41/52 2017

Week 41
09 - 15 October




This is the week Jamie turned two. I'm glad, therefore, to have this picture from his last few days of being One.



It's not possible to overstate how excited Jamie gets about builders and associated vehicles. As well as gazing enraptured from the window, we also got to know a group of builders who were doing work on several houses that were so close to ours I never even lost my WiFi signal when we went to investigate. For their part, the builders and the homeowners fell in love with this serious little boy who was content to stand quietly out of the way, gripping his mother's hand, as long as he was allowed to gaze at the "mix mix", the "dig dig", and of course the beloved Van.

The last stage on two of the houses was to lay brick paving at the front, and on both occasions Jamie was delighted to be invited to help with the sand (parental pride moment: that's how confident everyone was by then about Jamie's demonstrated ability to be a very good boy, observe limits, and not make us regret it). He was so thrilled, fetching the toys from his little sand tray in our yard and being allowed to go for it with literal tons of sand alongside his very best adult friends.

21/52 2017

Last week saw Jamie's first barbecue party.



He had a terrific time running around, and we got home with neither sunburn nor food poisoning, so it was a success... better than that though, it was actually quite relaxing. Of course it was at someone else's house and that always helps.

17/52 2017

This bunny was in the Easter box from my mum, and Jamie seems to have really taken to it.



He likes carrying it, cuddling it, feeding it (thankfully only the plastic play food) and periodically heaving it over the edge of the playpen with an air of "you can be free, my friend!"

BADD 2015: Progress

Written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015.

Years ago, I participated in BADD 2009 with this post about an offensive blog comment I had received. The commenter had noticed that, participating in a Bucket List style meme that was going around at the time, I'd mentioned that having a child was among the things I would like to do. She felt it her duty to inform me in no uncertain terms that it would be "cruel" of me to inflict my "seriously broken" self on a child and instructed me to "stay on birth control and accept (my) fate" of not being a parent.

It wasn't the first time I'd had to put up with that kind of garbage. In the earlier years of my illness, in an exchange I've never quite managed to get over, my sister had somewhat triumphantly told me that now I was sick I would "just have to give up" on my lifelong hope to one day have a family. When I made a slightly stunned effort to assert that disabled people could still have children and that as long as I secured the right support it would be possible, suggesting an au pair as just one potential option, my mother joined in with the marvellous line "why have kids if someone else is going to raise them?"

After having to deal with attitudes like that from my own family, I wasn't exactly going to be left devastated by a semi-anonymous blog commenter. On the contrary, having the attack coming from someone I didn't know meant that I finally had a chance to reply without worrying about the feelings of the person who'd just insulted me. But I was still a little bit concerned about what sort of response there might be, considering how BADD posts tend to get rather more exposure.

The support from the online disability community took my breath away. People were angry right along with me. Directly and indirectly, via comments and emails, parents shared their stories - not sugar-coated success stories or bitter tragedy ones, but real stories including the hard work AND the joys and achievements involved. The BADD archive, for every year since 2006, offered a category of posts on "parenting issues", both for disabled parents and for parents of a disabled child. Not to mention all the posts in other categories, written by disabled parents but not about parenting!

I felt more encouraged, rather than less. I learned about all sorts of little tricks, suggestions, ideas, and resources (although if anyone can suggest an active non-Facebook replacement for the sadly now defunct Disabled Parents Network, it'd be a help). I was able to access publications written for disabled parents telling me what sort of support I should be able to expect from Social Services, and how to go about accessing it. Sure enough, I spoke to Social Services and got written confirmation that I would be supported in my parenting role. I'm also pleased to say that having this more concrete grasp of what I'm doing appears to have enabled me to put my family's fears and prejudices to rest.

In October 2015 Steve and I are expecting that baby. We are confident. Our baby, our so very wanted baby, will arrive and will be loved and cared for, and part of that is due to the hope and practical help that BADD unlocks.

Coombe Country Park

This weekend Steve and I had a friend come to visit, and the three of us went to Coombe Country Park. It's very pretty and a really nice place to spend a sunny day. Entry is free, parking is the really quite reasonable sum of £1.90, and access is pretty good as these things go. It's "natural" paths rather than tarmac, so not the smoothest of rides, but in the dry weather the easy access route is very do-able and the medium access was what I would describe as bumpy, but possible with assistance.

I needed assistance three times.

The first time was to go over a bridge. The gradient of the slope up was just a little more than I could comfortably manage... I probably could have done it but there's no prizes for hurting yourself when you're with people who are entirely happy to give you a boost.

The second time was to go down a slope where the path had a deep rut all the way along the centre, presumably caused by a combination of feet, bikes, and from the look of it I suspect water when it rains. It was just a bit too wide for my chair to go astride it, and there wasn't quite enough space for me to go down one side of it - especially once nettles, tree roots, patches of loose pebbles, patches of loose sandy soil, etc got factored in. So Steve took my chair down and our friend took me, and we all made it safe and sound to the more solid path at the bottom of the hill.

The third time... the third time was the most terrifying, but was nothing to do with the park itself. It happened, of course, at about the furthest point of the two-mile medium access loop around the forest and conservation area. My left front wheel started making a funny noise. The funniness of noises is a bit subjective when you're talking about hauling a four-year-old cross-folding wheelchair along a forest track, but this was a really funny noise with more than a hint of ominousness. I looked down, and noticed that one of the two bolts holding the left front wheel unit on was sticking out by just over an inch. I put my brakes on, reached down, and caught the bolt as it came out completely and the whole wheel unit flopped.

Things got worse as I examined the bolt and saw it required an allen key. Although I had two pocket multitools with me, furnishing an assortment of screwdriver heads, cutting blades, bottle openers, tweezers, pliers, etc... the nearest allen key we knew of was in the car. Which was at least a mile away over terrain which in one direction was completely unknown and in the other direction would include going up the slope that I'd already needed help to get down.

I got out of the chair again and we all took a closer look to see how much of a field job could be done with the tools we had available. We hadn't lost any bits, and it seemed to have simply untwiddled itself rather than having sheared away or anything, so that was good. Unfortunately, Steve realised that lining up the bolt that had come out would mean undoing the second bolt as well to take the whole wheel unit right off, in order to align the whole thing properly for both bolts to go in together.

Being out and about, especially in nature-type places, always gives me a sort of thrill that people who've never been housebound don't quite get. Look at me, how daring I'm being, not only out of the house, but a mile or more away from the nearest car. Which is great until the point you're sitting on a dirt path, knowing that yes, that's right, you're an actual mile or more away from the nearest vehicle, and trying to stay calm while someone fully detaches a wheel from the object you depend on not just to get back to a place of safety but to move around independently once you're there.

Of course it could have been worse. There were three of us. It was a sunny, dry day with about eight hours until sunset. We were on an "official" path, we had phone signal, a picnic blanket, and plenty of water. I was hardly at risk of life or limb. I trust Steve, and I know that he has more mechanical ability than I do, and I know that he's read the manual, and I know he won't put me at unnecessary risk. I was happy to let him lead the repair effort, and he kept me informed and waited for my permission at each stage. Even so I was only one notch off a panic attack at the point the wheel was entirely removed.

Thankfully my faith was not misplaced. Within a few minutes Steve had got the wheel back on and we were able to move again, albeit somewhat cautiously and with all three of us continually peering at the chair every few minutes. The rest of the path was much kinder, and bit by bit we reached the visitor centre, got some lunch, and then I installed myself on the picnic blanket within not just sight but wobbling distance of the car.

On our return home, Steve tightened up every bolt he could find on the chair, using the Official Toolkit. Apparently most of them were pretty tight and the ones on the right front wheel were basically immovable, so we don't know why the left one managed to work loose.

The bad news is, now the car has started making a funny noise.

Bank Holiday

The bank holiday weekend managed to coincide with some absolutely magnificent weather, so on Friday we loaded up the car - me with my picnic blanket and knitting, Steve and a friend with more camera equipment than you can shake a stick at - and set off for Wales in search of Scenery.

It'll be a while before the lads get round to uploading anything from their Big Cameras, but here's a snapshot from Steve's action cam:



This is Lake Vyrnwy, as viewed from a picnic spot accessible from the perimeter road. Getting from the parking area to the grass, while only a few metres, was a bit precarious in places. I opted for wobbling rather than wheeling, although I think a fit person in a more sporty chair might well manage. No filters have been added to the picture - the sky really was that blue. I started off knitting on my blanket, but after a couple of rounds I was just sprawled out, soaking up the sunshine and listening to the water.

We considered trying to visit the area by the waterfall where Steve and I got engaged, but the track now has a locked gate across it, so we had to abandon that plan. It's slightly sad that I won't be able to get to it again, but we're not planning to get engaged again, so it's not too much of a tragedy. And it was a bit of a dire track.

So instead, we carried on with a scenic drive along to Bala, with another couple of stops around the lake there. I seem to have avoided getting sunburnt, although that's more luck than judgement. It's a good start to the summer.

Cake (picture-heavy)

For reasons too complicated to explain, I found myself committed to baking a cake for a friend in another country who isn't going to be here to eat it any time soon. The only relevant part of the backstory is that I was meant to make a cake some months ago and made a bloody great mess on the floor instead. It's almost like I got DLA for a reason.

Nevertheless.

Part One was done in advance. I found a recipe, of the sort that tells the cook to get an adult to help them with the oven, and went and bought the stuff I'd need.

I think eggs and butter were the only things I had in the house anyway, and I didn't have enough of either, so I purchased the whole recipe. Using mostly supermarket-own-brand ingredients this came to about £15. Admittedly I have a lot of stuff left over - flour, sugar, icing sugar, vanilla essence - but I'm really unlikely to use any of it. Even if we just add up the things that were entirely used up it comes to over £8. It would definitely have been cheaper, in monetary terms, to just buy a cake.

Nevertheless, again. This is not about eating cake. This is about making a cake.

Greasing the cake tin wasn’t too traumatic. Measuring ingredients was a bit okay if a little messy at points. Creaming the butter and sugar brought me back to that whole "DLA for a reason" thing. But that's okay, because the difference between making a cake and cooking a meal is that I can take as long as I like to make a cake, and it doesn't matter if it's the only thing I do today (I will now stop banging on about DLA. I'm just always worried, when I post about my biannual adventures in cookery, that someone's going to try and use it to report me).

Adding the eggs to the butter and sugar was… well it started okay and then I thought it looked a bit lumpy, but no matter how much I stirred the lumps wouldn’t go away, so I figured, it’s butter, it’ll have to melt when it cooks if nothing else, and pressed on, adding a tidge of vanilla essence, a tidge of milk, and the sifted cocoa and self-raising flour.

The resulting dough was tasty… uh, did I say tasty? I meant it looked tasty. Yes. Looked. Having no great cake-making expertise I did wonder whether it was meant to be dough. If it was meant to be batter then I’d done something really badly wrong at the measuring stage. But I was too messy to Google it, or to take pictures and ask Twitter. So I kept going.

Wrangling the wodge of dough from the mixing bowl was awkward, and then it kind of sat in a big sticky messy lump in the middle of the cake tin. It didn't really look like any kind of proto-cake so I sort of splatted it out a bit. Not squished it flat or anything, but made it a bit more circular and more evenly shaped. I probably should have taken a picture before it went into the oven, but it was already in the oven when I realised that, and even I know you're not allowed to keep opening it.

The time it took to bake was longer than the time I needed to find instructional videos on how to check a cake is done and how to get it out of the tin. I have a springform cake tin with a removable base, so getting the cake onto the cooling rack was remarkably easy. A couple of people have already expressed jealousy about my cake tin. Seriously, it cost less than the cake ingredients. If you enjoy baking, and are frustrated by normal tins, then just get one.

And lo! Cake! Properly baked, not dry, not burnt, not soggy!


There was, however, one small problem.

At just an inch and a half in height, the stage of the recipe that called for cutting the entire cake in half horizontally was going to be more of a challenge than this novice could handle. Happily, I'd been looking for a way to avoid that particular challenge anyway, so it didn't take me too long to decide that actually, I'd just cut the cake in half the easy way, and stack the halves into a semicircular cake.

I mixed up the filling and while that was chilling in the fridge, I had my lunch:


It was very tasty.

Finally, it was time to assemble the cake.

From this side it pretty much looks like chocolate mousse with cake somewhere in the middle...


... but from the other side it looks much more cakelike.


If I was doing it again, I would probably try and get a smaller cake tin. I also think that while the whole raspberries look good on the top, for inside the cake, making it a sandwich of chocolate filling on one side and raspberry jam on the other would work better than thick chocolate filling with whole raspberries added.

I have a great sense of accomplishment for having successfully made a cake. All things considered, though, I probably won't be doing it again. The cost of ingredients, the pain, the time, the cleanup, are just all too much for what's basically a pretty mediocre cake. In future I will continue to outsource all of my cake requirements to the lovely experts at Sweet As.

This is a technical document

Well, of course, it isn't, but I could put words like Cisco and network and voice over internet protocol all over it, and then it would look a bit like a technical document. It wouldn't make any sense, but I can't imagine who'd notice.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, there have been complaints. A particular reader is being a Bad Example To The Younger Generation by reading my blog at work, and apparently I must post more often. It's okay, English is unlikely to be the first language of anyone peeking over his shoulder. Yes, hello you. :)

There now follows a diagram. This proves the technical nature of this document which is entirely work related.



Look, I'm sorry. I mean to write more. I also mean to not just write about disability. I want to write more about my life and what I'm doing, but things divide into two groups:

• Things which are too boring and inconsequential to write about.
• Things which are quite interesting and I want to write about, but after doing the things, I'm too tired to write about the things until later.

Perhaps I should try doing shorter posts?

Today, I did some grocery shopping online. The best bit of doing online shopping when your brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to, is that when the shopping arrives, you've forgotten what you ordered. It's as if some kind of benevolent pixie sent you £70 of delicious food, and there isn't a single item you don't like!

I also had my laundry done. Yes, that's right - don't tell any of the women in my family, but I use a laundry service for my towels and bedlinen. I am a slattern who does not do her own housework. Or possibly a person who prefers not to injure herself wrestling large, wet, heavy pieces of cloth. Either way, in the morning the nice man picks up a sports bag of smelly linen from my house and in the evening he brings it back, fresh, clean, dry, and neatly folded.

I'm struggling with the paperwork for my assistants at the moment - making sure they get paid, and the monitoring that Social Services conduct to be sure I am using the money properly. I set up my systems really well, and my more lucid self has written out clear instructions for how to do each stage so that when I am not very well, I can still get things done. The problem at the moment is I quite literally don't know what day it is. I have "today" and "yesterday". All other days are confused together in a big tangle. So the timesheets and invoices got in a muddle and weren't submitted at the proper times... I think I've unpicked it, though.

Steve and I have been married for nearly a year and we are wondering what we should do for our anniversary. He's been able to book a little bit of time off work and we're looking at options. We have all these ideas - we'd love to go back to the Eden Project, or alternatively there are a few places in London we'd like to visit, for instance the Science Museum - but Steve is so tired out from work, I think he could sleep for a fortnight. We could just stay home and try to put together our wedding photo album. Right now we have thousands of photographs backed up to multiple storage devices, but unless you count shoving a USB stick into a digital photo frame, no album. There are also several guests who we have no pictures of, which is a bit sad.

The book I'm reading at the moment is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I have read it many times - I first picked it up in high school. It's a bit of escapism, I suppose. I have the DVD as well, but I think the DVD won't make much sense to people who haven't read the book because it misses out an awful lot of backstory and historical detail. Some of the "historical" detail is inaccurate but then it is a fiction novel.

I don't know. What else? What do you want to know?

Following technical complaint about the diagram above: (written by evilstevie)
This diagram clearly only holds true for a relatively small number of passwords - above a certain point you are either some kind of memory-whizz or use a password-manager program to ensure the right password goes in the right box. This has to be the case as most applications of passwords also have something in place to prevent brute-force guessing of passwords, either a counter or timer (or in some cool applications, both) to make it difficult or impossible for you to try more than a few passwords. At a certain point on the graph you simply get a flat-line as you can't enter any more wrong passwords and you stop making new ones or come up with a new way of dealing with passwords. Also, I'd like to add that Batsgirl's clearly been around me too much when she considers VOIP usable in everyday conversation or blogging...

Naidex 2012

On Wednesday, I went to Naidex National at the NEC, Birmingham.

I have to say, Naidex itself wasn't as good as last year. Last year, I saw all sorts of innovative products and came home with lots of literature and a wish-list as long as my arm. I also picked up goodies like the National Trust's Access Guide, and was able to have demonstrated to me how much more comfortable an ergonomic office chair can be. A number of stallholders were communicating on Twitter, having actual conversations with people who said they were going to Naidex, encouraging them to come and say hi at their stall, and I dropped in on several of them. There were also a few inventor/entrepreneur types there, interested to hear ideas about what products we'd like to see in the future. I felt like I was the target market as a disabled adult in charge of her own home, equipment and finances.

This year was different. Only one company - PoolPods - engaged with me on Twitter. Their product, while I'm sure it's lovely, isn't really relevant to me - but I thought I would say hello anyway. Except I couldn't find them! Step One was easy, finding them in the list of exhibitors, they were listed under "P" for "PoolPods", simple. Stall G82. Step Two was slightly more difficult, trying to find Stall G82 on the printed room plan, but after a bit of hunting I spotted it tucked somewhere at the back of the hall. But Step Three, actually finding that stall? Couldn't do it. There were frequent traffic jams because a small cluster of two or three people standing in front of a stall could block half the aisle. Add to that the lack of signposting or labelling of the aisles (would it be so hard to have North-South aisles numbered 1, 2, 3, and East-West aisles labelled A, B, C?), the manoeuvrability issues of many attendees (wheelchairs don't tend to sidestep well, mobility scooters are often quite long) and the usual pedestrian traffic flow problems (people stopping for a chat on a busy intersection), and it was nigh-on impossible to follow a planned route to a particular point on the map. Nor was it possible to just wander up and down the aisles until you found what you were looking for - the layout was confusing, the aisles weren't continuous, and stalls faced all directions. There were several stalls I saw twice or three times and others I didn't see at all.

The small, interesting vendors with "everyday" disability products (such as Trabasack and DisabledGear) didn't seem to be present this year. I also felt that there were fewer stalls aimed at "people like me". For instance, I saw umpteen companies offering incredible, amazing off-road wheelchairs, powerchairs, hand-cycles and suchlike. We're talking massive knobbly off-road tyres, aggressive-looking LED arrays and exciting metallic paint finishes. That's great, but these aren't the sorts of chairs you can use for your everyday needs. You couldn't ride them into Starbucks, or a high-street shop, or a work meeting, or your kid's school for the parent-teacher evening. They also probably won't fold down to fit in the boot of the average Ford Focus, either. They're aimed at people who are disabled but who also have TENS of THOUSANDS of pounds to blow on leisure equipment over and above what they use every day. This made me feel sad. I mean, on the one hand it's terrific that disabled millionaires have so many choices of how to spend obscene sums of money, but on the other hand, products like comfortable wheelchair jeans are going to be far more relevant for far more people.

But! That was only part of why I went. The other part was to have the opportunity to meet up with other disabled people, and that was managed with great success. One is a very good friend who I have met before on several occasions, and we had a much-needed cup of tea together that in itself made up for the disappointment of the exhibition. Another person I have "known" and considered a friend for many years, but only online, and my PA tells me that my face lit up like a Christmas tree when I saw her for the first time. Others had familiar names and I'm pleased to be able to add faces. Eventually our group - consisting of two powerchair users, two manual wheelchair users (myself included), one person using a mobility scooter, and two people without any visible mobility aids at all - made our way into a well-known pub/restaurant chain for lunch.

Incidentally, I still get a thrill from that. Us being able to go and have lunch together in a pub is concrete proof that campaigning for equality works, has worked, and can continue to work. There's still a way to go, but it would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.

The meal was not spectacular. The company and the conversation were. There's an unusual sense of freedom when socialising with other disabled people, because you can actually go ahead and talk about disability issues without having to draw a diagram of the welfare/social care systems, and without being pitied, and without having to listen to any ablesplaining about how surely X doesn't happen any more, and the real problem is Y, and if you try Z it'll all be sorted out. No one feels the need to make the stupid jokes about running over people's toes and there's no sense of being the "odd one out". For me, it's also really refreshing to socialise in a role other than as "Steve's wife" - Steve is a nice person and so are his friends, and I like spending time with them, but it's a completely different thing to socialising as purely myself.

Of course we're all rather wiped out now. For spoonies, a look around an exhibition followed by a couple of hours having lunch and a chat with half a dozen friends can have repercussions for days on end. It's embarrassing to think about how long it's taken me to write this post. Nevertheless, I still think that despite the disappointment of the exhibition itself, the day was worth it.

RAF Cosford

This weekend Steve and I did something completely not-wedding-related. We went to RAF Cosford, a RAF museum in Shropshire.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. We decided to invite our twitterfriend @gentlechaos along and offered to give her a lift. This meant fitting three adults and two wheelchairs, plus all the other "stuff" we were each bringing along for a daytrip, safely and legally and comfortably enough for a 25-mile journey, into a three-door fiat Punto. It was a little bit on the tricky side, but we managed really quite well.



We also met up with one of Steve's friends who was able to give me a few more photos from the wedding. That was great, but the best bit of it was going around in a group of four like that - two walking and two wheelchair users. It was a wonderfully normalising experience as it meant none of us were the odd one out.

Being an airfield, Cosford starts off ahead of the game on wheelchair access. It's a huge flattish self-contained area and the buildings are huge aircraft hangars with lovely smooth flat floors that are a positive delight to move along. However, to make it even better, they have a small fleet (possibly a fleetlet?) of mobility scooters and a few manual wheelchairs available for no charge. There's also no charge for entry, although there is a small car parking fee (even for blue badge holders) of £3 per car.

There's a brilliant hands-on area with lots of little gadgets and gizmos that demonstrate, and allow visitors to experiment with, the principles used in different types of aircraft. It's allegedly for kids, but most of the people playing with appreciating the demonstrative devices were 5ft or taller.

The Cold War exhibition is particularly striking, with aircraft suspended from the ceilings in a very dramatic (and slightly unnerving) fashion.

Like most museums, there's far too much information to absorb on a single visit, which is a shame because by the time we next go back I'll have probably forgotten most of what I did pick up. On the other hand, it means we'll be able to go back without it being repetitive or boring, even if the exhibits themselves haven't changed.

Wedding: the party

This is me and Evilstevie enjoying our first hours of married life:


After the ceremony described in my previous post, we bundled into a car with our Official Photographer (Steve's cousin) and went to a more scenic part of the venue to take some nice, couple-y photos. I'd recommend this to anybody. It allowed us to have some time to just cuddle each other and marvel at the fact that we were actually married, rather than having to dive straight in to a busy mishmash of family politics and being congratulated for a ceremony we were still getting our heads around.

This took maybe half an hour or so, and then we headed over for the reception. I had decided ahead of time that I would walk for the ceremony but use the chair for the reception, and I think this was a good idea. Our reception room was advertised as accommodating up to 160 people. Our guest list was about 80 and about 75 came. It did look a little bit sparsely populated - especially as the summery weather saw a lot of people hanging around the outdoor areas - but it also meant that I had plenty of room for manoeuvring the chair, that parents didn't have to worry about where to put buggies, that strangers weren't sitting more or less on top of each other - all of which are good things. If I was doing it again, which I don't intend to do, and if I had a free choice of room sizes that met my other requirements, then I'd probably go for something nearer the "seats 120" capacity for an 80-person guest list.

The reception was going well when we arrived. Rather than a disco drowning out all hope of civilised conversation, we'd opted for quiet chill-out jazz and this worked really well.

We'd invited all the kids (mostly little boys between 2 and 10) to come dressed as pirates. The idea was that this way their parents wouldn't have to fork out for uncomfortable suits that would be ripped and outgrown within minutes. We'd hired a bouncy castle shaped like a pirate ship, complete with giant purple octopus overhanging the prow.

We also had heaps of chocolate coins/pirate treasure on every table, in lieu of favours...

... and our cake table had several chocolate pirates on the beach, alongside their enormous treasure chest.


We did have our Wii set up in one corner to entertain the kids in case of bad weather, or if the bouncy castle was too full. It was set to just scroll through a slideshow in the meanwhile. None of the kids even noticed it.

Lunch was an assortment of sandwiches, and scones with cream and jam. The venue caterers served these in large dishes to each table, a happy medium between the awkwardness of a buffet and the unwanted formality of a plated meal and seating plan. Obviously at this point Steve and I were both making our way around the tables, with the tragic result that I had to eat two scones. Just to be polite, obviously.

You can't put helium balloons and engineers in a room together without there being an effort to get something floating. At our wedding, this was one of the pirate ship table decorations...

... shortly followed by the Stunt Bride And Groom.


We only had one Stunt Bride and Groom which we really didn't want to lose, but we had plenty of table decorations. With this in mind, when a certain young lady begged for permission to take the floating pirate ship out and launch it... well obviously it's irresponsible and we couldn't endorse it, but we felt equally unable to say no. And it did look beautiful drifting off into the dusk.


Technically the bouncy castle was for children only, although at one point Evilstevie and I did, erm, pose on it for wedding portraits that may have had a slight bouncing element.

By the evening some people had left and others had changed into more comfortable, less formal clothes. At Jiva's suggestion, I too had a less formal outfit of black trousers and a white top to get changed into for the evening. This was another one of the Really Good Ideas. My dress wasn't uncomfortable to wear or difficult to manage as wedding dresses go, but it was more effort than my normal clothes and I was starting to get really quite tired. Also, dinner was bangers and mash with vegetables and gravy. Getting changed was definitely a good way forwards.

The bangers and mash had another effect we hadn't predicted. All those little pirates, who'd spent the day hopped up on sugar enjoying sunshine, a big grassy area to play on, and an unlimited-access bouncy castle, suddenly had bellies full of a nice solid hot dinner, and very nearly fell asleep on the spot. It was magic.

The last guests left a little while after 9pm. By that point I wasn't making sense any more, but I was very happy and had enjoyed the most wonderful day.

Guestbook

The wedding looms ever closer. The craft-project chaos of my lounge is gradually turning into stacks of boxes with neat little contents-lists stuck to them, Evilstevie has confirmed his time off work, and really, everything's on track.

I keep telling myself, and anyone who has a tizzy at me, that the venue is booked and paid for, the registrar is booked and paid for, and we have the rings - therefore a wedding will take place. Everything else is fluff.

But fluff is fun, and today's fluff is the guestbook.

The guestbook isn't really a book. We're doing it in the form of lots of luggage labels, which our guests can write on or otherwise decorate as they see fit, and pin to a line at the reception.

I'd quite like to pre-populate the line, to get the ball rolling. So here's my idea. If any blog readers who aren't coming to the wedding would like to add a message to our wedding guestbook, then pop it in the comments, or email me, and I will be able to print it out and stick it to a label.

I know to new readers this may sound a bit "internet! validate me!" - no. If you don't feel you know us, or you've nothing to say, then there's no need to say anything. It just felt a little bit strange not to include the online side of our lives in our wedding day.

Naidex

Following on from my last post, I carried on in the bit-under-the-weather vein for a few days and met with repeated frustration on the balloon-quest and several other things I wanted to push forwards with. It wasn't a great week.

Nevertheless, some wonderfully good things happened - we started to get RSVPs from wedding guests, and Pip has got a decent job that actually uses his skills and qualifications, and Steve had a much-needed full weekend away with a friend. I was able to get quite a bit of rest in, and then on Tuesday, I just turned into an incredible luck magnet.

The first thing that happened on Tuesday, was that I managed to book a new balloon decoration firm.

The second wonderful thing happened - Shopmobility had received my innertubes and my wheels were fitted and ready to collect.

The third wonderful thing was that the ever-lovely Carie, ably assisted by the charming Miss Kitty, gave me a lift into town to collect the wheels. While we were about it we had a spot of lunch and cooed over lovely little baby-hats. This seems to me like a marvellous way to spend a lunchtime.

I should have bought a lottery ticket at that point, but I had to go home and recharge my batteries, physical and metaphorical, so that I would be able to thoroughly enjoy my trip to Naidex the next day.

My PA picked me up bright and early in the morning and we managed to get to the NEC with only one minor burst of getting lost (the NEC is so well signposted that several roundabouts actually have more than one exit marked as "NEC" which is generous, I'm sure, but ultimately not helpful for navigation purposes). My Blue Badge was checked and we were ushered through to the disabled parking hangar, and from there on in... it was weird. But in a good way.

I've never been to a crip-centric event before and suddenly there were these three huge halls full of companies wanting to sell me stuff. Not to prescribe like NHS/Social Services/AtW and other 'official' groups do, and not to find a way of adapting their existing product or service to find a halfway point like shops do. But to actually sell. It wasn't all or even mostly wheelchair users, but everything was accessible and there were enough of us that it felt entirely normal to be at seated height (usually I feel a bit like I'm trying to navigate a foreign world made up of steps and buttocks). I also saw at least one other person with the e-motion m15s, which was nice and made up for the man who perhaps didn't realise how loudly he was saying "f---ing show-off with fancy wheels grumblegrumble etc."

There's some wonderful inventions out there. A few of my favourites were:

• A small phone, too small to be much use as a general phone, but that wasn't what it was for - it had just two buttons to be preprogrammed with emergency numbers and was small and light enough to be worn as a wristwatch (it also tells the time). Infinitely preferable to those emergency-button lanyards that reside uselessly on the bedside tables of elderly people up and down the country.


• Adjustable height kitchen worktops, so that a prep space, sink, or hob can be raised or lowered at whim enabling one kitchen to be usable for multiple people with different needs in the same household - like a woman who wants to sit down and a man who's tall and dislikes having to stoop all the time.


• SafeSpaces, which are basically like indoor tents. Designed with autistic kids in mind, they create a small, manageable, safe place for sleep and timeouts. They're soft, waterproof, wipe-clean, with low beds, and they're anchored to the floor 10 inches from the walls of the room so that the user can't hurt themselves. Inside, there's all sorts of sensory therapy stuff, and it was so soothing... I sort of wanted one myself!

Then there was all the tried-and-tested stuff - mobility scooters, wheelchairs, lifts, ramps - and I remember being thrilled to spot grab rails in a whole rainbow of colours rather than just boring clinical white/dark blue.

A number of Twitterers had been planning to go, and although due to the harsh realities of spooniedom some people couldn't make it, I was pleased to meet up with @GentleChaos and @FunkyFairy22 at lunchtime. My PA, although employed directly by me, has been involved with Social Services for several years, so we decided that she would go and say hello to a few familiar faces in the halls while the three of us chatted. It was marvellous, we thoroughly put the world to rights. It's been years since I met new "internet people", particularly on my own, and particularly meeting females, rather than being one of a couple of incidental females in a male-dominated group. I'd like to do it more often.

Unfortunately on the Thursday morning I woke up with no spoons (expected) and an absolutely stinking cold (wasn't quite prepared for that). Each is making the other that bit more unpleasant. However, once I've shifted the cold and can breathe through my nose again, we should be full steam ahead for the wedding!

Good news

This post is not wedding related. And truth be known, I feel guilty about posting it at a time when cuts and reforms are playing merry hell with the lives of so many of my disabled friends.

I appear to have won at Social Services, and now I don't know what to do with my good fortune.

As part of Steve going back to work, I've been reassessed. Steve's new job involves a much longer commute as well as regular trips further afield, and that in turn means that there's less expectation on him to provide my care.

This is going to get complicated so first I have to explain about Direct Payments.

Direct Payments are paid into a bank account in my name and I am the only person who can access that account and distribute the money. All contracts are between me and the PAs or agencies who I choose to employ. This gives me control over my care. To give a simple example, I could decide to skip showering on a Thursday in order to 'carry over' enough time for a long bubble-bath on Friday.

What I can't do is take the money and spend it all on sweeties and computer games. Social Services closely monitor the account to make sure that it is only spent on items and services approved in my Care Plan. I can't invest it, and it doesn't even count as my money on my tax return. And once it's gone, it's gone - if I have long bubble baths every day for a fortnight and then realise there's no money left in the account to pay the agency for the rest of the month, that's entirely my problem and my responsibility.

Supposedly this reduces the admin costs for Social Services as they are no longer the first point of contact and no longer have to manage the carers or negotiate with agencies. They identify needs and then supply the money. Choosing the best way to spend the money to meet those needs is no longer anything they have to worry about.

So I've been identified as needing 45 minutes of help with personal care each weekday. I have some interviews (sales pitches) with agencies this week and hopefully something will be set up soon. Once it's set up, there's also scope for us to call in an agency carer should I need one when Steve's away from home for longer periods - even if we had to add the extra money privately, the 'account' would be in place.

They've also changed my social care. Previously I got money for the stated purpose of employing a PA for three hours a week to help me do "out and about" things I needed help with. This was about £30 per week - most of it for the wages of the PA, the rest to cover specified necessities like Employer's Liability Insurance, placing job adverts when I need to hire a new PA, that kind of thing.

Now, my assessment says I am at risk of social isolation (the internet doesn't count, who knew) and therefore eligible for two days per week of "daytime opportunities", but thankfully identifies that it would be inappropriate to send me to a daycare centre for two days per week. So what Social Services are doing, is taking the money they would spend on my daycare centre place, and giving it to me as a Direct Payment. It is rather more than £30.

We've identified that I will continue to employ my PA for three hours each week as a baseline, but after that, it's looking a bit blank, because I simply can't think of much to do.

This is apparently an indicator that I have already become used to social exclusion.

I don't just have to use it on PA wages. For instance I asked if I could use it for taxi fares to go to a knitting group or to a friend's house, situations where I don't need a PA sitting right there with me for two hours, but I need someone to make sure I get safely there and back. Apparently I can, as long as I get a receipt, and keep a log of the purpose of the journey (which must be 'social').

The best and worst of this system is that there's no list of approved uses. There couldn't be, because there's so many different things a person could do. I have to think of something I'd like to do, and then find out how much it costs, and then they'll tell me whether I can use my Direct Payments account for all, none, or some of those costs.

It's also a bit experimental. My Independent Living advisor tells me I'm the only person on her caseload so far with this setup. So no clues from that direction.

Ideas, anybody? So far all I've got is an Action Point of going to the library on Wednesday to see what clubs and groups and things are running in the area.

And Up Again

I've spent the last month or so having a bit of an ME flare-up, which hasn't been nice. What's positive, though, is that I've been ill for long enough to be able to identify that it's just a flare and deal with it accordingly. In real terms that means doing lots of things for ten minutes at a time. So, a quick run through of my usual topics...

Steve
Is lovely. He's not enjoying the heat very much (he prefers to be cold and add layers) but we've still been out in the sunshine a few times when it hasn't been too stiflingly hot - barbecues, cream teas, going to the park and suchlike.

Pip and The Boy
The Boy is fine and continuing to grow like there's no tomorrow. Pip, on the other hand, is suffering a bad case of Clumsy at the moment and has managed to sustain two entirely different injuries requiring hospital treatment in as many weeks (and on separate occasions). He says the most upsetting thing is that he is currently perfectly capable of making a cup of tea, but lacks the capacity to carry it anywhere. I desperately hope this is not the set-up for a "scald" injury to complete the set.

Wedding
Plans for the wedding are coming along nicely. We have fixed our date in May next year, booked the registrar, made an appointment to give notice, and chosen and booked our venue. We've also forked over the deposits, which means that even if we don't manage to decide on anything else, we now have everything we need in order to get legally married.

However, we haven't paid the premiums for an Approved Premises wedding (extra for venue hire, extra for the registrar to travel, etc) just to turn up in jeans and t-shirts and drag a couple of witnesses in off the street. So there's still an awful lot of planning to be done.

Business
The business is off the ground now, with "real" paying customers who didn't start off as personal friends, a website, some wonderful artwork, and best of all some really interesting jobs. Some boring ones as well, it is true, but one research project in particular I had an absolute whale of a time doing.

I really want to show it all to you, not least to give due credit to the terrific people I've worked both for and with. Also this blog, with regular-ish content, quality comments, and four years of archives, has a respectable Google PageRank which would give my business website quite a boost if I linked the two. But for now at least, I really want to keep my business and personal online identities as separate as I can.

Wheelchair
Allegedly due tomorrow morning. However given the previous issues and timelines so far (applied week1 February, assessed week1 March, approved week3 March, test drive week2 April, placed order and deposit week2 April, now it is week2 June) I am trying to not hold my breath and haven't booked any activities yet. However my friends and I have been coming up with lots of ideas for things I could do, including but not limited to:

• The Cancer Research UK Race For Life next year - I won't be getting a winning time, but I should be able to accompany a friend who is expecting to walk around.


• The Stratford Town Walk which is allegedly both free and accessible.


• Getting a Disabled Person's Railcard and going places by train.


• Going around Ikea and only needing one assistant.

Even if I don't do any of that, though, it will be nice to just go round the block and post a letter without needing help to open the garage or someone else to push or drive me. I fully expect Steve to have stuck a proximity tag on me within a month.

Anger at Current Affairs
Um, let's not. Even if I could whittle it down to just one target, we would be here far too long. Let's just say that I don't feel very represented by the new Cabinet (not that the old one was better) and can only hope that the extraordinary wealth and privilege that they do represent brings with it a sense of noblesse oblige.

Indescribable

In my last post, I talked about the Twitter event Such Tweet Sorrow, a production of Romeo and Juliet being played out in real time over five weeks.

We're one week in and it's still a really tricky concept to describe. The biggest problem is that first, you have to describe Twitter itself which is still really hard to do for anyone who isn't already using it. Trying to describe the Such Tweet project itself, on top of that, before you can even begin to talk about how much you're enjoying it, what you think about it, how it makes you feel... it's nigh on impossible.

I'll give it a go anyway. I think Such Tweet Sorrow is most like an immersive fantasy game along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons or perhaps Knightmare. A bunch of people improvising within their given character descriptions interact with you; you are supposed to pretend that they really are those characters. Except that it doesn't require special equipment, like-minded friends, pens and paper, or time set aside to play, and it continues 24/7. As a Twitter user, it slots almost unnoticeably into the life which I am already living.

That's the bit that makes it a little disturbing. Due to the circumstances of my life - I am disabled, I work alone from home, I cannot drive and am waiting on a decent wheelchair - most of my interaction does happen online, and as such I do have several good friends (not to mention clients and suppliers) who I have never physically met.

There are also dozens, if not hundreds, of people who I consider to be part of my wider social circle. We're not friends in the sense of having heart-to-heart private conversations about our innermost feelings, but there's some shared interests, some common acquaintances, and we've had a couple of brief direct exchanges - we're friendly even though we're not bosom buddies. This is the area that the Such Tweet cast fall into. The stream of posts about whatever happens to be on their characters' minds - the progress of a football game, a trip to the pub, a crap day at school - is melding seamlessly into all the other incoming tweets about Dr Who, Mad Cap'n Tom's bid for Parliament, current affairs, Naidex 2010, and biscuit preferences. Every so often, I reply to an incoming tweet. Every so often, someone replies to one of my tweets. It's incredibly normal social networking and an outsider with no knowledge of Shakespeare or the Such Tweet project would probably not be able to pick out the fictional characters.

With it all being mixed in, the line between characters and real people gets blurred. I am reacting to the characters' tweets in the same way I would react to those of real people. The most striking example of this for me so far was yesterday, when @laurencefriar sent out a tweet about meeting some "courageous" disabled football supporters. Anyone who knows the Ouchers knows that the best way to get our hackles rising is to start throwing around words like "courage" "brave" and "inspiration" and I simply couldn't help the way it made me feel (ie: angry). I had to seriously remind myself that @laurencefriar is a made-up character who is supposed to be the sort of person who comes out with tripe like that. Then I thought, well, I'm supposed to respond, an emotional response to well-performed characters is entirely permissible and means the actors are doing their job right.

But it's made me start to worry about what's coming. The writers have admitted that they're not observing a religious adherence to Shakespeare's storyline, but it's safe to say that the basics remain in place - which means it's not long to go before there are a couple of violent deaths in my social circle.

If I find myself getting angry about "courageous" then who knows how I'll react to that?

Still on cloud 9

I rather suspect that, no matter what happens in my life, I'm not going to trump my last post for a while yet. Even the business start-up, while consuming a fair chunk of my time, somehow doesn't seem quite as significant at the moment. A really big thank you to everyone who left a comment or phoned or emailed to congratulate us. The whole thing has been like a dream.

Now, of course, I have the new challenge of organising a wedding.

I've made a start on the research and found that it is possible to get legally wed for the grand total of £103.50 and two half-hour appointments a couple of months apart. This consists of £30 each in fees at the first appointment when we give notice of our intention to marry, and then second appointment and the rest of the cash covers the basic civil ceremony at the Registry Office (Mon-Fri only, maximum of 8 guests) and a copy of the Marriage Certificate.

From there it scales up, sometimes very rapidly. So far the biggest single number I've seen has been somewhere in excess of £5,000, although in fairness that was at a smallish hotel where they reserve the entire premises for the day, night, and morning after, including all the bedrooms, for you and your guests.

I like the idea of having it all in one place, no chances for anyone or anything to get lost or overlooked betwixt ceremony and reception, so I've asked every "approved premises" in my district to send me (a) their wedding brochure and (b) their accessibility policy. Unsurprisingly, only one venue has been able to respond with an actual proper access policy document detailing what is and is not in place. Others, when pressed for a response ("Thank you for sending me yet another copy of your wedding brochure. However before I can get excited about menus, I need to know whether I can actually get into the building...") say things like "there's a ramp kept at reception" as if that answers every possible accessibility question there is.

Even the places that I have visited for other reasons and know to be quite delightfully accessible, don't appear to have an access policy. It's frustrating, not only having to ask, but having so much difficulty getting a straight answer. Still, I'm gradually getting some options together.

I have some very definite ideas about the timetable and the food and drink. I have some less definite ideas about attendants (a decision likely to be made on who is close and sensible enough to offer support, rather than on family ties or a popularity contest) and guest list. Oh, that reminds me, if you are fairly certain you should have an invite, you should probably email me, because so far I'm not even sure I've remembered all of the family members let alone all the friends.

Things I have not even begun to properly think about yet: rings (yes), clothes (not a meringue), hair (up), makeup (photo-proof yet not orange), flowers (no idea), table decorations (even less idea), photos (Steven, you are NOT spending our wedding night on the post-processing), music, transport, guest accommodation, invitations, and probably a dozen or so other things. I hear there are books for this sort of thing. No idea which ones are worth reading, though. And so it goes round, and round, and round.

Assisted Suicide

I've tried to stay more or less out of this one, but today brought the news that the law on assisted suicide has been 'clarified', although the level of that clarification is slightly unclear and seems to consist mainly of a list of factors that will be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to prosecute.

Firstly, let's remember we're talking about assisted suicide, assisting and enabling people to kill themselves. We are not talking about euthanasia, which is actually doing the killing. Big difference.

Secondly, let me state for the record that I am NOT suicidal and have no intentions to kill myself or enlist others to do the job for me. I have reasons to get up in the morning and am looking forward to tomorrow, next week, next year and beyond.

However, I can understand why some people might want to kill themselves, and how it is possible that they can feel this way with a mindset of 'calm and rational' as opposed to 'agitated and desperate'.

I can also understand that on a practical level it is a difficult thing to actually physically do and succeed with if you are impaired in some way. You need to be sure that your chosen method will be effective, and that you will not be thwarted by a lack of physical strength, or an inability to get hold of the necessary materials, or by a carer calling for an ambulance instead of allowing you to get on with it. A failed suicide attempt is in many ways worse than a successful one, as you have to continue to live with not only the factors which made you feel suicidal, but also the shame and frustration of failure, not to mention any additional impairments caused by the attempt.

So I understand that, since you'll need help, you want to be sure that those close to you won't be prosecuted for allowing and enabling your suicide - although I draw the line at anyone else actually carrying out the act.

But. Any kind of blanket law saying "this is legal, that is not legal" wouldn't work. It would be open to too much abuse. Which is why, although today's clarification seems at first glance to just be a fudge, I quite like the way they've done it.

Partly because there are so many different situations, so many factors, so many shades of grey. There needs to still be case-by-case consideration.

But mostly because it forces people to take the risk of prosecution, and therefore forces them to think really, really carefully about whether it is a risk worth taking.

You see, it's a big and serious undertaking, to help somebody to end their life - or indeed to ask for that help. It should never be a quick decision. It should not be taken lightly.

If, as an incurably ill and suicidal person, you know that there is a risk that your loved ones may be prosecuted for helping you, you'll think long and hard before ever bringing it up. If, as a loved one, you know there's a risk you may be prosecuted, you'll think long and hard before agreeing to take that risk. If, despite the risk, you both go ahead anyway, then it demonstrates how important you think the issue is.

If the suicidal person and their helper look at today's guidelines and, for example, rewrite the Will to ensure that the assistant does not stand to financially gain from the death (and remember that in many cases the assistant is the next of kin and most likely to gain, that's a big something to give up) then that also helps to demonstrate that they have both seriously considered the issue, the outcome, and what is most important.

I think forcing this kind of consideration helps.

I still don't like the idea and I still don't think it's one I'd go for myself, but the way they've gone about the clarification makes a sort of sense to me.

Second Job

Yes, that's right, in these darkened times when there are many more jobseekers than jobs available, I'm being a greedy git and deciding to have TWO at once.

Okay, so they're both part time - the existing one at 17.5 hours a week and the new one at somewhere between "a couple" and "a few" hours - and even the combined pay wouldn't be enough to lift anyone without financial support from a partner out of benefits dependency - but nevertheless.

As you've probably guessed, precise details are at a hazy stage with a start date of "once the paperwork's done", but I've filled in my bit of a P46 and been shown around the system I'll be using so I don't think I'm jumping the gun in considering the job to be a definite thing.

It's very flexible and it's mostly working from home, data entry and envelope stuffing and suchlike, which is why I'm able to take it on. There's no way I could do more hours in my main job, since by the time I crawl into my taxi at the end of an afternoon I am utterly shattered, barely capable of talking, and wincing at every pothole and speedbump on the way home. But the idea with the new job is that once I've got home and had a couple of hours to rest and get a bit of dinner inside me, then if I feel up to it I'll be able to sit up and do anything between twenty minutes and two hours of additional work. And if I don't feel up to it, or if I have something else to do, then I won't. I can stop the clock for a break whenever I need to, and I can take that break in the quiet and comfort of my own home which is so much more effective than trying to screen out the noise and busy-ness of a hectic office. I won't have to force myself to keep going until a taxi arrives, either, which will be nice.

Of course, the first person I called to tell was my mother... of course, her immediate reaction was a comparison to Sister Dearest and her Fabulous Career*. Admittedly I know by now that any phone call to my mother has to include several minutes listening to the praises of SD and her FC being sung, but on this one occasion I really could have done without it - I wanted to play the game where we at least pretend to be proud/congratulatory/encouraging of my hard work and minor accomplishments.

Happily, Steve and my friends are more than capable of bolstering my self esteem when it flags and did a sterling job of being pleased for me. Even my current boss congratulated me, once I'd assured him that it was a second job and I wouldn't be leaving his company (his immediate reaction in the seconds before I'd fully explained that bit thoroughly reassured me that I am valued within the workplace).

I've got a desk set up at home now, complete with two desk tidys, a coaster, and my Sunshine Buddy. I have a wireless mouse but I need a mousemat as it's a glass-topped desk. Well, I say need, it's possible to get by just using a bit of paper. But I'd like a proper mousemat. In fact in an ideal world, I'd like to try one of those ones with a padded bit for your wrist but they seem a bit pricey and I'm not sure how much difference they make. If anyone has any input I'll be happy to hear it.

Access to Work are being their usual cagey selves - you can't determine what help you may or may not be able to get through them until you're fully signed up to the job, have a start date, and have completed an application for support - but I've been told that I am "eligible to apply" for support with this job as well, and have two separate support packages running concurrently, although they'll probably be handled by the same person. I'm hoping to get the same deal on transport (I'll be working from home but I will have to go in every so often) where I pay an amount equivalent to a bus fare, and AtW top it up to a taxi fare because I can't use a bus. Equipment-wise, I'll need to have a good think - as a rule, they'll provide anything that is (a) to be used solely by me, AND (b) an item or a specific version of an item needed because of disability-related reasons. So for instance they won't supply biros but they might supply any of these for someone who has trouble with their hands. Ideas?

* Fabulous Career = working for several large national chains of bookies, encouraging gambling addicts to indulge their addictive behaviour. Since she falls in the narrow margin where she can write her own name but is unable/disinclined to get a different job, she has over the course of several years worked her way up to local management. While I realise I'm hardly a high-flyer myself, I can't get quite as excited and impressed by this as my mother seems to.

Not the WI

Not a great success.
Originally uploaded by girl_of_bats

Today I decided to make chocolate cornflake cakes, having in my kitchen both a box of cornflakes and a packet of chocolate bars that were getting dusty because no one fancied eating them.

Turns out, it IS possible to balls-up chocolate cornflake cakes. Who knew?

Things to remember for next time:

• Don't use snack bars of Galaxy and expect them to behave the same way as cooking chocolate.



• Don't look at the semi-molten, unappetisingly pale brown mess and decide that it's a good idea to add cocoa.



• Don't look at the consistency of your now dark-brown mess and decide that the best way to make it runnier will be to add a bit of water.

With a nod and a grin to Carie, multi-prize winner at her village show and a marvellous friend despite being my polar opposite in so many ways.