Accidental heaven

Posted on January 31, 2012 by livinginalimitedword

I seem to have developed a skill I thought only belonged to teenagers and my husband. I can now without any encouragement or struggle, manage a whole hour and more. It used to seem to me to be one of those things that was nothing but an avoidance system. You know what I mean, for example, when the housework needs doing you suddenly have to go to the supermarket for some bleach, you will need it to clean the bathroom properly and although there is some in the cupboard it probably won’t be enough so, best go now. On the way home, you happen, after walking as slowly as you could all the way down the road, meet a neighbor who of course you have to go for coffee with, well rude to do anything else and god forbid that you would ever do anything rude. A well homed avoidance system can actually take days to play out and actually achieves nothing. That’s what I thought my new skill was, but I now see it differently.

I have just spent an hour lying in my bed not actually asleep, as I wasn’t really tired, but on the edge of sleep. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this in the past couple of months but it is really the first time that I have found such a physical refreshment and my mind being at peace.

I just lay there in the warmth and silence of my bed with my eyes shut and let my brain drift anywhere it wanted. I was at first very aware of my thought trail and what was driving it, then it ran away all on it’s own and it was fun and it was an escape. I’m never totally free from pain but even that seems reduced. When the alarm woke me this morning it was hellish and quickly drove me back to bed, I couldn’t deal with sitting any longer. I had lain down in the quest of finding a position that would ease the pressure on my arms and legs.

I know it sounds nuts that just sitting upright at a desk can cause so much pain but it constantly destroys me. Taking away all clear thought, monopolizing everything, silent prayers that a tiny adjustment in posture will let me sit just that bit longer. Like today I sometimes give in, I waited for my morning tablets to kick in, the edges had been dulled but I found myself still unable to start my day and get on with the job search. I had no choice and I went and hide in my bed, hoping not just comfort but also sleep will take over. I frequently try the pain control methods I have been taught, maybe this time, even though they never have before.

It took me about twenty minutes to find just the spot that let me rest, but this was the first time that I gave up trying to control my thoughts, no relaxation tricks, no story making, nothing, I just lay there and let go. The doorbell interrupted me and broke my drifting. That’s what it was, drifting. I wasn’t asleep and I wasn’t bored out of my head or fidgeting, the usual effect of being in bed awake, no I was happy, relaxed and without effort holding back the pain. I just hope that some how in the future I can find that place again but there lies the problem in any future drifts, how do you can you force an accident happen again?

Cows and Crackers

Posted on January 29, 2012 by livinginalimitedword

I’m trying to find space to think, I don’t know exactly what about, just an uncluttered gap. My steps and actions to get my working life back on track, or may-be I should just say back, seem to be demanding so much of my time that I don’t seem to totally relax. Even last night In the middle of watching a quiz show I found myself making list of company websites to take a look at as the agency thing isn’t showing the success I had hoped for. Others have said that looking for employment is harder than any job you can do, I am beginning to agree.

When I was able to move about in the outside world, I was never without work, when I wanted it, I got it. My first rule was that I had to work, at what, it didn’t really matter. I’ve worked in bars, face to face sales, as a DJ, telesales and most recently as an Operations Manager, loosing that job felt like the end of the world but no one is immune from redundancy. Being housebound and unemployed is a completely different thing, until now, I had only ever been unsuccessful in getting one job I applied for. I did get an interview but I really had been pushing my luck when I applied for it.

They were looking for a nightclub manager, my experience for the post was more than just limited so I had to come up with something original just to get me through the door. I guessed what they were looking for from the ad, I don’t actually think their ad would be allowed these days, as they wanted a photo of the applicant along with the CV. That was my first hurdle. I didn’t have a photo or the money to have one taken.

I did have a photo from the 1940’s of a field of black and white cows. On it’s own with a CV it still wouldn’t be enough impact, something else was still needed. It was July so naturally I decided that it needed to be delivered in a Christmas Cracker. Time for the toilet roll, paper, ribbons and glue, once completed I walked to the club and popped it through the letter box. Two days later I got the call to go to the club for an interview. I was still surprised to get to the short list but not at all surprised that the new manger was a guy with a degree.

These days my CV gets the attention, I know because I have had phone calls and emails from those who haven’t read it right through. I am totally honest straight up that I am housebound but I still get calls. They always tell me that I have a great CV and they always end the same way, with me still looking for work.

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What to use instead of ‘We’

Posted on January 28, 2012 by livinginalimitedword

I made a simple comment in response to something on the news and received a snap-back-answer for my trouble this morning. The presenter made a throw away comment about the number of supplements and leaflets in the weekend Newspaper, I said “I stopped even picking them up when we used to get them because of the junk that fell out”. “We? who are ‘We’?”, shot back at me from the other side of the living-room.

I hadn’t thought about this before but I say ‘we’ a lot. Not the royal ‘we’, to me it’s a simple way of showing that the time period I am talking about, I wasn’t alone, there were others around me and what I am talking about wasn’t an automatism decision, but I was involved. How do you talk about a group of people from a time that long ago, that you can’t instantly define their names and numbers. There have been so many people in my life, not surprisingly when you get to the age of 50, that instantly placing a memory to it’s era and family, is difficult. I’m sure for a normal brain it would be hard, mine has a lot of lesions in the way and roads that over lap, where no crossroads should be. I can’t say I, as I wouldn’t be true, but if I was to wait and sort out the memory behind the thought, it would be 10 minutes to late to make any sense.

That zip response meant that I had to locate the time period, I eventually pulled back to belonging to around 1970. I was still a kid and we were on holiday in the caravan, every Sunday morning a van arrived on the park that sold milk, breakfast cereal, eggs, warm butteries and newspapers. It was my job to take my little brother to the van for the morning supplies, coming back meant the juggling of bags, bottles and papers as the there were no carrier bags. Once we were back in the van I had the job of splitting the paper into it’s sections and my payment for this mammoth task, I got to read the comic section first. As time went on I learned to hate this job, the promise of reading ‘Our Willie’ first ran out. It got harder and harder just to get across the site to the caravan without leaving a trail of advertising garbage. If it was that bad that long ago, I hate to think what it is like now.

My next recolection of Sunday papers jumps forward to 1988, when working in the Ardencaple Hotel we offered a full range of papers for the public to read in the lounge bar. This brought a good number of people in for morning coffee, but not one of them ever left the papers as the found them. As each one left, the sections had to be collected up, sorted and restored to the rack. I suspect that somewhere in the world at this very second that is a person smiling and saying ‘Thank, good-bye’ and cursing silently as they walk towards the now vacated table to clear up the thousands of bits of paper into a once more deceptively compact newspaper.

If there is another word in the English language to cover what to me is the natural word of we, then please tell me what it is!

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Kryton? WHY?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by livinginalimitedword

Have you ever played that game were someone says a word and you have to answer with the first thing that comes into your mind, well I played a similar game today with myself and it turned out to be quite interesting. I was thinking about TV that I enjoyed watching so I entered a search into Google Images for the first show I had thought off, then looked through the pictures until something caught my eye, that made a connection to another show. I was surprised by the journey that it took me on as I remembered and then viewed photo’s of casts and shows, I also came up with a couple I hadn’t thought of for years.

I started with ‘Merlin’ the brilliant BBC show that recently concluded, passed through the ‘BBC News’, ‘Secret Millionaire’, ‘Crimewatch’, ‘Dragons Den’, ‘Eastenders’, ‘Master Chef’ and then ‘Red Dwarf’. The ones before made sense due to program schedules, recently watched and so on, but I haven’t even seen ‘Red Dwarf’ for years. I went back to the page before and looked again for what had triggered the link. It took me ages to find it, but in the background of one of the ‘Master Chef’ pictures was a guy with a rather angular head, there it was, Kryton, the android. Once again my mind had found a way of wondering back in time and not just to the program, back to the time and place’s where I lived when I first watch them. I used to watch a lot of Sci-fi, it seemed to offer so much of what the future might hold, unfortunately the promise of a cure for all ills and four course meals produce by a voice command is still a long way off. Actually I’d be happy just now for something to release the band that’s closing round me and a bubble pushing outwards through my ribs, the ‘hug’ had vanished for a few days and returned far sooner than I hoped.

I am finding it hard to believe that time is passing so fast. I had this horror picture in my mind when I was made redundant back in September last year, that I was going to be driven completely mad with nothing to do and the constrictions of being housebound suddenly terrified me. Strangely time seems to be moving faster, days and weeks are just vanishing into thin air, yet with so little to show for them. How has Friday arrived, when yesterday was only Monday? And it just isn’t possible that January is close to an end. I also noticed that the days are growing longer again, I no longer need to, but I do, close my curtains at 4pm. I love the long winters evening, there is such a wonderful comfort and safety, when the house is shut down and sealed from the world. It’s even better when a cutting wind throws rain and hail at the windows, shaking the glass and howling round the chimney. I can think of nothing better than opening the curtains in the morning to find inches of snow, silencing the city and making everything clean.

I remember one night years ago when I was living in the ‘Waterfront’ in Glasgow waking up in the middle of the night and sensing that change in the world, that without looking outside, I knew meant that loads of snow had fallen. I sort of accidentally woke-up my then boyfriend and we got dressed and went outside. The next couple of hours was spent building a big snow man in the center of the frozen pond and throwing snowballs at each other. The rest of the world was asleep, no lights from any windows and not another sole to see. When we were about to go back inside we suddenly had the idea to make a snowman for every car in the car park. Where possible these were mounted on the bonnet of the car, just like a car ornament, where not on the roof. We eventually got back to bed not long before everyone else had to get up for work, but it was one of the best nights ever. Totally stupid and totally fun.

Yes I’ll have winter anytime, keep your sunshine and light nights.

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The Joys of so Called Modern Life

Posted on January 27, 2012 by livinginalimitedword

Well so much for integrated media. I have been trying to add photos and videos directly to the individual different accounts. I at first uploaded my videos to Facebook and they were fine, over night they stopped working!!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!! I tried to upload them on to this site and guess what, they don’t work here either, well not for me and therefore not for some others as I’m a PC user and I don’t have anything made by Apple. Oh I did try to add the plug in, but it wouldn’t have it. So the only answer is to add videos to there natural web home and onto Youtube. Now I am having to add links all over the place.

“The Early Years” video http://youtu.be/NOGLiAJGUPI

“The Monster Years” video http://youtu.be/wrF2NTLGm8s

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