Being PC

Spent a lovely afternoon yesterday potting up tete a tetes and polyanthus with two of the children.

My youngest decided to sit in amongst the compost and at one point when I looked up at her she was covering her legs in it.  I gently asked ‘what are you doing’ to be told ‘I’m washing my hands’.  Obviously!  How silly of me.

I am suffering today with the aches that you get after going for it in the garden, but when the sun shines you have to take advantage.

But when I looked outside at my clean and pretty patio tonight, it was worth the slog.

Work went okay today, although I really clock watched.  I am so desperate to be at home.  I’m missing out on a school trip with my son tomorrow and it’s really eating at me. 

I know needs must at the moment, but I really hate this side of being at work.  If I’d have had more notice from school I’m sure they would have let me have the time, but I only found out about the trip just before the weekend.

Also today, I have decided to rename body odour -  ’deodorant malfunction’, sounds much nicer. I thought I had another touch of it today after walking to the local town centre in my lunch hour, visiting two shops, then carrying all of my shopping back to work.

I am a fast walker and got very warm very quickly especially laden down with my bags.  When I got back to work I attempted a discreet ’sniff’ and ended up wearing my cardigan all afternoon just in case.

It’s obviously time for a change in deodorants again. Anyone recommend any good (and strong) products?

And on an artistic note . . .

Thought you might like to see these pictures of the sky from our back garden tonight.  We have the most magnificent sunsets.  The colours were gorgeous.

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Anything Goes

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35

In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.

Margaret Thatcher

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Graphics

Spent a great couple of hours last night and in the week sorting out some graphics off a new cd I bought to enhance the web pages for the ‘Secret Project’. 

As a visual person I needed to see some evidence of the work I have been quietly putting in and so we commenced in earnest last night.

It’s a good feeling seeing something tangible.

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Glad This Week is Over

It’s been a really funny week and I have to say I’m so glad it’s the weekend and I’m home now.

I didn’t go in to work on Thursday as I felt completely out of sorts, but in general I’ve quite enjoyed the tasks I’ve been given this week.

I tend to be given all the ‘clean up’ jobs to do, checking spreadsheets of information against files, computer records etc.  And, actually I enjoy doing that.  It’s probably because I take ownership of that job and I have a purpose to the day.

It would be so easy to stretch out the work but I’m not like that and I don’t like having to keep asking for work to do.

For some reason, perhaps because I’ve become a familiar part of the office now, more people are engaging me in conversation and giggles.  So that’s been good too.

I did have a bit of a ‘problem’ yesterday though.  I’ve found that as I get older let’s just say that my deodorant doesn’t always work effectively.  Do I need to embellish that? 

It must be linked to them smashing little chaps, hormones.  Somebody was having a real laugh when they landed women with them!

I find that I am constantly having to switch around brands, but it is usually connected with that other fantastic womanly thing, time of the month.

It was in the afternoon, the sun was shining through the window by my desk and it was actually quite warm.  I had my cardigan on and took a loo break.  In the toilet I realised that I wasn’t as fresh as I could be.  I had to ditch the cardigan and freshen up the armpits. 

I was mortified.  I had been wandering around the office all afternoon wafting my wares around.  I walked back in with the offensive cardigan rolled up and looked for signs of disgust on people’s faces.

There were none.  I’m just hoping that I had a super sensitive nose yesterday and it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

But then I also thought were they saying ‘crikey did anyone smell her’ when I went out of the room. 

I’ll never know and maybe it’s best left that way.

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Injury time

Fast forward to the present. S attends a school for children with autism where he is doing well.

It is 3.30pm and I receive a call from his lovely class teacher. She sounds serious.

‘I’m sorry, S has just been beaten. I’ve given him first aid.’

Images of my immature, trusting son being beaten up by large thugs flash alarmingly through my brain. It is only as the conversation continues that I realise I have misunderstood, she must have said  ’bitten’ not ‘beaten’. It was her Eastern European accent which momentarily confused me.

Most parents would be horrified to learn that their child had been bitten at school, but actually I did not stress. I know these things can happen in the blink of an eye when a child is distressed and are almost impossible to prevent. Not so many years ago it might well have been S doing the biting, in fact I still remember the embarassment of seeing the imprint of a perfectly formed set of tiny teeth in the arm of one of his classmates. It could only have been S as he was late losing his teeth and the others had gaps in their mouths. Luckily the child’s mother was a friend and shrugged it off just as I am doing today.

An hour later he arrives home in his taxi. He looks happy. I ask him where he was hurt and he ignores me. At the third attempt he casually points to his upper arm but won’t let me look. It is not until bedtime that I see the damage. A small deep bruise, but the skin is unbroken, thanks to the thick fleecy top he was wearing.

It could have been much worse.

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Hearing Dogs

I did say that I would tell you about the Hearing Dogs last night, however events overtook, but first let me get a few things out of my system.

Apart from the usual ‘time of the month’ (again!) feelings at the moment I have just sat and had a quiet sob.

Our Accountant came round tonight to finish off some paperwork for us and announced that he would no longer be able to carry on working for us.

No we’re not rubbish payers or anything.  He has decided that the time is right to start spending more quality time with his wife and has been mulling over cutting back on work since the end of last year.  Totally understandable.

So why would I get emotional over an Accountant?  Quite simply because he has been more than just an Accountant to us.  He’s become our friend, someone who we could have a laugh and joke with quite apart from the fact that he took the pain of Accounts away from us.

It will be hard to replace him and moreover we have to start building a new relationship with someone else.

We also found out this week that our milkman is retiring at the end of this month, so it’s change all round.  I’m not convinced I like this kind of change especially when we have had so many changes in our own circumstances.

I am trying to be positive though by thinking of the good that could come out of it in terms of maybe this is just the start of many changes for us, hopefully for the better.  At the moment I’m finding that hard.

Work has been okay this week though.  We’ve had a good laugh even though the volume of work is about to hot up. 

My younger colleague has also been a lot more professional this week.  Plus I found out they think I’m a bit scary.  Even though it was said jokingly, there must be an ounce of truth there.  Me scary!!!!

On Monday at work, we had a really nice man, Bob,  come in with his dog Marsh to talk to us about the role of the Hearing Dogs. 

It was a superb presentation with a demonstration from Marsh which, for some reason made me want to cry.  Not just because of hormones either.

Bob explained about the work they do, the types of dogs they ‘recruit’ and how they use a lot of rescue dogs who’s fate could have been very different.

We were told about the varying levels of deafness and the difference in lifestyle having a Hearing Dog can make to someone.  

Bob told us of a young woman who was a virtual recluse because of her hearing impairment.

Six months after having a Hearing Dog, her mother commented how very, very different her life had become because of the confidence she had found in having her dog.  In fact, she jokingly complained, her daughter was hardly ever in any more. 

How fantastic is that?

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A Tear in The Eye

In the midst of all my ranting and raving over the weekend (which made me feel a lot better) I haven’t yet mentioned something touching that happened on Friday.

The company where I am temping are very much into diversity and often have guest speakers in over the lunch times.

On Friday it was the turn of a lovely woman named Anne who came in to talk about Asperger’s Syndrome.    Her son Bobby has Asperger’s but wasn’t diagnosed until he was 19 years old.

Although her own husband is a Doctor, he specialised in diabetes and so didn’t know much about the condition, therefore never picked up on it.  It only came about when a patient with Asperger’s was referred to him and he had to do some research to ensure that he treated them correctly.

It was only then that he realised his own son had the same condition.

Anne described what it was like for Bobby growing up and how some of the most basic tools we pick up on as children didn’t happen for him.  For example,  he couldn’t read facial expressions, therefore he didn’t know how to react to people and he didn’t like change.  Yet this remarkable young boy went to University and is now holding down a job. 

It was a very emotional subject especially for those of us who have children.  It’s hard enough being a parent these days but to be faced with knowing that throughout his childhood and growing up there was always something not quite right, but not really knowing what it was, must have been heartbreaking.

And of course, Bobby looked ‘normal’.  It was his behaviour that was different to other children. Anne said that to take him to places such as the supermarket was a trial because people just labelled him as a ‘naughty child’.

The work she’s had to put in to making his life easier is incredible.  She told a story of how Bobby was given a job in a big company and one day he just went missing.  The staff obviously knew that Bobby had Asperger’s and had managed to settle him really well into a routine.

They became worried and literally had a search party looking for him.  He turned up safely at home having walked miles.  It turned out that Bobby was great with his job. The part of the day that he couldn’t cope with was the break times, when everyone congregated in the staff canteen.

It was too much for him. He couldn’t deal with the interaction.  Anne had to get her thinking cap on quick to ensure that it didn’t spoil his job and came up with the suggstion of him reading a newspaper at break times, as he would be able to ‘hide’ behind a paper.

He could then have his break with everyone but not have to worry about ‘reading’ the people around him.

Not one person left that room without being touched by the story and to be honest many had a tear in their eye.  One of the senior managers, a man, actually began to break down at the end of the talk, when thanking Anne for her time - that’s how it had affected him.

It was a fantastic opportunity to meet Anne.  To open our eyes to this topic was excellent and to try and be a little less judgemental about people that may seem ‘different’ to us.

Like Anne said ‘we all do it’.  If people don’t react to us in the way we expect, we label them as odd.  We can’t help it.  But because there is such a wide spectrum with Asperger’s and Autism  it means people can have very mild symptoms to very severe.  We should therefore take the time to think about our own reactions.

And if this got you interested, please take a look at A Parallel Universe on this site.  Lizzie who writes for teafriendsandchocolate has a son who is severely autistic which puts a whole different slant on parenting. 

She has some wonderful stories to tell over the coming months, so please check in and take a look. 

Tomorrow I’ll fill you in on another talk I was fortunate to go to today all about Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.

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Assessment time

When I had my first child, M, I had to learn about what was available locally for young children. I had just given up work and we had not been living in the area for long, so I also had to make new friends. Some of my best friends now were met in those mother and baby groups fifteen years ago.

When S arrived it should have been straightforward. The local pre-school playgroup was very popular so I put his name on the waiting list at birth. From the very beginning I took him along to mother and toddler groups with M. He had plenty of chances to socialise with babies his own age but he could not cope with it and would get very distressed. It became a struggle to take M out and cope with S.

Once he started to see the specialist speech therapist at the hospital his name was put down for an assessment and therapy group there each week. It was a lovely supportive small group for both kids and parents, but S hated that too. He had no idea how to play and would cling to my lap. He hated the noise. Instead of just feeling the dried pasta shapes he ate them and painted his face rather than the paper. He wouldn’t go on the climbing frame if any other child was on it  and refused to wear an apron for art or water play.

I knew that he and the others were there to be assessed over a period of time for autism. But some of the parents were unaware of this fact, so the ‘A’ word was never used…

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34

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.

Pearl Bailey

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