Holy crap, I’ve won a watch…
About the time last year that I burst into tears all over a strange pharmacist twenty years my junior, I realised that things were in general quite shite really.
Financially we were more than a wee bit stuffed.
Example:
I had pus squelching out of my left ear for nearly two months. This was probably due to some curable thing. I know this because the doctor very soon after saying “That is a nasty looking ear” and pulling a groo face booked an appointment for me to see a specialist.
This is Australia. There are a lot of specialists around to do stuff that GPs used to do all the time at home, probably before folk started suing them. I went to the specialist. I didn’t have a long wait but at over $200 for the appointment I would have been narky had this been the case.
“Mhwwwmm, ffufff, mfufufffing muw” he said to me when he looked into my ear. I nodded. It seemed like the right thing to do.
He stuck something in my ear that felt cold and switched it on. I felt like he was vacuuming my brains out.
“That was a nasty looking ear” he said afterwards and handed me a presciption. “I’ll see you next month“.
I handed over my officially skint person’s Medicare card. “You’ll have to pay the whole amount” the receptionist told me “that’ll be $225.00. You’ll be able to claim back $75.00.“
Luckily at that stage I stil had enough room on my credit card to pay. As it turned out I didn’t have enough money to pay for the prescription. I didn’t realise this unfortunately until the pharmacist handed me a bag and said:
“That’ll be $175.00.“
I burst into tears immediately.
“Not everyone has money, what on earth is it with these specialists?” I huffed with as much dignity as I could. Not easy with a diseased left ear held aloft and snot running down the non-aloft bit of my face.
“Can you substitute anything on the script for anything else?” I said quietly looking him with no dignity left whatsoever.
It took him while but he did and when he had done so he sat me down and told me how everything worked, mostly as well as the versions of the prescribed medications. He gave me back the prescription in the envelope with a sympathetic smile “Just in case“.
I didn’t go back to the specialist. I was scared of how much more it would cost. Eventually my ear cleared up.
As time went on everything else cleared up as it so often does. I stopped being quite so scared of how much everything costs.
Not long ago I found this wonderful new yoga place full of vibrant, exciting, inspiring and ever so slightly bonkers yoga teachers. Practising there I feel – refurbished.
One of my teachers there is another Scottish person – Vicky Smart. She wrote this last week on her blog Peacock Dreams:
What would it feel like to throw gratitude and thanks to the things which hurt us the most. Thank you for telling me the hard truths, thank you for piercing my layer of ego, thank you for showing me that I am not always right (even when I REALLY think I am).
I’ll tell you what it feels like. It pulses between feeling like crap and feeling like liberation.
Last week I was sorta nominated for a Yoga Pose Weekly photo competition. The Yoga Pose Weekly folk encourage yogis everywhere to stick their legs in weird places, have fun and go into the mix to win cool iPad yoga app prizes. The Yoga Pose web site admin people had found the photo above on my blog and suggested that I bung it up on their site for their Bakasana week prize. I did and I hassled people to vote for me and I got loads of votes.
I didn’t win.
Bugger, I thought and moved on.
They also really liked this photo and stuck it up for me the following week for the Tittibhasana prize.
The photo comes from this post from last year.
The asana is not strictly speaking executed as it should be. It is a photoshoot version of an arm balance that depends on engaging mula bandha or, in layman’s terms, pulling your pelvic floor muscles away from the floor. A lot. My bhandas were a bit borked at the time so I had to use raw power and determination to keep myself there. You can see it in the way that I am clenching my toes.
There is a ferocity and focus in my eyes that may have been lost between when the photo was taken and the present time.
I have no more fight left in me. If this thing that I am doing with my life is going to work, it will work.
So I decided to ask people to vote for me just once on Twitter and Facebook and left it at that.
Loads of you did.
I won. I feel a bit shocked. I feel like things might be changing.
It is a good feeling.
