Assortedpixels's Weblog

Through a strange connection of Facebook links through my daughter Charlie’s endless friends, I tracked down the daughter of one of the guys I was next to in the ward when I was in hospital. I messaged her saying “Hi…” and asking how her Dad was. He was admitted initially with complications of his Multiple Sclerosis.  She wrote back with some shocking news. Instead of Rob getting out of hospital as expected before New Year and making good progress with his MS, he’d had a massive heart attack caused by a blood clot entering his heart, resulting in him having three broken ribs and a torn stomach during the subsequent resuscitation. He’d died for nine minutes. What a shock. He was fine when I last saw him on Boxing Day. Just goes to show you how precarious our lives actually are! His daughter said Rob was also on Facebook and tracking him down I messaged him too. He wrote back explaining a little more graphically the series of events he’d been through. He said he saw the white lights that every one talks about when dying, but he couldn’t find ‘his’ light and hence returned back to life. Weird eh? Luckily he’s on the mend again and is now back home recovering.

That’s it, I’ve survived my first week back at work. HURRAH !!!! OK, so it was only half days, but it was pretty darned tiring I must admit. I think fitness is something that we all take for granted. Even though most of us don’t inhabit gyms, or work at being fitness, I think we all have an underlying general fitness that enables us to carry out our day-to-day life, like shopping, working, housework etc. Being ill and loosing that ‘base’ fitness makes it so hard to function normally and it’s such hard work to get it back to normal again.

A quiet weekend ahead I think, we’re popping out for a family curry tonight as my daughter Harry is back home from Uni. It’ll be nice to go out as a family for a change. I’m quite looking forward to a couple of Onion Bhaji a nice Vegetable Biryany and a couple of Chapati. Yummy. I might even go the whole hog and have a desert too !!!

Have a good weekend !!!

BP

While shopping yesterday my daughter slipped a bag of crisps into the trolley as we shopped… not an unusual occurance by any means, but the flavour of the aforementioned crisps was so weird, Strawberry & Sweet Chilli.

STRAWBERRY flavour crisps !!! Yeeeeuuuuuurrrrgh. IMHO they tasted awful, leaving a starwberry flavour in my mouth for ages after…. yuk.

Despite being given the all clear last Monday, I still had to finish off the antibiotics I was taking, which up to this last dose has been a total of 540 capsules !!! I’m surprised I didn’t rattle taking all that lot !!!

So, the picture below is my final dose of four Amoxicillin capsules… this is the final dose. From here on, I’m medication free !!! Whooppee !!!!

My final dose...

Other news from Chez Pixel….

As a treat and a huge thank-you for looking after me over the last couple of months, I’ve packed my daughter Charlie and my other half off to a nearby hotel spa for a night away for some much needed R&R and pampering.

Charlie is still looking for permanent work and her part-time music lessons are looking dodgy too as the couple that run it are having trouble paying the rates and the electric, plus the new contracts they’ve been asked to sign are extremely dodgy and not well written or even legal so we’ve been told. They also include a strange clause charging them for advertising the business !!!  Hmmm… strange.

I’m still keenly awaiting my go-ahead for getting back to work. My HR lady Angela is arranging a meeting with our occupational health nurse before letting me back on the premises… as yet I’ve not had a date. =:o(

As a treat, seeing as I’m all on my Jack Jones tonight, I popped down to Krispy Kreme for a swift Latte and a couple of Original Glazed do-nuts !!! Yum yum…

BP

Like the rest of the country I awoke to a blanket of the white stuff this morning, but I didn’t have the luxury of a lie-in this morning as I had to drive Karen to school as she is off on a school residential. After brushing the car clean and cautiously tip-toeing off the estate, the main roads were clear and the journey to school was easy.

But…… I made the silly mistake of not retracing my route home, choosing to exit the school car park  by turning left instead of right, thinking that I’d avoid the approaching wave of Mum’s delivering their little kiddy-winks to school.
WRONG !!!!
It was like a skating rink… you could see the road shining like polished glass !!!
Slowly reaching the end of the road, I needed to take a left turn to go back down the hill to pick up the main road, which I knew to be clear. But with cars gliding side-ways across the road, a shunt in the middle of the cross-roads and a builders lorry spinning it’s wheels and zig-zagging back down the hill, I felt a tad nervous as I made the turn.
Slowly I tippy-toed down the hill with only one sideways slip. PHEW, I’d made it !!!
My heart was pounding I can tell you.

I tried to warn a fellow driver turning into the road that it was lethal, but as he was driving a monster BMW X5, he obviously thought he was impervious to such perils. I looked in my rear-view mirror to see him slipping sideways across the road. It was good, in an odd way, to see these people in their monster 4×4’s, those ones that drive like they own the road, careering across the ice like everyone else, wheels locked, out of control !!! HA !!!
Further along the main road, one huge Mercedes 4×4, driven by a tiny behatted woman, almost skidded out onto the main road, but JUST found some grip as it slowly spun sideways, pirouetting gracefully backwards down the hill, stopping just short of the traffic !!!

One of my chums from my old place of work dropped by earlier today,  he’s lending me the first DVD of the Jason Bourne trilogy of films, which I’m catching up with, but in reverse order !!! Harry and I caught the Bourne Ultimatum on TV after I came home from hospital. I found the Bourne Supremacy for £3 in Asda’s last week, which I watched at the weekend, which leaves me only the Bourne Identity to catch up with.

Great, great action movies. Very Bond-esque…. and very enjoyable too.

Crikey, it’s been one of those fortnights were bulbs, the electrical variety, have been giving me aggravation !!!

Firstly, my car’s driver’s side headlamp bulb blew. I changed it and the passenger one blew 4 days later !!! Karen’s car was next, popping her drivers side headlamp bulb.

Then one of the under-cupboard unit bulbs blew in my kitchen, and I’ve yet to find a replacement for this one. Then in the space of two days, two of the spotlights in the kitchen blew, so now it’s like the black hole of Calcutta in there as it’s so dark !!!

And then, this week, the day before we had a plumber coming round to give us an estimate for some work in the bathroom, the bulb blew in there too !!!

So, guess what BP will be doing tomorrow ??? Yup, a trip to the DIY store and the car spare shop !!! Lucky me….

Not a lot going on at Chez Pixel. I’ve started getting up a little earlier each day, sort of preparing myself for the eventaulity of getting back to work again. I think I must be getting better as even getting out of bed earlier, I’m no more tired than usual at the end of the day. Living the quiet life though isn’t really for me. I’m ready, or maybe even need to get back to work. How my neighbour can sit indoors all day and everyday I have no idea.

Another sign that I’m on the mend is that my creative juices seem to be flowing again and I’ve started back on my novel again, and a couple of short stories too and even rhymes have started popping into my thoughts. I don’t even pretend to be a novelist or a poet, but I do enjoy playing with words.

One program I do enjoy watching while at home though, is Miami Ink. Some of the tattoos these guys produce are amazing. Real works of art. I have one very small tattoo on my right arm of my name. I don’t regret having it done. But I can honestly say it hurt sooooo much. The outline was ok. But when the guy started colouring it in…. Jeeez, that hurt. It was like a prolonged burning. I very near fainted !!

Well, I think it’s time for a brew… and maybe a Digestive or too !!

TTFN, BP.

Overall a quiet weekend. I ventured out on Saturday to our local shops, I wanted to get some fresh air and also fancied a walk just to stretch the legs !! On the way to the car my next-door-but-one neighbour spoke asking how I was which was nice. We don’t see a lot of the neighbours really, working full-time you tend to pass the time of day on the way to or from work and that’s about it. It’s sad, but I don’t even know this guys name… awful I know. His wife works in our local Wilkinsons and is usually very curt, almost to the point of being rude, but he always speaks, especially as he washes his car EVERY Saturday morning. Turns out he had a heart attack when he was 32 !!!! Blimey. So for ages he was unable to work. We stood and chatted for about fifteen minutes. We then drove into town, pottered around the shops for a while, I got a new mechanical pencil in Smiths as I was missing the ones I had left on my desk !! Karen then went to the gym and I treated Charlotte and I to a coffee in Costa Coffee. While I was in hospital that was the one thing that I craved more than anything, a large, hot, frothy, Latte…. just the thought of it drove me insane !!!

Mmmmmm, coffee....

We then bumped into a couple that we used to see a lot of before she had to wrestle with an alcohol problem and she dropped all her friends and became a virtual hermit. She’s fine now, but we don’t see much of them. They’d heard I’d been poorly and we chatted for ages, catching up etc.  When we finally got back I’d been out for almost two hours and I felt fine. Not tired in the slightest which I think must be a sign I’m getting stronger and better.

Sunday was pretty quiet, Karen and Charlotte popped over to see her Mum. She’s recovering well from her Op’.  And I cooked dinner. We then spent the afternoon on the Wii that we got for Christmas.I never got in to game playing, but it’s such good family fun on the Wii I’ve become a convert.

Well, it’s time for a coffee… not a Latte sadly….

Have a good week bloggers…

BP

I’m a lover of pencils mechanical,

No sharpening, never-ending, they are simply magical.

But away from my desk, I’ve no pencil, it’s tragical,

as Biro’s don’t cut it for work that’s all technical.