And this time an ambulance… (by sarah)

So I had stopped bleeding for about 2 weeks with just a little bit of 'marking' every few days and then I started what I again thought was a period and it was ok for a couple of days and then Mary had a hungry night and fed and fed and fed (breast). But I could feel the flow getting heavier and heavier and I started having to get up to change pads etc.. again and again and again and then it was time to get Jean up for school so I got up the last time and felt the bleeding become very heavy and was on everything - I made a right mess of everything.

And not quiet being with it I got into the bathroom and started to feel strange. I remember thinking this isn't good and Jean burst in her normal fashion and apparently I asked her to help me and tried to follow her out of the bathroom as she went to fetch my dad. He came up the stairs just in time to try and catch me as I passed out which was fortunate as I landed on the almost full length mirror I had propped up on the landing.

This mean I only busted the frame rather than shredding myself to pieces. But it also ment I was slumped on my knees laying sideways on a mirror. Jean apparently called my mum on my mobile phone (I think she just pressed the button she knows calls people and mum was the last person I'd phoned). Dad was trying to get me up to put me back in bed when mum arrived, I was trying to talk but unsuccessfully.

She called an ambulance, by the time they arrived the bleeding had slowed and I was trying to get up off the floor because as I kept repeatedly telling everyone I had to get Jean to school :/ I cried cos I was bleeding on the carpet and had ruined my favourite things and the baby was hungry and Jean had to go to school :/

It took both ambulance people to get me up off the floor and I screamed with pain 🙁 Mainly the pelvis. I was starting to feel more with it and embarrassed that I was causing a huge fuss and appeared to be half naked.

My sugar level was low but I hadn't had any breakfast so they spent time trying to get me to eat and drink. After three pints of water I started to feel a lot better - food had been hard as I felt so sick. As the bleeding had slowed down they called the Drs surgery and I went for an emergancy appointment.

And after an examination and a phone call to the hospital I have more antibiotics and hormone tablets to stop the bleeding. More bloods have been taken and I have a hospital appointment for Monday - by the time I got to the Dr I was just in pain and so very tired. I had lost lots of black jelly again though.

My womb is enlarged and the wound on the outside is even acting up again. I was barely able to walk with the crutches at the Drs surgery the pelvis was acted up so much. I think it extrememly lucky that I didn't pass out whilst using the crutches.

And then I should have just been going home to rest and take tablets but it didn't quiet work like that. Leaving the Drs we went to the Chemists to get the prescription or rather we stayed in the car whilst Dad went - none of us realised how late it was as I'd passed out at around 7 in the morning.

This meant that it was actually past lunchtime and Dad had not had his morning snack and had had lots of stress and so went hypo at the shop :/ They told him to stay put whilst his chocolate bar kicked in but he walked out and collapsed. He then got up and did it again. By this point people had stopped to help and he ended up sitting on someones steps with the pharmacists trying to find out where he lives. At this point me and mum were talking about how we should have made dad eat the banana he'd refused when we arrived as when there is stressfull stuff he tends to go hypo and then I saw the time and phoned him.

I ended up talking to the girl from the shop and they walked him down to the car - initially they'd asked if someone could come and get him not realising that we were in the car park. I had to explain that I'd been passing out, mum was a wheelchair user and we had the baby with us :/

They were concerned that he would try and drive but I assured them we'd wait and feed him the emergancy food.

So we got home just in time for the Jean pick up from school. I went to bed and slept as did everyone else except Jean who watched a film.

It was an adventure I hate living in Interesting Times :/

Weaning (by sarah)

Mary is only 3 1/2 months old and I am weaning her - I started by letting her just taste things at about 3 months because she would squeak angrily when we were eating - screwing her little face up and looking like a red Donald Duck. But because World Health Organisation recommends just breast for the first 6 months I was trying to hold off full blown weaning as in giving her mushed up foods to eat.

But she just would not sleep and began grabbing at food we were eating. So I chewed up banana and fed it too her and she slept like a log!

We had to wean Jean at three months as well after talking to the Midwife/Health Visitor who was coming round at the time - Jean was a hungrier baby though so I thought Mary would last out a bit longer.

Anyway the last few days have been great - she loves banana, carrot and parsnip, semolina (without sugar!), peas and sprouts. She is really enthusiastic about this and grins when she sees she's being put in the highchair. She even grabs the spoon and to my amazement tries to ram it in her mouth - though I think this is many due to the fact she tries to ram everything into her mouth at the moment!

Nerves and Guitar (by sarah)

I live near Cheltenham and that town has some very good poetry nights etc... so Friday saw be going along to Slak Bar to an open mic at Earshot (probably my favourite poetry night). But this time it was opened up so that the open mic included acoustic so I thought I'd take my guitar and play one of the songs I worked on last month.

But though I was fine if a little upset as Jean refused to talk to me as I said she couldn't come in and watch, things got a little delayed and my anxiety and fretfullness mounted.

For a start I have a glittery nail vanish covered guitar, it is not one of those you can add pick ups too and I knew I wasn't getting the vocal range to be heard well over it in any case. (not an excuess but my glands where up due to hay fever and because of breast feeding I couldn't take anything for it - I find this heavily affects my singing)

Then one of the real acts got up (Horston Longsail) then one of my friends got up and using my guitar and his string clamp thing played a lovely haunting song.

Then I got up - for a start I hadn't wanted to use the crutches but there was no way I was going to be able to get up onto the stage without them. So I was feeling a little flustered as well as nervous. I sat down and begain to play and stuffed it up! I was shaking which didn't help and also I was so nervous my hands were sweating and my fingers slipped of the strings - I'd never encountered that before. Stressing out also makes my voice even tighter and smaller and I couldn't check if I was in tune becuase of the ringing in my ears.

The neverous twitch I used to get where my lip curls up on the left hand side started. I was still attempting to play. I closed my eyes and sang the second verse of my song instead of the first but then managed to look up a bit and get more in the flow - though I changed to the wrong cord and had to alter the sequence slightly so that it would all still fit.

I got off the stage feeling I had really stuffed up - I was so annoyed at myself - how comes I can play the song through perfectly whilst Jean is doing things like licking the guitar to get my attention becuase its dinner time but I get infront of people and it all goes wrong?

It's nerves.

People were very nice about it and I got given tips in the fact the microphone needed to be nearer my mouth and told that it started out a bit hesitant but once I got into it it was good. I even got told the song was like my poetry full of the sweet and dark and that it sounded very PJ Harvey.

I also know that I wasn't really ready to 'perform' in public but that if I didn't start trying I never will be. The issue I have is playing infront of other people and like getting rid of the stutter there is only one way to cure this and that is - if I mess up an open mic I simply need to play more open mics. Now I haven't got a clue weather my songs are any good or even if I can still sing in tune I just have to hope that people aren't going to be too mean!

I am still annoyed with myself over getting so flustered though - and with being annoyed - it meant I didn't really click back into gear until latter in the evening so basically missed Avril Staples poetry as I was waiting for the ringing in my ears to stop!

But I did have a fantastic night - I really enjoyed the two headline poets Bohdan Piasecki and Michael Wilson.

Lords of a new economy (by alaric)

Pondering Bitcoin, I recently opined:

Who sets the difficulty of the puzzle and all that? The computers in the network do - when the system was created, rules were agreed, and written into the software. As everyone runs software following those rules, anybody solving easier puzzles or trying to award themselves more bounty for doing so will have their bounty-claiming transaction rejected as invalid. To loosen the rules, a majority of the computers in the system will all need to accept the new rules - so it will require consensus from the community.

I've been thinking more about this. Read more »

Garden design (for geeks) (by alaric)

When I was about 11, I designed a garden. I remember drawing a plan of it on a page of my spiralbound notepad. Sadly, that means the original design is now long gone, but that's irrelevant - the original design assumed a plot of land the exact same shape as a page of my notepad, which is unlikely.

The important thing is that I can remember the concept.

The idea was simple - I think of a garden as a fun place to relax. Be that a pleasant spot to read a book, or a venue for a party. Where, to me, "party" involves a buffet and background music and people mingling and chatting.

Therefore, I wanted to pack in a pleasing variety of spots to read/sit/chat into a limited space. Also, being a geek, I wanted it to be intellectually interesting.

So the answer was obvious - it had to involve a maze. But more than that. Two mazes. Why not have a stream and little ponds that forms a water-maze, and then overlay that with a maze you can walk, with little bridges and stepping stones and the like where it crosses the stream, to add interest? And use a variety of materials for the maze; hedges, walls, balustrades, the stream itself - all can form barriers of varying solidity. I love strings of lights in trees and bushes, so let's run lights around it. And have lights in the stream and its ponds. Lights are pretty at night.

One idea that appealed to me was that, for parties and the like, you could have little boats with candles in circulating around the stream. Of course, if it's an actual natural stream, then all the boats would end up stuck at the grating you'd need to put up to stop them all going downstream - but if it's an artificial one (in effect, a long thin pond that wriggles around the place) you could encourage a continuous current around it by putting pumps around the place, sucking in water then emitting it in a jet, with the jets and inlets all aligned around the circuit to push the water in the same way. Extra points for style: Computer control of the pumps so, at the end of the day, you can cause all the boats to congregate in one place for easy collection...

There would need to be a more open patio / lawn area joining the maze to the house, for when you need to gather everyone together to eat and so on. And it would be nice if the other end of the maze led into some more wild and natural terrain such as woodland, after all that order. But the maze would pack a lot of different little nooks into a relatively small space, creating a garden that seems a lot larger than it really is...

I'd draw up a plan, but of course, the actual implementation totally depends on what the land you have is like, and what bits of random architectural salvage turn up to build the maze out of!