David

Blurry.

by frogpondsrock on August 13, 2010

in Amy,Arty stuff..,ceramics,David,Sadness

That is how I feel today, all blurred and mimsy. Yesterday I felt shattered, emotionally shattered and I missed my mother with an intensity that had me weeping at inopportune moments. It must be quite disconcerting to see a woman weeping into the oranges at the greengrocers.

Amy is being assessed by the early intervention people and she has some sensory processing issues. Veronica will write about this in due course and I wont go into detail other than to say the news reduced me to tears. I see a bright future for my grand daughter as she will be a strong, talented and determined woman but I also know that her time at school wont be easy and that makes me unbearably sad.

My gifted and intelligent youngest child has taken under-achieving at school to a whole new level. His school report is almost a carbon copy of mine at the same age and I worry about my son.

The spouse is as grumpy as usual, though he smiles and pulls me towards him for a hug when I take my teeth out and pull old lady faces at him.

The dog has rolled in roadkill this morning, thoughtfully filling the house with the delicate bouquet of putrefying possum. I am trying to ignore the persistent whining at the backdoor and I wish it would hurry up and warm up a bit so I can hose the dog down without us both risking hypothermia.

This Sunday the 15th of August is the opening of the Tas Ceramics Society’s annual exhibition. It is being held at the Rosny School house Gallery and will run until the 5th of September. I have two pieces in this exhibition and I will post some photos later on in the week as I forgot to take any before I delivered the pieces to the gallery. *doh*

Making a film is an incredibly time consuming and eye straining job. I really underestimated just how much work was involved and so I have temporarily postponed the zombie, mutant fish gorefest. I am working on a project using vision that my son and I shot while we have been driving through the Brighton bypass road works.

I have finished my three week sculpture block and it has been a delight to work with Belinda Winkler. Thanks to the ideas that Belinda shared I am going to make some quite large dragon eggs for installation at Chauncy Vale and I will publish photos of the sculptures once they are fired.

I cant decide which of these images I like best so I have published them both.

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How do you measure success?

by frogpondsrock on June 15, 2010

in blogging,cancer,David,Grief,Veronica

Last week Brenda asked on her blog, Mummytime, “where do you hope your blog will take you?”

This morning I followed a twitter link to a blog post that asked why do most artists blogs fail?

I commented with Interesting point but it all depends on how you measure success. I am an artist and I have a successful blog as well.

So this morning the ideas have meshed and I need to ask the question,

“How do you measure success?”

This time last year I measured my success by my ability to keep those I loved, alive and safe from harm.

I failed to keep my mother alive. The cancer that consumed her was too strong and the strength of my love was not enough to save her.

My love was strong enough to let her go peacefully though and Veronica writes about it beautifully here.

I failed to protect my daughter from my brother and in his pain he lashed out bitterly at my girl and wounded her deeply.

I am an only child.

I am an orphan.

I am motherless.

I am successful.

We have survived the first year and my son is alive.

I kept my son alive in those dark months following the death of his Grandmother. It was touch and go there for a while and I watched him like a hawk.

I didn’t restrain him when he punched the walls.

I screamed back at him when he screamed his anguish at me. I held him as he cried like a baby and my tears mingled with his, I fed him pizza and let him sleep and protected him as best I could.

How do you tell a 15 year old that grief will pass when you are so immersed in the same grief and the tunnel is too long for even the tiniest glimmer of light?

I managed to get through this last year because of my blog. I could write out my grief here. When there was a deathly silence after the funeral and only my closest friend rang me, I came to my blog for solace. When my head was going to explode with all the words I needed to say I came to my blog.

And you listened. You sent me chocolate and clippies, classical music and cards. You commissioned my art work and made me think of renewal. You posted photos on your blogs for me and You held me close and let me cry. You filled my inbox with emails and when there werent any words You hugged me and now we are here together.

My blog is successful and that is down to You.

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Ehlers Danlos, fear, frustration and dislocations

by frogpondsrock on May 3, 2010

in David,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,Family,Veronica

Yesterday afternoon my daughter rang me, Veronica had dislocated the bone behind her knee and it was refusing to go back in. I was full of useless advice and it was a horrible but brief conversation. Veronica was in a lot of pain and I was unable to help her. There was one small consolation though and that was that Veronica was trapped on her chair in front of her computer.

I suppose if you are going to be in excruciating pain with a bone poking out the side of your leg and unable to move, there are worse places to be than at your desk in front of your computer. I told Vonnie to keep me up to date via twitter.

Here are some of our tweets over a three hour dislocation.

@SleeplessNights will straightening your leg out make it pop back in?

@frogpondsrock Nope, will tear the tendons.

@SleeplessNights Bloody thing! While you are stuck there you could look up quince recipes for me.

@frogpondsrock lmao – I think not.

Relocated. Excruciating.

It wants to pop out again.

All the painkillers in the house wasn’t (isn’t) enough to deal with that. #ehlersdanlos

@SleeplessNights now strap the fucking thing

@SleeplessNights not that strapping it will help but it will make me feel better.

@frogpondsrock It’s braced with tube bandage, lots of it. Best stuff.

@SleeplessNights Good. Now please be careful, I still feel a bit sick for you.xox.

@frogpondsrock I am being very careful. Can’t bend the leg at all. Funny – I didn’t do anything to dislocate it, just bent the knee.

It is that last line written by Veronica that sums up all my fears and frustrations with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. The fact that you don’t have to do anything at all to suddenly have a dislocation and be faced with excruciating pain is frustrating and terrifying at the same time.

My husband, son and daughter all have Ehlers Danlos but with varying degrees of symptoms.The Spouse has only started to dislocate in the last few years and it is apparently quite common that dislocations will only start to present in middle age. David is in the middle of puberty and isn’t as bendy as his sister but to date he has dislocated his shoulder, elbow, fingers and his ankle subluxes. He can make a horrible clicky popping sound with his jaw and I worry that he will do it one time too many and bam out goes his jaw.

They all share the same symptoms of nausea, headaches, insomnia, low blood pressure, dizziness, achey joints, pain, stretchy fragile skin that tears easily, slow healing and they are also prone to infection. The Spouse and Veronica also have Livedo reticularis and Veronica and David have stretchmarks in strange places. They all have allergies, excema and asthma, poor circulation, weak eye muscles with a slight blue tinge to the whites of their eyes and I would trade them all in on new models if I didn’t love them quite so much.

Doctors in Tasmania know very little about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and so it is very under diagnosed. Medical students only ever see the very extreme cases in medical text books and Doctors often fail to connect the dots. EDS has a lot of similarities with Lupus and EDS is commonly misdiagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia.

The Spouse has two sisters who are suitably sympathetic towards our diagnosis of EDS but completely refuse to believe that their children could have EDS. *sigh* It is glaringly obvious to me that some of my nieces and nephews are definitely very EDSy and as much as I worry about them, I have to conserve my energy for my own children and grand children.

There are some very good bendy bloggers out there and I would recommend that you click over to Bendy Girl at Benefit Scrounging Scum or Achelois at The Tensile Times as well as my daughter Veronica at sleepless nights.

If you have any questions about EDS or if you think you have EDS leave a comment and I will get back to you and help you as much as I can.

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Birthdays and other things.

by frogpondsrock on January 13, 2010

in Animal cruelty,blogging,David,friendship,Grief,Hope,real life,Veronica

My grandmother is 87 today and Isaac will be one in a few days.

I successfully avoided getting together with my extended family at Christmas.Today we will all be together for the first time since Mum’s funeral. Combined with the fact that I handed the keys to Mum’s house over to the lawyers on Monday has made this past week very emotional.

Tears are never very far from the surface and my men are tiptoeing around me lest I rip their heads off.

Veronica has been busily disagreeing with a “hate blogger” which has provided me with a much needed distraction from myself. The comments section of that blog is a hoot. Accusations, sweeping assumptions,aspersions and arseholiness are the main themes.

It is all very amusing for about five minutes until you realise that it is real people they are ripping on. I am very proud of Vonnie for standing up for what she believes in and loudly saying that by our silence we are giving these stupid hate bloggers more power. Personally I believe in Karma and I cant be bothered with the small mindedness of chicken liver and her pathetic cronies but I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my daughter and say this crap shouldn’t be tolerated.

David is aghast at the ramming and subsequent sinking of the Ady Gil by the Japanese security ship the Shonnan Maru. The Japanese are killing whales in Australian territorial waters and our government is hoping that by ignoring the problem, it will just go away.

I have been very impressed by my son’s articulate and passionate response to the sinking of the Ady Gil. David would love to join the Sea Shepherd’s crew and be actively involved but the ships are vegan and my son is honest enough to admit that he isn’t quite that committed. Yet.

There is a rally to support Sea Shepherd at the Abel Tasman Memorial fountain at Salamanca at 11 am on Saturday the 16th of January.David is keen to attend his first environmental/political rally.

I am very proud of both my children for passionately standing up for what they believe in.

Thankyou for the response to my video of Harry and the pigs. Jientje and Barbara have asked me to make some more videos and so I will. What sort of things would the rest of you lovely people like to see?

I have had the camera out a bit this past week and I think that I might have enough decent shots to post a couple of photos later on this week.

Lastly I want to thank you all my dear internets. I really don’t know how I would have gotten through the last six months without your support. Thankyou.

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The sky is blue today

by frogpondsrock on October 27, 2009

in ceramics,David,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,Love and Loss

I have this photo of Mum and Amy as my screensaver.

Mum and Amy, a few months before Mum died

I look at this photo every day but I cant bring myself to really have a proper look. If I look properly at this photo and look into my Mother’s eyes I feel myself begin to get all teary. So I quickly look away or I focus on my grand daughter’s face instead.

The enormity of the hole that Mum has left in our lives is only just now starting to become apparent.

Thankfully I have stopped crying every time I think of Mum,though I am crying a little bit as I write this because trying to articulate the depth of my loss makes me examine it in more detail than I want to.

Veronica now has two horses and she reminds me so much of Mum, in that she never does things by halves. Mum was an accomplished and knowledgeable horsewoman and watching my daughter with her two horses I am confident that it wont be long before Veronica is the same.

Mum on Prince

I don’t know where I am going with this post at all. I only know that today the sky is blue and it promises to be a lovely day and for that I am thankful.

David has been formally diagnosed by the geneticist as having Classical EDS with a score of 7 on the Beighton scale. ( a non bendy person might score a 1 if they could touch the floor with the flat of their hands) I am not very flexible at all so my score would be a zero.

The cardiologist has decided that a non-interventionist approach is best for David. Yay. I am all for non intervention. We go back to see the cardiologist in late January 2010. The irregularities with Dave’s heart mean that he will have to take extra care of himself and always be aware of the “heart healthy options” which is a big call for a fifteen year old boy who, like his peers thinks that he is ten foot tall and bullet proof.

My mouth is all healed up as is my self esteem. I can wear my teeth all day now without any major discomfort. I have plonked my teeth into the same category that shoes and bras belong, annoyances that must be worn outside the home for the sake of vanity. The first thing I do when I walk in the door when I get home is kick off my shoes, take off my bra and rip out my falsies. aaah.

I have been in touch with the trustees of a local nature reserve and they were quite excited about my idea of a sculpture trail. I was so nervous before I rang them,that I had to wander around the house psyching myself up to make the call. All the angst was for nothing and I was incredibly relieved and excited by the end of the phone call. I am meeting up with the trustees early next February on site. All I need to do is submit a written proposal to the committee and once that is approved I can begin working towards a major interactive exhibition in a lovely bush setting in February 2011. YAY.

I am also excited about our upcoming exhibition Perspectives of Fire and as soon as the invitations have been printed I will publish one here and then invite you all to the show.

I am working on some different bowls at the moment and Chris Jordan’s photos of the dead albatross chicks have really touched me. I am going to make a dead albatross bowl later on today and I will publish photos of it as a work in progress early next week.

Here are some bowls I made last week. These bowls are the sort of thing that I am thinking of making for the outdoor exhibition. If you mouse over the photos you can read the descriptions of what I have done.

I am off outside now to enjoy the sunshine.

I rolled the clay over some gum leaves.

This is what it looked like when I peeled the leaves away. I should have let the leaves burn away in the kiln, because by removing them I weakened the bowl.