life in general – Enchilada Sunrise

Phonelessness

Woe is me, etc etc, I am bereft of my mobile phone. Oh noes, dramaz dramaz, how will I survive?!

Quite well, as it happens. To be fair, I have a tablet – an old slightly creaky model, yes, but a tablet nonetheless – so it’s not like I don’t have any kind of portable interwebs. Because that’s so very vital for things like plurking, or watching youtube or iplayer, or checking my email from the bedroom. You know, instead of walking the 20-odd feet to the PC in the living room.

Of course, I also have a landline phone. I’m far from cut off from the world without my mobile. But it’s been five days, and it’s actually been kind of nice. A sort of holiday. I don’t really know why, since as I said it’s not that much of a practical change. Maybe it’s that I’ve become a bit dependant on that one little device – it’s used for phone calls, texts, email, games, social networking, music, radio, ebooks, audiobooks, a calendar, a camera… but hey, look, I can actually trundle along without it perfectly well.

That doesn’t mean I’ll use it less when I get it back, but I could. If I chose to. Which I won’t.

Accidental week off.

Or nearly a week, anyway. Six days. I completely forgot to blog at the weekend… and managed to carry on forgetting all week until today. Whoops! So I’ll extend my blogging an extra week, I think. Or maybe I’ll keep going until the end of July. I’ll aim for that. And beyond, of course, but hopefully every day until then.

So, what have I been up to this week? Not a lot, really. Much the same as I have for the last few months. That’s mostly involved not going out a lot. I don’t actually remember the last time when I managed to leave the house by myself, either. Not counting letting the cat in and out, and putting the rubbish out – somehow that doesn’t seem to count as Going Out in my wonky brain, even though if I want to go somewhere further than the end of the garden path I haven’t made it past the flat door. Make sense of that!

I had to go out today, and will again tomorrow, as I have an appointment with my psychiatrist in the morning. Mum has been brilliant about coming over and helping me get out / taking me places. Today was an appointment at the Jobcentre to talk to them about work and things now that I’ve been moved onto the new ESA benefit. In my case, that was pretty much going over the fact that, what with not being so well, I can’t do full time work, but I can continue with the (part time) Permitted Work scheme. So that’s OK. What was less OK was the panic attack part of the proceedings, but it wasn’t a major one and I think I’ve remembered everything alright. If not, I can ask Adam-the-support-worker who was there with me. Mum had just dropped me off there, as Adam knows the ropes for this kind of appointment. But she will be coming in to the appointment tomorrow, as per usual. Her perspective is useful, but she can also remind me of anything I forget to mention as well. Two heads are better than one, and all that stuff.

And on that note, I’d better go and make my list of things I have to remember for tomorrow. Oh, and wipe my phone ready for taking it back to the shop for repairs. Poor wee thing. (No phone? How will I cope?! Noooooo! etc) Good night!

Mid-month Blogathon Challenge

I’m sure I’ve said this umpteen times, but I really do want to get back into blogging more regularly. So, I’ve decided to set myself a blogathon / blopomo challenge: posting every day for a month from today, June 15th.

I don’t think I’m going to have a theme, though if I do start to get stuck I might try the alphabet meme thing. That worked pretty well for me before. It’s probably going to be general rambling and catching up on what’s going on in my life, though. Exciting stuff! Or, you know, not.

As a reminder to myself in case I’m in need of inspiration, I’m going to try to write about

What I’ve been up to over the last few months
Mental health stuff (which kind of ties in with the above, tbh)
My favourite niece, Miss RA
Merlin McPurrlin (cat spam, here we come)
Knittin’ and Spinnin’
What I’ve been fangirling over
And my forays into learning to be a bit of a girly girl. Sometimes.

Alrighty, first post accomplished! I have some partners in ‘thoning crime, gathered via my Plurk flist. So, hi Che Rex, Char (also on deviantart), dangerouslycrafty and captainstardust. Feel free to prod me if I forget to post!

Ergonomically Speaking

For nearly 18 months now, my left shoulder has been “ouchy”. By which I mean, there are stabbity pains in the joint, the muscles down my upper arm have gradually got more and more tense, and putting my arm back to put on a coat or whatever sometimes just didn’t really work. In summary: ow.

But hooray, I’ve finally worked my way up the waiting list and a couple of weeks ago I saw the physiotherapist at the hospital for my first appt. And guess what? My posture is completely borked, and my back is as tight as an exceedingly tight thing, which has caused and/or exacerbated inflammation of my shoulder ligaments(? tendons? I forget). Then blah blah tl:dr subsequent tensing of the arm muscles and it’s all been a whole catch-22.

So, I’ve got exercises to do, which I think are definitely helping, but the one thing that she said also needed to be sorted out asap was my computer desk ergonomics. I spend an awful lot of time sitting here, and I have known it needed sorting out: there was a shelf for the monitors which put them too high even if I had my chair up as far as possible, which in its turn meant that my short little legs were dangling in the air. Plus, I was smooshed up against the wall on my left side and, it turns out, had my mouse too far over to the right! Whoops.

I have actually been looking for a new desk for a while now, but can’t really afford one just yet. However, my brother came up with a couple of excellent ideas: Mum is redecorating his old bedroom, complete with new furniture which meant that his old desk was going spare. So I’ll be getting that once we can get it over here. And then he asked if I could detach the monitor shelf. That hadn’t even occurred to me. Yes, I could. So I did. Then I moved the printer (which was on the right of the desk), pulled the desk away from the wall, and put the printer in the resulting space there instead.

It’s not the perfect solution: there’s a middle shelf bracket that means I can’t put the monitors right to the back of the main desk, but since the keyboard is on a pull-out tray, I’m still a good distance back.

I’m left with less workspace for now, but only until I get the second desk. And I’ve been able to put my chair back down to a me-sized height. This means that I’m finally, for the first time in years (!) sitting properly at my desk. So much better!

I think it also helps that a bloke I know is doing a course in sports massage at the college, and I get to be one of his guinea pigs. Doing the physio exercises unsurprisingly stretched things in my back that’d been determinedly tense for ages, so it was fab having that ironed back out again. I have two more sessions with him to go, too. :-)

Welcome to the jungle family!

So, what with not having posted properly for ages again, I haven’t mentioned that there are two new additions to the family! One actual brand new person, and one fuzzy feline dictator.

First of all (not chronologically, but never mind that), my Favourite Niece, who is also my first and only niece or nephew, arrived in the big wide world last summer. Here she is aged 2 months:

photo of Ms RA and her Daddy — Favourite Niece aka Ms RA, with her Daddy

It's srs bznz, this growing up thing — It’s srs bznz, this growing up thing

And this is a more recent photo, aged nearly 6 months:

photo of Ms RA wth Mummy — Ms RA invites you to try some of her parsnips

Isn’t she adorable? *proud auntie face*

And secondly we have Mr Merlin McPurrlin, my new feline overlord. He is about 2 years old, loves his play tunnel and yellow-mouse, prefers to drink from the bath tap… and yeah, has me very well trained! He came to live with me back in the late spring, after having been left in a box outside the vet’s because he’d been spraying in his previous owner’s home. The vet gave him the snip, and surprise – no more spraying since then. He’s a lovely boy, and I’m very glad that I happened to pop into the vet at just the right time!

photo of Mr Merlin McPurrlin — Merlin McPurrlin, Lord of ~~The Remote Control~~ All The Things

The Good, The Sad, and the Dusty

I know, I know. It’s been ages. Again. I won’t try to update on everything that I’ve been up to, so here are five things: three good, one sad, and one dusty.

The Good.

1. I have a new blog! What on earth for, when I hardly ever post in this one, you may ask? Well, this one has kind of got too unwieldy for me, so I’m taking out the ‘Review’ categories that I never use, and narrowing the focus of this blog to be… well, what I actually do post about, which is knitting and bipolar, for the most part. So no real changes, except to how I think about it. Never mind, it helps in my weird brain. So the new blog, Frozensoul.net, is my review blog. So far it’s all book reviews, but it’s for whatever I feel like reviewing. TV, movies, music, podcasts, gigs, events, stuuuuuff. I’ll probably go back to posting general life stuff and fandom rambling at Dreamwidth / Livejournal, as well. There may be some crossover there, though.

2. I’m going to be an auntie! My brother and sister-in-law are expecting a little girl this summer. Yes, I am knitting. Mwahahaha!

3. The doctor (psychiatrist) reckons I’m well enough to start back to work gradually! So I’m going to be looking into the Permitted Work scheme, and speaking to the Bridge-builders worker at Together, as she has info about all of that. So far, the vague plan is to get back to freelance web design part time, and see how that goes. Fingers crossed!

The Sad.

My lovely fuzzy Xandermog has moved on to hog the big sofa in the sky. He was really ill last year, and he never completely got back to full health, although he was happy and active and pesty up until he got ill again last month. It was all very quick, and he went peacefully – lovely Adam the Vet did the necessary while I was stroking Xander. It’s very strange and quiet to be mogless, even though he wasn’t a noisy cat most of the time. But I’d had him for over 11 years, so I spose I was used to his presence. I shall probably find a new furry dictator to arrange my life fairly soon.

The Dusty.

I’ve been spring-cleaning. Or really, I spose it’s getting on towards summer cleaning by now! It’s an ongoing project. My allergies aren’t impressed, but I’m sure they’ll be happier with the final result. I’ve sorted out a whole load of things that I was hanging on to for no good reason – hairbands and scrunchies when I’ve had my hair short for over a year with no intention of growing it again, and so on. Old make-up, random bits of paper and fabric… so much clutter! I seem to have all manner of things that I’ve stashed away “just in case” they might come in handy some mythical day. But no! I need to get rid so that I can do the re-organisation of my living room that I’ve been planning for months. I will get it done!

Kick Start

Hello, and Happy New Year! Look at that, I’ve finally got around to posting here again. I keep meaning to, but I always feel like I should post a long explanation of where I’ve been. Well, I will, but first of all I think I need something simple to get me started. So, have a meme:

webuyanycat.com has valued my cat at £14.33.

I think I’ll keep him a while and see if he appreciates – I spent more than 200 times that on him last year, and I need to make some of that back somewhere. ;-)

Fly By

I have no time to make a the post I’d planned tonight (knitting & spinning related)… although it serves me right for leaving it so late. I’d planned to have a nice bath, then post and be off to bed. But no, fate intervened. Or my Downstairs Neighbour did, by hitting the fire alarm for the second night in a row and setting it off (then hiding in his flat until the rest of us banged repeatedly on his door). Luckily I was just out of the bath and decent again! However, now I’ve had to get out of my PJs and dressed again because in all the drama, our neighbour from the garden flat is locked out – he was asleep when the alarm went off, and left his keys in the inside of his front door. Downstairs Neighbour didn’t hit the alarm on purpose, btw – he’d probably had a few and made a mistake. But there’s a £40 call out charge to get the thing fixed. Luckily we had a glass panel so could do it ourselves this time, but… argh! I really hope he doesn’t do it again. But now I must get back downstairs and see what progress has been made Garden Flat Neighbour getting back into his place…

[Half an hour passes]

… Yay, go us! Thanks to a group effort, Garden Flat Neighbour is now back indoors. As are we all, warm and dry out of the pouring rain. It took my ladder, Upstairs Neighbour’s Son#1 (to wriggle through GFNs bathroom window), and GFNs torchlight and assistance in getting Son#1 over the garden wall. And now I’m going to dry my hair, and get myself to bed.