Day 209 - stand, stand, stand to the loo...

Don't worry; this is the only (I repeat, only!) time this blog will have a post title that even remotely resembles toilet humour. Today, however, it is necessary - and you shall soon see why.

In case I wasn't clear enough yesterday, I'm home very briefly for some R, R & R (the usual 'rest and relaxation' coupled with a physio regime). This couldn't be more fabulous...except that on a Friday Mama and I are on our own, so we have no-one to help with the loo. Today, though, it was fine...because I took my own weight completely and stood on my own with no support while she pulled up my trousers! My knees were rather bent, but still...I haven't stood unsupported, and felt that I wasn't about to collapse, in years!

Then I went and walked in my hoist for the first time since the botox and did six lengths of my room, each one stronger than the one before it.

So I guess you'll forgive the toilet humour, eh ;)?

Day 208 - come the little white flakes of snow

Okay, it's not actually snowing yet (at least not here in Warwick, nor at home in London) but it certainly feels like it might. This weather is icy, and neither my body nor my mind are enjoying it very much. Yes, the botox has magicked away my spasms, but it's also given my legs a deep-running desire to get back on the road to this walking wish of mine (pun absolutely intended!) so my muscles have been aching with lack of use...who'd have thought it!?

Clearly I need a running-track at uni. No, what I really need is a hoist-track that is more moveable than the one above my bed here (which I don't use for its intended purpose anyway), and a hydrotherapy pool - both of which are available at home. This time, though, I've been here for two weeks - pretty much since I had botox - and I've had lots of work to do...so no exercise for me, and cold feet.

Cue weather-related soundtrack, especially Noel Coward's song from Cowardy Custard, 'Come the Wild, Wild Weather' that I've always loved. (Then imagine my horror when, googling the song, I discovered the play toured last year, and not only with Savannah Stevenson, one of the girls from Chariots, but with Kit Hesketh-Harvey, who I've never met (sadly) but who's helped us Opera Warwick lot with translations for the last three years! Considerable failure of ticket-booking on my part, but that's what you get for going to a uni away from home and being nowhere near Greenwich when it's on, eh =p?)

Yet I digress - because the song has done what I hoped it would and kept me afloat this last fortnight - and I found Savannah's version, which made me even happier!

Now homeward-bound for physio, so all is well in the world, but that's not the most important thing. I've learnt, I hope (thanks to Coward, and Savannah), that I'm resilient enough to keep going and that there's always a silver lining to every cloud (or snowflake)! Huzzah =)!
  

Day 200 - guess who's back, back again?

Jessi's back, tell a friend.

Wow. So it's Day 200 (seriously!?), and I haven't blogged for nearly a month. It's shameful, and I'd like to apologise very sincerely, before reassuring you all that I'm back. A lot has happened in these, the first twenty-one days of November, and this post will aim to tell you about, well, my life since the 28th October.

It seems rather apt, then, that this return to the blogsphere is happening late - because, for those of you who know me in the real world, November is the month of my (premature) birth. So, although I wanted to post on my actual day (especially as it was my twenty-first!), in some ways I'm rather happy I didn't because my main message about it is as follows:

It feels as though I'm finally allowing myself space to grow into life fully, to be physically ready to take on the world. I had a wonderful day, surrounded by wonderful people, and I'm looking forward to a wonderful year ahead. It's been an interesting time, as my spasms came back (clearly the weather before wasn't that cold in reality), but it actually felt like something of a rebirth (or, to use the favourite word of one of our lecturers, catharsis). I don't mean to be clichéd (goodness knows, once you've gone to a Warwick Writing Society session you live in mortal fear of that!) but I really was taken right back to my incubator with each of them and, now I've (figuratively) grown up again, I'm ready to stand on my own two feet.

This was helped by two things - Mama made me a page-a-year scrapbook from birth to twenty-one, which is the most beautiful book, and reminded me of abilities that I possessed in the not too distant past. Then I had what we both agreed is my best birthday present - the second round of botox since I started this blog.

Cue relaxation, cue raring to go, cue a wonderful beginning to my twenty-second year - a resurgence of excitement and enthusiasm for Walking by 2013!

Yay!