Virtual Launch! Spoogy :) (by sarah)

Today is the day! I will be adding extra bits to this post as the day goes on! But for those of you who do not know, today is the day that we launch the digital version of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry - a free PDF you can download by clicking on the image below (until midnight on the 31st of October!). It is a series of ten halloween themed poems for little ones to enjoy with lots of fun illustrations 🙂

I will also be giving things away on my FaceBook event for the launch and my FaceBook Writers and Artists Page, I'll be on Twitter as Saffy and TheMonsterBlogs and on Google+ and probably LinkedIn too 🙂

Cheltenham Litrature Festival – All Star Slam (by sarah)

Today at 3:30 I will take part in the qualifier for this evening All Star Slam which is a poetry event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. I've done one poetry slam before so am very nervous but I have more poems memorised and the ones I had memorised I can now say slower without fear of forgetting.

I will have my Celestial Montage poetry cards on me if any body wants to purchase any.

Anyway hoping to catch up with friends etc... I'm disappointed that this is the only day I can make it into the festival this year.

Womb Gloom (by sarah)

Wednesday I went to the hospital for the much awaited scan and though it was only an ultra sound it hurt more than any I've had whilst pregnant :/ Just everything round there is really sensitive at the moment. I was cross about the scan - I had been waiting for it for weeks this time and I had recieved a letter informing me I had missed it so I'd had to phone up to book and be told off for something that was not my fault and made to feel small due to the Royal Mail being crap. And to make it worse the health visitor didn't turn up when she was supposed to be visiting me - this annoyed me no end.

Anyway the lady doing the scan was lovely and had a conversation with Al about the machine. The initial thing was it was weird there being not baby in there but we could see a line which was the coil and the coil is in the wrong place. So in the wrong place it is going to have been doing nothing >:( but worse than that I could have gotten pregnant and had the baby and the coil in there at the same time.

I am I admit it paranoid about things going wrong and I had felt that I had regected the coil just before the bleeding came back (it stopped for about 6 weeks after an initial large increase in the bleeding after the coil had been put in but then I felt like I had a series od contraction type things and the bleeding started again.) but the coil was still their when they looked so I had to go away and come back after it had been in a year. And though I thought I was over reacting about it I didn't trust it and so have been shall we say double careful which I am now so so gratefull for it is untrue.

Anyway I was told to phone the Drs and sort an appointment for a weeks time but had struggled to get through to them. Finially I got through today and I couldn't make an appointment like that - the earliest was the second week of Novemeber which the receptionist and me agreed was no good, So I had to wait for a Dr to phone so that they could book me in one of the ermergancy slots.

They were supposed to phone before one but the specialist that they want to deal with me couldn't be tracked down so I got the phone call as Jeany was coming in from school. The issue is that it is not just the coil in the wrong place but that their is inflamation and the womb linning is too thick. So they want to have a meeting to discuess my best options and then I can come in and see them. The Dr is going to phone me back again on Monday.

The thing is that the more I've thought about it the more I really want that other baby - I suppose that will always be the case with me and Al though when ever menopause or womb stuff happened. We had wanted to finish having babies in our 30's but did sort of think we would have the whole of our 30's. But I've found out that menopause has a tendency to hit women in my family in their 30's or endometreosis occurs again in the 30's so I'm feeling as hopeful as I had been.

And yes I realise that I am lucky I have my two lovely girls and a hubby who has not gotten fed up with me even though I have been basically pre-menstral for 19 months! But I am feeling hacked off. Many of my friends haven't even started their families yet and if I'd followed my 'career' path I probably would have only just started thinking about kids now.

Harvest Festival Food Bank Grumps (by sarah)

Ok so there have been times in the past few years especially after the flooding in 2007 when we have not had enough money for food - this thankfully is not the case at the moment and we hope it never will be again but you never can tell unfortuantly. During those times we were lucky and friends and family provided or lent us stuff and I have managed most years to produce quiet alot from fishing in hedgerows and growing things in buckets or on veggi plots. So I like the fact the school have teamed up with the Food Bank who provide food for poorer families but Jean came home with even more restrictions from them than before.

This time it is no baked beans and no plain pasta.

I am furious - seriously. There have been harvests when this is all I have had in the cupboard to give becuase it is the only things we as a family had ourselves and now I am being told that is not good enough. This to me is humiliting, degrading and a slap in the face.

Now I understand that they are trying to get a balance of food to give away but this is one of the issues I find with charities alot - how ever much you do for them it is not enough and rarely appreciated and probably due to the demographic incharge/mostly volunteering (not forced to volunteer but actual volunteers) they seem to think that everyone just have money to give away. I have observed people with little money emptying their wallets for charity - causing themselves hardship and yet it is not appreciated in the same way as the tenner given by big earners who really will not miss it. It's like the time the Shelter Chugger guy was really laying it on think to get me to sigh up - I explained I couldn't as we had nothing at that point - he then explained what it means to be homeless - the definition and you know what? At the time we counted as homeless due to the floods - we had just spent the summer sleeping on friends couches and office floors, startled I pointed this out to him and his response was... 'that maybe so..' and then just continued with his sales pitch and that is what is getting to me - charities run as businesses rather than businesses run as social enterprise.

Of course I'm still going to provide food for The Food Bank but I am really insulted by this. When I was younger (yes I realise that makes me sound grumpy old!) we had Harvest Festival at school, Brownies and Church and the tinned food and flowers went off to old peoples homes, hospices, hostels and childrens homes, the fresh produced was either auctioned off or made into a communial dinner everyone shared or in one case turned into a soup kitchen. There was a nicer feeling and no obligation - if all had was blackberries from the bushes along the fence of the school that was fine - of course I was young so I may have missed stuff and be looking at it through rose tinted lenses. But now there is this feeling that you have to give food and that it has to be well POSH food etc...

I just feel disillusioned with it and Harvest, is part of what I love about Autumn - it is my faviourite time of year. I think I might have to do my own little autumnal thing to set my mood back in place and I realise it is probably petty and childish to feel this way but I am just hacked of with charities in general at the moment, they just seem to be so money grabbing and that puts my back up.

Banks! (by sarah)

Bank 'we urently need to talk to you about your account' I agree to go in get there and 'so what did you want to talk to us about?' Urg! I repeat what they told me - we go through the accounts and transactions and they say 'oh your credit rating is good do you want a loan - you could put your credit cards on there.' me 'erm no I have paid two off already I am out of my over draft and have a payment plan in place to deal with the other.' bank 'are you sure it's so fiddly having all these different payments you could put your husbands on the same account.' me 'erm no I didn't like having loans to pay off before.' bank 'but you did so well with paying them off you sure you don't want another?' me 'no thankyou.' Bank 'well if you change your mind or it gets to the point where you can change your mortgage over to us do come back and talk to us ok?' me 'ok thankyou bye.' bank 'buy'