The Bane of Goosegrass! (by sarah)

I have just come after 3 hrs of removing goose3grass, willow herb, thistles, ground elder and stinging nettles from the headge along the drive with Al and Babara. They are still out there even though it is getting dark!

We have shifted about 10 barrow loads of the stuff and we dont have a small wheel barrow!

I hurt! I fell in the ditch but then I was supposed to be in the ditch anyway! My wellys made a bid for freedom everytime I tried to move my feet 🙁

Worryingly there appears to be lots of bell bind - Babara has another name for it but its a creeper thats a real menace - really pretty bell shaped flower and green heart shaped leaves. Once you've got it its murder to get rid of and has a nasty tendancy to choke all the plants you do want!

Anyway time for a well earned dinner now!

Steaming piles of….. (by sarah)

Due to having to ration the wormery we have to take most of our kitchen waste to the compost heap - well heap sounds small - we have an industrial type compost area!

There are three piles - this yrs, last yr and the one before (thats the one being used). We have to berry any kitchen wast as the deer and badgers (well mainly the badgers) dig it up - sorry now have a mental image of a deer with a spade in their mouth! Before we even got there you could see the steam rising from the now 2m cube pile of grass cuttings, the smell is gross and Al had to dig (makes gagging sounds). The steam was thick and white and looked more like smoke from the inner depths of the heap - shudders.

Why did I eat Meat? :'( (by sarah)

Stupid stupid me!!!

I kept eating meat a little bit here and there and nothing happened - I thought - Yay! The pregnancy has curied me I can eat meat again - then I proceeded to eat meat - not alot but some meat for three days in a row and wham bam thankyou mam - the stomache cramps start - just like the onsort of labour.

The got worse over a few days until the climaxed with the morning of my concert and chior reunion - probably the added stress of having to leave home three hours later than I was expecting (at least - due to Al deciding he was going to work an 11 hr day) and panicking that I wouldnt be able to sing - probably didnt help!

Due to throwing up and 'other' stuff I didnt even get an hours sleep before I got to the Church for the Chior reunion at 9:45 - sigh!

I had to tazke fall dosage of Lopramid just to survive - it was horrible and I am still suffering - I know from the past that I've got at least another week to go.

Becca - time for you to preach at me now!

P.S soz if this is to graphic laughs evilly

My weekend (by alaric)

Friday night - worked until about 10pm, getting things done that were meant to be done for Friday.

Then helped pack and prepare to go into London, a 3 hour drive. Sarah's choir reunion starts at 9:45am tomorrow.

Not sure what time we set off, but I remember leaving a service station at about 3am after stopping for a nap because I was starting to nod at the wheel, but I had barely fallen asleep when I was awoken by Sarah's parents ringing her on her mobile, and found my leg had gone dead from trying to sleep curled up on the driver's seat.

I slept in at Sarah's parent's place, but then had to get up in order to go and buy some baby milk powder for Jean, since there was none there. The little nearby chemist turned out to be shut so I walked back and took the van to a large supermarket, braved the Saturday morning queues, and then brought it back. I spent some time fruitlessly trying to fix Sarah's mother's computer which had come down with Microsoft Windows Goes Very Slowly disease, but there were no obviously out of place malware processes running, and it's slow right from the very earliest stages of booting. Then I managed to grab a couple of hours to myself to do some shopping (a shiny thing to put across the windscreen of the van when parked to prevent it from becoming a solar oven, and part of a wedding anniversary present for my wife), and to go for a walk, before picking up Sarah's brother and going to the choir concert that evening. Then to bed.

Then up early Sunday to pack all of our stuff away and go on a delivery mission of various things to various people as we crossed London back towards home, then get home, do work that needs to be done by Monday, then to bed, now at 1:30am. To be up about 7:30am tomorrow morning to take Jean to nursery, then for a conference call to start the next week of work.

Zzzzzz.....

Dislexia, Dispraxia ADHD and the Autism Spectrum (by sarah)

Hmmm I'm sure there should be some y's in that lot - oh well!

I was bored in the doctors surgery and just couldnt sit still so I went to look at the littloe nhs books they have in the waiting room and there was a book on ADHD - I thought that might be interesting - it turns out that the above 'disorders' are now all lumped together. Now Dyslexia and Dyspraxia I didnt realise had diversified into two distinct groups. Anyway the case studies were depressing as mostly it seemed the childrens distress seemed to be mostly they were surrounded by 'stupid' adults be that perants or teacthers.

I was also a bit shocked that people took kids to the doctors becuase of the 'symptom' I didnt read the whole book but it did throw up some interesting things like the fact it is licky that if you have one then you will have some of the others. Anyway I got intreged as I have sort of ignored the whole thing and even get annoyed when mum tells people about it.

I got a 'diagnosis' of dyslexia and dyspraxia at the begininning of my A'levels after struggling for the whole of my school life, being accused of being thick until IQ tests were done, then of being lazy etc... etc... anyway thats all old hat as they say!

I've started reading up some stuff and was suprised to find that omega-3 is supposed to help alivieta symptoms - I need to go more indepth because this is jusst one paper I've come across - when I'll get all to link at some point though it'll be a pdf. Not having studied in this field I dont know if the journal is any good - but the main contributor is from IC 🙂

This paper basically says that the 'disorders' are actually all just part of a phospholipid disorder which has also been conected to scitzophrenia (sp), bi polar (though I thought they were still arguing about weather this exists!) and other psychiatric conditions. Also that the disorders are associated with digestional track problems - if you know me then that is v.v.v. interesting - now I can see that this may actually be becuase if you have a digestional track disorder you are more lickly to suffer deficiencies - though this hasnt been mentioned yet!

Also if it is a deficiency then it would explain why more 'poor' people suffer from them and the rate of apparent increase (I say apparent becuase I dont beleive its something we can even get close to properlly quantifying) ie we all have bad diets in modern society etc...

Anyway - I'm off to think - especially as with all these disorders (the originals not bi-polar) there are disproportionatly more males affected than females - ie I'm unusal having server dyslexia as a girl which I already knew!