Poets Work (by sarah)

Saturday I went into Cheltenham to meet friends and write and what have you. It was great to see my friend Andy again who I orginally met at a writing group in Cheltenham back before the floods!

The postcards and stickers of my art work arrived for moo so I gave him some one of each which he seemed really happy about 🙂 He also told me I should be selling them.

Somehow three hours disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Then I went on to Centre Arts who are running an Arts Cafe on Saturday afternoons. I managed to fall off my chair - a prelude to passing out and stuff later in the day which was unfortunate but I recovered and they were very helpful and understanding as always!

I felt stupid but a cup of coffee and several poems inspired by the artwork later, I was having a fine chat with an artist/nurse who was in there drawing away.

I also managed to talk to my friend who runs the place about the Science-Art Exhibition we will be running in March which is very exciting and lots of organising needs to be done!

Alaric was concerned about me so bought me a four pack of irish stout which did seem to really help - he then made me lots of green veg for dinner and we discussed the bleeding problem :/

I've also had a neck spasm for the last week or so which is making typing and drawing and reading hard but I am steadily working my way through it. On the plus side the continual headache I've had for the past year seems to have disappeared with the coil 🙂

I finished the day off by sorted out my poetry mug - I love this cupcake tea cupe 🙂

It may not sound like work but with the aememia acting up it was very exhausting for me but it was definately worth it. I'd been in on Tuesday as well to watch a talk about The European History of Warewolves which was interesting by (Deborah Hyde)[http://www.jourdemayne.com/about-jourdemayne].

It was a narrowed down talk so covered a later bit of history than what I have been researching lately. However it did tie in with the time period of the first Punk storyline and I'd very much want to add in the warewolf, witch and vampire myths on top but within the context of actual history, science and the storyline itself. Well that was really the point of going!

From a writing point of view Tuesday was a very productive day - I spent it trying to get an overview of Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Tudor period but completely side tracked myself in disease history (as you do!).

This was all whilst cuddling Mary who was in one of her slightly grumpy I am teething moods so wouldn't be put down.

After the warewolf talk, I wrote a horror story based on real accounts of the Black Death - I should have been sleeping but had brain over load!

I freaked myself out slightly and ended up having to wake Alaric up - this is a good sign though - I feel my best horror stuff is written in this way - though poor Al was not amused!

I have a story idea that came out of the talk too but it is very disturbing so can't face writing it yet. It maybe shelved until GothNoWriMo or something.

The talk was good in another way though - I realised as I miss people who think and know stuff. I was sitting there and some makes a comment about us and chimpanzees and I know it's wrong and before I can say anything someone else corrects the guy! It just sort of felt like uni again and I have always really missed that atmosphere.

Writing wise this month is being hectic with me running WoPoWriMo too and I really want to donate some more poems to charity cause - one for the disabled and their fight at the moment and some for Freedom - a book shop that was fire bombed in London on Friday.

So I am chugging along with the work thing - never as fast as I want but little bits will build-up.

One Leg Longer than the Other (by sarah)

So awhile ago Alaric started having horrible lower back pain which we thought was initially a slipped disc as did the Dr and he got refered to physio and he seemed sorted but then it came back, this time with exploding knee and things. It has been getting worse and more frequent though disappears in the intermediate stages - he had to be tested for various other nasty things like bone cancer etc... especially as he was having the night sweats and things but these were all clear.

Further prodding and pocking reveals he has a wonky pelvis leading to inflamation of the thorasic joint - he has siattica basically. He is fixable - especially as it appears the wonk has been caused in the first place by one leg being short than the other. He says in hind sight there has always been an issue with him getting into trouble for 'tripping people up' as he naturally stands with the longer leg sticking out.

So he needs manipulation and special shoes, but the nhs wont fix him, they will prescribe pain killers and send him to pain management but wont fix him as it will cost too much. His Dr has given him the contact details for the person she went too as she had the same problem.

I just don't understand the logic of the nhs - left untreated he will end up a cripple and dependent costing them alot of money. I suppose it's why save money for a tomorrow we shall not see :/

But more than that - when I was at school we had a medical in secondary school where they measured everything and checked spins were straight and all sorts - he apparently didn't have this - I can't help but think the leg issue would have been picked up then - the amount of damage all ready done which could have been solved by made to measure shoes with different height soles :/

So the mission is to sort him out - we can't afford for both of us to be cripples. When his back is bad we have to work together in the most ludicrous of ways to get the most simple things done. Not too bad at the moment as I am walking again but there were a few dicey weeks when I was on crutches and he couldn't lift anything last year. We had to work in tandum to get the baby seat in the car etc...

Mary is 2! (by sarah)

Mary was two on Monday - she spent most of the day in nursery with her friends who made her a lovely card complete with scribble signatures 🙂

When she came home she opened her card from Uncle David and Aunty Michelle and the one Jeany had made her with a little drawn birthday story in it! Then there was one present from Al's mother - a ball pit which both girls had much fun with.

We sang Happy Birthday in four different languages - English (all of us), Lojban (Daddy), Polish (Mummy - or what I cold remember of it), and French (Jeany).

Due to Dad being ill and me having med issues too we have posponed the official celebration ie the party until the 16th of Feb.

The Danger of Quotas (by sarah)

Recently a Ruby on Rails conference was destroyed and never took place because feminists complained there were no women on the panels and talks etc... when it was pointed out that no women applied the response was that they had not tried hard enough to find women. This attack grew until the sponsors pulled their money.

This is a shame and horrible, a lot of work had gone into the event and I'm sorry but it is not the organisers fault no women applied. They should not be forced to look for women for fear of events not going ahead. Now what should have happened is that the event went a head and effort was then put in to encourage female programmers to apply to the next one.

Even if women had applied but were not as good as other candidates, there should not be an obligation to take them on just to fill the quota.

Now obviously there is the issue that some people for some reason still seem to think women are not as capable with things such as science and maths and programming but really forcing them to put women on panels is not going to help. The quota thing is being banded about in the science world but to me this can be nothing but damaging to the image of females in science and tech.

The reason is that it devalues what they do - ok so they are there because they are actually really good at what they do - but no one is going to be thinking that - they will be thinking oh she's the token woman isn't she? I wonder if she actually knows her stuff.

Now I had issues with this during my degree. I found out about the area I really wanted to study due to an outreach programme for getting women into the sciences and this was good. In conversations I've had since with various people in charge of universities they agree that the intake of girls on the courses suddenly increased to around 50% and that this was streadily trickling upwards through the science hierachies. There was some winnowing away with the issue of women hitting the glass ceiling with finding themselves at home with kids if they went for families in their 20's, they would often then find themselves also look after sick relatives or some such making a return harder but this was being metered out by older women joining the ranks once family were off hand.

This was great and I never experienced any problems with sexism from staff or established scientists (though disability was another thing and I believe a friend who found herself pregnant had one person say she wasn't coming back so why make a fuss - she got her degree and that staff member was horrible in many other ways). I agree that evidence of women succeeding is needed but it does not need to be rammed down peoples throats. The issue is that we are heading towards equality right?

Not female supremacy.

My main beef with quotas is that though I did not receive any sexism from the lecturers or those I worked with during my work experience I did from fellow students. And the main thing they bullied me over (and yes I mean that in all it's nastiness) is that I ticked three boxes, I filled three quotas with just one person so of course I got in. I was a disabled, poor, female, the only way I could have been better for the books is by being a minority preferable not the creamy pale white I am.

And the thing is there is no come back to this - how did I know that wasn't why I was on the course?

I already knew that I'd been offered a lower grade boundary to get in than others had - a correction made as those in 'normal' schools tend to score lower grades than those in schools you pay for but tend to actually work their buts off if they manage to get in. As it turned out I got the grades needed to get in without the concession which was a great help with the confidence when arguing my right to be there.

The most important thing for succeeding is self confidence but how can you have this if you yourself are worried that you are only there because of some damn quota. A female lecturer told me this was why women had to be better than men to get to the higher jobs in the modern science world, no longer is it to get noticed but more to keep the wolves away once you are there.

To me it is saddening to see that people are still worrying about this, and I have seen 'feminists' do and say some awful things. Things that make me not want to say 'I am a feminist' - when I say it I mean that women are equal to men. When they say it they mean women are better than men and men are all horrible and must pay for centuries of persecution against women.

Well you know if that's the case then they need to look at who's ancestors persecuted who's and start worrying.

People are people.

Scientists are people that do science - end of.

It Didn’t Want to Come Out (by sarah)

WARNING this is a TMI post with some gross bits.

Yesterday I went to the hospital to have the stuck coil removed - we arrived early and so actually got to go in early! It had to be tugged, twisted and cut out as was embedded fortunately in the place of polyps so have free polyp removal and my c-section scar is unruptured - which was the main concern with the removal. It was all under a local anaesthetic which is great as generals are bad for you. I was a big baby so they gave me more to numb it all. For a while they worried that it had lost it's arms. They had to use an internal and the belly ultra sound to deal with it and were fiddling for about 45 mins - coil removal normally takes a few minutes but I knew I was going there as it was stuck and this was nothing compared to what might have had to happen..

They gave me a copy of the scan to show just HOW far away the coil was from where it should have been. The biopsy is still not done due the mess it was all in so have to wait a few months for a second scan to check for growth. Feeling sick but v v v relieved and no where near as bad as I was expecting.

The Dr said she could quiet see why I had been put off having another one to replace it but that if my bleeding became uncontrollable and dangerous again then to get my GP to send me back to the clinic so that it could be fitted using the Ultra Sound machine.

I am hoping that the headaches I've been having are going to be gone now as it is likely they were a coil side effect. Only time will tell with the bleeding but I position of the coil means that it probably was not helping with that anyway.

They could tell that one of my ovaries had just ovulated too and were being paranoid about me getting pregnant. And infact I am really lucky that I am not pregnant as as a preventative it was doing nothing.

However I realise that I am just unlucky and that the coil works for most women who have it and the number to times it goes wrong verses the number of extra pregnancies without it probably works out well (not sure don't have the stats).

I don't think I'm ever going to forget the sight of the thing when it came out as it had bits of me attached but I needed to see it to be honest just assure myself it was gone. I didn't really want it, got it for medical reasons and was always very aware of it and then when I found out it was stuck it sort of freaked me out to be honest. Part of me wonders if I somehow made my body reject it by being so worried about it - bodies are funny things.

We are very lucky to have had friends step in to look after the girls after dad's trip in an ambulance and I am just very relieved that it is gone.