear you ask.

My dad was in the army until I was 6.  When he left the army apparently my sister and I talked 'posh' - garage was pronouned 'garaaage' and such like.  However, living with my mum has left me with a 'northern' accent and I tend to drop into a broader dialect when with her.  Hubby lived further down the country until he was 14.  I generalise by saying that most people from 'down South' talk posher than we do up North. My broader dialect had me deleting ".....us up North."  

Yesterday morning mum and dad went off to the DIY store to buy a plug for their bathroom sink.  In the UK, a plug for a sink is 1/2 inch and for a bath 3/4 inch.  Naturally, they bought the plug for the sink.  When they got home it was too big.  The conversation went like this:

Mum:  "Ribena, what do you call that thing upstairs that you wash in?"
Me:    "A shower, why?"
Mum:  "No, that you wash your hands in..."
Me:    "A sink, I assume there is a point to this question?" (laughing)
Mum:  "Not a basin then?"
Me:    "No that is a bowl!"
Mum:  "You are wrong. Hubby, what is it called?"
Hubby:"A basin." (being posh)
Me:     "Ooooh, get you!"
Mum:  "Apparently a sink plug is for the kitchen but a plug for a bathroom sink is a plug for a basin."

So a trip back to the DIY shop to buy the correctly sized plug.  They had to actually look at sinks to discover bathroom sinks are basins and what they needed was a basin plug. I wasn't having this - these southeners were obviously infiltrating DIY shops now!

Me:      "Hubby, Google it.  What is the difference between a basin and a sink?"  
Hubby: "A sink is located in the kitchen and a washbasin is located in the bathroom."
Me:      "Damn Google...."

Mum has a habit of talking all day long, mostly random stuff.  She also has a habit of talking to my dad from the kitchen when he is in the living room (sitting room or lounge if you are from down south).  He has to get up and go into the kitchen to talk to her.  This drives me mad personally. 

Dad said she talks all day; I said "Tune her out.  Hubby does with me."  I will agree that I am very much like my mum.  Dad is laughing at me and Hubby says "If I listened to everything Ribena said in a day my brain would explode."

He demonstrated this later in the evening when I was talking to him and during the conversation said something along the lines of:  "Well, that is okay because they live over there."  What it actually sounded like was "Well, that's okay cos they live oorrr therrrrr"

Me:       "Hubby, did you listen to that?"
Hubby:  "No, I tuned you out."
Me:       "Well that's okay cos they live oooorrrr therrrrr?"
Hubby:  "What?" (with a confused expression)
Me:       "I say it all the time.  It's over there."
Hubby:  "Never heard you say that before.  Just say over there."
Me:       "Yes, I say it all the time, especially if talking when driving as I am doing two things at once."
Hubby:  "Thank you. I am so much more confident as your passenger now."

It has left me wondering how he does half of the things I ask him to or what conversations he actually understands.  I can only assume that his brain is automatically filling in the words he doesn't understand by using the rest of the sentence. Apparently I don't talk as broadly at home.  I only start talking to my family with that accent when around them.  Maybe I talk posh when around Hubby?

Doubtful, seen as this post is full of sentences that are not grammatically correct but make perfect sense to me.