Recently they had a new disability reporter start and I really liked the way they introduced her. They aired her story first then interviewed her in the studio. If they’d done it the other way round it would have been infantalising because it would have felt like show and tell in primary school.

The way they tied the interview in with her story was neat because she was born limb different, iirc she has one leg and one hand that has some fingers fused. She has worn a leg prosthesis since 2 yo and tried an arm prosthesis at 7 but immediately rejected it.

Her story was about a young boy who lost a hand when he was 4, he looked about 12-13 now. The first question she asked him was bland and unremarkable but for the second one she asked if there were things he preferred to do without it.

This instant but brief look of relief crossed his face, his body relaxed. Like he was thinking thank god I don’t have to pretend this thing is awesome. All he said was yeah some things are easier...like holding a piece of paper.

Something you’d be doing all day at school. No biggie.

It was also clear from the briefness of his reply that things being easier for him was not on the radar of anyone controlling his life. He looked uncomfortable with it and I got the feeling he wanted to throw the thing across the room but his parents probably go on at him about how lucky he is or some shit.

The good things are that they play a lot more varied music and composers now, a lot more women and people who aren’t white. One of their feature albums of the week was by a brass ensemble that just does arrangements of video game music so I’d be driving to work listening to Super Mario or something.

One piece that caught my attention was Pagi (Morning) by Belle Chen. I spent the first half of the piece trying to figure out what three instruments I was hearing before I realised it was a prepared piano. I was surprised because whenever I’ve heard pieces for prepared piano it’s always been kind of ‘look at me! *clonk*, I’m a prepared piano! *thunk*’ like the composer doesn’t really have a feel for what to do with it and as a result it doesn’t sound musical.

But this sounded like a bunch of instruments with different timbre effects because she’d clearly thought about what sounds she wanted. She was also looping as well so I guess classical electronica is a genre now.

The things I don’t like about it are pretty much all the things I dislike about ABC TV now. There’s too much talking and conversation and it has the rhythm of commercial radio the way they put the breaks in. Plus the endless cross-promotions they do all over the telly between all the ABC properties are on radio too.

Other than that it feels a bit like Triple J? They do a classical Oz Music Month for November same as JJJ. I miss the old Classic FM presenters with their sombre, stuffy back announcements. It used to be a much quieter station.

I was expecting a few months away from here, it always takes that long when I start a new job – a couple of weeks of ‘I hate this and I’m never coming back’ plus working out what I need to settle into a new work routine.

What actually happened was:

Two weeks in my bad wrist got worse. I couldn’t bend it at all. I wore my brace all weekend but still no relief by Sunday evening. In desperation I played a few minutes of guitar, cursing and swearing all the way from the pain… and it fucking worked dammit.

So I had to start doing a bit of practice everyday, worked up a few simpler pieces, had to buy a suitable chair and look for a guitar rest because I can’t use footstools anymore with my bad hip. Did you know that there is a guitar rest that looks like a giant chopping board that you attach to the back of the instrument?

Still haven’t found one I like but there’s one on ebay I’ll try eventually. Also my nails were really brittle for ‘some reason’ so it was nail hardener and nail care all over. I had to pick the one instrument that requires them.

Thankfully just doing my job has strengthened my wrists to the point where that’s mostly no longer necessary..

Then at work they introduced an app for clocking in and accepting shifts etc. (The company I work for is a zombie of a thing where everything is outsourced and they actually rent me from a recruitment company).

Of course it wouldn’t work on my phone so I had to buy another just for work, then I had to remember to use the damn thing, then it turned out others were having trouble with the app too so they put an ipad in the office and I was using this whole smartphone just for accepting shifts. At least I picked one with an alarm I can find this time.

But that turned out to be OK because then we had a break-in at home and my other phone and wallet were stolen so I just switched to the new phone but had to buy another sim to get my old number ported (all of my 2-factor authentications go to that one, all official communication goes through it) So then I had 2 sims in my phone on 2 different networks (do you think I could remember to keep credit on both?) and I only finally got everything connected back to my original number last month. Only took a year.

And THEN, the week before xmas last year I got rear ended. Second time I’ve had a perfectly good car turned into a repairable write-off by a middle aged bloke who wasn’t paying attention. Being just before xmas/new year meant all the crash repairers were closed for a couple of weeks so I was driving around in an unroadworthy vehicle with an exploded back window covered in plastic.

Luckily there were witnesses (the people in the car in front who I got shunted into - my car was the only one with major damage) and we both claimed on his insurance because I didn’t have any…. He was insured with an industry co-op for people who work in transportation, he drives for a living. I got another car for half the payout amount though so that left me some spare money.

In between all this I discovered my iron and B12 levels had taken a serious dive and I was either close to or officially anaemic, depending on which standard you use. My skin looked exactly the colour of the image on the Wikipedia page for B12 deficiency. I thought I was just getting really tanned! So that explained the brittle nails. Got B12 shots, finally found an iron supplement I can tolerate (it’s liquid! It tastes nice! I don’t get side effects!) Now I have sustagen in my morning coffee and it’s not to make the coffee taste better.

My blood test this October just gone showed I’ve made it into the low normal iron range and many of the symptoms that cleared up over that time are things I have had for my entire life. Hmmmmm.

After that I got onto my first round of allergy blood testing, just finished the second round and the results are that I am allergic to flavour lol. I’m heterozygous for one of the coeliac mutations so 10% chance I’m coeliac. I’m allergic to onion, tomato, potato, sesame and chilli. That’s, like, my entire diet and it means eating take away is near impossible. Also can’t have most gluten free baked goods cos they frequently contain potato starch.

Spent a bit of time trying different ways to hide veg and such in food, tried some kitchen gadgets and have achieved 3 reliable recipes – egg-lemon rice with spinach, lemon herb chicken and decadent porridge. Cheese n crackers and popcorn for snacks. ‘Reliable recipe’ here means a) something I can cook without too much effort and b) something I will actually want to/be able to eat once it’s made. Food shopping has become pretty basic since, and I’ve found a brand of fresh frozen lemon juice that doesn’t contain sulfites so I can go nuts with the lemon juice with no risk to my vitamin B1 levels.

So my diet is still very restricted but it’s completely allergen free and I’ve managed to finally ditch coca cola. I noticed my cravings for it were a bit sus, I’d always want something with gluten after and I’m pretty sure it’s the caramel colouring doing it. Still trying to find ways to increase veggies but fibre capsules are a godsend and my cholesterol is also high. Welcome to early middle age I guess?

In amongst all this I noticed a pattern in my sleeping habits where I would always either fall asleep or wake between 3 and 5 o’clock. Could be a.m. or p.m. but always those hours. I tried setting my alarm for 5am – totally unrealistic hour for my entire life. And IT FUNCKING WORKED! It still drifts a bit because 24 hours has never fit with my sleep-wake rhythm but I don’t suffer in the mornings anymore. I’ve actually had to move it to 4:30 because that’s about when I start waking naturally now.

So that left me feeling liked I’d been body snatched and took a while to stop feeling weird. Really weird. My only issue is sometimes falling asleep too early in the evening but then I just do cooking or whatever when I wake at 12 or 2. I suspect the key to it is that I’m awake for both sunrise and sunset and those are pretty much the only two time cues my brain has ever noticed. Also I’m not sacrificing any quiet time at night, it’s just been shifted to early morning.

And on top of all that my housemate’s sister’s second job was looking for people. I had to turn them down the first time because I still hadn’t sorted out several health issues but they asked again a few months later and I was ready. This is the sort of job I was looking for in the first place (audio transcription rather than data entry but still) but it’s way better than the one I had originally lined up for myself and its $50+ an hour. It’s only 3-7 nights a month so good second job, I get like 2x my regular day job pay if I do a full session

And that left me feeling weirded out again because now I have two jobs that I like, they both pay well, in both I have good bosses, I wake everyday (still not knowing what day it is) looking forward to whatever the day is. I don’t dread mornings anymore or wake up with the thought of ‘not again’.

Some massive changes for the good this last year and also I finally cracked crochet and knitting. But important to note, I think, that the main thing that made these huge gains possible was having a livable amount of money coming in. I regularly drop $200 at a time at the chemist and I have to be able to afford that, never mind the specialists I have to see and my GP clinic no longer bulk bills.

Now I have it stuck in my head to the tune of Jolene.