Urine Trouble Mr Fox

When you have a captive audience, sometimes it’s hard for not to put on a bit of a show. Standing in the middle of the garden, a warm wet smattering of liquid splashed across the top of my bare foot. My wife reluctantly watches with morbid curiosity from behind the protection of the double French doors as I put a white disposable cup to my lips.
 
Quickly she turns away, suppressing the urge to gag, shivering silently repulsed. Daughter, with her own matching plastic cup mimics daddies mime to mummy’s distain. Unable to resist, I slowly lick my lips just to lower the tone that little bit more. Down turning my mouth I nod with a mimed approval at the taste.

Mmm ‘Salty’.
 
Without further-a-do, I go and pour the rest of the cups steaming contents in a strategic line along the border of the garden. Through the double glazed doors I hear my daughter call- 'Me help too daddy!!'
 
I do the same with the second and third cup, left over cutlery from last week’s BBQ which never got used. Too small for adults to use, they were a handy receptacle for my wife to hastily pass to me while I filled them in the down stairs loo. Like a two person yellow water bucket chain ‘we’ filled each cup in quick succession, pleasantly pleased I still have the ability to stop mid flow- much to my wife’s surprise.
 
It's the councils fault really, they were the ones who suggest it, and almost immediately the fox got the message once the garden started to smell of my pee. Or at least for the first three days, it seems he’s been successful gaining access to a hutch before, having been chased off on more than one occasion having been seen ‘digging’ at the hutch latches. Simply chasing him away isn’t working, ultrasonic deterrents or repellents may upset the rabbits as well- we are quickly running out of options. At the moment we’re looking at spike strips, which also work on humans, the trouble is that it means getting permission from all three of our neighbours (if either one says no, the spikes will be useless), not to mention its £11 per five meters and considering we have a 15m long garden, it’s going to be a complicated and expensive exercise.

Watch this space.

Persistent Mr Fox

Flying out the conservatory double doors barefoot, dressing gown bellowing in the wind, with a wild crazy look in my eye as I grab a suitably long stick, I precede to shout and yell at a shabby looking mange riddled animal as it plays peek-a-boo round either side of my dilapidated shed. With a scratch and a scuttle it eventually vaults over the rotten back garden fence and disappears into a neighbour’s garden.

Breathless I stand for a moment, ankle deep in thistles and stinging nettles still stuck to the flesh on my legs. Dejected I turn to leave, he’ll be back- he always comes back. Looking up, I noticing my 65yo Irish/ Catholic neighbour watching me somewhat perturbed and perplexed from her bedroom window. It’s then that I realise the belt to my dressing gown has unwound and in my haste to chase the fox out of our garden for the third time in as many days, and that I neglected to put any underwear on this morning. Inside the Rabbit hutch further up the garden, Dawn thumps the floor of her wooden cage mockingly, thanks, I think. Remind me not to try and save from the fox again.

Don’t misconstrue my maniacal moment of madness for a beastly being beater. No, I for one have always been fervent a supporter of animal welfare. For most of my childhood and teens I’ve been fortunate enough to live where local wild life, including Foxes, are regularly seen. My mother would leave peanuts and out-of-date dog food for badgers and foxes in the evenings, and the pair of us would stretch out on loungers under thick tattered tartan blankets and wait for them to come into the garden so we could watch them. While some may say this is unfair to the animals, making them used to human contact and therefore making them too tame, not to mention artificially propping up an unsustainable fox population. I would like to add a lot of the food we put out was also laced with mange treatment.

The last few weeks have been something of a problem for us, living in a more sub-urban area there just isn’t the space of local wild life to safely co-exist with humans. We have two Rabbits, Dawn and Dusk, my daughter loves them, and there is nothing I would hate more, then for my daughter to race down to the living room, open the curtains, and find her beloved ‘rawbits’ strewn in pieces all over the garden. We used to leave them in their run, a sort of low metal circular fence; they ate the grass dug holes, and played all day in the sun and what not. But since having out regular guest, sometimes three times a day, they’ve been confined to their hutch, now a veritable Rabbit Alcatraz:

The other day my neighbour, the same one who saw me in the garden rang the doorbell, turns out the fox has been harassing other people down our street, even leaping into a child’s buggy. In these sort of situations, where a Fox can get too tame, like eighteen months ago on the news, a fox crept though a dog flap and mauled a six month old baby, the RSPCA has to step in. In many ways I sympathise with the fox, its scrawny and gaunt, tail almost completely bald, and obviously starving and desperate. Being trapped by the RSPCA would probably be a death sentence as such an animal would probably be too unhealthy to be rehomed, still, with an average life span of two years, perhaps this is the more humane solution…

BBQ

It’s been something of an eventful few days. I’ve been contacted by an old friend who I never thought I’d ever hear from again. And played host to some other old friend’s on the weekend, and there in the process, discovered a somewhat penchant for food of a savoury-sweet nature.
My daughter while initally shy, eventually warmned to the new guests, with amusing results...

So without further a-do here is my recipe for the puur-fect homemade burger, be it plain or spicy:

You will need to make 6 x burgers:

1 kg of minced beef

1 x tbs of mustard

1 x tbs salt

2 x tbs of black pepper – 1 ground 1 whole

1 x eggs

2 x slices of bread (crumbled by hand)

1 x diced onion- of your personal preference

1x finely diced red pepper

(½ jar x Jalapenos if you wanna add a little spice)

Mix by hand in bowl, pat and shape into six burgers and cook.

For awesome if somewhat cheating smoked ribs-

1x BBQ source of your choosing (the cheating bit)

1 x ts of cinnamon

1 x pack of ribs

1 x ts salt

1x 50g brown sugar

1x 200 ml honey

Mix all and baste with additional layers of honey and brown sugar on ribs. Then store in foil sealed tray overnight chilled.

Whilst cooking in smoker/BBQ grill, baste and layer with sugar and honey, turning every five minutes for 30 minutes. Ensure ribs remain in tray keeping ribs submerged in source.

I use charcoal and then add cooking wood kindling which is soaked overnight in cheap whisky to add a bit of a punch to the smokey flavour...

Enjoy:

Warning: the following may occur should these steps be followed…

Tiredness from over indulgence:

Bloated-ness and trapped w…. daughter?!:

Lesbianism in Rabbits… (Of Course)

Confusion as to which specie you belong to- human or Rabbit?!

And finally sleep….

Failure to do so may also result in…

Tantrums:

Princess Pollys Potty

Princess Polly’s Potty (Andrea Pinnington 2009) is one of my daughter’s favourite books. She’s only two and a half but she’s already really into her stories. Yes, she is a Papa Pig fiend, and we have several short story books, but PPP is a current bedtime firm favourite.

Originally we got it to introduce her to the idea of using a potty. Daughter on the other hand was initially resistant to using a potty, instead choosing to skip the potty all together and move straight to using the toilet- with booster seat.

There were a lot of things I really liked about the book. The illustrations encouraged parent/child to explore each page, picking out little details. Daughter is pretty good with her paying attention and focus, just like her dad, but some books have very bland images which can be looked at only once without the need for closer attention. Good detail is vital to the replay factor of a book. Bedtime stories can be a little repetitive for parents; especially the early years when all the kids wanna do is look at the images. With a good illustration, you can read the same page, like if you watch a good film, and notice something you haven’t done before.

The noise button (HoooRaaay!) can be a little bit of a pain; perhaps if they’d made one that used more than one sound effect it wouldn’t be as bad. But provided you don’t let your child press it whenever they want, i.e. except when the book prompts you to, it can really encourage them to interact and articulate better. Daughter can already distinguish between what potty/ pants PP would like and what she would like, usually very different. The story itself is both informative and fun, with good tips for girls- wipe front to back etc and ade the book a fun interactive experience for me and her. and encourages hand washing. There were quite a few pages where you had to ask and get a response or opinion on a choice PP made, which I thought really m

I think the book really helped assure daughter about potty training, showing that everyone uses the toilet, wears pants etc. Even if she has accidents, the book assures her that this is ok and that she is still clever and its part of her learning process. PP also has a baby sister- me smells the hint of a sequel … ;)? The book also comes in a boy version, which we will probably get when the 'wee' wee man gets big enough…

Gardening

You positively couldn’t imagine a more stereotypical Sunday in the garden today. Having done 87% of the house renovations, I turned my keen (yare right!) eye to our shabby, yet potentially reasonably sized garden. Apart from the strange Swedish style cabin/ shed thing that hogs all the space, the garden has your typical mundane ‘old’ man low maintenance shrub affair stuff, with some non-descript non-producing tree plant thingy’s.

With the idea of maximising re-saleability, as we still have aspirations of turning a pretty penny in lieu of property development. Small or non-existent flower/ growing border beds are good because they give a potential buyer a veritable vegetation-able-ly clean slate from which that can image their imagine-in-edibles (yes I did just type that!) can go. (Exhale)

 

My daughter was kind enough to want to help and/or hinder-now two and a half, potty training is something of a bit hit and piss. (ha-ha, see what I did there) Having peed three times out of her nappy on the wood floor I laid myself not six months score ago. She also did a lovely big poo in the downstairs lav(oh yes, the joys of parenting!). So pluses and minuses, she just about broke even.

The Rabbits also did their part digging up the plant beds, though I somewhat suspect they were actually trying to re-enact the great escape, tunnelling up under the rabbit run I erected for them.

Four hours later, and a lot of false wee-wee alarms, half the garden is now done and no-heat stroke. And to top off my manly graft, there’s nothing like a manicure and hand massage from my beautiful and brilliant wife.

Pass me an ice filled glass of Swedish Kiwi and Blackcurrant Cider, and my day is done!

Ok, Fine! I’ll return my man-card tomorrow… L

StraightNecked-Feck is Dead! Long live Ccwc

It has been brought to my attention that SNF gets flaged on peoples email accounts and gets forwarded to their junk. this is cr*p and Ccwc is back. Yay!

Its time I did something a little different, I’ve changed my blog name and address for many reasons.

Firstly, I have changed, but back to that. Confessions of a care work contractor somewhat limited my horizons as to what I could blog; I wanted to write more about fatherhood, writing, marriage, health and other things which interest me in my life right now. I guess this is a substitute for an actual social life, or a social life where I can talk candidly about my interest and views with people who have either the time, studies to fully understand.

Gone are the days I had the time to discuss into the early hours of the morning the folly of the American dream illustrated in films such as Blue Velvet (1986), or the subtle nuances and gritty rawness of Pi (π) (1998). I guess some eight years on, I realize how much I took for granted those years at college and university where I was in an environment I could study at leisure film, media, and literature.

A hunger I’ve never truly sated. Do not misinterpret my sentiments, I wouldn’t trade my circumstances for anything, being married, being a parent; it’s the single most important thing I have ever done.

Who is straightnecked-Feck?!

SNF(sounds like some form of American Sports Association) it sort of my new Alias. I’ve been blogging on and off for the better part of a year now, and for the life of me I’ve never been clear what I wanted this to be about. For the most part I originally wanted to share my experiences about the industry I work, the good, and sometimes the very bad. Hence the need for Anonymity, but life has carried on, I now have a baby boy, and my little girl isn’t so little anymore. So I’ve ditched my old screen name and Blog address, CCWC (Confessions of a care work contractor just didn’t fit anymore.

I am also more aware than ever that my children may one day read this, and perhaps this might give them a snap shot into the muddled world of their old mans mind.

The name comes from a minor malady I’ve been recently been diagnosed with. I have a straight neck- ‘isn’t that normal?!’ you ask. Apparently not, normal necks have a curvature in the sine, mine does not. How this was caused I cannot say, I have been involved in five, yes 5 x car crashes all involving some form of whiplash. But the fact that I suspect that my snoring, which is linked to my sleep apnoea that I’ve had my entire life, somewhat makes me believe I have a congenital disposition.



Fortunately I’ve been getting treatment, as per my previous blog- Cracking. But I think the name fits quite well, its descriptive and self-deprecating, which comfortably suits my borderline manic-obsessive-depressive tendencies, a slightly neurotic writer, how original!

 


(Mine)                                    (Normal)

Silicon Glove

Being as conscientious as one can be in this age of penicillin resistant super bugs. One if fraught with the challenge of keeping oneself clean and heathy.

Most care homes, (should)have at least one hand dispenser pump, usually in the dirtiest place in the building. No not the toilet, that at least gets cleaned once a day.

No, I'm talking about the signing in book.

For you see, even diarrhoea can mean death for the elderly or ill.

For me, it's compulsive now. I see infection control stations, I have to use them. And it's not just because the alcohol clears my sinuses.

No, it's the fact that in all my life, I have never caught a vomiting bug, and though one time I had food poisoning from un-cooked sausage(a word I still struggle to spell) I never vomited. Begged for death, and felt so cold I nearly set myself alight cosy-ing up with a halogen lamp heater. But never sick.

Hospitals are the worst for me, there are so many pumps, so many infection control stations. I even cleanse my hands as per the twelve, yes 12, stage NHS prescribed hand cleaning process. OCD springs to mind.

But when you have to realise I come into contact with every bodily fluid and excretion you could imagine on a daily basis; with little more then out of use by date latex or vinyl gloves.

Cross contamination and MRSA are always sitting around in the back of my mind, metaphorically speaking.

The side effect of this is in fact less obvious, no not a weakened immune system. After a year or so, i hardly get ill, and my allergies have subsided. No doubt busy with a constant barrage of dirt

It is surprisingly, dermatitis. The skin on my hands, especially the corners of my fingers are nearly always split and dry. The answer came from my mother in law, a product from avon no less, it's called- Silicon Glove. And basically forms a barrier from which not alcohol can sting all the cuts and cracks in my dry mottled hands.




I guess I could of posted that I got some hand cream because my skin was dry. But that would hardly fill a page...

It can be purchased here...

http://reviews.avon.com/5588/33981/reviews.htm

Cracking

A local spine clinic were doing a special consultation offer, and the long and the short of it is, I'm seeing a chiropractor.

The stupid part is, I don't know why I never went to one sooner. And since Ive been going, I've sort of started converting others to the back cracking religion.(I ought to get commission for this)

Being a life long, undiagnosed- until recently sleep Apnea suffer- (basically I stop breathing while I'm asleep starving my brain of oxygen and causing sleep deprivation.) Not to mention the weakness in my right side and stiffness in my upperback.

I accepted that diagnosis, and the necessity to wear a breathing CPAP(looks like CRAP I know) machine for the rest of my life.

Wrong.

Turns out, among other things, the vertebra in my neck are misaligned, changing the shape of my throat causing it to close while I'm asleep.

To quote my chiropractor, Apnea is actually a medial term for something doctors don't know the cause for.

This is so typical of the NHS and most health services. About six years ago I saw this clip you tube, it was an animation highlighting the fixation with only treating symptoms not cures.

The animation crudely illustrated this using driving a car as a metaphor. In short, a town decided to reduce accidents(disease) by preventing skid marks(the symptom) on the road by covering the road in Teflon. In the process removing all the stop lights (the cause, American roads). Unsurprisingly the people making the decisions were also owners of the car repair shops so they had a vested interest in accidents occurring.

Like the NHS, quite happy to dish out pain killers to mask the symptoms rather the address the under line issues.

A simple x-ray of my neck could of identified the cause of my Apnea.

But instead, people like me, and people worst off. People like my brother with a slipped disk who's unable to work and is currently having his rent paid for by the state and is on incapacity. will probably never be able to support himself again, costing the state 16k a year just in housing benefit.

But for the price of 24 sessions- about £700. He can be cured and a productive member of society.

So why why why?! doesn't the NHS refer those type of maladies to specialists like chiropractors let alone offer the service themselves?!? A chiropractor is not a form of alternative medicine, it is medicine. I myself read the tarot and practice Reiki, helping and guiding people on a spiritual path.

I look at all those people with back 'ache' who sponge off the state, who, instead of paying for private investigators to follow them costing thousands; for £30, send them to a chiropractor and prove they don't have a problem!!

That's my rant for the day...

The Process

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Apologies

Yes, i know. Its been quieter here then.... somthing which is quiet... erm....

Anyway, poor excuses. For all my followers, that being one. I would like to apologise for the huge gap between posts. In truth, ive been preoccupied with a novel ive been writing, fictional this time. Not to mention a new addition to the CCWC family, and a minor bout of depression. Blogs to follow on all three.

Work has been stressfull, we have gained a few more staff, and now ive been 'promoted' ive been espected to whip everyone into shape. So far ive learned that Bestality in Polish sounds basciallt the same as it does in english.

Moveing swiftly on- in summery, im sorry, ill try not to do it again, and next time I'll make sure i dont get cought.

Watch this space people... person....

xx

Further comments on ladygogo84's: Jeff Brazier documentary

Reading LadyGoGo84's blog. I just wanted to add a little of my own personal experiences to the smelting pot.
 
Following on from my comment made on:http://www.facebook.com/l/170advLBeoe7XiiLBJLtUOVKgzA;ladygogo84.blogspot.com/2010/12/jeff-brazier-documentary.html
 
I fear that as our society becomes increasingly disconnected and impersonal. There are fewer and fewer avenues for able bodied, let alone anyone with a disability, to meet and form meaningful and lasting relationships.
 
It is a sad truth but for many woman; a night out in a nightclub or pub, can be an endless procession of men, well-meaning or not, trying their luck. It's been allowed to go on for so long it's become the norm and an excepted part of going out.
 
I was eventually lucky enough to find someone who found my besotted puppy-ness endearing enough to agree to go on a date with. So I didn't have to navigate the sometimes scary and difficult world which is the modern dating scene.
 
Throughout my youth, I suffered crippling shyness and low self-esteem. Today's cattle market can be a cruel and shallow place. Women are so over harassed, it becomes almost second nature to reject most men who approach them for the tiniest of flaws.
 
You just can't expect someone to spend the whole of their evening giving every chap who says 'hello' the chance to make his case.
 
Technology may strangely be an answer for disabled and non- disabled people alike, who wish to socialise and interact with other likeminded people in a relatively safe 'environment'.
 
I would come across as timid and nervous, not to mention I couldn't hear what people were saying over the loud music. This left me tongue-tied at the best of times or speechless at the very worst. But through Internet facilities such as messenger, email, and recently Facebook, I could articulate myself, and give people a glimpse of my real personality in a stress free, non-judgemental environment.
 
Over the years and the latter part of my youth I had several, sometimes romantic, sometimes plutonic, sometimes a little bit of both; interactions with people of the opposite sex through one medium or another.
 
Technology allowed me to overcome the emotional barriers I had built up through years of rejection after rejection. With messenger, I could be witty, smart, passionate, charming, and even somewhat romantic.
 
During the latter part of my stint at university; there was this girl on another course we had been mixed with. She was the sort of girl who everyone, even the girls fancied.
 
She wasn’t how they say in the business, just a well-dressed civilian. In her youth she had actually done some shoots in clothes magazines, and while she came across as quite ‘blond’, even though she was dark haired. She was actually secretly very intelligent.
 
There were quite a few far more attractive and sporty and popular chaps on the course who made the local girl population drawl with ravenous appetite. But luck would have it, one particularly hot summer evening. I struck up an msn conversation with her. I didn't really think much of it; she was so out of anyone’s league I didn't even give it much thought. I had absolutely no chance. At least that's what I thought.
 
Four hours later, and she not only gave me her mobile. But was offering to pay for a taxi so I could pop by and give her a 'visit'. I regrettably didn't take her up on that extremely tempting offer. I’m just not that sort of boy, guy I mean, ahem!
 
I choked.

Partly because the whole episode was so surreal I was sure this was the side effect of some drug I'd inadvertently taken, and partly because I wussed out.
 
Pity.
 
So in truth. Technology can allow you to be yourself. Course, if you’re a pussy, that still means you’re a pussy.