My eyes, my eyes!

Well, technically that should be my eyebrows, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s been kind of a rough week, which partly explains the lack of entries (it’s also down to nothing interesting to write about too…)

There’s been good news, bad news (nothing bad, just news of the non-good kind, rather than “bad news” as such)

Of course, as is usually the case in these instances, even the good things have a slap in the face following close behind, just to keep my feet on the ground (or 6 feet under at least!)

So… Last Wednesday was the first thing of note…

Wednesday was good news, albeit a bit of a shock.

I got up, checked my on-line banking and found I had nearly £1000 more in my account than I did the day before. Now random large deposits are surprising at the best of times, but as I have never had more than about £400 in my account at any one time, it was even more of a shock.

As it turns out the paperwork arrived a couple of hours later to tell me I’d been awarded Disability.

Yes, it’s true, I’m finally classed as disabled *does NakedFraggle pole dance to celebrate* It’s only taken 7 years for them to figure it out!

Now admittedly, it’s probably a bit strange that I’m so happy to be disabled (I’d like to point out here and now it’ has nothing to do with the money, they could have kept the money for all I care!). But after all this time, it’s just the principle of the thing.

My doctor told me all those years ago that I should be claiming disability because of my health condition, and since then every 18 months or so I start the cycle again, apply, have a medical, get rejected, go to appeal, get rejected because they prefer their doctors medical evidence over the battery of evidence all my doctors and specialist provide, wait 6 months for leave to reapply, and repeat.

So that was good news anyway.

Naturally the slap followed, in that I’ve got some new stuff to take that’s really boosted my energy levels the past week, so of course because I wasn’t trapped in bed like some kind of mummified corpse, I then feel guilty that I’m just not ill enough to be entitled to it… Yadda, yadda, yadda… I just can’t win. The fact that I’ve had treatments that have helped before, then kind of give up a couple of weeks later leaving me back where I was still doesn’t help me feel any less guilty about it all.

So… Couple of days to recover from my news (who knew breaking out into spontaneous bouts of school-girl giggling could be so tiring?)

So now we come to Monday.

Given that I’d had a little more energy, I decided to get a haircut since I hadn’t been able to manage to get since my last one back in November. And if I was heading that way, I figured a trip to the opticians too, as I needed to confirm the prescription to re-order my contact lenses.

The haircut went fine, until she started combing my eyebrow

Before I realised what she was doing, she cut them

Well she cut one, so I didn’t have any choice but let her cut the other one so they at least matched.

She said the blond was showing through, so she trimmed them to make it less obvious. I’m hoping she’ll not make a habit of that, I’d like to keep my eyebrows, thank you very much, strange blond streaks and all…

On a side note, I’ve had blond streaks in them since an unfortunate hair bleaching incident about 16 years ago (is it really that long ), I used something called Sun-In to lighten my hair, a good idea I thought at the time, except my hair went straw-yellow and just wouldn’t grow out for the better part of 6 months. Anyway, during the application, some trickled onto my eyebrows, and I didn’t notice. ever since then I’ve had parts of my eyebrows that same straw-yellow colour, and even if they come out, they grow back in the same colour.

But I digress…

Back to Monday.

Hair (and brows *pouts*) cut, off to sort my eyes.

Another saga.

The girl looks at my eyes, checks the prescription, sets her machine up to look in the back of the eye… No power. Totally dead.

We go to another room, she tries to set the machine up, but it’s stuck and won’t swing out from the wall.

So she’s clambering over the machine to pear in the eyepiece upside-down against the wall, I’m on a chair that’s too low, so end up crouching in front of the machine so she can try and see into my eye.

Then I get home and order the new contact lenses, only to find that she’s written the wrong fitting measurements on the form.

Finally get the lenses ordered, and they turned up yesterday… They’d been discontinued, so the store had given me a “free upgrade” to the newer model.

Not good.

I have sensitive eyes, and finding lenses where I don’t have a reaction to either the material or the liquid they’re stored in is a nightmare. Naturally, the new lenses practically burnt my eyes out and I couldn’t see a thing.

So I’m now blind and screwed, not to mention the check-up at the opticians cost £35, and I’m going to have to try and go back again to figure out what on earth I’m going to wear now

Oh joy!

In the meantime, I used some of my disability money to buy one of those Roomba, robotic vacuums to make life easier with the housework.

It came, I saw, I spent twice as long trying to clean it than it would have taken me to vacuum the room in the first place… And then it was sent winging it’s way back for a refund.

I hate having to return new toys when they end up being such a disappointment. It looked cute, but I couldn’t justify that kind of money on something that just looked cute, and would whimper for help every time it got stuck in a corner…

Heck, I’ve got my father who does that and he didn’t cost me a penny

So… where are we up to…

Ahh yes, my new scanner arrived last week so I finally got around to setting it up yesterday. It works well, runs in Linux happily (unlike my old one) and has about 3 times the resolution of my previous scanner, plus a full size negative function, so I can scan all those old negatives and photo-plates we have from clearing my grandfathers house a few years ago.

Except with having that bit more energy and all these things I’ve been trying to catch up on, I’m now feeling like a dug-up corpse and don’t plan on even attempting to move from the keyboard for at least a few days

Oh and in amongst all that eBay had an offer on free listings, so I sold a load of stuff, got a fraction of what it was worth, since most of it was brand new and never used.

It’s nice to get rid of the junk, and items that I’ve bought and just weren’t suitable for the task I wanted them for, but I’m never sure it’s entirely worth the hassle, I get a pittance for them, given the quality and condition I keep them in… I was inundated with people wanting to know the postage to this or that country, would I end an auction early, could they make me an offer I’d cheerfully refuse…

Add to all that, no matter how many times I write on a listing that I will accept PayPal, but as a personal user the money has to be in the account, if they try to pay using a credit or debit card it will be rejected… Still I get half a dozen morons who insist on trying it anyway, and then complain that it was automatically rejected, like I didn’t warn them in the first place! I always have it mentioned about 3 times on each item, just to be sure. Yet still they ignore it…

Now I have to keep waiting for cheques to arrive, get them paid into the bank, wait till they clear and deal with irate bidders who seem to think I should send the goods out as soon as the cheque comes through the door just so they don’t have to wait for the cheque to clear. Either that or there’s the ones who seem to think the cheque is cleared the second you leave the bank, and that there’s no reason to wait the full 5 days to make sure it doesn’t bounce and the cash be removed from the bank account again.

*sigh* I have this hassle every time I use eBay as a seller. One of these days I’ll work out that it’s just not worth the effort and send the stuff to charity instead, at least they might get paid what the things are actually worth!

Well I think that brings all the important events back up-to-date, and I’m now all whined out

Time for a nap me thinks…