Short and curly

Mmm...bed! I'm so grateful I have one and I'm in it, ha ha! I give thanks for a mug of Good Earth organic tea and a snuggly dressing gown and that the pain where I hurt my back on Tuesday (just lying down!) is easing because I have to bend my legs to get dressed in a bit and it's leg bending that hurts! It's amazing how high up in your back muscles for operating legs go...what a wonderful thing a body is eh? Mine's possibly not wonderful enough to go out with only a sarong on my lower half though...especially the trouble I have tying knots with my damaged hands!

I give thanks for finding a kind hairdresser yesterday to tackle a trim of that strange stuff on my head and who seemed to accept my explanation that the random mixture of lengths was a result of the staggered restart out of my scalp rather than dodgy chopping before. It's a nicely un pink and fluffy unisex salon just down the road that was virtually empty at the time and apart from the involuntary exclamations at how curly it is everyone took it in their stride. Unless I live long enough for it to grow long again (and that's a very long time for very curly hair!) it's never going to be what I'd have chosen but I like it better than when I went in so what more can you ask eh? I've been to hairdressers only very rarely in my life and I always come out thinking how brave I've been so that's a bonus too!

Dream job

Oh my ears and whiskers, I had the BEST job in my dream this morning...I was a view inspector!!! I had to go round checking views were beautiful enough...all to do with the Department of Outdoor Enjoyment apparently. Find the country that has one and go there...it has the most fabulous scenery! You can send me a postcard in appreciation of my contribution to its beauty and I'm sending my subconscious a bouquet of brain cells for coming up with such an excellent idea...

It seemed especially special to wake up to as I was rather unwell in the night and couldn't sleep, unlike my neighbour upstairs who passed out with her radio still blaring til past four am. I'm grateful for the opportunities to practice what I preach and stay calm in the face of adversity. I amused myself with word puzzles and articles in a stack of old Radio Times kept for that very purpose and trying to decide whether if I died in the night and wasn't found for several days I'd be too decomposed for a wicker coffin and woodland burial. And, if she died in the night, how many days would I have to endure the radio before someone would break in and turn it off! Methinks I've been watching too much CSI perhaps, or perhaps not enough as I'm sure those scenarios must have been dealt with in an episode some time or another!

I'm grateful to wake up too feeling relatively OK...well enough to get and eat a cuppa and a crumpet anyway. All of us here in the Valley of the Shadow get these episodes when we spot the very thin man with a very toothy smile lugging a scythe and a door around in anticipation. Fret not nor fear, it's what we're really here for...to get through this bit to the one where death has no dominion.

I give thanks to Julie for saying hello (hope Summer is helping with your seasonal blues) and to Angie for not sending in the women in white coats. I give thanks to Ivor and Heidi for getting me some lining paper and send warm thoughts to Pat getting her home ready for coming home from her hospital stay next week. I send to the cosmos the thought that either a bout of unexpected vigorous health on my part or an amiably available chauffeur would enable me to collect the purchase from the former and pop in to say hello to the latter as they're not going to be very far apart. You have to be careful how you word your wishes though...I longed for my alopecia to end and look what I got!

To be fair though...I did say I wanted my hair back and this clearly belongs to someone else. Maybe if they'd like to claim it my follicles could produce something a bit less Starsky and Hutch. In the meantime, in the spirit of spreading good cheer I thought I ought to give you all the opportunity to have a chuckle. I'm thinking maybe I could forget about a tree this year and just decorate my hair. It's quite strong enough to support tinsel and maybe some small baubles too!

Snap!

Went out with my head uncovered for only the second time since a year last November. That's what...twenty one months? Still feels quite strange...I mean it feels quite strange to show my head in public again and the hair itself still feels strange. People say well wasn't it curly anyway? Wasn't it curlier when it was short? Well yes, but not this curly, not lots of little tight tiny curls. I'm kind of getting to like it. If I live/it grows long enough I might get cornrows because for the bald months I became quite fond of the shape of my skull. Besides I've a white son with dreads, it would make a kind of pseudo genetic sense for his white mum to have cornrows. Like one of my sisters and I having the same shaped nose...both having had our original shape one broken by a hockey stick in similar school girl accidents seventeen years apart! On the rare occasions we were together in the same place after mine was 'reshaped' people would comment on the 'family resemblance'.

Fourthly today then I give thanks for having enough hair to neither get cold nor sunstroke!

Here is another of our T.R.A.I.L sculptures. You can go to their web site and see some of the other pieces from other years. The hub cap picture I put on here back in June was part of the exhibition a couple of years back

There are loads of them all around the area. This is one of my favourites from this year....The English Tropics rather than the English Riviera!

Here's a closer view of of the pool in this one. Some have solar cells to light up in the dark apparently. But I don't go out at night really so I just have to take their word for it too!







Lastly for this post I give thanks for a great letter from my Greek penfriend. It made me cry...but in a nice way. Yes, I know he's (presumably) a murderer but he writes me kind, funny, intelligent letters and I know a great many people who aren't and they don't. They don't send me any kind, funny, intelligent anything at all. It makes me cry because I tried to do a good thing and benefit a stranger and he's turned out to be more thoughtful than people who would probably still say they were friends. I feel very fortunate in this.

No pain no gain

This morning I'm grateful that last night's medical drama didn't turn into a crisis. I'll spare you the details but had a painful and scary patch patch around 3 am which is the worst time to have them I always think, in the limbo between one day and the next when even the feasibility of getting help is in question should you think it's required. I'm quite a tough cookie really and if I'm frightened there's good reason to be. I rallied though, of course, or I wouldn't be writing this...and seem to be mended again and not be permanently damaged. Well not any more than I was beforehand anyway! Or not any more than I can tell which is all that matters anyway.

Watched a documentary last night about a 13 yr old girl who had for a long time declined a heart transplant that everyone thought she 'should' have. Her reasons were so lucid and valid but a doctor who was sure he knew better stepped in and (anti)social services tried to have her taken into care. She convinced them to leave her and her supportive family alone though...explaining she was perfectly aware she would die without the operation but had no fear of that and as long as she was feeling relatively well she didn't want to be spoiling her life quality with more time in hospital. Even if the tests show my heart's not working properly I must be stronger than people say or I woudn't still be here, she said. There are different kinds of strength, some of which you only find in the most dire of circumstances. My second gratitude of the day is that I know how strong I can be in those. I'd never have found out if I'd had an easier life would I? Oh yes, and I'm sure you'll all be relieved to here the young girl lived long enough to come to her own decision in her own good time to have the transplant and it was successful.

Now I must go and wash my hair which isn't something many people thought I'd live long enough to say ha ha!

Follow me...

Good morning!

Heavens where are all these followers coming from? I must be careful not to confuse 'followers' with 'fans' though I guess ha ha!

I am determined to get out of the door by noon (yes...with sunscreen and a hat even if it's clouded over by then in case the sun comes back!) I want to find a place near the sea and sit for a while and feel good. There is so much to do beforehand tho!. I was just making a snack to take and wished I had someone to delegate chores to, or even say 'let me do that!. I can dimly remember these exalted states though to be fair a lot of it is stuff only I can really do like sorting out my 'personal' care and trying to rearrange this strange re-upholstery the cosmos has sent me in place of my hair so the aforementioned hat will actually sit on my head rather than resting above like some feat of levitation!

Between little bursts of activity I have to take little rests so that's how I'm finding time to write this! It also means I can think I mustn't forget to take such and such, or do so and so before I go and then see if I actually remember when I get up again.

Anyway I'm grateful for the brilliant sunshine luring me outside (1) and for living somewhere where the sea is within reach (2) even if I have to s-t-r-e-t-c-h myself these days to get there!

The past's so bright...

Mmmm, acupuncture...how much better do I feel now? Quite a bit actually, if you’d prefer the non-rhetoric approach. So you get some more of my ramblings...

I'm sure we've all heard of people saying re their blogs, or tweets, or Facebook status updates that they sometimes find themselves writing about their lives more than actually living them. Well for those for whom living is fast becoming a technical term rather than an experience that's absolutely fine. Plus I can 'speak' and nobody has to feel they ought to reply, feigning interest etc. Gotta be good all round eh?

Anyways, here we have the earliest surviving photo of me (as far as I know). Clearly the future was so bright at the time it was orange...either that or the glow from my hair was tinting all things around. Interesting to see how hairstyles come back into favour...have been sporting something not too dissimilar in recent times, albeit not so brightly coloured.

You may also spot I had the building blocks for life to hand - where did it all go so wrong?

absent friends

I miss the ones I thought I had, am grateful for the ones I seem to have found. A little wary...

Last night I thought my hair now looked almost normal enough to wear au naturel, this morning I see clearly some covering is required. No longer look like a militant lesbian, a Buddhist nun, or someone who's having chemo....just someone with a hairstyle fail!

For those who don't know it wasn't chemo that made me lose my hair...well not all of it anyway. I wasn't on particularly lock threatening drugs and didn't take them for long anyway. It started out long and curly and it got thinner and shorter somehow but after six months or so it was getting back to normal. Then my new oncologist explained clearly what no one else had before...that the chemo they had forced me to have with all its accompanying cockups and trauma (including strokes that no one recognised even tho I couldn't talk or walk properly and lost the use of one hand) had merely been palliative anyway and they'd always known they could not cure my cancer.

A couple of days later I looked in the mirror and thought what's that in my hair. And then I realised it was a bit of scalp where no hair was...and it grew and grew and grew. I didn't make the connection for a few weeks...I was too traumatised and trying to look normal at work with an expanding bald patch on the top of my head but then I began to wonder...

I lost it all, save eyebroes and lashes but after a year or so it began to creep back un evenly like flocked wallpaper in a random design and a different texture and colour thasn before. Hair, but not as I knew it ha ha!