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Boxing your ambitions away

I planted a mixed pack of sunflower seeds a while ago and they have started sprouting! The bigger varieties seem to be harder to germinate. Hopefully enough of each kind will survive being out outside, and then they have to survive long enough to become adult plants.

I’m not generally too lucky in that regard. Freya seems to seek out and tread all over my seedlings whenever they’re outside. She was so obsessed with onion seedlings once that we had to put a net over them. Plants that do grow halfway to decency seem to get devoured by slugs at the last minute, or don’t thicken their stems enough to remain standing up. But I have grown some sunflowers to adulthood. They did, however, flop over from the weight of their own heads before it was generally normal for sunflowers to do that, so I’ve yet to have a “perfect” sunflower.

Hopefully the garden will look nice in the summer, regardless. I want to have a barbecue here.

I love my house. Even just having a basket of washing machine stuff here, is very nice.

Freya doing some door shutting.

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of my dog one day.

There was a noise in a film that caught her interest but I can’t even remember what it was now.

You may remember a space-print bag I made with Kadek a year ago. I found a use for it as an under-seat bag on my new chair! The interfacing is very useless (as well as hard to work with in the first place – do not recommend), so the bag slopes down unevenly due to all the loose fabric, and can get a bit caught on the left castor sometimes. Hopefully it will be in better shape when fully stuffed.

I used to have a Firearms UK patch on the right pocket, because I love target shooting, but I lost a lot of faith in them because, despite claiming to represent shooters from anywhere on the political spectrum, I saw a lot of unchecked transphobia from them, as well as assertions that people who support a political party other than the Tories (and why wouldn’t I, as a disabled person) should literally kill themselves. So now it’s covered with a CC badge.

I’ve moved the bag forwards a bit since this picture was taken, it’s now quite easy to put my cane in and out.

Sewing up a leggings hole while still wearing them. Surprisingly I did not stab myself!

Sasaki replaced my wheelchair batteries with ones that actually do hold a charge. Unfortunately the “safety feature” of the chair cutting out over any slight ridge in the pavement is still active, although I got away with more movement than last time, on the way to my appointment yesterday.

I had an appointment with Chest Outpatients, and in the waiting room I saw a local Guide Dog and was pretty happy about that. I couldn’t really discuss much about my compression stockings because I haven’t managed to find and unpack them yet, even though it’s March already.
I think I am doing better in terms of general fainting though, although I still get a lot of POTSy sick feeling when doing pretty much anything, ‘specially having to butt-shuffle up the stairs still. In fact I’m pretty sure I fainted on the stairs in the last week or so.

Anat has been doing this a lot recently. I hope she’ll recover because I really don’t want to replace her. She’s a lovely lightweight computer, I’ve got stickers from Kadek all over the back of her, and a triple-language keyboard made by adding stickers. I don’t want to start again with a new laptop for as long as possible!

Got a bit excited with the blackboard.

I am getting so unbelievably excited for Crufts. I am planning to watch it live on YouTube for as much of the 4 days as I can. Especially on Sunday, when we are having a party for it (the Best in Show and the Friends for Life results are on Sunday so it made sense to have it then).

I’ve joked that I should finish my drink every time a strange dog name is said, and maybe literally die of alcohol poisoning. But as my liver is apparently being weird right now it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to drink much.

On a related note, I am hoping to spot “Yakee Ooh Aah Cantona” in the ring for the 3rd year in a row.

Some bad night-time photography from yours truly. Not sure why there’s a plastic bag in the shrubbery.

It’s very lovely here. Just a shame the accessibility isn’t perfect.

Freya shutting the door.

Letti desk: From the other side.

We tried repairing the sofa for the third time. We used the drill Will was given recently but couldn’t figure out how to actually make it work. It was not happy about driving any screws in.
As soon as the sofa was done, other parts did start breaking, but thus far the repairs have held broken bits together. If it becomes unsittable again, we’re going to give up and have floor cushions. Which I imagine will be quite hard to get down to, but we can’t keep sitting on some wonky junk.

Freya moping during the sofa repair.

The council screwing up our tax has really messed with our finances. They failed, twice, to take the council tax from my account via direct debit, and so the bill mounted up to more than £300. They also messed up with the last flat we lived in, and keep asking for money for it. It’s a nightmare.

I’ve been trying to find ways to soften the nearly £500 total dent. I’ve been slowly selling the things that are currently cluttering the guest room via eBay, but people really take their time about buying things even though they’ll “watch” them for ages, and the fees eBay keeps debiting via PayPal have surely cancelled out whatever money I’ve made from it.

I love my books but I came to the realisation that I had to sell them to get past this time. It honestly made me very sad to pack them up. I didn’t quite cry but it was still a surprisingly painful thing to do.
It wasn’t just hurtful because I am losing things that I love, but because it forced me to realise things about the path my life has gone on. I am probably not going to re-read some of that fiction again. I am probably not going to bring home my own meat for the table and hunt with an airgun. I am unlikely to build my own house or add self-sufficient elements to one. I probably won’t get to have alpacas. I am not going to hold a Japanese conversation again. I am probably not going to ride a horse again. I am not going to own a horse. I am probably not going to get seahorses, I may not even get to have a cat. Life is too expensive. It made me very sad. I was boxing my dreams away.

The site that I am selling them to didn’t actually take all of the books (you type the barcode in and see if they’ll take it), and oddly they wouldn’t take the middle books in series by both Myke Cole and Aliette de Bodard (that I loved to bits and wanted my children to read but I probably wasn’t going to get to reading them again, and, maybe we won’t be able to afford children anyway!). They took the first and last book, but not the middle, for both.

I definitely wanted my kids to read Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon but they offered about £6 for it so I had to let it go.

Luckily I could reuse the “Books! Heavy!” box we had when moving.

I hope all our monthly council tax bills won’t be £300 and that this financial rut sorts itself out. Normally we get rid of clothes with Clothes for Charity bags, but this time we might have to find a private company willing to pay for them. It’s a shame, but I’ll do what I can to stay in this lovely house.

In an ideal world we’d own the damn house, we’d have a child sleeping in the oft-used guest room, we’d have pet dogs and we’d have long been married. But this isn’t an ideal world. Will works his arse off and has a nightmare commute for virtually no payback at the moment.

The best life I can hope for now, is Will getting better pay, us staying here until we can buy a house, get married, have a child, have pet dogs of our choosing alongside whoever my Assistance Dog is.

I never ever want to go through the horrible nightmare of finding a private rental again. I would only willingly move into another house that I didn’t own, if by some miracle a wheelchair accessible property became available to me and it would take Will, Freya and my future Assistance Dog.

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