Living the i life in Scottish Meanderings

I have finally dragged myself into the 21st century by becoming the owner of a blue iphone 5C. I’m also awaiting an ipad Air which is hopefully winging its way from Amazon to my humble abode soon.

This from operating a Sony Ericsson W995 and no form of tablet whatsoever!

The whole touch thing is driving me bonkers I have to say but I know I’ll get used to it in time. The pads of my fingers are quite chunky and it’s really difficult to hit the right character most of the time - especially the ‘i’ and ‘o’ for some reason - I keep trying different fingers which sounds quite dirty but to no avail!

I also don’t want all these pointless apps on my home screen - half of them I’ll never use and it would be great to work it like a desktop where you can choose what’s on there, change the look of them, make them bigger etc etc.

The good thing is I’ve got my music back although that took a few nights to figure out how to get it from the pc to the phone through itunes - I stupidly thought it would just be a case of copying it over or even dragging it like it did with my ancient dinosaur phone - I guess when things become so sophisticated you expect everything to be simple when it’s far from it. I also like the fact that I can now take better photos and that they’re all there, easily accessed on the phone, although I discovered by accident that when you create albums and shift pics into them, you then can’t delete them from the Camera Roll or they disappear altogether. You learn better from experience I suppose ......

Transferring contacts was a different story though - I’ve no idea where they are on my old phone! They don’t show up on the phone, memory or SIM card and only half of them appear to be visible. Plus they’re all mixed up with the previous owner of the phone’s contacts as I realised when I imported them from my even older phone and just to confuse things even further, she appeared to have several friends with the same name as mine! After wasting yet another evening trying to locate them I sat down one teatime and went through my contacts list on the old phone, transferring them manually and cleaning the list up at the same time. It only took half an hour.

Sometimes the old dinosaur ways are the most reliable.

Getting used to all these different operating systems is exhausting though.

But it may be a state I will be getting used to in the coming weeks.

The Scottish Recovery Consortium is a relatively new charity set up in Scotland with the aim of promoting recovery from addiction in as many areas in Scotland as possible. They run Recovery Colleges whereby 2 trainers will come to a specific area and train anyone interested on a 5 week course after which they should be in a better place to set up a group or develop a group already set up to help people in recovery in that area.

There is a recovery group operating in Aberdeen which I had been involved in before I started my new job and they decided they would try and ask for the course to be run for their members up here so 2 folk came from the Consortium to talk about it one week and I have to say I was very impressed. As a result of that I applied to get on the course and found out last week that I was accepted. College days are a Monday and Tuesday which are 2 of my current working days but I was able to switch them round and work on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for the next 5 weeks (starts next week) instead so I’ll be out every day now for the next month at least.

And I’m so grateful for my past.

To explain about the course to my new bosses, (which I had to do because of the switching working days thing), I just said that I regretted not using my previous skills as an Addictions Counsellor and all the training which that had entailed (true) and had been looking to get back into it somehow (also true). It would seem, however, that to do anything now I would have to retrain which would involve a Diploma course costing thousands and taking a possible 2 years of my life. I have neither the time, money or energy to be able to do this so as the Scottish Recovery course was free and only running for 5 weeks I jumped at the chance of possibly getting on it (true again).

I just omitted to say I was going as a recoveree rather than anything else.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew because of my energy level but I’m hoping it will stimulate me, move me on and in that way help the energy problem. If not well I’ll just deal with it - I think it’s worth trying.

I’m so chuffed - I bought a little wicker chair at a sale Nikki’s primary school was having all of 14 years ago for no other reason than it was cute and dinky. A few years later I saw the perfect sized cushion for it featuring the back of a little girl walking away from the camera holding a teddy bear. It sat on the chair like it was made for it and I remember thinking at the time what a shame I don’t have a granddaughter because that chair is soooooo made for her!

I was babysitting Lily 2 mornings this week, Thursday and Friday, as she’d had a bug and was off nursery and Nikki didn’t want to take any more time off work. She was sitting on the floor having her snack and I realised the smallest of my nest of tables would be a perfect size for her - shame I have no chair to fit it.

Hang on a minute ......

One rummage in the wardrobe later and I produced my little chair which had been sitting waiting for this moment for 14 years ......

And here we are - I was away to post pics of how good an eater she is when I realised the only pic I had of her in the chair itself was when she discovered it’s far more fun to upend the bowl of cheerios onto the table than eat them.

And here is my lunch about to be pinched .......

Yesterday she snaffled half a cinnamon and raisin bagel for breakfast (these things are big), a third of my own wheatgrain bagel, a bag of Cheerios at snacktime (well apart from the ones which went on the floor) half my apple later on then had soup, sandwich and fruit pot for lunch. Normally she has Ready Brek and fruit for breakfast, she hates cake, and has virtually nothing with sugar or salt in it unless she’s having a quick ready meal for some reason. Hopefully these healthy habits will stand her in good stead later on.

She’s wearing a hat inside because she’s obsessed with it - drags it out of the bag and plonks it on when she’s playing around the house even though she’s perfectly warm!

She’s a headcase.

But a very cute and loveable one.

Last updated March 29, 2018