Has anyone seen my disability?? Nope??

One of my most popular blog posts was this one when I spoke about what dyspraxia meant for me for the Dyspraxia Foundation's awareness campaign

Since then I've discovered there's more to me than dyspraxia. Whilst that diagnosis back in 2007 made a lot of sense, it still didn't explain everything and left me feeling like it still wasn't the answer.


Anyway, rather than ramble on about all my 'labels' I thought I'd just revisit the idea of what hidden disabilities mean to me:

Being absolutely knackered, from doing absolutely nothing.
Noticing 4 hours after I've left the house that my clothes are on inside out and my shoes are odd.
Repeatedly calling a client 'Lasagne' when her name was 'Lasana'.
Arriving to work an hour late because you work different shifts and you got the days mixed up.


Having mixed feelings about the day ahead - being super, run around the house and spin around in circles excited about your plans, but at the same time contemplating which would be the best way to kill yourself .
Having so many great ideas about what you want to do with your life, but forgetting them all before you get to write them down.
Starting to tidy your house but an hour later things are more in a mess than when you started.


Wearing odd socks everyday because it's easier that trying to match all my socks up.
Wanting to have friends but not wanting to socialise.
Buying a house with a garden so that you can spend time outside, but not wanting to go outside in case the neighbours can see you.
Loving the cinema, but not ever going because it hurts your ears and you hate sitting with so many strangers.



I just want to you to know that you're not alone, and not the only one out there that feels that way. I'd love to hear what your hidden disability means to you in the comments section below.

What do you mean, you can't see my disability?

xxx

Yes, my knickers are supposed to be inside out

Ever wonder how you get to the end of the week in one piece?

Feeling things weren't quite right at work yesterday I toddled off to the loo to find my knickers were inside out (in fact they still are as I type this, fancy!). Not quite as bad as the day I realised I didn't actually have a limp but that I'd got odd shoes on. 

Reminds me of all those occasions I've got my son home from school to find he'd had no underwear on all day. Luckily he's been dressing himself for some time now and does a much better job of it than me.

Some days its just harder to get your shit together than others. So for those days I keep a drawer full of stuff at work:
Hairbrush
Deodorant
Dry shampoo
Painkillers
Spare meds
Cash
Porridge
Phone charger
Nuts
Tissues
Tea bags
Vaseline
Hand cream
The list goes on... my work colleagues think I'm crazy.

I only use the stuff occasionally* (mainly because I've got a butt load of stuff in my handbag and coat pockets too!) but it's helps calm me down on those days I just haven't got it together on time.

The one thing I'm really bad at remembering is my meds, so I've got some of everything I need in all the important places- work, home, the car, my handbag.  That way I've nearly always got some to hand. I find this a real good way to compensate for poor memory.

How do you cope on a day to day basis with being so forgetful?

*who am I kidding, I'm rooting through that drawer on a daily basis!

Your balls are too heavy, once is enough thank you

I voted for one game. We got two.

Ten pin bowling people, it's a love hate relationship for me. I love playing but my bendy limbs and poor co-ordination don't fare for a good score. The first game is always better that the second (100 - 84 and that was with bumpers). By the time I've rolled 20 balls down that slippery ally my body has had enough and it just goes downhill from there. Towards the end I was just flailing and dropping the balls. Like a drunk person. Except I was drinking tap water.

One good thing happened though - they let you wear your own shoes now!! Score!! No more wearing shoes that a bazillion other stinky feet have sweated into. No more burning my socks as soon as I get home.

Bowling is just one of the many things I love to do but suck at/find painful/ simply can't do well.

What do you love but struggle at?

I didn't take any pictures at bowling, I was too busy showing everyone that I could fit a ridiculous amount of stuff into my dungaree pockets. So here is a picture of an extremely germy gecko in the food place we went to after bowling. As if I'm going to touch your gecko and die from all the human germs living on there. NICE TRY PERSON!

I will not touch your germy gecko. Nice try! 

I'm just left with dead bits

Aw man, I'm no good at plants!

Why what have you done?

Snapped the only bit that was alive off. Now it's just dead bits. Aggr I can't do plants. I'm bad at plants.

You're missing something

What? That I'm really shit at plants

No, that sentence is missing something 

That I didn't get taught plants because my mum is shit and kills plants too?

No, like a doing word

OK, I'm shit at doing plants

No, like a noun or a verb, which one means a doing word?

I don't know, I think I missed that day at school. Like I either wasn't there, or probably was just thinking about something else

Me too

You'll have to ask our son. He knows everything.

Yeah, he does school

Maybe if I just put this bit in there it will grow back

Yeah, maybe 

My memory is like a sausage. The worst.

Having a bad memory totally sucks ass. I think of really cool ideas all of the time but before I can do anything with them, poof*, they're gone.

I got asked the other day to set up a security question on one of those forms you fill in when you're creating an online account. You know the ones where you choose a question and tell it the answer in case you forget your real password (which is like every single time). The ones where you don't give the real answer because you're sure that if you ever have to answer the question on the phone that the person on the other end is going to think you're a complete crackpot. So you put a more 'normal' answer but the problem then is when you get asked the question you can't remember what your 'normal' answer was.
Anyway the question was, what superpower do you wish you had? There were the usual options, flying, invisibility, immortality...but you know what I wish I had? A good freaking memory! That would be a great thing to have. Make my life so much easier. Like the ability to think of something and then recall it 5 or 10 minutes later. The ability to walk in a room and know why the hell you're actually there. The ability to make a phone call without having to write everything down that you want to say beforehand so that you don't forget what you called up for the minute you start talking.

But now I'm thinking my memory maybe isn't the issue. Maybe my memory is a perfectly acceptable memory, it just can't keep up with how fast my brain goes. So if I'm wishing maybe I should go for a slower mind. Nah, that sounds dull. How about the ability to play my mind back, like I can with the TV?!?!? Holy crap, that's it. Playback mind!!!! That should have been my answer!!!!***

Now would someone like to show me how to replay my mind so that I can actually remember what the crap this post was supposed to be about. Because I know I had a plan but I can't for the life of me remember what I set out to write!

Anyone have any good tips for remembering really cool ideas?


*that's the sound of something really cool disappearing. He're a cracking example...I knew exactly what I wanted to say next up there after this sentence but I've spent so long spelling disappearing right that it's gone. The idea has gone. And I know it was a really good one. (and you can't disprove that because neither of us knows what it was, so I win. I'm the cleverest and the bestest. Except that I'm not because my memory would be great if I was and it's not, so I'm not.)

**(right now anyway, the thought has only just come to me if I'm totally honest - I wasn't going to be, I was going to claim that this is something I've been thinking about for a while to make it seem like I have more normal thought processes, what the actual fuck??? Jeeze it's hard work in my head)

***I put flying. Not only was it top of the list, but I do actually quite like the idea of flying. Like a bird. Like a big giant bird.

Hating suprises

A few Christmases ago I had a bit of a meltdown over a gift from my parents. To anyone on the outside I guess I would have been comparable to a spoilt toddler having a tantrum because she didn't get the toy she wanted. My mum didn't take it personally though.

To set the scene for you, I'd just made Christmas dinner for the whole family for the second time not having learnt my lesson the first time round that the stress of cooking a 3 course meal for 8 people, and the burns and mess were simply something I shouldn't volunteer to put myself through again. But hey if you listen to anyone round here I'm stubborn.  

My mum handed me the gift - I hate gifts. Or at least, I hate things I haven't specifically asked for. So I open this gift, it's a pair of socks. They're soft, cosy, fluffy. I love soft, cosy, fluffy socks. But Oh My God. I put them on. Aggrh the discomfort. The seams. The unusually long length. They feel just soo wrong. I try to keep them on and show thanks but the stress and discomfort is unbearable. I'm walking around in these socks, crying and laughing at the same time. It's ridiculous that socks can make me cry. 

Luckily my mum was laughing with me. She knows what I'm like. She still tries to buy me surprises occasionally, knowing full well I'll probably freak out. I know she means well but Oh My God I hate surprises. 

Claire x

Hating the feeling of make-up on your skin but not being brave enough to go barefaced to work

Feeling stupid when everyone in the meeting is laughing at something someone said but you don't understand why they are laughing

Working really really hard to keep up at work but being told by your boss you're not working fast enough over and over again

Trying to explain to your employers you struggle with certain things for them to label you as lazy like every employer you've had before them

Going hungry at work because you left your lunch on the table at home with your purse next to it, again

Getting huge headaches day after day because you told your employer you have a problem with bright lights so they moved your desk right under a fluorescent light

Putting up with comments about the way you look from the men you work with because you can't think of what to say when put on the spot

What does dyspraxia mean to you?

Claire x

Taking control of your finances

Money, money, money

If you're anything like me you won't be the best with money. I've tried time and time again to 'be good' when it comes to controlling my spending and to try and get something into savings. Having started a job in the debt advice sector it's made me really analyse our spending habits as a family and basically has been a huge wake up call about how bad we are with money. Not only did we have no savings we'd also been overspending each month and piling it on credit cards. So after a mooch around the net and stumbling across Mr Money Mustache (seriously love this guy!) I'd found my latest obsession - sorting out our money situation.

So we've gone all guns blazing on trying to pay off this debt we've got hanging around like a bad smell. Looking at our spending habits over a couple of months was a SHOCKER! I recommend you all go do this (but be prepared to be horrified!). We certainly were when we realised aside from our mortgage our biggest outgoing was on food and eating out, spending a few hundred pounds each month on restaurants and coffee. Ouch. The easiest way I found to do this was to split our spending into main headings such as food, transport, eating out, clothes.... and working through our bank statements total up the spending for each category.

Time for a kick up the bum

The first logical step was to start out by doing a budget that included all the essentials that we have to pay for:

Essentials:
Mortgage
Building & contents insurance
Landline & internet
Food
Mobile phones
Pet insurance
TV licence
Council tax
Car insurance
Fuel
Car Insurance
Mr H's car HP - this ones a bummer, it's not something I wanted him to get in the first place but he's tied into it now so we just got to suck it up and pay it
Little H's sports clubs - most of these double us a childcare now that I'm working

Then we added in a couple of things that although we're essential, we really didn;t want to get rid of completely:

Non essential:
£50 a month allowance for social/entertainment costs
Little H's pocket money - he has to do jobs for this and only gets it on the agreement he puts half into his savings account
Clothing - we haven't set an amount for this but realistically things need replacing now and again like little H needing new school shoes this month. All non essential clothing costs have gone though, we're making do with what we have.

Next up I opened us a joint bank account that we have all our bills going out of and then use a 0% cashback credit card to do all the food shopping which we then pay off in full on payday.
So on pay day I transfer most of our wages from our accounts into the joint account. The only money we leave in our single accounts is fuel money Mr H, and a little in my account to cover pocket money and sports clubs. Anything left over after this goes on paying the debts off and some goes into our savings account for things we know we have coming up like birthdays, Christmas, & school trips.

Our first steps to being debt free

It's been a couple of months and so far things are going great. We've paid off nearly £3,000 in debt and saved just over £1,000 (this may seem strange but we're off to New York next month as we'd already booked and paid for it before deciding to go on a spending freeze).

At this rate we're hoping to be debt free in the next 6-8 months and then we can really ramp up the saving. I'll keep you posted.

Are you good with money or do you find it hard to control your spending?

Claire x

Job hunting with dyspraxia

Wow you guys! I'm totally amazed at how many of you stopped by to read my post about what dyspraxia means to me. It's clear to see that dyspraxia affects a whole bunch of you all around the world to some degree. So I want to say a big thank you to you all, you're fab.

As the post was so popular I've been considering writing more about living with dyspraxia. I already posted my tips for trying to keep a tidy home here.

I've not posted in a while as I started a new job earlier in the year so it's taken a while to get my act in to gear! Finding work and starting a new job can be hard enough for most people but with a hidden disability like dyspraxia things can be, well, a tad tricky I guess.

In all honesty I'd love nothing more than to be able to just find something I'm good at that can bring in enough money so that I don't have to work for someone. It would make my life so much easier and I'm sure many of you can relate to that. Unfortunately I'm yet to find that something so I'm battling on in the world of employment. I won't lie, it's not easy. Its a struggle some days and my current employers seem to have the same lack of understanding that all my previous employers have had when it comes to hidden disabilities.

To any of you currently looking for work, keep at it. I had so many applications ignored and rejected. My biggest knock back was when I interviewed for a job that I desperately wanted at a charity I'd worked for before. The interview was with a girl I'd worked for and knew, and they were well aware I had dyspraxia. What unfolded in the interview room was confidence shattering. The questions were so long winded that by the time the interviewer had finished asking them I couldn't have told you what she'd asked me for toffee. By the end of the 40 minutes having asked her to repeat most questions at least twice I was stumbling over my words and struggling to get any coherent sentences out. It was not a pleasant experience and certainly not one I'd like to repeat but hey if someone wants to treat me like that in an interview then they sure as hell don't deserve to have me work for them.

To any of you having similar struggles - don't let it get you down. Anyone would be lucky to have you work for them. You are amazing and unique and whilst you struggle with some elements of life, you sure do make up for it in other areas.

If any of you have any specific questions about applying for jobs or doing interviews then ask me in the comments below......

Have a great weekend,
Claire x

Kind resolutions

I must admit, I'm not one for making New Year resolutions. Up until a couple of years ago I'd set the same ones each year (lose weight, try harder, be tidier, have more friends.....). I'd never stick at them, and feel even more rubbish than I felt to begin with. I found an old diary when we moved this year from when I was only 9 years old with a couple of pages filled in. I had one of those moments of clarity when I read it and felt really bad for my younger me. I was so horrible to her. I'd basically written that I was fat and needed to be tidier and less clumsy. I also felt sad that I wasn't given the help I needed and was criticised for things that were entirely out of my control and made to feel that I wasn't good enough.

We put so much pressure on ourselves to be 'better' people, to be different people, that we don't always take the time to appreciate and love who we really are. Do I wish that I found things a little easier sometimes? Sure. Do I wish I wasn't so clumsy, or bothered so much by noise? Hell yes! As I've gotten older though I've learnt to appreciate my good qualities and my uniqueness too. Dyspraxia makes life hard enough at times as it is without beating yourself up over it. It doesn't feel great when other people make fun or are mean to you so why on earth do it to yourself? Madness!

So my resolution this year is simply to continue to embrace my uniqueness as much as possible and to be more kind to myself. Whether you're one for making resolutions or not I'd love for all of you to share this one with me. I also resolve to raise awareness of dyspraxia (hell the spell checker on my computer doesn't even recognise it as a word!) so that each and every one of you gets the support you deserve and that you all believe how awesome you really are.

Hope you guys have a great time bringing the New Year in tomorrow whatever you are up to. I shall no doubt be spilling my drink down me and tripping over my own feet but luckily for me everyone else will no doubt have had one too many and will be joining me for once. See you in 2015.

xxx

Keeping tidy with dyspraxia

So I'm pretty sure that many of you out there have trouble staying organised and tidy for whatever reason. My biggest battle is dyspraxia. For those of you that haven't heard of it or are unsure of what it is then I'd recommend taking a squiz at the Dyspraxia Foundation website. They've got tons of info and advice. Basically for me though it means amongst many other things I'm messy as hell!!

Now put someone with messy issues in charge of a house that also contains a little person with the same issues and you've got yourself one big messy nightmare! I wanted to share with you today a few of the things that work for me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suddenly not messy, my house in no way resembles a show home, it's just a bit less messy and my husband has a little less to complain about.

So here you go:

1. Ten minute tidy

This is what is really working for us in our house. Instead of writing down all the jobs that need doing and then getting nothing done I just tidy for a set time. That way I always achieve something and don't feel bad for not getting things done. You'll be amazed how much you can get done in ten minutes and this is seriously how I do everything around our house. I'm forever getting distracted from whatever I'm doing and feeling crap afterwards for not getting anything done. This way I have no set expectations other than things will be tidier than when I started!

The ten minute tidy also works great for kids. Sending my son to tidy his room never works, but if I tell him to go tidy it for just ten minutes once a week then he gets most of it done and it is relatively tidy most of the time.

Set a timer on your phone or oven for ten minutes. Keep tidying until the beeper goes off and then step back and see what you've achieved. Do this everyday for a week and by the end of the week you'll be amazed at how much easier it is to keep a tidier house.


2. Regular routine

Like the ten minute tidy this is something I do everyday. Once you get into a routine of doing something it makes it so much easier to do and harder to forget! Every morning I do the same thing - empty the dishwasher, load it back up, put a load of washing on, and do a ten minute tidy of the house. And I do all this before I do anything else, no arguments, no excuses. I know if it doesn't get done then, then it won't get done at all.

Ask yourself what needs doing on a daily basis as a bare minimum and make yourself do those tasks at the same time each day until they become habit. It's really important not to overwhelm yourself though so start off with just maybe 2 or 3 small tasks, you can always add more once these become habit.


3. Everything in it's place

Having a set place for everything is a must if you're going to have a tidy house.
When we moved into our new house earlier this year we put our coat rack out of the way in a hallway behind a door because who wants to look at that ugly thing. In reality we use the back door the most and all our coats ended up being piled onto the furniture next to it. We just put a second rack up right next to the back door so all the coats get hung up there now and we can see the furniture again. Simple things like that just make life so much easier.

Think practical. It's no good trying to create a pretty home like you see on pinterest. I can guarantee that most of those houses don't look like that day-to-day.


4. Let go of the guilt

Go easy on yourself. These things are hard for a lot of people and I for one will wave my hand in the air and admit that I'm messy as hell. I've spent years beating myself up over being untidy and disorganised but it's just not worth it. I am who I am and if someone doesn't like that then screw them! It doesn't mean I'm not going to try real hard to be tidier (I won't say 'tidy' because who am I kidding?!) It just means I'm not going to beat myself up over the fact that my house looks, erm, we'll just say 'well lived in'.

Stop stressing over what you haven't done and focus on what you have achieved each day.


5. Less is more

Now I've put this one last because it's one I'm not afraid to admit I'm stuck on. The theory being that the less stuff there is in the house, the less there is to keep tidy right? I'm certainly a lot more ruthless than I used to be when it comes to getting rid of stuff. My Dad took great pleasure in announcing to a room full of people during his speech at our wedding about the time we found a dead slug in my wardrobe that I'd collected as a pet and forgotten about.

If anyone has any tips for us hoarder types on having less 'stuff' please please do share!



I hope those tips will work for you guys and help with the mess that living with something like dyspraxia can bring. If you're going to try any of the tips here I'd totally recommend doing a ten minute tidy today and do let me know in the comments section how you get.

Oh, and if you're reading this because you have dyspraxia remember how awesome you are!

x

Edited to say that the Dyspraxia Foundation are currently running a campaign to raise awareness. To take part just take a selfie wearing a hat with what dyspraxia means to you and post it on their facebook page. To donate text 'HATS02 £2' to 70070.