Blog Challenge End

Blog Challenge Ends!

Well here we are at the end of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  It has been a strange experience for me throughout this challenge as there has been so many different things that have happened along the way that has both surprised and humbled me.

I started this blog in the beginning of June with a couple of posts but it wasn’t until I started this challenge that I really started thinking about blogging and writing seriously.  The fact that I needed to post every day made me really think hard about what I was going to write about but also made me think about how I wanted the blog site to work out.  I started out being hosted on wordpress.com and after around 15 or so posts I started to get frustrated at the restrictions that prevented me from doing a few things so I started to look at getting hosting and a domain name so I could have more control.

Ever since then I have had a huge learning curve in trying to sort out what different plugins did, how stylesheets work and how S.E.O affects everything.  I am still nowhere near an expert in any of these things but I have learned an awful lot along the way.  I am now looking at trying to learn how to create my own themes and plugins to see if I can customise my site even further making it totally unique.  I have so many different ideas that are coming soon to my blog that I can’t wait to take a little bit of time to sort them out and implement them.  Some theme days may be in order and there will hopefully be some audio/video content coming along as well.  It should be an exciting time getting all of this in there and once I get it up and running I hope it will be enjoyable to all those who are reading at the moment and hopefully it will attract some more people to grow my lovely little blog.

The biggest advantage for me from the whole challenge has been the many hundreds of bloggers that have joined me on the journey.  I have read so many exciting and different blogs covering so many subjects that it has been so refreshing.  I have learned more from these bloggers in the past month than I have learned from the media on TV or the Newspapers in many years.  Each blog is unique and holds a small amount of the writer in them and it is nice to see how each one approaches the same subjects or situations in completely different ways.

Along with that there have been those bloggers who have given me such amazing support along my journey so far and they have really become friends and I look forward to reading their blogs each time they post.  There have also been many great awards that I have received and passed on to various blogs throughout this month which has been a pleasure and an honour at the same time.  I do hope that everyone else has enjoyed their Ultimate Blog Challenge experience as much as I have and I can definitely say that I will be joining in again when the next one goes up.  I do hope that those of you who have supported me so far along my journey will stick with me afterwards and I can say I will definitely be following many of you along for a long time to come.

So if you were one of the fellow Ultimate Blog Challengers then Congratulations on finishing and I hope you have had a great experience. I will see you on the next challenge, if not sooner, so until then:

Stay safe and keep smiling!

Heading in new directions

Heading in some new directions with some new ideas.

As we head towards that last day in the Ultimate Blog Challenge I find myself thinking about a few ideas I have had for this little blog of mine.  I am going to expand out some of the things I have spoken about over the past month and start putting them into place.  I am planning on having a Short Story/Creative Writing section of the blog which will include any creative writings that I want to share with everyone as I got through my journey of self-discovery, heading in a new direction.  I hope that you will give me feedback and encouragement as I am probably going to need a lot of it as I start out from a beginner to hopefully becoming good enough to publish a book or collection of short stories.

The second idea that I was toying with was some video reviews……..Yes that would be yours truly, giving a review on products/books/toys/equipment or anything else that I feel is worth having a look at.  I would not do these all of the time as I don’t want it to be a money making venture but more fun, informal and honest review of something you maybe considered getting for yourself.  What do you think to this idea?  Does the thought of my ugly mug being in front of you make you want to vomit or could you cope with the accent and ‘rugged’ looks telling you what I thought of a certain product?

Finally I had thought about doing a question and answer session to be done as an audio podcast on the blog.  This would be me talking about anything you want to ask me.  It could be about politics, health, spirituality, special needs, being a guy…..you get the picture, it would be me trying to answer whatever particular questions you felt like posing me.  It would be one per week with a small audio podcast of maybe 5-10 minutes in length (Maybe more if it is a good topic).  Do you have anything you want to ask?  Would this sort of idea appeal to you?  Would you be willing to listen to a 5-10 minute piece of audio instead of reading it?

 

You also may have noticed that the site has been changing around a little bit here and there with design, colours etc.  This is because I am trying to find a theme for the blog that ‘fits’ where I think I am with the blog.  If you have anything you would like to see change then please let me know as this is just as much your blog as it is mine.  I want it to be as easy for you to read and interact with as possible.  Kina has already made some suggestions which I am working on but as I am not used to any kind of programming you will have to bear with me.

Well that is my idea head burnt out for the meantime as I haven’t been to bed AGAIN, so I will leave those suggestions with you folks.

Until next time, Stay safe and keep smiling!

9 things special needs parents don't want to hear

Special Needs parents can get grouchy too you know!

I decided to write this post on the different things that have been said to my family and how I have felt across the years that I have been looking after Pretzel.  Some are said with malicious intent and some are things that have been said by family or friends who think they are being helpful but maybe don’t realise how hurtful their comments or actions can seem.  I am sure you have probably heard or done some of these before (I admit that I have before I had my special needs daughter) but there may be one or two things in there that you may not have thought about and they may surprise you.

I am often jealous. You may not think this would be the case but it is definitely true. When I see a 2 or 3 year old who can do what my daughter can’t do at 9 years old (such as talking), I feel jealous and it can upset me quite a bit. My daughter can’t point to tell me what she wants or tell me where it hurts when she is ill and it hurts me. Hearing about all of the things that your child can do is a reminder to me that my daughter isn’t able to do those things and it is like a twisting knife in my heart.  I have sometimes sat at night crying thinking about the things that my daughter will not get to do or enjoy.  Sometimes it is hard to see other special needs children who have a diagnosis because they are more understood by the general public and they often have support networks that they can access whereas I can’t because my daughter has an undiagnosed genetic condition.

I feel isolated. Parenting a special needs child is probably the most isolated I have ever felt in my whole life. Parents with ‘normal’ kids can make me feel very uncomfortable and even comment sometimes that they don’t want themselves or their kids to ‘catch’ what my daughter has. Other parents either shoot you that ‘I am so sorry for you look’ or spend so much time talking about their own child and their achievements that it makes me jealous or fed up.  Since finding SWAN UK it has been a little easier as I can talk to parents of other special needs children who are going through similar situations but, each child is affected in very different ways. Only I understand my daughter and her special needs fully and what caring for her entails. Because of this role that has been given to me, without my choosing, I can feel very isolated and especially if no one has visited in a while.

I am so very, very tired. Most parents will feel this at some point, but parenting a special needs child takes things to another level of tiredness. Even if I manage to get a good night’s sleep, or even if I manage to get some respite, there is still emotional and physical tiredness that comes from tending to the special needs of my child. Appointments with the hospital and doctors’ surgery are not just a few times a year, they may be a few times a month or even a few times a week. I have to do different therapies with my daughter which have to be done every day. Housework, shopping, review appointments for different services, fighting for equipment and services to make things easier for my child are things that eat into the time that I have available. This is not to mention how emotionally draining it can be raising a special needs child can be, it is like a rollercoaster, one minute you are on a high, the next you are plummeting down until you hit rock bottom.  This is why any small amount of help we get or any time to myself is very precious and is very much appreciated.

I wish you would not say things like: “retarded”, “slow”, “touched in the head” There is a strange thing with these phrases as I have heard them used both maliciously and to try and describe my daughter. They are awful phrases for me to hear in any regard but to have them associated with my daughter hurts even more. Please think before you use any kind of descriptive words about children with special needs as they are often hurtful both to the parent and the child themselves.  I believe people should be educated about this and I wrote about it in an earlier post called Is Education vital for key disability issues?

I am only human. I have been to Hell and back in raising my daughter. I have become a better person because of my daughter and I have developed a sense of empathy and patience that I would not have otherwise, however, I am exactly the same as other parents. Sometimes I get snappy and irritable, my daughter drives me up the wall, and sometimes I just want to lock myself away and get 5 minutes to myself.  I still have dreams and wants that need to be satisfied. I blog, listen to music, play on my Playstation 3, enjoy woodcarving, love to read books and watch mind-numbing TV like Family Guy or American Dad sometimes. I have to escape my role as a parent and carer every now and then and it is nice to be able to have a conversation that doesn’t centre around my special needs or my daughter.  Sometimes talking about my kids is the only human contact I will have in a week or even a month of visiting doctors or the hospital, so it is nice when I do see you to talk about other things than my daughter and her condition.

I am frightened. Do I do enough for my daughter? Have I forgotten an appointment or missed something that could improve our situation? I worry about the future for my daughter, Will she ever get married? Will she ever live independently? Will she ever learn to speak? I am scared that she will hurt herself as she is not aware of what danger is.  I am scared that she lashes out violently and hurts someone or she is hurt by somebody who doesn’t understand her special needs. I am scared about money and whether I will be able to keep up with the demands that her special needs carry with them.  I am scared that the services and equipment that she needs may not be provided in the future.I am terrified of what will happen to my daughter if something happened to me or her mother.  I am frightened to think that she will be relying on her sister when she gets older after we are no longer able to care for her. I am scared that one day I may be carrying a coffin with my daughter in it and that is something that has almost happened on a number of occasions.  It is the living day to day with the uncertainty of what tomorrow entails for my daughter even in the most basic sense that is the most scary thing to deal with.

I want to share information about my daughter/It’s hard to share information about my daughter. There are two sides to the coin and these are the choices. Sometimes I am overjoyed that my daughter has done something new or we have tried something with her and she has liked it.   There are other days where I may be trying to process something the doctors have said or something I have found out that I may not be ready to discuss just yet. Sometimes I have hidden what the doctors have said because I don’t want to admit it to myself or upset or unnecessarily worry my family. There are still things that I haven’t been able to tell my family about my daughter and I probably never will.  There are the days when I do want to share my feelings but you are better to ask a question that relates specifically to one subject such as “How did Pretzel enjoy the first play date with the one-to-one support worker?”  I am more likely to be able to start to share if you ask a question like this rather than “How is Pretzel doing?”.  This type of question usually gets the response “O.K” as I often can’t be bothered to go through the mountain of things that you may not see ‘behind the scenes’ after you have finished your visit.

I get frustrated and angry.  I get very frustrated and angry when you don’t listen to what I tell you about my daughter.  For example when you talk to my daughter and I tell you that she doesn’t understand what you are saying and she can’t talk back to you, please don’t look at me like I am an idiot.  She may be 9 years old but she has the developmental level of an 18 month old child so don’t expect her to do something you wouldn’t expect of a child who was 18 months old.  I also get angry and frustrated when you treat her like she is a ticking time bomb.  She is just like other children and loves to have a cuddle and a tickle so please don’t treat her like she is about to explode in a cluster of seizures or act in some unpredictable way that will be anything different to any other child at her developmental age.  She may have special needs but she has emotions and feelings just like other children so please try and be sensitive to those as well.

I get extremely touchy and fed up.  I don’t know how many times I have heard that I should be doing this or trying that with my daughter.  If you want to suggest a treatment, teaching method or some other thing that I should be doing with my daughter, PLEASE DON’T. I appreciate the thought but my daughter is not like any other special needs child that you have encountered and in all likelihood if you have heard of it or tried it SO HAVE WE! I know that sounds touchy but you can sue me.  Every day someone tells me what I should or shouldn’t be doing with my daughter for one thing or another and it has driven me to get very shirty with people because the best doctors in the world have been stumped by my daughter so what makes you an expert on the subject?  Not all difficulties faced by special needs children are the same.  For example a child on the autistic spectrum can be very  different to another child on the same spectrum and a child with profound learning difficulties can experience them in very different areas to another child, so please don’t think that whatever worked for you will automatically work for me and my daughter.  Only myself and my family see the work that we put in to get even the most basic pattern recognition with my daughter and it has taken almost 5 years of constant repetition for her to recognise a single word.  Please don’t try to undermine that work by dismissing it as ‘not being enough’.

 

 I hope I haven’t alienated any of you with this post but it was something that had been sitting on my mind for a few days now and I could only think about writing it the way that I have gone about writing all of my other posts, honestly and straight from the heart.  I apologise if you are offended by this in any way but it is a truthful insight into what happens at various times throughout the journey we are taking in caring for Pretzel.  In saying that there are a number of times and a number of people who have enriched our lives.  They are the people who make this difficult journey more tolerable and there are some times when I truly feel blessed to have the opportunity to travel this road that I am on with my daughter.  I have grown as a person and I appreciate every tiny little detail of life as each and every one is something we were told was not going to happen.  When you face those odds I will take whatever I can get, wherever I can get it!

Until next time folks, Stay safe and keep smiling!

Sunshine, creativity and inspiration

Sunshine, creativity and inspiration award for my blog

 

I wrote in my earlier post about the life changes that I have made to try and improve the different aspects of my life that I was not happy with.  I also wrote how today was a good day for me but it actually got even better when I found out that the lovely Melissa over at The Bright Side has awarded me the Sunshine Award for my blog.  I know I have written a few posts saying thank you for the different awards that I have received but when I read this one I was touched to find out that there is a reasoning behind being given the award.  The sunshine award is given to “bloggers who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere.”  It is amazing to think that I am inspiring others with my writing but there are so many very talented and inspirational blogs and bloggers that I read that I feel I am one of the ‘small fish’ in a sea of truly inspiring ‘bigger fish’.  I hope that I can live up to this award and keep inspiring others to be the very best that they can possibly be and that they can go on to live life appreciating all of the good that there is in what is almost always portrayed as a negative, destructive world.

The rules of this award are that:

• Post the award along with a link back to the person who gave the nomination
• Answer the questions below
• Nominate 10 fellow bloggers for the award and link to their site
• Comment on your nominees’ blogs to let them know you’re sharing the love with them

 

Who is your favorite philosopher?

I honestly can’t say I have just one.  I tend to find quotes that resonate with whatever my core beliefs are and use them, share them or pass them on for whatever reason.  I do tend to find I quote a fair bit from Ghandi, Lao Tzu and Buddhism.  I am a fan of any kind of thinking that celebrates equality, balance and respects the viewpoints of others.

What is your favorite number?

13 is my favourite number as I was born on Good Friday on the 13th April.  My daughter was also born on the 13th and I like the idea that some people can be frightened or steer clear of a simple number.

What is your favorite animal?

It would have to be the Wolf.  I admire how they live in packs and through working together they survive through the toughest odds. Their speed and strength is matched in their grace and finesse at the same time.   There is also something that seems to connect deep inside me when I hear a wolf howl and it makes me think of being free and wild, unrestrained by the cares and problems of my daily life.

What are your Facebook and Twitter URLs?

You can find my on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nosleepintoon, You can find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/kitbass and my Blog Fan page on Facebook is http://www.facebook.com/sleeplessinnewcastle

What is your favorite time of day?

I prefer night time to be honest.  I have always had an affinity with the small hours of the morning when there are very few people around and the world is silent.  I love looking at the night sky and smelling the fresh, clean air with no sound to be heard for miles around.

What was your favorite vacation?

It is a tough one to answer as there are two that spring to mind for different reasons.  The first would be the second time I went to Florida with my family and also my parents and my niece.  We rented a villa for two weeks and had the best time ever. We visited Disney World at halloween and the kids and Zanna got into fancy dress and loved it.  We actually both ended up in tears sitting in the back garden one night because we new that we had to come home.  We still feel like we could live over in Florida if we ever got the chance.

The second would be the time that I went to Mallorca with my family, my parents, my sisters and my niece.  It was a pain the first night we got there as our rep gave us the wrong directions to our hotel so we ended up paying to stay somewhere else at first.  After that was sorted out we had a lovely time just relaxing and talking most of the time but it was the last holiday that I had before my stepmum passed away from cancer.  I still look back at that time with the fondest of memories as we had a lot of fun laughing and joking.

What is your favorite physical activity?

erm…..well…. making love to my wife 😛  I know that might be a little too honest for some people but it is completely true.  I love the connection that we have and it is the experience of being completely and totally in love with someone especially as it is my soul mate.  I knew that she was the one person I wanted to spend my life with from the first day I met her and that is still the case today after 15 years of being together.  To me lovemaking is the true expression of love for someone and I could never imagine being able to do it without having a trmendous amount of affection for the person you are with.  There, it is out there in the world now and I am blushing!!!!!

What is your favorite non-alcoholic drink?

 

Root Beer.  I find it so difficult to get over here in the UK as nowhere seems to stock it.  I first tasted it in the USA when I was there on holiday and I have been hooked ever since.  I wish I could find some way of getting it over here or making it as I would happily drink it all day, every day!

What is your favorite flower?

I would have to say it would be the Black Baccara Rose because it instantly reminds me of my wife, Zanna.  I once walked 6 and a half miles to college every day to buy her some black roses for valentines day one year because I had no money and I saved the bus fare for about 2 weeks until I could buy them.

What is your passion?

I have two passions really, the first would be music.  I have had music in my life from being a very young age and I have always loved to play musical instruments, listen to music in the house and to go out to see live music whenever I can.  I find that different music can invoke such powerful emotions and I love that it is accessible to everyone.  Each culture, religion, civilisation has had their own musical heritage and it is a signal of the uniqueness of each one.

The second would be writing.  I have only discovered the passion for writing in the past couple of months that this blog has been up and running but I have had an amazing journey of self discovery and now it is the first thing that I think about when I get up and usually the last thing I am thinking about when I go to sleep at night.  I would love to get better at doing it and I plan on doing as much as I possibly can to hone the craft of writing with the aim of sharing it with as many people as possible.  Maybe it will happen one day and I look forward to it!

Now I need to pass the award on to some other bloggers who have inspired me so here we go:

 

Family Bugs

Kat’s Cafe

Daphne Shadows

The Daily Hottentots

Recovery Corner

Just Bring the Chocolate

My Inspired life with Fibromyalgia

Suddenly they all died.  The end.

Trip the Eclipse

Journey Through the Chrysalis

 

So there you have it, thank you very much for the nomination and the award and please check out those that I have nominated as they are really good blogs to read.

Until next time folks, Stay safe and keep smiling!

 

Life changes, are they important?

Are life changes important?

Life changes turned out to be very important to me even though I had never thought about making them before but the revelation came for me towards the end of last year, when,  I have to say I was thoroughly miserable.  I was heading down the slippery slope towards depression medication once again, my old demons with my binge eating disorder were resurfacing, I had high blood pressure and my blood sugars were too high.  I was stressed all of the time, I was losing my temper very quickly and I really was not happy with where my life was going.  A couple of weeks before the new year I decided I had to make some life changes if I was going to save my health, my sanity and my relationships with my wife and daughters.

The first thing that I needed to address was my weight.  I was constantly unhappy about the way I looked and after a visit to the GP and the Diabetes nurse I was told that unless I lost the weight I was likely to have a heart attack or a stroke within the next couple of years.  I have to admit that this frightened the life out of me and the thought of having Zanna and the kids go through all of that was something I didn’t even want to consider.  So I decided that I would go and join a local slimming group and make the commitment to go every week.  Zanna said that she would come along too and support me and hopefully she would lose a little bit of weight as well.  It was extremely nerve racking to go into the group but it gave us the chance to have a social outlet that we were sorely lacking and also gave us an hour and a half on our own as a couple.

The next life change was to do with my Open University course.  I was studying for a degree in Psychology and I was enjoying the course materials but I was also really struggling with the workload due to the different pain medications I was taking.  I found it very difficult to concentrate for longer than 10 minutes and my memory was getting increasingly worse.  This was making me frustrated, stressed and angry and it often spilled over into me shouting at the kids for stupid little things.  I was a nightmare to live with.  Those life changes were now more needed now than they had ever been needed before.

Fast forward to today………

I woke up this morning after having a decent night’s sleep for once.  My insomnia decided it was time to take a break and allowed me to sleep almost the full night (a pity Pretzel didn’t see it that way as she was up at 4am) leaving me brimming with energy.  I got up out of bed and decided to do something I haven’t done in a long while…….I tried some of my old clothes on.  I had saved some of my clothes that were too small for me as I hadn’t had much chance to wear them before my weight shot up.   I was surprised to find THEY FIT!  I was genuinely shocked and stunned that I had ‘new’ clothes to wear and they actually had colours in them.  I had been wearing black, white and grey for so long that I had forgotten just how nice it is to have a bit of colour in what I am wearing.  When I looked at the tag I was even more amazed to see I had dropped 10 inches from waist (5 sizes) in my trousers, I have gone from needing a XXXXL to an XL in t-shirts and I have lost 3 inches from my collar size.  In total I have lost 3 and a half stones (49 lbs) since January and I am starting to find that people are seeing a difference and commenting on how I look good for a change.  It is nice to be getting the support but in addition to that I also combined my weight loss with raising money for charity and I am doing quite well.  Zanna is doing amazingly well and she has lost 2 stones (28 lbs) as well so we are now a slimmer, more energetic couple than we were 7 months ago.  The first life change was a running success and it spurs me on to keep going.

Unfortunately, after discussing my medications and situation with my GP I decided to discontinue my studies with the Open University for the moment.  The next few modules I would have been taking were double the workload and there was also the addition of an exam at the end of each one.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to complete those modules and gain the results that I needed and wanted so the best option was to stop.  I do feel relieved as it took a lot of pressure away from me and allowed me to concentrate on getting my own health and personal life sorted out.  This is a life change that I didn’t want to make but, after having made it, it has improved my health and improved my relationships an awful lot.

Not studying started to drive me a little crazy at first but to keep myself occupied I looked towards doing a little bit of charity work with the local short break care unit that my daughter attends to give us a little break every month.  The Carers Association there is a charity that has been set up to help disabled children experience outings to different places around the local area and also to take part in things that other children do but they would struggle to do such as a Trick or Treat Halloween Party, a Christmas party where they get to meet Santa Claus and also to go and see a pantomime.  Both Zanna and I help out raising funds for the group, the administration and also taking part in the various events to recruit more volunteers to help out as well.  It is great for us to make this life change as it allows us to meet other parents of disabled children in the local area but it also helps us feel like we are contributing to the community that has helped us so much over the years.

 Life changes made today a good day!

My life changes have made such a difference in the past 7 months that it is like a dream to me in all honesty. My weight loss has improved my life so much already and, although I still have a way to go yet, it has had a dramatic affect on so many different things I never even considered before.  Now I am able to go out and be a bit more confident in myself and I don’t worry half as much about what people might be saying about my weight and how I look which was always such a big issue.  I am volunteering for a charity which is something I have always wanted to do and especially if it was giving something back into the community.  I have discovered a love for writing which came about from this blog and I posted my first attempt at a short story just a few days ago (this is the first written work I have put out into the public).  The responses that I have received so far have been really good and a few people have asked me to carry on the story which was not what I had planned but I am now considering building a storyline around it.  My personal relationships with Zanna and the kids has become a lot closer because my mood has changed and I am learning to vocalise my feelings instead of bottling them up like I used to.

It is amazing what  a few life changes can do in such a small amount of time and the things I have achieved in the past 7 months have given me the drive and the determination to carry on with the way I am going and also to make some more life changes to improve other things that I am not satisfied with.  I am finished part of my journey towards my final goal and I can’t wait to reflect back when I finally reach the end of my journey to see just how far I have managed to come.

 

Life is pretty sweet for me right now and I like it!

I think life changes are very important on the road to happiness and contentment but what are your thoughts on taking a step back and looking at your life and where it is heading?  Is it time for you to make some life changes?

Until next time Stay safe and keep smiling!

 Related articles

 

• Reaching Your Weight Loss Goal (energymuse.wordpress.com)
• Four Tips On Fitness And Weight Loss (e-prescribe.biz)
• Rise of the super-sized: More than one million Brits are morbidly obese (mirror.co.uk)
• When Eating is Out-of-Control (brokenbelievers.com)
• Breaking Up With Binge Eating (thoughtcatalog.com)
• Psychology of Transformation (trikatykid.wordpress.com)

Is your website feeding the perverts?

 

Hi again folks.  I wanted to write today about something that got me a little bit disturbed and a little bit worried about certain aspects of my website.

I was looking through my site stats for yesterday and I noticed there were a number of disturbing searches that seemed to be hitting on my website.  The terms used in them were things that would sicken most people but as a parent of 3 daughters it made me physically sick.  Needless to say I wanted to know what was causing me to have these scumbags clicking a link directed towards my blog.

As I am new to blogging I had no idea what could be causing it so I decided to see if anyone else had been having the same problems.  Not much came back but thinking about it logically the first place I decided to check was my files on my server to see if anything had gone wrong on that side of things……..Nope, everything was fine there so the next thought was to check the ping links on my posts……nope everything was fine there too.

I managed to find someone who had a similar thing happen and it turned out to be their images on the page so the next stop was to check Google image search.  Unfortunately this meant I had to actively search for these things with my site name in the search as well but still I got nothing back.  I was starting to doubt my sanity by this time until I realised I hadn’t searched for the actual terms in Google web search.  Off I went to enter the search terms making sure to include my site name as one of the parameters (I didn’t want to see anything that these sickos get off looking at) and there were some hits.  Each search term seemed to come back to the same post and fortunately it highlighted the terms that it had found in bold.

As it turns out because I had mentioned the same words, totally unrelated in any kind of context, on the same page in my website it had picked up my website as a possible match.  The term that was causing most of the problem was the latter half of the word ‘half-naked’.  Needless to say I went straight to the offending post and changed the terms that I used to try and stop these animals reaching my blog.

The downside is that it has started to get me a little concerned.  On this blog I have posted pictures of my children.  None of the photographs could be seen in my eyes as being inappropriate or possibly being viewed in a lecherous way, but then again I am not one of these sickos.  So I am now in a bit of a difficult situation. 

Do I leave the photographs of my kids on this site and show off how proud I am of them and who they are but at the same time run the risk of those sick people who may want to use those photographs in an unsavoury way?

OR

Do I take them down and stick to the stock photos that I can find to illustrate my posts at the same time killing one of the reasons why I started writing this blog?

It is also something that I though other people should be aware of and may not realise.  I wrote an innocent post totally unrelated to anything that was being searched for by a small minority of sick individuals, yet I still possibly could have exposed my family to their attention at the same time as possibly allowing photographs of my children to have been used in ways I don’t even want to think about.  I know in future I will be very careful in how I word things on this blog when I am writing and I will be making sure that I double check eveyrthing before it is posted as well.  But the question I want to ask you is:

Is your website feeding the perverts?

Hopefully there will not be any further incidents such as this but it is something I think all bloggers should be aware of if they have photographs of family members on their blogs.

Until next time folks, Stay safe and keep smiling!

Short Story teaser, what do you think?

Short story teaser attempt number 1

I am going to try something a bit different for this post to see how well it works for me.  I chose a photograph taken by one of my fellow WANA members that looked really interesting and I thought I would try and write a teaser to a short story and gauge how you folks reading felt about it.  I have never written any kind of story before (except maybe in school) so I would love some constructive criticism and any kind of suggestions on improving or getting started in writing some short stories.

So here is the photograph :

Photo provided by Prudence Macleod

The icy wind bit into his cheek as he made his way up the ridge.  He had been walking all night and the numbness had crept slowly from his toes, through his feet up to his ankles and was so bad he now struggled to feel his feet at all.  Each step in the thick snow drained a little more energy each time he moved and if he didn’t find somewhere to rest soon he would succumb to the elements.  That was not an option, he had to make it, he had to reach her otherwise the consequences would be dire not only for both of them, but both of their families too.  He tripped and fell gashing his hand on one of the sharp rocks hidden just beneath the surface of the snow.  A crimson pool slowly started to spread out across the snow as he hauled himself up and looked at the wound.  The rock had sliced through his palm leaving an ugly, ragged tear stretching from his thumb to his middle finger.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of tape and began to wrap it around his hand over and over.  A shot rang out from behind him and whistled past his head.  Another shot followed, this one a little closer as it nicked his ear on the way past.  He felt the searing pain and the familiar trickle as the blood began to run down his face.  He clapped his taped hand to his ear and began to run as fast as his legs could take him.  Half stumbling down the hillside he ran towards the small town of Hartsville.  He knew that if he could get there he would at least have a chance of survival as he could hijack a car or at least find a place to hide. He made it to the bottom of the hill and he could hear the shouts that followed him.  He dared not stop, he had to make it to the cover of the buildings.  At least there he could duck out of sight and hopefully find a weapon or a good ambush point if he needed it.  He went to vault the small fence that surrounded the garden of the first house but he slipped, crashing down to the floor in a heap.  “No time to stop” he thought as he stood up.  They were getting so close now, too close for comfort.  He set off again in a stumbling run heading for the house across the road.  If he could make it around this corner he would be in the clear.  Almost there now, one more corner and he would have given them the slip.  A shot rang out and thudded into the side of the wooden hut.  As he rounded the corner he was met with a hard sharp smack to the front of his face.  He felt the bone shatter in his nose just before he blacked out…….

 

I have never tried writing anything at all like this before but I really enjoyed it.  I might look at doing a series of these once the Ultimate Blog Challenge finishes as I hope it might get me started on writing something a bit longer.  I managed to keep this to around 500 words but I think I could have gone on for a lot longer.

But what I really want to know is what did you folks think of it?  Do you think it is worth me having a go at writing or is it so unbelievably terrible I should stick to writing my shopping list?

Drop me a comment and tell me what you think.

Stay safe and keep smiling!

Are the disabled dirty rotten scoundrels?

Are the disabled people of Britain today ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ as the media and politicians suggest?

I was reading an article as I had five minutes to myself this morning which just confirmed my thoughts on what the current atmosphere is like about disabled people in Britain today.  Newspapers, politicians and an increasing amount of prejudiced, moronic public are firing shot after shot at people who are not able to fire back.  As a supposed civilised society surely we should be taking care of the young, the elderly and the sick?  It seems that those values are thrown to the wind in today’s economic climate where cutting benefits and services for disabled people is deemed as the best possible course of action for facilitating change.

ATOS PROTEST BANNER (Photo credit: Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty)

The numbers cited in the media and by politicians say that 30% of claimants are fraudulent and yet the 40% of claimants deemed fit for work by Atos, the outsourced company dealing with the claims, are going to tribunal with 40% of those having the decision overturned.  A lot of disabled people use their payments to pay for extra costs they incur to go to work and with a reduction in this type of payment the government would only succeed in raising unemployment figures as the support would not be there for these individuals to continue working.  The agenda looks to be to shut away all disabled people in their homes as they cutback on vital services that allow them to go about their daily lives with dignity and respect.  As a disabled man myself this is worrying enough but as a father of a disabled daughter as well it scares me to think about the legacy we are leaving for our children.

We have a media that uses terminology such as ‘benefit scroungers’ and ‘cheats’ implying all disabled benefit claimants are fraudulent.  We have politicians who are closing the Remploy factories making disabled people unemployed yet they open a new office elected fund to entice disabled people to stand for election.  Surely the government realises that closing the Remploy factories is going to leave a large number of disabled people unemployed and with no incentive for employers to take on these workers or even to cover any adaptations that may be needed to allow a disabled worker to be employed, they have simply saved money in one respect to pay it out in benefits in another.

My questions to you folks reading is this are:

What is your take on the current situation for the disabled people of this country?  Do you think these cuts are appropriate? Do you feel that there are a large amount of fraudulent claimants? Should the Remploy factories be closed? Do you think the disabled are dirty rotten scoundrels?

I apologise if the post seems a touch like a rant but it incensed me so much I felt I needed to talk about it.

I promise my second post for today will be on a more cheerful subject!

Until then Stay safe and keep smiling!

Related articles

• Disgraceful! The myth that criminals are claiming sickness benefits | Sue Marsh (guardian.co.uk)
• Britain is losing its sense of decency when it comes to the disabled (blogs.independent.co.uk)
• Inaccessibility pushes disabled people further on to the edges (guardian.co.uk)
• Disabled people slam media libels (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• Disabled access fund gets mixed response (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• DLA reform: coalition is exaggerating benefit fraud for its own benefit (guardian.co.uk)

What music videos are your guilty pleasures?

Every so often I find myself hiding away from the world not wanting to do anything except crank up the volume on my speakers and let loose with some music videos that just make me feel alive again.  There are some music videos that seem to give me energy and have me buzzing within a few seconds of them playing and then there are some which just make me laugh/smile/headbang/mosh etc.  I always find that music is my go to no matter what I am feeling and there is always a music video to make me feel like I am connected to the rest of the world.

But then………then there are the music videos that I would never dare let people see me watch to but for whatever reason I just cannot resist having a secret love for them.  I am going to break the silence though and share some of them with you now.  I don’t expect you will like all of them or maybe even any of them but I reckon you have a few secret ones that you don’t want anyone to know about.  Why not take the leap and share them with the rest of the world?

Well I here I go with my 5 secret guilty pleasure music videos:

3OH!3 (feat. Katy Perry) – Starstrukk

This song for me is just a lot of fun and has a funny video and what can I say, it just plain cheers me up a bit 😛

Technohead – I want to be a hippy

This music video reminds me of a holiday I had when I was at school and this song was playing absolutely everywhere in the Netherlands.  It was a lot of fun!

Bloodhound Gang- Bad Touch

This music video is a favourite as it introduced me to these guys and some of the songs have me killing myself laughing in no time.  Check out their other stuff as well as it is very funny but be aware the lyrics are adult as well though.  You were warned!

Scooter – The question is what is the question?

Ok, here it is out to the world.  I AM A JUMPSTYLE FAN.  I am a total metalhead and rock guy most of the time but something inside me just loves the energy of jumpstyle and no matter how hard I try to resist it there is something that just sucks me into it and I get lost for days!

Daddy Yankee ft Prince Royce – Ven Conmigo

I think I love this music video because I would love to be able to dance to this type of music.  I listen to this track and other tracks like this one because it perks me up, gets me driven to get things done and that can only be a good thing.

So there you go that is my 5 guilty pleasure songs.  There are many, many more that I could put in there but they will stay my secret for now!

So how about leaving a comment for me a sharing some of your guilty pleasure songs?

Until next time, Stay safe and keep smiling!

 

 

Awards, Recognition and Nominations (Part 3)

Awards Galore!

Awards time again but this will be the last awards post, I promise, after writing two over the past two days for the Daisy Award and the Fabulous Blog Ribbon. This one is for the Liebster Award and I was nominated for this one by Kina over at Human in Recovery once again.  I can’t believe the amount of love my readers are showing me at the moment by giving these awards to me but as always any interaction with my online presence is appreciated and cherished.  I just hope that you keep coming back and keep letting me know if there are things that you really enjoy or if there are things that you aren’t liking.  I am almost at the end of the Ultimate Blog Challenge which has introduced me to some fantastic people and some brilliant blogs.  It is through reading those and looking at how they do different things that has helped me to learn so much in a very short time and has led to me getting these awards and I am very appreciative of it.

Shall we move on to the Award rules and nominations then?  I thought so 😛  Well here we go then.  The rules for the Award are as follows:

• Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog (done).

• Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you (done and done).

• Copy and paste the blog award on your blog (done, done, done).

• Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed.

So 5 blogs with under 200 followers, there are quite a few that I can think of that I could nominate and it is tough to pick out 5 so please don’t take it as I don’t enjoy your blog if you aren’t nominated this time.  I am sure I will get an award to you at some point.  For this award though I am throwing out some love via the Liebster Award to my fellow SWAN UK bloggers.  We all have children with undiagnosed genetic condition and most of them have needs that require a lot of attention so these blogs may not be updated every week but they are well worth a visit and a read as the stories that are in there show just how dedicated these parents really are.  That goes for all the SWAN parents/carers but the five I am going to choose are:

1. Half A Decade Old
2. Down in the Jungle with Monkey
3. Living with Allergy Children
4. Orange This Way
5. Areyoukiddingney?

There you have it those are my nominations.  I urge you to go and pay them a visit as these bloggers have a special place in my heart as they have helped me in so many ways either with their support of my blog, listening to my rants on the SWAN UK Facebook group and understanding what it is like to have the same/similar situation as we do with Pretzel.  They may not have much time free to work on blogs or update them all the time but each and every post is well considered and is put up there with intent and has great meaning within it.

Well I will leave you with those new blogs to go and peruse at your leisure.

Until next time, Stay safe and keep smiling!