the personality dilemma

when i had typed the post's title i instantly thought, well are you right in stating this?
I was to talk about how prejudice around personality causes many sick persons finding it difficult attending doctors.
When i was referring to 'personality' in this context i was thinking more of 'difference' in the context of society's norms.
Society has a set of givens.  we have the 'extravert' and the 'introvert' but what if we have the 'depressive,' the 'manic' the 'hysteric' the 'sulky' and so on?
When does society say that a person has erred too far over on one side of the divide to be given much attention to?
That is, ignore and move on to one of society's acceptable people.
Not every one fits into the basic standard dress size.
Anyway there are always variations on the theme.
so what makes a person acceptable?
Is it...beauty, wealth, or just plain 'normal' or just plain 'plain.'
Does a person have to be a cardboard cut-out, that is, lack all personality to be acceptable?
Or does a person manage to overcome the difference by being different but wealthy or different and from an influential family?
because certainly if celebs say it all, they get it all, and mostly because they have the wealth to buy them just about everything, even if they are wild, drunken, rude, hysterical and everything other than plain plain.
Walking into a doctor's surgery is not for the faint hearted any day, for anyone.
Some seem to get away with the task better than others.
Many don't have to put up with the rudeness.
i have seen this.
I see it too often.
I also see and have seen how some people do have to put up with rudeness, being left until last in a clinic or being shunted to the 'virtual wards' on the side near the laundry baskets.
i will say which bracket these individuals belong to, they are the individuals who stand out from  the  accepting society's norms.
we have as i say the drunks, but here the POOR drunks.
we have the mentally ill, again the POOR mentally ill.
also those who are Not from high society families or who have the support of family who are high flyers.
if you have been rubbished by the family of origin and do not have them supporting you then well, you are also a complete gonner.
they have documented that to be poor and sick means you die younger and sooner.
That has now taken off a sizeable proportion of the people i happen to know.
so if they die off then i can quake with fear.
but mostly the persons who get it between the eyes of hostility are the persons perceived to be mentally challenged, that is, mentally ill or been in the mental health system.
this is all across the board and in not only holy ireland which is my country but all countries.
but being in Holy Ireland i have seen horrible things done to people here.
try this for size...i know a person who was not treated for physical presentations until psychiatrically assessed..that person was myself.
yes, i sat it out until i was and i was many times and all times found to be mentally sane.
what the sender to the shrinks saw was at varience to what the sender perceived or realised.
they SAW tram track slash marks on this person's body.  they immediately percieved madness.
well they were found to be wrong by the shrinks.
the shrinks had never seen me as mad or having a mental illness.
Tram tracks on flesh is not from madness, but say that to the ill informed.
Tram tracks means many things.  Abuse can cause it, neglect, vulnerabilty and also feeling isolated in crowds or not liking oneself, or not being able to express oneself adequately to be heard sufficiently for things to change.
it never is about madness.
but i have seen also mentally ill persons being so badly treated it beggars belief that medicine is about healing not destroying a human being.
You would rather think it would be more healing to lift up than slam down.
A doctor has the ability to do this in such a differnet way to most.
they are after all , the gods to keep us alive.
we depend on them to do this, keep us alive.
they then are 'God.' and believe me they chose to act it.
making judgements that are divine is their supreme skill but in the hands of humans it amounts to ignorance.
Tell me why anyone should be treated badly just because they are different?
tell me please why these people with difference too, should be less believed about their own feelings and bodies than those who have the money and the beauty and the sanity?
because when a person describes how their body feels, most if not all will say it as it is.
why would anyone say less or more, when they go to a doctor for help?
it is very few who are feigners, very few.
again the gods decide that a person with tram tracks are, and they get shunted to the side.
Every time.
they also get treated badly at every turn in medicine without exception.
there may be an individual doctor who will decide to believe you and i have had one or two, but one or two does not mean absolutely everyone.
we started on this blog about personality, and it is so all embracing, all consuming that it goes to the heart of what being a sophisticated species is.
the way to 'take animals' out is so much more sophisticated than the arrow or the mallet.
you simply treat them with rudeness and shunt them away, also shut them away.
the voiceless many as known particularly in this country when we shut more people away behind bars for being different than any other country in europe combined at the time and we are talking about a period of time, the 50's.
Irish people i feel, are far more prejudicial than most would be led to believe.
i put it down to being too long the under dogs.
i see it now having rebound again, just as we began to show hints of tolerance, i believe we may revert back to the dark ages.
mostly economic decline will see a hardening of attitudes, another 'survival of the fittest' tactic.
at the end of this blog i will say one thing clearly.
I DO NOT want to be the Plain PLAIN>
i do not want to be a shrinking person who has no say on matters, who has to grovel, who has to be 'important' in economics or beauty in order to be treated well.
i want to be myself, which is, DIFFERENT, by virtue of birth.
i have not wealth, status, age, beauty or sex gender on my side.
but i have Spirit, Spunk, Laughter, Hilarity and uniqueness that is particularly my own, and my own style.
does this sort of 'difference' along with my pain, my past, my vulnerability and my inability to withstand abuse mean that i am led to the slaughter each and every time i am found wanting by one person and another, those who are the 'acceptable beautiful people' of our society?
when society can be judged as truly sophisticated, humane and reaching out toward difference, then we can say we are nearer the God of Life than the God of destiny, the doctors.
and i see too many of them - for my sins.

a dog's life and no denying it

The fire is lit, the small chihuahuas are asleep (they do not count as dogs), i have a cup of tea.
I am jaded.
Many words would express my feelings about life and Ireland.  I think what i have to say and what i feel is pertinent to Ireland, and pertinent to the Irish dynamic that weighs back to the time we had to pit wit against the enemy.
we have enemies for sure and we have lost the pitbull will to face these, so in our insular, comfortable state and cosiness of armchairs we pit the bull against our own kit and kin.
This i say is Irish.  It speaks of ignorance and lack of both emotional intelligence and fairness.
its the shrewd way of getting the exact response which will  make you feel a bit better around your argument, even if the argument isn't a good one.
its the cunning that the Irish is known for, and boy i have received it in spades, that awful, awful feeling that yet again i as an individual have been 'taken out' because, those who can do so, do it.

Here i do not speak that i am any holy saint for i am not.  He who casts the first stone...so before i throw rocks (not from the water feature i am making in a garden), i will say that i have rocks shored up of vices and nastiness that i do have i guess, certainly i am wrong a lot of the time, but jaysus surely i couldn't be wrong all the time?
so hence i say, why the feck has Ann been at the receiving end of so much.

where can i begin to hurl the rocks?
the medics who still leave me in virtual wards before they ever speak to me, why? Cos i have tram track trauma blade marks all the way up both arms and parts of my thighs and belly.
they let me out of hospital too soon, they didn't believe me when i say i was unwell.
my wound burst.
they send me home and say it is all anxiety when i cannot walk (for gods sake, has this happened anywhere but in holy ireland i wanna ask?)
I then do not get treated unless i am assessed by a shrink, yes, i have been left waiting for a shrink to come back from hols before i am treated for physical complaints - how many people have been treated thus?
I have been threatened with ect, nasal gastric tubing and more besides, the first well, they couldn't but they threatened, the second cos i physically released a build up of bile when my crohn's caused a blockage.
and so in that arena i am continuing to suffer and be terrified, will the next A&E visit actually see me die unnecessarily due to my tram-tracks of yesteryear?
and also now, after a bunch of horror years i have been attacked, by children with guns, and told its again all in the mind, even when i have the photo to prove it, ah sure that not a gun!
it was, and remains a gun, it was a gun!
we had men jumping walls to attack me, and i am asked what did i do to make them!
well the corpo spray painted their car parking bays away from them without telling them, and they took it out on me, for the corpo wanted to give me a disabled parking bay, but did i ask for them to do it over their dead bodies or mine.
it was nearly mine and i nearly had the housing unit i was to occupy burnt down before i ever went into it cos if the corpo gave me another persons bay he was going to torch all three units, period.
no nonsense, like.
so out came the guns after that and me being told to get back to where i belonged, well i would have gladly if i had known where that was or is.
we cobble together a way to get me out of danger and the council nor the hse, that is our health service were able to get me out, cos the council wouldn't and the hse couldn't.
i do what i could and did.
i left, with all my stuff piled onto wheelchairs and into disability van and trip after trip i left.
here is the throwing of the stones, and listen lord they are mighty boulders.
the Mammy's family dear Lord.
Irish mammy's family my dear Lord. Lord hear my prayer for sure as god i hope, that i join you shortly as thats the only way out of continuing hell.
my mammy bred the family as most in Ireland.
there was one eggit in each family called the goat.
I was that goat.  so when you want to win an argument and were not winning you shot the goat, not dead like, but you shot it, again and a gain and again - flogging. Irish style.
and i got flogged.
over and over again, flogged.
so flogged that i fought back, badly - see i have many vices and i have declared them to the lord, but at least i cannot lie so i shot them, them feckless greedy, self serving individuals that my mammy produced.
and they know who they are, the one who said she wished i was dead, the person who was in the psych system who never had a penny who trashed her body, she wished that person dead, why, cos i was that goat, Irish style.
then we had the other who said i wasn't coping and needed sheltered accommodation..this is the one who i asked if she would include me in a cook pot from time to time to help me recuperate from surgery and what do i get - i get cooked.
this is the person who felt i had asked a soup bowl too much.
certainly a fish pie too much cos eventually i got delivered a fish pie to be told 'this is a gesture and nothing more' it was, i saw no fish pie more  nor nothing.
she who knows how to dress a salmon, take out the royal albert and couldn't think christian to help her kit and kin, the one the mammy also produced.
that christian and the other who wished i was dead, go to mass of a sunday.
i dont, why, cos i was abused by a wonderful man, a holy roman catholic priest, nothing less nor more, well actually yes, more but thats another chapter by far.
so where am i at right now in time?
just about on the edge of my armchair, wishing to god that i could go to my Dad, who never harmed me the way the rest of my mammy's children did and continue to.
my dad, my good and lovely dad, i want to be with him.
no one else, absolutely.
but the problem with that is...i dont believe in any more than this shite life so i wont see my dad will i?
nor will i see my two sisters and brothers, my first cousins and my nephews and nieces, cos i am so bloody evil, the evil personified that none visit nor text nor tell me anything.
that my international confraternity of internet friends is called putting a person in solitary and making them suffer cos you can do it, so you do it.
and it happens in the Ryan's daughter Ireland and the Field's ireland and my ireland.
its where you shoot the small guy, doesn't matter how you shoot them, but if you want to be right and proven to be, you blame another, and the only way to be right is to do it this way cos they are not doing it the proper christian way.
The right way is to cherish not only themselves but all, and holding the most vulnerable in their hands.
they are blaming them cos they are too fecking selfish and mean to help a person who honestly could have done with the help they had the ability to offer and didn't.
so to my mammy's children, the children of my mammy's brother and the children of my mammy's children, watch your step, some day not for decades but for maybe a decade or a day, you too can be shot at in the most violent way imaginable and when you are you will feel as lost and as lonely and as sad and depressed as i am tonight, with my two wee chihauhaus, one on either side.
on the lonely sofa where i have always been, on the lonely side of life.
and the killer of me will be that.
the loneliness of a person who has felt so betrayed and continually betrayed by the very people she yearned to feel loved by and wanted to love.
how can i and i doubt if there is any love left after what my family have done to me in the past three years.
i was threatened with complete anihilation if i wrote another blog along these lines again.
anihilate then cos it cannot be any worse.
you have done it already.
you all collectively - the doctors, the pills, the clerics who sexually abused and the mammy's children did this to me.
so cast the stones my christian family when you read this blog.
as for the medics and clerics, the medics are so holy they are the untouchables and will remain that way until someone tells them they are daft naked kings all along and the clerics well they are in worse shit for their boss, the real king has the supreme ability to send them all to fry in hell, if you believe that you believe anything.
shit life, and pretty shit people around i say.

Visiting a large dublin hospital

I don't like hospitals, period.
I think i have good reason at this stage of my life and with health 'issues' in abundance, which would dictate a certain level of 'understanding' in my Irish System.
No, wrong words, not MY system, but the system i personally am part of as being, in it...very much in it.
to my disappointment and regret.
When our Health Minister says that He and the present Gov inherited a mess, well who ever inherited it, it is just that...a mess...words fail to describe how much a mess actually.
I can attempt it, but it would all fall short, this is not the definitive set of volumes but only the prefix to the introduction which then leads on to the first volume of volumes into the next decade kinda thing.

We, the sis and i arrived early at the hospital.  We were directed to 'Admissions' ...closed..we were..too early.  This was our fault not the hospital.
Off we went, i for a cuppa, twin to watch.
Back to the Admissions and we were there as 'opening' was declared, first in queue as i say 'the twin was enthusiastic!'
she signed in..i watched.
It was then up to the ward.
We were beckoned into the day room..store room for chairs-cum-day-room. I have a horrible sense of deja about this, and wonder will i find the cigarette butts jammed into the cracks of the toilet if i go there, for thats what i found when i was a patient here last and more besides.
I attempt to open the doors to a small balcony.
Failed (suicide prevention tactic to have it locked?)
Baking.
I try to separate two sandwiched chairs and succeed.
we then are summoned to see the reg doctor.
she was lovely.
My twin only light up when she saw the familiar face of the cancer nurse.
she rubbed hands and admitted 'now we are down to business, and comfortably so!'
not spoken but implied.
we were really.
My twin was prepped up for ever and i sat it out down stairs.
I now was on a mission to find  my own surgeons, or rather possible surgeons, and here the difficulty started.

I actually was peaceable for a change.

I mean i am known not to be.. but this time i was...sickness can cause two things..a sabre tooth or no tooth at all.

physcially i have little but realistically i can have some in spirit, and it all depends. but i am sickening and so the teeth that i can have left me, entirely, and so peace reigned, and in that regard all were lucky.

I was grinding what was left in my mouth though.

down to the cafe where i saw a wonderful inviting Wifi symbol which usually means what it says on the tin, but not in this hospital it doesnt.

why? the Wifi services are for the elite, and that doesnt include them patients and the relatives.

the elite are the doctors no less!

and you and and tudder can think other.

I then tried my mobile to extract a contact number through directory inquiries, but i was out of money...so...next tack being to put money in!  i was told i coudlnt do this at that particular cafe but one a couple of hundred yards further into the jaws of the hospital, which at this moment in time i wasnt enthusiastic about.

I go to the reception desk.

I first ask if he - the male receptionist, if he can find me a phone number of another hospital, where my consultant resides.

he cannot.

Can he find me the number of another consultant within this hospital, i have rather a lot of them, see start of blog for explanation, if it is one.

he cannot.

But he does tell me that this consultant's secretary is near by, in fact, nearer than the furthest cafe, which is a blessing.

i go, but am told by that person, a woman this time that she doesnt have a number to the consultant, so she doesnt have a clue how to give it to me, naturally.

i leave.

I go to get the yellow pages and sit down again, in the first cafe.

I cannot read the darn thing for my sight is too bad.

I then go back to the receptionist.  He suggests i pick up the phone by the entrance door and ring the operator.

i do so, but its the wrong phone, as he has come over to tell me this.

i take up the right one.

but nothing happens.

he is back at his desk.

i cannot leave as i have a heavy bag i am reluctant to lift again, in this moment in time.

i shout 'excuse me!' he hears, thank god.

he gives me the number, one digit, so thats a blessing too.

i ring.

sucks, i cannot hear, i do hear garble but apart from that, thats my hearing for you.

i wasnt deaf for no reason...i have not heard the operator.

tears are now welling up in my eyes.

i feel sick and in pain...i have been outta A&E two days now, i have been told i have Gallstones, plenty of em, so now i want outta pain and them outta me.

but i am not getting very far to realise either ambitions.

i pick up a heavy bag with a heavy heart and cart both self and it, back to the wards.

See, they were to find me a 'way in' so that i can get a 'way out' of the hospital, in communication terms.

I ask the secetary if she can ring IT department and get the password and user name for getting logged in on my laptop.

she raises her eyes to heaven, pretty much the same way as the porter/receptionists did downstairs, and i am feeling that there are a lot of unhappy people in this hospital and i am not the only one.

she hands me the phone, i am a bit startled at this but evidently its the IT department.

he, the guy at the end of the line, recites a password, and i have no pen and paper.

i ask for one from the raised eyebrow woman and she rips off a sheet of paper from a pad in an alarming fashion with more raised eyebrows.

jaz many got out of bed the wrong way this morning.

I wasnt one, for a change.

i attempt to get logged in, and fail.

i am banned from entry, i have been blocked and denied for some unknown reason.  my next plan for getting out was to physically do just that, i left the ruddy building no less, i nicked the twin's wheelchair and off i went to the Merrion Centre or tesco or whatever it is beside the hospital on the merrion road.

i got onto the internet, all for the sum of one euro, but did it at a booth, and very successfully so.

i have now an appointment to see the consultant about puffy knees, one of my probs and in the process or at the consult i will ask about the surgeon and the other matter of an ovarian cyst which i insist will all be done and dusted on the same day, that is three lots of surgeries all on one day, job lot fashion, knees sucked out, gall stones blasted or ribbed out and cyst removed all together, one lot of anesthetic, one lot of taxi fares, and one bout of out of my own home. what more could a woman want, in life.

well i want more, but never seem to get it.

we moved on...well she did, the twin that is...down to theatre and poor twin was upset and nervous.
there was really no going back, but the staff nurse who was not in good mood said that the image of her appointed 'assistant surgeon for the day' could stay in her room...the black assistant with the knife...that is.
well we had other ideas, to which i encouragingly said that actually would the black assistant not go and stay close to her hearing aids and specs?
and it was more of a 'grrrrr...the black assistant GOES to theatre...grrrrr..gnarl...grrr...'
the Black Assistant went!
who is this Black assistant, none other than her Saffi, holding the large lethal weapon of a knife, nothing stands in the way of our Saffi and the knife...Saffi the wonder...black..dog!
Saffi went where she always goes, with my twin in mind and spirit if nothing else, this time.

and you  and tudder can think other.

She has gone and so do i, leave.
I leave the hospital, she stays.
i go for lunch, grand plan to get out and use my laptop and see what is happening my world via the internet and the only place to do that is the nearest hotel.
i hail a taxi, and he wasn't pleased either, another grumpy soul who just wasn't pleased to get a small fare.
all of E7 but as my dad always said, 'look after the pennies and the pounds would look after themselves.'
its Euro now and they don't seem to look after themselves for this man wasn't interested in the pence, not a bit of it.
again i was near to tears for i find all this unsettling and begin wonder do i have the same effect on others when in similar mood?
i possibly can, and do.
i sit three hours out in the hotel.
jaz i was in pain.
and info on a four wheel was less than promising as the two weeks wait had now extended to three.
(another story for another day).
i then leave, deciding to save my E7 back to the hospital i have the brainwave to catch the bus.
i should have thought better.
the toilet beckoned so it was back to the hotel.
and the taxi the reception THERE has requested was waiting after i had peed, so i had now to spend the E7 after all.
another bad mood met me up on the ward.
mags wasn't back from surgery.
and the staffie (yes, the barker) informed me that  she had no idea how mags was or when she would be back.
tears ? yes, again - nearly.
a student told me she would ring if she had word.
on leaving i asked the Staff nurse was she always in such bad mood as today?
she didn't know what i was talking about - the student did!
ah for a cuppa cha.
and when i then saw my twin wheeled in, it was her screaming desire for the same. the tea.
and mine was for the bed.
we got our wish in due course.
I also got my wish to make peace with the neurologist at this establishment.
a lovely man actually but i had always known this.
what i also knew was, he has a shite manner, as others know too.
but i made my peace to an amenable guy, who finally announced that he knew all along that my neuro difficulties was Dystonia, but did he have to say too, that 'you don't have parkinson's you just want it?"
this was the pits, and i shall never forget that.
no, bad choice of words and bad manner, very.
He wont cross me again, if he does...them teeth, do you remember them teeth..real or imagined?
I left some disgruntled pack people at that there hospital whose brandished snarls left a bad taste in my own mouth.
i left too, the twin, to face either friend or foe, i was outta there, and  none too soon.

Is living in Ireland a syndrome?

the definition of syndrome is a 'cluster of manifestations that cannot be defined in one physical condition,' well thats my definition.
I have many physical conditions but am known to have been infected or effected by one virus pre-birth, so i have a syndrome, all add up to one or thought to add up to one starting point, Rubella.
So i am using this analogy to refer to sickness across the board, with one starting point, Ireland and being Irish.

The battle in Ireland is, multi-facetted.
my twin has discovered that!
When she puts the hesitancy to work, the work-shy ethic, the lack of action and the promise of same she reels at the difference it was in the country she adopted for over forty years.
She has in essence been hit a mighty blow.

How on earth has Ireland functioned she has wondered.
How on earth did anything get done!
Well how did it, i too now ask this question.

A malaise has set in.
A sickness born from an ethos, that is distinctly Irish.
Today for instance i had my Disability Advocate.
Advocacy is getting something done for a less able person...
Meaning a person has designated that person to get stuff done..it is supposed to do exactly what it says on the tin.
This woman i have met a few times.
I have emailed many times.
we have been in phone contact, email contact and the directions have been pretty specific.
Today, as i say she arrived..again at my door with her jotter or notebook or diary whatever.
She asked me a weird question.
'what is your vision of what i can do for you?'
I giggled at the phrasing of words here.
"HUH, are you serious?"
As so happened i had my laptop nearby.
I googled my mail box to see our number of communications.
I read out.
18 emails,
7 emails.
3 emails.
Going back a couple of months now.
All saying the same thing,
all asking the same thing
and all requesting the same things.
My requests were plain.
- basic services
-support
-help to make my way in a new county
-some useful entertaining and productive communication with the natives and creative persons is needed so where can i start in an alien county where i know nobody?
-support, support support.
These were the reasons of getting the advocate.
So far nothing has materialized and today i am asked what my vision for her in regard to me is!
I thought it was pretty well explained.
I really did.
Obviously not.
Another question, one asked when i had first met.
"Now tell me what are the conditions you do have?"
"HUH?" I giggled again.
"I thought they would have been stated at onset."
"Yes, i know, but tell me again."
("Why?")
I have a syndrome.
So does she, and so do all.
A cluster of ills that go to make up one ill defined problem.
I put it in one here - we are lazy, my friend.
We have a difficulty with another word.
ACTION.
we are all blow and no go.

When my twin gets through a difficult day of getting no where with this nonsense she rings me saying she had a difficult day getting through this nonsense.
She is weary.
I AM WEARY>
Is this the 'new way?"
the new way of dealing with problems and difficulties.
The new IRISH way...or more of the same.
The Irish way!

An older sister tells my twin that 'You are in Ireland now, not London."
so it is KNOWN.
The syndrome, that is.
We have promises of letters being written, services being given, phone calls being made.
Nothing happens.
No services either.
HOme-helps do no home help they play with soap suds in the water.
To leave the saucepans for the HOme helps is called being abusive toward home helps!
Give me - and my twin - a break!

Home help manager - "Oh i didn't know you had moved into your home, when did you?"
In prep for the move and the need for er, home help, i had rung two days before the event.
'Oh yes i moved in two weeks ago.  I rang and told you as you had requested."
"OH."

I am two weeks without a motorized vehicle after crashing the one i had into a tree.
Again more of the same, symptoms of inertia and changing goal posts.
One tells me one thing, another another and another another.
If you can keep up with the deception and the rejection of what one said to another and "No, he was wrong on that, he shouldn't have said that."
WELL he did!
Nothing gets done.
"OH you have done so much in your new home, in so little time!" i am told from jaw dropping visitors.
"Yes." i say, i wanted to and i had to so i did so.
Its easy.
Its called ACtions not words.
Peezy.
You work hard at this.
You work. Period.

But as the sister said to the sister.
You are not in London now, you are in Ireland.
She didn't have to say anymore.
but she did actually.
with twin in mighty tears at the lack of action, the stumper was 'i told you you couldn't manage and you should have gone into sheltered accommodation!'
Why i ask myself is this the solution?
It isn't a solution, its an excuse for a sick person cos others cannot or won't help.
get shut of her when she bursts into tears and needs help.
Whip her dog, her fantastic dog away and stick her in magnolia with bewildered.

Promises of help too, once i have moved into my own home.
well that didn't come fast.
the manager interviewed me about my needs and what the home help would do.
We had that all before months ago when she met me up at my twins.

All the workers of the world (well, Ireland anyway) manage to not work for their clients cos they are on 'annual leave.'  (euphenism for a few days off)!
or, 'training days.'  that is sitting in a wheelchair for a few hours to realize what its like being in one.
or lifting, as in 'how do i lift a lump of potatoes in the shape of a human being?'
the cave man just lifted.
Irish people and sophisticated workers have to train to life.
they go on refresher courses too, cos they tend to forget.
One thing for sure, they don't forget to eat or to cook do they?
they forget to lift.
Yes, i am a begrudger and wailer of litanies.
I have suggested that Dr. Raging Wheels starts raging and dictating and writing.
we are a country gone awol with laziness.
money for old rope and bathing hands in soap suds for a few hours.
I have never seen it take so long to wipe down a few surfaces and wash a few crock and clut for a sick person, one sick person.
not after the Vanentine's ball, no. not after the Farnley either.
we are LAZY.
no amount of emails can describe this adequately.

Pinch me please! is this true? AT LAST!

How many years folks have i sought a better way to live?
How many years have i stuck out distress and trauma every day and night wishing and hoping for a better type of living and in a better environment with safety?
it has been three full years since DRCC decided in their wisdom to uproot me from my community and move me away from it to an unknown cul de sac.
This cul de sac was not even known to many in the area and certainly not to me or my care team.
This is where they decided in their wisdom to place me.
I was becoming more disabled and asked for rehousing in a downstairs apartment.
One had come free on the street i had grown to love.
They refused me that place on the grounds i did not deserve it as i was a single woman and only needed one bedroom.
Well, i had already a two bed apartment and already so due to my disability of a different type.
What i experienced in the cul de sac with no name doesn't bear thinking about.
I was shot at by the children, had hurley balls thrown and eggs and water bombs.
i was intimidated by all those older children and by the men.  It seemed that all the men in that street were alcoholics with only two women, one being spanish.
I had no where to go to, no one to talk to and was sandwiched between two men with alcohol issues who drank heavily and threatened me.
I was single and disabled.  I had been sexually abused as a young person.
i was alone.
Also, the place was tiny and claustrophobia was awful.
there were high walls all round and i saw no one and heard nothing but alcoholic screams and fights.
i was terrified and taking hammers and heavy implements to bed with me in case i was attacked.
Many times i fled to my twin sister who had relocated back home.
Three full years of finding a way out.  This had uprooted my dear twin, a person i loved and who had also expectations for her retirement after a very fulfilling and rewarding professional life.
This was coupled with the disruption that was needed to get me out and not helped by a family who found me pesky and demanding.
Demanding i was...'Please help me!'
In fact, the demand was nothing other than despair in my heart as i tried to live day to day in hope for a better way.
My twin and i also had fraught relationships during this hellish period for both of us.
We fought a lot and found our characters and personality had grown in proportion to our different lives and different experiences and ways of living.  Not to mention different countries of choice!
We made decisions not approved of by the family of origin and we made decisions also not approved of in the economic sense and the time that is in it.  My poor country now is not feeling charitable toward the least fortunate and disabled and struggling.  My country like self is now completely and utterly broke!
We held firm.
Days were slowly passing with no answers and it was proving unrelenting hell on earth.
We then had to relocate out of our county in order to find what we needed as disabled women, single and alone yet wanting to be near each other.
We always wanted to be near enough to care.  This is not alien to our character or ways but does come naturally.
We also wanted suitable homes, bungalows with easy access.
We found the homes within a small enclave in Co. Wicklow.
The natives are kindly and gentle and seemingly have embraced the oddity that has come into their lives, rather surprisingly.
We already have proven 'Characters.'
We are noted for screaming at each other, having dogs that bark and being very different.
We are also noted for howling at full moons  and holding up pineapples (this for photographic aesthetics and fun) on my part.
We are noted for getting up at dawn and dressing in attire not seen before, that is purple woolly dressing gowns over african kaftans and topped and bottomed with woolly gloves and boots, all for the snatch of a steak of red or rather a ballooning of amazing colours peeping up over the horizon, awakening myself to take the image of a lifetime.
this is a purity i have not ever experienced before.
To wake with wonder and awe, to awaken in safety and a haven.
I am now fully awake.
I have arrived and can do nothing other than pinch myself.
Today, i shall remember.
I am now in.
I am in my own home, with my two dogs Ana Chi and Maggie Mai.
My twin is in her own home.
She with her dog Saffi.
WE have arrived.
This is what we had fought for and fought over.
No, no sheltered accommodation.
No, no living together for economic reasons.
We wanted to get back our sanity of what we had known mostly.
Living quietly on our own, the ways we had known and our ways of dealing with life and all it has to throw at us.
Remember, we are touching the golden, at the age where settling down is normal, uprooting not so.
Who could blame us for wanting something better than we had had before, if this was to be the case?
We have settled down.
I have a wonderful wee home now.  An even more so wonderful garden, full of potential.  I have already asked a neighbour down to identify my weeds!
I cannot believe this awakening from living in hell to now living in utter peace and quiet, well lets hope time will deliver on this last part.
Knowing my twin is up the street not far from me is the bonus we had sought for too.
We will have all the hurdles ahead relating to our disability and illnesses and that is not in dispute.
We recently had the very bad news that twin now has to undergo Cancer treatment and i had a bad bad day of trying to figure if i was to live or die, fortunately i walked away from a car crash unscathed.
that crash enabled me to embed myself firmly into my neighbourhood as i embedded into trees and vegetation in it and had many stand round until ambulance came and had a sweet talker at my ear as i lay horizontal on the damp and cold grass.
i have made my contact.
we have made contact.
we have arrived.
woa.
What can i say to all who have hurt me in the past decade?
what need i?
i can say, i did it, we did it and we will survive anything now.

CRS rules OK!

Well CRS is a big 'hit' it seems as peekers and peepers looked and read a bit about the dilemma facing the Rubies.  All is not rosy nonetheless!
NONETHELESS, i am asked to deviate from 'misery' and a constant whine and gripe.
Should i or should i not?
HUMMM....for once...just once.
Well, yes actually just once, so be uplifted and enlightened and delighted.
I am deviating...not much..just an inch.
Away from the reality of more of the same.
Ah no, not really.
Spring is in the Air, children are screaming on trampolines...yikes...beside me in my new home...yikes. God bless the children?
What about the wrinklies?
I shall say nothing and take my hearing aids out and fully understand that our 'clocks' will deviate.
I shall awaken to hear the birds and they shall be struggling with the shoe laces and school bags and then i shall be in bed, hearing aids out once again, when they have their play stations full blast and couldn't care a shit about the adults all around.
Well, hearing aids out i shall be fine.
When my shed is relocated..away from the tramps and the visual impact i shall sound proof the thing and take the hearing aids out...again..and all will be well with MY world.
Not my country or the fiscal state but my small wee world where from time to time a peeper shows out of curiousity.
When curiosity wears off, peepers go and hearing aids will be out again!
That is, if i am not up at dawn listening or trying to.
Ha! Do you remember that wonderful day you tripped out with BirdWatch Ireland, 4am was it not?
It was.
'Oh, did you hear THAT?"
"No!"
"Two o'clock, there!"
From a stance of twelve i look two o'clock, and i didnt see the bloody thing nor hear it.
It was a resounding disaster as not one tweet did i hear and discovered it was counterproductive to awaken from sleep to go listen to others awaking from sleep.
this is an occassion i would have benefited from staying absent from.
I have since and pretty much benefit but miss not hearing.
Crows and Magpies aplenty, small birds - NO>
Well...I compensate...I feed them so get to see them, close, up close...usually very close.
I am happy with the solution.
Now the jubilation of it all, i am on the move again and pretty much moved by it all.
I simply have to stop going for twinkly things, as in Magpie fashion.
them wee things that facinate a person of my inclination, snatched for a pittance from the jaws of a rubbish tip in the guise of working the community service by adding to the charity box in a charity shop, i go every day and come away disappointed if i am not uplifted by a 50c twinkle.
the kind that sets a small beat flutter at a 'coup of a find' well, for 24hrs, anyway.
That too, is a coup, believe me.
So the move is moving apace as all my stuff is IN, and some has been booted out and just a tiny left to shift and i then follow the body and then i can finally say, the move is complete.
After that my friends i am never moving again until i go out in my eco-friendly designer cardboard coffin or a mug.
Ah, bonfires are not allowed on private property.
thats another idea scuppered.
So, it will have to be the eco-friendly lightweight coffin.
So enthusiasm for life is on the upper after the howling at a full moon last night (i have just heard the twin scream from the kitchen, so enthrawled at her computer she burnt the pots).
most of her dinner now is a-shrivel.
Well, i was barked at for reminding her on her pots last night, over and over reminding her as she was glued to the glowing rectangle that is laptops.
so i barked not.
i remained glued tomy own and kept my peace.
the potatoes burnt up and so too the saucepan and no lessons will be learnt on that one.
a jaunty trip through a blog on the seriousness of disasters and traumas for one evening is about to come to an end.
I now have to seek out a nice snazzy adapted van that can replace the silver bullet that hit a tree last week.
Insurance is paying up for repair, and after that i am shutting the chapter on the pink and purple flower encrusted shape of metal that once brought a smile to the chizlers and their mamas on their way to the school.
When the shoe laces were well tied.
My van has been tied, and well tied up the backside of a tree and there it shall remain.
some other eegit can drive it but i will not.
so suspect is it.
Panic rises to think i will or can or should.
so a van is needed and i must seek out.
I hear goddam awful screams from the glow in the corner, the twin has turned on some reality show as twin eats what is left of the potatoes and her dinner.
I am off...jaz

A day like this does not come often

How on earth do many cope with adverse events that LIfe inflicts?
HOw can you explain it to anyone, anyone that we, the persons in conflict, come in contact with?
I speak of the people who are either family, foe or professional.
I know all trot along and try their best and belt out the days in either abject despair, a watered down feeling of contentment and the odd glimmer of love, glimmer of life and glimmer of happiness.
I guess thats it.
We all do this and it never really works does it?

But how do you do such strong events as twin and i are 'doing' and wish with all our hearts that we too could lighten up and relax and do what we both feel is deserving?
A chance to enjoy a slice of life, something neither of us had is not a lot to ask.
How can you even begin to comprehend the assaults both have been subjected to?
A virtual escape by cattle boat to a strange country at the age of 17 with no qualifications, no friends and no support networks in that country.
A virtual escape by the other half into the oblivion of medication, wrist slashing and despair and yet both survived
Against the odds, i might hasten to add.
Who can imagine what it could have been like to stand deaf, alone on a stinking and drunk and shit ridden boat with the breeze of irish salt on the cheeks and the tears and unspoken pain in the flesh.
Who can imagine what it was like for a hopeless 'left behind' bereft of a dear sister who had always  saved her from drowning.
The sister she slapped so hard at night fearing the she had departed leaving her alone.  I was about seven and this was continuous until about twelve.
After that it did get worse.
We separated and lost a lot in the parting.
all of forty years plus.
Once, we may have been bonded both physically and psychologically.
We were not to remain like this and life experience dictated the path of our ways and abilities.  We also learned to ride the waves and do it 'my way.'
Little help came then and less comes now.
We rode rollers today.
My twin bereft of her health and meaning.
The "why did I come home?"
Why did she?
Why?
Why has she now to face Cancer when she had struggled so hard in the past three years and on the cusp of the settling to her new life and pleasant life, in a wonderful part of our land that is gentle and giving?
Why?
My twin came home my friends for more than she has received.
She came HOME.
This is something also hard to explain to the uninitiated.
If, you had been away for so long as four decades and sensed and felt the land she was brought up in and yearned to return one day, you would understand.
she does not understand why our country, her country and her family and society around has not embraced the BFE.
She, who taught us all to look at such pain of clerical sexual abuse has come home to her own personal pain of loss and bewilderment when her home coming has bottomed out and gone pear shaped.
The hope she held for over forty years up in a puff, my friends.
How can you explain this to family or those she had left back in London.
Now, we are here.
Here in a new place.
We are on the cusp, to say to all the begrudgers, 'we told you so,' but also give that two finger salute to those who wished us away, wished us shackled and shacked together, twins who love but twins who also are their very own persons. Many had wished me to give up my companion chihhuahuas.
Many had wished for my twin to relinguish her Saffi to another and go to the Magnolia Land.
No one asked or embraced her to her own family.
We were in essence rejected.
I certainly was.
We felt this today.
I made another big move, for the third time, a new home in an alien county away from a stomping ground of forty years.  A ground on which i knew each blade of grass and where i heard my dad whisper and watched the mother bravely fight her own fight of living.
I listened intently and learnt.
Now we both are learning that the struggle will be ongoing but we will struggle with panache.
My twin has lost so much in her decision to return.
I have lost so much by living at all and by being brave and brave again.
To break from the oblivion of medication takes some doing.
To break from the relentless cycles of wrist and body slashing to cut the hate for self out was a hard task and took a lot of blind faith in myself and bravery.
To never resort to a comforter when in pain is painful.
To stand with back to the wall and be shot at by a hail of bullets from most who faced her was difficult and soul destroying.
We both, my twin and i faced demons and people who wished us away.
Wished us to a place where we could be forgotten,  but they could live. They could sigh that two sisters in pain with neurodegenerative disorders will not be part of their lives and part of an inch of responsibility.
We are not away but very much here and very much alive.
We will survive and we will celebrate what we have done despite all.
We both have our fabulous homes suitable to our needs with the companions we have chosen.
We both have love in spades, for life and for each other.
We both know we can depend on each other in times of hardship.
We both will help each other during this last decade of life.
We shall survive and not face magnolia, ever.
But right now we have an urgent pressing matter.
My twin has to rid her already ailing body of Cancer.
I have to face my demons daily and be brave.
I have to cobble together a mode of transport that will go to enhancing our lives and keep us sane and mobile. Both have been force to stop in our tracks.
We both will gear up again once the obstacles are over.
We shall have life in abundance despite.
Did you see us howl at the moon tonight?
yeh, bet-ya.
And bet-ya bottom dollar we will survive.
Pineapple and all.
Welcome to the land of living.
Twin style.
Not by half.