Foot update

Here’s a quick update after Sunday’s accident. Although my foot’s not back to normal and there is still swelling over my foot and ankle, the swelling has gone down a lot and the bruising is starting today. Here is a photo, although it doesn’t really show the lovely purpley-blue shade of my foot or the yellow tinge to my toes. You also can’t see from the photo and I needed both hands to balance and press the button on my iphone, but I can get my fingers under the gap between my toes and the floor with the swelling. It’s still very painful, especially when the dog stands on it or DDI drops a cup on it or hits it wit a hairbrush!

Clever little girl

this is just a really fast post to say how quickly baby I is learning. She is now 16 months old and speaks quite well. She knows and says loads of words. Last week she surprised me by counting the ports on my computer! She counts to 5 regularly now.  She loves books and “reads” them herself by doing things like “eating” the fruit in the hungry caterpiller and saying butterfy at the end or doing or saying appropriate things with her different books. She can name many body parts, makes sounds for different animals – dogs bark, cows moo. I’m very proud of her. She is still a 24/7 little girl so I get nothing done now. We struggle getting her to sleep. If we’re lucky I can get her to have an hour in the day, but if she gets to late afternoon she is so tired she won’t stay awake but then will not sleep at all until midnight. She still sleeps with us and at night, has got into the habit of staying awake til I go to bed. I tried going to bed early but she normally wakes around 10 and won’t go back to sleep which is very frustrating as I’ve spent all night in bed.

I’m struggling with all of my kids at the moment. DDJ is always in trouble in one way or another. DSK just doesn’t come home when he should (he was 4 hours late home from school one night last week). DFS is still very temperamental and loses his temper over the slightest thing and I’m up and down with the rollercoaster that is my day to day life.

I keep meaning to blog it all but there are never enough hours in the day – maybe it will be my new years resolution for 2012!

28 nov 11 – notes

limped over lotty to make sure kids had put tools away after our hasty exit yesterday, which they had, although DSK’s idea of digging up and bagging potatoes isn’t the same as mine and he’d left several on top of the soil. I bet there’s still loads left in. i should have been at home resting but I had DFS and his brother sitting there on phones and laptops discussing buying motorbikes…

Weeded carrot bed (very roughly with my grub hoe), tipped the barrow load of compost I’d emptied yesterday on as a mulch – didn’t cover much nor very deep; will need 4-6 loads!

cleared yellow leaves off red cabbages, added pointed summer cabbage to new compost bin – need green stuff!

took tops off sprout plants but too many white fly to be useable

hoed (hand weeded a few couch grass) onion bed, raked, planted red baron red onions with DFS – he didn’t want to but I think he enjoyed it once he started. He’d been walking around with his hands in his pockets talking of going home all the time he was there…

when we rolled back the tarp 60cm that is covering bare soil so we could get to the onion bed without standing in puddles, we found lots of piles of slug/snail eggs. left them uncovered hoping thebirds find them.

Foot now much better. Swelling down but toes still don’t touch the floor and its very painful. I jump if anyone gets within a 30cm radius!

Pallets and feet don’t mix…

This afternoon, I dragged DSK over the lotty to help with DSI as so much needs doing. DSI fell asleep so DSk started digging up potatoes while i lit the firebin. I then started emptying the old compost bins, putting uncomposted stuff into the bin DSK and I made yesterday. The top half of the first was full of leaves which were very dry. After putting some in the new bin, I decided to put them in bin liners, wet them and leave them to rot. I continued on bin one but it was really dry especially at the back where, what I think were mice started hopping out! The last 45cm or so a

nd some at the front of the bin wasn’t bad compost so I started putting it in the barrow to use on the root beds. DDJ came over the lotty with a mug of coffee and distracted DSK from his potato digging. Then I went to put the bag of leaves out of the way and a pallet that I’d ledged up the front of the

compost bin- stupid -  fell on my foot. I was wearing only croc type shoes – again, stupid. OnceI’d done swearing under my breath, I slipped off my shoe and my foot looked like this:

After a couple more minutes it had swollen all over up to my ankle (sorry I didn’t get a photo, I was otherwise busy!),  I couldn’t put my foot down and was in a conundrum. I was half a mile or more from home, with a foot looking worse by the minute, and three kids, one of which was in a pushchair. I had a fire going in a firebin (safe) and tools everywhere. I got the kids tidying away while I figured out how was I going to get home. I tried to walk but no joy, I could hop but I couldn’t really get off the site as my plot is so uneven. The only other people on site were the newcomers and I felt a real pratt asking them plus they were in a big van.  Hoping DFS was on his way home from his sisters 15 miles away I rang him but he was still there. I said not to worry and rang my parents who didn’t answer. Then I decided to ring DSL as  his girlfriend has a car. As I was talking to him my brother, whom DFS had rung, rang me and suggested I get an ambulance. I didn’t want that much of a fuss! In the meantime, DSL and his girlfriend headed home. In my stubborn fashion, I figured out that I could sort of walk if I put my weight on the pushchair and only touched my heel on the floor. I rang DSL to tell him I didn’t think it was broken and I’d rest it and see what happened but as I did, they pulled up outside. Coming in and taking a look at my foot they insisted I go to hospital to have it examined.

So I went to our local minor injury unit with DSL’s girlfriend (GFK) and DDJ while DSL and DSK stayed with DDI. When we got there (and they didnt consider that I could hardly walk so I was struggling to keep up!) it was packed with over 30 people waiting. I’d have happily gone home but GFK and DDJ thought I’d be better off having it checked and voted to go to a hospital I hadn’t heard of before that is normally quiet. It was about half an hour away and yes it was quiet but it also didn’t have an xray department which the nurse said i needed; they then suggested I either go home and rest and go back or head off to a bigger hospital and they gave me crutches that I need to return. Thinking I’d rather get it sorted now after we’d drove around for over an hour and sat in waiting rooms, we headed off with the help of a satnav to find the other hospital. The satnav was directing us one way but GFK spotted a sign for an A&E department  so we aimed for that one instead and ended up at a different hospital to the one we’d been refered to. GFK wasn’t convinced (right city, wrong name but I wasn’t going to argue) so we went in. Thankfully they did have an xray and a nurse who’s first consideration was patient pain relief! After another hour it was confirmed, as I’d thought, that it wasn’t broken but it needed rest.

It doesnt look too bad now and much of the swelling is reduced though I still can’t stand on it. partly because it is so swollen still that my toes don’t touch thefloor and partly due to thepain. How easily we do these things but I’m really thankful I’ve got tough bones!

Here’s an update of it two day’s later.

organising, planning and folia

Every year i spend countless hours trying to organise myself and my plot. I want a system that tells me when to sow, transplant and harvest. I’d like it personalised for my plants and it would be nice if I could link it to moon planting! My problem, I think, is that I make it harder than it needs to be. I suppose I could just use a diary but I’d like a record I could alter each year as many things will be repeated. I decided to try to make a database. I wanted one that linked to a spread sheet that updated as i added new seeds but it’s too much for me to get my head around. I’ve got AS levels in office but I seem to have forgotten it all and now my brain has gone foggy and I just don’t take it in, I’m tired and don’t have much time. I never get quiet time so it’s a battle to learn. I also have hundreds of packets of seeds to enter! And plants  (fruit, flowers etc) that I’d also like to include now that I think of it…

I thought that somewhere, someone on the web might have made something similar to what I wanted and would be willing to share so I hit google. I found hundreds of people discussing similar but not really what I wanted, or they cost too much (£100 for a template that comes with access?!) or no longer worked. In the end I found a post from a lady on a site called Folia. The lady (I won’t link to her as her inbox would probably melt!)  is kindly sharing a database that does almost what I’d like. I’m even struggling to get my head around this too – how did I forget what a query is and how to change it? Anyway, it also introduced me to folia. I made an account and I’ve spent ages in between (and at the same time as!) looking after house and family entering seeds, plants etc. It’s brilliant! Ok so it’s probably old news to the thousands of people who use it but it’s new to me!

I’d like this system or something similar on my computer as the options I’d like you have to pay for and I also like to know that I have a back up if anything goes wrong or the website closes. In the meantime I’ll carry on trying to make my own – eventually I might get somewhere and when I do, I’ll post it on here!

Random post

Haven’t done any decorating today and as we’re doing two rooms at once, there is stuff everywhere!

Our electricity is going haywire. Since we changed to a pre-pay meter we’ve been watching our consumption and average £25 a week. There was over £30 in there last weekend so I was amazed when the power went off  yesterday and found we’d run out. I hit the emergency button and checked the weekly tariff (£3). DFS put another £10 in this morning which only gave us £2.46, I then added another £20 tonight at around 10 and it gave us £19.85. DFS checked it 2 hours later and it was £19.27 so it had used another 58p but nothing has been used. It makes no sense. There is no way we’ve used over £40 in a week (if the maths is right), especially this week!  With the hot weather we’ve hardly been cooking and we’ve been outside so haven’t been watching much tv either. Nothing has changed with our usage. In fact some things are being used less such as all the stuff in the kids rooms as I’ve restricted the internet until they tidy their rooms. We will have to monitor it.

My pregnancy drags on with 17 days to go. I want it over but am getting very nervous too. Healthwise,everything is the same: too hot, legs/feet too swollen, thirsty, heartburn, restricted nasal passages, sleep uncomfortable,  hypertensive and now… toothache. will definately ring dentist on monday.

sorry it’s been a while… other

Not on the same scale but Lexie isn’t the only thing we’ve said goodbye to since becoming pregnant – yes there is a huge list of things but the thing I was refering to was my landy. It had to go. Not practical for the kids really but definately not for a baby. So out goes the landy and in joins the mondy… not quite the same ring is it? Still, it’s comfortable and family friendly and we thought we had got it for a good price. After sitting in it and it shaking so much it rattles your teeth or, even worse, driving down the fast lane of the motorway over taking at 83 mph with a queue of traffic behind you when an orange light on the dash flashes on and the car decelerates rapidly as it hits limp mode it seems i’ts  not quite such a bargain! A mobile mechanic called today (charged us £40 for the pleasure) and told us that one of the injectors is down, which we suspected, but he couldn’t say which one but offered to repair it for somewhere in the region of £300 and then said that he also thinks the problem on the motorway is due to a faulty/dying fuel pump which is going to be around £800. Not much fun when DFS still hasn’t got a job and I’m not working either. So, for now,  we will put up with the shaking – maybe the movment will help settle the baby when she’s restless! – and not drive over 75mph.

Over the last few months I haven’t been able to do much but I do have some photos of what we’ve been up to. When I get chance (and aren’t so tired!) I’ll upload and blog about them . For now, goodnight.

cold

The snow we’ve had so far made an attempt to thaw today but didn’t get very far.. They’ve forecast more too! My feet are already blue and I actually have frostbite on one toe!

(taken from diary)

Snow

(taken from diary)

Normally I love the snow and can’t wait to get out my camera – even if it’s just my phone – but this year I’m too cold. I don’t know if it’s because my circulation is poor while I’m pregnant but I don’t remember feeling this cold! I suppose the fact that I’m vomitting all the time and losing weight isn’t helping.

Anyway, this is probably going to be this year’s only snow pic from me!

Flip-flops and photography foolery.

What a day today. DFS woke me by ringing half an hour before my alarm was due to go off and it was raining. I’m fed up of the rain. The kids wanted to go swimming so I dropped them off and when I came back I popped over to the neighbours. I only meant to have a quick coffee but that turned into almost two hours leaving me only 15 minutes to get ready to go collect the kids.

I want to save some seed off the hollyhock so when I went home I  thought, despite the rain, that I’d nip out before I had to go and collect the kids to take a photo so I remember what the flowers were like. I grabbed my fleece and a rain hat, slipped on my flip flops and ran outside. It was hard taking pics with my left hand but because of my right wrist, I couldn’t use it properly. I  couldn’t get a picture through the fence anyway so I went around to get closer. Getting soaking wet, aware that I would be late to fetch the kids if I didnt hurry, I stepped into the overgrown grass and felt a sharp pain in my right foot. Looking down I saw the end of the plank of wood in the grass and I knew what I’d done. I went to pick up my foot but the wood lifted too. I tried to pull the wood off with my one good hand (remember my bad wrist that’s been in a support for two days) and realised avplanter of sweet peas was on top of it. So I had to try to balance on my left leg,without moving the right, put the camera in my pocket and lift the planter off the wood with two hands but without bending my right wrist nor taking too much weight with it. Achieving this, I had to pull the wood off my foot. The nail that had pierced my flip-flop and foot was very rusty and bent. I semi-hopped (have you tried hopping in flip-flops), semi-limped, and semi-skidded in the rain up to the house. Then I did my best to clean it but there was now mud that had splashed from the downpour mixing with the blood trickling out of the tiny hole and I now had 3 minutes to get to the sports centre to fetch the kids. Typically, the plaster I put on wouldn’t stick so I had to tape it on! I limped to the car, pulled off the wrist support which was now soaked and tried to get in the landy. Not fun with a right hand I can’t bend – hence can’t pull myslelf up – and a right foot painful to weight bear. And guess waht? The wet floor must have caused some type of suction with my foamy flip flops becuase as I lifted my left foot up to get into the landy, the bottom pulled off the bar that goes between your toe leaving the sole hanging off and getting wrapped around my foot! In frustration I flicked it off my foot and drove bare foot up town in a rush as I was now late. The kids were even later and I sat outside (couldn’t go out with only one shoe and a limp on the other!) for another 10 minutes.

When i got back I realised the khaki cambell drake had escaped and was wondering arounf the garden. I left him out. It was still raining and I wasn’t in the mood to chase ducks.

By this afternoon the rain was coming down in gallons and we had our annual eye tests. I took them up and the same as last year, we were split up – I don’t like that. I should have asked more qestions but wanted to get to see what was happening with the kids but the short version is that I need glasses for both reading and driving. I’m not sure why I need some for driving. I know reactorlite will be usefull for me because I really suffer with bright light but prescription glasses? My reading ones i was expecting because I find myself pulling things further away to focus on them – it’s my age they told me. I will research my prescription to see what it means. It seems I also have astigmatism.

I will put my results here if anyone wan’t to explain then (when I can be bothered to go and get  them!)

My foot’s throbbing now. As my nan used to say. I am in the wars!

I think I’ll save seed from these too: