Tummy Troubles

Another door that has been slammed shut.....but I will sure not stop fighting to kick it open.

I've mentioned before that I've been diagnosed with abdominal diastasis following Flynn's birth.  The only real fix for this issue is an abdominoplasty, but, thanks to the government, this postpartum condition, which affects many women, is now deemed 'cosmetic' and is no longer covered by Medicare.  Due to this, I cannot claim private health on hospital fees, either.  No coverage at all.  I'd be $15,000 out of pocket. 

Yes, $15,000!

The only people who qualify for Medicare benefits now are those who have lost a massive amount of weight, or if they have an abdominal hernia.  My doctor, the surgeon she referred me to, and my physio all thought there was a high likelihood that I have a hernia, and I was sent for a CT scan at the start of September.  I never thought I'd be praying to have a hernia.

Unfortunately the results said I don't have a hernia, but the area is very close to herniating.  Apparently near enough is not good enough.  When I had the scan done, something didn't feel right.  They didn't get me to lie in the positions that the physio said they would.

So, now after ruling out other options, including cheaper surgery in Thailand, selling our four wheel drive to pay for the surgery, and taking out a loan, I'm going back to my doctor to get a referral for a second opinion.

Yes, I'm desperate.

For the past year, I've been unable to exercise due to the risk of making the muscle separation worse.  I miss tennis.  Another netball team was set up this year and I wish I could play again.  My self-esteem has taken a battering because I still look pregnant.  There's always some insensitive twit who will ask.  I'm still in maternity clothes because nothing else fits.  I still get some pain in my stomach area because both of my bubbas stretched me so much and I carried all out the front. My pelvic floor is weak.

I'm sick of people who say stupid things like, "Your body carried a baby, you should be proud of it," or, "You can't expect to look like a supermodel."  I'm not wanting to look like a supermodel, I just want some of my old life back.  This makes my depression worse.

Stupid government.  Why do they reward people for losing weight by giving them tummy tucks covered by Medicare, but women who've had children are left to suffer?

Could I ask you to please do two things for me?

1.  Pray that I will somehow miraculously qualify for Medicare and that I'll be able to get a second opinion.

2.  Sign this petition.

Thank you!

Save A Place To Call Home

Grrr Channel 7, what's with axing one of the best shows on TV?  Are you seriously wanting to destroy Australian TV and deny fabulous actors, like Marta Dusseldorp, their chance to shine?

Yes, yes, I know, it's all about saving money.  Import cheap overseas crap and promote terrible reality TV, like What Really Happens in Bali (I, and probably many others, do not give two hoots about what stupid things Australians do in Bali).

If you're a fan of this show, sign the online petition so we can see the third season which has already been written. 

Maybe it won't achieve anything, but we'll never, never know if we don't give it a go!

Image from here.

Please Vote For My Post

I've entered my post My Prayer For My Church in the October edition of the Christian Blog Carnival and now they are having a competition where readers get to vote for their favourite post for the month.

Could you please take a minute of your time to vote for me by going here and typing 'I vote for My Prayer For My Church' (or something similar) in the reply box?

I'd be honoured.

They're going to announce the winner on Monday so please, please vote over the weekend. :)

If you're a Christian blogger, consider entering one of your posts into the next carnival on the 7th November.  It's a great way to get more exposure for your blog.  Go here for more details.

No Comment

Last week I discovered that I can no longer leave comments on some Blogspot blogs.  Whenever I click on the comments link, the whole page freezes so I cannot even read any existing comments.  The odd thing is that it only happens on some Blogspot blogs I read regularly...but not all.

Yesterday I did quite a bit of clicking around to see exactly which blogs and posts I could comment on and which ones I couldn't.  Apologies to anyone who has a stats counter and probably thought they had a cyberstalker on their hands!

I can comment on my own blog ok, but now I'm wondering if others are having the same problem?  After doing a bit of Googling, I think the issue may be a bug in Blogger's new threaded comment system.  Apparently there is a compatibility issue with Internet Explorer.  If you use Internet Explorer (which I do), you may not be able to comment on blogs which have threaded comments.

I expect that Blogger will sort this out in time, but for now I want to suggest a temporary fix.  Change from threaded comments back to pop-up or full-page comments.  Just for a while.   That's what is being suggested on the net anyway.  I know it might be easier to suggest blog readers use a different browser, but I'm having trouble with Firefox as well at the moment for different reasons and my download is quite slow.

So...can you comment here?  Leave a test comment if you like.

If not, you're welcome to email me at seddyed at hotmail dot com

Threaded comments do sound cool though...eventually.

Techy Stuff

Until a little while ago, I had this Blogger profile picture which displayed on my own blog and when I left comments on other blogs:

But then a few months ago, I did a very silly thing.  I went into Picasa and wondered why there were so many copies of this photo in the album.  So I deleted some of them.

Nooooo, Sarah, NOOOOOO! Bad, bad decision!

After this, I noticed when I commented on some blogs, my profile picture was replaced by this horrible looking image:

Then Blogger Help provided the answer:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=5356579984d80119&hl=en

In short, DON'T delete anything from your Picasa Web Albums.  Even if it looks there are 50 copies of the same photo.  Don't touch it.

I ended up changing my profile pic to one of my favourite photos of all time - the jumping, action shot. :)

So now this picture will display with my comments.  BUT it still doesn't fix the comments I've left on other blogs in the past.  They still have the ugly exclamation mark.

I thought I'd mention this in case anyone was experiencing the same problem....or was considering deleting photos from Picasa.

Oh, and something's gone wrong with my header picture.  I looked at my blog on one computer and the header picture had shrunk by half.  But then I looked at it on another computer and it seemed relatively normal, except maybe a bit smaller.  There have been stacks of bloggers reporting this in Blogger Help, but, although Blogger says it's a 'known problem', they haven't mentioned a fix for it yet.

Could you please do me a favour?

Could you please look at my blog and tell me if the header picture looks 'normal' to you?

Thanks...

The Winner is Sydney

The countdown is on!  Duncan and I fly to Sydney this Friday.

When deciding where we would like to go this year, Sydney was the winner for a number of reasons.  Neither of us have been to Australia's most populous city before, plus we have friends who moved there from Perth at the start of the year.  They are studying at Bible college and we want to encourage them and give them the joy of seeing some familiar faces.

We will be gone for about five days and will be staying with our friends on campus at the college in their tiny apartment.  That's one reason why our trip will be short.  We can't afford hotels and eating out all the time, and we figured our friends might get sick of us if we stayed any longer.

But don't nobody go nowhere.  Scheduled posting will be in full swing (I hope).

So Sydneyites or those who have been to Sydney.....where should we go and what should we do? 
What are the must sees (besides the bridge and Opera House) in a short period of time?

Image is from http://www.freestockphotography.com.au/

Blog Cleaning

Many people do their once a year spring clean.

It's time for me to do my annual 'blog clean'.  This involves the following:

• Removing blogs from my blogroll which have been deleted by the author or I suspect have been abandoned.
• Add blogs I have started reading recently.
• Make sure my Bloglines list is current also.

If you read my blog regularly, could you please do me the honour of adding me to your blogroll?  If you don't have a blogroll, then can I encourage you to create one?  If you're a fellow blogger who has been lurking here for a bit, then it would be great if you could introduce yourself so I can add you too.  Blogrolls are a great way of sourcing new blogs to read which brings me to my next point....

I would love it if you could recommend some blogs for me to read that do not currently feature on my blogroll.  It's a bit sad when blogs I've been enjoying for a fair while are suddenly spasmodic or no more, so please recommend a handful of blogs you enjoy.

I have also been doing some cleaning of a different kind.  Unfortunately one of the downsides of being a blogger is spam.  Since last year I have been regularly trawling my archives and removing silly comments from 'blog taggers'.  I've seen them on other Blogspot blogs too...the ones with the links to Asian girl websites or dating sites.  Grrr!  I have set up the word identification thing for when people make comments, but that still doesn't stop them!  I don't want to change the comment settings to Blogger IDs only because I would like anonymous people to contribute if they wish.  Does anyone have any tips on winning the battle against spam?

So....are your blog links up to date?  Have you left your recommendation of a good blog for me to read?  Cleaning your blog is a bit like clearing out your inbox....a jolly good job done. :)

Book Recommendations

Although I have a pile of unread books under my bed, I am always on the lookout for interesting reading material. Reading widely inspires my own writing.

So, I would love for you to suggest some books for me to read. Christian or secular, I don't mind. What books have you particularly enjoyed and would like to recommend to me?

List as many as you like.....please list away.

Embedding YouTube Clips Into A Blog Post

I have to admit I'm a bit of a dumbass sometimes when it comes to technology and this is probably obvious with the number of times I've asked for technical help on this blog before.

Well techheads, I need your help again :)

I was wondering if it's possible to embed more than one YouTube clip into a single blog post? You see I've found five clips that I want to embed in one post rather than in five separate posts. I've searched Blogger/Google help and YouTube help and I read that I can copy the 'embed code', choose 'Edit HTML' instead of 'Compose' when I create a new post and paste the embed code into it. But it didn't work!

Am I doing something wrong, is there another way or is it just not possible?

Help me pleeeeeeeeeease. Thanks dudes! :)

Flying Tiger

I am going on my first 'writing research trip' to Adelaide in early July and after a lot of arm-twisting, my mum is going to accompany me. Since the first part of my novel is set in Adelaide and I've never actually been there, I thought it'd be a good idea to go for credibility purposes! I also have family over there so it's a good excuse to visit them. I am just SO excited! :D

I was looking up airfares and at this stage am leaning towards Tiger Airways. They are ridiculously cheap; it costs the same return fare as what it does one-way with Virgin Blue or Jetstar.

But before I book, I want to hear from anyone who has flown Tiger before. My mum thinks that because it's so cheap it's bound to be dodgy and we'll probably crash. I told her she's being paranoid but I really would like to know what the pros and cons are. I don't care about perks, the basics are fine with me but I do want to know if it's really dodge or not.

So my little flying Tigers, what feedback do you have to give me? :)

Week of Firsts

I want to take a break in transmission regarding my Tassie photos to let you all know about big week (well big in comparison to my usual everyday life in Buntine) and ask you all to please pray.

• I'm starting my new job tomorrow. Yes, I got the job at the gift/toy/clothing/everything shop working Tuesdays and Wednesdays on a casual basis. I finally heard back from the lady while we were in Launceston - she took a month to get back to me! Anyway, it's not my dream job but it's a start. Please pray it'll go well and I'll adjust back to working outside the home again.
  
• I'm going for another job interview on Thursday morning. Brad sent a text message to Duncan while we were in Devonport to let me know about another job which is a part-time administration manager position at a farming organisation in Buntine. I think admin manager is just a fancy term for 'office chick' but it sounds like it's more up my alley than retail. I was already preparing my selection criteria when I found out I got the other job but decided to apply anyway. If I get this job it'll be ideal as it's much closer and I'll save a lot of petrol. But first I have to confront a panel consisting of the executive officer and three local farmers who are involved on the committee. Duncan assures me that these blokes won't be intimidating and have good senses of humour. I hope so. I have no idea what they're going to ask but I know whatever it is, I'll need God to answer for me.
  
• On Thursday night, I'll be umpiring netball for the first time this year as my team has a bye. I haven't umpired for 10 years and when the chick I'll be umpiring with and I found out we'll be umpiring the two 'roughest' teams, we groaned loudly. Pray that I'll look really mean and the players will do as they're told. Or better yet, pray that one of the teams will forfeit. Yes, that'd be better :)

New Hair....Yeah Yeah

I've decided I'm sick of my long, straggly mane and that it's time for a haircut.

I've always been fairly conservative with my hair in that I've never had a really drastic haircut (ie. having long hair and suddenly chopping it really short) but now that I'm married, I want to do something a bit 'different'. I figured that even if Duncan doesn't like it, he's stuck with me now haha!

And I'm not too worried about looking really dumb. I'm out in the middle of nowhere anyway and by the time I get to a hairdresser again (there are no hairdressers in Dally, have to go to Perth) it will have grown back.....probably.

My hair is currently pretty long. The last time I had it short was 2005 when I went to the hairdresser for a trim and relayering and came out with a mullet! I've never been to that hairdresser again! If you'd also like to avoid that place, leave me a comment or email me and I'll tell you where NOT to go. Three days later, I was in Kalgoorlie, visiting Rhianon who lived there at the time, and a fantastic hairdresser there fixed it for me.

There's a great application on Facebook called HairMixer and it enables you to try different styles on your face. All you need to do is upload a mugshot of yourself and away you go. So here's where I need your help peoples. Below, you will see five photos of different hairstyles on my face and I want you to tell which one you like best. I've labelled them Hair 1-Hair 5. You can vote by either leaving a comment or voting on the poll on the right hand side (how techy am I!)

I've already made an album on Facebook with the same title as this post so if you're my Facebook friend, you can vote there as well. If you're not my Facebook friend then you should seriously consider adding me haha!

While I do appreciate your input very much, I also reserve the right to go against the majority and do whatever I want. I'm the kind of person who just does that sometimes ;)

Also, if anyone can recommend any (cheapish) hairdressers in Perth, please let me know. I'm hoping H-Day (Haircut Day) will be this Saturday.







Hair 1















Hair 2












Hair 3 (me on right obviously)












Hair 4











Hair 5

So Sad

I was on Facebook yesterday and saw that on a friend's profile that her friend's baby boy died on Saturday. I have met this friend of hers a couple of times and when I read that, my heart just broke for her. She is married with a two-year-old daughter and while I'm not entirely sure how her five-month-old baby son died, it sounds like it was SIDS but again I'm not sure, only that he passed away in his sleep.

Both she and her husband are Christians and trusting the Lord with this but if you have spare minute, please join me and many others in praying for Donna, Adam and Jessica as they grieve for their son and brother. Pray that God would keep them close and bring them comfort and peace with the hope of seeing little Jordan again in heaven.

Faint Hearted

Yesterday, I went to a MoleScan clinic to get a skin cancer check. It was one of those things I kept meaning to do but always used busyness as an excuse to keep putting it off. Last Sunday at church, a friend was telling me how she'd been recently and this prompted me to ring up and make an appointment.

I was really hoping they didn't find anything even remotely dodgy and while the doctor was checking, she said "so far, so good." Then she spotted a couple which she reckoned looked a bit suss.

Now while I'm not a fan of needles, I'm all for the 'if in doubt, cut it out' motto so when she said she wanted to take a sample of one on my back, I obliged and hoped the anaesthetic needle wouldn't hurt. It stung a bit but was bearable. She took a photo of the other one and asked me to come back in three months or sooner if I noticed it had started to change.

In regards to the one on my back, she said no news was good news. If it's bad, she'll call me back and I have to come back to have it cut out. I have never been cut open while being awake and the only stitches I've ever had have been in my mouth when I had my wisdom teeth out and they came out by themselves. I've never had a local anaesthetic before, only general.

All was well until I went to the receptionist's desk to pay and I started to feel really weird. First my vision started to go, my ears were ringing and I felt really light-headed and sick. The receptionist quickly got the doctor and they got me a chair before I passed out. I was still conscious but couldn't hear very well, except that the doctor was telling me that this was a reaction to the anaesthetic and was normal.

I then had to lie down on a bed for half an hour before I was well enough to drive home.

Please pray that none of these two moles will need to be cut out. Otherwise I'm going to have to bring someone with me next time to drive me home in case I nearly pass out again. I'm trying to stop my mind drifting towards horrible thoughts of advanced skin cancer so prayers for everything to be okay would be much appreciated.

This Sucks!

I have received two pieces of bad news in the past day or so.

1) I have nowhere to live from mid December until the wedding.
That's four months! My lease expires on the 31st January and the plan was for Aimee and I to move out and go and housesit for some friends of hers who are going to live in London for a year. Since they rent, we'd be taking over their lease for them and Aimee was hopeful another girl she knows might move in with us. That way she wouldn't risk being stuck with all the rent when I got married. Anyway, that girl has decided not to move in and Aimee doesn't want to move into these people's house in case she finds it hard to replace me down the track. So we've said 'no' to housesitting.

This was a real disappointment for both of us. People were asking me about my living arrangements until the wedding and I was happily telling them that I had somewhere to go. Now neither of us have anywhere to live. Aimee is going away to Mauritius for a while so we decided to move out on the 15th December (her date of departure) and go our separate ways. Obviously we'll be breaking the lease and the stupid real estate agent said we have to find someone or keep paying rent there. My dad's a property manager and he said that's THEIR job and only if THEY can't find someone do we keep paying rent there. Sheesh!

I really don't know what I'm going to do! I was looking at possible rentals on the net and there's no way I could afford any of them. $300 a week for a crappy two bedroom shack in a dodgy suburb. Or $135 a week for a ROOM in a house with five students. No thanks! Did the whole student housing thing for three years. Never again!!! I have no furniture (my place is furnished) and not enough money to rent on my own.

My only option seems to be to beg someone to let me stay with them but I feel uncomfortable doing that. And who'd want me for four months! I'm also wary of living with some of my friends because we're very different and I feel it just wouldn't work. Yes, it's only four months but I'm wary of damaging our friendship. I'm hoping that some kind soul will let me stay but I also want our friendship to be intact.

2) My writing day has been taken away for next year
Some of you will know from this post last year that I've been working four days a week this year instead of full time and have been spending Wednesdays at home writing a novel. Well, I forgot I had to reapply to stay part time for next year and so they have made me full time instead. But then one of the managers told me that even if I had remembered, it's almost certain that my application would have been rejected. The library is making everyone full time or 0.5 and they don't like 0.8 people like me because I make their budget more difficult. So the book will have to go on hold after New Year until after the wedding when I resign (yes another piece of news I'll have to blog about).

Right now I'm disappointed and angry. I was so pleased that everything seemed to be falling into place until the wedding and now everything has been turned on its head. I like control, I like plans and I hate being in limbo, not knowing what's going to happen. Part of me is wondering why on earth God is allowing me even more stress after the stress I've already had this year. But God and I often have different agendas - I want peace, comfort and orderly plans that fall into place and he wants me to learn perseverance and patience and all that stuff. I don't think God's out to 'get me' but I'm afraid he wants to teach me something and the only way I can learn it is through difficulties. I'm terribly afraid that he's going to provide accommodation for me with ferals and 'difficult' people in the lead up to the wedding in the process of making me more like Jesus. I know I need to trust him, to trust that he is good and has everything under control but my first reaction is to freak out. My mother-in-law to be has encouraged me to reflect on the life of Joseph in the Bible when things go wrong and we don't understand.

I'm so over renting it's not funny. I feel so unsettled after moving from flat to flat then back to Albany then back to Perth again during my three years in student housing and that's why living in one place with Emma for three years was so good. Renting is far worse when you're single and you have to find people to live with as well as find a place. Some of my single friends are constantly moving house or replacing housemates and find it so tiring. I look at people who live at home til they're married and think that it's not fair! Be grateful if that's you. I can't wait til I'm married!

If you know of anyone who's looking for a housemate or has a cheap-ish furnished granny flat for rent, then please point me in their direction.

Please Petition Heaven....

...for fine weather tomorrow.

We have approximately 150 people coming to our engagement party, it's being held in a park and we have no backup plan - too hard to find anywhere to go nearby with that number of people.

I just checked the Bureau of Meteorology website and the forecast for tomorrow is a 'few showers' with a maximum of 20 degrees.

Please pray for the rain to come later in the afternoon when the party is over. Duncan and I were talking last night and we agreed that it's out of our hands and if it rains we might as well make light of the situation....by encouraging everyone to dance in it :)

Will You Volunteer?

As you can see I'm getting nowhere in fixing up the mess I've made of my blog.

So I need someone to help me. Someone who's experienced in using Blogger and HTML and who might be able to help me bring my profile back up to where it should be and basically make my blog look as it did before. I'm just getting way too angry and frustrated.

If you'd like to help, then I please email me at seddyed at hotmail dot com. I'd be very grateful if you could and can even offer a reward. It's save me the frustration and disappointment of losing over a year's worth of posts and comments.

If you email me, I will email you my login details. Once you've finished, let me know and then I'll change my password.

Please help....please

Urgent help!

I've tried editing my template in HTML in an attempt to get my sidebar back and look what's happened. It's a total mess. Can anyone help now?

Help!

I've royally stuffed up my blog this time.

Since I managed to copy the Thumbs Up logo onto my blog, everything's gone haywire. That post keeps coming up with error messages saying there is no matching div tag or something or other. Now whenever I try to create a new post, it's permanently stuck on 'Edit' mode instead of 'Compose' and everything's in HTML. I hate HTML! I can't change it back despite going to the Settings tab and trying to fix it. It keeps saying it's already in Compose mode but it's not.

Now some of my previous posts have no left margin and everything looks squashed. There's no double spacing between lines either.

Can anyone help?

Pray for Madeleine McCann

You probably have heard about this in the media and on blogs. Story can be read here.

Pray for Madeleine's safe return and for justice to be done. Pray that her family might know God's love and peace at this time.