Yesterday was definitely a day for learning. I’m usually as interested in the lives of celebrities as I am in cracks in the pavement, but a very few do stand out from the Red Carpet crowd and are worthy of my admiration.
I was in the waiting room at the dentists yesterday and picked up a magazine. On the cover there was something about Melanie Sykes and her autistic son. Continue reading
In this blog I cover many subjects; epilepsy, autism, eating disorders, gardening, cooking, pickling/preserving and adventures. This blog is generally where I record my take on certain things, leave my thoughts and fight the cause for autism and epilepsy awareness and education.
I have only just begun to fight against the eating disorder that has had me in its grip for twenty years. I felt that blogging my road back to healthy eating/living might help me in my progress – and possibly help others on the same journey.
My new blog is The Girl In The Corner if you would like to follow my progress.
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Who kept the faith and fought the fight; The glory theirs, the duty ours. ~Wallace Bruce
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My friends,
If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ve heard me talk (ad nauseam you might say) about the absolutely egregious lack of care for our nation’s military children with autism. You’ve also undoubtedly heard me talk about my friend, …
I have made no secret of the fact that I suffer from an eating disorder since beginning this blog. I’ve suffered in silence for twenty years and have only recently sought help. Continue reading
They met at a motorcycle event. She had arrived on the back of her best girlfriend’s bike, and he had ridden in convoy with his friend and some of his bike club. Their meeting was probably pre-ordained; they were both lonely and they were both different and wildly eccentric. Continue reading
I am a feminist. Not the stompy-booted, hairy-legged, shaven-headed militant stereotype that most people seem to envisage – I am actually quite a girly girl who likes jewellery and pretty clothes and a subtle slick of makeup as much as the next woman my age (thirty-eight).
I’m a real feminist who believes in equal rights. For men as well as for women.
I don’t normally jump on the feminist soapbox – I’m one of the quiet ones who believes what she believes but rarely makes a noise about it and simply supports the cause for equality.
However, some mysoginy really does need to be shared, as in the case of a certain George Tierney whose Twitter attack on one lady went viral. He wants to sue the Internet because he doesn’t want to be on Google any more!
Aside from being incredibly rude (if you read the article you will find that he attacked this woman with a word that would never pass my lips as it disgusts me so much) I would say that he is also exceptionally stupid.
Point One: If you don’t want your Tweets retweeted, don’t have a public account.
Point Two: The only person responsible for getting George Tierney’s name on the Google search engine is… George Tierney.
Point Three: Abusive/sexist/racist/homophobic/disablist/ageist/threatening behaviour on the internet will always be shared. Without fail.
Nice one George. You’ve just ruined your entire life, when it comes to relationships and finding work and making friends. You want to sue anyone? Sue your ego and your fingers. The Internet didn’t put those words into your mouth and neither did the Internet write them. You did, George.
I know I have followers that will be very interested in this story. The attack itself is in no way funny at all, but his resultant petulance is priceless.
Please share this if you feel so inclined. It’s already gone viral and so I’m sure George Tierney won’t object. He can’t object if he chose to make his erroneous statements public property, surely?
I wonder if he’ll do me the honour of visiting my blog? I’d enjoy that.
I believe the hashtag is supposed to say “Moron”, but I didn’t make the macro. I’d like to shake the hand of the person who did though.
I have other things to talk about today, and an award to share, but first of all here is something very important.
When I woke up this morning I found an email from Epilepsy Action informing me that today marks the beginning of National Epilepsy Week.
Clicking on the Epilepsy Action logo above will take you to their home page, should you wish to visit and learn more.
I, personally, have chosen to share my achievements with epilepsy here and have included details of my wedding and a link to this blog. I wish I could say that I’ve been able to do more than ask for donations at my wedding and write a blog as a strong advocate for awareness, understanding and education, but I will be getting fitter now that I’m registered for help with the local eating disorders team and my time will come; I wish to do a sponsored walk or a sponsored swim or similar to raise as much money and awareness as possible.
I thought that this may be a point of interest for some of my followers and so decided to mention the event.
In other news I made some onion and rosemary confiturra (pictures to follow) last night and have recieved a lovely award that I need to blog about and pass on to 15 other bloggers. I also need to decide which work in progress I’m going to photograph for Needlework Days, as I’ve been lapsing badly on that one!
Edit: My achievement has been published on this page.
Shortly after submitting the donations from the wedding I recieved an email from one of the team at Epilepsy Action, thanking me for thinking of them on my special day.
The lady who had emailed me also wanted to know if they could use my wedding to promote fundraising in this manner. She wondered if I could supply a photo, my husband’s name, details of where we married and why it was so important to me to be raising money for them on our special day.
Of course, I will do anything to help any of my chosen charities – which is mainly why I began this blog – and so I agreed.
I submitted this photo, because it is my personal favourite
I also gave the link to this blog, explaining that I am a strong voice for advocacy of awareness and education concerning both epilepsy and autism, and that I also like to prove that you can live a happy, fun, amazing life with either condition. I’m rather hoping that my story may be printed in the next quarterly edition of the member’s magazine so that I can reach out to those who may feel as isolated and alone as I once did.
I genuinely feel that I am doing a lot of good with this blog. Certainly I’ve gained followers here and on Twitter (Epilepsy Action included, I’m delighted to say) who have a personal interest in the things I write about. I enjoy writing my more serious articles, but I love interspersing these with the crazy stories of life here at Tribble Towers.
I like to believe that somebody somewhere with epilepsy and/or autism (it’s very common to have both – I know I do) might find me on a search engine when they’re feeling especially down, be able to identify with things I say regarding both conditions and have their day brightened by my most recent mishap.
There is always a bright side to everything.
Are you especially interested in the mind of the epileptic? You might be interested in the poems of epileptic writer and published author Maggie Mendus who writes from personal experience. Her poems are haunting, emotional and well worth a look.
I ordered these celebration envelopes from the Epilepsy Action online shop; they cost me nothing at all and so I bought a wristband and a badge too.
We placed the envelopes on a table at the reception and D announced that they were there should anybody wish to give a small donation. People were required to write their names, addresses and the donation amount on the back of the envelopes so that I know who to thank.
On Tuesday morning I looked at the envelopes we’d collected. If you include Gift Aid our wonderful friends and family had raised almost £115 in total! I am delighted; they all know of my epilepsy and even I was surprised by the generosity.
If we ever have an anniversary party I’ll probably look in to doing the same for one of the many autism charities out there.
This morning I have sent the donations to Epilepsy Action online, and I feel that my marriage has done the world some good and made the life of somebody with epilepsy a little easier to manage.
It’s a good feeling; it makes my marriage feel all the more special from it not simply being about the two of us.
Edit: Epilepsy Action have requested that I include the link to their online shop – which I wanted to do anyway but wasn’t sure if that was an infringment on the organisation or not. Apparently they positively encourage it so I shall use their links in future blogs about epilepsy.
You can find the shop right here. Please consider taking a look and passing the link to friends.
It was such a magical day yesterday. I’m still too tired to really talk details, but here are some pictures!
Continue reading
