A brand new spanking cast

What a weekend!

We've had a crazy family weekend where I: Saw a baby in 4 dimensions - 3 months early, Saw 2 half films, Saw 2 whole X factors, Saw (not met) Adam Buxton, Knitted 5 squares of a blanket, Picked out 2 dresses and 1 poncho to knit for said 4 dimensional baby. It was pretty fun filled.

Yesterday my stitches came out. That was an adventure. It meant saying goodbye to the old bright orange cast, thank goodness for modern technology though, it means I don't have to keep an empty shell full of dead skin, instead, here are some pictures:

Unfortunately some of the earlier messages were so faded they wouldn't come out on the pictures very well.

So, I go to the hospital, expecting to see my doctor that I had only actually seen twice, and one of those times he came just to tell me I had a fat leg, but it turns out I don't actually have to see him, I was a little bit glad because my leg isn't getting any thinner while I can't move it. Why are doctors all such fat bashers?

The man who does the casts, let's call him...cast man. He calls me into the room and gets me to hop into a giant chair, he then lifts the chair so I am the TALLEST PERSON IN THE ROOM! Cast man removes my cast with a mini buzz saw and, even though it's his job to do this every day, I pray that he isn't going to cut into my leg, and guess what, he doesn't! What does that tell you? Cast man leaves me there for about 10 minutes waiting for the nurse to come and remove the stitches, let's call her...stitch nurse.

In the meantime I notice how hairy my leg has gotten, and I have a long way to go yet, in fact it's so hairy when I sent it to Josh's phone he thought it was his own thigh he'd accidentally taken a photo of. There's also this bruise looking thing, how do I get a bruise on a leg that's been in a cast for over 2 weeks? Oh wait, that's an arrow so they operated on the right leg, still there.

Hairy right?

I also finally get to see how many stitches I had. Everyone always says "I had 2 stitches" or "I had 8 stitches" but no one ever told me how many stitches I had, so I was starting to feel a bit left out. Here was I, recovering from a major operation and I didn't even know how many stitches I had. Well to answer this question that had been plaguing me, I had 19 stitches. Here's some picture of (what I have affectionately named) my frankenfoot:

Considering it was my ankle that broke, they seem to have cut a pretty long way up my leg.

Along comes stitch nurse, she's friendly enough and I'm not too worried as all of my friends who have had stitches say that they don't hurt. Granted this hurt the least of everything I've been through so far, it still bloody hurt! Literally, when she took out the first 3 stitches they bleed, she went to get some new tweezers, apparently they weren't very good. That puts my mind at ease perhaps it was just the tweezers, with the new tweezers I bet it won't hurt very much at all. I lost that bet. Imagine waxing your legs when they are twice as hairy as they should be. Now double that pain.

The worst parts over! Wrong again. Cast man comes back to put another cast on me. He plasters up the bleeding stitch holes. He tells me my leg has inverted itself and he pushes my foot to the left and up a bit, it's agony but it least it's done. What's that? I'm wrong AGAIN? As he is putting all the layers of bandage on my foot slowly, but very surely, inverts itself again "like elastic" cast man says. So he calls over his buddy Matt.

Matt has to put to cast on while cast man is remodelling my foot. In a very rude, patronising, but somehow compassionate way, cast man tells me I need to work with him or I won't be able to walk when the cast comes off. It's agony but I agree with cast man that I will probably want to walk after this whole ordeal, so I let cast man bend my leg and I move my toes when he tells me to. Matt tries to sell me his unborn baby, and then immediately reneges on the deal. Just as I was working out a price! And before I know it the cast is on, cast man has stopped torturing me, and I only have to wait for half an hour before I can have more pain drugs! Life is wonderful!

Isn't it pretty?

And after all that, I have to go in next Monday to do it all again, apparently my foot is still swollen and I have to sleep with it above my heart in order to get the swelling down. C'est la vie!

The Axe Factor

Let me be the first to say it! We love The X Factor! I've been watching Telly Talent Shows since the hay day of Hearsay being crapped all over by their not preferred, but somehow more successful rivals Liberty X.


Yes, the auditions may be better than the actual contest with some of the best, worst, and downright weirdest performances you would have ever seen

And yes, the producers may have already picked out a winner from the first episode of the show.

But gosh darnit we love this show...or, at least we did.

It's time to face up to the facts. The X Factor has lost it, it no longer has the X Factor! From the first episode of the new series it was obvious that the show was trying to keep up. I can kind of understand why they wanted to steal the popular audition set up from Britain's Got Talent, but the auditions was one of the best parts of the show, and now with an audience there we are sorely missing the awkward moments when a bad contestant really thinks they are good, or when they are close enough to the judges to throw water on them. Not to mention the competitive attitude that the judges have taken to. Now that's not to say this is the first time they have boasted to eachother that their groups are better, and they as a judge WILL WIN this year, but this year they Simon seems to have lost his partial stand point and good criticism skills, he is blinded by love for his 3 boys. And anyone who will say Cheryl Cole's new single is "good" is deluded by money.

Now all of this was fine, it was quite annoying, but bearable. The thing that topped me was the fact that Jedward were in the bottom two last week, but somehow they are still in the competition, while the talented (if not dull) Lucie was kicked out. Simon Cowell, you have done Britain a disservice. The whole point of the judges getting the final vote is for situations like that, so good singers will stay in the competition and underage boys who can't even rap in tune will not have to be endured for another week!

The whole thing makes me want to turn over the channel and watch Brucie make some uncomfortable sexist and racist jokes for the evening.