Solheim family update

I woke up this morning, felt the cold, heard the wind and hurried to hear the weather report. Why do we do that? We can look out the window to see the weather and yet so many of us will still rush to see what the professionals have to say about our day/week of weather. It’s like we want to be depressed.

Well this morning that was indeed what I got, rain, wind; cold and possibly even the dreaded snow. 

YUCK!!!!

Essentially everything I hate about winter.

Now don’t get me wrong, I can cope with a lot in the winter. Rain I can handle and the cold I can tolerate, but the wind… I hate the wind.

The wind smashes into my canopy on my scooter and leaves me quivering with fear. 

Will it tip? Will the canopy get ripped off and go flying down the road? Will I be humiliated and unable to do anything about it?

Touch wood, no!!!

My hubby assures me all is well. That my canopy is tougher than it seems. I hope he is right.

Needless to say, my trip to the bus stop this morning will be an anxious one and I am praying that the bus is on time, so that I do not need to be out in the wind too long.

Snow!!!!

I used to love snow, back in my innocence, before I knew the disruption and stress it can cause.

I live at the bottom of a big hill, if it snows while my son is at school I am left panicking about whether or not my scooter will make it to the top and if not,  can I make it up there on my crutches alone.

I used to love winter, but these new found fears that arise during the winter, mean that it has now become something to dread.

It’s interesting how much being disabled changing the way you think and act in life.

I have certainly become a lot more fearful since my disability developed.

There is; however, some news on the disability front.

I had a doctor’s appointment Thursday and my doctor has decided that it is time to try physiotherapy. The idea being that if we can strengthen the muscles around my spine, it might help with the pain. I hope he’s right.

I of course also need to work on shedding some weight, which will hopefully help take a bit of extra strain off my back.

Dieting of course is never easy and it seems as if food jumps to the forefront of my mind whenever I am trying to be good.

That said, if I can beat smoking I can beat this too. Although I think this will definitely be the harder of the two battles.

More news on the disability front, my lovely Ludo has been deemed officially calm enough to continue on with his service dog training.

YAY!!!!

It’s been a long hard slog working on calming the Collie, not helped by the fact that I was mega soft and kinda liked his excited, happy go lucky nature.

Well he is still very happy go lucky and given half the chance will still jump all over you and smoother you in kisses but he has also learned that he needs to sit and wait for a fuss as opposed to throwing himself at people.

Well I say has learned, he has learnt it with my dad, Dan’s mum; however, has yet to be tested and she is his fav person to jump attack. He just loves her to pieces lol.

So time will tell there.

All round though we are seeing a lot more calm, he has been learning to wait for me to step through the door before he goes through, this has been tough for him too, as he likes to always be in front spinning with excitement.

So the continuation of his training means that he is now learning some basic commands, Touch for items I am holding and items I am not, Paw’s up which will help him later to deal with doors and light switches for me and focus, which simply helps him to learn to pay attention to me.

He is doing his training alongside Harley de. Yes those who know Harley are probably thinking, but he is too old to be a service dog and your right, if Harley were a service dog he would be a retired one by now.

Harley isn’t training to be my service dog though, he is doing the training for fun because Harley loves learning new things and it’s also so that he doesn’t feel left out of all the fun, which is essentially how they view the training.

Harley is in fact doing even better than Ludo with the training, but that’s because he is a little less distracted than Ludo lol. Harley has mastered closing cupboard doors and the washing machine door using the paws up command.

Whilst Ludo has mastered paw’s up quite well, he has only been able to apply it, bizarrely enough, to closing the washing machine soap draw which I would have thought was a much more challenging task than the door of the washing machine, but Ludo seems to think not.

Focus, they both have to a tee and I have noticed that they look at my eyes a lot more now since learning the focus trick and they are just generally a lot more intent on me all-round.

Touch, is a tough one for Ludo who has always been very paws on and whose paws like to get involved with everything. The result is that touch gets his paw, instead of a gentle nudge with his nose. I wonder if it is because the command for his paw is tap and perhaps it is a little too similar, so this may be something that needs to be changed, that or a clearer distinction made by re-teaching him tap alongside touch.  

Harley; however, has well and truly mastered touch both in hand and when the object is not being held and even progressed yesterday to picking the items up. Although letting go was only done when he had enjoyed a brief tug of war and nibbled a small chunk of the letter we were using for training. Good thing it was just junk mail.

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks?

Organisation

I never thought I would truly master or even enjoy the art of organisation. That said, although I think I am far from a master, I have actually started to find that I am enjoying being organised.

Oh I feel so dirty for saying that. I feel as if someone needs to come and wash out my mouth with soap or something.

I don’t think I will ever be as organised as my mother or mother in law, nor anywhere near as tidy as them either. Although I wish I could sometimes, but I think I am making progress in both areas at present.

Blogging

I tried a week of blogging every day but I have to admit, it just wasn’t for me. I don’t think I could find enough topics to cover like that and I found that when I did have stuff I wanted to blog about I had to make a note for a later date because I already had blog posts scheduled for that day.  

A few other bloggers talked about schedules during the IWSG posts last Wednesday and said how they found that scheduling blogs took the fun out of it too much and that they were just going to post when they felt they actually had something to say. So I am going to follow their lead.

Today there is clearly quite a lot to say, mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t say it last week due to the pre-planned posts.

Workshop

Hubby’s work shop is really coming along now, he has started to build his work benches and has everything planned out. The only problem is going to be keeping him out of there long enough to spend time with Kye Kye and I, because although we can go out there with him, we would also like some none workshop time to spend with him. J

Well that’s everything for now. I don’t want to bore you too much.

How things with you and yours?

Love and hugs

Joss xx

P.S. no pictures today things have been real hectic and it has taken all day to get this post done near enough never mind designing artwork for it as well. 

School run in 15 minutes, how time fly s. 

P.P.S. I am slowly working my way through all my comments and over to your blogs to comment but it has been a busy few days so please be patient I will get to everyone