First hack in nearly 5 months and I did it with the wind in my hair

Quite literally too because it was really blowy today.

The weather here has been absolutely awful, it’s windy, it’s cold and it rains, sleets or snows periodically, not quite able to make up it’s mind which method it wants to get you wet by.  Oh the joys of living in Scotland – but it could be worse, I could be worrying about earthquakes or volcano’s while out riding so I guess we have it ok really.

Anyhow, I arranged a hack with my buddy Tracy, who owns the positively delicious Kamber,  a dark bay gelding Warmblood.  So I got up nice and early this morning and headed to the yard only to get stick at the traffic lights at the roadworks round the corner – for 10 whole minutes that damn light sat at red, so I gave up, reversed and went the long way.  It was probably the cold, I hear they tend to jam up in the cold weather.  So I arrived at the yard late, as usual and got my boy all ready and we headed off.  Well, once I had managed to drag my arse into the saddle we headed off.  We mounted up using the smaller mounting block and being that I had not ridden for 4 months my legs are a little stiff so it was rather funny trying to climb up on to my huge 16’3 horsey who probably felt like he was going to be pulled over onto his side at any moment by this big lumbering idiot attempting to get on his back.  Not to worry, the legs will loosen up in time, I hope!!

So off we went to the park, and the horses were very well behaved considering the weather.  We had a few moments of Arion spooking slightly at stuff but in that wind who could blame him.  My hairiest moment was when Kamber realised he was leading and decided to put in a quick reverse but failed to check his rear view and nearly drove his arse straight into Arions face which I will admit made me slightly nervous at the time.  I got over it quickly though and we continued on our way.  I was a bit nervous when we left the yard but having Tracey to chat with helped ease me and once I was in the park I settled down and besides a few occasions where Arion decided he didn’t like the way a bush looked or the noise of the donkey in the field (well that donkey noise is rather annoying) we made it round without incident.  We even managed to have a canter at which point I realised that my head has obviously shrunk from all the surgery when my hat promptly fell in front of my eyes and I couldn’t see a damn thing.  Luckily for me, Tracy gave a verbal “I’m slowing down now” signal or we might have had close visitation with Kambers arse for the second time today.  I have told Kevin I need to buy a new hat, oh what a shame!! So a very successful first hack out since surgery and Tracy and I will now hopefully be regular Sunday hacking out buddies.  Before long I will be cantering round the park and getting annoyed cause we aint going fast enough lol.  Hopefully future hacks will not be accompanied by high winds – incidentally a few hours after we got back it was snowing.

Arion also had a visit from the dentist today and he did very very well.  The dentist remarked “I wish they were all as good as this” and Arion got some extra treats for being such a good boy.  His teeth are in excellent condition and he just needed a little rasping to smooth off some rough edges, otherwise nothing to worry about.

I now have 3 lessons a week booked with Dawn, Mon, Wed and Fri – I am determined to get back to full fitness and ridability as quickly as possible.  I want to start jumping in the Spring – I think I said before I didnt want to jump at all until later this year but bugger that.

I had to edit my post cause Tracy without an E put in an official complaint that she was not Tracy without an E in my blog. All fixed now Tracy..without an E.   Hahahaha.  Damn it I need smilies I tell you, smilies damn it!!!

Alien Wars – Warhammer and £8.70 for parking

So, they brought Alien Wars back to Glasgow for a few months having originally opened it there in 1992 I think it was.  I recall the laugh we had running through it when our mates worked there and the fact that we used to go in under the influence of alcohol and almost die laughing so hard at the aliens running around and everyone screaming their heads off.  Dylan was desperate to go so we took him and his friend from school along tonight – I took them in while Kevin stayed in the cafe area with our daughter, she is just too sensitive and would have absolutely freaked out if we had taken her in.  They absolutely loved it, they were running for their life when the marine yelled at them and absolutely freaking out when they saw the aliens – oh wow it brought back some memories and its something I am so pleased that I could share with him.  He loves the movies so to be able to go to this was so much fun for him…and for me, I still laughed my way through the whole thing, but I still ran like hell at the thought of an alien behind me.  LOL

We then enjoyed a McDonalds and while walking back to the car nipped into The Game Workshop and the kids ended up taking part in a Warhammer demonstration which they loved and they are all begging for the game now.  I am taking them back next week for a demo on painting and creating their own army – should be fun for them and they have a couch I can plonk myself on and read with a coffee while they do their thing. By the time we got back to the car, the parking cost £8.70 which is outrageously expensive for a few hours – I will have to find alternative parking next time we go into town.

I have a riding lesson booked for tomorrow at 12pm.

Arion in the school

The case of the wandering cat and the sore muscles.

Did I mention that I went back to work on Tuesday.  It was very nice to see everyone and I didn’t really do much on my first day other than wander around talking to people and answering inquisitive questions about my surgery.  Several people did not recognise me without my bandana which was permanently fixed to my head for a year after the first round of surgeries, but I have hair on show and I have a fringe – they are amused by this.  I was quite tired after my first day though but am glad to be back – although I probably won’t be glad to be back once they start letting me do some actual work haha

Funny thing happened at work that first day.  I was bored so I was browsing the Internet on my break and I had my weekly look at the Cat Protection League cats for re homing section that I check out to see if there is anything that remotely resembles my cat Charlie who had been missing for nearly 6 months.  We had pretty much convinced ourselves that he was not coming home.  I saw a cat which looked a bit like him so I called the girl to ask a few questions about him.  First thing she said was that the cat was found in Blantyre which is 8 miles away from me, so I thought unlikely to be him.  She asked me some questions and the more I answered the more she went “hmmmm” and then she asked me to give her a few minutes till she called the cats foster-er.  2 mins later my phone rang and the foster-er is telling me that the cat I am describing is identical to the cat she has sitting in her living room.  My heart almost jumped out of my mouth at the thought of it being him….so we arranged for me to go straight to her house after work to see the cat so I could see for myself if it was him.  All the way there from work I convinced myself it wasn’t him but when I walked into the house and saw him lying on the couch there was no mistaking my boy Charlie.  To say I was deliriously happy would be an understatement – I was crying tears of joy and the little bugger just sat there like “hey mum where have you been”.  So he came home with me there and then, is now grounded for the remainder of his 9 lives and is happily snoozing at the bottom of my daughters bed where he always sleeps.

So, yesterday I got on board my horse for the first time in 4 months.  I was delighted that when I tried on my riding hat Thursday, there was no pain so immediately confirmed my riding lesson with Dawn for first thing Friday morning.  Kev came with me to photograph the event and off we went, having dropped the kids off at school and headed straight to the yard.  I was like a kid at Xmas I was so excited.  He had not been ridden for 2 weeks over the holidays and had been kept in his stable for a week seeing as he had the start of some mud fever and I didnt want it to get any worse.  So I lunged him first which is just as well cause he was like a bucking bronco for 1o mins on the lunge.  So I mounted up and we had a lesson with Dawn and it was knackering, it was sore,  my position was awful, I was red in the face and completely out of breath but it was the best half hour of the last 4 months and I loved every second of it.  Today, every inch of my body is aching, with the exception of my toes possibly, and I feel as stiff as a board but at least my body has remembered what muscles we are supposed to be using when riding.  I have a long way to go to get back to where I was 18 months ago but it is a start and I have every confidence in myself and my RI that I will get there  Tomorrow I am going for a hack with my friend Francis and I have another lesson booked for Monday.  I am back in the game at last.

First ride in 4 months

Big long catch up!

Dylan feeding an Emu in the Lake District last year

First of all Happy New Year fellow bloggers, its been a while so here is my catch up.

OK, the staples are out…it was not as bad as last time with the pain and the screaming and the crying, but it was still pretty sore and there was lots of Mr Hevs hand squeezing going on.  Bless him he never complained once either.  My head is still full of scars and feels weird and itchy.  My head is still a tad swollen , although not the extent it was when I got my staples out.  I have been making daily attempts to fit my riding hat on my head ever since the staples came out and we are getting there…I reckon another few days and I will be able to ride my horse again.  In the meantime I have been at the yard every day grooming and spoiling him with treats.  Just to be around him at the moment is great and to be able to be at the yard, chatting to my riding friends, watching them ride their own horses, catching up with everyone…it’s been fantastic.  I have booked a riding lesson for Friday with my instructor, just a nice easy walk and trot session to begin with because my leg muscles will be screaming afterwards as I haven’t ridden for4 months.

Horror upon horror I have put on weight too!  People keep stating that “what did I expect laying around doing nothing for 4 months” but I still feel crap about it.  I am not back up to a size 16 after previously being a comfy 12/14 with tone.  It doesn’t help that all my muscle has died and will need retrained and toned up again, this just makes me feel even fatter.  I have had to order some new clothes for going back to work and cannot yet wear the nice items of clothing that my mother in law bought me for Xmas.  It will come off soon enough with regular riding and doing other stuff, I may go to the gym for boxercise classes or similar just to help.  The not smoking anymore is not helping as i am snacking more to compensate although I am very aware of this so try not to do it too much.  I have now gone almost 4 weeks without a cigarette and the kids are very proud of me.  That alone is worth it, never mind the health benefits.

I have become much more aware of the aspergers affect on my son over the holidays too.  I am starting to figure out what triggers his frustrations when he completely shuts down and will climb under his bed rocking himself back and forth and talking to himself.   All I can do is leave him to get on with it until he chooses to come out and talk to me which took several hours after a day at his grans where his gran and his aunt (my sister) were both trying to get him to put his shoes on and leave the house.  The problem was that they were both trying to encourage him, be firm with him, yell at him and threaten him with discipline at the same time while he refused to put his shoes on. His younger cousin was running around with his sister, the noise levels were going up, 2 people were yelling at him and Dylan cannot cope with this, the end result being he shuts down.  He cursed at his Aunt and his Gran and just kept repeating the same “screw you” phrase over and over again until they left him alone.  Mum got really upset, my sister then topped it all off by making the statement “he thinks because he has aspergers he can get away with murder”.  Later I would spend 20 mins screaming at her for this foolish foolish error in judgement..no lets call it what is is…fucking moronic and stupid statement.  I told her if she ever said that to him again she would never clap eyes on him again and I would personally shove my fist down her throat.  I understand that we all have to deal with this and its new to us all, but what a fucking ridiculous statement to make to a 12 year old child.  I have very little time for my sister, she is an ex heroin addict, very needy and lazy and never thinks before she opens her big mouth.  I feel great pity for my nephew who is only 2.

Anyway, enough sister bashing.  We got Dylan home and I tried to speak to him but he was too wired so I left him to calm down and then we had a chat about how he has been feeling .  He got really upset at the thought of making his gran sad and felt bad for the “screw you” comments but said he didnt know why he said it.  He did make it understood that he felt frustrated because there was too much going on around him.  I had a chat with my mum which ended up an argument.  My brother has 2 kids who are autistic with different needs for both of them but he lives 250 miles away and they see my mum twice a year for 2 days if they are lucky.  My mum decided it would be a good idea to compare my child with my brothers children and to say that “Alans kids would never speak to me like that!” to which I stated how the hell would she know because she rarely sees them, she has no idea what my brother deals with having 2 autistic kids, nor can she expect me to be an overnight expert and know exactly how to deal with it all given that I had only found out my son has aspergers a week or so earlier.  We didn’t speak for 2 days and then for 2 days after that every time we did try and speak we would end up fighting.  My mum just cannot accept that I don’t have all the answers for this one, I have to play it by ear and learn how to make it easier for my son, not her.  She is an adult and will need to learn how to deal with this too.  We did eventually make up though but its been a very stressful holiday period this year.

So we have learned that Dylan does not cope well with bustling noises in small places, he is fine at a large environment, say a funpark, but in the sitting room of the house, calm is required to keep him from getting frustrated.  It does help if he is the one making the noise though, as he will happily sit in his room and listen to Linkin Park at full volume while playing his X-Box 360, it just appears to be a probem when it is a noise he cannot control.

We have also learned more about the eating situation – he cannot cope if he feels he is being forced to eat something he does not want to eat. He must decide on his own that he wishes to eat it and no amount of encouraging or bribing will work and this is more likely to make him not want to eat it.  I am not so worried about this as he does eat quite healthy although not varied.  I have decided that next time we go shopping, he will be allowed to write a list of things that he wants me to buy (within reason) and we will go shop for it together. He likes omelette’s (so long as I make it), loves cheesy pasta (so long as Kev makes it), he loves broccoli, chips, carbonara sauce, cucumber, pizza, mince and potatos (so long as his gran makes it).  He will eat cheese and yoghurt too so its not like all he eats is rubbish and e has his favourite restaurant that we go to every month as a family and he loves the pizza there.  He has his best friend at school who he has over during the week and he eats very well so I try and make him something nutritional and tasty in the hope that Dylan will decide that he wishes to try it, this is how he discovered spaghetti carbonara and now he is a huge fan.  So lots of reverse pshychology required for the eating.

We went through a few after school hobbies last year which he started off loving and then suddenly went off.  With the Navy cadets I think it was the staff as he mentioned this to me a few times.  They had no idea how to deal with an aspergers child though and it kinda went bottoms up at the Halloween party when they decided he was helping himself to the sweets beyond an acceptable limit.  I have no idea how this went down as I was not there and messages left requesting they contact me to discuss have gone unanswered, but when he came home he was upset and adamant that he would not be going back.  No amount of coaxing would make him return. We also went through the At Home centre, martial arts and guitar lessons, nothing stuck.  So we are kinda stuck at that one and he hates football so thats a no goer.

It’s a learning process for us all…we have made some progress over the past few weeks.