Swimming, embarrassing underwear and insults in Makaton

Oh but today has been quite a day for the Woodcat. Kittencat overslept, so I was moderately late for today's session at university, though thankfully I got there before anything properly started. We had a joint session today with the nursing students about interacting with and treating service users with learning difficulties, and carers. One truly heartbreaking aspect of this session was the lack of respect that all too often service users encounter in their treatment, the dehumanising and debasing treatment described was abhorrent. Differences in communication abilities really impact the way people are treated, rightly or wrongly, but in too many instances can mean that people are treated as less than people, and not afforded the respect and dignity that we all deserve. There was an exceptionally moving talk from a parent and carer to someone with profound learning difficulties, and the session was jointly hosted with a nurse and a service user with a great sense of humour. We learnt some basic Makaton, my favourite of which being "That doctor is a pain in the arse", before heading to smaller sessions with nursing students to reflect on how what we'd heard would influence our attitudes and our practice.

This afternoon I swam. I've been meaning to go again for a few weeks, and every time something has come up - yesterday it was a flat tyre, last week it was the sheer virtue of being a girl. Too much information? Probably. seems to be a theme today. I forget how much I love swimming. I also hadn't realised how much stronger I am these days. In 2007 I had to build up from 10 lengths almost killing me, now I can go straight in at 40. I haven't been in ages, and I was only just starting to feel a bit tired by the end. I am a slow swimmer though right now. 40 minutes for 40 lengths? Absurd. I was always slow, but I used to be slow in the 2k in an hour kind of way. I reckon I can get back to that in a month or two if I work at it.

And then, alas on such a productive, rewarding, and uneventful day, disaster struck. Disaster. DISASTER. I came across a stash of underwear that's not seen the light since well before I was pregnant, but recent weight loss and swimming mean that I'm closer to that size again, and it's cheaper to find again what you have than buy anew. And I found I have some pretties that are still pretty new and lovely, and I got excited and sent a picture of some of them to my friend Driver. Only my phone is temperamental at the moment, and it sent the picture of my smalls to loads of people. Loads. So many in fact, that actually, I'm going to put the picture of my smalls here.  I think it's got to the stage where everybody being able to see them is way less embarrassing than a few people having seen them.

Pretty, yes? But I think some of the recipients thought they were getting sent some kind of "message" from me, as opposed to reading the giddy about underwear message accompanying the picture sent to Driver, and clearly much less of a come on than a girl discussion about pants and bras. I tried to call/text everyone to apologise and ask for deletes, but some people replied before I'd got to them, and were excessively shirty about it, and didn't acknowledge subsequent apologetic grovelling. But hell, it's not like I'm in the pants. Now that would have been a traumatic sight.

When I told Cattenberg, showing him the picture and text, he said "That's definitely not a come on." Hence forth Kittencat has been spouting all evening, "It's not a come on Mummy. It's not."

Freaking A.

Yeah. My day has been awesome. How was yours?