HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Hahaha…I know we’re now in March and I can only apologise
for my tardy greeting. Things have been
a little up and down on Planet Cazzy of late.
Between October and Christmas I seemed to come down with every lurgy
under the sun, so creativity was a little bit lacking :(
Those who know me on Facebook will have some idea of the
chaos in my life, but for those who don’t, I shall do my best to fill you in!
My aim for 2016 is to lose some weight and do more
exercise, so in mid-January, I joined my local Slimming World group. The first few weeks were hard going, trying
to get my head round what I can and can’t have and cutting all the crap foods
out of my diet!
I’m into my eighth week now, and it’s going reasonably
well. The weight is coming off gradually
instead of in big chunks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
In terms of exercise, I’ve started going swimming, which
is great. I can usually get about 30
lengths of the pool in and I always feel really good afterwards!
Some of you on here will know that I am a keen ice
skater. My nearest rink is about 15-20
mile away, so I don’t get to go as often as I like. I used to love roller skating when I was a
teenager, and me and my school friends used to go to a roller disco at our
local leisure centre every Saturday morning – it was a lot of fun!
Keen to take up roller skating again, I started perusing
the internet looking for a pair of decent skates. I’m a bit retro and wanted quads, and came
across a company called “Rio Roller”, who specialise in fashion quad skates for
women.
The only trouble was picking a pair, as there are so many
funky styles to choose from. I found a
skate shop locally selling them so I went down to check them out and hopefully
buy a pair. They didn’t have the
particular style I wanted, but I chose the black/gold ones from the “Varasity”
range, I thought they were cool, and £60 wasn’t a bad price either.
Now all I had to do was find somewhere to skate on them!
My UK-based followers will know just how shit the weather
has been this winter with all the torrential rain and flooding. Where I lived missed the flooding, but
outdoor skating was not on the cards.
Recently though, I found out that my local leisure centre
still ran a roller disco, although on a Sunday afternoon. I thought “great”, now I have a chance to try
out my skates and see how much I can remember!
The session runs from 3pm to 5pm. It’s mainly all children, but there were a
few adult skaters there besides myself.
Quad skates definitely take some getting used to, especially when you
are used to ice skates. It certainly
took a good half hour or so before I felt reasonably confident with my forward
and backwards crossovers!
The only issue was stopping.
Most videos I had seen YouTube recommend the t-stop or
dragging one foot behind the other. This
is reasonably easy to do on ice skates, but not so easy dragging the wheels of
quad skates. I’d been doing a bit of
snow-ploughing up until that point which I’d been finding reasonably easy to
do, but then I made a beginners error and tried to use “both” front stoppers to
stop … not a good idea!!
I’m still not exactly sure how I actually managed to do
it, but I remember going up on my front stoppers, overbalancing and then going
from vertical to horizontal in a matter of seconds, face-planting the
deck!!! I struck my chin on the floor
and gave myself whiplash, and I landed awkwardly on my left thumb and grazed my
left knee.
I managed to pick myself up off the floor, but I was a
little shaken and dazed so I went to sit down for 10 minutes to compose
myself. One of the other adult skaters
came over and asked if I was okay, stupidly, I said “yes” :/
My knee was grazed and sore, and my thumb was throbbing
and starting to bruise. I shrugged it
off and carried on skating, determined not to let it dent my confidence.
About half an hour later, one of the other skaters
suggested skating round the rink clockwise to “give the other muscles a
workout” which we all agreed to, although I can’t say I enjoy skating
clockwise. I find that trying to
crossover from left to right doesn’t come naturally, and as a result, I clipped
my wheels and took another tumble!
I landed on my other knee, but my left thumb also took
another knock!
Again, I was asked if I was okay, and laughing, I said
“Yeah, now I have a matching set!” (referring to my grazed knees)!
When I got home, both my knees were very sore and my thumb
had bruised spectacularly and was throbbing.
My other half thought it was probably just bruised, but said that I
should “keep an eye on it!” I didn’t
sleep particularly well that night.
The next day at work I regaled my colleagues of my
mishap. One or two of them were
concerned about how bruised and swollen my thumb looked, and that it could
possibly be broken. My manager
telephoned our local hospital that has a walk-in centre. After describing my symptoms they said that
it was probably broken, but their x-ray machine was broken so I would have to
go to the A&E Department at Macclesfield
Hospital
Frustratingly, my local hospital is a 10 minute walk from
where I work, but the hospital in Macclesfield is a good 20 minutes away in the
car and a trip to A&E would mean having to take the afternoon off work,
which, I had to do as I needed to get my thumb x-rayed :(
I phoned my other half to tell him about it and he said he
would speak to his boss about taking me (I don’t drive), and about 5 minutes
later he called back to say he’d got the afternoon off.
Anyone whose been to A&E will know just how atrocious
waiting times an be. When we arrived at
the reception desk, there was a sign up saying there was a 2 to 3 hour wait!
Once I’d checked in, all I could do was sit, and wait (and watch daytime TV
with the subtitles on). I waited about
40 minutes before I was seen by the triage nurse, and after filling her in and
a quick inspection of my thumb, she sent me straight for x-rays.
I had to wait about 15 minutes before I had my x-ray done,
and then I had to go back to the main A&E waiting room, where it was back
to the daytime TV.
It was a good hour (maybe longer), before I was seen by
the nurse practitioner. Annoyingly, she
couldn’t get the x-ray images up on her computer so she had to go back down to
x-ray to view them. When she came back 5
minutes later, she confirmed that my thumb was broken – I think I actually
started laughing when she told me this!
*AHEM*
She also had to get a doctor to come and check my neck
because of the whiplash, but that was fine.
I’ve been given a splint to wear and told not to do any
sports :(
I had an appointment at the Fracture Clinic on Tuesday
this week and finally got to see the x-rays that I hadn’t seen in A&E and
it appears that I have taken a chunk out of the bone rather than a straight
break!
It’s very painful and I have to admit that the split is
annoying me now, but I shall continue to wear it until the consultant tells me
otherwise.
Whilst this injury isn’t as debilitating as when I had my
carpal tunnel surgery (I am right handed), it has been hard to undertake things
that I would ordinarily take for granted.
As well as not being able to continue roller-skating and
swimming, I can’t do any crafting either, which is very frustrating! At this time of year I’m usually trying to
catch up with some of my outstanding WIPs, and I did have a few projects which
I had wanted to finish stitching before posting the charts. I’m not sure when these will get done now :(
The upside is that I can still chart new patterns, so it’s
not all bad and it gives me a chance to complete half-finished charts. I'd already got quite a few ready to go but
for one reason or another, I’ve just not got round to posting them.
You may recall that I still had a few Download themed
charts still to post. I think it’s about
time I got those posted and out of the way before moving onto new themes! The last chart I posted was for the Sunday
night headliners “KISS”. As well as the
logo chart, I have some additional “KISS” themed patterns to post based on
their face make-up:
I have uploaded the patterns to BOX.net into the music
folder :)
Well, I think I have gone on long enough and my thumb
hurts from all this typing!
Hopefully, I'll have more soon, but until then … keep Kalm
and cross stitch! xx
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