Where has the time gone?!
The neck pain and headaches got worse. I went back to the Physio to see if she could give me some additional exercises to try, and she pinpointed the source of the problem immediately. Well, she said "This is where the problem is ", pressed the middle-ish of my shoulder, and I said "Ow". Or words to that effect.
She explained why. I asked questions about my symptoms, and she gave reasonable sounding answers. I left, happy that she was probably right, with a new set of additonal exercises.
They've made a difference. In the last week (?) the ectopic heart beat and palpitations have also diminished, which is a great help. I'm still waking up many times a night as I turn over, but it's now only "painful" rather than "excruciating", and the lack of palpitations/ectopic means that I can sleep on my right side and back for a while before problems start. Previously it took less than 2 minutes to go from "OK" to "move move move".
Towards the middle of February, before the new exercises had made much difference, I risked going to my parents overnight. The sleeping was about the same as at home. My lovely brother (DB) drove me there in his people carrier, and the plan was for us to bring back all my parents jigsaw puzzles, one brand of them anyway, to be sold for them.
We managed to get about 270 puzzles in the people carrier, and we couldn't fit anymore in. The drive back was slow. As usual, we listened to many episodes of our favoutie radio sitcom, Cabin Pressure. I can't coun the number of times I've listened to the episodes, they still crack me up. I love Roger Allam's silky voice.
We stacked the puzzles in my hallway when I got home, and then I did some sorting. And over the next few days, re-sorting. I started with a spreadsheet for the puzzles, and I photographed each individual puzzle with the box open. I then had to rename each image to match the manufacturer reference number. I tried a few options for sharing the pics, and I bought some fabulous watermarking software, Umark, which has been a godsend. I bought removable labels, and wrote a unique refence number for each puzzle.
As I grouped together various puzzle series, I moved them to the summerhouse, where we'd cleared space on surfaces to stack them. It took several goes to get things properly sorted and labelled, and then cross checked with the spreadsheet and with the photographs.
I've been busy selling them, and 125 have gone so far, including a whole load to the US. Working with that individual was great as I found limitations to the tools available and there was only one person I was dealing with. My handwriting on the labels, although relatively neat, was not as clear as it could have been.
I ended up teaching myself to use Access so I could link the lines in my spreadsheet to the photos and then provide various reports both for me and for the recipients. I've been able to provide detailed packing information for the individual in the US.
At this point I realised that the watermarking software was able to watermark the photos with the image name (which is the manufacturers reference number), and also my own reference number. It's no good relying on the manufacturers reference number because (a) it's too easy to transpose digits, (b) the manufacturer has reused the reference numbers on occasion (c) I have multiples of the same puzzle.
I ended up renumbering the remaining puzzles, and printing labels. I've continued using my spreadsheet as the main tool (it's quick and easy to add columns and manipulate data as I lern begter ways to do things) and I've linked it to Access to do any reporting.
Now when someone asks for a several puzzles, quoting my puzzle reference numbers, I can use my Access to generate a with-picture confirmation report to make sure the puzzles I'm picking from the pile are the correct ones.
I'm in a much better position now to manage things, and I know how I'd do things if I did this again!
