Friday 29 March 2013

Time On My Hands


That was weird.

As you know from my last blog, on Wednesday I was suffering from a strange, painful stiffening of the joints. I went to bed that night pumped full of Nurofen and hoping for the best. I awoke on Thursday completely fine. A little stiffness in my left wrist but apart from that nothing. How odd, I have no idea what it was but am heartily relieved that it has gone. I just hope it doesn't come back.

I still haven't worked out the phone function in the Mito but I have found my trip computer, which has please Peter enormously as he's into miles per gallon and all that stuff. I must admit I am curious about the fuel consumption. My 156 gave me 28 miles to the gallon on a good day so I would like to know if the Mito is as economical as it sounds.

As I am writing this I'm waiting for a summons from Andrew to go and pick up his stuff from university. I have tried to get him to give us plenty of warning this time but it has fallen on deaf ears so I'll probably get a text sometime this afternoon with the instruction 'pick me up now'. Kids!

I was delighted to notice the first signs of spring on my way home from work yesterday. A bunch of daffodils on the side of the road. My Forsythia seems to have burst into life too and is a riot of gold in an otherwise grey garden. The snow has melted, which has please the cats, and other plants are beginning to show signs of life too. And we are finally seeing some sun, which the cats are very pleased about and taking full advantage of, here is Smirnoff sun bathing on the stairs.


As I have an extra day off this weekend and not much to do with it, I'm going on a cooking spree.

I'm going to make ice cream, cakes, soups and bakes, all of which can go into the freezer to be thawed out and eaten when I'm too tired to cook. Although my shorter working days leave me far less tired, this does not mean there are not times when I get home too tired to do anything. This is especially true of the last two working days in a week. By day four I'm still on my knees getting home so I need something Peter can slam in the oven or microwave that is not processed crap.

To be fair I like cooking, it is rapidly replacing gardening as my preferred method of relaxing. I'm getting quite good at it too and even have enough confidence to experiment and change recipes here and there. I'm also trying new dishes and have bought myself a Moroccan cook book which I'm slowly working my way through.

Although I still itch to get my hands dirty I know I am extremely limited in what I can do now. Unless there is someone at home who can do all the lifting and heavy stuff, and these days there often isn't, I'm stuck. Standing, kneeling, digging, bending, pulling and tugging are all more or less beyond me now and it is so frustrating. However frustration doesn't do me any good so I'm having to accept that my herb garden is overgrown and full of weeds, my borders will be devoid of bedding plants, my pots will not contain any tomatoes, peppers of sweet peas and the lawn will not get cut every week during the summer. It's heart breaking but I'm consoling myself with the thought that I'll have a huge amount of fun sorting it out post transplant. In the mean time I'm gaining a new skill, possibly one I should have put more effort into years ago, so it is not all bad I suppose.

In the post yesterday I got the information I'd been waiting for from the Teaching Council regarding what I'd need to do to get back into teaching. There are refresher courses if I feel I need them, though as teaching methods haven't changed all that much and I'm still a qualified teacher, even though I'm no longer practicing, I could step back into a classroom tomorrow if I wanted. However my subject, I taught ICT, has moved on so much that I will probably need to complete another HNC/HND in order to learn the new techniques or I could got for a completely different subject altogether.

This is something I'm going to have to read, digest, ask a few more questions and think hard and long about. The planning for my life post transplant has begun, well I am an optimist.




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