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It is very wet again and I am hurting all over. I have been reading your messages about Fiona Colwill. It seems odd that she has passed. No more filthy laugh on the phone. Yes, she had a really good laugh. All gin and cigarettes. Not an insult. It's a way to describe her voice. Even when times were hard, and they were for her often, she laughed. She tell me her woes and before long we were laughing. Her dogs were everything. She lievd a long way away and so we usually only met at dog shows. She was here at least once and that time she brought two of the most delightful toy poodles. i almost wanted one. Only recently she was sharing pictures on here of her toy hopeful and it was either the daughter or grand of the one she brought to my home.
Not wanting to be morbid, but really, life is very short and for some of us it is very short. NEVER complain about your age. It really pisses me off! Not that that is is the reason you shouldn't complain. No, you shouldn't complain because you are effing LUCKY!!! Every day you have, is one more than millions of others. Some people don't get 53 minutes. Fiona got 53 years. I have 53 years. I am grateful for each day I have now. I am lucky to be here. If you are reading this then you are lucky to be here too, no matter your age. You might be only 20 something and still believing that death happens to others. It happens to YOU too. ALL of us. It is not to be feared. Neither si life. Too many of us are afraid to live and be happy.
I know that being happy and things going well is something foreign to me given my past. All the more reason to be enjoying it and refusing to fear that other shoe falling! It is such a waste to fear what might me when we have no idea. For those of us who lived in terrible situations for many years, but do not now, it is hard to let go and just enjoy. Enjoy we must though. I am enjoying every day I have. It took practice. It takes reprogramming of the self talk that goes on in our heads. It can be done.
Our day may come suddenly, like with Fiona, or it may come with warning. Whatever way it comes, just be sure you are not frittering away your time today. NOW is all we have. This instant. How we experience it is down to us It isn't down to others. Don't give other the power to decide on your happiness or lack of it!
Very good things are happening right now.
We have become completely debt free. We have no mortgage now either. The house is being remodelled so as to accommodate me more easily and also give us more room.
Even my dog breeding and showing are going very well.
Neither of us have our health. I think I have accepted mine more easily than Joh has his, but he too has come to terms with his COPD.
So why do I feel so lucky?
For starters, the life I have. Growing up I didn't know happiness was possible. I only every wanted numbness. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to get away from my family and stay away. i wanted a man to share my life with.
I got far more than that. Yes, I git the man and I could not have done better than my John. I also came to understand love and joy and peace. I experience these. I also came to love myself and accept myself. The fear stopped. I came to realise that it was never me. It was always them. I was not abused because of who I am. They abused me because of who they are.
Today there are drugs available that make living with my very painful disease much easier. At least three of the drugs I take were not available 10 years ago, let alone twenty. They became available just as my disease progressed to needing more help. John too has drugs that were not available 10 years ago. Both of us can live well into old age-80's 90's with our respective diseases.
John is lucky. He has a passion for his career and is continuing to work until 70. After that he will still write and probably lecture.
I am lucky because:
I love music and I listen daily. I can listen when I am too fatigued or sore to do anything else.
I have a passion for fibre. Knitting with it and dyeing it. I can do these things sitting down and when I am unable to do anything else. So i always have something to do and I am very rarely bored.
I have loved my breed, Lhasa Apso, since I was 12. They are small enough that I can still take care of their needs despite now being disabled.
I have really good friends. People who know me well and understand how I am. Not only am I challenging because of my disabilities, I get tried easily and cannot spend hours with friends, I am also challenging because I am an abuse survivor and as such I have and always will have quirks that people just have to accept. There are days, not frequent now, when I am back 'there' and it is noticeable. John and my close friends know this and they see it happening and they take it in their stride.
I am alive and I am having a really good life. I am grateful for it. Not because i don't deserve it. No. Because not everyone is as lucky as I am. I am even able to keep a positive outlook most of the time. I have overcome much and yes i did put a lot into the recovery process and it was extremely painful but I carried on forwards. Others were not so fortunate. I don't know why I have been. I am grateful.
There was a time I was grateful for somewhere to sleep, for a few pounds to get me thru the day, for a crumb of kindness. I haven't forgotten and I never shall.
I used to feel bad for not having a family. Now I am grateful for the family I have chosen and who have chosen me.
Oh gollygosh! I hadn't realised how sandy the outside is now with all this brickwork and groundwork part done. The kitchen and hallway covered in sand. Will be bathing MG and Pussy today if I can do both. I just drugged up so will see. Slept well again but I couldn't beyond eight which seems to be my new natural waking time no matter what time I retire. It was 2am before I put the light out and still could not sleep beyond eight.
John is very pleased with our new door. In fact many have commented positively. We chose the new bathroom suite yesterday too. We more or less only had one choice as we want a higher toilet. It is still very smart though.
The tile border we chose turns out to be £15 a tile! Ahem!
Now that MG has dropped her season, she and Ada are okay again. Ada though is going to her new home next weekend. She is going as a pet to a really suitable home. The mother is stay at home and they have one 8 year old boy. They are so excited. Have had several calls so far from inside pet shops asking what Ada would like to eat and play with, leads, bedding. They are thinking of it all. Yes, a good home indeed.
I thought a long time about re homing her and as soon as I decided, the right home came str8 away.
The conservatory is going to take some time to complete. The base is only the beginning. It seems that it, and the electrics and tv aerials, might just be over with by the time the kitchen and bathroom work start. We still have a question mark regarding the flooring in the kitchen this is where I do my dye work. It is not possible to work without dye dripping onto floor. On the present tiles, it matters not as it just wipes up. We need to be certain that it does not stain the flooring we have chosen. No answer yet from the supplier.
Still, we are really looking forward to it. Our new room is going to be wonderful. Our present living room is going to be an office for John. I will also be moving my iMac and printer from upstairs into it. This means the upstairs room is just houses two knitting machines and my boots and wardrobes. The little yarn room will also become a wardrobe.
Hopefully, by the time of our marriage on July 7th, all will be completed.
I did well at the pool. Am suitably tired. Having just Chase here means we are really getting to know each other. He is very loving and he likes to play with me. He is also pretty good at fetch. I take him out on the lead a few times a day as he cannot go into the garden. He is a bit iffy outside and is disturbed by barking dogs and large trucks but he will get better. Like his mum, in the show ring he shows his socks off, no sign of reticence.
The Sky HD box arrived today, not Saturday as I was told. I fitted it in less than five minutes. Very good picture and easy to install. I telephone them and was answered promptly. Nothing need to be done as I had already done it. We go over to Sky for broadband and telephone on the 24th.
The money we are expecting has yet to arrive in the bank. Fortunately all our house renovation people understand that at present we have no money to pay them! No worries, the money mst arrive and we are told no later than Tuesday.
THIS WAS POSTED TO A PERSON AND I DECIDED TO USE IT AS A BLOG POST
I do not waste my time trying to get you to change your opinion. Your elites are yours and you have a right to them. What I and others strongly object to is people of religious faith trying to pass their ideas into law. In your country this has happened recently and your political life is all tied up with religion. It is especially hateful toward gays. It is difficult for me to feel well toward a person who believes I am sinful because of my very nature. I am not a choice, not a behaviour, not an aberration, not less than you. You believe otherwise and I find that hurtful but I can live with it as long as you keep out if my life. Unfortunately, far too many people who believe as you do are trying to take my liberty away and are steadfastly trying to stop the return of my human rights which are the same as yours but people who share your religion(and other religions) are determined to treat us like sub humans and would have us dead if they could. Now you say you don't judge others but your words belie you. You say you believe the what the bible says about sin. Therefore you believe I am an abomination and deserve to be killed. You can say you don't follow that but in actuality you do because you give succour to those who would have me dead. This is what Anne Rice means. It's like saying I am in the KKK but I wouldn't go against a black person.
I have found that people who profess the way you do, in the end, are just as culpable. I would love to think you are different. In 53 years of keeping my heart open and my hope going I have been always been disappointed.
The beliefs you support ruined my life. I was born to parents who believe as you. From a toddler onwards it was clear to me that I was not acceptable. It took years for me to realise that this was because I was not the boy they wanted. I was a sissy boy, not a butch boy. Thus resulted in being unloved and physically punished to the extent that I live with brain damage and 24/7 physical pain because of the damage done to be body in the attempt to make me other than the way I was born. I have never been able to earn my own living. I do not have a family. All because of what you believe. That I am not acceptable. Your refusal to see that I am not a choice or a behaviour is what results in the life I had. However, I had my own epiphany and I am a happy and grateful man. I k ow what love is. I am loved by my husband of 31years. He taught me not just how to love, because I knew how not to hurt, but how to accept love because I detested myself. I had no mirror for many years I hated myself so much. I cut myself. I didn't go out. Then after much pain and searching, alone in my bedroom and I screamed out if you fucking love then you show it NOW! Because I was so afraid and hurt so much I could not bear it any longer and I knew in that moment that God had to reveal himself or I would be finished. Guess what? He answered. I fell to my knees and wretched and wretched and the phone rang and it was the woman who has been there for me since '79, she didn't ak what was wrong with me, she just started to speak to me like was a little boy. I erupted and finally all that grief and pain came gushing out. It hurt. It hrt in a way I cannot describe. I wailed like an animal and she just soothed me and kept telling me over and over how I was not to blame, I was not the problem. I have changed since then. I do not self harm. I no longer dress in dowdy hiding clothing. I don't have night terrors, I don't have panic attacks, the PTSD is very mild now. I am over 100lb lighter. Today I know I am acceptable just as I am, that I am not a sin, a mistake, an abbé ration, or any other thing you might say. I am the way God made me and my love for my husband is not an abomination, not sinful, not shameful, not evil. No, far from those things, it is holy. As all such love between people is.
I had not intended to write so much. I will send though. I am not doing so to change your mind, I know that is pointless. I do so in order that you might glean a better idea of why people have antipathy toward you and others who think the way you do. Stay out if my life, and I will stay out of yours. I mean in a political sense. You must though realise that yes, you have responsibility for not just how I was so abused but for every gay person who is so abused by religionists (like the American Xians who helped draft the Ugandan death penalty law for gays) because although you may recoil in horror and offense at my words, you DO enable and embolden these people because you support their belief.
Perhaps I have at least explain to you in a way you might understand that since your beliefs are responsible for so much agony in other people, it is understandable that said people are not exactly enamoured by you. It is a cop out to say you don't agree with the way I was treated growing up and the way some still treat me when at the same you say you believe I am an abomination and deserved of death.
positive regard
Colin
(why positive regard? You are human and I view all humans that way. I can hate your belief because of the suffering it causes. Doesn't mean I hate you. Your belief can alter. It isn't who you are, it's your choice. Who you are is a human being who I assume wants what most want...peace. Why would I wish anything else upon you? If you found peace, you'd believe differently.)
It has been an odd day. Recovering from yesterday so have been up and down both physically and mentally which can have its amusing moments. We went into the Huntington Tesco and there I nearly lost my cool with people who got too close, blocked my way, swerved by me, and basically behaved like a 14stone man in a 15 stone wheel chair was invisible.
Luque, Whitney, Ada, Chris and Pussy have all gone to stay with our friends Tony and Jackie until the building work is complete. I have jot Mary-Grace at home because she is in season. I have also kept Chase here because I did not want to take the risk of him being negatively affected by going away for a week at this age. He is a sensitive soul.
The house is not only weird for us but clearly for MG and Chase too. MG especially has been looking for the other dogs. Probably just so she can kill Ada.
Well, tomorrow is the big day. It's all go. The building starts. It is going to be odd to say the least having our living room outdoor wall being cut through but left in place until the builders of the top half of the conservatory do their build. I am sure they know what they are doing and maybe I have misunderstood but sitting here with a wall cut out but left seems somewhat precarious to me.
Last night I went out like a light and didn't wake up until 10am! That has been unheard of for many years. I was not in bed until 2:30am because I was just sore after the show and needed to wait until I could safely take more drugs. Even so, 7.5 hrs of unbroken sleep is astonishing. When I awoke there was an alarm going off. I was up and looking for it before I was fully awake and before my body was working so I fell as I got off the stairs. John was there so it was okay. The alarm turned out to be our UPS (uninterruptible poer supply). For some reason it was a power overload. It had the same plugs in it as it has had for years so not sure why it went off. I removed an unnecessary plug and it shut up.
The dogs, except for MG and Chase, go to their holiday home today as the builders arrive at 8am tomorrow. I will need to be up at 6:30am daily now. I used to get up at 6 daily until the latter of last year when my disease dictated otherwise. I love the very early morning.
The builders are going to do more for us than just build the conservatory. They are going to concrete over the gravel strip. We had that put in for free by dog people we knew but it is totally unsuitable for dogs! It is very difficult to pick up dog poo from pls dogs like to chew the stones!
We will also have the back half of the garden completely re lawned getting rid of the gravel borers there too.
It has turned out that weare doing more than originally planned. I, I mean we, decided we might as well have all areas of our house and garden as we would like it.
I have to say that the new flooring and bathroom and stairlift, all because of me and my disabilities, is an expense that bothers me. I k ow it is for the best andi accept that. I think the Govt and those in the general public, have no idea just how much more expensive daily life is for people with disabilities.
For example, I buy ready prepared vegetables. The most expensive way to buy them. Why? Using a knife is often not possible and even when my hands do work it s too dangerous. I have cut myself badly a few times until I faced the fact I cant use a knife safely.
Underwear: this costs me more. I cannot just wear a pair of pants. I need lightweight long underwear, top and bottom, even in summer.
Travelling: I need to use the car. The cost of fuel is outrageous. Going on holiday is always by car because of what I need to take and the fact that Daniel, the wheelchair weighs 200lbs. Have to take my own pillow to keep my neck supported correctly in bed. I have to take so much an airplane trip is out of the question.
I point this out not out of self pity, but in an attempt to maybe educate others about stuff they don't understand. Not even I understood how expensive I am until I thought about it. I am very lucky though because I am in the position to pay. However, many, if not most, disabled do not have my advantages.
Just bear all this in mind when it appears that disability benefits are too much of a burden or that is handed out too easily. One it isn't easy at all to get it, and it is nowhere near enough! Disgracefully, a person who has to rely on disability solely, has a very poor standard of living.
It was really a wonderful day. A big thank you to Andy Horne, the husband of Hayley Horne. He made me a bracket that attaches to my dog trolley and then to my wheelchair so I can pull the dog trolley with my wheelchair. It works! I am astonished he did this without having to have my trolley or chair with him. It fits securely and it works safely. Thank you very much. Well, asi already said, Deita won Junior Bitch and two other classes. I dont think she has lost a major class yet. MG was 5th of 18 which is not as good as first but far better than no place a all! She showed really well. We took Chase and he too did very well in a pretend puppy class. Pretend as he is not eligible until six mthere to be shown.
I need to remember how much I enjoy the shows, how good it is to see people and converse. Lots of hugs. It really is fun. Yet before each show I balk at the idea of being with so many people. I still feel like the bullied nerd I was going back into the lion's den. It has yet to be like that. Instead it has been the enjoyable day it was today. Some things one never forgets, even at 53 and so far away from those childhood years yet they loom fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. If you were the nerdy, ugly on, chubby one, never picked for the team, you will know what I am referring to. I am NOT that poor child anymore and dog shows are not school. Remember!!
It saddens and angers me to know that so many people think it is legitimate to kill men women and children in order to gain an objective. In response to 9/11 and 7/7, many of us decided it was fine to go an kill children. As a result hundreds of thousands were killed. Just how was this supposed to stop people hating us? How willing are you to have your children torn limb from limb by bombs in order to satisfy a political aim or lust for revenge? I thought so. None of you. Yet we happily cheer when other people's children are destroyed. Especially when they are so 'different' from us. We can even think they are not humans who think and feel the way we do. I cannot feel proud of our armed services for doing this. I don't hate them either. They have been manipulated and trapped and most are far far too young to understand their own mortality and the consequences of their actions. On top of that we have thousands here suffering grief, truly a terrible thing, because so many of these dear young men and women have had their lives revoked because of the machinations of old or inadequate men.
Just how are we going to have peace when we value human life so little? When even my ordinary everyday fellows justify the blowing up of children?
They cannot say they do not sanction the bombing and shooting of children because any fool knows that is war means!!!
That is two consecutive nights that I have slept well. It makes such a difference to my pain levels and my mood. Of course not so easy to tell if I feel less bad cos I am in a good mood or if I am in good mood cos I feel less bad! Whichever, I really appreciate good sleep which is five hours without waking. Now that is amazing for someone who wakes every 90minutes to move as I can't just roll over. The last two nights I have saved my last morphine dose until bed time. I never used to because it gave me bad dreams but I am obviously past all that now.
You know, several people have spoken to me about the side effects they got from morphine, tramadol or Gabapentin. I am lucky and have very few. Yes, nausea. Yes, to feeling away with the fairies. However, if one perseveres the side effects DO subside.mit is also possible with morphine and Gabapentin (not sure about tramadol) to start on low doses. I started on 5mg with the morphine and 100mg of Gabapentin. It does make me wonder how much these people are really in need if they won't do the necessary.
Untreated pain causes nerve damage. Untreated pain leads to pain that is difficult to treat. It eventually means large amounts of pain killers to effect relief. How do I know this? Well apart from informing myself about my condition, I was stupid enough to refuse meds for years because of the twattery I listened to from twats who in reality were plain ignorant. One, pain should be coped with without meds otherwise one is just a wimp and besides that if you go on painkillers you'll get addicted, lose your home and would be selling your body on the streets!
I am lucky, I have doctors who understand pain and palliative care. Some people have Dr's who have been overcome with twattery and thus they are just left with paracetamol for serious pain!
With long term serious pain one has to just accept it and not fight it. Don't think oh why me, or kid yourself you will get better and that it will go away. In fact try not to think of it at all. GET proper treatment and if drugs make you feel like shit at first, persevere with them. No matter how the side effects are, they WILL lessen.
Today started off badly. After dropping John off at the station and Spock was picked up to be. Taken to he garage to be fixed, I went back to bed. Two and a half hours later I got up again. I feel much better for having done so tho I do wonder how tonight will go. I have only just taken my firs set of pain killers so the longer sleep did help me. I am usually on my second dose by now, 1:30pm.
I have an eye specialist appointment this afternoon. I will have to go in Daniel as I do not have a car. I am not looking forward to that. I always feel vulnerable in my chair it hour John with me.
The house remodelling will start next week of the tenth. The new conservatory will be first. The bathroom starts in May and we do not yet have a date for the kitchen. The new front door and upstairs windows will be done with the conservatory.
We are having an induction hob. I think this is safer for me and also more economical. Plus it us much easier to clean and it looks good. We bought several pots and pans from Le Creuset. We chose their non stick range as the traditional iron ware is just far too heavy for me. These non stick are just about okay for me.
The two boys, Chase and Christoph are in the process of getting there second teeth.this makes them vulnerable to upset tummies and also fussy about food. It looks as if Chase is going to have the perfect mouth. Christophe's mouth has never been a concern, having always been a reverse scissor bite. Chase's bite will be tighter. I am still very pleased with both pups but Chase is my heart's desire. Sarah tells me that she is very happy with their sister, Fern, especially on the move. Chase is a dream mover too.
I will be glad when all of te changes have taken place. Despite all of these changes being very good changes, I still find it much more stressful than I would have thought.
