Just realised something

Why do I start thinking people don't like me when I'm depressed?

Because I'm generally no fun - I:

Don't go out because it feels like too much effort
Don't talk much in group situations
Give the impression of constant boredom or inattention
Stop making small talk, asking people questions and generally interacting in a social way
Don't often smile, joke, tease, or flirt
Break promises
Forget I've agreed to do something or meet someone
Let other people fill the gaps in conversation (thus making talking to me hard work).

So I end up looking cold and serious and unapproachable and let's be honest, boring. Really can't blame people for not treating me in the same way they used to, because right now I'm not even the same person.

Just to let you know

I'm still here.I haven't blogged in forever because really I don't think I have anything interesting to say.

Having depression again, you see.

Yes I'm on medication, and yes it's helping, but no I don't feel my usual self yet. I'm just supremely unimpressed by everything a lot of the time, and my sleep pattern's completely fucked despite regular attempts to de-fuck it (hence me still awake and posting at 4am).

I'm not trying to elicit sympathy, don't get me wrong. And I'm not even that bad really, mostly just like the shine's been taken off everything and nothing is fun and I can't be bothered with it all. I'm not cutting myself, or crying all the time (have only cried once actually), or in a black cloud of despair, or thinking that no-one really likes me and that they'd be happier if I wasn't around - which is a step up from my last "episode" - I'm just not really here.

We have a choir Christmas concert on Thursday, and I'm singing a solo quartet bit in one of the pieces (Britten's Hymn to the Virgin) which is a really nice piece. I really wanted to get the solo and I did. I'd expect to be happy about it, but somehow my brain thinks it's not even worth mentioning. I just want to go to sleep.

Good news

My grandma went in to hospital last night, and had her operation today. It went well, and she's fine.

Thank goodness for that.

The scans and tests showed that the cancer hasn't spread. If they'd found it somewhere else, they wouldn't have operated on her at all, just given her chemo.

But yeah, it's as good as it could be, and she could be home at the weekend.

Thanks Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

Just a quick one

My uncle died last Saturday, of cancer. I don't know much about it but he definitely had a tumour on his spine and cancer in other places too. I hadn't seen him for years but I remember him as a nice man, older than my dad - the type who'd do anything for you, too kind for his own good sometimes.

My grandma found out last week that she has womb cancer. And the tests she had today confirmed that she has an aggressive tumour which may spread. It may have already spread. And she's 70 and has heart disease so it might be too risky to operate - we'll find out more when she has an ECG next Tuesday. She's already said that if it's spread she doesn't want the operation.

I'm not letting myself get upset, not unless the next lot of tests/scans say that it's inoperable, or that the op would be too risky. That sounds very cold-hearted - obviously I am upset, but I can't make things any better by crying and letting it get to me so I'm choosing to deal with the potential situation as and when. Can't say I'm massively optimistic though. I don't know what to think.

And my grandad's not long since had an op to remove his prostate cancer.

Understandably I'm now somewhat concerned that a new mole has appeared on my hand.

Can it stop please?

Sparkly pretty things

Finally got round to adding some new jewellery to Etsy.

I have more to add, but I haven't taken pictures of them yet.

I'm actually quite pleased with the way I'm progressing as a jewellery artist. The owner of the lovely bead shop in town has been asking me to take some polymer clay beads in to show her for a while now, and when I actually managed to remember to do it she seemed very impressed. In fact she wants me to run a bead-making class! How exciting!

I can definitely see the improvement in my work since I started back in August.

Unfortunately I haven't sold all that much yet. I'm blaming this on my lack of business skills, having never run a business before. Anyone have any tips on marketing and such? I've been thinking about doing a jewellery blog showing each piece as I make it, the stages I go through, etc. - any other ideas?

More on the charity single

Check us out here! There's even a video where you can see me in all my curly-brown-hair-and-glasses-standing-next-to-the-blonde-soloist glory if you're paying attention.

And now my hair is much darker, with some red though the top of it.

Right, now I'm off to finish my wings for tonight. They will look awesome.

Ouch

Concert went well, we sounded good.

Pete's advice about singing high notes worked, because the high Fs in Messe Basse didn't bother me (and I usually crack or squeak a bit). But working really hard in rehearsal on Thursday, singing for two hours (or something like that) at Meadowhall on Friday, then rehearsing hard all afternoon Saturday was obviously pushing it a bit when my throat hasn't been right all week, because by the time we moved onto the Requiem I was having problems.

The third movement, Dies Irae, is fairly loud and shouty and it was at that point I felt my voice going wrong. Most of my low notes were fine. The high notes were a bit strained, but okay. Middle range? Rubbish.

For those of you who aren't singers, you basically have two parts to the voice: head voice, and chest voice (there are other ones, but those two are the main ones). I'm not going to expain properly what they are, but on the higher notes you use head voice, and the lower ones you use chest voice. If you sing up or down a scale you'll find your voice "breaks" at a certain point as you change over from one voice to another (for me this is around the B above middle C, which is pretty normal for an alto - a soprano has a higher break). As you train your voice you learn how to blend the two voices together over these notes to hide the break - so as I sing upwards and approach the B I can gradually increase the proportion of head to chest so by the time I get to the D I'm pretty much completely using head voice. Make sense?

So what happened to me was, I lost the ability to blend. My sweet(ish) choirgirly high notes were fine, and my rich low notes were fine, but if I sang upwards I'd crack, and if I sang downwards I'd go all quiet and breathy. Which was pretty useless since the majority of the Requiem's in my middle range. Oh well.

And I woke up this morning with a really sore throat - hurt to talk and swallow, and my tonsils are swollen.

So I've avoided talking as much as possible, and tried to drink lots. I have a rehearsal tomorrow, and I'll probably end up sitting there and not singing because I don't want to damage my voice any more.

I'm actually scared stiff of getting vocal fold nodules and not being able to sing for a long time. Better to rest now I think, rather than lose my voice altogether. Hopefully I'll be all recovered soon.

Concert!!!

Mozart Requiem tonight. Should be good.

And we sang carols at Meadowhall yesterday, for their turning-on-Christmas-lights thing.

And I was amused to be pretty much the only girl there who wasn't all excited to see Vernon Kay, who pushed the lights-on-button. They think he's gorgeous, and of course he's famous(ish), but I just find him a bit annoying.

And we were on the local news.

But it's still too early for Christmas carols - it's not even my birthday yet!

You know, I learned something yesterday

Went to a singing workshop yesterday, run by my conductor Pete and our accompanist Robert, both of whom are singing teachers as well as conductors.
The first half was Pete teaching us how to breathe, warm up, etc. (most of which I already knew but always useful to be reminded), how to sing with different parts of the voice, how to sing louder, and most importantly of all for me, how to sing high notes without that horrible closed up squeaky nasy-sounding effect I usually get on anything higher than a top F (and sometimes get on lower notes than that).

Sometimes I do high notes quite well. There are times in rehearsal when we're warming up by singing scales which get successively higher, and I can manage to keep up with the sopranos almost all the way. I mean it doesn't sound nice, but I can do it.

But with the tips and techniques Pete gave us, I reckon I've added a whole lot of notes to the top of my range, which still sound good - and it was easy. Apparently it's always been there, I just didn't know how to do it before. Watch out sopranos! I might test myself later and see how high I can actually get, because it's always good to know.

Oh and I added a tone to the bottom of my usual range as well, but I don't know how I did that. Now I can sing almost all the notes in the tenor range (I can sing down to a low E, and the bottom of the tenor range is a D), and I've reached my actual physical limit. Cool.

The second part was Robert teaching us sight-reading, with a lot of useful short-cut type techniques. Now when I joined SingSoc 3 years ago I was awful at it, but I've definitely improved a lot since I joined (particularly when a certain alto who always got everything perfect left and I could no longer just listen to her and sing what she was singing).

I think my main problem in the past has been over-reliance on my ear, which has always been very good. I always learned everything by ear because I could - however in a choir you often don't get anything played to you unless you get it horribly wrong.

We went thought loads of exercises yesterday, of the type you get when you take instrument/voice exams at Grade 4 and above. The first ones I didn't find too tricky because they were just pitching notes - this gave me confidence because I thought I'd struggle.

I did struggle on the next bit though, when we moved onto actual pieces of music - I had trouble with doing pitching and rhythm at the same time. I blame it on being tired after all that work though, because I usually manage better than that with more difficult music. I'll try the exercises at home and see how I do when I'm not exhaused

In general, I feel much more confident. I mostly held my own with people who had much more musical experience and knowledge than me (if not singing experience) which means I'm better than I think I am.

And I also learned something important about sight-reading - I perform much better when I relax a bit, and stop working so hard. There's a part of my brain that knows all this stuff fairly well, and I should just stop thinking so hard and let that bit do the work for me.

More on the synesthesia thing

So I've been thinking about this some more tonight, especially as a friend of mine told me she's read my last post and that she has coloured numbers.

I was discussing the number form/coloured numbers thing with Michael when I came home (he has a day form too, and an alphabet form) and realised that there are some numbers and letters which have an associated colour in my head. I didn't know I did this.

It isn't at all strong, and I don't "see" the colours in the way that I "see" the positions of days - I just have a "feeling" that certain colours go with certain numbers and letters. I don't feel uncomfortable if those letters/numbers are printed in the wrong colour, but if I was to choose colours for them to be printed in, I'd tend to pick the same ones every time. I can easily ignore it since it isn't that strong.

A is red. C is yellow, D is green. F is purple. G is brown. H is green. M is dark blue. Lower case n is green, but upper case N doesn't have a colour. S is white.

1 is white. 2 and 3 don't have colours. 4 is dark red, 5 is a mid blue. 6 is pinkish purple, 7 is green, 8 is blue (but a lighter blue than 5), 9 is pink. Bigger numbers don't have colours either, but the digits that make them usually do. (The colours I've used here aren't the exact shades by the way, just the closest ones I could find on the text palette).

Some musical notes have colour as well. It's not the actual pitch that gives it colour (they don't change colour if someone plays the music in a different key or whatever), just the position on the staff. Some correspond to the colours of their letter, like the yellow C. But some are different, like the D under the staff (brown).

Interestingly the E on the bottom line is blue, but the E on the top space is white. A is red like the letter, but the As above and below the staff (not shown) aren't coloured. The F way below the staff (the lowest note an alto can reasonably be asked to sing) is dark green, the F in the bottom space much lighter mint green and the top line F isn't coloured. The higher D (second line from the top) is dark purple.

Weird, isn't it?

The shape of time

Well I said I'd draw my day and month forms, so here they are.

Apologies for the poor quality, i used my new digital pen and I haven't had chance to play with the software much yet.

The colour of my life at the moment...

... is red.

I've been trying hard to find a particular yarn for a custom order. One of my return customers wants four knitted hedgehogs made in "Santa" colours - a bright scarlet red with white.

Now I have probably 6 or 7 hedgehog-friendly yarns in red, but all bar one tend towards crimson and more purple kinds of red. Typical. Actually it's probably that way because I prefer purple to orange, so I've picked out reds that reflect that.

I'm also making red beads at the moment, because I've sensed an opportunity to sell jewellery to the girls in Ladies' Choir. We wear black in concerts, and try to wear red jewellery. Several people have mentioned that they don't have anything red - so that's where I come in! I have three necklaces ready so far, hopefully should get a load more done over the next few days.

Bear with me - this seems irrelevant but it's not. Sometimes I look up something on Wikipedia, and while I'm reading the article I'll open up links that interest me in other tabs. When I finish the article I close the tab, and move onto the next tab, and do the same thing. It's kind of like surfing, except I end up in loads of different places at once. Often I just mean to look up a couple of subjects, and end up spending hours reading page after page - I call it "falling into a Wiki Hole" (see also Wookey Hole - nothing to do with Star Wars - and K-hole).

I fell into one when looking up the word red, just to check out if there were other good words I could use.

Somehow that lead me to the page on virginity, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.

While on the synesthesia page, I made a not-really-very-surprising discovery. I have a form of synesthesia. I'm not going to explain what synesthesia is, follow the link!

I have number form synesthesia, specifically for days of the week and months of the year - each day or month has a position on a circle for me.

Days follow this pattern: the week forms an oval shape, wider than it is tall. Wednesday is exactly at the bottom of the oval, Saturday and Sunday at the top. The days run anti-clockwise so Monday is on the left and Friday on the right, and the weekdays are closer to each other than they are to the weekend.

Strangely, the months run clockwise, unlike the days. The year is a circle, not an oval, but the months are unevenly spaced. December is at 9 o'clock, April at 12 o'clock. July is 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock sits just between October and November. And for some reason, I can't help by think of December as the start of the cycle (it's in the same position as Monday).

Maybe I'll draw my day/month forms so you can see more clearly what I mean.

If I know that Tuesday is the 13th for example, and want to count forwards so many days, I see the oval in my head as I count, and the numbers fit into the form in the right positions for the days. if that makes any sense.

I discussed this with my mum fairly recently, and was surprised to find out that she has the same thing, except her days and months both run clockwise and Monday and January are at the top. Whick is kind of logical, because she's reflecting the clock face.

Anyone else experience this? Or something similar?

The non-sexual crush

So I sort of have a bit of a crush on someone.

Someone I'm not sexually attracted to at all.

It's a sort of wanting to impress them, being more interested in whatever they're talking about than you usually would be, being more aware of them than others in the room, caring what they think of you kind of deal, rather than wanting to sleep with them.

It's weird.

I've noticed that when this happens to me (not that it happens very often, not since my teenage years), it's usually a woman that's the recipient.

Now I am sexually attracted to women as well as men, but don't identify as bisexual mostly because I'm not interested in romantic/sexual relationships with women - in general they are just too complicated, with all that expecting you to be a mind reader and saying one thing and meaning another and insecurities that you get so often. Note that I'm not dissing women at all here, neither am I saying that all women are like that. Those that are? It's a social conditioning thing. But I digress. Plus, penis = good.

So anyway. This crush is a man. I've known him for a while, although I don't know him very well.

I've been trying to figure out what it is I like about him, and what he has in common with my previous crushes - and I've come up with a little "crush wishlist".

1) Funny. Makes me laugh, in a clever not-just-endless-fart/penis-jokes kind of way. Which also leads to...
2) Clever. But not obviously cleverer than me. Not that I've administered IQ tests - he could very well be more intelligent than me but he doesn't act it, and that's the bit that matters. Clever enough to be intellectually stimulating, but not clever enough to be threatening or make me feel stupid.
3) Slightly vulnerable. Guess that's the maternal side I haven't got coming out.

This probably explains my little list of People I Don't Fancy But Would Still Sleep With, which notably includes Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Billy Connelly, Rich Hall, and Jennifer Saunders. Okay, so I do sort of fancy Jennifer Saunders, but not enough to discount her from this list.

What is it about funny people? I don't get it.

Well surprise, surprise. Blogger's being a twat again.

Bastards....

I've been trying to comment, on my OWN BLOG, so I can reply to the comment's I've gotten recently.

Apparently that's just asking too much.

Despite being logged in, my blog looks like I'm not, i.e. it says "sign in" or "create blog" at the top rather than "new post" or similar. When I click to sign in, I go straight to my dashboard, which I'm signed in to. But if I try to comment, the page just refreshes and my comment vanishes.

Pippa says the she's having trouble commenting here as well, so it's not just me.

So you were going to get actual content, but instead you get yet another moan. For which you can thank fucking Blogger.

And I'm out.

You'll be pleased to hear...

... that I've accepted the support job.

It will actually be more like 15 hours a week but as Sarah says, some weeks it will be 8, some closer to 20. Depends what she needs at the time.

So, I have basically two choices regarding uni - if I can persuade them to let me back in a part-time flexible kind of way.

Either I work part time and study part time (can possibly manage that), or I take the year off from studying and just work for Sarah, then reconsider next year.

If the job works out for both of us, I could potentially do it for 3 years (the length of Sarah's PhD) - I've told her I'm definitely available for at least one year.

Just realised that I actually have a third option - if uni insists that they can't make adjustments for me (and if it turns out that they can do that legally), I could study by myself this year. Although it wouldn't actually count for anything, then I could lie to my doctor to get them to provide me an "I'm all better" note and go back full-time next year having already got most of the material under my belt, and just spend the year revising and doing essays and exams and practical work. Much easier.

So yeah, a lot of stuff to think about.

I'm waiting to hear back from the Disabled and Dyslexic Students department anyway, see what they have to say about the uni thing.


And on a completely unrelated note, tomorrow I will finally reveal the mystery bird! So this is your last opportunity to guess...

To make things slightly more complicated...

... I've just been offered a part-time job.

Which sounds really good.

Basically it would involve me being a PA for my friend Sarah, who's doing a PhD in speech therapy or linguistics or similar (I forget the exact details), and who's completely blind. I'd be her reader, recording printed text onto CD, and assist with things like references from printed books. Also as her guide when she goes to conferences and such (she has a guide dog but the dog doesn't help when Sarah's in an unfamiliar place - you can't ask a dog to tell you where a particular room is for example). And I'd format her written work on the computer, making sure that tables were the right size for the page, stuff like that.

I'd be trained in the International Phonetic Alphabet which is used a lot in linguistics, and how to use the recording equipment, and how to make the various vocal sounds which aren't used in English. (Very useful for singing actually, since we sing a lot in different languages.)

Hours would vary week by week, but would average maybe 6-10 with most of it being done at home, so I could work at 3am if I wanted to.

Since I have an interest in linguistics and the work's flexible and I already get on well with Sarah, it would suit me pretty well. And I should be able to cope, it's not like a massive workload or anything.

As to how this would fit in to studying, I'm not sure.

Plan at the moment is to contact the Disabled and Dyslexic Students department at university and see if they can help me at all with tackling the Psychology department. Because I still think that they have a legal requirement to give me a bit more than "sorry, we can't help".

I'm so not happy. In fact I'm downright pissed off.

I emailed my university department today, explaining the difficulties I've been having with the fibro, and saying that I didn't think I'd be able to cope with going back to uni full time.

The reply I got was pretty much, "Sorry you're ill, unfortunately we can't offer part-time study, try Open University - you can't come back until you get a medical certificate saying you're well enough to do the course".

Now I know I'm pissed off right now and probably not thinking straight, but surely that's discrimination?

Don't they have to make "reasonable adjustments" to make sure I'm not disadvantaged compared with other students, since the problems I'm having all come from my disability*?

Which won't go away?

Would it be unreasonable for them to allow me to work at my own pace, provide me with copies of lecture notes and allow me to access actual lectures from home (via web cam or video recordings for example)? To give me extensions on essays? To give me just a little bit of fucking support?

Needless to say, I'm tired and I don't know what to do.

* I still can't quite think of myself as disabled. Although I am. Disabled to me is using a wheelchair or crutches, or having dyslexia, or being blind or partially sighted, or something of that magnitude. I don't look disabled and I don't have specific impairments that are obvious to people - maybe it's because I don't have a "traditional" disability that I have such difficulty in self-identifying as disabled. Or "person with disabilities", since I'm all for the person-centred label.

First jewellery sale!

Michael took a couple of pieces (heart pendant and earrings) to work with him on Friday to show some of his colleagues. And he sold them!

And the lady wants a matching bracelet!

And another lady has commissioned a pendant "to wear on holiday". I'm going to be sneaky and make matching earrings and bracelet as well, because I'm pretty sure she'll buy them too. Because I'm awesome. :)

I'm off out tonight, Charlotte's 21st birthday party. Should be fun...

A house guest

So I'm in the dining room making polyclay beads a little while ago (I know, it's really late, but my sleep is fucked up still), when I spot something out of the corner of my eye, in the kitchen. Not that my eye was in the kitchen, the thing I saw was.

Anyway, in front of the sink cupboard was a mouse. A pretty big, healthy-looking one. It had a look around. It sniffed the air. Then it disappeared, presumably under the sink cupboard.

So I got up and grabbed our multi-mouse no-kill trap from upstairs, baited it with peanut butter (that got Summer's attention), and set it on the floor by the sink. And went back to the beads.

A little while later the mouse (well could have been a different one I guess, it was a mouse anyway) strolled on past my chair, along the wall. Behind the rabbit's cage and round the other side back towards me. I tried not to move, because despite not really wanting mice in my house, I'm interested in how they behave. I often spend time watching them eat the food I put out for the birds. Cute little things, but destructive and rather unhygienic. Rather like children.

Anyway. This mouse either didn't clock me, or just didn't care that I was there - it practically ran over my foot at one point. Then it headed out into the hallway and I lost it.

Presumbably it went into the understairs cupboard.

Which is an absolute tip.

It's full of the vacuum cleaner, tools that are so essential that they don't live in the garage (like the big torch), dry dog food, dry cat food (for Basil the hedgehog), rabbit food and wild bird food. All in open bags. The little mouse must be having a field day in there!

Annoyingly this means I now have to clear out that cupboard and buy storage containers for the food and probably throw a lot of it away because it will be contaminated with mouse doings. Because mice are continuously urinating.

There must be a market for incontinance pads for mice.

Typical, when I have stuff I really need to do tomorrow, I've got to deal with the black hole under the stairs which may now be home to countless mice and spiders (not that I mind either, but still...) and possibly a small third-world country. When i should be making cute little cakes with glitter to take to the Activities Fair on Thursday, so we can bribe freshers into joining SingSoc.

That and doing something which I can't tell you about til Sunday.

Oh and while I'm here, are there any birders who want to play Guess Which Completely Unexpected Bird Turned Up In My Garden Last Week Which Isn't A Garden Bird And I Think Must Have Been Having A Rest During The Start Of Its Migration - before I post pictures of it?

Hell, non-birders can play too if the want!

You may have noticed...

... stars! At the bottom of my posts! So you can give me feedback!

I noticed that Blogger have just made this feature available and I liked the look of it. However I've found a better one... with customisable colour and size and a widget which tells you which are your top posts (since no-one's rated me as I write this, it isn't showing up, but eventually you'll see it in my right sidebar as "Stuff you like").

Have a play! But remember that once you've rated a post, you can't change your mind or rate it again, unlike the official Blogger one.