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?

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...

Know what else is annoying?

Because being annoyed is my theme at the moment...

Clichés.

Seems no-one can open their mouth recently (especially on TV) without spouting a whole load of tired old phrases that have been so over-used they've lost all meaning. They might as well have said nothing at all.

Just a few examples: I'm over the moon, it's a dream come true, I'm doing this [i.e. trying to win a competition/sporting event] for my kids/mother who brought us 12 kids up single-handedly, it means the world to me, we'll just see what happens, at the end of the day, I gave it my best, if X happened it would just change my life.

Can't people be just a little bit imaginative??

Michael's often said that if you use a word/phrase (he's referring to swearing in particular, but the point still stands) all the time it loses power. Like if everyone said "fuck" in every sentence it would stop being offensive. I don't 100% agree with him, but in general he's right. New language please.

And while I'm on the subject of 100%...

Evidently when people trot out their clichéd phrases, they also lose the ability to understand basic maths.

I'm so sick of hearing "I'm going to give it 110%!"

Er, excuse me? You mean 110% of your effort/time/strength? I think you're misunderstanding a basic fact here.

100% is EVERYTHING. All of the money in your purse is 100%. Every book in your house would be 100%. And every last drop of effort you possess is, guess what, 100%!

Perhaps people get confused when they hear that, as a made-up example, the price of oil has risen 200%. This just means that the original price has tripled - and all of the new price is still 100%. Because percentages are relative, not absolute.

All this is quite apart from the fact that if you actually managed to put 100% of your total energy into some insignificant sporting event, you'd drop dead - because you'd have used up all your body's reserves (including that stored as muscle and organs). There would be no oxygen or glucose available for your brain (if the brain had mysteriously managed to not be converted into energy, that is).

You often see people on shows like Gladiators (okay, I know, if I watch Gladiators I deserve what I get - but I kinda like it) who are understandably very tired after they've finished whatever the last big challenge is. And they say things like, "Well, I did my best, I couldn't have done any more, I gave everything", but if their baby son was trapped in a burning building and they were the only one that could save them, they'd somehow find a bit more speed, be able to run a little further.

Apparently I'm also a maths Nazi.

Tune in next time, when I rant about how people completely fail to understand probability!

Or maybe I'll post pics of my garden and a recipe or two. Vote now!!

Just a short one

Bah. I suck at this regular updatey thing. So bullet points, here we go.

* I've fallen into bad sleep habits - staying up til 4am then sleeping til 1pm. Doesn't agree with me, and I need to get back into a sensible routine.
* Garden is good. Pictures will come soon, hopefully.
* Michael's been less good. He's had a stomach virus since Sunday morning and still isn't feeling right. I'm feeding him bland foods and making him drink lots of water.
* We're off to Islay the weekend after next, for a week. Yay! Islay is beautiful. More details on that to follow.
* Mario Kart Wii is taking up way too much of my time. Anyone else have it and want to add me as a friend?
* I've just sourced loads of books I've wanted for ages on Green Metropolis, which is an awesome site where you can buy and sell second-hand books. Everything's £3.75 plus varying postage (standard paperbacks are free postage), with 5p from each sale going to the Woodland Trust to plant trees. Great idea, plus they have books I want!
* I'm hungry. Pasta, I think.

People are pissing me off

I've allowed myself to get into a bad mood, which is unlike me. It's just a few things that have got to me.

So Thursday was nice, with a very chilled-out rehearsal with nibbles and cake and a good time at the pub afterwards. A bit sad that I won't see a lot of SingSoc people again until October though.

Friday was the committee/helpful people night out, and it was really nice to have the chance to chat to people without the pressure of having to do anything else, like sing, or organise a concert!

Usually my nights out with choir people involve me drinking too much and making unwise choices, like deciding to stay out later than I intended and so ending up really really tired, or deciding to drink more when I've definitely had enough. But I managed okay - one bottle of beer and 4 glasses of wine, and I was home around 1am.

But before I got home...

...I was outside Bar One (student union bar), calling a taxi. In the middle of the call, I felt something hit my left shoulder (it actually hurt), and a male voice shouted from a passing car, "That's for being fat!". I didn't react, being distracted by telling the taxi company where I was. When I'd finished the call, I saw a broken egg on the pavement just in front of me. And my jacket was all wet and sticky with raw egg.

I'm amazed that anyone could find throwing an egg at a random person funny. And deliberately trying to upset someone? Hilarious.

Not that I was upset. I was pissed off. It would be easy to feel bad, but actually it's made me more confident - anyone who'd judge me for my size is obviously the kind of prejudiced egg-lobbing fuckwit that thinks kicking a hedgehog to death is funny, would steal money from their own mother, who considers a MacDonald's Extra Value Meal followed by 10 pints of Stella and a fight a classy night out, and who will probably impregnate an emaciated 13-year-old, or several. So obviously not someone whose opinion I'd value.

The thing that bothers me is that they almost certainly continued their sad little rampage, and
probably actually hurt someone, either emotionally or physically.

However, just a couple of minutes later I met a really nice taxi driver with the coolest accent - his parents are Iranian, but he was born in Moscow. So I tested out my few words of Russian on him (I know the words for such useful things as man, woman, dog, car, boy, horse... stuff like that), he taught me hello and hi and shop and magazine (except I've forgotten the first two which I blame alcohol for), and he asked me to give him the English for someone who can speak two languages, and a few other phrases. And I explained the alternative meaning for the verb to pull. Lovely man.

Michael's pissing me off though. Not going into details, but he's doing stuff that he must know will annoy me, the going into a really irritating innocent "What? What am I doing wrong? Why are you getting so aggressive?" routine, when I'm simply telling him he's pissing me off.

So yeah. In general, not in the best of moods. Someone pass the chocolate.

Veg plot - day 9, where things really start moving

We couldn't have asked for better weather today - it's been really warm, gorgeous blue sky, and birds singing away like mad. My face has actually tanned a little which is annoying because now I'm pink, but much better than being soaked to the skin like yesterday.

Michael shovelling the last few bits of topsoil. Well, at least the soil for this bed anyway. There's still a ton and a half on the drive. But...

Bed #1 is finished!!

Well, except that we need another bag of compost.

Frame is done, all the topsoil's in there, and a layer of compost on top. And we've used string to mark it out into square feet, leaving narrow strips between the three sections of the bed where I'll grow herbs and companion plants to attract beneficial insects and deter the nasty ones, and generally help the plants grow better.

The bricks are there to hold the compost in, and will be moved as soon as the beds get filled completely. I'm not adding compost to the potato section (the end furthest away) now, I'll use that compost to earth up the plants as they grow. And I know that the bed isn't square, but I don't much care, especially as the ground isn't level anyway. It looks, er, rustic!

I'm now desperate to get some seeds sown in it... perhaps not desperate enough to get up early, but I'm looking forward to getting out there.

Oh I forgot to mention that yesterday we had a couple of helpers. A pair of magpies were wandering around the bed while we were inside drilling, I thought at first they were looking for insects but once I got the binoculars on them I realised that they were collecting weed roots from the soil! Must have been nest-building. Now mags get a bad press, because of silly superstitions and ideas about them being unlucky (obviously not) and stealing shiny things (maybe) and being responsible for the decline in songbird numbers (definitely not, blame pesticides and habitat loss and monoculture), but I've never heard of them gardening! Have to say I do like them, very attractive birds even if they do have a horrible voice.

Anyway, I think that having a project agrees with me, because I've felt pretty good the last week or so, despite not sleeping well. Tonight I'm really tired because we've worked hard today - arms and legs and back and shoulders are all a bit achy, but strangely not in a bad way. Just in an exercised kind of way. I can live with that.

Veg beds - day 3

We were a little tired after the previous days' exertions, especially me. I was worried about overdoing things and suffering the inevitable fibro backlash, so I took things a little steadier.

But once we got into the rhythm of digging it got easier (I dug out slices of soil with the fork, and Michael broke them up with one of those twisty fork things), and we finished the whole of the first bed.

Summer however, didn't help very much.


Summer just about to bark, after insisting that we get her in the picture.

Feeling better now

I usually see feeling/being depressed as my brain's way to telling me I need to to make some changes.

So Thursday night I made the decision to get my life sorted out.

True to form, I haven't worked out how I'm going to do it yet, or what I need to do, but just making that decision has made me feel better.

Probably a good way to start is to be healthier. More fruit and veg (I already eat loads but more can't hurt, right?) and less cake/biscuits/sweets, more exercise, more "quick reward" type tasks that don't require too much mental energy to get my brain back into work mode.

And in that vein, the garden is my big project this year. I want a pond, a wildflower meadow/wildlife area, and an organic veg plot/herb garden. I've bought a healted propagator, in which seeds are germinating, and I've ordered a shedload more seeds. I've concentrated on non-hybrid varieties so I can collect the seeds to sow for next year, because I hate the idea of paying a vast amout to seed companies every single year.

There's a fair bit of room for me to play with - for an English suburban garden mine is pretty big (something like 1/4 of an acre), with an orchard (three full-sized apples and two full-sized pears, one young plum and one young greengage). Unfortunately we do have heavy clay soil which isn't ideal, but just means I need to only grow certain veggies, or buy loads of manure.

I'd love to keep ducks and/or ex-battery chickens for eggs, but Michael isn't keen. I'll have to persuade him, they don't seem to need much looking after - I'd fence off the whole orchard for them and build them a house (and a paddling-pool pond for ducks), and they'd just need feeding and shutting in at night and cleaning every so often. Easy.

Anyway, apart from the fact that I actually like gardening, I like the idea of knowing exactly where my food has come from, what chemicals have been used on it, whatever. I'd rather get my hands dirty and produce my own food than pay silly prices for tasteless, uniform veg that's been flown halfway across the world, which the poor farmer has been paid a pittance for so that supermarkets can make vast profits.

I'll take some pictures so you can see what the garden is like now.

Not having fun

So I felt like shit all yesterday.

Tired, mopey, couldn't persuade myself to do anything, couldn't think of anything I actually wanted to do. Couldn't concentrate. Got pissed off at little things.

I didn't even feel like cooking or eating, which means I must have been bad.

And after a less-than-satisfactory conversation with Michael in the phone last night (he's coming back tonight), I ended up in tears because I felt so fucking miserable.

Haven't been there for a while.

And although I don't feel quite as bad today, I'm definitely not well, and the old fibro pain's kicked in. I guess it's the weekend catching up with me - bastard fibromyalgia can do that. That's why I'm depressed and "out of it".

So I texted Harriet to ask if I can audition another time. Sounds pathetic, but I can't cope with it today. In this mood I won't sing as well as I can, and if I do that I'll cry. I'm not auditioning if I can't be me.

Bah

I'm just not in a good mood.

The sum total of my progress today has been grouting maybe 2 square feet of tiles. I fecking hate grouting, it hurts my wrists and it's dull and tedious and boring. I'm gonna leave it for Michael to do I think.

Michael's off to Edinburgh tomorrow with work, for the fourth time in three weeks. It's pretty bad timing, because I'd like him to be getting on with some house stuff here rather than sitting on his arse all night in a hotel on his own. And I'm so used to him doing certain jobs that I forget about them when he's not here, so the bins don't get emptied and the dishwasher doesn't get unloaded, simply because I don't think about it.

It worries me a bit that I don't really miss him. I seem to just get on with it. I think I'm just not in emotion mode right now, as I'm not feeling anything very much, like just emotionally beige or something. I guess it's better than being depressed, and it's probably a result of me not doing anything fun for ages.

Another thing that's winding me up is my left wrist. I had a ganglion removed from it 5 or 6 years ago and I have a lovely little scar and a lump there now, which swells up and hurts a bit occasionally. Basically it's not the same wrist as it used to be, but it's pretty much okay. Took me months to be able to use it properly after the op though. It was bothering me last night, and I noticed another ganglion has popped up to the left of the op scar. It's quite tender and achy and annoying. I don't know whether I want to have it treated or not because of the pain and inconvenience of the op - maybe I'll wait to see how bad it's going to be. And if anyone else tells me to hit it with a Bible I'll scream! First, I'm an atheist. I don't have a Bible. And second... I have no desire to be hit hard on the wrist with a heavy book. Call me weird.

So yeah. I'll try to be productive tomorrow. I certainly feel better when I'm doing stuff. Or am I doing stuff because I feel better? Either way - I'm not happy today. Just frustrated and tired and blergh.

I was going to post this in Pirate-speak, considering what day it is. But I really can't be arsed.

A little from Column A...

So I'm in a weird mood today. Various things have wound me up, but only because I wasn't particularly happy to start with. Here's a selection of the stuff that's bugged me, in no particular order.

• A woman who sat behind me on the bus into Sheffield and kept farting. I couldn't hear it but I could smell it - and call me strange but inhaling someone else's digestive gases isn't at the top of my list of things I like to do on public transport. Hell, inhaling my own digestive gases isn't in the top 20. I'd have said something but I wasn't sure it was her until she got off and the smell stopped. I know we all do it, but we don't need to do it every 5 minutes on a bus.
• The fact that I never realised that there is such thing as a DayRover bus ticket, which allows me unlimited travel in Chesterfield and gets me to Sheffield as many times as I want in a day and only costs £5. If I'd known about it before, I could have saved a fortune.
• People with their mp3 players on too loud. Here's the deal. If I can hear the words and I'm 4 rows away, it's too fucking loud.
• Going to see a university counsellor today. Because I'm basically not coping well with the whole uni thing, and the whole fibro thing. Pisses me off that I need to talk to someone about it. I'm an adult dammit, I'm supposed to be able to sort my own shit out.*
• Crying three times in the counselling session over practically nothing.
• Hot weather. I know it's not really that hot, but I don't like it. My feet and ankles and wrists swell up and I'm uncomfortable and I can't sleep and I have to put suncream on just to walk to the shop. I suppose it's more the humidity than the heat that bothers me. Either way, it sucks.
• Blood tests. Having to starve myself for half of the day for blood tests.
  
• Losing the blue tit last week. He was doing very well, started eating by himself and flying well and I was thinking about how to start the release process. And on Thursday he wouldn't eat and in the afternoon he got very weak. I tried to persuade him to take bits of food but he was too far gone and died in my hands. It was very sad.
• Seeing a gorgeous little rabbit in the pet shop yesterday and wanting him and Michael saying that he didn't want me to buy him, even though he can't use the "you have too many pets" defence now as I only have the Summerdog (and technically Basil's a pet now too, but that's still only two).

So yeah. And in the interests of positive thinking, here's some things that don't suck.

• Being motivated to exercise is easier when you have a friend to exercise with. Me and Emma are trying to loose weight and get fit(ter) together. To start, we're going for a long walk on Monday evenings with the Summerdog and doing an exercise DVD on Thursdays. So far, I'm coping, even laughing at myself for having no co-ordination and failing to do both the legs and the arms at the same time. I'm also cooking healthy (but yummy) stuff and eating loads of veggies and cutting down snacks.
  
• After the counselling thing I actually felt better this afternoon.
• Seeing a couple of young blue tits outside on my peanut feeder, making the "feed me!" call that I'm now intimately familiar with. It was a little bit sad but made me feel better because at least there are some out there that have survived. And I gave mine a chance he wouldn't have had otherwise.
• Casually glancing at the fat cake feeder hanging from the bird table on Wednesday evening and being shocked to see a gorgeous male great spotted woodpecker. It's only the fourth one I've ever seen, never seen one in the garden at all. I'd been thinking I could hear one for a few days, weirdly enough, but decided I must be mistaken. And seeing it again the next afternoon.
• Going back to the pet shop today and buying the rabbit anyway. Michael's not really happy, but I think he'll like the bunny when he gets to know him. The bunny is lovely. :)
  

Yeah. Like I said, weird mood.


*Yes I know we all need help sometimes, and there's no shame in that. But it doesn't stop that part of me thinking I'm being pathetic.

Why is it all so complicated?

I went to see my Level Tutor (Paul) at uni on Monday, to talk about my (lack of) attendance. I explained the fibro situation. He basically said that although they do take medical conditions into account when calculating the final grade, it will only actually make a difference if I'm on the boundary between grades (then they'll give me the benefit of the doubt and put me in the higher grade). Also as my condition is chronic and won't go away, they won't be able to compare my work to my normal "baseline" level (without the illness) so they won't be able to assess exactly how much the fibro does affect me. They'll give me deadline extensions and extra time in exams, but can't do anything else.

I have three choices now.
1) Try to catch up and finish Level 2 this year, doing some of the exams in August if necessary.
2) Take the Level 2 Autumn exams in the summer, then do Spring Semester next year.
3) Do the whole of Level 2 as normal next year.

Of course, 2 and 3 involve an extra year of studying, which has financial implications. I can't say I'm all that happy with the way things are being dealt with, because there doesn't seem to be much effort being made to make day-to-day studying any easier for me. Paul says that Level 3 is easier in terms of having more coursework, and hardly any early morning lectures, so once I get through Level 2 I'll struggle a lot less. Can't say that makes me feel any better now.

And I went to see my new doctor yesterday. They don't have my notes from my old surgery, so I had to explain everything over. When I'd finished, the doc said, "What do you want me to do about it?" in a you're-wasting-my-time kind of way. I replied that I didn't know. I'm not a doctor, after all. He's given me refills on my prescriptions and asked me to make an appointment with a nurse to check out my diabetes. He also says I can't take codeine for the pain anymore because it's addictive and affects mood, and that I need to start a graduated exercise programme and lose weight.

I feel cheated. He's right, but I don't just want to be told that he can't help me and that I'm doing things wrong. I want step-by-step instructions, because when I even think about how I'm going to implement a healthy eating/exercise plan or in fact any kind of lifestyle change at all, my brain won't work (to many variables to consider) and I just want to go back to bed and not deal with it. It's too much. He obviously didn't believe that sometimes I can't actually think in a straight line and make rational decisions, and how badly this can affect my memory.

After all this, I tried to talk to Michael last night. I was thinking about how to do it most of the evening, because I know he's practically counting the days until he doesn't have to support me financially anymore. So it was 10.30pm when I broached the subject of potentially doing another year of studying - he said he didn't want to get into a discussion because it was loo late in the evening. I really wanted to talk though the options with him and how I felt and what the problems were, to sort things out in my own head as much as anything. The fact that he said it wasn't an convenient time to discuss something which is going to have such a major effect on my life somewhat annoyed me, and disappointed me as well. I snapped at him a bit, and later when he tried to say something I told him it wasn't convenient to talk to me right now. I also said I was going to make decisions without his imput, and just tell him what I'd decided once it was all sorted out.

Guess I'm mostly hurt that my life, my future, isn't as important as getting 8 hours sleep.

And dammit, why isn't anyone hearing me? I need help, I can't do this by myself.

Mnemonics

On the way home from Minsmere (when we played the bird word game), I created a visual image for Michael. He recognises a lapwing (the above photo is one of his), but was having trouble remembering the name of it, so I asked him to picture the bird with a cat lapping milk from its wing. The theory being that the weird image would help him recall the name - and it worked, he gets the name straight away now.

And the other night I thought about this and was inspired to do a little drawing for him to make him smile. And here it is. I don't profess to being an artist, but it turned out okay and it amused me anyway.Mark it well, I'll be testing you later.

Also if I mention "pussy licking" I might attract more people looking for porn.

Love is...

Michael can be very sweet at times, bless him.

We were in Padley Gorge this morning - for those of you who haven't been there, it's a wooded gorge with a stream at the bottom, huge gritstone boulders everywhere, dippers and pied flycatchers - we took the dog for a walk and tried to find me a dipper. I got one, yay, but I digress.

Being a wood in summer, there were wood ants everywhere, thousands, millions of them. I foolishly hadn't thought about it and wore my sandals. And as I was navigating a tricky little stream and feeling a little less than secure in my footing, I felt a sharp pain in my foot and looked down to see the jaws of an ant embedded in my flesh. It felt like a needle. A big sharp needle.

Michael had to seriously swipe at it to get it to let go. Maybe it was karma, I'd probably squashed loads of them as I was walking. But it hurt and I didn't like it.

And Michael (who had been sensible and worn trainers and socks) gave me his socks to wear so the ants didn't get me again.

He didn't even laugh at how stupid I looked wearing socks with my sandals, and still managed to keep a straight face when I tucked my jeans into the socks to stop the nippy little buggers from getting inside them.

He's a star.

Please note, my legs aren't really that fat, I'm just wearing very baggy jeans. Honest.