huh. feeling a bit .... neglected. boyf is watching tv - damn Mythbusters!! ok its a good show but not every night of the week. and not when i want to feel vaguely connected to a human being. oh well there is a party tonight. hopefully i will not be a total grump. theyre a nice bunch of ppl and live just down the street, handily...

on the bright side i am on my summer holidays from uni and have a job at a temping agency (catering assistant, need i say more? oh the glamour....) But anyway, today i was cancelled as the place was overstaffed - someone had apparently accidentally ordered 4 ppl when only 2 were needed. So i was happy to take a holiday. imagine my delight and surprise when i found out i would get paid for 5 hours of not working!! Hurray! so i cycled home and i met my boyfriend for lunch, which for all intents and purposes, i was getting paid for! :) go Helen!!!

but as for feeling miffed, i think its coz i was looking forward to my boyf coming home early and hugging me like he normally does and telling me he loves me - which didnt quite work out the way id hoped. hes feeling "lethargic" but is still able to get up and go to the kitchen and snaffle biscuits. speaking of kitchens im really supposed to make the tea... hopefully pot has not boiled over and remodelled the kitchen in the style of "the apprentice".... hungry!!!

hmmm well jersey isnt actually so bad. and being a physio is both more rewarding and more easy than i thought it would be. altho perhaps its more stressful when the ward has a timetable it actually sticks to. oh well, im getting better at assessment, communication (that one is a bitch for me), figuring out what the persons problems are, and treating them. the thing i still really need work on is which treatments will help specific patients with specific problems. like if they have no motivation at all, what do you do with them?? put their cigarrettes in strategic places and take their electric wheelchair away to make them walk it appears...

the worst thing about being here is i have no one to really talk to in the evenings. and i havent seen my boyfriend in 2 weeks. and wont for the next 2. oh, and the COMPLETELY unconnected lack of batteries im having just now....

i just want a hug... :( or someone to slob around with in the evenings and watch bad tv with and laugh at it and talk over it to each other. i miss my boyfriend. the nurses are all jsut pants. (living in nurses accomodation. oh it must be heaven! i hear you cry. well not really.) they sit and smoke in the room with the only communal tv as there seems to be no smoke alarm in there. they have all these airhead magazines (Soaps weekly, Models addictions, Reality TV!, you know the type) and theyre all either pudgy or much older than me. not a bonnie lot i have to say. i mean, theyre really nice and everything, just they smell smoky. and their conversation in the evenings leaves alot  to be desired. and at about 8 they all jsut vanish. and thats normally just about the time id really like to talk to someone. ah well, at least my boyfriend calls every night. if youre reading this - i miss you!! phone calls are not the same as a hug!

but im feeling less lonely than before. im starting to be a bit happier with being here. last week was rotten, feeling so grouchy and homesick. but this week its better. not constantly comparing jersey to home. ah well. only 2 and a half weeks to go now, half way there. and i see my boyfriend in a week and a half so that should cheer me up. im just used to seeing him first thing in the morning and last thing at night after being with him for so long. ok im young. a year is a long time to me. speaking of a long time, my lunch was hours ago. very hungry now. nyeh cant be bothered doing dishes and cooking at home. pah. will probably sulk in my room this evening.

oh before i forget - went to a comedy night yesterday. on the whole i was unimpressed as for the compere and the "headline" act were a bit pants.... altho maybe you had to be both english and male to appreciate some of their humour... but the girl - ok woman she was 30 - was really funny. went into perhaps too much detail about attempts to conceive, but really funny comedy is always a bit close to the bone. what was her name .... Meryl something... damn i wanted to recommend her. oh well life isnt perfect. shes english? no idea how many english commediennes there are called Meryl....

well this is probably the last time ill write till i finish my third year in may... i start it on monday. and next saturday i go on a plane to take me away to jersey where some poor person has to try to help me get the skills to be a proper physio... oh god im scared. im ok with some ppl but for some reason with others im just crap. i guess ill get better eventually. and i have no real idea how to interact with children... the last time i spent any real amount of time with young kids was when i was one and i had to go to an after school club because my mum always worked late and she didnt want me to take the bus home myself (altho god knows why because i got it in the mornings myself). and even then the younger kids would make friends with me but sooner or later they would take advantage of me or try and wind me up as much as possible. and that was a good 9 years ago. since then, ive had no real dealings with kids. not many kids in my neighborhood as it was full of pensioners and expensive to live there. and i was shy. no younger siblings, nephews or neices. well i do have some distantly related young ppl but they tend to live in america, england or australia, so i dont really know them either.

i can cope with old ppl just fine. its a bit depressing because a lot of them are extremely crotchety and in a lot of cases, quite rude, but i can handle them quite well. just be polite and respectful, and if you are supposed to be making them do something, firm. or they jsut think youre a young whippersnapper up to no good and out to steal their purse or whatever. or they go the other way and walk all over you.

middle aged ppl seem the most reasonable of the bunch. maybe a bit set in their ways tho. but if you explain things to them for the most part they will take what youre saying on board, or at least listen to you and then decide that its a load of twaddle later. but at least theyre not (mostly) rude for no good reason. if they are theyre probably stressed or in a hurry or whatever.

young adults im not so good with either. for one thing, anyone from the age of 16 to about 28 tends to look about the same age to me. they just look after themselves too well. or if they dont you think theyre about 40 when theyre only 25... one off encounters i can pull off like a normal human being, but im actually kind of crap at making and keeping new friends. this is normally (i think) because i pass them in the corridor or wherever and recognise them, have no idea who they are or how i know them so i dont know how to react to them - do they want to stand about and chat? or do i recognise them from the cafe and theyre in a hurry to get there? and i never know them very well so im rubbish at having conversations with them. like- what offends them? what are they interested in? am i boring them? do they actually have any desire to talk to me? so i tend to pretend i havent seen them and ignore them. so they either dont see me or they ignore me i guess because they think im not interested in them. and i tend to come across as secretive for some reason. to be honest im just shy and i dont want to be teased about things which are important to me. and as for flirting, i have no idea at all. i cant tell when someone is flirting with me, i cant tell if im flirting with someone or if ive even been noticed (im too shy so i always look away) and to be honest flirting is really not a life skill ive ever developed. the first boyfriend i got due to someone telling me he wanted my number and then i asked her for his number and texted him. the second boyfriend just sat next to me and started talking to me in a nightclub and an hour later asked me out. the third was completely off his face when i met him and i asked for his number (but he couldnt actually remember what i looked like the next day and later confessed he as really after my friend. it did work out tho as im now living with him.) and thats all the experience of picking up guys i have. well, unless you count wearing some kind of revealing clothing and standing alone at the bar. this normally gets guys to buy me a drink.... but thats just mean if i dont even like them. and i havent done that since i got a boyfriend. lot of good it does me, i got more free drinks when i was single! altho i guess its because they were trying to get me drunk asnd he doesnt need to coz i go home with him every night anyway. but it would still be nice once in a while.

eeek im going to jersey for 5 weeks and im not gonna see my family or my boyfriend or my cat or anyone! well except the 3 other ppl from my uni who are also going. 

hello again! tis only 2 months since i last wrote! this is becoming almost regular... well in my life over the past 2 months: month one. looked for a job. panicked as my bank account seemed to dwindle lower each day and there was a severe lack of interviews. finally asked for help from my jammy (or "lucky" for the less colloquial among you)  boyfriend with my CV. he actually got approached by one of his lecturers in the corridor and asked to be a research assistant at the uni over the summer! end of month - found a job which would last 3 months. woohoo! i thought.

on to month 2. not so bright and shiny. if u can call panicking and staying in the house living off cheap food bright and shiny. the job was in a nursing home. oh god but i was NOT prepared for what met me there. "So... have you ever had any experience like this before?" me: no. "Right...." look of fear - "well, just go in there and get that demented woman washed and dressed. Were kind of busy today because 2 ppl are off sick." so i was really flung in at the deep end. and at the end of the month, when id finally begun to like the job, as it was quite rewarding (feel like helping ppl, like youre making a difference, like youre respite care, warm fuzzy feeling at night, my job is important! kinda things going through your mind) altho it did entail some quite nasty tasks (taking incontinent - feacally, mind, not just their bladders - demented ladies to the toilet, total lack of training, the fact that we were doing illegal lifts and the manual handling was bad for both us and the ladies, washing and dressing argumentative and/or dreamy ladies with limited cognitive powers) but at the time it seemed worthwhile. but now were at the end of that month - end of the day - "Helen, can i have a word with you?" turns out it was my one weeks notice. she said it was because the permanent girl i was filling in for for 3 months had decided not to come back and that 2 other full time permanent staff were leaving the same week i was and that they couldnt have that big a skills gap with the people leaving and the inexperienced/ new to that place people starting. however it may also have been that i took 3 sick days in three weeks. and id only been there 3 weeks. but i couldnt help it. i got sick. i had a bad cold and my head was full of cotton wool so i had to go home (and i had soldiered through it for 8 hours of a 12 hour shift already). i took the next day off because i still felt like i was on planet Zog. and the next week, on my way home from that week's 12 hour shift, i tried to cycle my bike from the road right onto the pavement (i cycled there and back every day) but the pavement was too high and me and the bike both fell. hard. i grazed my hand slightly and banged my knee quite hard. thank you to the really nice lady who hurried over and asked if i was alright and checked i hadnt been run over by a car when i was huddled on the pavement in agony next to my bike. (so glad i was wearing a bike helmet!) so i pretty much landed with the full force of my body weight and the bike's on the outside (lateral aspect if you wanna get really anatomically correct) of my knee. and it hurt. i couldnt walk without it hurting. i sure as hell wasnt going into work, walking about everywhere and underarm lifting 20 stone demented ladies the next day with a fucked knee! so i called in sick. but i guess it didnt look good. especially as on that day 2 ppl had already called in sick.

so now i didnt have a job. my sister also had her 22nd birthday and graduated. (well done :) ) Then my boyfriend had his birthday, and because i didnt have a job anymore i spent the whole day making it the best birthday ever for him (ahhh i love him heee ). and i had to tidy the flat coz his brother was staying over for my boyf's graduation (boyf same age as sis, same uni also. thankfully different graduation ceremonies.) i meet his family and they are soooo weird compared to mine! which is admittedly a little strange, but we love each other, respect each other, listen to each other (altho maybe not as often as we should), know each others strengths and weaknesses, get on with each other most of the time and try to support each other when someone needs it. his doesnt seem to be quite like that, and thats so strange to me. and his family is huuge compared to mine. its really two families. anyway, my amazng boyfriend is cooking a lovely meal for me :) and from the smell its nearly ready! mmmm mmmm! hes great ^-^

seems i only ever write in summer.... when im not in uni and/or with a job... well, my 2nd year of physiotherapy is over!!! unless i need to resit anything. but theres no way thats happening for the written exams. the practicals is another matter... i didnt practice the explanations and safety and model comfort enough to be able to do it perfectly under stress. and unfortunately in practical exams, i get stressed. if i go over the material, normally i can write or speak, but actually do stuff? :S on demand? with the markers beady eyes on you and their pen poised and you know you have to cover about an hours worth of material in 1 hour, and still be coherent, and do the technique while talking and everything at the same time... for some reason this stresses me out and i forget hlaf of what im supposed to be doing. a bad thing. but i know i passed one of the 3... i should have passed one of the others but the other one (Electrophysical Modalities in the treatment of Musculoskeletal Injuries for those of you who are interested...) im not sure if i passed. because i missed out some really obvious stuff. for ice: on talking about the effects, totally forgot to mention aboutt the pain relief due to numbing.... which is more or less the whole point of using ice... doh!

anyway, apparently i am Gandalf. thank god i dont have the beard... actually Gandalf looks far more groomed than i do... oh well....

<p><a href="http://www.tk421.net/character/"><img src="http://www.tk421.net/character/gandalf.jpg" width="230" height="250" style="border-color:#f8f8ff;" border="2" alt="Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?" /></a></p>