I had a Dream (by sarah)

Actually I've been having lots of very vivid dreams which doesn't bode well for sugar levels but I haven't got the results of the Glucose Tests back yet - by this time with Jean's pregnancy I had gestational diabetes. But then I often have vivid dreams - many of them are what is termed lucid and I have some sort of control on them. Part of this is the fact that when pain levels are high I don't actually go to sleep properly so I am in a sort of resting trance. They have benifits but it makes it harder for you body to repair itself from injuries - this isn't mumbo jumbo this was out of the Drs mouth at the pain clinic when they attempted to medicate my sleep when we lived back in Essex.

Anyway I thought I really needed to share lasts nights dream. It starts with me trying to get to a PhD interview at Reading University - the PhD is about modeling other solar systems and exo planets etc... I have no idea if Reading does this sort of thing but it was Reading in the dream - the only issue was Alaric was running late so instead of having a nice sedate drive to the interview we had to high jack a state of the art plane from the local army base type place.

As we took off I noticed the tail wasn't actually attached to the plane but the whole thing was segments held together a bit like a kite - the tail itself looked remarkably like a cray fishes or something lobstery only in shiny metal.

We get to the university and I am late - I haven't read the notes on what the things is actually about but they agree to see me anyway as there is only one other candidate - a UG astrophysics girl. I then proceed to think on the spot and tell them that they need to reassess everything. I tell them that what they need in a lovely large database with a nice archive mode - this is sort of a giant wiki with the ability to pull meta structures from the data such as phase diagrams. You see I don't just want to make a database of the planets and the physics but why not add all of mineralogy and astronomy?

Why not had layers where people can choose the data to run their simulations and the like? In the dream I'm in a pale yellow room with aging equipment and they are like - we don't have the money to pay the programmers and our stuff never quiet works.

Of course it doesn't I crow - your not programmers and you just use which ever language you happen to have picked up. Then I tell them not to worry - I'll make the database - I'll make the initial system and we can have people adding their own stuff!

It would be massive and everyone would argue about things added which is were the archive system would come in - they could just take an previous theory ect... With this we could easily extrapolate the composition of planets around other stars. It could have the ability to swap between notations so no more issues over what a Chemist calls a metal compared to a Geologist compared to a Astrophysist etc...

I have to say at this point there was decent in the interviewers - there is of course a problem of who the data belongs too and would we have to pay and keep it secret - that would hamstring the project - it would kill alot of their grants dead etc... alter the peer review system. Subjects that I have touched on before whilst awake!

But then I point out that it would have commercial applications and launched into a whole thing about the gaming industry being a growth sector and how you could build games engines on this thing! (again this is something we are sort of doing anyway in the real world but not with real physics).

I point out that scifi authors and the like would love to get their mitts on such a database too - for it would make world building a lot simpler and you could make smaller custom ones.

They were still like but we need someone to make all this and we just wanted a data monkey to enter numbers into spreed sheets. I laugh and say I can build it for them (I can't but I'm planning on using an advance version of Alaric's Ugarit.).

Anyway it ended with me negotiating to mainly work from home and stuff.

Part of me is now going - this needs to become real! We need to have this database - an extention on an idea I had a few years ago! And Alaric was like that is exactly the sort of thing the archive mode of Ugarit would be good for. The arogance of me in the dream was a suprise though. Besides last time I had a PhD interview I told the person their project was recording the wrong things - which didn't go down too well :/ And this dream is just that rite large - plus there is no way I am going to be doing anything academic for a while either - but it was a cool dream non the less!

Equal Writes (by sarah)

One of my fellow NaNoWriMers is collecting sponsers for his writing this November - he did this last year too - he is raising money for Equal Love, the campaign group from same-sex marriage rights in Melbourn 🙂 There is a FaceBook Group here.

As those who have been reading for a while will know I hate intolerance and this the same-sex marraige being denied is to me a gross example of intolerance.

Marrage is about love, about declaring that to the rest of the world - hey guys we're together! I know some people say marrage is about children but many hetrosexual couples never have children and when they do they are not necasserily inside of marrage.

Also to say it is about children is to diminish what it is worth - if it is about children then it nothing more than a snare and a trap to enforce family structure and that leads to unhealthy mental baggage for the kids in the first place :/

Marrage should not be a trap, it should be a union and as such there should be no gender/sexual orientation constraints placed upon it - people can not choose who they fall in love with - such has been known for a millenia or two.

Plus with IVF and adoption the child argument really can not stand even on it's own merits - I feel sad that society is still so bound up in hate that two caring individuals can not easily adopt just because they are the same sex. I have heard people fearful that it means two men can adopt a little girl and do dreadful things and then I think of the Wests and I think that was a hetrosexual couple and what they did was beyond words. Yes there is a risk of abuse but no more so than with adoption in general or even just who your perants happen to be 🙁

So why? Why? Can't gay marrage be allowed? We have Civil Partnership here in the UK which people tell me off for telling Jean is marrage. But I will not tell her that people of the same sex can not marry as to her any couple who are together are marrade. Obviously she is very young and kissing apparently counts as marrage but she came home very upset from pre-school last year, as the other kids had told her she couldn't marry one of her best friends. The topic came up sooner than I was expecting but we told her it was fine if she wanted to marry a girl (she will probably kill me for this post when she's about 13!).

I know people thought that we shouldn't have told her this but we have gay couples as friends! And I'm sorry but Jean is not silly and is very good at noticing human interactions :/ Plus why should we lie to her? Also we have been to a gay wedding with her so I think it would be a bit stupid to tell her they can't happen :/

Homosexuality has had to lay hidden for far too long, to the extent that friends asked if they could kiss their partners or even bring them to things like our wedding - they shouldn't have to feel like that.

Anyway - that is how I feel and why even though he is not based in the UK I felt this was something I would tell you all about 🙂

Food and Dyslexia et al (by sarah)

Food would appear to play a large part in how bad things like Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and ADHA get, or how the symptoms show. It has been suggested that diary plays a large part in this and I have to say that I have personally noticed a coralation with this but I due have food intollerances. These may or may not be connected to the problems however excessive diary does seem to act things up as does general none home cooked food to be honest. Obviously there is the issue I have with food colourings, caffine and sugar combinations - I assume these are part of the ADHD but apart from caffine can find no mention of them.

The other one is that Omega-3 (I think) oil seems to play a huge part too - or at least it's absence. This is interesting as it plays straight into the joint issues and for me at least the pain management stuff. Add in collagen difficiences and the like and I came to a conclusion (this is mine there is no research on this - it's just something I have observed with me!). We basically need fish and shelf-fish type nutrition in our diet to remain healthy - this appears to be true of many people anyway but more so with those with Dyspraxia and stuff.

Of course this would be a situation that is getting worse as modern diets are down to a fraction of the amount of sea food it once had in it - on top of that we are killing the seas and they may not be able to provide for us 🙁 I think you can get the oils from things like flax seeds so there are veggi options though they may take more digesting.

I have noticed it is not just me with these conditions and either the chronic pain nor the food intollerences - they crop up in combinations startingly frequently on the forums and help sites I've seen - people asking are their intollerences/allergies part of the condition etc...

This is something I really feel would benieft from some more research done on it 🙂

Social Expectations (by sarah)

Conditions like dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD are supposed to be more preverlant in males but even the NHS seem to think this could be biased. Why would it be biased?

The answer is social expectation of girls - something which with girls improving in leaps and bounds in exams now they are being allowed and ecouraged to do so - may become more evident. If a girl is uncoordinated it's ok she's a girl and they can't catch balls and things anyway can they? Less so now but spelling? Well girls don't need to do well at school unless they are going to be a secretary (this one is almost erradicated but it did exist and in some places still does - I am talking the UK here by the way before everybody gets confused!). If a girl has trouble concentrating well girls are quiet and dreamy anyway aren't they?

I think biased is probably very artificial and as our understanding of children's development increases so this biased will disappear!

However there is another issue with these disorders and society and that is the conclusion that most of the public are still drawing i.e. = lazy child, naughty child or thick child with parents who can't come to terms with it. Now These sorts of cases do exist but they are the minority not the majority.

And worse this is sort of a self fore filling prophesy - if you take an intelligent kid and tell them they are lazy, naughty, can't-do's - that is exactly what they will turn into. In a world where they are frustrated and no one will help them or are even hostile to them, they will be hostile back, they will stop going (playing truant and getting in with people they should be kept safe from). So instead of having a slightly kack-handed physist searching for exo-planets you get Mr 3 Kids in a council house by age 21. Instead of the deptudy manager you get Dude Is Run the Gangs Round 'Ere. Instead of the artist selling her pots and boosting our economy you get Miss Heart Attack Victim dead behind the flats from glue sniffing at seventeen. Instead of the teacher you get Miss Recluse scared of her own shadow and unable to get a job langishing. All this potential wasted.

And the thing is - it's not just people who don't know about the conditions - sometimes people who have struggled with them themselves and have put in coping techniques so well they now no longer believe they have anything wronge with them. Even when they can't sit still for more than 5 minutes even as a grown-up. This is akin to the business person who has made it by hard work and luck to drag themselves out of poverty - they can not see the luck aspect only the work - and yes they have achieved great things but they still would not have managed it without the luck and yet they exactly the people who point to themselves and say 'see I did it the rest of you are just being lazy'.

Don't get me wrong I think that things can be made worse by environment with these conditions and like it or not the parents are not always going to be able to help. They may just not know or they may not be capable of helping or sadly just not care. This is one of the reasons it is so important for there to be Social Peramitters to help these children and adults - and yes I count myself in there - I have been extrememly lucky and things could have been different. So this means educational help, medical help where needed and maybe social workers or the like for those adults who are server enough that they really are just going to be at loss in the world. And it's not that I'm saying people should be giving freedom passes - most want to be useful and helpful - to give something back or to support their families but they may need help in finding the sorts of things they can do.

Me And Dyspraxia (by sarah)

Those of you who know me know I am as clumsy as a clumsy thing stuck together with inept glue :/

I even got an award named after me :/ The Spym Award for the Most Spectacular Injury in the Field :/ (Mainly due to things like falling into a prickly pear patches and little things like tearing all the ligaments in my ankle and leg and being sent home on crutches). Add in the old getting lost in Ingleton (something I will never live down! It is not exactly a big place but I got confused and walked the wrong way - away from the bus/coach waiting to take us home).

But the issue is that even by this point I was no where near as clumsy as I had been! And I am less clumsy now. I remember the pain of being a child and not being able to run without tripping over, of ending up in detention because I would manage to knock the chairs off the desk at home time :/ We had to put the chairs on the desk to finish the day off and somehow I always took about five of them out on route to the door. (The draconian teacher who shouted at me over this was a primary school teacher - something I would be horrified to find happening to Jean - as it was the woman insisted I needed to go to a 'special' school and it involved the head mistress, my parents and an educational psychologist before she agreed that I was not retarded - just lazy).

PE was more than a horror - oddly not so much in Junior School though I was more inept - because the kids just sort of accepted it. No, the horror of PE came later.

Now I remember getting a pink crystal ball that lit up and tinkled at Easter People (a religious camp held every Easter) and this ball became a sort of obsessive life line for me. I think I was, what, eight years old? I thought the ball was a space ship for fairies and that they would help me.

I decided the first thing that needed sorting was balance and catching a ball. Being hyper flexible and small had meant my aunt had taken me along to try and get me gymnastic classes a few years earlier but I was 'not suited' so that went down the drain but I took away the idea of what I suppose was circuit training.

So I set up an assault course in our garden - not the normal type which involve lots of running and things but ones with fence posts balanced on brieze blocks, and a 'saturn ball' (a ball with a disc round the middle that you stand on and balance). All these sorts of things and I attempted to do this course everyday at least once without falling off of anything.

Then there was my magic ball; not being able to throw or catch was something that the other kids always picked up on and no one wanted me in the team for those catching ball games and I always ended up being piggy in the middle - a game I grew to detest and associate with bullying behaviour.

The ball was made out of little fused plastic beads, slightly transparent and in multiple layers. It was a mish mash of white to dark fuscia pink. I started by dropping in on the floor and attempting to catch it on the up bounce. Initially I never caught it. But I would try and try and my memory of it is chasing this ball around the patio as the light faded but it lit up on bouncing so it was ok.

Then I began to catch it - first one in five bounces and then slowly more and more. The boy next door asked what I was doing and I explained. And so then we began a game of throwing balls to each other over the fence and playing badminton with the fence as the net and things like that. These were fun but they only happened if he didn't have his friends over 😉

He then moved away and I was back to it being just me and my bouncy ball. By this point the light had stopped working but it still tinkled.

At some point I began catching it most of the time - this was initially done with both hands as I didn't really have the concept of left and right and didn't get that until I started playing guitar during my A'levels and then I would have to pretend to play the guitar to work it out!

But I began to catch it a 100 times with one hand then 100 times with the other. I then added in things like throwing it up and catching it and bouncing it off of the wall. Things continued to improve until I was pushing myself to catch it one hundred times in a row without dropping it at all, in all the different combinations - even roping my brother in to play catch with!

Of course there were a few blips with this and I didn't do it every day - just most - depending on how much time I spent playing with the kids in the street. My next door neighbour Micheal showed me how to rid my bike - I was 10 by this point and it took a lot of him holding the bike for me. The issue I had was the same with the balancing on the beams - I got like vertigo :/ Sort of a dizzy spell. But the more I did things the easy it got.

A big blip in it was when I accidentaly miss judged a football, treading on it and twisting my knee by treading on the damn thing instead of kicking it :/ This wouldn't have been too bad but I was on a cinder path at the time - all those little sharp fragments of burnt wood and coal ground into my knee and it was a trip to casualty. Fortunately we were in Wales and I got seen really quickly.

This was my first stint on crutches. (The second occuring not that long afterwards when I fell over the wheel of my own bike gashing open my knee on the wheel nut and chipping the knee cap! Told you I was clumsy).

The improvements I made where staggering especially when I think of the struggle I was having with reading and writing at the time as well which I was working equally as hard on. I had also had the hearing problems which had resulted in my speech needing work.

But even though I could now catch a ball I was still a little erratic at it and then the hardest thing - Secondary / senior school - no glasses allowed during PE. Now it didn't matter how much work I had done - I couldn't see the balls :/

PE was still a nightmare and then they gave the bullies large wooden sticks to chase you with - this was known as Hockey. PE became a moot point as I ended up on crutches and then on a walking aid for a year (yes again I know!). This was another football related injury 😉 I was given a pair of little patent leather shoes with little heels on them - the sort of thing people buy just-pre-teens as they are becoming all feminine and growing up :/ I'd never worn heels so it didn't occur to me that playing football on a parque floor that had just been polished was a bad idea. (this incidentally was the same ankle I killed later on during school and then again at University - this time however - I had seriously mullered the achillies tendon 🙁 )

The injury wouldn't have been so bad if the PE teacher hadn't decided to make me run cross country on my first day back with out crutches :/ That's right five minutes in me and a tree root had an altercation and the ankle that was still under going treatment was wrenched and racked all over again :/

Anyway the injuries are only semi-relevent due to hypermobility possible being related to Dyspraxia.

The things that really helped with my co-ordination during secondary education was the fact that in year nine (so aged 13-14) the school gave us a list of activities to choose from at Stubbers Outdoors center. Horse Riding did not appeal and as my swimming still was... erm.... "lets panic if we're out of our depth and not wearing a life jacket", sailing and rafting where out. This left archery and climbing.

Initially climbing - I spent most of the time clinging to the wall- vertigo, feeling like I was falling, getting dizzy was there again. But climbing I found I could do, it was that much different from scrambling across welsh mountains and as long as I didn't look down it was fine. So after the first week I started to find I could get to the top of the wall - then however vertigo set in when absailing was to happen.

But then I was asked if I liked roller coasters - the answer to which was yes! 'Pretend that's what this is, your safe on the line.' So that's what I did - the vertigo thing also affects me in cars but I used to just think of that as a roller coaster!

And then... the I found falling off was mostly fun (as long as you didn't crash into the wall at right angles to you with all the jabby hand holds on it.) And then I loved abseiling and then I found that the floppy twistiness of me made climbing easier! I had found a sport that I could not only do but that I was good at!

And then archery - it turned out I was allowed to wear my glasses! I started to actually win things which was a shock - it was around this time me and my friends started going on lots of camps and things. We did lots of climbing and archery and it even got me into canoes and kayaks and making rafts. Of course then due to guiding stuff I ended up working at Thriftwood Campsite where I ended up instructing the climbing! and archery!

I believe the climbing and really helped with my co-ordination and balance but that wasn't the end of it. When I got to University I found something else that helped - took me another leap forward and that was Wu-Shu Kungfu (I don't have a clue how you spell it but it basically a Chinese mish-mash martial art). I didn't actually do it for very long - just over a year what with crutches, back problems coming to the fore and stomach problems. But it did help drastically. It was a combination of Wu-Shu, physio, yoga, pilates and Chi-Gong (which I took up when Wu-Shu was obviously a no go anymore) that got me walking again after I had Jean.

I just feel that mostly the dyspraxia doesn't affect me that much - other than being a scatterbrain and getting lost still 😉 But it was a long road - I have included here the things I think helped me the most - in the hope that they may help others.