Don't go into panic mode, everything is fine, well, almost everything.  I'm just having a moan about my thumb.

3 weeks ago, I dislocated my thumb.  Full dislocation, which frightened me so much, I popped it back into place all by myself.  Don't know which hurt more, the dislocation, or the relocation.

This happened at about 11pm at night, so there was no way I was heading to the hospital until the morning (can't drive, 5 kids asleep for once and taxi's virtually non existant on a Thursday night).  I went, despite Les saying he didn't think I needed to go, and did the whole xray thing only to be told that there were no breaks, and the offended appendage had popped cleanly back into place.

Despite being prepared for a lengthy wait (had a good book and all), I was out of the hospital in 90, no bandage and the recommendation to take it easy for a few weeks, no heavy lifting (what a joke-I have a boob reliant 15 month old) and to take ibuprofen for pain and swelling.

Yeah, despite the heavy swelling, I was sent home with my thumb in the same condition I had entered the hospital in- naked!

For the past 3 weeks, I have tried to use my hand as normally as possible, without doing any heavy lifting or anything that could upset the injury further.  Well, guess what?  The thumb is threatening to explode.  The last week or so, there has been evidence of a split blood vessel.  The bruising patterns coming up would suggest a minor nick.  The muscles and tendons are both tight and loose at the same time, and I never know how my thumb is going to react to being forced into duty.

I have kept up typing, doing my cross stitch, and all the rest of the things I do every day.  I even closed the car door a week ago which almost saw the thumb back out of its socket.  More swelling, more bruising and more pain.  Dammit!  Why couldn't I just listen to Les and let him use the key to lock the car door.

I have noticed a sort of numbness in the thumb too, which sometimes extends to the index finger, but that comes and goes.  Like having a local anaesthetic really.

I don't like relying on pain medications because they mask symptoms (pain is beneficial in identifying how serious and injury really is), so I haven't taken any for the hand in over 2 weeks.

The problem now is, do I make an appointment with my gp for 6 weeks time (only urgent appointment they have), or do I go back to the hospital, incurring that scowl from Les that says ' it will get better in time without the doctors help'  Oh the arguements we have had over seeking medical attention, even when I was suffering extreme morning sickness with my first pregnancy (if I hadn't put my foot down, I wouldn't be here to type).

I'm stuck between wanting to wait and see how the thumb goes and jumping in and getting it seen to right now.  I was told if there was no sign of improvement in 10-14 days to go back, but I also know that injuries of this nature just need time.  I think the statistic thrown at me isn't helping things -you know the one, '60% of thumb dislocations require surgery to manually straighten the ligatments and muscles, and to make sure they are tight enough or not too tight'.

At what point to I just GO?  At what point would you just Go.

Arrrggghhh, if it isn't the kids keeping me up all night, it is the constant joy of a recovering dislocated thumb!  Need a break from typing, might have already over done things for today

I feel all I have managed to do on minti today is vote and comment in the reports section.  Because of that, I have not had a lot of time to do anything else, and I'm now getting ready to log out for the day because I have other things to be doing.

The members that are being reported have written blog posts that, while not entirely about parenting, aren't in breach of the ToS either.

These members are being reported as spammers, which normally I'd agree, except that the definition of spam is unsolicitored advertising, which means the means of delivery is on mass by email or in inappropriate areas of the internet eg:  In the advice and q&a section of minti.

I was under the impression that our blogs are for us to write about whatever we want to write about, and that as long as it isn't derogetory or explicit in nature, then it is ok to publish it.

Where is the line drawn between spam and someone wanting to share their experiences about a particular service, links included?  At the moment, I'm finding it hard to understand why my membership hasn't been reported, and yet others who only use their personal blogs are being reported.

Because of my feelings, I have cancelled my rss feeds, meaning minti will no longer receive my external blog, which is where I do most of my blogging.  I just think that my blogs are spam too, or at least some of the posts are.

I don't have time to be sitting down and writing a blog for every website I visit, so this will more than likely be my last blog.  I will keep the links to my site on my homepage but other than that, no more blogging here from me.

Apologies to anyone who tried to read my previous blog post, but couldn't get through to my site. My webhost moved my site to a new server, but kind of forget to notify my control panel of the fact, so for 12 hours, my site didn't exist.

My first reaction to discovering it was that my site had been hacked, as it was an error code I have never seen before.  Thankfully, that isn't the case, I just didn't have permission to view my own site!  Yep, I own it and all and still didn't have permission! 

The good news is, they responded to my complaint asap, fixed it and explained they were moving me to the bigger server, where I shouldn't experience as much down time.  We will see on that score though, because they promised that last time, and I was down for 3 days!!!  Oh the joys of trying to run your own site! 

That isn't where my computer woes end either.  Oh no, I have a barage of problems going on here at the moment, and it is all because of the latest version of Firefox!  Yep, webpages load quicker, minti now being the quickest of the lot, but what good is it being quick if Firefox crashes without warning and for no reason?  Hhhhmmm, wish I could remove it and have the old one back, but that isn't possible either!

The problem with Firefox has also affected other areas of my computer.  I can no longer use msn, because apparently it doesn't exist on my computer, which is odd considering I was chatting away early this morning!  Not now though, I have once again been locked out!

None of my games will run properly and self terminate without warning, very frustrating seeing as some don't have auto save (like the Sims).  What else?  My desktop keeps changing around so I can never find anything!

Apart from not being able to do much on my computer, I'm having a ball!  I'm constantly sending error reports to Microsoft so they might be able to work on a patch to fix Firefox, which can be fun!  I doubt very much they will understand anything I have said though, because I've written it all in Arnaish! lmao!

What do you know!  I have managed to write this without being kicked out!  Yippeeee!  Now it better publish!

Yes, I have the most beautiful little monkeys in the world, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to wrangle all the time.

Over the last few months, I have noticed an alarming trend in the behaviour or Willow.  Nothing that can’t be managed and nothing too serious, just something that is tiring to deal with and takes up way too much of our time.

The first time I noticed this happening, was not long after she started school.  Naturally, I just put it down to her being tired from a big day of playing and learning, but apparently that isn’t it ...

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