Just beautiful

I was a beautiful baby. I was, just ask my mother. Oh that's right, you can't. Bugger. Take my word for it, I was gorgeous, I have photos to prove it and everything. I know what you're thinking right now... "so, what happened?" I guess what happened is I had my own peculiar set of genes with their own potential to fulfil. I look at Heather and Adam, and I see a whole different potential. Adam is going to fight a weight problem his whole life, but he is a good looking boy with a wonderful sense of humour, compassionate and loving of his fellow Man. Heather, on the other hand, is bloody gorgeous. But she is becoming horribly peer group driven when it comes to clothing. She is at war within herself, the rational half saying new clothes with Labels aren't important, the materialistic and shallow half saying "I want what Leah has".

She had a school disco tonight. She also had a go-to-hell tantrum and mini-pity party about all the clothes she didn't have to wear and how she didn't want to wear any of the clothes she has. I could have slapped her silly, but I ignored her instead. It gets easier over time.

She's been a preteen since she was 4 years old; I should be used to it by now.

As I was shepherding my kids out of the school hall tonight, one of the other parents on kiddie-pick up at the disco asked me if I was collecting extras. I said no, but I might be willing to swap a girl for something. Anything.

~~ Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film ~~

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Hey you, yes you

I've been stressing about the wrong shit. I have. I've been all wound up and stressed out for nothing. Everything starts me up and I get all strung out and I can't stop. Big things, little things. Here's a classic example, genuine, but classic nonetheless. I had plenty of warning about Colin going to Fiji, but it was all quiet and low key, no great long list of things I had to do and roles I had to play while he was away, no stress. Easy peasy; only had to worry about the schools, the workshop would wait until he got back. The day before he left, Blaster Worm began to make it's presence felt. The night before he left, he dropped off the cellphone so the schools could contact me. The morning he left I dropped the cellphone and turned it off by accident. Suddenly, I realised there were a few little things we had overlooked in our laid back planning; like what the PIN for the cellphone was, what airline they were flying with, their departure time, where they were staying... you know, minor shit like that. I was allowed 3 guesses until the cellphone was locked. My cellphone was dead and the retailer reckoned it was poked (it's not, nothing bloody wrong with it, lying buggers just wanted to sell me a new one). Vodaphone couldn't unlock Colin's cellphone without the PIN; "Can you tell me what the PIN is... can you make a guess at what the PIN is, that was incorrect, have another try... sorry Ma'am, we can't help you without the PIN number". If I had known the fucking PIN, I wouldn't have locked it in the first place, would I? And that's about when I had kittens, a whole cattery full of 'em. It wasn't pretty.

At least we know now it ain't easy to get someone's cellphone PUK or PIN from Vodaphone. Super.

Sue, bless her cotton sox, insisted on finding out what airlines had flights going to Fiji that day and she narrowed it down to Qantas. It took 4 phone calls to Qantas to get hold of the right person to tell me it wasn't them, they don't have any flights to Fiji today, try Air Pacific. Air Pacific managed to track the booking to a Qantas flight departing at 11.30am. It was already 11.15am. She managed to confirm that boarding had not started yet, and a message was left at the gate to stop Colin and get him to phone me. When I left the house at 11.50 he hadn't rung and I thought they must have missed him, but when I returned at 1.30pm there was a message from him with the PIN to unlock the phone.

There is a God, She is good.

In response to the very polite and controlled email I sent him, Colin replied "I just wanted to create a challenge LOL". I had to laugh, it's so typically Colin. Karma, baby, it's coming for you :-p

It took me days to stop fretting after that, but then I started thinking... drawing a few lines of perspective, if you like. If I hadn't got what I needed to unlock the phone it wouldn't have been my fault, and if people couldn't get hold of me it wasn't my problem. Mark would be proud of me, it took him years to beat that (metaphorically speaking) into my thick head. Being the practical and somewhat laid back bloke that he is, Colin in the same situation would have probably shrugged his shoulders and said "no use worrying about it". But I'd made it my problem and I was worrying about it and I was doing it to myself. It's not a matter of abdicating or shirking responsibility, it's about recognising where responsibility begins and ends and giving it 150% inside those boundaries.

I stopped worrying about it.

So, I've been thinking, as one does and I came to a couple of conclusions, as one will hopefully do as a result of all that thinking. For starters, I think that I have to stop worrying about the rest of the world, and just worry about me. I know that seems pretty damned obvious, and it is, but I have to work that out inside me before I can carry it out. It seems so damned selfish. But I've been so busy worrying about being sick and not getting things done and inconveniencing other people that now I spend all my time inconveniencing me instead to the point where I drive myself into the pavement. Secondly, I have to stop worrying about whether people will still like me if I stop trying to live the lie that everything is OK and nothing's changed.

What a pointless exercise.

I'm not who I was; I can't do what I used to. It's that simple, isn't it? The importance of how people around me adapt to the changes happening in my life pales in comparison to the importance of how I adapt. They only have to put up with me for a few minutes (or usually less) each week, I have to live with me and inside me full time. If they can't cope, can't change along with me, grow with me that, too, is not my problem. I didn't choose this journey and I can't force people to take this cruise with me; they are free to disembark at any port. But I might miss those that do, and besides it's not just me who loses out in the end, is it?

~~ Everyone's life is an object lesson to others - Karl G. Maeser ~~

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Life is gray and life is gloomy
When there's no one here life's kind of roomy
I'm bored and lonely, if it's a crime then sue me
The cat's gone to the Vet

He's gone to get his conehead fixed
It's abscessed from one to many fights he picked
His head's a football and he feels sick
Outside's dark and cold and wet

~~ Dogs have owners. Cats have staff ~~

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Hot Stuff

It's Tuesday. It's the right end of Tuesday, too. Shopping is done, laundry is done, kids are fed and so are Colin's cats. My head hurts, my leg is on fire and I feel just dreadful. A typical sort of Tuesday, in other words.

How unusual.

When I was dishing up dinner, I said to Heather that some days I hated having MS. She said "What days?" I thought for a second and said "Well, I suppose every day, really". This awful burning is making me crazier than a crazy thing. I know it's better to burn out than fade away, but this is ridiculous.

I've been hopping in and out of bed for hours, trying to get comfortable and get a snooze, but I just can't do it. Everything seems to be jangling and on edge; I'm not feeling myself. No shit I'm not feeling myself, and no one else is doing it, either.

Sometimes when Deb has finished my massage she gives me some Reiki. For those of you not familiar with it, Reiki is one of the more widely known forms of energy healing. It's a way of activating, directing and applying natural energy for the promotion of health, healing, balance and wholeness. It's not quite "hands on" healing because when Deb does it, she holds her hand just above my head and face and leg, where all my worst problem spots are. The heat just radiates off me, the energy explodes out of me and up her arms. Sometimes, it hurts her enough that she has to stop. I don't have to tell her which bits are annoying me on any given day; she finds them for herself. She is always right.

Damn, I am a hottie!

Anyway, today I don't need Deb to find all those hotspots - I can feel the heat pumping out of me all by myself. Especially the right side of my face, waves of heat that bear no relevance to my body or skin temperature. And I don't like it. I think it is the start of an exacerbation, a flare in my MS. Springtime is starting to look like "my time" of the year, the season when I am most likely to go missing in action.

I feel a bit like this fellow over here, today. Not quite behind the 8 ball. A bit distracted on the inside. It's easy to feel a bit different when every piece is a different temperature at any given time. When people say "isn't it cold today?" what am I going to say, "er, well it depends on which part of my anatomy you're talking to" or should I nod sagely and murmur, "if you say so"? When I had my short sojourn in hospital a few months back, the specialist warned me that my "thermostat" was stuffed by the MS and I had to be really careful to maintain an even body temperature; don't get too hot and don't get too cold. Well, that's seeming really hard to accomplish as legs and arms and face and head and body and front and back are all different temperatures and all I do is put clothes on and take them off again.

Some days, sleeping the coma sleep for the next 40 odd years looks like a really good option. Just wake me when it's over, will you? Thanks.

~~ It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him. - Arthur C. Clarke ~~

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Irony

My kids have an Aunt, Uncle and cousins who live about 20 minutes away, up the Kaimais. They have a few acres of orchard, a few chooks, a tractor and a mower and two boys almost identical ages as my kids. It was always quite neat for the kids that two of their only three cousins lived so close. We used to drive up there in the weekends and spend time with them quite regularly. Even though it was hard in the early days after our separation to keep the contact going with the kids paternal side of the family, I also felt it was important that they know both sides, not be isolated inside just one branch of their family tree. Even when I was busy studying, we still went there a lot because it was important, and it was fun. Besides, my ex-brother-in-law and I were very close, got along really well. Even when I was being told to fuck off for laughing hysterically at the wonky chisel box he'd made, he still loved me. He just didn't like any of us for an hour or so.

For years and years, Dan and I bored the living crap out of our respective spouses whenever we all got together by talking computers. We leap-frogged each other in who currently had the better/faster hardware, software and berries and cherries like the internet and a CDROM. I told you it was going back a few years...

All through the early years of study, Dan was always there to yak to about computers, even when everyone else was bored shitless, and it was really good. But after I got sick, things slowly started to change. I had less energy to traipse around the countryside at the weekends, less time to have some recreation in because I was moving slower and life in general was taking longer to happen. We didn't take as many trips up the hill, and they never came down here anyway. Gradually, I stopped buying presents for their kids, and they stopped buying them for mine. We saw them rarely; a break of 6 or 9 months was not uncommon. Heather brought it up a few months ago, the fact that they never saw Aunty Ali and Uncle Dan any more. I said we would, when someone wanted something. She said I was being bitchy, but I said "wait and see".

One of my mother's pet phrases, damned useful as well.

Colin is away overseas having a working holiday, and so for the duration, I am fulfilling the role of boss of buyonline in my own uniquely meagre fashion. The night before he left, he hurriedly put into place contingency plans for support for his clients with the imminent computer problems likely from the latest Micro$oft security consumer-fuck, the Blaster Worm. It meant that, as frontline troops (and back line, vanguard and flank) I would be well served in getting a handle on what was going to be needed. This meant I had to keep up to date with all the info on how it was affecting people as I was fielding phone calls and emails from people with problems.

Colin did not look half as unhappy as he should have as he apologised for dumping it all in my lap as he flew off to sunny Fiji for 10 days.

Tonight, I received a phone call. It was with pleasure that I recognised Dan's voice on the other end. We chatted about this and that and caught up with the past 7 or so months of news, and then he got to the point. He has XP on his computer, and he has the Worm. Can I help him fix it? So, over the phone, I walked him through all the steps necessary to halt the Worm long enough to download the fix and the patch to cure his disease. Then he rang me back after he had the files and I walked him through using them. We yakked a bit longer, after he had cleaned up his mess and I gave him a few things to look for when he performs the same process on his friend's machine, which has the virus too. It's not every night you get an hours free tech support at 9pm, is it? When he hung up, he said that we must get together really, really soon.

Heather asked who was on the phone - I said it was Uncle Dan. She asked what he wanted so I told her. She looked at me and said, "you were right".

I said "that's just people being people. Wait and see".

~~ "We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Talmud ~~

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