Glimpsesofcolour

Searching through my stats, in particular the search terms, which turned out to include ‘rude places’, I am reminded that yesterday after leading worship I sat down next to a church friend and during a conversation on the swiftness of time, I quoted ‘my days fly faster than a weaver’s shuttle’. Which would have been fine except that after the word ’shuttle’ I paused for a moment and then found my lips and voice forming the word ‘cock’. All on its own. Fortunately the friend was the sort to which one can say such things, even in church…

The other day as I wandered along the Broadway (that leadeth to distraction), I was stopped by a ‘charity mugger’ or chugger, asking me to support the Mental Health Foundation. His exact first words to me were ‘Are you a pensioner?’. When I somewhat huffily explained that I am not, and people usually tell me I look younger than my age, he replied ‘It must be your hat’. What?! My sparkly red baker boy hat, is a pensioner’s hat? I am still recovering. This was definitely not a good day. And I am afraid I have not signed up to donate to the Mental Health Foundation. Their representative did not do my mental health any good at all.

So finally, after three days of no school last week (with GB thereby missing a German test yet again), we get a message saying there is school today. Only to find him just before school time saying he has a bad stomach ache, and can’t go. I tried asking if anything about school is worrying him, but he couldn’t identify anything. So one more day getting behind with coursework etc.

Oh well, I managed in spite of this to get back into some kind of work routine. It feels like Christmas has only just finished, and even now I can’t tell if it’s safe to go back into the office (ie across the landing into the spare bedroom…!). Still, I did finally take down the Christmas tree yesterday, with much sadness (I hate that task) and to the accompaniment of a CD of the Vienna Philharmonic doing the New Year concert (the Vienna Boys’s Choir singing German Christmas carols is my accompaniment for decorating the tree before Christmas).

Feeling a bit shaky after a day’s work, and not looking forward to doing minutes at the Inclusion Group tonight, but at least I’ve got some important admin done.

My son sweetly sent me a beautiful gift-wrapped link to Google Chrome, which he said was the best internet browser ever. I downloaded and installed it, and set it as my default browser. It kindly imported all my bookmarks, including all the links to Firefox sites which I no longer wanted. I then discovered it is almost impossible to delete bookmarks in Google Chrome for Mac. But I persevered and found a way to do it.

Then I gave up on it for the moment and went to log in to the Wibsite. Whaddya know, it had forgotten my saved password. I then had to hunt around Chrome’s online help, which is a nightmare, for advice on this. It turns out that in Chrome for a Mac, there is currently no way of transferring saved passwords, at least from Firefox. The powers that be are working on it.

Reader, I abandoned Chrome and went right back to Firefox as my default browser. Maybe I’ll try Chrome in a few months when they have caught up with Mac users. It’s all part of the evil conspiracy against Mac users….

Strange bangs and vibrations are coming into our house from the flat above. I hope it is just the tenants’ washing machine throwing a wobbly. And I hope it stops, otherwise we will have to buy them a new washing machine.

Meanwhile the saga of the school special needs policy grinds on. I saw the SENCO (special needs coordinator) this morning, and since my earlier emails, Genius Brat’s teaching assistant support has magically rematerialized. However she has also confirmed that there are only 8.6 TAs (what does 0.6 of a TA look like?) to fulfil the support hours on around 54 statements. This is clearly woefully inadequate, and I feel justified in organizing the parents’ meeting I have organized for Saturday (though woefully unqualified to lead it). It looks as though a feasible number of parents will be coming to it too. And we have a grant promised from the NUT to cover expenses (eg room hire, refreshments).

As well as running this (admittedly with a competent co-organizer who knows more than I do), I have four tasks given to me by the CBT therapist. I am beginning to think this therapy is going to give me another breakdown. Of course, I could always say that this is too much, and decide which of the four I am prepared to try. Since I am not good enough at saying No, I could surely practise by saying No to the therapist?

Finally in this blog of bits, the Over Keen Girlfriend crisis and the German Coursework Crisis seem to have been temporarily resolved. Though I expect they will both crop up again. I wouldn’t go back to being a teenager for anything – not even for a wrinkle free body (have you ever noticed how those extra powerful hand drying machines blow the loose skin on the back of your hand into little waves if you are over 50?)

What is it about medical personnel and the words ’slip’ and ‘pop’? I have a recurring fantasy of a pair of doctors called Dr Slip and Dr Pop, so often have I been invited to ’slip your things off and pop onto the couch’. I’d rather not pop anywhere, thank you.

Even the dentist is at it. This morning after examining my mouth to discover why I couldn’t bite any more, he offered, ‘Shall I just pop the tooth out now?’. Now it is nearly forty years since I last had a tooth out, but my memories are vivid, and ‘pop’ is certainly not the word I would use to describe a tooth extraction. ‘Heave’, ‘yank’ and ‘lever’ are more like it. There was a horrendous grinding noise as he performed the operation, and being numbed I was unable to tell whether he was taking half my jaw with it.

Do they all get taught a special language at medical or dental school, which includes magic phrases like ‘you’ll just feel a little prick’ (I certainly did feel a prick with my mouth wedged open).

Which reminds me, before and after the extraction I was having fun with my regular column, making up words I feel ought to exist. One of them, no doubt inspired by my recent experience, was the verb ‘to aesthetize’. This, as you might guess, defines the process of becoming sensitized to thoughts or feelings that you were impervious to before. I think a bit of aesthetizing would do no end of good in the world. So long as it didn’t make us all too pervious.

So. Everything was going well, GB was back at school and, amazingly, did his homework the minute he came home, and I was getting to grips with the pile of urgent admin that has been urgent for at least a year. I was all set to go to a theological forum today and tomorrow, and had even read the emailed copies of today’s indigestible papers. Then I woke up this morning and found a boy in my bed, making little grumpy noises. Turns out he was feeling ill and achy. Thoughts of possible swine flu (although I think he has probably already had it) made me feel I couldn’t possibly leave him alone at home ill, and I was feeling pretty exhausted myself at the thought of academic papers and discussion all day. So I rang the school and the conference organizers, and spent the morning messing about online while my cleaner cleaned, and the afternoon asleep. Meanwhile GB, as I might have known, declared he was feeling better. No swine flu then.

This means that in the event of his being fit for school tomorrow (which is likely), I have to decide whether I can spend the day catching up on a forum of which I have missed more than half, when I am still feeling pretty foul myself. Also I have just sent a really rude email to my bank (starting with Dear Stupid Banker!) about which I now feel really ashamed, and don’t feel like showing my face in public at all.

But really – what am I to say to a bank that sends me my user name for online banking, promises I will have a password within five days, and I still haven’t got it two months later; then when I email to point this out, and they reply to say it will be sent in the next five days, they then send me an anonymous email saying that as I have not yet activated my online banking I will have to ring them up! But the reason I haven’t activated online banking is that THE IDIOTS HAVEN’T SENT ME MY PASSWORD YET!

What kind of numpties work at these places – don’t they read their own correspondence? But still I feel bad because they are a nice ethical bank and I ought to be forgiving, and I am supposed to be non-violent in deed and word… Let’s just hope they laugh at ‘Dear Stupid Banker’…

..mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Yes, I know I haven’t blogged for nearly a month. My only excuse is that for half that time I was in Austria, where although I did have access to hubby’s laptop, I was more interested in swimming every day, going to the sauna, having a massage and a manicure (and you can’t write your blog while your nails are drying).

That was the second bit of the Austria trip, in a hotel we’d stayed in before, by a lake high up in the mountains, with luxury food and all sorts of indulgences. The first bit was in Vienna, where we definitely chose the wrong week as there was a heatwave including Austria’s hottest ever day at 39C. This curtailed our sightseeing considerably but we managed to do enough for Genius Brat to say he would like to see Vienna again when it’s cooler (it was the first time we had actually stayed there with him as opposed to rushing through on the way to somewhere else). We also managed to have a meal with my cousin, and spend a lot of time in cafés, which is after all what Vienna is really for.

It was a great holiday but since we’ve been back I have been more down than for a very long time, partly induced by the foul weather in London and the fact that I wasn’t on holiday any more. I have spent large amounts of each day in bed asleep and other large amounts playing Lexulous or messing about on Facebook. This is a bad thing, apart from the Lexulous which is great but my opponents keep getting brilliant scores and I don’t (and I thought I was good).

All of this has not been conducive to blogging. I think I’ve probably turned the corner now as I am only spending part of each day thinking my life stinks, as opposed to all of it. The irony is that my plan on returning from holiday was to talk to the doc about reducing my meds, as I had been well most of the time for a longish time. Methinks it is new therapist time (I am currently therapist-less but have some leads). Of course in order to do anything as constructive as finding a therapist, I have to be well enough to face making phone calls and sending emails…

Just to make life even better, The Grouch has just had another blood test for PSA, which is not a theological concept but the marker that indicates prostate cancer. He has gone from 3.9 which is borderline dodgy and necessitated a horrible biopsy, to 7.2 which is decidedly unwelcome and calls for an MRI scan and another biopsy, this time under general. Prayers very welcome from those who pray.

In the midst of all this we are about to celebrate GB’s 15th birthday. It may not be the best ever.

Oh goody, church business meeting tonight, with lots more impossible decisions. I do so love chairing endless business meetings.

And how come, outside the shops down the road there are plentiful puddles from the recent downpour, for the toddler ahead of me to splash in (which is, after all, what puddles are for); yet further up the road, when I finally step in the pile of dog poo I have carefully avoided on three out of four journeys, there is not a single puddle in sight to wash my shoe sole in? Could of course have something to do with water running downhill… Anyway, I washed it in the water caught in the upturned (and never used) lid of our recycling box, which will have to do.

Yesterday: I receive a letter from Genius Brat’s chemistry teacher that informs me helpfully that the deadline for his chemistry coursework is Tuesday 22 June, a date which does not exist this year. Even assuming she meant Tuesday 23rd June, it was not hugely helpful to send, second class, a missive informing me of the deadline which only arrived on the deadline. She also informed me that the coursework was worth 33% of the overall mark, and that he could be moved down to a lower set if the work was not submitted. Added to this is the fact that he missed the Core Science Chemistry exam last week because of illness, and we are well on the way to a failed GCSE.

GB very nonchalant about the whole thing, saying that he can afford to lose one GCSE. I, not very convinced, raise the matter at home group, and lose hours of sleep over it, as well as posting it in every prayer forum I can think of. I also write a panicky email to the Chemistry teacher, asking if there is any possible leeway. My email bounces back the same evening.

Today, I transfer the contents of the email to a letter and, reasoning that it is foolish to post it when the school science wing is 10 minutes walk from home, I go and deliver it by hand. I have done all I can.

Lo and behold, GB saunters home from school and remarks, ‘Oh, I found the chemistry work I’d already started and did some more work on it. I can finish it tonight and the teacher says I can hand it in tomorrow’. My mouth drops open with disbelief.

Do I believe there is a God who answers prayer? Well, to paraphrase a song, ‘Ma’am, I do tonight’.