Not quite the Secret Seven.

 

I've always been in two minds about keeping a journal.  On the one hand, because I keep a copy on my hard drive, it really is the nearest to a diary I've ever managed to maintain for more than the 3 weeks when I got a locked diary for my 8th birthday so in that sense it will I hope be an aide memoire in years to come.  BTW, when I was 8 I tended to say, every day, "went to school, didn't eat my cabbage, it rained" But I also wonder whether having a public journal, even tho I keep fairly quiet about it, isn't actually a bit egocentric.

Lately I've been spending time looking at all the journals on nablopomo and I have read so many entries by the really brave, the really adventurous and the really philosophical that I cannot help but forcefully realise how very dull my blog must be to people who don't know me - and doubtless even more so to those who do! 

I've also read countless entries by people just noting their everyday lives, humdrum domesticity and the doings of families and as their entries mount up I've got a sense of them as personalities.  I've even, in my head, taken sides in their family bickerings tho I have yet to email any of them and put them right  LOL.  

As I read these entries it's occurred to me to give that a try.  So while I have my doubts that any of my select group of regular readers (ie all 5 or 6 of you <g>) will be fascinated to know what I've cooked for dinner, what I've bought in the shops, what my kids have said on the phone, the multifareous ways in which my husband winds me up...  I'm going to give it a go.  But not quite yet.

 

For now I'm going to do what almost everyone in nablopomo is currently doing - giving 7 weird random facts about myself:

 

1. Whenever I see a large weed I am impelled to pull it out.  It doesn't matter where it is, private garden or public planting, or whether people are looking -- if I see a large groundsel or a sycamore seedling or anything else which ought not to be there then out it has to come. 

 

2. I pick the jelly out of pork pies and leave it on my plate.

 

3. My toe nails are always varnished, winter and summer alike.

 

4. My first husband has had a canal barge built and intends to live on it once it's fitted out.

 

5. I can become accustomed to squalor almost at the speed of light.

 

6. My elder brother was killed while riding my new bike.

 

7. I was once engaged to an American.

 

Well, that's it for now.  Tomorrow, or sometime fairly soon, I intend to regale you all with sidesplitting and/or heartrending tales of the daily grind chez nous.  I bet you can't wait! 

The omnipresent eye

After needing specs for 50 years my husband can now, using only the eye which was operated on yesterday, easily read what I'm typing here in comic sans size 10 from a distance of 6'.  It's a good job I never diss him  ;-)

We went into town today to get one of the lenses in his specs changed to plain glass as an interim measure and it was very reminiscent of going to town with Constance.  He needed his hand held descending stairs and kept reading aloud from street signs and shop windows.  I may apply to Children In Need for a Grant.

Eye aye

 

My husband is home after having his cataract surgery this afternoon and all seems to have gone very well.  He's now sitting in his chair with the dog and cat on his lap, and a clear perspex eye guard taped over his left eye.  Aww, bless.   

He has to keep the eyeguard on until tomorrow morning and then wear it over night for the next week and have eyedrops 4 times a day for the next 4 weeks until he gets the all-clear.  Then he'll be arranging to have the other eye done early in the  New Year.  He's been very matter of fact and stoic in the lead up to this which, given that he's not had any surgery since he was a lad, is brilliant I think.  I'd have wittered and needed regular reassurance I suspect.

 

It's a fascinating operation.  The eye and all nerves around it are numbed by anaesthesia and then the sac, which is within the eye and behind the iris, in which the fluid has become opaque is penetrated on 2 sides by a teensy opthalmic pipette.  The murky contents are then 'vacuumed' out and a clear replacement fluid inserted.  It takes about 20 minutes which is an amazingly short time for such a life-changing outcome.

Mind, it's a good job there's not a big soccer match on TV over the next few days else he'd not be a happy or stoic convalescent bunny.

It's fun, fun, fun all the way today.

 

Two weeks of workmen in the house ended early Saturday afternoon, thank God.  They were polite, considerate, quiet and did a good job but I really don't like having to get dressed first thing in the morning.  I'm the sort of slobby woman who greets the mid-morning postie in her dressing gown.  So it was great to get the house back except once the workmen had finished the bathroom had to be decorated.  Sizing, caulking, cutting in, 2 coats ceiling, 3 coats walls, inch by inch cleaning.  Having looked in close up detail at that bathroom I shudder to think that children have been bathed in the grunge.  Now they could have an appendectomy there.  Tomorrow my husband fixes the cabinet, towel ring and rail and loo paper holder.  So that would be a diy-aphobe, plus power drill, plus newly plastered walls the day before he has his cataract surgery.  What's the betting I'll have workmen back by next Monday?

 

My other cause for joy is being told by my GP that I need cortisone injections in the ball of my thumb and, gulp, my coccyx.

 

A pic of my eldest granddaughter Thea with Felix. 

 

 

Tits R Us

 

Yes, I know I'm dumber than a dumbbell for even clicking on this, but hey, I'm still not quite as dumb as these dumb boobies.  If you had the squillions of £$ that these woman have firstly would you give a flying fek what anyone thought of your figure and second if you had a boob job which gave you one near your navel and one up by your collarbone wouldn't you go back and smack the plastic (surgeon)?

 

Perhaps they needed a surgical opthalmologist more than they needed breasts like melons.

 

Click here: Bad celebrity boob jobs - AOL Photo Gallery

nablopomo rocks

 

I wonder if anyone else has noticed this blogthing which has taken hold of American bloggers?  Every day throughout November everyone taking part tries to make at least one post to their blog each day, and you can read a random selection via this link:

 

Click here: http://nablopomo.ning.com/random.html

 

I've spent a happy hour or two engrossed with these random blogs.  There are blogs on poetry, drawing, cooking, knitting, family life, countryside, politics, home schooling, romance, city life, TV, music and film - you name it sooner or later this link will throw up a blog about it.  I think it's a fantastic idea and wish that AOL Journals did something similar.

3 cheers for the AOL General Help board posters!

 

I just had an awfully traumatic incident with my PC.  It really threw a wobbly on me and I had to switch it off.  Then when I rebooted I sent an error report to microsoft and they came back with an explanation I didn't understand and advice as to what to do about it.  That involved opening somewhat scarey sounding files in Device Manager.  Anyway, it was like totally freakin me out dood.

 

At a loss and messing my panties I posted on the General AOL Help board which I read quite often in hopes that something will rub off on me - tho it would have to be by osmosis because generally I don't understand much of what they say.  Bless those brilliant helpful members, they came back within minutes and gave me the very best advice I've ever had regarding PCs.  Here it is:

 

>>> The simplest solution: if after restarting the computer it seems to be behaving normally, don't do a thing.  Wobblies happen, and very often just require a restart, and, if the wobbly was very frightening, a stiff drink.

Never start taking anything apart or annoying your software if it only happened the once!  <g>

 

If you ever have a problem with your pc or with aol, then if you have this link to the board in your Faves you'll be okay.  AOL General Questions

Quack quack quack

 

When I was a young woman I developed plantain warts on my chin.  They were virtually flat, small, and the same colour as the rest of my chin but I was very self-conscious about them.  I had pills and creams from my GP and twice had them 'freeze-burned' off in hospital.  I can't tell you how much good it did my self-image to have a bandaged suppurating chin.  Nothing worked.  At my final appointment when I refused to have them 'frozen off' again I was told that the consultant had no doubt that I'd fallen victim to warts due to my resistance being lowered by the stresses of being a working mother of small children.  So nur nur to me.

 

I also suffered from very severe headaches which nothing could touch. When I almost walked under a bus because I'd lost all peripheral vision and hadn't quite twigged that I had I was taken to A&E and seen by an eye consultant as an emergency.  He told me that I had migraines, and that the cause was stress due to my being a working mother of small children.  Stop working, take a holiday and you'll have no more headaches.  I still need to take daily sanomigran two decades later as a prophylactic.

 

One of my children had hearing problems.  Her school denied it and said it was entirely behavioural. I took her to the doctor who said that her hearing was fine but that she was doubtless attention-seeking because she was a small child with a working mother.  [Eventually in despair I took her to a child psychiatrist.  He told me it was a waste of time and to bring her back when she could hear.  When she eventually had her own (peripatetic) teacher for the deaf he told me she was the most intuitive lipreader he'd ever come across.]

 

So when I was a young woman the stock response from frustrated medics was that all women's health issues were due in some part to the inevitable stresses of continuing to work after having children.

 

Now it's smoking and before any of you nod in agreement that smoking is the cause of all human ills just wait - within 5 years the cause of all that's bad will be eating the 'wrong' food. 

 

You may be interested to know that in preparation for the government's case for banning smoking, all health stats where the patient had smoked at some point during their life was designated as 'smoking related'.  So if you smoked for 6 months as an adolescent and broke your leg 30 years later, then you're one of those stats. 

And it'll do you no good leaving out the buns and bacon from now on - they've got your number and they'll be using it against you sometime soon.

 

Doctors?  Bandwagon jumpers the lot of them.

Maybe white men can't dance

But white birds can!

Bird Lovers Only Rescue: May I have this dance?

Who's that knocking at my door?

 

This morning we were visited by officers from HM Customs & Immigration.  Armed with a survey map they asked whether we owned the paddock and when we confirmed that they asked if we could show them where the runway strips were.  On their map our paddock and the adjoining field constitute an airfield and they needed to ascertain whether it was in use. 

I was very tempted to ask them if they thought I'd be sweeping out my own courtyard if I were making bags of dosh by providing landing facilities for planes full of illegal immigrants but I thought it best not to push it - an orange jumpsuit would ruin my 'hamlet cred' at Evensong.  So off we went, me in wellies, they in smart town shoes, striding through piles of horse manure until they were quite sure that the ponies weren't eating concrete.

 

It makes a change from people knocking at the door and asking for 3lb of Bramleys I suppose.