i don't update enough...

[quiregrrl]

i had a birthday since the last time i did a proper update... i'm now 34 years old. I had a rostered day off on the actual day, and spent it at home, on my own, under a doona on the couch with my cat, and then went to guitar class in the evening... twas perfect :)

Soooo... thirty four and what do i have to show for it? Not much really, but that's ok. On the usual swings and roundabouts of my life the desperate depression of a month ago has abated somewhat now, and I'm feeling a bit more optimistic about life.

I'm keeping busy with SLPA stuff... the forum last Sunday seemed to go quite well, there would have been 40 - 50 people there, and I think everyone who wanted to talk had an opportunity to do so, there were some really good discussion points raised, and some really good suggestions for fixing things, quite a few ideas that i would love to run with, and lots of interest from people wanting to volunteer time and energy to working on stuff, which is fabulous! I'm actually really optimistic at this point, and even better, I'm currently feeling vaguely competent, as opposed to my usual feeling that I have no idea what I'm doing ... I ended up having to facilitate the forum, which scared teh bejeebus out of me, and i'm not sure i did a great job, but i did an ok job, and sometimes that's enough.

Adding to teh stress on Sunday was the fact that mum's not been well, she had a massive blood clot in her leg found last Monday and she was started on 200mg of Clexane and 50mg of Warfarin to try and dissolve it, but then Saturday morning she ended up in hospital secondary to a suspected a GIT bleed brought on by the thinning agents... so I'd spoken to her Saturday night and her Hb was 95 after a blood transfusion that afternoon (normal rnge is 120-150) and she said she was feeling a bit better... then she rang me early Sunday morning, in tears, telling me that her haemoglobin was down to 75, she'd collapsed in the bathroom in hospital, and they were about to take her to theatre for investigations to see if they could find where the bleeding was, and depending on what they found open her up and fix it... Ma usually dramatically underplays illness, she's the kind who'd have a spear through her arm and say "it's just a scratch", so hearing how scared she was, the fact that she was crying, scared me a lot. Unfortunately they couldn't find anything in theatre... they got a specialist in later in the day for an angiogram, and still couldn't find any active bleeding. She had another transfusion on Sunday and by evening was feeling better, although still lightheaded, and her Hb was back to 97 or so... She's improved steadily since then, and was let out of hospital yesterday morning, they did another doppler on her leg to check the blood clot that started all this and couldn't find it, no idea how it disappeared or where to, and she has to see the specialist in his rooms today, but in spite of all this when I spoke to her this morning she was all packed and ready to be on the ferry tonight for the overnight trip to Melbourne, and then drive up to Sydney tomorrow... they're coming to stay in Sydney for a couple of months because the golden childs wife is due to pop a baby out, so it's been planned for a while and she's so fucking stubborn. She said unless the specialist absolutely forbids her from travelling she's coming... i think she's an idiot. What if something happens when she's in the middle of bass strait on a boat? not that she listens to me... ah well, fingers crossed all goes well...

I am still head over heels in love with Lola (my guitar) and lessons continue to go well, although we only have two classes left :( We've been working on learning Wonderwall (Oasis) the last couple of weeks, which is actually a fairly simple song in terms of chord progression and variance, but the strumming pattern is a bit full on, which is the point, but it's actually not as hard as it seemed at first... I was very excited last night when i got home and found my brand new shiny capo in the mail (woot ebay) as Wonderwall requires a capo, immediately dragged Lola out, and it's remarkable how much more like the actual song it sounds now :) We've also been doing stuff on scales, learning individual notes, picking rather than strumming, and more bloody barre chords (I hate them, but at least i get a decent sound SOMETIMES now, with lots of perseverance)... i'm going to miss having a weekly lesson when it finishes :( A good lesson in measuring progress was last week when practicing and getting frustrated with bloody barre chords, I decided to work through my folder from the start and play everything I'd learned so far, and with the simpler stuff, even though i haven't looked at it in months, i could actually play it reasonably well, which made me happy :) it was a productive exercise in proving to myself that I'm not utterly crap at playing the guitar and i AM improving even though it doesn't always feel that way.

On the topic of music, best boy is like a pusher when it comes to tunes and keeps sending me playlists on Grooveshark, yesterday was GOLDEN! In the morning I arrived to an email with a link to a playlist of nothing but Dolly Parton, about 50 songs in total. I love Dolly, and I don't care who knows!! but then!!! it got better!!!! in the afternoon he sent me another playlist of 25 cover versions of Jolene, 25 versions of the same song, one of my all time favorite songs, done in many fabulous and varied and utterly different ways... I didn't get a chance to listen to it yesterday but I have the office all to myself today and spent the whole morning with Jolene playing over and over, loudly, it was awesome :)

Also awesome is this short story from a book called, oddly enough, "Stories" edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, due to be released in a couple of weeks... i think i may want a copy.

on the subject of writing, i never fail to be touched and immensely flattered when i find that someone has kept something i wrote to them, because it makes them feel better, or makes them smile, or just because they like it... i also find it slightly disconcerting when they quote me back at me... not that this happens often, but it's happened more than i would have suspected it might... anyhow, the point of these musings is that I had me quoted at me today.. and i'm pasting part of it here because as the person doing the quoting pointed out, i need reminding sometimes...

"but here's a perspective... I sometimes think of my life as a movie, it has a pretty fabulous cast, a bumbling, odd, but gosh-darn-you-can't-help-but-love-her lead character, a great soundtrack, but I really don't know where the plot is going... and I want to find out what happens... and y'know, movies generally have a happy ending, or at least resolution and/or triumph ... so I figure the cruddy days and the bad stuff is all just plot turns to make the eventual happy ending even better... so you just have to get through the boring bits and the sad bits and see what happens... "

I started writing this post 6 hours ago... finally, done!

Comments

[quiregrrl.livejournal.com]

thank you, she's doing much better now :)