August New (by sarah)

You may or may not have noticed a dirth of posts and onlineness from me - this is due to a slight no computer issue 🙁 But I've got a temporary solution currently!

So what shall I be upto in August? Well like the rest of the summer so far it will be full of craft and writing workshops - mainly for kids 🙂

I am also back on the papier mache thing and having made a giant sheep last month am working on a piece of textural art work for the visually impaired which I hope will be exhibated in September.

If I can extract stuff of my broken laptop there will be the long awaited for poetry book and of course there is a family wedding for which bunting is being made 🙂 There is the village feast, boundary walk, and Jean's birthday which is going to be in Essex this year hosted by my aunt 🙂 as there is a Christening on the Sunday we are going to!

Alaric's family are visiting too which is exciting as they haven't met Mary yet!

I do of course have lots of other things to share and write about which will be coming soon 🙂

Hormonal Strops (by sarah)

I realise that I never did blog about what happened at the Drs after the whole abulence thing - well I had to go to the hospital where they took a biopsy and examined me and their conclusion was that it was actually my hormone levels and the mega bleeds had coincided with mammoth all night breast feeds by Mary. This sometimes happens with women.

Anyway I was already on the hormone to help stop the bleeding and it dwindled and disappeared for about 4 days and then I was out of hormone and had three days before my next Drs appointment - I started bleeding again which got heavy mainly due to the fact that I thought I'd stopped bleeding and that it would be ok to breast feed Mary again :/

I saw the Dr and she wants to get the biopsy results before doing anything like giving me the coil but she gave me a lower dose hormone which is the pill basically. I'm ok on this one - the higher does one though it slowed the bleeding a lot quicker made me so tempramental - Al say's he's never been shouted at so much in his life. The first three days I was a monster - there was even a thrown plate :/

I was going form shouting about the minutest thing that had 'gone wronge' to then bursting into tears because I was shouting at people for no reason and was a bad person. I was having hot flushes and I was hungry ALL THE TIME. This had settles down abit around the time I ran out of tablets. The smaller tablets had me a little bit grouchy the first day and a half but I've been fine since.

I am still bleeding though which is rediculous - it's over four months now since I had the baby and I didn't realise how drained I was feeling. On the plus side it is getting sorted now - I'm not too worried even though I have gained 1/2 a stone as I am being able to do more things as have more energy with less bleeding which means more exercise and hopefully more weight loss in the long term.

I did almost cry at the Drs about the breast feeding thing - basically I've stopped which makes me so sad and makes me feel like I am letting Mary down and I thought I could get it right with her - I already feel I stuff the breast feeding up with Jean. She said it was ok - that I'd given the baby a good start.

I still feel I am letting my babies down with this aspect of things and I don't think there is anything that anyone can really say to alter that :/

Anyway I am feeling a lot better.

June’s Challenges (by sarah)

Looking at what I have achieved since the New Year I have decided that June's challenges are going to be a Finishing Projects Month and a Game Design Month.

FiPoMo and GeDeMo - I did a GeDeMo last year which worked really well and I got a beta version of a card game I use for writing workshops out of it. I also got it a fair way towards the sellable version. It is part of a group of games that can fit together to make a bigger game and as it looks like I'm in the running workshops business now I really need the game completed.

I'm going to start of by making a large slightly altered version to use at children's writing workshops. Then I want to get the poetry card pack actually out there and selling - after that there is a lot of other things like making the next card packs and designing and testing the board which is going to be heavy on the graphics side of things I feel.

For the FiPoMo I am going to focus on getting the illustrations for the Little Books of Poetry sorted out and editing the poems - yes the first week of May I wrote 70 children's poems - mad, insane and it melted my brain!

I have a deadline for some of these. I think that will take up all of the time to be honest.

And this time an ambulance… (by sarah)

So I had stopped bleeding for about 2 weeks with just a little bit of 'marking' every few days and then I started what I again thought was a period and it was ok for a couple of days and then Mary had a hungry night and fed and fed and fed (breast). But I could feel the flow getting heavier and heavier and I started having to get up to change pads etc.. again and again and again and then it was time to get Jean up for school so I got up the last time and felt the bleeding become very heavy and was on everything - I made a right mess of everything.

And not quiet being with it I got into the bathroom and started to feel strange. I remember thinking this isn't good and Jean burst in her normal fashion and apparently I asked her to help me and tried to follow her out of the bathroom as she went to fetch my dad. He came up the stairs just in time to try and catch me as I passed out which was fortunate as I landed on the almost full length mirror I had propped up on the landing.

This mean I only busted the frame rather than shredding myself to pieces. But it also ment I was slumped on my knees laying sideways on a mirror. Jean apparently called my mum on my mobile phone (I think she just pressed the button she knows calls people and mum was the last person I'd phoned). Dad was trying to get me up to put me back in bed when mum arrived, I was trying to talk but unsuccessfully.

She called an ambulance, by the time they arrived the bleeding had slowed and I was trying to get up off the floor because as I kept repeatedly telling everyone I had to get Jean to school :/ I cried cos I was bleeding on the carpet and had ruined my favourite things and the baby was hungry and Jean had to go to school :/

It took both ambulance people to get me up off the floor and I screamed with pain 🙁 Mainly the pelvis. I was starting to feel more with it and embarrassed that I was causing a huge fuss and appeared to be half naked.

My sugar level was low but I hadn't had any breakfast so they spent time trying to get me to eat and drink. After three pints of water I started to feel a lot better - food had been hard as I felt so sick. As the bleeding had slowed down they called the Drs surgery and I went for an emergancy appointment.

And after an examination and a phone call to the hospital I have more antibiotics and hormone tablets to stop the bleeding. More bloods have been taken and I have a hospital appointment for Monday - by the time I got to the Dr I was just in pain and so very tired. I had lost lots of black jelly again though.

My womb is enlarged and the wound on the outside is even acting up again. I was barely able to walk with the crutches at the Drs surgery the pelvis was acted up so much. I think it extrememly lucky that I didn't pass out whilst using the crutches.

And then I should have just been going home to rest and take tablets but it didn't quiet work like that. Leaving the Drs we went to the Chemists to get the prescription or rather we stayed in the car whilst Dad went - none of us realised how late it was as I'd passed out at around 7 in the morning.

This meant that it was actually past lunchtime and Dad had not had his morning snack and had had lots of stress and so went hypo at the shop :/ They told him to stay put whilst his chocolate bar kicked in but he walked out and collapsed. He then got up and did it again. By this point people had stopped to help and he ended up sitting on someones steps with the pharmacists trying to find out where he lives. At this point me and mum were talking about how we should have made dad eat the banana he'd refused when we arrived as when there is stressfull stuff he tends to go hypo and then I saw the time and phoned him.

I ended up talking to the girl from the shop and they walked him down to the car - initially they'd asked if someone could come and get him not realising that we were in the car park. I had to explain that I'd been passing out, mum was a wheelchair user and we had the baby with us :/

They were concerned that he would try and drive but I assured them we'd wait and feed him the emergancy food.

So we got home just in time for the Jean pick up from school. I went to bed and slept as did everyone else except Jean who watched a film.

It was an adventure I hate living in Interesting Times :/

Nerves and Guitar (by sarah)

I live near Cheltenham and that town has some very good poetry nights etc... so Friday saw be going along to Slak Bar to an open mic at Earshot (probably my favourite poetry night). But this time it was opened up so that the open mic included acoustic so I thought I'd take my guitar and play one of the songs I worked on last month.

But though I was fine if a little upset as Jean refused to talk to me as I said she couldn't come in and watch, things got a little delayed and my anxiety and fretfullness mounted.

For a start I have a glittery nail vanish covered guitar, it is not one of those you can add pick ups too and I knew I wasn't getting the vocal range to be heard well over it in any case. (not an excuess but my glands where up due to hay fever and because of breast feeding I couldn't take anything for it - I find this heavily affects my singing)

Then one of the real acts got up (Horston Longsail) then one of my friends got up and using my guitar and his string clamp thing played a lovely haunting song.

Then I got up - for a start I hadn't wanted to use the crutches but there was no way I was going to be able to get up onto the stage without them. So I was feeling a little flustered as well as nervous. I sat down and begain to play and stuffed it up! I was shaking which didn't help and also I was so nervous my hands were sweating and my fingers slipped of the strings - I'd never encountered that before. Stressing out also makes my voice even tighter and smaller and I couldn't check if I was in tune becuase of the ringing in my ears.

The neverous twitch I used to get where my lip curls up on the left hand side started. I was still attempting to play. I closed my eyes and sang the second verse of my song instead of the first but then managed to look up a bit and get more in the flow - though I changed to the wrong cord and had to alter the sequence slightly so that it would all still fit.

I got off the stage feeling I had really stuffed up - I was so annoyed at myself - how comes I can play the song through perfectly whilst Jean is doing things like licking the guitar to get my attention becuase its dinner time but I get infront of people and it all goes wrong?

It's nerves.

People were very nice about it and I got given tips in the fact the microphone needed to be nearer my mouth and told that it started out a bit hesitant but once I got into it it was good. I even got told the song was like my poetry full of the sweet and dark and that it sounded very PJ Harvey.

I also know that I wasn't really ready to 'perform' in public but that if I didn't start trying I never will be. The issue I have is playing infront of other people and like getting rid of the stutter there is only one way to cure this and that is - if I mess up an open mic I simply need to play more open mics. Now I haven't got a clue weather my songs are any good or even if I can still sing in tune I just have to hope that people aren't going to be too mean!

I am still annoyed with myself over getting so flustered though - and with being annoyed - it meant I didn't really click back into gear until latter in the evening so basically missed Avril Staples poetry as I was waiting for the ringing in my ears to stop!

But I did have a fantastic night - I really enjoyed the two headline poets Bohdan Piasecki and Michael Wilson.