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
