Foil

Published January 13, 2020 by helentastic67

Foil

Pray tell, anybody? Please explain how this is still a thing? (rhetorical) Every now and again, someone is in my home using foil in the capacity to assist me. Lovely people that they are and I’m having a conversation with them, I thought their mum would have had. Or somebody. No?

Just thought perhaps I should Google this topic before foil-shaming everybody, but don’t want to lose my train of thought. So, alas I will forge on, finish then Google and share Google results. Sure!

Damn it, now I’m doubting myself and over thinking it. Forge on. Do you know, there is a right and a wrong side of foil? Well let me tell you. There is indeed.

You should always put the shiny side down over whatever you are baking or if wrapping something inside it? Shiny side up, put in contents and fold foil over food to seal in the goodness. Something to do with insulating it.

Every now and again, more often than you can imagine, I am explaining to someone, different race, religion, age, etc, etc, etc. This fact, how is this so?

Now Google. Got a little lost in the over thinking, however!

Google. God, I hope I’m right.

Well, itself propagated as a Google search, it has been so very popular. I’m just saying I was not the first person to ask. I didn’t read them all and there are varied opinions.

I’m just saying the shiny side retains heat better and doesn’t stick and I will finish by saying to all the Americans out there. You say Aluminum wrong too. OK, how about weird?

Efficient – Part 2

Published January 10, 2020 by helentastic67

Efficient 2

Now, you might imagine having carers or to use their current tittle “Support Workers” is so easy (said no one ever). But you really should imagine it’s like having “staff” or running a busy café where people come for short shifts and someone else off site manages their comings and goings and they might work for several agencies that give them clients/shifts. Now, I’ve been doing this ‘shit’ for about thirteen years and it’s still not perfect.

I like being very efficient to make my life work best and normally the less times I have to attend to something, the more efficient it is. However, the more times I have to touch something to have it run smoothly the way it should because, it’s the way I asked for it the first fucking time, it’s always getting moved.

Of course, I have an example for you!

My carer should arrive on a Sunday morning at 10am for a ninety-minute shift. My main agency that covers all my PC (Personal Care) morning shifts has a few carers who are prepared to do weekend work, so they have outsourced me to another agency. Now, we know from Japanese whispers, the more people involved in relaying a single message, the results or the goal sets diluted and altered when your shift gets outsourced, it works the same way.

Also, because I’m not in the office rostering, but I’m on the cold-face (receiving service) I know more about the big picture. Also, because I make conversation with the carers, because they are in my home.

This particular Sunday, it was my mum’s 70^th and family were converging from two different directions at my place at 12pm. Are you doing the maths?

They arrive at 10am, leave by 11.30am, I may eat ‘something’ small to get me through to midday lunch. A call to my main agency (let’s call them MH) during the week, told me she would be coming at 11am.

What? NO!

I rang MH and told them it had to be 10am because of XYZ. They rang the agency (let’s call them MC) because I can. They locked it in for 10am. Bingo, right?

Um, don’t be fucking ridiculous. On the morning, I woke early, got back to sleep eventually and kept waking, stressed she would arrive on time.

10am – I woke, no carer, it’s cold, so I stayed in bed to wait. 10.30am, BUZZ. My carer had arrived, late. Yet her roster states 11am.

I am of the understanding she sometimes has a catering order that needs to be filled. It’s rather ad-hoc so not consistent and I know this because people come to my home, so I get to know them.

As I have a brain injury, I often find people underestimate how switched on I am. It’s a misconception all brain injured people must be stupid. We are not and I’m speaking for all people with brain injuries. You’re Welcome.

So, I know when this shit happens, I am fully aware of who did what, who didn’t and who just said they would fix the roster and never intended to and the fact that I know this is all very taxing too.

I’m an overthinker, I think its anxiety and I think part of it is being a high functioning ABI. And the majority is my need to be efficient, because why is it so fucking difficult?

So, every day, there are examples of this where I need to touch on something to get it running smoothly.

Today’s Lunch – 8th January 2020

Published January 8, 2020 by helentastic67

Today’s Lunch

Good Mental Health Day

My appointments are all starting back again way too soon. Yesterday, I returned to Clifton hill to see my GP and as my favourite cafe is not yet back after Christmas, I found another place to have a quick light lunch. a rather strong coffee with an almond croissant. Neither as good as at my regular haunt. Over my respite, I wrote some blogposts.

I confess to say over Christmas and the New Year, I’ve only left my apartment on the Friday’s to restock. I have not even checked my letterbox. Do I feel badly? No, I do not.

Tuesday ended with my egg dealer delivering my eggs. In my efforts to create community, I have become the middle person between my egg supplier, Bill who I prefer to call my egg dealer and about four others for free range happy-eggs! I was expecting him Thursday evening but he ended up in the area earlier. Just in time for a true wog classic. Poached eggs in sauce, these were the two eggs before I put them in the sauce. Feel free to count?

The trays of eggs are 20 to a tray. My masseuse is not back from India until next week and she has forty eggs awaiting her return. I then of course like to remind people if they don’t collect them In a timely manner, I don’t want to wake up in the morning surrounded by 100 baby chicks recently hatched.

To be clear, I think Bill delivers the day the eggs get picked. You realise, eggs do not grow on trees? And eggs need to be sat on, by a hen for some weeks or kept warm another artificial way to hatch presuming they are even viable.

My mum had about twenty chooks when I lived up in the country 20 years ago. So, in short waking up surrounded by little yellow chicks. Not going to happen. But I hope you can imagine the image I just described…..?

Poor Mika would be beside herself! Get them off me!

Also, don’t think I’ve ignored the worldwide exposure of the bushfires in Australia! Melbourne has a Smokey haze over it. Homes and lives have been lost and it’s just the start of summer. It’s just the beginning……………

Will be back to normal programming next week for sure!

Sleep

Published January 6, 2020 by helentastic67

Sleep

There is never enough when you have a brain injury. Never enough. Add, crazy bitch hormones as I call them, the Peri-menopausal hot flushes, sliding into the pause.

More sleep, much, much more sleep.

But, finally following up on my visit to the clinic. Yeah, I’ve been busy and am now circling back to the thing. I had to go to an older building that is on the same block as the St Vincent’s Hospital in Fitzroy. Seen this entrance for years wondering what was in there. Well, now I know.

I went in a little early, off Nicholson Street and was shown to my “room”. Mum had been to a sleep clinic in the country and told me it would be like a self-contained hotel room.

Mine, no it wasn’t. The room had a single bed – expected. An armchair, nice place to put suitcase and sit to take off shoes and AFO’s – check. A small hand basin, oh nice. Where was the bathroom? Apparently, there were only three of us in the inn that night, me and two men and I got the room closest to the ‘Men’s’ bathroom.

Super! Where’s the lady’s bathroom? Oh great, no shoes or AFO’s. I’ve gotta go for a nice long walk to the lady’s bathroom. Past the waiting room, finished with a big vinyl chair in Orange.

Now, I’m a kid of the 70’s, we had an orange car.

And an orange kitchen bench. (Yes, mum! I hear your voice, it was Mandarin) Sue me! I’ll let you be the judge.

The Doctor who was showing me around was the same age as me and we bonded over the orange of our childhoods.

You know those moments you meet people and if you meet them in completely different circumstances, you might become friends.

We bonded over the fact that neither of us live with other people. I bluntly stated “I fucking hate people!” She laughed and said I was her spirit animal.

The Like

Published January 3, 2020 by helentastic67

The Like

Today, I thought I’d write about how I started blogging and the process I use to be a valuable contributing member in the WordPress community.

Now, I have been writing since I was a teenager, nothing worth saying, but writing extremely all the same, but I’ve been posting and blogging consistently since November 2015 and when I began, I trusted Noelle to sort out who to follow. I gather she picked the top 10 bloggers and over the years, a few of my favourites still post with regularity, some have fallen away and a few I unfollowed fairly quickly after I realised their blog was not what I was after.

I mean, I can only deal with so many carefully manicured red nailed fingers smashed into a woman’s well waxed snatch (vagina; not kidding) that I can cope with.

In case you are wondering, my limit for the above was one. One, and done!

Well, I think I also want at the bitching, whinging and moaning ‘he’ was using to complain about how his wife had cheated on him, while he was overseas fighting for his country and maybe, it’s because your wife is bi-polar and you were self-medicating with a S & M lifestyle and when you weren’t there, she looked for another.

Not suggesting any of those things are wrong, just it’s your life and you can choose how you live it. But if it goes sideways, you deal with the consequences.

I have a rule of thumb, if a blog inspires me, I will follow. If I think I can help you in some way to better understand the shit you are dealing with, I will comment. Short and pitchy, in the comments. Because, they wrote the post, it’s not for me to write a blogpost in their comments section.

On a rare occasion, I will email someone for a more in-depth conversation, because I consider that’s the medium for more informative advice.

If someone new likes a blogpost I will go check out their blog, if it interests me, even if they haven’t chosen to follow my blog, I will follow theirs.

Also, I will give them a ‘Like’ to say I’ve visited. I have the rule I don’t follow everyone that chooses to follow me.

I just figure, if you need numbers, it happens organically and it takes time and after a while I check how many followers I have and I’m surprised.

My first blog post, I got followers. I mentioned it to Noelle, my administrator, I was so excited, I went to check out their blog and they had created a profile, but had no contact. Sadly, I’ve never seen them like another post since. But with that first follower, Noelle said the wisest of words ever “Keep writing”.

Now, five hundred posts later, two hundred and forty plus followers later, I’m still chipping away at the past, present end, I’ll get caught up in the end. What I hope for the future.

Today’s Lunch – 1st January 2020

Published January 1, 2020 by helentastic67

Today’s Lunch

A very special good mental health day post!

Happy New Year! Now, recapping and completely from memory, I made a New Year’s resolution last year. I don’t normally bother but last year I did, I set the goal to finish that bottle of Baileys that had been in the bottom of my fridge the last 2 Christmas’s.

https://hellonwheelslifeonehanded.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/todays-lunch-18th-september-2019/

Well, I had to make a note once a month to remind me to have a little nip. But I’m proud to say. Nailed it! By July even and it was so good I was tempted to go get another smaller bottle. But alas, barely a drinker so I didn’t.

So, because it went so well, I thought I’d offer some New Year’s resolutions for me to achieve in 2020

Note: achievable goals. Don’t judge me……

Eat less meals every day on my couch, maybe one of those meals could be had at my dining table. Spoiler alert! I’ve been working on this already and 2. Baby steps here, get to bed by midnight. It’s really hard to break a life time of bad sleeping habits and to quote Stephanie in Norfolk “Rome wasn’t built in a day!” 3, and not in any particularly order, I intend to call friends more often to chat. Long chats.

Do you have any resolutions you want to share?

Let us all ask the Universe to bring us what we need in 2020. To be happy, safe and prosperous. To be kinder to others and ourselves and for there to be more time and lastly, a classic New Year’s anthem from my teenage years. Enjoy…..

Cheers,
H

Groundhog Day

Published December 30, 2019 by helentastic67

Groundhog Day

It fucking happened again. I know I started with my favourite word, but you shouldn’t assume there will be lots in this blog post. I’m just emphasising the fact that it’s like a new round of people are coming into my sphere, (didn’t know I had one like I’m a planet, right) but every now and again, I’m somewhere I wouldn’t normally be and new people will ask me ‘what have you done to your arm?’ Every fucking day, I leave the house and I generally mention it’s because of my brain injury, because it’s the perfect way for people to learn sometimes Brain Injury walks and moves amongst them like a normal person.

Sometimes, brain injury looks like this hot mess that I look like. So, I tell people, depending on their response I might, no will follow it up with my standard follow-on that my brain injury is NOT SELF INFLICTED.

Because, the second assumption is that all brain injuries are and I will describe a little more info. So, it’s understood how I have had my AVM (Arteriovenous Malformation) all my life and didn’t know it until I was thirty-four.

Then there’s the next round of questions. Well intended, sometimes the way I respond, I hope they read my mood correctly and stop asking questions.

Maybe? No! Don’t be ridiculous.

A few weeks ago, at my favourite café where I go because, well I love it. The staff have gotten to know and I don’t get treated like a weirdo/freak and I don’t get the questions about ‘what have you done to yourself?’

I was in the room, I’m a permanent fixture. Two men came into the room and asked me straight away. The question, don’t ask me to repeat it. And I did in layers of –

Brain Injury
Not self-inflicted
Had it all my life, just didn’t know
Bullied in a stressful work environment

After he had taken all of this in, I realised I’d disclosed way more to a complete stranger than I normally would have and it had all happened so naturally, I hadn’t stopped (he didn’t look horrified), but I felt a little raw and vulnerable.

I had a moment of weakness and almost cried. He obviously realised and he leaned forward and grazed the back of his knuckle against my cheek and told me “You’ll be OK”

And I was really surprised. Now, I don’t want to need to remind people however, if you made it this far? Please hit “LIKE”

Hate feeling needy, but we all have needs and, in this case, we all need validation.

Cat Toys

Published December 27, 2019 by helentastic67

Cat Toys

I have discovered my cat’s favourite toy. I was (as I call it) cat-less for about two years, between my beloved Jamima, Patch the Pirate cat Puddle Duck.

Before getting Mika, just Mika. Or as I sometimes mistakenly call her Ja-Mika. SHUT UP.

Yes, I might have a type it’s tortoise shell. Once you go tortoise shell, you don’t go back. There’s a crazy little psycho in there in everyone.

Anyway, I digress at first, I did what many parent does, I got out Jamima’s old toys, some of which she showed no interest in what so ever and that tradition seems to have been continued.

Of course, like any new hopeful pet owner when the time came, I went out and bought what I like to call the ‘bird on the stick’ and the ‘snake on the stick’. These just live on the bed these days.

Actually, she’s on her second ‘bird’ as one day there appeared to have been a massacre of a bird on the bed.

But, however her favourite toy, I discovered purely by accident as we all do.

One evening, as I was sitting on the couch catching up on my admin, I crumpled up a piece of paper quarter of an A4. Mika appeared from nowhere like a meerkat in front of my legs.

The meerkat version of Mika, sitting on her rump, head twisting from side to side and keen interest on what was in my hand. I threw the wad of paper towards the apartment door. Mika did go get it. I don’t know where she takes them, but occasionally I go around within ‘Reachy-Grabby – thing’.

And collect the balls of paper from every nook and cranny. Tonight, I found this under my Happiness cabinet.

Fuck! I nearly died laughing. There was another toy there, but Mika came and took it away before I could get a photo. I think my neighbours might think a crazy woman lives here.

*No birds were killed during the writing of this post and Mika is an indoor-cat only, so I want to keep it that way.

Today’s Lunch – 25th December 2019

Published December 24, 2019 by helentastic67

Today’s Lunch

Good mental health day! Or as I like to say Merry fucking Christmas!

It’s actually Tuesday right now, Christmas Eve as I tap this out. It’s a good day, I’m well-adjusted as I’ve seen my chiropractor who I won’t see now until mid-January. My girl Friday and I had fish and chips for lunch in Fairfield.

I will have a medicine later at home. I received a gift from my mum yesterday in the post and presuming it was a tree, due to its shape, I’ve left it to open tomorrow. A message late last night came from my mum stating I should open it and that it wasn’t a tree? I don’t know, you tell me? Mine is on the right, she lied didn’t she! It’s a tree!

My Christmas Tree

Mums Christmas Tree

Also, a photo of it during daylight without the lights on. I hope JD is impressed? As promised, cat-friendly. It is sitting on top of things in my living room about a metre off the ground and Mika can’t get to it, or shows little interest.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas. Be safe and try not to eat too much. I received my new NDIS Plan just in time for Christmas. I’m not looking at it until Thursday and over the New Year, I need to take some time off. My first medical appointment in the new year is the 9th and all the crazy starts again.

Also, while my girl-Friday was away I had some fresh new carers, one day I was in K-Mart on an important call from a lawyer. Trying to take it seriously when I looked up and this is how my girl-Friday 2, Oh had kept herself busy……..

I don’t know how I made it through that phone call.

Lastly, a big thanks for my wonderful blog administrator Noelle for whom hellonwheels would not happen. I am lucky her husband has a thing for trying to give himself diabetes. Last week, I managed to mule some gifts their way via a friend.

And today, the 24th, I managed to mule some goodies to the States to be sent to my friend in Texas! I have a post to write about to gift for appropriating people to mule things for me.

Also, Many thanks for my 200+ followers, for comments from close and far. Hope to see you in 2020!

Rest! Replenish and see you back for more in 2020!

Cheers,
H

Bucket of Funding – How to Stem the Flow

Published December 23, 2019 by helentastic67

Bucket of Funding – How to Stem the Flow

Today, I thought I’d give you all a lesson on how to over promise and under deliver and do it in a way that your clients, if you are lucky, will be slow enough not to realise for a little while.

Big business can’t work this way, they would be bankrupt. But this is how governments seem to work because ours at least, is not want the bucket of water to empty too quickly.

When I talk about funding for people with disabilities, there is always talk about State V Federal funding and it’s all about a different bucket of funding.

What they promise is a huge bucket of funding, when they start to deliver on what has been promised. Big bucket with a huge hole in the bottom.

Here’s a life lesson by example:

When the NDIS was piloted in a region in every state of Australia, it was out with everyone having an appointment (assessment) with the NDIA directly.

There was not much (if any) information about where the pilot regions would be, because they worried people would move there and flood those areas (causing a false economy etc) No one knew, what they could ask for from the NDIA, as they seemed to be making it up as they went.

Ironically, rumour was it was such a painful process, people were leaving the pilot region (in Victoria, it was down near Geelong) nobody knew how long the pilot program would run or when it would be rolled out in their district.

It way maybe three or four years before it went to phase two (1^st roll out after the pilot) still impossible to get information of what we could get, what it would cover.

We all got the message in the early days not to get reports and supporting letters early, because the NDIA wouldn’t accept anything older than six months.

I digress,

So, when my region was rolled out, the Northern District of Melbourne, there were three large areas rolled out together. It was fucking chaos and this is the important part. This is how to stem the flow, rather than follow the pilot region (why else have a pilot region, I ask?) they outsourced to other agencies and businesses (Not for Profit, NGO’s) who had tendered for the contracts, but it felt like the information was not given in a clear and concise format.

No one was on the same page and it rather seemed untrained and inexperienced staff were only to gather information for someone else to decide.

I know my mum did some training with an agency that I was not allowed to attend (because I was the client) and it was more geared towards the others, carer or family members present whose participant was much higher needs and had the background of having funding. And I found my mum returning all very excited, I could get a FREE COMPUTER.

I sigh! Oh, dear God, what do I need to set her straight on now?

“You can get a free computer from Greenpeace”

What!? Did you hear that too? (I’m asking you, reading this post)

Um, mum that is an NGO to save the whales.

Daughter, ever so ungrateful, poo-pooing on mum’s new found wealth of knowledge.

“Fine, you call Greenpeace and ask for a FREE COMPUTER” on the other hand, “Green PC” was an NGO that would be donated computers, they would upgrade them and then donate them to people who reeked then, or had to buy them for not much at all.

They ceased trading back in (I forgot now, back in 2010?) because they felt every household in Australia had a computer.

I’m wrapping this post up now!

Oh wait, at first there was a rumble about how much the NDIS was costing tax-payers. More obviously, than they had imagined.

Then, they were suggesting they would dip into the NDIS bucket to give to the drought affected farmers, some much needed financial relief.

There was outrage!

Instead, pubs were offering $10.00 Parma and chips or Parma and salad deals and sending/donating the profit to the drought relief. Which is great, farmers are still dealing with drought.

But the lesson here is the government seemed to work out from the pilot region roll out, not what was needed and how to offer a service and deliver in a timely fashion, but how to slow down their money escaping the bucket too quickly.

If our NDIA ran like a business, no one would choose to do business with them or be their customer and here in lies my point. That is the point.

Footnote! The farmers while optimistic, were not at all on board with funds being taken from the disability sector. “For the drought-stricken farmers we pray for rain”.