Free Chrissy Pressy from dear Dr Speedy. Beat the Rush !

Right my little blogging chums. Here's a very jolly freebie for next year, created and provided by our dear friend Dr Speedy who has given us all a Chrissy pressie by providing a download of a great 2008 ME Calendar with splendid artwork and chuckles.

Go on. You know you want one.

You're worth it................and now for the 'science bit': the calendar also blows all the myths about CBT and GET, so you're amused and educated all in one every month.

Bargain !

Get yourself over there now before they all run out ;-))

Click here for link

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year:

time for new beginnings and healing of old wounds

Thank you for all the support you have shown

and all the fun and laughter you have brought here

during 2007

Love Cusp xxx

Now it can be told

One of the reasons I've been a little tardy in writing post and responding to comments in that I've been busy making more sockee monkee. They was commissioned !! Yes...other people actually wanted them ! ;-))

Anyway, I do like making them and thinking up all the biogs that go wit them and it's lovely sitting in my everso 'umble abode thinking about the monkeys sitting about in other people's abodes all over the place.

This time it was DJ Kirby who asked me to make two: one for one of her sons and one for her niece. She was specific about colours the children liked but left the rest to me. For all sorts of reasons it seemed best to make cuddly soft monkeys so I used a different kind if sock and, because they are for children I felt I couldn't use buttons for eyes as I usually do so I had to find another way.

The soft towelling socks proved to be a bit tricky to work with but I think it was OK in the end and thus Chutney and Pickles came to life.

Chutney thinks he's really hard and sports a mohican a sparkly earring and is poking his tongue out. In actual fact he's a real softie and needs someone to look out for him. DJ's niece is just the girl for the job . I don't know if she likes 'Hollyoaks' but if she doesn't it'll be tough because it's Chutney's fave and she'll hog the remote when it's on TV

Pickle's a lot smaller and younger. He's pink and green stripes with a sort of mask over his eyes and number 8 on his back: DJ's son's favourite number. They both loves trains and Pickle likes to eat Jammie Dodgers. Mind you he is a bit grubby and doesn't like washing very much ---that's why he has flowers growing out of his tummy button

Best Blogging Buddies Awards

Right. Now I've done a bit more wrapping of presents, written another letter to the Insurance Company and been to another school Xmas concert I can get on with the next important thing --- listing my seven recipients for Best Blogging Buddies

1 Seahorse for her positive and beautiful blog and for the way she never fails to keep in touch

2 Amanda for her informative blog that keeps me going in an arty direction and leads me to arty places I didn't know about and because she also keeps in touch and is very supportive

3 To Maggie, who despite having had a really tough year and her own health problems, maintains and bright and cheery blog and has been supporting my blog since it's earliest days in 2005

4 To Azirca who has beautiful photographs, collages and artworks and is always supportive of my work and ups and downs

5 To NMJ who is a clear thinking, yet quirky literary diva who makes me laugh and brings a strange and enigmatic quality to the world of blog

6 To Pixie who is brave and strong and fallible and never afraid to say so and who always pops over

7 To dear Mr Speedy, who despite being rather poorly manages to maintain a brilliant funny blog about a very serious subject and who is now turning to cartoons to make me roar with laughter about a shared malady

I can't really send you a pressie in real life so this is my virtual yuletide gift to each of you.

Now it's your turn to each make this award to another 7 people

* I would also have made this award to dear Signs who has always supported me in blogdom but she already received one from Kahless and I know she's not greedy so she won't want two

David, Goliath, the bastards and the saviours

Dear NMJ has alerted her readers to a very interesting post by Caroline at INSEARCHOFADAM about bullying.

In all honesty, life at the moment is a real curate's egg --- good in parts. On the one hand I have the children who are all excited about Christmas and the joy of buying their presents and anticipating their faces in a few days time when they open them. I have the luck that two people have ordered sock monkeys which I enjoy making when I have the energy and I feel blessed and rather honoured to think that people who have seen my strange creations on this blog should want to own one for themselves. It's busy as ever at Christmas but it's all good.

On the other hand there is a lot going on in my head about 'the illness' --- the bloody illness from which you can never escape.

Now, at the moment, the way I feel generally is not terrible...it's just my usual state with the odd bit of nausea, headache, tiredness etc. thrown in: the gay abandon and pick 'n mix, selection box symptoms in the day of a life of PWME....but..... what's really getting to me is this bloody insurance business and the constant nagging pressure of being coerced into seeing a psychiatrist when I don't want to, don't agree with all the nonsense that the Insurance people spew out about my need to see him and all the phone calls, emails and letters that go into fighting Goliath. It's there all the time and it's beginning to drain me.

Reading Caroline's post last night signalled to me what this nagging feeling is all about and why it drains me so much: I feel I'm being bullied. I am being bullied. And though it's something I rarely talk about

because I'm 51,

because I have responsibilities,

because I have better things to do,

better things to think and talk about,

because it's in the past,

because I should be OVER IT BY NOW

is that I spent the whole of my secondary education being bullied and the feeling has never really gone away.

I can identify with everything Caroline says about the echoes of the past always ringing in your ears somewhere. There is always a part of me that is on the alert, waiting to be ambushed, waiting to be abused, denigrated, humiliated. I never really think what I've done is good enough, never really believe the good things will last. I do now feel I deserve the good things when they come ---- and it took me years to come round to that, but I still don't trust them just as I have taken years to trust people in RL.

Caroline is pleased she has achieved the goals she reached out for so as to prove her bullies wrong. NMJ, who was not bullied but who witnessed her kid brother being bullied, would like to form a Society for Kicking in the Heads of Bullies.

Me, I'm past wanting to kick in their heads. It's all too long ago. Part of me has given up the fight and just wishes it had all never happened, wish I could still talk to the other person who was bullied with me....the only person who really knew what it was all about. But that's too late too: that person was dead of a heart attack at 39, three weeks before our 40th birthdays --we were born one day apart.

The insurance fiasco is just another reminder of my past; the past I am always trying to escape but never will. I wonder if those bullies have any idea or any memory now of what they did. Do they realise how much their taunts still linger? When I see one of them on TV telling me about whether it will rain tomorrow or the sun will shine does he imagine me watching him and feeling a glimmer of hatred as the old film projects it's frames onto the back of my retina and I feel the fear and anger all over again. Bet not.

*******************************************

And then, on the other hand, there is light in this darkness ----- for who should come forth with a candle, bidding it to shine with a pure clear light but my blogging chum Kahless who awards me with a Best Blogging Buddies Award.

Couldn't have come at a better time, my dear. Thank you once again. Gives me real faith that there is still kindness in the world and strength to carry on fighting

David & Goliath

Not many posts of late. Too much going on. On the one hand I'm still being hassled by the Insurance company about my claim. They still insist I see a psychiatrist ---as is usually the case when they want to try and prove that someone with M.E. has mental health problems such as depression so that they can then say the condition is treatable and so it is possible to eventually return to work. I know I'm not depressed (though there's no shame in being so) and my Consultant has said I'm not. Even so the insurance company want to play this game of Cat & Mouse their way in order to win. Ill or not I'm a fighter and even though it's really beginning to get me down I'll not give in without a fight.

On a more positive note, I have had 3 orders to Sockeemunkee for Xmas presents (one is from that eminent 'Vedette Blogeuse' and renowned author NMJ) so at least I have something positive and jolly to bolster me up in the dark winter days and the pressure of being a little David in the face of Goliath.

PAPER CHAINS

We've been making paper chains from old magazines.

Hold on to your hats.............Christmas is nigh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!