Getting up to date with April - part 5 (more day to day stuff)

On Wed 21st April I was woken early by dad shouting Alf because he'd missed his bus to college. Dad ended up running him to a nearby bus stop in the car and Alf caught the bus there. I managed to get back to sleep after that though :) A science GCSE certificate from my secondary school arrived in the post that morn. I realised a little while ago that I'd never received it so Claire chased it up for me. That morn I had to wait in for some deliveries because my mum was out. My Tac was delivered and dad received a waterproof MP3 player for him to listen to while swimming. He'd got one a few weeks ago but it didn't work, so he'd sent it back for an exchange. Luckily the second one he received worked fine and dad seems very happy with it.

Mum had to go to the village library for a lesson in emails. Mum doesn't use her emails at work because the library is single manned so she hasn't got time to read through all her emails (most of which are county council ones that are sent to lots of people and have no relevance to my mum) and reply to the ones that need replying to while serving customers. And she's not going to go in and do it in her own time and not get paid for it. Mum's opinion is that if it's important people can phone her! However the higher people think that because mum doesn't use her emails she can't use her emails so arranged for her to have a lesson. But the lesson was a complete waste of time. The email programme my mum has to use looked different to the one that the teacher used, so she didn't know what she was doing! My mum hasn't had anything to do with her emails for a couple of years now so she had 1500 unwanted emails to reply to. Between them they couldn't find a way to delete them all so the teacher made my mum delete them one-by-one and then delete them one-by-one from the deleted items folder! And that was the lesson over because that took a couple of hours! How ridiculous. I think my mum is attempting to learn the basics of her emails now because there's a qualification she wants to get but she'll need to use emails to get it.

When my mum got back we popped round to the local shop and the village butchers together. We couldn't believe that the butchers had no free range chicken! So we didn't get any chicken for them - mum changed the meal we were going to have for tea and based it around ham instead of chicken. If we'd have wanted free range chicken we would have had to drive into town to go to a supermarket. I thought it was ridiculous that the village butchers had no free range chicken, I think I might write a letter to them about it - it's on my list of things to do.

That evening Chris and Sophie popped round again and I spoke to Lizzy on the phone to confirm Sat.

On Thur 22nd April I attended my first physio appt at Hosp H. I was very nervous beforehand in case I had another physio who knew nothing about ME but it went much better than I expected. The physio I saw knew a lot about ME and was very easy to talk to. We talked about the importance of pacing (a technique for managing energy levels in ME). It sounds like her idea of pacing would be for me to work out my baseline for various activities (how much I can do comfortably) and then try to gradually increase that. She gave me an activity diary to fill out for a week (which I've already done) and asked me to find my walking baseline by timing how long I can walk for on a good day, an ok day and a bad day and then averaging the times out. I did try this once on an ok day but found I could just keep walking until I got to where I was going. I recorded when my legs felt more tired though and would have recorded when my heels started hurting but they were fine that day. I'll show that and the activity diary to my physio when I see her again on Wed 12th May. I also mentioned the pain I'm getting in my feet due to plantar fasciitis so she said that she'll have a look at my feet next time for me.

After my physio appt I met mum on a bench outside the hosp where she'd struck up conversation with a stranger. Hehe. Then we had our packed lunches in the hospital quadrangle, which brought back some memories of spending time there when I was younger. After lunch we went to visit my Nan who at this point hoped to be discharged the following day. She hadn't had an xray as the doctors had decided that she didn't have a broken rib. I think that they thought that her feeling ill had just been related to her heart problem. That evening Chris popped round.

I didn't go out on Fri 23rd April but had a busy morning wrapping some presents for friends. It was Claire's birthday the following Mon (26th April), but she was coming round that evening so I wanted to be able to give her her wrapped presents then. I bought Claire the Radio Times exclusive Doctor Who book and 2 DVDs (Speed and Memoirs of a Geisha). I also wrapped up the doll we'd bought for Mia's 4th birthday. It isn't her birthday until this Thur (6th May), but because her and Lizzy were coming round the following day we wanted to give Lizzy Mia's present then. That afternoon I decluttered and tidied my room a little bit and then Claire came round in the evening.

On Sat 24th April my Nan was discharged from hospital and dad helped her settle back at home in her flat :) Lizzy and Mia came round about lunchtime to spend the afternoon with us. It was a lovely warm sunny day so we sat out in the garden and I had to get changed out of my poloneck and into a t-shirt! We chatted a lot, went to a local jumble sale (where I bought the Joseph soundtrack on CD and A Series of Unfortunate Events audiobook for 25p each) and had a BBQ for tea. Me and Lizzy also played on my Wii together but Mia decided she wanted to play too so that was good fun :) I asked Lizzy to record Holly's Battlefront prog when it was on TV again a little while ago and write it to DVD for me, so when she came round she bought 5 DVDs each with a copy of the programme on :) Lizzy also lent me some short story books that she thought I could try because I can't read novels at the moment. I've only tried one so far but I managed to read it :)

On the morn of Sun 25th April lots of old Mr Gumpy style cars came driving down our road. Mum sat out on the front bench and waved to each of them but she often didn't get a response from the snooty drivers. Mum thought she saw about 70 in total. We only live in a little village so this was quite intriguing! Mum heard from someone that they were going to a posh house in the next village (not really sure why), so we had a walk there to look for the cars. Unfortunately they'd all left by this point - they must have gone a different way as they didn't go back past our house. Then we walked to the village bowls club where dad was playing bowls. We stopped and chatted to people there for about an hour. I had no idea who most of the people were but everyone seemed to know me and everything about my health too! Thanks mum - she tells everyone everything whereas I like to be a bit more private! I wanted a drink there but they didn't have any milk or apple juice. They only had J2Os (which I think would be too strong for me), fizzy drinks (yuk) and alcoholic drinks.

I heard from Becky that the Telegraph were giving away Dr Who audiobooks. I'd missed Sat's because I didn't know at that time but wandered round to the local shop on Sun to have a look. The Sun Telegraph only had half of the audiobook (the second half would be in Mon's paper) and cost almost £2 so I decided against it. I'm sure they'll turn up at carboot sales and in charity shops soon.

On the morn of Mon 26th April I phoned Barnardo's to see if they had anything for me to do if I went in that afternoon. Usually the manager (who I know) answers the phone, but she wasn't in that day so the deputy manager answered the phone instead. She had no idea who I was so had to go off to ask if anyone else had heard of me! Then when she got back to the phone after speaking to someone else she said "Does you mum bring you in?". I'd prefer not to be known as the volunteer who's mum brings her in! Then I was told that there was no work for me that day.

Me and mum went into town anyway. On the way we went via someone's house to pick up a Doctor Who DVD (Utopia from series 3) that they had been offering on Freecycle and I'd got. We went into all the usual charity shops. In a charity shop I nearly bought the Blue Planet DVD boxset for £5 but I left it to think about it and when I went back for it it had been sold. Never mind. I bought 3 Agatha Christie audio books in one charity shop for 75p each and bought both parts of a Dr Who audiobook called The Stone Rose (which had originally been free with the Radio Times) for 50p in another charity shop. Me and mum stopped for drinks in a cafe, but again I didn't have much luck with drinks. They couldn't sell drinks of milk and didn't have any clear apple juice so I had cloudy apple juice instead (which I don't like as much). Me and mum did the crossword while we had our drinks. Then we called in at 2 supermarkets before heading home.

Once we got back to the village I called in at the surgery to pick up some tablets I'd ordered. I also found out that a new suncream had been ordered for me.