Cauliflower and sweetcorn curry type stuff!

Right, this is kind of thrown together, I just did it by feel so all values are approx.

1 cauliflower
1 tin of sweetcorn
1 1/2 pints of water
2 vegetable stock cubes
10 drops Worcester sauce
3 sloshes soy sauce
10 drops lemon juice
4 tablespoons Plain Yogurt
4 teaspoons mild curry powder
50-100g or so of plain flower  (enough to thicken)
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar

Break the Cauliflower into Florette's and roughly cut the leaves, place in slow cooker, on low. Add 1 1/2 pints of water, stock cubes, Worcester sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice and curry powder.
Leave for 8+ hours (overnight.... but I left it for 2 nights because I was busy) reduce liquid for running for an hour or two with the lid off. Add yogurt, add drained sweetcorn, sieve in flower while stirring to thicken sauce. Cook with lid on for an hour or more, then cook rice, add some of this to it and EAT!

Nice!

An Open Letter to me

Hi Ceri

You're feeling a bit crap aren't you? *nods* Do be careful hun, you have just cried all over the keyboard. You don't want to end up shorting it out, it wont work then. *shakes head*

Right, Ceri, oh womble of quite a lot of brain really for you have a degree and your own thoughts and stuff. You can be simple minded at times *drinks wine and sniffs* you are scared, far too scared of people. *nods*

You are really scared of telling people what you want and need aren't you? *nods as tears fall* Because whenever you have in the past you have been called unreasonable, or are thought of, and told you are being a bad person. *snivels and blows nose*

I know honey that the people you are used to having in life are those that actually couldn't give two craps but that make you feel as if it's all you deserve, but you are worth more than that. *pouts and looks disbelieving, and whimpers as more tears fall* 

You are allowed, and SHOULD be able to say what you want and need sometimes. People who can't give you what you need in life, people who don't think you should be able to express what you feel, they're not worth it. It's not worth spending all your energy on the people who make you feel inadequate.

You are worth more, you are nice, and a human being, and fallible, and funny, and silly, and your nose is pretty, even it it is a little red and snot filled right now.
*nods, wipes the tears from her nose and finishes her glass of wine*

And then the lovely nurturing Ceri and the not so happy Ceri watched some TV on the laptop, coz they needed to unwind and reintegrate. - also, massive thanks to @miss_sobriety who chatted to me partway through this and cheered me up to the point where I could actually see the screen again.
If I/we could actually behave towards ourselves in the same way we talk to others then we'd all be fine actually wouldn't we?!

Upset Ceri pipes up and says she must listen to this first!  *watches*  Right.... time to find comedy!

Virus fairy and feeling Ugh!

I Had a visit from the virus fairy this weekend. I've been rather burning the candle from both ends lately, been not having hardly any down time and not much sleep.
Although I'm ok with it to a point, eventually my body cracks, I just don't have the ability to keep going like I used to pre the attack of this summer.
So I spent Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday Morning in bed, had loads of sleep, even though it still doesn't feel like anywhere near enough.
Eventually forced myself into getting up, got dressed, felt exhausted.
I really need to sort the flat out, get rid of all the crap.
Thing is, even just getting up, getting dressed, washing a few plates etc. and sitting around all day feels like too much at the moment; and I fall even more behind on the housework, even less chance of getting all the other jobs I need to do done.
I really need to sort all my stuff out, chuck away a load of stuff, thing is, it's getting started, and continuing... lets be honest, it's the whole darn thing. I have no energy anymore.

So yeah, in an attempt to make myself feel a little bit useful today I made a new avatar for twitter.

That concludes the interestingness of my day, well it probably doesn't, I've just hit brain fog territory and I can't think anymore.

Save my hair!

Look, I am terrible at explaining the actual issues in text form so thought I'd just show you!

Tell me what the hell to do! I currently use Rehab shampoo and Retread conditioner from Lush, but although this is lovely and makes my hair amazingly soft and shiny it doesn't actually sort out the underlying issue... I use frizz ease currently too... it helps it retain some moisture but not much.
HELP! Save my hair!

Ceri xx

Friends are the Familly you choose for yourself.

Why is it that Nothing within my life feels fixed? I feel broken, inside, like I am fractured into pieces. I have literally nowhere in the world I feel safe anymore. I always feel as if I am about to have a rug pulled from under me and then people will either all laugh at me or pull me apart to tell me how wretched I am.

I am paranoid, I have always tended towards paranoia, but now, recently I am full on paranoid, when I feel bad I find it hard to express now, I think that everyone is just waiting to trip me up so they can stab me in the back, as if everyone will hate me when they find out who I really am, as if I'm actually entirely alone in the world and it's entirely devoid of any hope and empty.

However, I know this is untrue, I know I'm paranoid and depressed, I know I can feel better, but then something happens, it doesn't have to be much, it doesn't have to even make sense, and I freeze, I fall apart and I lose myself again.

I know that not all of my friends will abandon me and attack me and try to destroy me but sometimes I can't be sensible, sometimes I can't believe it. I know the old adage that friends are the family that you choose yourself, but I expect both to stick with me... Family I would define to be the people I can bicker with but still we come together and love and support.

I thought I had that in my friends but due to various circumstances I now find that very hard to accept, I feel that any time I stand up, any time I don't lay down and be exactly what everyone else wants me to be I might have somebody switch on me and I will not only lose the people I care about but be suddenly in a world where everything is trying to attack me.

I can't trust people, I can't trust anymore and it breaks my heart. It's wrong and weird that someone who used to find it very easy to confide feelings in others now finds it easier to post her feelings on her blog than talk to her friends. It's almost safer, even though it's not, I can't be rejected in the same way.

It makes me very angry and sad on my own behalf.

What is it that Grown up Wombles do?

I am aware that I'm 28 which for most people comes across as probably mostly "grown up" but screw it, I only just got my degree and getting to a point where I feel like I know what I want to/can do with my life.

I would actually love to teach, well, that said there are a great many things I want to do with my life but one of these many things is indeed, to teach.
Also, teaching is a good jumping off point for lots of the stuff I would love to do too, so let's do that!

For those that are interested/know that pre-August I wished to be a nurse, know that my MS attack in late July/August brought things into focus a bit more for me and brought me a bit back down to earth.

What I want to do is help people, and overall I feel that teaching is actually quite good way of doing that. So yes, I am applying to do a PGCE at Leeds Met (when I get my Personal Statement done - probably early Feb after my Dad giving me a hand), My favoured course is Health and Social Care. If I don't get into that, then I'm also applying for Citizenship and if all else fails my third preference is for Further Education (which it now seems that you can get loans for - as you don't get fees paid for PGCE's any more).

All of this of course would mean moving or some such, my Dad already lives up in Leeds so it'd be ideal for doing the whole grown up thing without being entirely without support. Thing is, I have an assured tenancy, it's secure. I am in a council flat and there's not much that can get me out of it. I need to find out where I stand with moving, whether it's possible to get a transfer, whether I'd need to get an exchange, whether I could even keep my flat in Cambridge and just pop down again at weekends, holidays etc. etc.

Also, I have been out of work, for many years, I'm frankly concerned about whether I'll be able to cope with a full time job, thing is, for everything I'm doing to try to get myself out of the hole I'm in, to try to get myself off of benefits... the more peril I actually stand in!

I am very concerned that I will end up being found "Fit to work" over the next few months (by Atos) and will be thrust into something like workfare so that I will not be fit enough to actually go to college by next September! I am frankly terrified by the prospect of the future, anything I might do, any movement at all could get me into deep water with the powers that be.

What I would love to happen is for tomorrow everything to be sorted, to be volunteering with the charity I help out at, to do this Further Education course in Preparing to Teach Adults for the next term. To have a place at Uni, to not have to choose between the prospect of a brighter future and somewhere to love (a real worry re housing and moving etc.), to know whether there will even be a place for vocational GCSE's in the future. Whether my health will even allow me to actually DO any of this at all!

All rather up in the air at the moment as you can see, so if I'm a bit all over the place at the moment please excuse me, I'm just busy trying to work out what the HELL I'M DOING!

People, Patterns and Minbari

Ok, I am aware not everyone has seen Babylon5 but they have this thing, this high opinion of themselves.
Minbari to not lie.
According to themselves they do not lie.... This is except of course for when they do, which as it turns out, quite bloody often!
Minbari do not kill Minbari.
Except of course when they DO!
Etc. etc. etc. The list of things that Minbari do/do not do is virtually endless when you include the various casts etc.
Humans are the same, people do not hurt other people, except for when we do, we do not lie, except for when we do,  we do not kill, except for when we do.
People, as with Minbari;  tend to keep themselves to these binary systems, myself included; i for example don't lie except for when i do,  i don't judge except for when i do, i'm logical except for when i'm not, again and again this could continue forever.
As human beings there is a tendency to see pattern within disorder, i'm sure Gandhi must have upset more than a few people in his time and i'm pretty sure Hitler must have been nice to some people sometimes too.
The fact that these things do not match our image of them is because we see the pattern and we judge.
If i can see this though, why do i still insist that i can know, that is truly know people. I see parts of people, we all do, we see patterns, often only the patterns we choose to show to the world.
Right now i am a pretty sad and lonely pattern, except for when i'm fine, except for when i'm not. I'm a lot of other things too as i'm sure you know but i can't see that.
Today i am SadCeri and SadCeri doesn't know how to be HappyCeri.
This is why i am trying and failing to sleep, I am a pattern, I am everything and I am nothing, and I am getting up coz I can't sleep!

2011 And being a positivity shark!

Ok, I seriously can't be bothered one bit by doing some blah about looking back at 2011, it was a bit shit if I'm honest, let's just say I have learned some important lessons about myself and all that stuff we should say, actually I have learned MAJOR lessons this year...
Not least of which is that I write stuff and people seem to read it, I have no idea why this is but I want to thank you, and if there's something you would like to see more of then please do say and I'll get on it or ignore you, definitely something!
I haven't done what I wanted to with the year because of a HUGE number of things, people, health - both physical and mental... it all went a bit shit really in places, best to just move forward, like a "positivity shark"!
But yeah, other than this I thought I'd give you my top 5 blog posts of 2011, these are the most popular posts.

What is twitter to me? - A post about twitter and how I use it.
Bus Stop Biggots - A post about how I hate opinionated idiots
Lie of Capitalism - A silly drawing about how I want to buy all the things but how this is bad!
The Past - A bit of an emo-post, about me, my feelings, my thoughts and basically my past.
Handmade Chocolatey Goodness! (Fixed) - A post about my AWESOME chocolates I made for Xmas!

Anyways, lots of positive things to look forward to, thank you ALL for helping SO much this year, I have really needed my friends around me, and those that have stuck by me have shown my what true friends are, I feel able to be me, truly in a way I didn't feel this time last year. Thank you for helping me and supporting my fight, through a hedge, kicking and screaming to go "Oh, Right then, ok" (although occasionally I still go "ARRGGGHHH! Love me!" but then, who doesn't?).
To learn how strong you are you must get to your lowest points. I now know a tad of who and what I am, and I have my friends, both IRL but ESPECIALLY online to thank.
I honestly couldn't have done all this without you.

All my love and best wishes for the next solar cycle my lovely peoples!
Womble
xx

An Open Letter to the Wombles of Wimbledon Common

I felt the need to be creative today so I kind of went with it.
This is the result! It takes quite a long time to make something look like this.
It is a letter from Lady Budapest (AKA: Liberated Womble) to the Wombles in Wimbledon.
Yup! I need a life! I was going to use this as some kind of blog background but it's all the wrong proportions!

click image to enlarge

Transcript: (with errors)
Dear Comrades of Wimbledon Common
I Remember the days I wasn't behind the times, though it seems oh so long ago now, long lazy days spent not worried. Remember the fun we used to have? Long before the death of dear Madam Cholet, before the trouble with Orinoco and the police, before Wellington got caught up with those crystal meth dealers and Bungo got shot.
Those beautiful crazy days, picking up detritis, Taking the papers to Tobermory, I remember it all as if it were yesterday.
Poor Tobermory, he never deserved the way left things with him I never stopped loving him, I just couldn't stay with the cameras and everything. I just think that Uncle Bulgaria had other options instead of getting a documentary team in; things weren't that bad, even if we were in debt. I had even thought about coming back to the burrow but then what with getting involved with Mike Batt, it just seemed to me that he didn't care about us Wombles or the music at all just the money. I really wish it didn't have to be this way but I think it needs to be. I need to be able to live with myself and such rampant capitalism and disregard for not only my own feelings but those of poor Adelaide! Not having her appear until she got that wonky nose sorted was just grotesque behaviour on the production teams' part. So yes, if anyone of you guys left in Wimbledon every need a safe place to live away from the iron rule of Uncle Bulgaria then please keep in mind your cousins in Cambridge.
We all love you dearly
All my love and thoughts
Always
Lady Budapest xx
AKA
The Liberated Womble.

Quite obviously the poor Womble was very emotional when this was written so some sentences do not make complete sense.

Handmade Chocolatey Goodness! (Fixed)

My Goodness me! I finished this post last night, it's been sat here since then, all messed up, just one picture, no text or recipes or ANYTHING! I am a sad Womble coz I have to rewrite it all.

 

Right, buying for my grandparents is impossible at this stage, they want nothing cluttering up the house as Gramps doesn't intend to make it much further and Gran can't remember anything she gets anyways.

So it basically becomes booze or food. I decided handmade chocolates would be a good way to go.

I bought special boxes from Hobbycraft, I wouldn't do this next time, they were too difficult to fold, cheap looking, didn't close well and were too small anyway.

The chocolates I made were mainly truffles, there's the basic truffle recipe and then I added things to make them more interesting.

Basic Truffle Recipe:
(makes approx 40 in total, so once split around 20 for each batch)
2 125g packs of Moser Roth (aldi) 85% cocoa solid chocolate.
1 tin of Carnation Light condensed milk.

I melted the chocolate into the condensed milk in a metal bowl over a pan of water. I split the mixture into 2, I then put flavouring etc. in and popped into the fridge to set before taking it out, taking out a small amount with fingers before rolling it in between my palms to a good shape and rolling it in a coating. Finally I popped each one into a mini cake case and put them in the fridge to firm up.

To make brandy truffles add 4-6 tablespoons of brandy to the mix,
To make praline truffles add 4 tablespoons of nutella to the mix,
To make mixed nut truffles at 4-6 tablespoons of chopped mixed nuts to the mix,
To make lemon truffles add 4-6 tablespoons of lemon extract (probably would have been better with white chocolate instead with hindsight).

Roll in any coating you like, eg. icing sugar, cocoa, hundreds and thousands, chocolate shavings, chopped nuts, or cover in molten chocolate and place on greaseproof paper to cool in the fridge.

Coconut Creams Recipe:
1 pack of Moser Roth 85% cocoa chocolate (from aldi)
make the coconut cream by adding 1/4 a can of condensed milk to 4-6 tablespoons of desiccated coconut , just mix into a cream (It made way too much of this though and now have a jar of coconut cream in the fridge hehe, so use less but try to keep the same approx ratios).

 Me showing you how to not make videos very well how to fail at covering moulds with chocolate.

To make coconut creams first melt some chocolate, then spoon approx half a teaspoon into each small silicone mould, and tilt etc. to cover mould before tipping out the excess and then putting in the fridge to cool, spoon in the coconut cream (about 1/2 a teaspoon of coconut cream to each small chocolate). Top up with molten chocolate to cover the coconut before placing in the fridge to set again.

TADA!

Finished lovely chocs! MOREISH

Red Queen Crisis

A few times lately I have had to try to describe/explain the mental flips I can do when in a fit of depression to others; Of course it didn’t actually work last night but I managed to get other coping mechanisms in place.

I think as a consequence of me growing up I have actually come to start to understand my depression, what I thought was somehow a defect in myself, a mark on my character is actually just another condition, a disease I have to fight against.

It tells me life is hopeless when it’s not, it weaves webs of mistruths in my head until I can’t see anything apart from my loneliness and the blackness of my future. It tells me to do things I shouldn’t to try and kill my pain or to not do things that will help me because there’s no point.  I have always felt like this, it has just taken me a long while to come to terms with the fact that I have this in my life and I’m not quite normal, I’ve always known that I’m not. I just never took it as a difference but as a flaw, I think my double standards make me able to see all sorts of shades of grey for other people but not in myself.

Now I start to see it as a strength, I have many coping methods others don’t. I can give myself and my time without thought to others in a way that other people would find absolutely exhausting. When I am feeling totally black and without hope I can quite often just go “NO! I REFUSE TO FEEL THIS WAY!” and spend my time doing everything and anything to distract myself to the point of exhaustion when I can normally quiet my thoughts enough to actually sleep. This is a real strength.

This is what I mean when I say I can flip, I also tend to do this when my physical health is bad, like a self righting mechanism of some sort, because if I kept feeling bad then I would just go into a completely downward spiral. The other contributing factor is that I often make myself physically more ill, as a part of my depression’s action; that is, I push my body until I make myself ill because it makes me feel more sane again or I don’t do things like eat properly or take my medication.

All of this takes me to why I was so bad last night, my pain has been increasing and I should go back to the doctors and get my medication adjusted but this is just another aspect of depression ruling my world, I don’t want to, I can’t bring myself to, I just want everything to go away and for me to fade away to nothing. So with increasing levels of pain my mood rises but then it has nowhere to go once it’s up apart from down, if I try to make myself feel better by taking part in exercise I end up at square one.

Me feeling absolutely terrible last night was just me, not being to cope with the various currents of physical pain mixed with emotional pain and mixed with plain old exhaustion lead to a crisis.

I am really quite proud of myself for managing to ask for help when I needed it, the plan now is to go watch my gorgeous sister being a tree in Roald Dahl’s Snow White and then to make myself a doctor’s appointment in the morning, however I’m kind of hoping I might get some sleep in the in-between time.

Brilliant Play, I am one VERY proud sister, she wasn't just a tree but a narrator too!

Validate me.... validate me hard!

Right, I have to write something about myself, and given that I'm no longer actually even capable of holding a coherent thought about myself for longer than one hundred and fourty characters I thought I would get you guys to help.

Please if you could tell me about me, then rather like a film puts up reviews of itself I can use what you say about me to help.

So, tell me about myself, review me... coz I'm constitutionally incapable of seeing what's behind her nose.
You can even do it anonymously if you like... I'm looking at you, yes you, you can say what you like!

k thx bai

x

------
Thank you for your input, I have been really quite ill recently which is even more difficult to gauge than my MS, Your wonderful comments have really helped.
Also, I'm sure they will be invaluable for helping me write a personal statement for my PGCE application, feeling a little better now.

The Womble Drawers of Awesomeness

Right, this is a bit of a labour of love, me and craft, well, I love it, but I'm not very good at it exactly, so this is me making stuff up as I go a long.

I have this unit that my TV is on, it's pine and sturdy but boring! I was going to paint it and for a bit of a shabby chic look, seems like a lot of work though, especially when I am fairly well known for my ability to screw things up, somehow hurt myself, or cover me or the cat with paint. For this reason it hasn't been done.

So I was going to post a before photo but it failed
and now it's half done, so here's a picture of my cat Riley!

I had what I believe to be the idea of the century, which is that rather than painting it I could decoupage it.

On a side note, I have rather a habit of trying to attempt to be an adult, doing all this "posh" well done, organised and elegant stuff. I think I have realised finally that that's not me! I'm not that! So anyways, back to the subject.
The decoupage! I had this cool idea of doing it with comic books, just the draw fronts (yeah, coz doing the whole thing would be completely crazy - obviously).
Therefore I needed to get some comics to do this with,  it actually turns out that it's difficult to buy broken or damaged comic books in the UK. Therefore I popped into my local Forbidden Planet to get some grab bags.

Ouch, 25p per comic for a grab bag, that's a mite expensive.... also, I kind of have a constitutional objection to actually taking comic books apart since that's like taking books apart, or damaging them, or that sort of thing. It's against everything I was brought up to believe!

You can cut stuff out with scissors or a scalpel

However, the lovely man working in my local Forbidden Planet went to take a little look out the back for me to see if he had any damaged stock. For some unfathomable reason head office had decided to take a few off sale or something so he had a load of comic books with no front covers (they have to make them incapable of being sold) which would have just gone in the bin! He gave me a pile of about 15 comic books! they're all copies of the same 3 but WOOT! Best part was they were FREE!

I kind of wallpapered the draw with half pages,
the key is to cover the whole of the drawer front

I've googled decoupage, bought some PVA, made a mix of that and water (about 50/50) in a little bottle, cut out a load of cool bits.
The internet says to do all the boring stuff like sand the drawers and clean them and all that sensible stuff.
However, that's not really me... therefore I put some newspaper down and just kinda went for it.

I then added my "feature" bits
to get a vague idea of positioning

I worked with a load of half pages to completely cover the front, painting the mixture on the draw front and the back of the image, then painting the top of the image, before sponging it with a damp kitchen sponge to remove the excess. Then I left it to dry (you're meant to leave it a few hours but in typical me fashion I left it only 1 hour) before getting the smaller motif images and pasting them on top. Doing the same thing as before, I painted it all down before sponging and leaving to dry again.

I painted the knobs with a mixture of
PVA and acrylic paint for a
satin finish

Then I coated it again and again in this pasty mixture as I have no varnish. about 4 coats should be enough to protect it and act as a glaze until I manage to find something else. Then I cut the hole for the draw pull (with a a screw) and added the newly painted handles (painted with acrylic mixed with PVA).

Or at least, I will, as I continue to do each draw one at a time, I've only done the one so far.

This is pure awesomeness!

A Perfect Day

Ok, so Perfect Day was apparently Steve's and my song, I had somehow been unaware of this for the vast majority of our relationship, so it never really resonated with me as a relationship song, however, I find myself thinking about the meaning of this song many times over the years on a totally different level, what a perfect day means to me.

A perfect day is nice, and fun, and I can imagine and let go, and have fun, allow myself to be, to live in the moment, to do and try new things.
The problem with a perfect day is the fallout, too many days which are lovely, followed by hope, hope for more good days, leading to crap, leading to pain, because none of the things that I let myself feel or be, or do in those perfect moments are ever real.
I'm not sure I'll ever let myself feel safe again, coz I know in reality it's just a lie, I don't get a happy ending, I don't get to be loved and hugged and kissed and cuddled and appreciated for me, I never get to rest in the shade of someone else's heart.

I guess all the times before when I felt like I was safe I was deluding myself, I don't think I ever was, I just hadn't been kicked enough by life to see that really it wasn't something I could even reasonably hope for.

So yeah, perfect days are lovely, but I'm really not sure it's worth it, if I don't open my heart I can't get smashed in the skull til my brains pour out of my ears... (not a perfect metaphor there but it's late).

So yeah, cheerful tonight eh?

Scared of Scarring

I'm feeling a bit scared.
I'm not very well again and while I'm pretty sure it's just a blip it's knocked my confidence rather.
I hate this... even with the depression I can normally be strict Ceri, I find a way through whatever barrier is there, somehow, coz I'm either tenacious or pigheaded depending on if you're trying to compliment/insult me.

However, when my MS screws up I can really do naff all about it. I can fight, and push and kick and scream all I like but I only end up more stuck. Thing is, I can't not do anything because that's just counter productive and leaves me in an even worse situation. The line between completely screwed and the right amount is totally on a hairpin trigger; I'm not always aware of how far I'm pushing and other times I think I'll be ok because I want to be.

It used to be ok because I could push myself further, because I've not been very well recently (with my first attack in 7 odd years) I'm continually surprised by how easily I can mess myself up, I'm not used to it. I'd do a great many things differently if I could go back in time but one would definitely be to not look what was relatively good health in the mouth.... that metaphor was weird; health has no mouth!

But yeah, I now tread a very odd line, in ground I am not used to between messed up mental and physical health, being very much more aware that I am beholden to them. I used to be ok the majority of the time with periods of worse health, now it's more navigating between shit health periods trying desperately to push hard enough to regain something but not pushing so hard as to end up back in bed.

I would like to say at this point that it's not fun, I didn't choose this and honestly I wish someone would just come and take it all away. Anyone who EVER thinks that this is some kind of fun life, living off the state and not being able to take care of yourself, how would you feel if you couldn't do basic things like the washing up or bathing, let alone working?

Anyways, yeah scared, always scared... but just lately, more scared of the scars than most other things, both the mental and the physical.
And trying to cope and look like I know what I'm doing, despite everything

Darn my myelin >.<

Ceri :-)

Field of Innocence

Hi, I’m Ceri and I’m a depressive.

I don’t honestly remember a time in my life, not one solitary moment when I felt ok, and alright and whole by myself, not once, ever.

I’m starting to get a handle on the fact that I am wrong, that my insides are wrong and that I don’t need outside input to tell me that I am a worthwhile person. I guess it’s the old tree falling in the forest with nobody around issue. What does it matter if I’m a good person if nobody realises?

I have been told many times recently that my identity should come from within me; however I think everyone just seems to think that I can accept this, and move on immediately as if awoken from a dream knowing the overriding truth.

I don’t.

I am getting better, I am more in control of my feelings now, they don’t own me like they used to, I used to be a whirling, screeching cacophony of feelings and urges and intentions and purity and that’s been muddied by the world.

A world I really don’t want to be a part of! It’s horrible, and bleak, and lonely, and cold and I don’t like it very much at all! However, I can accept that I am in it and not fight quite so hard against the current.

I can accept that a world filled with wondrous things can also be filled with crap, I don’t have to like it, and I can spend lots of my time thinking about ways to change it, and make it better, or decorate the crap and put a bow on it. However, I don’t think there’s any getting away from the fact that it’s crap!

It sucks that I have to be in a crap filled world, I am starting to accept it, I am starting to find coping mechanisms after many, many years of pretending the crap wasn’t there, or that it was the exception to the rule.

What I may have to eventually accept, for good or ill is that the world is like my heart used to be, a tumultuous journey and sea storm filled with waves and troughs and swells and drift wood and all manner of crap! I have just had to substitute what I saw as a stable world with a shifting heart and instead make myself the anchor.

I don’t have to like it though, it’s a bit shit, but you guys can come with me and be my friend if you like, I will sometimes need a hug, but most of the time I’ll be the one with her arms outstretched offering other people hugs. Coz I am FRIGGING awesome like that, it’s kinda my thing.

So yeah, I may not be anywhere near being “fixed” but neither is the world, and as I once said to an old friend, if you’re not depressed I can only assume you’ve not been paying attention!

I think this sums it up pretty well...

The Power of BatPants!

So ages ago I went to primark and bought a whole load of branded stuff, I bought sonic lounge pants, I bought bananaman lounge pants and I bought batman boxers. Yes, I had lost myself in the men's section of primark, I could quite happily make myself a little nest there.
It's quiet, there are lovely T-shirts and jumpers and PJs and boxers and it's like a transvestite dream of lovely comfy clothes!

But anyways, yes, I went home, I wore everything else but the BatPants became lost, they were almost TOO awesome to wear! They became like a fable! "One day I shall wear the BatPants of glory, and on that day, the world will become AMAZEBALLS"!


So, I wore them yesterday because I was feeling a bit naff and something amazing happened! Nothing amazing happened, there were no streamers, there were no police on zip lines arresting me for my awesomeness, life just continued, with me in AWESOME pants!

BATPANTS!

Yeah, I had the confidence to post a pic of me in said knickers of awesome on the Internet, yes, everyone on twitter was pleased I liked my boxers but it was fairly disappointing, I still felt a bit crap and my brain was still a depressed mess of ennui. I could not get my brain into sleep mode, and so, at 2:30am I forced myself to bed, to stare into the void.

Then something pretty amazing happened, I became a bit amusing!

This just got more amusing when speaking with the other nighttime inhabitants of the Internet (@angelikaka, @urbanvox and @nemesisuk)

I went to sleep, eventually, at around 4am. Then woke up at 4pm! It seems I had found the key power of my batpants! They make me a bit more mental than usual during the night and nocturnal!
This is clearly the BEST POWER EVER!

upsidedown of course!

Social Security: a Person Centred Approach?

It seems to me the government are missing a trick, when looking at getting those in receipt of benefits for sickness and disability back into work they should be thinking in terms of working with the whole person and their situation, not just their work life.

It should be seen more like a health issue (which it is, "occupational health" being such an appropriate term in this context), I have never met anyone who is sick or disabled who doesn't wish they could work, so why can't we actually stop treating "customers" (a grossly misleading term to me when people using the DWP have no choice of provider at all!) as if they are a problem to be managed but people, to be encouraged and helped in order to become all that they can be?

Within Health care and Social care comes case conferences, where the various different "stakeholders" (that is, people with an interest in a person and their well-being) discuss the subject and their needs, plan interventions, with said subject's views being seen as equal.

I'm not saying by any margin that this approach works perfectly currently or that it is without its pitfalls, however I believe that it is seen as the best practice approach in both fields IIRC.

Therefore I propose a shift in Social Security that works with a person centred approach, where you can have case conferences with all stakeholders having a say, GPs, claimants, DWP staff, specialists, occupational therapists etc. all getting together to discuss the amount of work appropriate for a person, the type, quality, etc.

Volunteering should be seen as a viable option for rehabilitation and all these disparate agents should come together to enable long term achievable goals as partners invested in the best outcome for the claimant.

I see absolutely no benefit in getting people off of social security when they will end up back on benefits again and again because they were only found temporary work, or they couldn’t cope with the practicalities of the job, I reckon that it would save money in the long term, improve health outcomes (especially in mental health morbidity) and decrease overall social exclusion if we all worked together for the benefit of all.

I literally have no idea why/how people can have the view that kicking already disadvantaged and ill and disabled people when they are already so down as to have to require help from the state to survive and further disenfranchising them helps anyone, I don’t see that it saves tax payers money. All I can see is that further disabling poor people a new form of serfdom is introduced, cheap, uninformed, uneducated labour. I literally cannot think of another reason.

That makes me sad, but then I think about my proposal and think, well let’s do that then, seems like a good idea to me and what could we possibly have to lose (other than, cheap, uninformed, uneducated labour)?

All about ME!

Right, this is my new name, my new look, my new everything on the way to intergrating everything together.
I'm also planning to merge my jewellery blog and this blog under a few tags that will be new to keep things together.

I've not been making jewellery lately, but I have been blogging so therefore it made no sense to me to have the jewellery blog languishing, while this one goes from strength to strength.

If you have any suggestions please let me know :-)