This is going to feel like Sunday all day long, Adam is sat on the settee and I have the TV on programs that we would watch together on a Sunday, but it’s Monday. I am doomed for the rest of this week to be on the wrong day, just because Adam has taken a much needed day off work. His day with his family seems to have gone well, but as always he has little to say about it as well, what is there to say about a day spent sitting in someone else’s home talking & talking, I know what they are like when they get together. I have to say that conversation is something I now find difficult, it is as though my brain exists, just at the point someone want to talk to me. It happened yesterday when Teressa gave me a quick call, as she said to annoy me by saying “Happy Mothers Day”. She knows how I feel about all these so called days of celebration, but just like my Birthday this year, she had to be the only one who didn’t do what I always ask, ignore it. I guess that is what happens when you produce a daughter so identical to yourself, they simply have to do what you would do, exactly what they were told not to.

Yesterday was an extremely short day as with no company here to keep me awake or for me to want to be with, I crawled off to my bed just after 7 and slept without waking once in the entire 12+ hours. I woke just as I do every morning, not quite with it. It seems to take me, at least, an hour to wake enough to be of any real use at all, I had to fill my lighter first thing today and I really wish I hadn’t, I wish I had done the logical thing and just lifted the full one off the coffee table, but no I had to fill the one that lives here at my PC. It went wrong from the second I managed to remove the case as I dropped that onto the sideboard making the first bone shaking clatter. Then I couldn’t find the tool that I use to lift the gas nozzle, making enough noise in the dead as I shifted everything in the draw around, but the best one I saved to last, lighter filled I tried to flip the nozzle closed but I dropped the metal canister onto a pile of crystal coasters, sending them clattering all over the place, none of which would have happened if I had just waited until I was awake. My coordination is always bad but first thing in the day it is pointless for me to even try and do anything, hence the reason I don’t bother with breakfast until just after 9, that way I have a chance of eating my porridge rather than wearing it.

I try hard not to have to wonder around carrying things, at most I always just carry one thing at a time and if there is anything on or in what I am carrying, I use an unnatural amount of pressure to be sure I have hold of it, so that I have as little chance of possible of actually dropping it. To date I have managed to never drop a glass or plate in a way that it has been broken or damaged, most slip from my hands when I first pick them up and that means that they are always over a table or kitchen surface. It was the reason that I also stopped doing any washing up, wet dishes were just too much of a risk, I dropped them frequently and I classed the risk of damage just too high. Every time I found myself holding a wet glass, I also found myself scared and wound up by the whole situation, it just wasn’t worth it. The purchase of a dishwasher to take the bulk, leaving just the glasses and odd things that couldn’t go into it, is a purchase I recommend to anyone with MS, as long as you also have a partner who can take over the rest. There are few gadgets that I have found truly useful, but this is one of them that I would never be without again.

All too often it is the small things in life that make the biggest differences, I know there will be a point when I will have to give in and get some kind of trolley so that I don’t have to carry anything, I don’t know how long it will be before it is needed, like everything else my body will tell me the time. Strangely I would guess that Adam would rather I got it sooner rather than later, but not because he is worried about my breaking things, more because he knows all too well I would have to clear it up and then I would be in danger of hurting myself in the process. We are so set on opposite tracks that it is sometimes unbelievable that we are together, I worry more about our home than I do about myself, the dangers of falling in most of our house is that I could land up lying in a pile of broken crystal, as it is everywhere. I am willing to take the risk, as I want it all to stay where it is, where I can see it and enjoy it. I have also discovered that it is a great inspiration to twist when I fall and land cleanly on the ground or softer surfaces where crystal can’t be displayed.

Mostly when I do fall it is just as I am standing or sitting, but the times I fall the most is when I am changing direction, in doorways. Doorways are deadly, but they also supply lots of things to hold onto and large clear area’s without anything there to hurt myself on. It is almost as though my brain has me cleanly passing the door, but somehow my body hasn’t quite got the message and tries to continue on a direct root, the result inevitably is either I am on the floor, or I manage to grab hold of the door frame and avoid the collision with the carpet. One of the joys of living in an older house is that door frames aren’t flush to the walls, they are pronounced and stand proud as part of the Victorian styling, I doubt they every thought that what they were building was an invalid friendly environment. Having a cluttered environment also means more furniture than is fashionable, which also means more things to hold on to, I know that on the surface my home would look like a nightmare for someone like me, but it honestly works well. Take a look around your home and just think about how you would move around if you were in danger of falling all the time, do you have enough things to keep you on your feet, or are there just blank walls, flush doors and hard unpadded floors. Often the opposite of what you think will work well, is the actual truth in life.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 31/03/12 – I have a plan, a cunning plan… 

I’m tired today, not anything to do with my MS or lack of sleep, it’s the kind of tired that seems to come from somewhere deep inside, almost from your sole. The kind of feeling that makes you want to go back to bed curl up and sleep in the hope that when you wake the world will be a different place. It is a tiredness that comes from my emotional heart as if I have pulled one bucket to many from the well and it needs time to refill. This week has had no more stress or activity than usual, nothing that has stretched me or challenged me. I feel as though I may have been running on half empty……