Archive for August, 2008

A good time was had by all

Tuesday midday

Phew I’m wacked! Today is post International Festival of Glass and more importantly post Stourbridge bead fair which this year was an exhausting 3 day affair, but well worth every minute and great fun. Hi to all my friends, customers and forum mates who dropped by to say hello, you all made our weekend such a good one. We should really have rested every evening after the fair, but what’s the point of going all that way and not going out with your friends in the evening? I think the best meal (in terms of taste) was on our first evening when we visited Ruby Cantonese around the corner from the Ruskin Centre, with Di East, Paddy Bush and Ruzica Ruane and her son (sorry, I can’t remember your name). We also revisited a pub where you get 2 meals for 1 with Francesca Cerreta and Caroline McMillan (waves!) and then the penultimate evening visited the Crooked House pub with Julie Anne Denton, Di East and Vic and Ian Bamforth, 2 glass blowers from the Red House Cone. It’s so nice to be able to spend time with glassy friends and make new friends.

I think it’s fair to say a good time was had by all, including our daughter who we took with us for the first time, I think 4 days babysitting was a bit too much after all the time she spent away when I was in hospital! I will try and get some photos up later, it’s not like I don’t have many to choose from, Rick took over 400 this weekend…lol.

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Rick you rock

Wednesday lunchtime

It is truely a momentous day for me today, especially as I start typing it’s 12:25, about the time I was brought out of theatre exactly 3 months ago. I have to take stock and look at my journey through the last 13 weeks, I remember the fear and apprehension as I padded down to surgery in my oh so sexy foam slippers and backless gown. I remember lazily waking up all numb and spaced out only moments after I initially closed my eyes. I’m grateful that I didn’t live during the butchery years when they were exploring surgery, and anaesthetics hadn’t been invented. I look back over my few days in hospital, my tentative first steps and the numerous days of exercising, my progression from totally helpless patient to feeling really great, as I do today. Obviously my right leg is still weak, and will probably need another 9 months to get completely over it, as I have 15 years worth of weakness to overcome, but for the moment I think it’s about as good as it was before the op in terms of weakness, and pain free so that has to be good. And of course it’s so much better than before as I now have more movement in my hip than I’ve had for years, I can almost touch my right foot now, and can actually wiggle when I walk as a gal is supposed to. I don’t think I’ll ever have as much bootie as Shakira but maybe I could try?

Yesterday the man from Direct Mobility came and took away my recouperation appliances, so the house is also now looking less like an OAPs house and is back to normal, so hurrah for that. I really feel that from now on life should go back to normal and I’m going to try my hardest to get my leg strong so that I can ditch the walking stick completely. Rick has been an absolute rock, he’s cooked all the evening meals for the last 3 months, and last night gave me such a funny card to mark the 3 month milestone. Thank you Rick, you rock!

So tonight we’ll be cracking open the Champagne, well, sparkling Pinot Noir as I prefer this, and toast good health and medical science.

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Home again

Wednesday afternoon

Wow I’ve been away from here a long time. So what’s been happening? Well it’s school holidays for a start, so life is upside down at the moment, but since we last spoke we’ve had Ardingly bead fair, a lovely day with lots of friendly faces coming to say hi and lots of bead shopping, yes me too! I couldn’t resist some amazing and simple boro beads from Purple Beech Designs, I bought some of the teardrops in various colours. Of course I had to rest for a few days after the exertion of preparing for this, then we went away to France for a week with Ricks family. There will be more about ‘The Great Downton Getaway’ in later posts. Now I’m trying to recover from the journey home and the last few days of our holiday which were very busy physically for me.

The good news is that I was 12 weeks post op yesterday, this being another milestone for me being allowed to do a few more things, but the last milestone is my 3 month date on 20th August, when I will be able to stop all my hip precautions and start to lead a completely normal life again (I hope). This is the date I’m really looking forward to. Also this week I have 2 days teaching, my first course until I resume working full time in September, obviously I can’t really teach many days in August due to my daughter being on holiday and family commitments on general.

My next event is the Stourbridge Bead Fair, formerly the GBUK Bead Fair. This is a 3 day bead fair at the Bonded Warehouse in Stourbridge running over the Bank Holiday weekend and is again part of the International festival of Glass (IFG), an amazing and exciting celebration of all things glassy. Actually I’m only going for the Gaffers’ Ale and another hand blown and cut 1 pint beer glass (hee hee) to add to the other 3 in the cupboard.

I am also very pleased to be taking part in ‘The Tempest’ glass bead exhibition on the theme of Shakesperes’ play. This exhibition of handmade glass beads and small sculptures is in the Coffee shop at the Ruskin Glass Centre, details are on my events page together with details of the bead fair. There is a fab website to accompany the exhibition, follow this link for a sneaky peak at my bead (which looks even better in the flesh)! I may also have a couple of my prototype beads for sale in the coffee shop, if I decide to sell them there, if not then they’ll be available on my stall at the beadfair.

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