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I promised pictures, so here goes :)
So happy to have it now, I'd been missing it all week lol. My Dad took these photos on his camera that Mum bought him for his 50th in October, it's an amazing piece of kit.
Engagement/wedding chat aside, my tummy is giving me serious pain problems, it's beginning to really really try my patience. All this messing around with my creon dosage is getting to me because I still don't know what the correct dose is and it's been a year since we started with it all :( I woke during the night on Friday in agony and had to get up for pain relief and lots of movicol, which didn't kick in til Saturday afternoon, and now I'm in a lot of pain again tonight. Pft.
Not really sure about everything else, can't really think of anything interesting to say!
Lots of potential music project ideas floating about at the moment, but I will expand on them if and when they take off x
Ok, so most of you probably already know, but James and I got engaged on Saturday! 6 years and 4 months we've officially been together (with about a year of messing around before that, courtesy of James being a typical 16/17 year old commit-a-phobe haha) and now we're engaged. Excited doesn't even cover it.
It was a total surprise! James had been out in Glasgow during the day and when he came home he told me he couldn't get the book I wanted but that he'd got me something else and to close my eyes. I was standing at this point and felt like a right numpty standing with my eyes closed and my hands out like a child haha, but eventually he told me to open them and he was on 1 knee with my ring and asked me to marry him. I'm pretty sure I said "of course I will, ya dafty" (pleasant) and burst out laughing. When I hugged him I realised he smelled a little of booze, so he must've been nervous, bless.
He hadn't told anyone about it apart from his 2 best friends so we had to phone our parents and that ended up being dinner at my family's house and his mum came over too. Lots of wine and champagne later and I was beat.
I don't have anything really to report in terms of wedding arrangements as we won't really have money until James starts work in August, so I doubt we'll be booking anything until then, but we will be having a party to celebrate with our friends and family :) We both have big families so it'll be busy.
Anyway, I get my ring back on Friday! Woop! It was too big so we had to order a different size. I'll post a picture when I can wear it :)
Feeling a little bit excited so have to post!
This morning I have arranged my first meeting with a "music therapy" client. I technically can't call it music therapy as I'm not a qualified therapist (it's too expensive!) but I can't really think of any other way to describe it. I can definitely take sessions similar to therapy, just can't use the word therapy or the name therapist...kinda like being a nutritionist and calling yourself a dietician, it's not on!
She is 5 years old and has Autistic Spectrum Disorder, attends a special school in my area and loves music. Her mum has given me lots of helpful information to go on about her behaviour and her abilities and it seems we are trying to encourage her to be more verbal. At the moment she has echolalia, which means she repeats exactly what you say, but she also has good understanding, so I think there should be a lot of scope for her school/extra-curricular activites/me to encourage her to use language in the traditional way.
I have been interested in doing music therapy for a long time, but the course only runs in Edinburgh or England/Wales, and costs a fortune, plus I don't think I was emotionally mature enough to do it straight after uni, or maybe even now (they tend to recommend a starting age of 23-25+) but maybe some time in the future I will be able to think more seriously about doing the MSc. It also takes 2-3 years to complete and you have to attend personal therapy while studying/doing placements/working, so it's a lot!
None-the-less, I am excited.
...is positivity.
It has been brought to my attention (and I do notice this from time to time) that I can come across really negatively. I don't do this on purpose, and it doesn't generally mean that I am unhappy, it's just the way I am.
I don't feel like I'm a victim in this life, and I don't want peoples sympathy, it's just an unfortunate part of being me.
I am trying to change this, but it's a little difficult at the moment as I feel pretty lonely. I have 1 friend in the area I live in and she's busy busy busy being a teacher. I live with James, which is great, and obviously stops me feeling extremely lonely, but I hardly get out on a good night out due to lack of funds and time and various other factors.
Anyway, bear with me as I work on this.
Well, if you really can call it that. Normally, eventful makes me think of good things, but not so much today! I'm not gonna dwell on it, there was nothing really that could have been done, happened in a flash. Today, I got my first work injury that needed a trip to A&E. I've been scratched, punched, kicked, had my hair pulled, been chased and nearly had an asthma attack as a result...all kinds of things, but today I got my first hard head butt. God, never again, please. Thankfully, I didn't pass out, I wasn't sick and I only have a mild concussion. It sounds awful obviously, but you have to understand that the people we support don't understand the consequences of their actions, and often when the become anxious or upset they injure themselves or other people. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Anyway, I've been really tired since Monday. I woke up and couldn't really get a breath in, and after refusing an antibiotic at clinic on Thursday, I wished I'd just taken something. But yeh, a few physio sessions and inhaler puffs later and I felt a bit better, but wasn't great at night. My chest hasn't been so bad since but I've had awful headaches and just been feeling really tired and run down.
On the teaching front, I started another new student yesterday, I have somebody hopefully coming for a taster lesson soon (I think she's too young, just turned 6, but will give her a chance!) and I'm still trying to organise something for the young girl with autistic spectrum disorder :) happy (and busy) days!
hope most of you are well, and thinking about all of you who aren't so well! hopefully you'll all feel better soon xx
but just thought I should really update.
So, I'm now working 3 days a week teaching piano! Well, I say 3 days, but so far I'm doing an hour on Mondays, 2.5 hours on a Thursday and my 1st half hour lesson on a Saturday is happening this week. So, that's 4 hours...great, but it'll hopefully continue to grow! I'm trying to think positive, and all the signs so far are looking good.
Things at my other job aren't looking so great. There are redundancies happening within the education team, meaning that teachers and resources/curriculum coordinaters are all losing jobs, other tutors are having their hours cut, some are taking voluntary redundancy even though they don't want to, purely because they have been lucky enough to find another job (that they also don't want, but money is money!) Our unit managers had to reapply for their jobs as well and 1 position is being closed to them...they found out on Monday who was leaving but I haven't heard yet. We have at least 5 clients leaving senior campus with nobody lined up to take their place, and 1 unit on junior campus is being closed and changed to accomodate a new respite service that's going to be offered. The loss of clients means that there will be full time staff running about with nothing to do, meaning that us punters at the bottom of the chain (bank staff) will have little to no hours made available to us...they have cancelled 2 shifts for me this month already and others have unfortunately had more cancelled. Considering I'm only working there 3 shifts a week, that's a big loss for me, but at least I do technically still have my job.
Many of us are under the impression that the place is imploding...
What a ramble! Anyway, if I lose my hours at work, I really need to build up to about 25/30 students to be able to survive, so quite a way to go yet.
Stressful and completely depressing times at work, the atmosphere is understandably horrific.
Everything else is as was really, except our flat is TIDY!!! WOOHOO!! who would have thought it would take us over a year to really move in lol, and we might be moving again come June/July, depending where James is sent for his probationary year. Sake lol.
Anyway, enough rambling
I can't believe I forgot to write about the 10k in the last post! I'm shocked and horrified at myself lol.
Anyway, in about June last year my uncle Alistair told me he was going to enter the Great Scottish Run for the CF Trust...and someone suggested I do it (for a laugh) but I took them up on it and started training. When I started, I couldn't run for 2 minutes let alone for 10k, but each day on the treadmill I saw improvements in my time and started to feel much better...so much better I suppose that I didn't even really pay attention to the classic signs of infection and figured I was just being melodramatic, but then landed up on the ward at the end of July lol. Everyone thought that was it for me and not one person expected me to say I was still doing the run. Of course I was! My main inspiration there was Kirsty, who did a 10k in May 6 months post transplant. There was absolutely no excuse for me not to do it.
Anyway, training resumed and that was it right til the 5th September when we did the run. I finished 15 minutes faster than predicted but had a serious episode of lungs closing over and couldnt breathe at all at the end, was a bit scary, but that's what happens when you push to the limit and then some. I wasn't happy at the end either, infact, I cried out of sheer exhaustion, but then obviously I started to feel proud that I'd done it. I've never been a runner, a dancer yes, but not a runner. I couldn't even do the 100m at school without jelly legs and that was when my CF was near enough symptom free apart from my tummy.
So, together my uncle Alistair and I raised just over £1000! :)
That was probably the biggest thing that happened in the year and I completely forgot to write about it.
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