Monthly Archives: December 2012

Dec 22 2012
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Work and Studying

Moving Out of My Comfort Zone

Two months working from home have left me with the social skills of a gnat. I dash out in the morning for newspapers and food and dash back home again. I am virtually a recluse, staying at home recovering from the emotional battle I’ve been through over the last year. I have been firmly embedded in my comfort zone.

Well, no longer. I miss company, chatter and being part of society. I feel strong and ready to take on the world again and I have just signed up to do something I have always wanted to do. Don’t laugh, but I will be volunteering in a charity shop once a week. I am the queen of thrift, the doyenne of upcycling, the one you always find in the middle of the jumble sale crush. I can’t wait to start.

Any new town I visit, I always find out where the charity shops are, especially If I go somewhere upmarket. There’s a great one on the King’s Road in Chelsea where I bought all my suits for work from when I lived in London. I am infamous among my friends for thrusting objects at them as soon as they walk in my door – ‘Hey! Check this out! Only £1!’ My house is filled with eclectic finds, rescued treasures and a haphazard mixture of randomly framed pictures.

I have never worked in a shop before and am looking forward to meeting new people and easing myself back into a workplace again. The manager, who’s lovely, knows about my MS and has no issue with it at all. There will be a workplace capability assessment, but that’s standard for anyone with an illness like MS.

It might sound odd, but I am over-excited about rummaging through all the donations. I can’t wait to learn how to use a till – strange I know, but doesn’t everyone want to play shop sometimes? So wish me luck, and if you see someone staggering along the road with a huge painting under one arm and a side table under the other, that’ll be me…

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Dec 21 2012
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Emotions

The End of The World or a New Beginning?

This could very well be my last ever blog post if the Mayans are correct. I haven’t managed to stockpile supplies for the apocalypse. It’s been difficult enough buying in extra food for Christmas, so if it happens and we somehow survive, we will be living on shortbread, Ferrero Rocher and white wine for the next week until the Co-op re-opens.

Assuming the apocalypse doesn’t go ahead as planned, today is a significant day. It is the winter solstice. I won’t be heading to Stonehenge in a flowing skirt decorated with bells and crystals, but I do think it’s a pretty special time. It’s the shortest day of the year, the slide into darkness is at an end and symbolically, this means an awful lot to me. Today is my last day in my old job and the less said about that, the better.

The solstice represents a rebirth. A renewal of sorts. The period of mourning for my old life, old job, old plans is now drawing to a close. I am buzzing with ideas and my confidence has been slowly rebuilt after being eroded by others over the last year. Life is looking brighter than it has in a long time.

I have been working from home for the last two months and for the last couple of weeks I have not done any housework bar the absolute minimum. Not because I’m a lazy cow (honest), but as a symbol of new beginnings, I am going to clean my house from top to bottom today. No more working from home, the house will once again be reclaimed as a sanctuary. I’m going to fling all the windows and doors open and let fresh air flood in. If it wasn’t raining, I would hang the duvets from the windows like they do in Switzerland, but a good fluffing will have to do.

Today then, marks the start of my new life. If I wake up on Saturday morning and the world is still here, watch out, because I’ve got my sassy pants on…

 

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Dec 20 2012
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Media

Does MS Make you a bad mother?

This is not a post about the horrendous shootings in America. This is about a news story that appeared a few days ago, reporting that Nancy Lanza, the mother of Adam Lanza, had been diagnosed with MS – read the article here.

Two things bother me about this ‘story’. First, the headline screams out MS, but does not actually mention much about MS at all. So why the sensationalism? What does the fact that she had MS add to this article? Or rather, what is left unsaid, hanging in the air?

Second, the article states twice that she ‘suffered from MS’. The use of the word ‘suffer’ implies a victim, a helpless person. I agree MS is far from pleasant, but I don’t feel I suffer from it and neither do most of the MSers I know. We live with it and we are not victims.

My heart sank when I read the story and I felt tainted by it. Media representation of people with MS is a hit and miss affair. Recently, us MSers have been lucky. Jack Osbourne has raised a huge amount of awareness by telling the world he has MS yet even he had to fight back against media articles stating he was dying from the illness. Amy Winehouse’s mother has MS and raises funds for research. Mitt Romney’s wife Ann has also put MS on the world stage during the recent American elections.

Now though, MS has been inextricably linked to one of the worst mass shootings in an American school. The article does state that she was a ‘devoted mother’, so perhaps we are being urged to see the pathos in the family situation. A dedicated mother, battling on to help her son, despite her MS. Yet this too is patronising and I find it uncomfortable to see news stories like this in a week that will bring funeral after funeral of innocent children.

There are many villains in this story, but MS is not one of them.

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Dec 19 2012
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Daily Life

Eat, Don’t Eat

Do you know what really, really annoys me about Christmas time?  We’re encouraged to fill our faces, over-indulge, drink too much, inhale whole tins of Roses and slump on the sofa all day long. Which is lovely. I don’t need an excuse at all. But isn’t it so annoying to pick up the newspaper on Boxing Day only be told off for our over-excess and shouldn’t we think about dieting? Make your mind up.

I am loving this week before the Big Day. My social diary is full, I’m catching up with my long-neglected friends and the usual timetable is suspended. There’s expectation in the air. We’ve reached the fag-end of the year and it’s time to reflect and move forward, fueled by chocolate and mince pies. Come the weekend, it will be totally acceptable to have a glass or two of mulled wine in the afternoon, and if I feel like dropping off in front of the telly, I can. Then I’ll pour myself a Bailey’s  – only at Christmas – and decide what else to stuff my face with.

Boxing Day will bring me back to earth with a thud. Magazines and newspapers flood into the newsagents, full of diets, rebukes and remorse. My local gym will hang banners up chiding me for my gluttony, offering me a free towel if I’m one of the first 50 to sign up for membership. Can’t we just enjoy a week or two of sheer indulgence without the shame afterwards?

It’s exactly the same every year. It’s just like the holiday adverts that pop up on telly. We’re deep in the middle of Christmas, we don’t want to be thinking about booking our next holiday. We’re praying for a little bit of snow. Can’t you wait until mid-January? Christmas isn’t over yet. I just want a chance to relax and enjoy myself.

I still haven’t lost the weight I put on with the steroids I took for three different MS relapses, so give me a break. If I want to buy a Family Circle box of biscuits and eat them all by myself while watching The Sound of Music for the 27th time, I will. I can blame MS. It’s a great excuse.

 

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Dec 18 2012
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My Ramblings

The Sweet Smell of Success

Right. After the realisation yesterday that my life is in ruins and I’ve got some serious rebuilding to do, where better to start than with my perfume? If the adverts are to be believed, I can totally transform my life with just a few squirts. I will become beguiling, strong, powerful and beautiful. Men will buy me flowers, I will dance in sunlit orchards and New York will lay itself at my feet. Bring it on.

I bought the latest issue of Marie Claire, made a coffee and flipped through the pages. Which one should I choose? Thierry Mugler claims I will ‘Feel Extraordinary’ if I use his Alien perfume. Alien? Really? I already feel strange and alienated enough thanks to MS.

Giorgio Armani has bottled ‘the secret code of women’. Eh? What the heck does that mean? I don’t want my new perfume to be secret – I want it to shout success, status and sassiness.

Lancôme says ‘life is beautiful, live it your way’. Well, my way hasn’t been working so far. Dolce & Gabbana proclaims that it’s perfume is ‘the one’. The one what? Banana? Escada is on the right track with ‘create your world of happiness’, but ruins it with a woman (child) posing in a rose garden. Not very empowering. And she’s too thin. And too pretty.

My favourite one is Boss Pour Femme with ‘this will be your night’. Now you’re talking. But I think I would like at least a few weeks, not just one night. I much prefer the Boss perfume for men. Ryan Reynolds (who?) says, ‘I don’t expect success. I prepare for it’. That’s pretty serious business. The one that made me fall about laughing though is Chanel No 5. You know, that one with Brad Pitt (Brad, why??). There’s an advert on telly, half shot in black and white and it is quite possibly the most pretentious perfume advert ever made. It ends with him saying, ‘inevitable’. Words fail me.

Maybe I need to run the dreaded perfume hall gauntlet in town, try out some new scents. I could collect lots of those dinky cards they give you then sit in a cafe and have a little think and a sniff. Knowing me though, I will end up looking like Hannibal Lecter working out which perfume Jodie Foster is wearing. My quest continues…

 

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