Tile engraving (by sarah)

I thought this might interest people - when we were on the Centenary Camp I was incharge of the tile 'engraving' which I had to work out as I went having only been left the equipment and no instructions!

Anyway the results are on Salaric including the Polyp tile I made for Alaric!

Of Hernias and Blood Clots (by sarah)

I came back from seeing the surgeon on Friday not very happy - she proded my stomache lots but as always the damn lump chose to hide but thats what scans are for.

But then came the problem - what did I think my general health was like? Good/poor - I answered and she rapidly flicked through her notes - nothing there.

I gave a brief summary which all seemed ok until Al says, 'Oh and there was the heart trouble during the pregnancy...' She grilled us with questions looking more and more agitated as all we could say was we don't know and yes my notes are still missing from Essex and yes I was on blood thinners and no things didnt show up on the scan but no we dont know what it was all about.

So this leads her to pronounce that she can not operate on me until this is sorted out - even if there was a suspicion of clots during the pregnancy she wouldn't want to operate without a blood expert being involved and she would not be happy doing it unless things are life threatening.

So she's chasing things and if she doesnt hear back within eight weeks I have to go for blood tests and to see a heamotologist and stuff as if I am a 'clotty' person I'll have to go on blood thinners and stiff before any operations and I'll be risking death everytime I have a procedure done.

As you can imagine this didn't exactly make me or Alaric very happy especially as she then went on to say that it will affect future pregnancies and stuff and that someone should have spoken to us about this as things will have to be heavily managed and stuff.

It's all a big crashing wave again, I thought oh this is a simple procedure with little risk these days and I should recover fine - but no things never work like that for us do they?

On the plus side though it might just be a beniegn lump thing which obviously they would normally remove but wont if the clot stuff makes it too risky. Also it means that I can have treatment (blood thinners I assume) to help prevent any early strokes or heart attacks so maybe its a good thing really.

The issue with operations as far as I recall what she was saying is that clots will tend to form in the legs and then go zooming off around the body lodging in the lungs and and stuff so if I do have an opp it will be sexy stockings like during the pregnancy all over again!

The Curse Looms Bigger than Ever (by sarah)

Yes friends it is back - today in the Snell-Pym disastor sytcom we have exploding taps and clonking vans!

Five in the morning sleepily I moan at Alaric fro having a shower that early. He grumbles at me for leaving said shower on. There was a brief pause and he gets up to investigate.

Not the shower, no lo! It is the squeacky cold tape downstair the washer had finially gone and water was jettosoning out of it at a scary rate. And so poor Al hurts his hand trying to turn the stop cock off.

Now we had known the washer was going due to the squeak in fact we had bought washers for the tape over a year ago but could not get to the washers to replace them. On top of that we could not get the stop cock to completely turn off.

Then there was some confussion later in the day when I thought Al had told Barabara but apparently hadn't been able to find her and she came around to ask if I'd been having trouble with the washing machine!

After alot of talking round in circles before things became clear it was a wait for the emergancy plumber - who fixed it in under five minutes - he said to be fair it was only an easy job if you had the right tools becuase they are stupid tapes!

He was also impressed with our messures to reduce the amount of water lost - ie we put on the fitting for the hose pipe with a penny in it and then cable tied it to the tape and placed tea towls over it to reduce pressure spray.

It was a nasty day as I had left banana chutney half made the night before thinking it would be a simple task to finish it today - sigh.

Then I managed to loose the work I had spent all morning doing on the laptop as it crashed whilst I was saving - it somehow lost the stuff I thought I'd already saved as well :/ The whole file thing - I'm wondering if I forgot to do intermediate saves or something - what ever the cuase I was not very happy as you can imagin!

The Alaric leaves the house to go and help at another Cub group in a sort of exchange thing him and one of their leaders has set up. But a few minutes later he comes dashing back in the house in a bit of a panic as the van isn't starting.

Clonk clonk and the lights go out - so this ment I found myself helping to strip some copper wire to fix the positive contact on the battery and wating Al sand paper it. To our emmense suprise it worked and the van started but I think we are now both just waiting for the next incident to hit us full force!

SIGH

Centenary Camp, and coats of many pockets (by alaric)

We've had a busy weekend running the Cranham contingent at the district Centenary Camp.

One highlight for me was finding the Cubs all scrabbling about searching their pockets for small change and whispering conspiratorially. "Akela, Akela!" they said when I approached. "You've got to buy this badge we found in the camp shop! It says Akela and it has a wolf and it'd look really good on you!"

So I let them excitedly drag me to the shop tent, where they pointed out this badge and looked me expectantly. I presume (from the conversation I walked into) they'd been trying to see if they could buy it for me between themselves, but had failed to raise the pound required, so I bought it myself, much to their delight.

I've surmised that having it sewn on in time for our next meeting (Wednesday) might mean a lot to them, so I've stayed up tonight attaching it to my coat-of-many-pockets 🙂

Now, I used to be famous for wearing coats of many pockets, stuffed with first aid equipment, compass, and the like. I gave up the practice due to fears that the weight distribution wasn't doing my back any good, and moved to a belt of many pouches instead, but that finally died a death, so after a terrifying period of wandering around not equipped for an unexpected nuclear strike, my brother in law and his girlfriend bought me a new coat of many pockets for my birthday. So I'm back to wearing coats of many pockets, except this time I'm not going to load it up so far!

Of Flowers and Day Moons (by sarah)

I saw a sliver of white moon in the blue blue sky and the flowers varilly glowing in the warm sunlight and so I tried to take a picute of it.

Its hard work but there is a day moon in each of these pictures. Even without spotting that tiny sliver I think the composition of the pictures them selves are buetiful. What do people think?

I want critasism here people.