Tell Tale Signs

What are the tell tale signs that someone is blind? they have a dog, they don't look at you in the eye, they have a computer that speaks to them, my dissertation tutor has all these signs and yet it still took me way too long to work it out.

I am the opposite of blind, I don't mean just fully sighted I mean pictures are my primary means of communicating and I think in pictures and it annoys me when I sometimes have to explain things in words.

I emailed this guy my dissertation and it was all colour coded so that I could see what paragraphs were about what topics etc, obviously that was no use to him because he's blind but I didn't know so that's hardly my fault. I kind of should have twigged when I had a meeting with him and his dog started sniffing me. I did register that as weird that he had a dog in his office but the dog didn't look like the guide dog kind it just looked like a normal dog. Maybe my dissertation tutor was scammed when he went to get his guide dog, I mean it must be easy enough to sell a fox or a badger to a blind person and tell them it's a dog.

My tutor asked a bit about me and my dissertation I told him I'd found one good book on autism but there wasn't enough other relevant stuff. He asked what the book was and not wanting to say 'I don't know it's brown and its got a picture of a cow on the cover' I said 'I've got it here and placed it on the desk' he then asked me to read the title which I still can't remember but in Hannah English it's something like 'The book about a girl who's a wicked drawer even though she's autistic and can't talk or tie her own shoe laces' He made me read the long and boring title to him, which I read in the style of a primary school child (with lots of pauses) not on purpose I'm just a rubbish reader.

His computer made a weird babble noise which I did recognise as the same noise Dan's blind friend's computer makes, and he didn't look me in the eye but he almost did sometimes. He said I should label my paragraphs so that I could move the around more easily and I said 'that's why I colour coded them' and that's when he told me he was blind. I said I'd just worked that out which was true but I don't think he believed me.

Poorly or Horny?

yesterday I was very ill, at first it was the fun kind of ill where you watch t.v all day and then it went to the not fun kind of ill where you can't look at light and you want to chop your head off, luckily Dan suggested phoning NHS direct instead. Now I'm back to the fun kind of ill where you sit in bed at 11.32am writing a blog and sneezing.

When I first got ill the night before last I went up for a rest just after tea and lovely Dan did all the cleaning up. My throat got scratchy and I got a bit of a headache and I didn't want to shout downstairs to him so I did a very lazy thing and phone the hose phone from my mobile. I said 'I feel poorly can you come upstairs' in a really pathetic voice. Unfortunately he heard 'I feel horny can you come upstairs' and he was up in a flash. He may have been a little disappointed to be sent out to co-op to get soothers and paracetamol, but as it says in the marriage vows:

when I'm skint and when I'm loaded,
when I'm poorly when I'm horny,
if it life's wicked or if it's pants,
you have to love me till I die (and probably for a bit afterwards)
and I will too.
lets spit on it. (because that is what a kiss is really)

Love you Daniel. xx

Oh My Gosh!!

So we were driving back from creative writing the other day where I had just written a semi-autobiographical piece about my littlest sister. If your one of the few people who read it- yes I did take my baby sister in for show and tell, but no I don't have a step dad that works in a plus size fancy dress store, or a nan with a toy boy.

We've had a few problems with our car lately it had a new clutch a couple of weeks ago and then last week we found out the clutch wasn't put in properly and so a thing to do with the clutch came out of another thing and that made the car stop and people beep at me. (I wonder if when people were beeping they were just beeping because actually they were swearing but it was 4pm and there were children around so they had to beep their own swearing out. Is that what car horns are for?) Anyway Dan was driving a few of us home and then he suddenly went 'OH MY GOSH!!' I thought the car was going to break again but it turns out he just has a moment of realisation.

'OH MY GOSH!! A MUSLIM CAT CAN HAVE 9 LIVES AND 9 WIVES!!'

after a lot of lol-ing we discussed whether if we were Muslim cats with 9 lives and 9 wives would we have one wife per life or have a few single lives and a few 2 wife lives. I think actually Muslims are only allowed 5 wives but I'm not sure about Muslim cats.

The Joyous Job Center

I'm in a bit of a backlog of blogs. Since the wedding we had a honeymoon in crete which was great it was 'better than reading a book!' I'd love to tell you more behind that story but I'm only allowed to tell 'one or two people' and I've already told four. There's no restrictions on those for people though so if you want to know what happen ask Helen Rachel Danni or Grace. It's hilarious.

Since then we moved into our lovely new house we came back to a brilliant surprise of two kayaks in our garden! Dan thought it was a wedding present from my rich relatives but then we saw the card signed by all of our real life best friends none of whom our rich, and soon after we saw the photos of them carrying the kayaks quite a long way to our house.

So we've settled into normal life again now, Dan's been hard at work and I've been making ikea furniture and stuff. I was hoping to start doing my art workshops in schools again but no work was coming through my agency I tried contacting schools directly but without much luck. I had a job interview to be a part time nanny but I didn't get it so I thought maybe I could go on Job Seekers Allowance, I phoned up to ask 'can I go on it ask I'm self employed and have a tiny bit of work?' They didn't directly answer that question but they asked me a million questions about myself and my financial situation. Including 'does anyone care for you?' I know the answer to that is no but I didn't want to say that I wanted say 'yes my husband cares for me, and my parents and all the friends that chipped in to buy us kayacks'

So after about an hour of questions and him taking every boring detail of my life he told me that I had an apointment at 10.50 at the job center on Monday and they will sort me out with JSA. I've been on JSA 3 years ago and I know if your later for an appointment then you can get benefits cut off so it got to 10:40 and I was trying to choose whether to go by car or bike or legs and I picked legs...I started walking then I started running then I realised even if I run I will still be late so I ran back and got the car. I couldn't park that near so then I had to do more running but I just made it on time.

When I arrived I then had to wait in a queue before finally going to my appointment, and the first thing the woman said was I can't get JSA because I'm self employed! she did tell me that if I wanted to continue with my claim then I could but I would get any money.

'errr I think I've wasted enough time thanks'

'Ok well then you need to fill in this form saying that you formally want to withdraw your JSA application'

'but the first thing I said on the phone is can self-employed people with no work get JSA!'

'it's not their job to answer that question, it's only their job to ask you questions'

I think there are some job cuts that need to be made in job centers! stupid questioning man that is being paid with my taxes!!!!!

Wedding Prequel

While writing some thank you cards to bridesmaids I remembered a few funny little pre-wedding moments that weren't that funny at the time.

One was the day before the day before where to reward ourselves for all our hard work icing the cake and buying flowers from at least 8 different shops we (me and my sisters) had what was meant to be a relaxing pampering night with face masks. We used the kind that you put on wait for 10 mins then peal off. Let me tell you if you genuinely believe that you have ripped off your eyebrow 2 days before you wedding that is not relaxing! you can watch that moment here:

http://youtu.be/8yFuJ25y7yk

Another non-relaxing moment was the incredibly stressful drive to southport in the least successful 3 car convoy ever. having a flat tyre and switching lanes constantly are not qualities of a good convoy leaded...you were provably best to loose me so early on Jo, in fact you got there before me without having ever driven in the northwest before so maybe you should lead next time.

On the morning of the wedding my hair and make-up person was an hour late which I have to say did not put me in the best of moods but luckily my lovely bridesmaid Rachel was there to offer two pieces of excellent advice.

1) 'Remember why your doing this.... it's about you and Dan making a promise to each other'

2) 'I'd be way more stressed out if this happen to me!'

Love you Rach.

Photo by Daniel Charles Photography

Wedding

Sorry for not blogging for so long, it's not coz I'm busy having an exciting life it's becuse we didn't have internet.

The most significant thing that's happened since I last blogged is I got married and got a morgage, so there's a lot of life changes, like we can now drill holes whenever we like, but first I will tell you about our lovely wedding.

I'm not really sure why people are nervous before weddings I wasn't at all. The most nerve racking situations I've been in we're driving tests and that time where I was graffiting the isreali palestinian wall and I could have got six months in prison. In conparison to those things getting married isn't scary all you have to do is walk in and not fall over, and then repeat things that someone else is saying. not.that.difficult. Even if you do mess up everyone has to be nice to you all day.

One kind of weird moment was we went to sign the register and I decided my dress wasn't done up properly and my sisters were called in to undo and redo all the lacing...I found out later that while we were all in a seperate room doing that, people were eating bananas.

Our cake depicted four significant stages of our lives in icing. I owe a lot of thanks to my perfectionist sisters who wouldn't let the children accross the road that come round for hugs, join in with making it. After we had cut the cake there wasn't much left to do except take a bit out of each other heads (the icing heads of course)

My favorite part of the wedding was the ceildh dancing. Near the end of the evening me and Dan were trying to learn this dance with everyone but as we weren't really listening to instructions we didn't really get it, so we left the main dance to form our own dancing corner. This totally ruined the whole dance because it was imposible for everyone to carry on being two people short...but we didn't care at all it was our wedding and if we want to ruin a dance for everyone we will!

There's a lot more I could say but you were probably there or at least saw the photos. It was the best day ever.

Hen Night

I've got a backlog of blogs queueing up in my head, and 6:46 am 2 days before my wedding seems as good a time as any to write about my hen night which happened a few weeks ago. My head bridesmaid Bex organised it and did a flipping good job! she knows me too well.

This is me and Bex back in the day, LOVE that photo! we were born next door neighbours then when I was 6 they moved a few miles away, and then 6 months later we followed them to the same street. We started a new primary school together and pretended we were sisters. There was a few years when we were teenagers where bex had become 'cool' and I was still in that annoying 'boys are smelly' phase of life. But it's all good now and I'm learning like boys too, one particular boy especially.

Bex came up with a totally awesome theme of where's wally, and we had a lot of fun doing silly things dressed as wallys. I love running after a stranger in a park that are wearing red and white stripy t-shirt and shouting 'WALLY!' until they turn around.

We had a girly sleepover and I had to answer questions that they had previously asked Dan, by guessing what he answered. I'm not sure why my mum was allowed to be in the room at the time, because she now knows one of Dan's most embarrassing moments. The time when I was telling mum infront of Dan about all the personally questions in the frontline marriage prep questionnaire. For some reason the first example question that came to my head was 'What's the worst thing about your future parents in law?' ...... to which mum asked Dan what he had written. Dan repleyed 'I haven't done that one yet.'

And everyone now knows about the strawberry yogurt thing.... sorry Dan.