Bingle

Monday:

I was involved in a very minor car accident today. I backed out of my parking spot at the shops at the same time as someone behind me - not directly behind or we would have seen each other - we crunched together when we both curved out of our spot. Each car ended up with a broken light cover and a dent. I’ve let my insurance know and booked in for repair tomorrow. No one was hurt and the other guy was very nice so it’s merely an annoyance. Neither of us really knew what to do! We got each other’s drivers licence details but I didn’t think to get his car make/model etc that my insurance asked for.

I saw my doctor and got another script for Duromine, just the lowest dose of 15mg. I need to kick start weight loss again after the depredations of Christmas and holidays. I’ll also restart my gym membership, which I put on hold as I wasn’t making time to go. My weight this morning was 76.6kg, about 5kg up from a few months ago. A slow increase was turning into a fast increase. So easy to get used to slipping back into bad habits. My doctor asked why maintenance had turned into a regain, I suggested it was partly eating from boredom. I finished my course six months ago and I’ve felt a bit directionless since then. So she asked what I was going to do to turn that around. I hope to get a job of course, but I might need to put more thought into other strategies until then. I really liked my doctor’s attitude; willing to give me the Duromine as a short term help but also wanting to help long term. The series of young female doctors at this practice (they only stay for six months as part of their training) have been consistently enthusiastic and lovely - haven't been doing it long enough to get jaded and grumpy!

Tuesday:

My weight this morning was 76.1kg so I lost half a kg of holiday water weight since yesterday. I restarted Duromine today and feel good. Able to eat less, a bit more energy. Actually a tiny bit hyper, I'm sure that will pass.

Home and final assessment

Monday:

A couple of important things happened today. Firstly, Tim came home after nearly three weeks in the US for a work trip! I didn’t mention it while he was away because I don’t like to advertise when I’m alone in the house. He was in Washington DC and Virginia. I misread his itinerary and thought he would be home in the afternoon, and was still asleep when there was a knock on the door this morning. Luckily he wasn’t expecting me to pick him up at the airport! He seems to have been most impressed by seeing squirrels cutely running around, something his US associates laughed at him about.

The other thing was I had my final assessment for my Diploma of Library and Information Services. My supervising teacher Julie came to my library and had a chat with my workplace supervisor Lyn, with me there, and they both said lovely things about me and also said they would give my contact details to someone they know needing a Library Technician for some casual work. Then I demonstrated my chosen task, cataloguing, to Julie and gave her a tour of the library to show I knew where everything was. It all went really well and I’ve seen the feedback they both wrote about me. In the past couple of days I’ve also got results for two assignments, so I’m just waiting on results on the last two. And I’m working two more days, but no pressure! I wanted to finish out the week to learn as much as possible.

My weight this morning was 70.6kg, down 0.8 from last week, so that is also good.

A couple of bad-ish but kind of funny things happened as well. When I first got to work I went to the staff bathroom. As soon as I sat down the whole toilet seat slid sideways, broken off from the base. My hands flailed wildly and I saved myself from falling onto the floor but have a bruise where my arm met the metal toilet paper dispenser. Not the best start to the day.

Usually I have two cups of tea a day, one with breakfast and one at lunch or in the afternoon. I don’t drink coffee or cola so I’m not used to a lot of caffeine at once. Today I’d had a cup of tea with breakfast but had another one when I got to work to warm up and to recover from the toilet incident. I’d just finished that when Julie arrived. Lyn got out a fancy tea set and biscuits and I felt like it was the polite thing to share a cup (and a biscuit) that I didn’t want at all. Three cups of tea in an hour certainly kept me alert, but I spent most of my assessment needing to pee.

Losing a wheel

Thursday:

I've heard more about my father-in'law Des' exciting adventure yesterday. He was driving along the highway in the fast lane when a ute (utility vehicle, car with a tray at the back) decided to overtake on the outside and then cut back in too soon, clipping Des' car and knocking him into the steel fence between him and oncoming traffic (that goodness for the fence!). The car scraped along the fence, losing a front wheel and sliding along on the base of the car, quickly coming to a halt on its own which was lucky because the brakes no longer worked with the wheel missing.

A policeman, stopped nearby booking a speeder, got the whole thing on tape. The ute drove a bit further then stopped (possibly only because there was a policeman right there!).

Very frightening, and incredible that neither Des on the fence side nor his girlfriend on the passenger side which was hit by the ute, was hurt. The car was a total write off. They are going to catch a bus home tomorrow and start pursuing insurance. Clearly the other guy's fault, and they have it on tape to prove it.

Mind Control and Car Accident

later Wednesday:

A couple of days ago a friend brought over a Christmas present she'd received - a mind control device for your phone. You put it on like a headset, touching your skull in three places plus a clip on one earlobe, and then use your brainwaves to control your smartphone. So cool! At the moment there aren't many good apps for it, but she showed me one and I had a go. You have to use your active brainwaves to blow up a barrel of fireworks - I had it fizzing but couldn't get it to blow up. Then you use your calm brainwaves, like meditating, to make a ball float into the air. I did better at that one, even though I suck at meditation and calming my brain! I did exactly what I do if a doctor is about to stick a needle into my arm (I am not at all scared of needles, but I know how to make it hurt less), I looked away and made my body go limp. And the ball on the screen floated up. I thought it was interesting that relaxing my body immediately calmed my brain (deliberately unclenching my jaw works too if I'm angry). But as soon as I looked at the screen, the ball started to sink again. It was really fun but you'd need more games than that to keep the interest going.

In other news, my father-in-law and his new girlfriend, who we met at Christmas a week ago, were supposed to visit a couple of days ago but postponed at the last minute so they could do something more fun on New Year's Eve. They were on their way here this afternoon when they had a car accident about an hour away. They are both fine, thank goodness, but apparently the car lost a wheel so it sounds pretty serious. Father-in-law says it was the other guy's fault, but I don't have any other details yet. They are getting the car towed to the nearest town and Tim has headed off to pick them up.

They were going to stay for two nights, no idea now. Might depend on the car getting repaired. Or maybe it's totalled.

This is the second car accident Des has been in in the past couple of years, which worries me. The other time he left the road in the dark and went down a short embankment. I had been starting to get concerned about my mum doing the long drive here at her age - she won't be doing it any more, we'll always visit her - so now I have to start worrying about Des instead! And my own father has a six hour drive here in a couple of weeks, on his own. Why do people have to get old?

My mum is feeling much the same. Her leg hurts if she puts weight on it but otherwise no pain, but she is tired all the time and mostly sleeps. She has her appointment with the radiotherapy doctor on Monday.