See horses not zebras

I've just finished reading a memoir called "When breath becomes air" about a neurosurgeon who has lung cancer which spreads to his brain. He died in his mid-30s in the prime of his life. This is all very poignant that a Dr used to dealing with death would have to confront his own and consider the meaning of his life in the process. Many of the steps along the way to the diagnosis ring true, the denial of the pain and tiredness at the beginning, not prioritizing this but instead putting it down to over work, long hours on his feet. I'm not suggesting that we should run to the Dr with any twinge but how many times do we hear that a friend/colleague or family member left it too late to go to see the GP? And how many times have you hassled your loved one to go and see the GP, only to have your head bitten off for over caring? Keep hassling I say.

Drs are taught to look for horses and not zebras when a patient walks through the door. Go with the majority verdict. If they come back in 2 weeks then send them for a scan. Fair enough you might say, restricted budgets and all. But how many do come back in 2 weeks or do they leave it for a month, or 2? Add on 4 weeks for the waiting list for a CT and you're several months away from the original complaint. And if it is something serious, like cancer, well you've just given cancer a head start I the race. So, google it. Yep, first stop for a diagnosis is the WWW. Scare the shit out of yourself why don't you! We all do it. 

Going back to the zebras, beautiful aren't they? Sometimes it works in reverse. Sometimes when I walk into a Drs surgery and meet a new Dr they see my list of treats and see the zebra first. I probably don't help with Mr Google under my arm and not allowing the Dr to get a word in edge ways.  So this week I have a bit of a bronchial cough and will get it checked out at the GP, hoping she'll see the horse and give me antibiotics. 

Paul Kalanithi was the name of the neurosurgeon. It is his almost poetic, philosophical voice that stays with me. His first love was literature. He died before completing this book. He ran out of time. 

None of us know when our time is up. It's a cliche. Play another record. We're almost immune to it. Too many funerals go by with us repeating the same old same old. Make the most of life. Live life to the full. Don't sweat the small stuff. Try to find good in everyday. Treasure every hour with a loved one. Kiss your lover hello, goodbye and goodnight. Don't put off til tomorrow what can be done today, is an oldie but goody! What is it that you've always wanted to do? Then do it.

Creativity Update
I've just finished a crochet tank top. I think tank tops are going to be the new black. Was inspired by my Dutch friend El so can't claim to be very original here! So I'm happy with it but can't wear it yet until I grow into it! I'm a little under my ideal weight at the moment so it's a bit baggy under the arms. Here it is:

The other project I am working on is a mosaic mirror for my friend Sho. Can't put a picture up though cos it's a surprise. But most of the tiles are down now and next will be the grouting.

The other project I've got going is definitely at the prototype stage. It's my projector project where I enlarge an image and transfer it to wood and jigsaw the hell out of it! Here's a picture so far:

I'll either mosaic this one or go ahead with the protoype painting using spray paint with a metallic effect. It's all new to me. I loved using the jigsaw as it was just like using a sewing machine. But I didn't like the reverb on the drill! Thanks to J for the demo. 

So that's all from me. Apart from to say that I've been catching up with friends over the last couple of weeks. It's been absolutely awesome. I have guzzled down every word and taken them home and reflected and laughed to myself. Not just the real life friends but also the virtual ones too. Laughter is the cure all and how I love to laugh. And it's with friends that we laugh so freely. Have a great week. Find something to laugh at. This cracked me up this week... Hope the link works...Mom with Star Wars mask

It's May!!!

What a glorious day!
The weather has been soooo kind. I'm so enjoying it right now. To think that when I was in the throws of recovery, just after getting out of hospital, the sun was splitting the rocks and I was so not interested in it. Wasted on me, the whole scorching hot summer. Endless days of scorchio. From January to May all I cared for was a room with a bed and heavy curtains! Or sat in front of Downton Abbey in the lounger with the curtains drawn to hide the sun from the TV screen at 2 in the afternoon. Shocking! So now I am so thankful that scorchio is still here and I can appreciate it sitting here on the covered deck tapping away.
So was anyone else a little surprised that yesterday was the 1st of May? We're almost halfway through the freakin year people! What have we got to show for it? Where's that New Years resolution list gone? Well by way of a kick up me own arse I vowed to myself last night that come this morning I will start actively DOING rather than thinking about the list of stuff I wanna do this year. There's only so much prepping you can do. Did you know that you can qualify as an honorary member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints if you can show you have stockpiled 3 months supply of wool in the event of a creative apocalypse? I have enough wool to insulate the entire house and the air aid shelter (google it up kids).
My day started at 6.30am with Pet Rescue. Woody brought a bird in the house, alive. It was like Tom and Jerry (You Tube it up) in the kitchen, plates, pans, water bowls going everywhere. He hasn't really got a killer instinct, he just brings them home to hang out. Never kills them. They usually die of shock. Anyhow this little bird was cornered by the bookcase on the floor. I grabbed a blanket and chucked it over the two of them. Dragged Woody out and then scooped up Birdy in the blanket to take him downstairs for release. I opened up the blanket and he flew straight off. Excellent start to the day. Back to bed with a cuppa and a surf of the net. I didn't stay there long what with the wailing banshee of a cat outside the door.
New cereal for breakfast today, fit for Ironman himself!

Back to the creative jobs for the day. Now can I include two rounds of washing, hoovering the house and cleaning the bathroom floors? OK, no it is a bit of a stretch especially as ma was helping too! What about an omnibus edition of Corro? Sorry! I know it's not exactly Dostoyevsky (ok so I googled the spelling whatever's!). Well I did take up J's trousers! 

I did make a start on my projector project:

Templates drawn ready to project and enlarge! And we're off........

GONE noroVIRAL!

We've had an unexpected visitor who has ripped havoc through our family this week. It's only now that I am able to talk about it. Never before have I felt so drained and exhausted. J has been blown over too. The big man was floored on Saturday and is still reeling today. It all started a week last Friday......

The little un has been fast approaching his first birthday and all plans were set in motion weeks ago for the party on Sunday 17th April. Cake duties were split between myself (defaulted from J due to all day bike ride on Saturday 16th in wop wops. Gawd!) and grandad H (chief icer). 5 loaves pre-ordered from bakery to be sliced by the baker (learnt that trick from the christening! Still have the callouses from the knife!) for ham and tomato sandwiches. Presents wrapped (including DIY monkey - see previous post) and cards written. Fifty million small plastic balls bought for DIY junglerama in the paddling pool. All set for Sunday's party. 

So, a week ago last Friday, the little un has a bit of a barf in his push chair after a busy morning chasing balls in the official Junglerama. Teething perhaps? Yeah. Cheeks are a bit flared. Goes to bed that night and mum is woken by a gurgling sound and there's little un covered in spew in his cot. Poor wee mite. He's all out of sorts next day and just before bedtime mum is up hurling too. On the hour every hour she's up spewing through out the night. This is Saturday night. Night before the party. So next morning she's absolutely exhausted. Cancels the party (very sensible) and reschedules for the 30th. Thank goodness for the power of Facebook! She's back to bed and dad's taking over the little un. So he's next in line. Hits him Monday night. Ugh. On the hour every hour. Has to try to get it together though to attend a funeral on Tuesday! Passes the baby baton back to mum who's still gotta get herself in order to go with him. Meanwhile me and great-nanny Ann step up to baby sit for a few hours on the Tuesday. Thinking little-un is well over his barfing so it's just a couple of nappy changes and some feeds. No signs of any spewing. All good. Baby goes home. We go to bed. I'm up the next day to get flappy checked, hit the Sweet Vanilla Cafe for a cheese scone and a latte, meet a friend in town, pick up some craft tools, visit the new Bunnings in Petone, take a wrong turn and am heading back to Welly, running out of petrol, gas-up, on my way again! Having a great day. head home to mamma to watch a bit of Tipping Point. Perfick. 

Until 4 o'clock.

Searing pain in my belly button. Argh. Need toilet. The big "D" in vomiting and diarrhea hits me. Ugh! Then the big "V" shows itself. Dramatically. Epically. Projectiled. I can't lift my head off the toilet bowl. Holy Fuck! What is this? Ugh. Bed. Half hour later I'm up again. V. I hate it. 5 hours I managed of this trotting to chuck. It's inhumane. It was like gastric plus flu. Gastric flu. Pains in the bones and fever. My head was on fire but my feet and hands were freezing. Whatever was in my system it was having an all night rave. After each hurl I lay in bed like I had main lined Rohypnol. I couldn't even move my lips. Boot camp for bugs. That's what I was doing.

By 9pm I was able to move from the bed to the sofa but still lay horizontally, moaning. I felt like I'd been run over. Now, you know, avid readers that I can confidently state that I do have a high threshold for pain. I have visited my happy place to relieve anxiety and pain on many occasions. But this battle with this particular bug was like Sigournet Weaver in Aliens (the one with all those British actors in it don't know which Alien movie it was darn it). "It will pass. It will take its course. It will be over. Soon. Ish". It did stop. The "V". And my first solid passed reminded me of my time in hospital and made me smile. How good it feels to move yer shit after you've been on a holiday in hell. 

So it's now Thrusday morning and I am totally wiped out like a rag doll. Stomach muscles, check. Flappy, check. Throat, errrrrrr, nah, sore throat!!!!! Argh! No way. Stripped and bare my poor throat is on fire. FFS! It's like those first few days after surgery. You know when you think they've let off a thousand ants in your mouth. There's nothing like being starving, not "V"ing and not being able to swallow - to bring you right down. I was sooo sooo over it. AND it was little-uns birthday, the actual one, and I wouldn't be able to go and eat the freakin cake!!! Right that's it I headed straight for the Watties tinned cream of tomato soup and sank right into its velvety creaminess, like a cat, swimming backstroke I was. Yummmmy yum yum. I wouldn't look at it normally, the tinned soup section. Oh no, it's all Go-Nakeds all the way (that's a brand of soup not Tuesday nights in New World Supermarket Thorndon!).

But there's more to the week that was from hell. J and great nanny ann set off to see the little un on Thursday night. J is out to work as usual Friday. We're all set to head to the beach for the long ANZAC weekend. We have our usual Friday night take out. Go to bed. And at 5am J is up "V" and "D" ing. "I've got the bug". What The Actual Fuck? This thing is flying through us like, er, flies? OMG. I seriously think the bug was twice as bad for J. Maybe it mutated? J still has it. It's funny, well not funny, But it's cute that we both share the same language while we're hurling. "THis is a fuc*ing Bast*rd" was one I remember. 

I headed to the t'internet, as you do, to get to the bottom of what we were all experiencing. A couple of other family members affected reckon it was worse than campylobacter and well that is saying something eh. I reckon we had Norovirus come to stay. Ripped right through all of us........ Except for great nanny ann, fingers crossed. Shes been with me all week while I've been ill and she's been around the baby and now J. 

Must be the fags. It's the only difference between us!!!!!! 

Long may she remain symptom less. Here's a link to Norovirus with all the symptoms we had.... Norovirus info click here

3 month milestone

Celebrating my 3 month milestone with a mini bottle of bubbles. Three months ago was D-day. January 14th. Wow. I am so grateful in so many ways for being alive and well today. So grateful for the love and support from my family and friends. All those positive vibes helped me heal. I am still healing. There are ups and downs. But everyday I am grateful for being here. Loving and cherishing every day as best I can. Hoping my guardian angels can take a vacation now. Cheers everyone! 

Vaya con dios - farewell

Today has been a long, hard day for many of us, for one reason or another the sky seems darker this evening. This song keeps turning in my head this evening. 'Vaya con dios' is a farewell song. Translates as 'Go with God'. The aunts were singing it in an earlier blog post. That was a great night of reminiscing about who sang what song at the family parties years ago, "what was your party piece?" Great to have captured a few songs that night on video. Precious times. Golden moments. Memories we will treasure long after the heartache and loss we feel when someone we love is taken too soon. 

We make memories everyday. Here's one of mine from today. I had just finished putting together some folders of lyrics of songs the family used to sing. Ready to give to the aunts as keepsakes. I have a cd of 27 songs that my uncle GJ put together so I put this on and mom picks up one of the folders, finds the song and gets right into it! An hour and a half later and she's still going... Check out the video above. 

This was my stop and smell the roses moment today, it had the music, the memories, the mamma and the poignancy in the lyrics. Goodnight and God Bless. 

Relishing a new skill

I've been dying to try my hand at bottling, preserving, chutney making, whatever you wanna call it for ages now. So our one and only crop of veggies this season has been the cherry tomatoes. With all the hoo-ha around my unexpected surgery and all the flapping around with flappy post surgery has meant we weren't really paying much attention to the veggie patches. We'd planted the tomatoes and lettuces and had high hopes of replenishing the coriander and maybe chucking in a couple of courgette plants but nah it was all a bit too much under the circumstances. The lettuces grew into conifers and the dwindling coriander went to seed. Ah well there's always the tomatoes. Slow to start they didn't really kick in until after Christmas and then they bloomed and bloomed and kept on giving until we harvested 2kg of the little gems:

I surfed the net for instructions on sterilizing the pots and picked Jamie's easy tomato relish recipe to try. It's been a bit of a team effort with J tending the little treasures in the garden, me and himself cooking up the relish and me potting them up into the final product. We only have 2 small jars of the stuff. Limited edition I'm calling it! Sooooo precious. I only used half a kg of tomatoes just in case the relish was awful or I screwed up the bottling. Haha! Bit of a clinical trial going on here! I won't know if it's safe for human use until one of us tries it out. "Hey mom....."

So now I've got 1.5kg of cherry tomatoes left to play with I'm going to try Annabel Langbeins relish which has mustard powder and curry powder in it. I reckon I'll then buy a jar from the shop and do a blind randomized placebo trial and see whether it really is worth all the freakin effort to make your own preserves!

Meanwhile at the craft table today.....

Woody was keeping my seat warm

A blank canvas

Today's activity was clearing out the garage to make space for my craft table. Me and mom got stuck into it this afternoon. I've got the whiteboard - ideas board - in place too. Looks completely barren of creativity doesn't it! That's cos all the ideas are in my head spinning around! Excellent! A fresh start. It's amazing how many treats and treasures lay buried in my boxes of craft gear. I reckon I've got everything except glass blowing tools in our garage! Mmmmmm sniffs of jack of all trades and master of none I hear you cry! Well maybe I get bored easily? I found an unfinished mosaic mirror amongst the loot so that will be one project that will get me back in the creative groove and recharge the batteries. I rediscovered my charcoals, watercolor paints, colored pencils, felt tips, mosaic tiles, mirrored glass, pottery tools and an endless supply of paper clips! All is well in my world.