Ranting!

Hi every body, Its a beautiful morning here, after a night of heavy rain the sun is shining and there is all sorts of lovely spring smells coming through my open bedroom window. After such a sad and tragic week I feel guilty at the warm feeling I have knowing all my family and friends are safe. I stood in my living room on Wednesday morning listening to the news, so many lives lost and shattered, and for what? I stood there for a very long time feeling sad and angry all at the same time. We had started to make arrangements to go into London a couple of times over the Easter break, and I have found myself changing my plans for fear of putting my children in danger! How crazy is that! Living in fear of what might happen, this is just what these, I supposed you would have to call them people, want us to do.
Thinking about London reminded me that I haven't heard anything from the hospital, my referral had been sent off about six weeks ago and Moorfields are usually quite quick with appointment dates, even if its a while until your appointment, they usually send it out quite quick, so, I turn the telly off and go rummaging around for the phone number for my Dr's secretary, after phoning four different numbers I find I am talking to a lady called June, who taps in my details on her computer which brings up all my details, and bet you cant guess what?.....You got it, no referral has been received! But I bloody checked with my GP that it had been sent....June tells me to call GP surgery and tell them to fax through the letter...Thankyou June, who was polite, friendly and helpful, she will ring me back as soon as she receives the fax.....I call GP surgery who assure me the referral HAS been sent, welllll, they haven't bloody got it so please fax it through on this number for the attention of June, Thankyou!....Then I wait, after half an hour June calls back, I am thinking she will give me a appointment over the phone....ohhhh no, June is sorry, but the GP surgery have referred you to the wrong hospital, this letter is for Bedford! FOR EFFS SAKE!!! Ring  the GP back again and ask them to re address the letter to Moorfields London.....this time the lady on the end of the phone at my GP surgery isn't so helpful...we refer all our patients to Bedford hospital, yes dear that lovely, but I am not under Bedford bloody hospital I am under Moorfields! I must add that there is a Moorfields clinic at Bedford hospital, but when I asked Dr Andrews at London Moorfields if I could attend that clinic instead of going into London as it nearer to my home, he just said NO and walked away, then came back five minutes later moaning about not taking risks and I was to remain under his clinic so he could keep an eye on me (excuse the pun). Anyway, the moody lady on the other end of the phone assured me that she would get the letter re addressed and faxed straight over...still haven't heard anything! If it wasn't for the fact that I would be wasting nurses and consultants time, and depriving real A&E patients of being seen a bit quicker, I would have jumped on the train and parked myself at Moorfields A&E until I was seen. So, as by then I was in a bit of a mood myself, I thought I would ring the council, they are always up for a good fight. some months ago, the council retiled the roofs of some of the bungalows near my house, they did it when we had all that really awful weather with heavy rain and very high winds, during one of these storms some of the plastic from the roof blew off and entangled itself in my neighbours tree, she is probably in her 60's, lives alone and has something wrong with her knees, she has had many operations to help her walk, anyway, all I can hear is this bloody plastic blowing around, the tree isn't climbable and the plastic is too high to reach safely. At night it keeps me awake, and it disorientates me as its a unfamiliar sound, equally its bloody annoying.  I am so silly though because the lady at the council, was like....what you taking about woman? That ant no problem of ours, you gotta sort it out wiv you neighbour!! Betcha bottom dollar if I went out with a chainsaw and started chopping down trees at the edge of the road the buggers would soon see it as their problem. Ah well, we live and we learn, so if I don't post again for a while its because I am stuck up the tree, so send help please x

Change isnt so bad.....

Hello folks, its been a crazily busy two weeks back at work after half term. Its scary how quickly time fly's and how easy it is to forget your own place in your life. I feel I need constant reminders to live for today, leave the past alone and stop worrying about the future, because I cant change the things that have already happened and the future will be what it will be, I can contribute to how my future pans out but essentially I believe the more time I spend worrying about the future, I am missing out on what's happening now. So, as the alarm went off at 6am one morning last week, I lay there very still in my bed, the room was starting to fill with light (I cant sleep with the curtains closed) the birds had started singing and I started to wonder what life is all about?! What am I doing? I get up every morning at 6am, when its light enough I walk Ralph, I get back, get myself ready for work and start nagging the girls to get up, tidy the house, think about what to get out of the freezer for tea, the three of us are out of the house by 7.50am, while I am at work, I am continuously running, working with special needs children means that you need to be alert to every situation, things can change very quickly and many of our children are dependant on us to help them with all aspects of their education and hygiene, a average day consists of a lot of teaching and promoting independence, quite a bit of toileting and feeding and a whole lot of spending time with and enjoying the company of some of the most fantastic and interesting children i have ever met, although I love it, its a very draining day. Then I get in the door at about 4.15 and its then a mad rush of walking Ralph, cooking tea, getting packed lunches ready, Ironing, hovering, washing up after tea, encouraging the girls to do homework and listening to them tell me about their day, then baths and hair washes and crash into bed by 10pm, that's before i have done my internet shop or seen to any bills or dealt with any other problematic letters that might have dropped on my door mat....so, once again...What am I doing? I wonder if everyone gets to a certain point in their lives and thinks...I just cant go on like this, something has to change...for me, I am finding that the world is rushing around me but I am getting slower! I have started to learn that because my sight is so poor, I need to pay more attention to the things I am doing, therefore these things take me longer, if I don't want to iron my fingers when I am doing the ironing, I have to do it slower...everything has become slower, crossing the road, using a knife or cooking, reading and writing has got really bad, I am struggling to write coherently in the children's books at school, or to read simple directions about what the children are doing in their lessons, this has unsettled me so much that I am finding myself pretending or guessing! I have noticed that my hearing has stepped up a notch, this is also draining as I seem unable to block out all this tiny noises that others might not notice, above all the noise in the classroom one day this week, all I could hear was the squeak of someone writing on the white board with one of those smelly pens. So, back to me lying in the bed, something is going to give, I believe in self preservation so, lets think, I had already had my meeting with my boss the week before, my man from Action of Blind had travelled miles to attend the meeting that my boss was 15 minutes late for, to cut a long story short, the school would not be offering me an alternative role within the school, I was able to reduce my hours but realistically I should be planning to move on, oh and the fact that I find work so exhausting is my fault because I am a perfectionist. Nothing to do with the fact of course that we all have a duty of care to the children and working as a team means pulling your weight. so, with my nose put completely out of joint I left the meeting feeling abit, err..insignificant and rejected I suppose. But, lying there I realised that reducing my hours is not the end of my world, no one is going to die! and actually working just Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays might suit me quite nicely, in fact I suddenly started to look forward to it, I admit that fanatically it might be a bit of a struggle, but if I am careful it should all be good. So after the Easter holidays I go down from four days a week to three, giving me more time to get things like housework done, sorting through paperwork that has accumulated and now is spewing out of the draws, AND AND the spring is coming...I can be out in the garden, take Ralph for long walks, and instead of the mad rush in the evenings things should be more relaxed, and maybe, just maybe I can get some quality of life back, Sometimes all we need is to tweak our lives a little, I don't want to give up work completely just yet, not only for the social aspects but also for discipline, making me get out of bed and follow the routine of thousands of others going off to work, my job gives me something else to focus my mind on, and of course,  you get a pay cheque at the end of the month. I know the time will come when I simply cannot do the job I do safely anymore, and when that time comes I will face it and deal with it with grace and dignity like a big girl...unless I win the lottery before then, I expect my attitude will be a whole different thing!!