I’m very aware of the fact
that I seem to say this every week, but things have been pretty busy again over
the last few days! I’m desperate for a few quiet days, just so that I can catch
up on sleep, university work and all the other little jobs on my to-do list.
But I can’t see any quiet days in my diary in the near future, so I’m going to
really have to try harder with learning to pace my activity.
I’m not sure if Leanne will
thank me for including this photo on my blog (apologies if you’re reading this
sweetie!) but it represents part of my Monday, so I wanted to share it with
you. Monday was probably my busiest day – I got up pretty early and my Dad and
I headed over to Basingstoke Magistrates Court. I must admit I was pretty
nervous when we first arrived, as I had no idea what to expect and was worried
I would do something wrong. But once we’d settled down in the public gallery
with the rest of the students that came that day I started to feel a bit more
relaxed. We had to take notes on each case, which was incredibly difficult as
they went through the details so quickly! Overall we saw around 11 cases within
3 hours, which was pretty intense but so interesting. Unfortunately I now have
to write them all up, so I’m really hoping I’ve got the right names, addresses
and birth dates for everyone! In the afternoon I had a lovely Skype chat with
my friend Leanne – we ended up talking for nearly an hour and a half – thank
God Skype is free! Then, in the evening, my Dad took me to our local town
council meeting, as we have to write up a few of them too.
Tuesday brought my STEPPS
group as usual, but before that I had to have an ultrasound, so was at the
hospital by 9am. The lady doing my scan was really lovely – she couldn’t see
any large stones in my kidneys, which is what we thought might be there
(apparently small ones won’t show up) but she did find some scarring on my
right kidney, which might explain the pain I’ve been getting. I’m seeing my
Urologist next week, so I’m going to have a chat to him about it. After STEPPS
we rushed home, just in time to let the man in who was delivering my DSA
equipment. He installed a few programmes onto my computer, which should help me
with my university work, and he also set up this digital recorder for me, which
is going to be massively useful, especially on my course. A bit later on I
headed down to the church, as I needed to get an interview with the curate for
a story I was putting together.
Wednesday was a really
productive day for me, which is pretty unusual so I tried to make the most of
it and get lots of things done! We took my cat, Jaffa, to the vets for his
annual booster injections, but while we were there we chatted to the vet about
how concerned we are by the amount of weight he’s lost. It turns out he’s lost
25% of his body weight over the last year, which isn’t good. They took some
blood and we’re changing his feeding regime a bit to see if that will help. For
the rest of the day I worked my way through various jobs, writing two blog
posts, a personal column and my homework on artivism and caught up on Downton
Abbey. I also organised my university planner, colour coding different types of
appointment and information so I can see things easily, and adding a post-it
note to the end of each week to write my to-do list on. I always feel so
relieved once things look pretty and organised!
My full day at university
was on Thursday, so there isn’t a huge amount to tell from that really. We did
get sent out into Farnham though to try and find a story. Thankfully it was a
lovely sunny day, so my support worker pushed me round the town and in the end
we popped into the William Cobbett pub and I interviewed the bar manager about
their Oktoberfest event, which I plan to make into a story.
Friday was a fairly boring
day to be honest. I had my pain course in the morning, which was quite
interesting and good to chat about things. I got talking to a lovely lady
called Becky, who is a similar age to me, which was nice, finding someone you
can relate to. My Dad then whizzed me over to Uni and I caught up with my
Learning Mentor, who is always incredibly helpful and supportive, and basically
helps me to keep my head screwed on! Our afternoon lecture was a bit hard to
follow again, and didn’t bare any resemblance to the topic we were meant to be
learning about on our timetable! But it seemed to go by fairly quickly, which
meant I was soon heading home for a rest.
Yesterday was really quiet,
as my parents are away for the weekend, my sister, Rosiie, was at work, my
other sister, Bekkah, was doing homework in her room and my brother, David, was
popping in and out. I had been put in charge of caring for my Gran, which I
seemed to manage better than I thought I would. Unfortunately, I had a really
unproductive day, spending all morning uploading and editing photos off my
camera, and all afternoon trying to write a cultural review for university. I
do hate those days when you just seem to get nothing done and you can’t
understand why a simple task takes you so long. I got a bit frustrated because,
after spending all that time on my work, I can’t work out how to submit it and
I can’t seem to e-mail it either, so I’m a bit stuck. The highlight of my day
was the postman coming to the door with some parcels for me (snail mail never
fails to cheer me up and I really need to catch up on writing to my penpals). I
received a lovely letter from my friend, Chloe, who is part of the Letters of
Love group that I started (click here if you’re interested in joining). I also opened a birthday present - this
beautiful Penguin Threads book, Wind in the Willows, from my friend Sarah,
which I absolutely love.
After receiving those
gorgeous bouquets of flowers for my birthday last week, I thought I would just
show you one of my favourite flowers from the arrangement. How beautiful is
this rose – it’s opened up nicely and you can really see the varying colours in
the petals.
If you haven’t read my blog
before, I just wanted to let you know I recently started a second blog, which
will just focus on my health in more depth than I talk about it here. I’ve
mainly set it up for friends and family to follow and keep up with what’s going
on, but if it’s something you would be interested in reading as well, you are
more than welcome to follow me over there. It’s called Unicorns and Floral
Crowns and you can find it by clicking here. I’m also trying to post on Snapchat a bit more,
so if you fancy following me, my username is Jennycole44.
What have you been up to this week? I
always enjoy hearing about your news and adventures!
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