DVT DAY 288

Monday and I get up after a bad nights sleep to a dish of muesli and a coffee accompanied of course by my drugs. What to do first on the first day of winter. Write letters of course and that’s what I do for most of the morning. I’ve taken to using an old fashioned dipping pen, just nib and haft with a bottle of ink. Its a challenge but adds to the effort of writing the letters, which I like. Somehow it makes them more works of art than a dashed off email of pitter patter finger play. Pens demand that you make the shapes. Again I like that, nothing is ever the same, every letter different in each of its occurrences, like people. I like the thought that unique shapes are made for unique people, there is a sense of evolution in that. The fact that the shapes form symbols of ideas that come from the activity of my brain is exciting and even more so when I think that someone else’s brain will have activity they would not have had if I had not sent the letter is really exciting. All of this is one way that collaboratively we make meaning of our lives, or at least I do. Without those mind mirrors I would be horribly lost inside my own head as my thoughts would just whirr around being prey to all sorts of unconscious distortions and interpretations. Of course who I trust with my inner pixies is another matter. I digress, letters written I pop across to the post box and back home to consider what to do next.

There is only one thing to do, open the post. A Christmas card with a present from a friend, which is exciting and a CT scan appointment in January. Its a pelvis and abdomen scan to check the tumors in my back. It goes with the CAT scan that I will have to check the progress of the cancer in my spine and the rest of my skeleton. All this in preparation for my next oncologist appointment in February. While I am in a medical mood I ring the GP surgery and book my next 28 day stabbing on the 4th of January 2021 plus my three monthly B12 jab. I thought I would get in before the world closes down for Christmas and New Year. I will also need to order my next months drugs as well to ensure they are available for me by the fourth. So much “cancermin” to keep an eye on. Having done all this its time to get up in the loft and get the Christmas boxes down, at least six big boxes of balls, gods, tinsel and lights. That done I recruit my eldest daughter to help bring the tree in. We set it up in its netted state while I sort out the lights.

I spend a while checking the lights and the various animals that we have with internal illumination. Then its all down to winding the lights round the tree and selecting which lighting patterns to set them on to avoid inducing an epileptic fit in family and passers by. I favour the more tranquil fading in and out that induces a sense of wondering how drunk you actually are or not. I finally get it done.

Of course I pop outside and see what it looks like so far from the outside world. It looks like this.

The baubles will come later but now I set about putting a new backing sheet into the art piece my eldest daughter made in response to seeing Cirque Du Soleil for the first time in Florida. The back ground sheet was white but we have changed it to black and think it works better. I complete the new backing and rehang it in the dining area.

So time for tea and then I spend time hanging my favourite drop baubles on the tree along with the rainbow that my youngest daughter bought and a Tucan ball sent from a friend. They look splendid. My work is done, its up to the rest of the family to complete the tree now. So I leave them to it and retreat to the bedroom to write the blog. I sneak downstairs and take a picture of the completed tree. Ta Da!

So all that’s left now is putting the boxes back in the loft and once the God in a Box nativity set is placed and some additional decorations and lights go up around the house over the coming days the rest can be cleared away. But for now that’s me done for the day. Tomorrow I’ve some work to do, messages to send an invoice to write and send and calls to make and take.