Poetry Me – a question of confidence (by sarah)

Last night I went out to Poetry Cafe which is a lovely poetry night in Chletenham organised by the Cheltenham Poetry Festival people - it often features a main poet and a mini show case of new poets (I've done a mini show case before which was fun). Yesterday was no exception with two fantastic headliner poets

I knew I had to go to this event in order to get back into the swing of things but it was hard - first off there is the anemia making me so tired and stuff still then there is the whole crutches thing and then of course children to be looked after and a time balancing with Mary's feeding as she is still completely breast fed and the event was being held in a pub. Then there was the panic whilst getting ready that cloths were either too big or too small and everything nice just made me look fat.

But I put on the black dress mum got me - it is maternity ware but I don't think you can really tell - it mainly hid the giant bandage/corset thing I have to ware to be able to walk and some black net stockings covered the compression stocking. I felt trussed up and rediculous and knew there was little I could do about it. I also knew I had to read to read at this event or I would loose the ability to get up on stage.

However I need some sort of confidence trick to be able to read especially as it was all going to be a bit awkard due to crutches and the venue room being upstairs etc... So I looked through my accessories and dug out the purple hat Al bought me at Wychwood last year and a purple flower hair band - I decided to go with the purple flower.

I ended up reading twice and I may now be doing two more events at the Poetry Festival - I am already doing the Poetry and Piaf event (reading my Piaf poem unsuprisingly).

The festival is the 31st of March - 3 April.

I am really looking forward to it plus April like it is going to be lots of writing fun for me anyway but more on that later

Musical Me (by sarah)

I've been practicing the guitar like a demon - well there's this little gap in the day when Mary is awake but not feeding and it coincides with Jean being around so I tend to spend then practicing the guitar. With a dose of nursery rhymes.

I am also learning the Firefly theme The Ballad of Serenity and the Hero of Canton just to be geeky and music mistro at the same time

Now I'm not really what I would call naturally musical, I can't read music, have little technical knowledge of the subject and spent a chunk of my early life with hearing problems, but I love music and I want to play it - I know I'm not really any good at it but I know that this also doesn't really matter.

I am making leaps and bounds with the guitar playing (still know 13 year olds that would make me look like a beginner because though I have had a guitar since I was 15 that is what I am!). Little things are clicking in my head - like I never could do strumming patterns - I still don't look at what they are supposed to be I just play but I noticed that I am hitting the right strings automatically some of which I always concidered impossible.

I have finially broken the back of reading tabs though I still end up with furrowed brow and pauses as I try and position both hands with multiple fingers for plucking. I am also attempting to combine strumming and plucking - again something I never thought I'd be able to do.

I know this all basic stuff but believe me it took me along time just to get rhythm - I'm not what you'd call a natural. Also the guitar music I was trying to play was far to advanced for me and getting the Nursery Rhyme and Christmas Carol book as helped so much - they are aimed at kids and so are my level.

The ability to tune the guitar is coming back too though I am still a slave to the tuner - when we first moved here I tried tuning from the piano at Barbara's but it never sounded right (mainly it turned out because the piano was out of tune).

I have also found things much easier since I stopped trying to completely mimic songs - I need to know what the song is supposed to sound like in order to start playing it but then I alter it to fit with how my voice wants to sing it. I'm sure half of you are cringing at that and Mum has apoplexy that I don't play the right tunes but sometimes the tunes are boring or it's too low for me.

Issues I still have is that my hands are being a little bit rubbery at the moment but I swear playing the guitar helps prevent the complete collapses that I've had in the past but I still have to restrict practice and incorporate it into the 'pacing' for pain management. On that note I can't currently play my new guitar due to it being too heavy for me to lift and swore joints make the extra push down on the metal strings painful.

I still fail at bar cords and those that I can make 'ring' (not sure the technical terms for half of this) I can't change into quickly and changing from one to another just is not even on the horizon. This is a shame as alot of my favorite songs use them :/ On the other hand I have found that I can work out simpler/easier for me to play cords that with me singing soprano works - though I again can see people throttling me as I sing heavy metal in a choir voice!

And this leads me into the singing thing - I really miss singing - I miss it so much - I sing to the girls all the time but though that is lovely it is not the same. I've hunted around for choirs but they do tend to be either just choral stuff - Latin etc... or they are naff and they cost a fortune!

But in desperation I had a little look around on the internets again and found there is a group that sounds vaguelly like MT Soc (Op Soc to the oldies) that I belonged to at college and they put shows on at the Everyman Theater and the Playhouse in Cheltenham. I really want to join this group though I need to learn to drive first really - the only down side is they do focus almost entirely on Gilbert and Sullivan - this only makes me sad as I feel there is so much more to musical theater and light opera.

I really enjoyed being in things like The Little Shop of Horrors at college but from memory just the right to perform the modern stuff is sky high. But The Cotswold Savoyards definatly sounds more up my street - I tend to prefer it if there is some acting involved plus you get outfits!!!! Droool.

But as I said joining this group would be in the future once I learn to drive and more importantly am back off of crutches.

Part of me is kicking myself for not having claimed domestic space for the music stuff before - I always hide the guitar away and had trouble keeping tuner, plectrums, guitar and music all in the same place and then the flood happened - mixed in with the issues with my hands and it's makes for poor neglected guitar. I'm sort of thinking - wow if I'd spent all the time form 15 until now playing guitar with daily practice I might actually be ok at it rather than at the - well I can play some nursery rhymes stage :/

A Perfect Me Day (by sarah)

Today I got up and between breast feds and also during breast feds I made and designed cards. Some of these were thankyou cards printing out my own art work to cut out and stick with glue, some were birthday cards and some invites. There were stickers involved too and card toppers This was done to the accompanyment of U2.

Then it started hailing and rain so Jean and Alaric came in and domesticness happened including yummy lunch of cheese and chutney toasties. We then went out to Primrose Vale Farm Shop - this was actually my first outing were there was sunshine! It was golden and lovely and sureal - we listened to Red Hot Chilli Peppers and bought nice cheeses and lovely vegitables and some funky looking popping corn. We then went and got some dinner.

On the way back to the car there was a vivid rainbow arching across the storm clouds that had appeared dark and grey tinged with violet. On close inspection the rainbow appeared to be a double rainbow with a second fainter arch on the outside. We explained about rainbows to Jeany who asked more and more questions and then had to chase the rainbow to prove what we said was true. The sunlight made the trees appear to be glowing gold and copper against the dark clouds and we listened to Gary Numan.

Board of chasing rainbows we sat at a veiwing point wating a peach and Turkish delight sunset with Tori Amos playing in the back ground, Alaric and Jean went for a walk whilst the wind scouped out the clouds into a billowed sail which drove it's mullioned shape across a brooding sky until it darkened into a drizling twilight with dirty storm light yellow tinging the edges and the lights of Gloucester begain to glint below.

We drove home to the Stone Roses and I read Terry Pratchette whilst feeding Mary and Al and Jean played Rush Hour. Jean then went to bed with a Mystery story from Daddy whilst I played my purple sparkly electric guitar - remembering part of a song I'd written at 14-15 with such delightful lyrics as 'my bones are a battle field'. It sounded good after some mucking about with tone, pick-ups and over drive settings!

I also played Mary to sleep with Little Boy Blue played harshly and loud, then some mucking about just playing randomly (at which point Al says 'oh that sounds better' :/). Playing around with what I can do resulted in Al putting on a Pink Floyd song he thought I'd been trying to work out and I'm doing some writing now!

Also this was an outing were I got out of the car and actually went into places ie Farm Shop - it was physically exhorsting and I struggled abit with standing towards the end but I did it! I almost managed to get my legs into the car myself too which is a vast improvement over last week!

I have a few story concepts to write down and then hopefully sleep as Mary's just had a big feed

Infection Update (by sarah)

Last Monday the Dr came out to see me as I mentioned and prescribed antibiotics (two different lots) for my wound which was smelling and seeping and it turned out infected in the skin around the wound. Wednesday saw Alaric calling in the emergancy Dr per instructions on Wednesday as the redness had spread. The Dr (a guy this time) told me that it was just the upper levels of skin infected and so it was a type of dermetitis or nappy rash type thing caused by the fluid seeping from the wound. The fluid itself was cuasing or was caused by (not sure) the wound showing superficial breakdown of the skin around it.

By this point it stunk even more

He was worried that there was no dressing on it - I had been using sanitary pads at the hospital as other mothers had recommended but they told me not too and to get frumpy knickers so that nothing was touching the wound - I'd asked about my stomach flap (my stomach is very floppy now the babies out and so the bottom of the stomach sits on the wound - I thought this might make it go feisty) and they told me to wash the wound three times a day and dry it. So this is what I had been doing. The Dr said he'd talk to the Midwife or District Nurse about maybe putting dressings on it.

The Midwife came on Thursday and discharged the baby as her umbilical stump had finially come off - she looked at the wound and was concerned - saying that I would probably need more antibiotics. She advised me to put one of my maternity pads over the top of my knickers so that it sits on the wound and between it and my stomach :/

So I have been doing this and within a like an hour of doing this the burning, stinging pain of the wound deminished to a dull thud and I felt ok enough to venture out of the house for the first time.

I went on the school run but did not get out of the car and Alaric drove to a coffee place and got me a take away decaf latte to have in the car as he knows I've been missing them!

Initially the pads were coming away covered in wound seepage which included the stinky liquid and blood This was actually more than I am loosing as having had baby discharge/giant after birth period but fortunatly the two have swapped places now!

The Dr has also upped the number of pain killers I am taking and said that I could increase my Fe tablets too if I wanted. I am rattling with pills at the moment but they do seem to be doing the trick - it is as the Dr had warned giving the baby the runs which is a pain but barable.

I also managed to go out for a meal with my brother and his fiance this weekend though it was a struggle towards the end. The wound is now barable for using the crutches properlly but the breathlessness and dizzyness from the anemia is still there meaning that I almost fell over getting to the car

But things are definatly on the mend and I am now 12 and a half stone as apposed to the 13 stone when I came home!

Infection :( (by sarah)

Yesterday the Dr came to see me - this was scheduled anyway which was just as well as the night before after posting that everything was fine I noticed my wound was smelling Just a bit - when I went to wash it. By the time the Dr got here it was reeking even though I have cleaned it and dried it twice. She looked at it and said there was redness again - but this time it is down around the wound which I can not myself see

I had felt it was still infected but I'd been showing it to Al and it had looked fine. She's prescribed me two lots of antibiotics which Al went and got straight away. The redness had grown by the time he came back with them - it appears to have shrunk a little bit today - he drew a line around it but when I wash the wound it washes off so we have taken to photographing it instead to try and keep track of it.

I feel this is a set back - I feel well ill to be honest - the fluey-ness is worse and I have developed mouth ulcers. If there is no proper improvement by tomorrow the Dr will come back out but I fear if that happens it's going to be hospital for intraveinous antibiotics plus I really don't like the idea of an infection that is making tens of cm2 of my skin red and hot - it is too close to septacimia and childbed fever - sometimes I think it was a bad idea to have looked into the bits of biology I have.

On top of that I had to phone my mum and tell her that even though her swabs came back clear I now had another wound infection and she needed to tell her Dr before she has her next lumpectomy. They are sending her the body wash you get if your swabs are positive - just in case.

I just feel slightly hacked off that I always get complications :/ Why does nothing ever heal properlly or why is it always me that gets ill or injured - just a bit of self pitty floating around my head. I think partly the issue is that I was looking forward to things being not a painful and to going out in the car - now the wound is burning like fire or spiking and suddenly all I really want to do is sleep and rest again :/