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Raisie Bay

Word of the Week #40 – Smile

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Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week, a nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My word this week is smile and you can read more about that below.

I’m not totally strict on using just a word or phrase but please try to stick to the theme of summing up your week.

There are not too many rules with this linky, just remember to read at least another couple of posts in the link up after adding your link. I will read and comment on all posts and tweet them out for you. I also have a Pinterest board devoted to Word of the Week and I will add posts to Mix Please add the badge below to your post so that others may find us and join in. If you comment or tweet then please use the hashtag #WotW

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

MY WORD OF THE WEEK

Smile

Smile, a woman smiling showing only her mouth and nose

I’m doing Blogtober again this year, it’s a great way of connecting with new bloggers. But it also means lots more blog posts than usual. However, there are no real rules, so you can post as much or as little as you like. You can stick to the prompts or write your own stuff.

Today’s Prompt – Smile

Today’s prompt is smile and as I was looking for a word of the week I thought I’d go along with this. So, what makes me smile?

I’ve had a difficult couple of weeks health wise so it’s always nice to settle down in the evening with a good book. I’ve been taking a different path to my usual reading material and this week I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘I Capture the Castle’ by Dodie Smith. Thanks for the reccomendation Enda.

I was also made to smile when I woke up the other morning to find my Little Man sitting up in bed with a huge green balloon on his head.

My Sunday Photo – Silly Boy

I smiled when I got my appointment come through with my consultant next week. I hadn’t heard anything and believed I’d been forgotten about again. But no, I am summoned to see the great one, healer of all things rare. (I can dream can’t I?)

More Smiles

Other things that have made me smile; My girl’s excitement over their creative writing classes; the brown, yellow, red and orange colours of the leaves in the trees at the bottom of my garden; the good news that my old cat is not as poorly as we thought she was and all she needed was a quick injection (and £115) and she’s well again; the new game my kids have been playing on the Switch (Unamed Goose Game) it’s so stupid it’s hilarious; Ash (my other cat) coming over after a disappearing act which was quite out of character; New episodes of Impractical Jokers, I don’t know why but these stupid guys make me laugh so much…and I’m going to see them live next week!

So lots for me to smile about! What’s made you smile this week?

Join me with your weekly summary posts for Word of the Week every Friday.

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Blogtober Posts

CoppaFeel Breast Cancer Awareness

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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. When my friend was diagnosed with Breast Cancer 14 years ago I was stunned. She was the first person I’d ever heard of with Breast Cancer and sadly she lost her life within 5 years. Since then I’ve known another 3 friends with Breast Cancer. And several other friends with cancer. It’s such a dreadful disease.

Another of my friends passed away in August. She fought so hard, but sometimes it can be really agressive and the fighting is in vain. Other’s I know have beaten the cancer and live every day in hope that it doesn’t return.

What Can You Do?

Well, awareness is everything and knowing your own body is a big key. That way you can check regularly and notice if anything feels different, or wrong. If you are ever in doubt then do get checked out.

  • Change in skin texture e.g puckering or dimpling
  • Swelling in armpit or around collarbone
  • lumps and thickening
  • constant/unusual pain in breast or armpit
  • nipple discharge
  • sudden change in size or shape
  • nipple inversion and changes in direction
  • rash or crusting of, or around, nipple

Catching it early can be the key to a better recovery.

What is Coppafeel?

I’m an oldie, I get asked to go for mammograms as standard. But Breast cancer can happen to young people too. Coppafeel is a charity that raises breast cancer awareness amongst younger women.

I am an Avon Representative and this month we are selling a whole range of goodies which are including donations to the coppafeel charity. The Boob bag donation is 50% of the cost, the rest are 10%. If you are interested then please click through and take a look.

coppa feel collage of Avon Goodies

Disclosure: clicking the link will take you to an Avon Selling page.

blogtober2019 pumpkin

Blogtober Posts

Blogtober Linky

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All You Need is Love, waiting, perservering & affirmation.

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This is my monthly post which I link up with Sheryl’s Chronic Illness link Up Party. This month I’m talking about Waiting, Parting, Perservering, Affirming and Love. This is also doubling up as my first Blogtober 2019 post.

All you need is love, waiting, perservering and affirmation. A cord heart tied on a branch

Waiting

Last month was not a good month. I’m still waiting for test results, but this is the second lot and the first came back clear. If these are clear then once again my symptoms will be put down to Stiff Person Syndrome. When you have a chronic illness, everything that goes wrong seems to be blamed on your current illness.

I’m also waiting for my daughter’s genetic and chromosome test results. I know these take a long time, but when the time I was given arrives I always get anxious. I’m praying so hard they don’t find something serious. Coping with her illness was hard enough when I was well, I can’t bear the thought that she may have worse to come.

Parting

In August a friend I’ve known for about 15 years passed away after a long battle of cancer. She was buried last week. It was a sad parting. I still can’t believe she’s gone. I’m not afraid of death, but grief is so hard to deal with. I hate to think of the suffering of my friends family, especially her husband who is not well himself, and her two children. It’s so sad.

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I’ll be posting about it on my Social media accounts. This affects so many people, more needs to be done to help. Ironically, yesterday I had my first ever mammogram.

Perservering

Oh my, this has been a tough month health wise. I’ve suffered so much. Some days I feel I can’t go on like this but it’s my family that keeps me going. There is no way I would leave them intentionally so I have to keep perservering with trying to make life better for me and for them. Some days it’s so, so difficult to carry on. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I want to carry on with my life and do all the things that need doing, but sometimes even the simplest tasks take so much out of me.

What choice do I have? Sometimes it seems hopeless, I keep suffering and I know my family suffer by watching. But I will keep perservering in trying things that will make things better for us all.

“Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.” 

― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

Affirmation

I truly believe that the brain is stronger than the body. Mind over matter. Sometimes it’s all I have. So I continue with the self help, keeping my affirmations, telling myself that I can get better and believing it. I take time to live in the moment. I love reminiscing about the past, but it won’t make it come back. Making plans for the future is fun, but you can’t live something that hasn’t happened yet. So, the only thing you can do is live for today. Get through one day at a time, good or bad and look for the things that make me happy.

I love my Little Man and Boo coming home from school and coming to give me a hug. Star is not the hugging type, she’s like huggin an ironing board! I was feeling unwell the other day and she gave me a very rare hug, it meant everything to me. The hugs off my children keep me going, even my big kids hug me. (As a side note, I barely remember hugging my Mum, apart from when she was in hospital, and after she had died. I guess I was an ironing board too, but my kids have taught me otherwise.)

Back to Affirmations, I’ve been reading a lot of Matt Haig lately and he seems to speak to me. I love this quote.

“Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.” 

― Matt Haig, The Humans

Love

As I said, I’ve had a bad month health wise, so reading has been my friend. I’ve loved reading Matt Haig, but I’m also halfway through a very sweet classic book, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I think I may stear away from some of my usual murder mystery type novels and maybe add a little romance to my reading. After all, they say, all you need is love.

“No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.” 

― Matt Haig, The Humans

I’ve never really classed myself as a romantic. I’ve always found the conception of love quite difficult. I mean with family it’s unconditional and that love I find comes naturally. But loving others I find difficult. I think my life needs a little more love.

When my friend passed recently, it was obvious how much she was loved. Am I loved like that? I thought that the way to find love was to please people all the time, or shower them with kindness or help. But, some people just don’t respond in the way you would expect. Love is a strange old thing, and I don’t just mean romance.

“Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.” 

― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

Thank you for reading my round up this week, by clicking the picture below you can visit Sheryl’s link up and see how other’s have interpreted these prompts.

October link up party

Read last months writing prompts here, The meaning of Life, the Universe and Chronic Illness.

blogtober 2019 around a pumpkin on a dark wood background.

Blogtober Posts

Blogtober Linky

See Other bloggers Blogtober posts.

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My Sunday Photo – Silly Boy

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The Little Man is such a Silly Boy

silly boy, with a big green balloon on his head.

know the photo quality is rubbish but I couldn’t resist sharing as he made me giggle so much.

I’d just woken up, five minutes before the alarm. It happens a lot, I don’t know if it’s my body clock or whether my body just can’t stand the pain of lying down any more.

I wake up stiff and in pain and it takes me a few minutes to actually get into a sitting position. I have bars I can grab to help me do this. Often, The Little Man will already be awake and helping me by pulling my stiff legs but this morning I was struggling alone. Once sitting I grab my medication..again, this is normally given to me by The Little Man, it seemed strange he’d not come in, I did wonder why. Then the alarm to wake me started up and I switched it off quickly.

I pulled myself to my feet and made my way across the landing. The girls room is first so I opened the door and announced it was time to get up. Then I reached The Little Man’s door and this is how he greeted me. The silly boy just wanted to make my day begin with a smile.

The Little Man has the same body clock as me and is always awake early. Star is the same, although she’ll lie in bed reading until I call her some mornings. Other mornings she’ll get up because she needs the toilet or she’s hungry. Boo is the only one I have difficulty waking. She’s like her Dad.

Linking up to My Sunday Snapshot. You can see my other Sunday photos here.

Word of the Week #39 – Glasses

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Hello and welcome to the home of Word of the Week, a nice and simple weekly linky, with everyone welcome to pop by and share. The idea of the linky is to reflect back on your past week and share it with us. It’s great if you can sum it up in a word or phrase, hence giving us your Word of the Week. My word this week is glasses and you can read more about that below.

I’m not totally strict on using just a word or phrase but please try to stick to the theme of summing up your week.

There are not too many rules with this linky, just remember to read at least another couple of posts in the link up after adding your link. I will read and comment on all posts and tweet them out for you. I also have a Pinterest board devoted to Word of the Week and I will add posts to Mix Please add the badge below to your post so that others may find us and join in. If you comment or tweet then please use the hashtag #WotW

Word of the Week is open from 6am on Friday Morning to 12 noon on Monday. Plenty of time to join in!

If you are unfamiliar with the Word of the Week linky then please feel free to ask any questions. New linkers are always welcome, we love to hear what you have been up to in the past week.

MY WORD OF THE WEEK

Glasses

photograph of a pair of glasses on a laptop

Last week I had an eye test and not to my surprise, my eyesight has deteriorated. I was given the choice of 3 pairs of glasses that I would need for normal use, laptop use and reading, or one pair of varifocals.

I chose the varifocals, despite hearing that they are difficult to get used to.

So, for the first time in my life I’m wearing glasses all the time. In one way it’s a relief as I don’t have to get my glasses out everytime someone hands me something to read, or if we are in a restaurant. I had a reading glasses in the living room, in my handbag, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Now I can just wear one pair all the time. I just need to get used to them.

Not Just Me!

My Little Man also has new glasses. He had a test the same time as me and he has to have new glasses too. He’s used to wearing his all the time though. I bought him two new pairs and he managed to break one in the first few days! I’m hoping we can get them fixed.

When I was growing up I was the only member of my family who didn’t have to wear glasses. My Mum only had reading glasses but my three brothers and my Dad had to wear theirs all the time. My Mum always said it was because I had brown eyes. It’s true that brown eyes are less prone to suffer from certain eye diseases, and are more likely to see better in glare situations, like night driving. I managed to get pretty far in life with 20/20 vision so my sight is down to pure degeneration (and possibly my condition, but that’s not proven.)

Out of my two older kids, the blue eyed one wears glasses whereas the brown eyed one is recently starting to need reading glasses. Out of my three younger ones I have two with blue eyes and one with brown. The Little Man has blue eyes, but he is most like his Dad who also had to wear glasses when he was young.

Anyway, as you can see it’s been an exciting week for me and all I have to talk about is eye colour and glasses! I hope your week has been more exciting, do let me know by joining up your weekly round ups.

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