TRANS MEDIA CONSULTANCY SARL
LEGAL PRACTITIONER, SOLICITORS, ADVOCATES,
LEGAL CONSULTANT OF THE SUPREME COURT,
ELEPHANT CHAMBERS,
TRECH SACARICE COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC ( WEST AFRICA )
NAME: Advocat Zonsou Kpadenou

Attn;

With much sincerity & transpirency, this information required power of attorney from you dully signed to enable us deal with the person you sent.

The humble gentleman, English citizen came to our bureau here in Benin republic and stated that you sent him to claim and have the fund transfer via special envoy arrangement on transit to Heathrow airport London confidentially.

Our bureau are hereby demanding for power of attorney stating that you sent Mr Thomas Whitehead to claim the fund and moreover that you are not interested in your inheritance fund.

So we want to clarify from you if you are actually the sender of the this person Mr Thomas Whitehead to our bureau,

Your earliest response required as this will enable us ascertain the real situability of things,

Best Regards

Advocat Zonsou Kpadenou

Never work with animals or kids. Of course, that’s only because he didn’t want to be in the background while the cute kids and animals stole the show.

This is the Tiny Tots division at the Red Earth Pow Wow. I don’t know how well the other kids did, but this little tot not only danced but managed to make it through the entire song.

I’ve been struggling the past few days. I’ll recover and have actually started already. I’ve gotten used to feeling mostly ok so falling into the pit was an unpleasant surprise of unfamiliarity. Tomorrow is a new day of potential to get my emotional life back into some semblance of order.

I’ve applied for a job with probation again. This one is in a small city north of Saskatoon. It’s a position that specializes in sex offenders. I doubt I’ll even get considered, but spent Wednesday, yesterday and most of today that I wasn’t retreated in the bedroom fine tuning my resume and cover letter. The closing date is Monday. If I don’t hear from them within 4 weeks of the closing day then I’ll know for certain I wasn’t considered. I’ll keep applying though. Surprisingly enough, for a government position it pays freakishly low, not a whole lot more than I’m getting now. The difference would be the experience I’d get that could get me into working for the feds at parole.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at.

Let’s see:
• Bran and I continue to work on getting my hobby work space built. I have photos on my Clicks blog (button on the right) if you want to see our meagre progress thus far.
• I finally got rid of the drain last Friday (the one before the one just past). I was greatly relieved to have that gone. I leaked for the night (laid down a towel to keep the bed dry, but it was healed over by morning. I have a lot of scarification on my belly now. I can’t say I’m happy about that, but I’m relieved to be a more complete person again.
• I began walking with Bran on Wednesday last week. He goes to a cardiac rehabilitation program that is subsidized by the provincial government. He, Boy and I walk around a track. On Friday last week I was feeling ill so didn’t go. I doubled my walking on Monday because I learned a valuable lesson. Clothing that is tight around an internal seam will limit what one can do. Loose clothing has no such limits. Tomorrow I’ll be wearing newly laced shoes (to try and solve a numb foot issue) and try to walk the entire 40 minutes.
• My tax refund is being held up wherever they are holding it. It was pulled for assessment or something for some reason. I’m to call by Dec. 22 if I haven’t received anything before then.
• Bran’s cast came off last Friday. He was having issues with his thumb becoming numb and having chafing problems. So he went in, it was x-rayed and the techs removed it. He’s inordinately pleased about simple things, like washing his hands.
• I spent time today looking at the possibility of immigrating to another country. Bran and I considered Costa Rica but they don’t recognize same-sex marriages even when the marriage is legal in the home country. That was my search criteria. I looked at Sweden, Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Spain and Portugal. Thus far Spain and Portugal are ahead because they are more temperate.
• After looking at other countries to move to I checked out the government job sites here and found one that I could apply for in the province. I finished up the application a few minutes ago. Hopefully I’ll hear something from them. I saw a pile of boner errors on my previous application and corrected them. Then I read through several times to make sure I didn’t screw up again. I hope I caught them all since simple errors aren’t a good thing.
• Bran thinks that the renovations the landlord did last year included adding some (if not all) of the downstairs suite’s wiring to our meter. This is because somehow our power usage doubled. While it’s possible we used that much power with the air conditioner and the computers, it’s not fully likely. Personally I wouldn’t put it past the landlord to be trying to save himself money with a fast one. On principle I don’t trust landlords.
• My weight is fairly steady since getting out of hospital. That’s unsurprising considering my activity level dropped considerably after the surgery. Hopefully the walking will help and then I’ll be going back to work at the beginning of January.
• Since beginning the work on my hobby corner I’ve been craving doing something. What I’ve been doing is tracing patterns onto tracing paper to transfer onto cloth for embroidery and beading. I also want to get back to making jewelry again. I really would like to make it a paying venture. I’ll have to figure out a way of doing that sometime that doesn’t involve Etsy. There are too many re-sellers there. When a place says they can make 10,000 dresses for your chain to sell, you can bet that they’re not an individual crafts person. What makes it worse is that when members make it known in the forums the thread gets shut down. You can see that if you go to Regretsy where they post that stuff. It’s hard enough for an individual craftsperson to get sales without re-sellers getting the edge.
• I want to win the lottery.
• I’m way behind on others’ blogs. I need to go read them.

This is what’s been happening since I last posted:
• I lived with the drain in until today (so, 4 weeks). The site had ceased to drain off much fluid and the drain was beginning to cause more irritation so it was removed this afternoon. I can now sleep on my right side but I have a towel on the bed because the drain site will leak fluid until it heals over.
• I was freed to drive again today as well. Bran has been very sweet about driving me around to various places. He’s now free to not.
• Bran fell the week before my surgery. It wasn’t until I was home and his wrist continued to bother him that he went into his own doctor and discovered that his wrist was, in fact, broken. He was sent to one of the hospital clinics for a brace. The techs there put him in a cast. The cast should be coming off in a couple of weeks.
• November 11, 2011 was my 10 year anniversary of blogging. That’s right, ten years ago on that day I opened my Diary-X account. About a month or so later I opened it up to other readers and then began reading the blogs of other people. VUBoOQ‘s blog was the first blog of another person I read. He was Enviroboi back then.
• We got snow. A lot of it is gone because of a recent thaw. I had a slip and fall earlier in the week on an icy patch (since been deiced with a vengeance). Luckily I didn’t hurt by belly at all, just a sore ankle and left wrist.
• I had my nails done (gel) and though was generally pleased, I was specifically unhappy so I won’t be going back to the place I’d gotten them done. It’s been weird having long nails and I had to get used to them. I still hit the wrong keys a lot.
• Boy has become unhappy at work. There was a change of supervisors and the current one is an asshole. Actually, he’s the one that Bran called an asshole and got a few days off because of it.
• Bran began working on creating my hobby/work space. I posted a couple of starting photographs on my Tumblr if you want to see what the beginning looks like. I’ll post regular updates as we progress on making a workable space. It’s where all my hobby stuff is, theoretically at least, supposed to be stored.
• I got a light box so I can trace photos and make embroidery/beading patterns. Using it has been fun. It gives me the illusion of being artistic without actually having any talent.
• I haven’t lost any weight since coming out of hospital. That’s to be expected though. My activity level is significantly lower than it was before I went in. I shall be joining Bran 3X/week at the Saskatoon Field House for his exercise in the Cardiac Program offered there. I can join him for $25 a month and we’ll be walking or cycling. I figure I can support him and have motivation to get my ass moving for an extended time.
• I continue to go into work to do the administrative work for the program I work. It gets me out of the house and forces me to be somewhat social. It also enables me to see my boss live up to his commitment of wearing a fake mustache for Movember. He can’t grow his own mustache to save his butt, so he said that for every $200 raised he’s wear a fake for a week. Needless to say I was the first one to donate. Yes, I’m evil and he knows it.
• Bran, Boy and I continue to take care of our chinchillas. I’m hoping they did tonight. I went to bed to have a nap with Bran and then asked if I could stay in bed when the alarm went off to go pick up Boy and do the cage. Bran said it was ok so that’s what I did. When I got up 1/2 hour ago Boy had already gone to bed and Bran was also in bed.

Thank you to all for your well wishes during my recovery. Having support really does help.

It never occurred to me, but until now, when Bran mentioned it, “discharge” isn’t necessarily a good word to associate with the word “hospital”.

He made me laugh.

Recovery is going well. The staples came out yesterday though the drain remains so long as it is sucking out fluid that is collecting where the gut used to be. The incision line itches like crazy sometimes though.

I got my nails done all fancy, but I’ll be going to a different place since I wasn’t fully satisfied with the job that was done. I’m finding myself having to get used to having nails while I’m typing.

I’ve been spending most of my time resting and recovering from the extreme sensory over stimulation of last week. I can tolerate music now, that’s a good thing. I’ve also joined a forum group at Thanatos.net. Though some might find the subject of death, memorial photography and the like rather macabre and disturbing it is an extension of my interest in crime and forensics. Memorial photography was popular in Victorian times with the advent of photography. For some, a photo of the corpse of their loved one was the only real, tangible reminder of their existence. This remains true today with the popularity of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep a non-profit organization of volunteer photographers who help grieving parents of infants that are born dead or die soon after birth. Anyway, it’s all in my bailiwick.

For your amusement from the folks at Weirdomatic, Creepy Ads.

I got home from hospital about 1/2 hour ago. I was actually discharged a couple of hours ago, but I decided to go into work with Bran and Boy. They needed to change the bedding of the cage and feed the chinchillas. I wanted to visit.

I have a drain tube running out of my belly still. I was hoping to not have to need it but such was not to be. The drain is set in between my muscle and skin (ok, fat). You see, I have a large pocket under the skin where about 4 feet (121 cm or 1.21 metre) of small intestine protruding through my abdominal wall. The pocket that gut made is filling up with fluid. If the fluid wasn’t drained while my body heals then I’d end up with that large bulge on my side as a more permanent feature. I’m told that drain will probably eventually plug up and I’ll have to have that pocket aspirated using a needle. I’m also told the skin is numb (it is) and the needle most probably won’t cause much, if any, discomfort at all. I go in next week to have the many staples removed.

There’s a huge saga about my time at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon. The most significant is about the nursing staff who went above and beyond to make my stay as comfortable and easy as a hospital stay could hope to be. The made me laugh, they helped me a lot, they made sure I got food I could eat. They cheered when I went for walks and they celebrated my first post-op poop. I can’t say enough good about them.

Today I was hyperstimulated and overwhelmed by that. I haven’t been able to sleep for more than 2-3 hours at a time because of my bed. It’s one of those pump beds. The mattress pumps up at various places. This is to try to prevent bed sores from forming. For me it was a nightmare. I couldn’t find a comfortable place to sleep because the mattress kept moving. It over extended my abdomen and caused me more pain than I would have had on a standard mattress. Along with the constant motion of the mattress was the noise the mechanics of the bed made. Add all that along with the IV alarms, patient rings to the nurses desk (just feet from my door), the snoring from my roommates (all men, by the way), the moans and other general noises, the fact that I was not able to have any alone time to recoup some coping and you have the recipe for a me that was falling apart this morning.

The food situation for me was a nightmare. I’m on a low carb diet. This means that the jello and juice they served to me when I was on clear fluids couldn’t be eaten. That left me with coffee, tea and broth. When I was to go to full fluids I was still on clear liquids because I don’t eat dairy and I couldn’t eat the cream of wheat. One breakfast there was nothing I could eat at all. Some sweet soul left a banana on my tray while I was out for walk trying to calm down (I was supposed to be on soft foods but was still served liquids). Bran brought me bananas, nut butter (cashew and almond and it’s delicious), unsweetened apple/fruit sauce and tuna. This guaranteed that I would be able to at least eat something. I was supposed to see a dietician yesterday so they could get more details about my diet and feed me adequately. Last night’s supper was a spare tray that’s always sent up to the wards in case they get a new admission or diet changes don’t get to the kitchen in time. I had an oddly shaped roast beef roll thing and squash. Luckily breakfast involved scrambled eggs. The rest of breakfast, a bran muffin, oatmeal, brown sugar and orange juice, were left out. A dietician didn’t come and see me until this morning after my small breakfast of scrambled eggs (supplemented by a banana and some apple/fruit sauce). I told her all the things that I can’t eat, the things I can and she left to see what they could prepare me for lunch. The made an omelet (I’m not sure they were real eggs – I think they were those egg beater things), a banana, tea and some blueberries that I ate with some almond milk Bran brought me when I went on the full fluids diet. Now I can eat whatever I want.

I have to wonder why the part of my intake on the day of my surgery that pertained to my diet was not passed on to the dietician staff at the beginning. I gave a complete list of the foods that I can’t have and the foods I could eat. The entire nightmare around the food (and believe me, that frustration did not help me feel better) could have been avoided. Or a system set into place where a dietician will visit anyone who has specific food issues that are noted in intake so that the appropriate foods can be served. It brought me to tears yesterday when I was served the cream of wheat, orange juice and brown sugar breakfast. I was very hungry and there was nothing I could eat (praise to the good person who donated a banana in my hour of need).

It’s so nice to be home. I can hear the kitty purring on Boy from across the room. There is the clicking of mine and his keyboards and I’m in my spot on the couch. I can look across the couch and see bran on his computer. I know that if I need to lay down that my bed won’t be making asthmatic mechanical noises in my ears and my mattress won’t be moving underneath me. When I lay my head down to sleep I won’t be hearing the beeping of various IV and monitor alarms, snores when I can’t poke the snorer and demand he roll over, and moans and groans. I’ll be decompressing for a while.

I make an appointment to see the surgeon on Thursday next week to have my staples removed and to see if the drain is still working properly.

I’ll post again when I get out of hospital.