I was doing something in the kitchen; Jean was toddling around playing with a hair grip. The kind that's two plastic jaws closed by a spring. She was gripping it on to bits of her clothing, and various objects around the kitchen, experimenting with what it would hold onto well.
She wandered out of the kitchen into the living room, then came back a bit later, looking thoughtful.
"Cat no like it" she said, waving the hair grip at me.
I'm amazed she wasn't crying and nursing a scratch!
Hmmm, it appears I have two mental modes when working.
Deeply focussed into something. I block out distractions to hold onto the focus. This is what I need when I'm programming. Once I get into this mood, I get a lot done, since I have all the pertinent information sitting in my head and all the correct windows open on my computer, but it can be an uphill struggle to get started.
Event driven. When I'm dealing with emails, phonecalls, broken servers, and that sort of thing, I'm in a very different mode, agily flipping between things. I come across problems that will clearly need some deep focus, and I have to put them off for later, since it takes me a while to get out of deep mode and into event-driven mode.
This morning I've been event-driven, catching up on email, dealing with a down server, and now I really ought to try moving back into deep focus mode to work on something else, and I'm finding it hard; my thoughts just keep jumping around!
I really want to decrease my dependence on lots of deep thought mode for earning money; part of this revolves around getting an underling to do more of the programming so I can be event-drivenly mentoring them while doing the considerably easier form of deep thought required to design software architectures for them to implement... which is a work in progress as we speak...
On Saturday me, Al and Jean went to the Cheltenham Museum and looked at the Medieval Machines they currently have there!
Jean loved it!
They also had a medieval loom which I have used for a blog post. We also had a little look around some of the rest of the museum including the special exhibate which is currently a lot of prints showing the Alphabet of trees - which I have also written up on Salaric!
It was lots of fun 🙂 And very very interactive - though JEan didn't like the jousting horse cos it moved too much. I personally feel that Al got more out of the bridge building excersise than she did but never mind! There was also a water wheel which she really liked and I felt was highly appropriate considering where we live! Unfortunatly she did become abit obsessed with the giant hour glass that she made Al turn over repeatedly for her 🙂
Yesturday as well as my physio appointment we had an appointment for Jean as she has had a perminate cold for about six weeks and it had esculated in the last few days. The result of the appointment was that she was fine and it is just a string of colds etc... but its good for her immune system. If the cough becomes weezy come back etc... becuase there is a slight chance that she could have asthma.
I asked about glue ear and he said it was borderline at the moment but that they now avoid putting gromets in as it tends to clear its self up and they have less invasive techniques now - I had gromets twice so I am obviously on edge about Jeans hearing.
Again we now have a list of things to look out for - she is still abit young for a hearing test to be reliable but shes responding to sound so hopefully she'll be ok.
Anyway, we sent her into nursery and at 2pm we get a phone call saying that she is covered in spots and has chicken pox and could we come and get her - sigh - that will be why she was suddenly worse with the cold stuff. How many times is she going to get this particular thing?
Again she doesn't even reaklly seem ill - no temperature just getting tired quickly and being abit naughty really.
Yesturday saw more physio for me including some light massage to try and get the muscles out of spasm - apparently the muscles in my back have been in continous spasm for at least four months which is supposed to be absolutly exhusting :/ I have two weeks of the current excersises and gentle massage and if the muscles haven't started to ease up its back to the doctors for muscle relaxents.
Also though previously they couldn't find any nerve damage apparently there is but its on a different set of nerves to those that do the reflexes which is why it wasnt showing up. This is why I have descensatized skin and why I sometimes loose control of legs and stuff. However the nerve issue is probably from inflamation in the opening in the vertibrea where the nurve comes out and it is sort of putting pressure on it so that the signals are all just dulled rather than having complete lose - this is actually a bit of a pain as it means its alot harder to pin point exactly where the trouble is.
I have to say that I am very very sore after this session and am not looking forward to more indefinate pain. On top of that my pain killers give me headaches so I am a mega grump at the moment.
Jean | alaric | 
Mon 25th Feb 2008 12:34 pm | 
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