All the posts so far

Thankfully it appears I had all of the posts up until the one I posted yesterday saved on my computer and so they appear here as one huge post. Please excuse the screwy formatting. Will fix it if I can!

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'This page is still a work in progress! C 'mon in and make yourselves at home and please promise not to laugh too hard at my mistakes as I try to finish setting up my little web house here!

A proper update is planned for around 24 hours time.'

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'I 've decided that I like this set up for journalling. It seems to me that in terms of formatting the posts it will be easier than diaryland. But, I will always hold a special place in my heart for diaryland because that is where I mostly journalled for over five years.

This website is also going to replace my caringbridge journal, it will allow me to have more control over it than caringbridge would. That is something that had concerned me greatly over the last few weeks. CB is a great place and again it remains special to me and I will still be over there checking on my friends... but it 's not a place I want to continue writing at.

I 've nothing against either diaryland or CB, I just want more than either of those platforms can allow me and so here I am. Of course, the fact that I can now tell people that my blog can be found at www.wheelchairprincess.com/blog/ is just an added bonus!

This site will be updated most days as before. However I have decided that for the most part I am going to move away from the "daily drivel " type posts of my previous blogs and concentrate more on what I 'm thinking/feeling/experiencing and work on improving my writing.

My absolute dream in life is to be a serious writer To do that I have to take my blogging seriously too.

And that starts... NOW

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Right Now -
-somebody is very proud of you. -somebody is thinking of you. -somebody is caring about you. -somebody misses you -somebody wants to talk to you. -somebody wants to be with you. -somebody hopes you aren 't in trouble. -somebody is thankful for the support you have provided. -somebody wants to hold your hand. -somebody hopes everything turns out all right. -somebody wants you to be happy. -somebody wants you to find him/her. -somebody is celebrating your successes. -somebody wants to give you a gift. -somebody thinks that you ARE a gift. -somebody loves you. -somebody admires your strength. -somebody is thinking of you and smiling. -somebody wants to be your shoulder to cry on. SOMEBODY NEEDS YOU TO SEND THIS TO THEM Never take away anyone 's hope. That may be all they have. That 's something that I was sent a long time ago by someone I once called a dear friend. She is no longer in my life but I remember her fondly and am thankful that she sent it to me at a time when I needed to read it. It also reminds me of the saying "To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world " I 've been reading for most of the day. I started this book just after nine this morning and found it to be one of the most amazing and inspirational books that I 've ever read. I barely put it down until I finished it a few minutes ago. It brought to mind both of the above quotes/sayings and so I wanted to share them here. r nJane Tomlinson is someone who was told she wasn 't going to have the luxury of time. After being told in 2000 that her cancer had metastised and was now terminal, she was given months to live. At most, she and her husband Mike were told, she had two years. The book I read today is The Luxury of Time. Jane 's story as told by her and Mike. Jane is still alive today and since being told she was dying she has taken part in several London marathons, biked from Rome to her home in Leeds with her brother and taken part in the New York Marathon. With her family she has raised over £1 million for Cancer Research and is working on the second million. Her book and her story are unbelievable. I learnt a lot from it and it really made me think. I could go on and on about how great it is and how inspirational and amazing the Tomlinson 's story is. But I couldn 't do it justice. If you get the chance, read this book. You can buy it here',

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Short (8 second) video of my parents dog Milo. I was just trying out some of the features of my new camera and also some of the features of this!','Milo playing with the dust',0,'','attachment','open','open','','milo-playing-with-the-dust','','','2006-03-05 23:31:38','2006-03-05 23:31:38','',9,'http://wheelchairprincess.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/Grans House 003.mpg',0,'','video/mpeg',0),(9,1,'2006-03-05 23:31:58','2006-03-05 23:31:58','I just got a new digital camera yesterday and it does video with sound! So... a short video I took of my parents dog today when we were at my Gran 's house. That 's the TV you can hear in the background. Click here to view

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I 've been thinking lately about how hard it can be for people to see beyond the parts of you that are on display to the world and to actually see who you are. The obvious exception being blogs where people can see just as much as you let them. A few times lately I have seen photos of people I know so well from the internet and then thought "that isn 't anything like I expected you to look like. " So I thought I 'd post this picture of me. My sister took it yesterday when I went to their house for lunch. If you look at me you might assume that I am one of hundreds of things, maybe because I am in a wheelchair, or because I wear glasses or because I have blue hair or for any one of many reasons I can 't think of. You 'd be wrong. I am a wheelchair user, I do wear glasses and at the moment I have blue hair. I 'm a lot more than that though and I have struggled a lot throughout my life to get people to see that. Truly unless you know me well (or really understand disability) anything other than the first one on that list is hard for people to see. At least, that 's what it appears to be to me. I am beginning to realise that whilst complete strangers do sometimes see the wheelchair and not the girl in it, a lot of people have taken the time to get to know who I really am but I haven 't realised it. I automatically just assume that everything that happens to me or get said to me is to a greater or lesser extent because of my CP. It 's time I stopped doing that and accepted that there are some very good people out there - people who have and who will take the time to get to know Emma and not "that girl in the wheelchair "','

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I seem to spend a lot of my time thinking and dreaming about what I would like to do in my future. I also constantly have a huge to-do list. My to-do list is a lot shorter after the last two days but not empty; I doubt I will ever reach the end of it given how busy my life is. I like having a busy life. Sometimes however I wish I were busier as I have noticed that I am less likely to feel depressed when I am kept busy. And so today I spent some time looking into other volunteering opportunities. There 's not anything out there for me today but there will be soon, I can tell. I feel it is my calling in life to make a difference to the way disabled people are viewed and I know I can do that... simply by living my life. One of the people I volunteer with at CAB once told me that he really admired me because it would be so easy for me to sit at home and do nothing, that I didn 't have to do what I do but instead I am there helping people. My first thought was you don 't know me that well at all Then he went on "knowing you Emma you 'd go mad and end up on prozac if you did that " I laughed and pointed out to him that I am already on the generic of prozac, fluoxetine. Then I thought about what he had said and I realised that he does know me afterall. But a part of me still wished that he would admire me for being an adviser, not for being an adviser despite having CP. Because I 'm just living my life and CP is just a small, small part of it, albeit a very significant one. And in living my life, I hope that someone out there sees that disabled people are people not their disabilities and that having a disability is not the end of the world. Obviously I have been disabled from birth and my condition is not degenerative meaning my perspective is likely to be vastly different from someone in either or both of those circumstances. However I hope that seeing me and hearing my story helps someone, somehow.'

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Weighed myself this morning and I 've lost 1 stone since 23rd Jan!!! Yay yay yay yay yay yay YAY!! *is most incredibly happy* So that 's 14lb down, 36 ish to go.

r nOh and on Wednesday I pulled an old pair of jeans out of the cupboard that I 've not fitted into for about 14 or 16 months and I wore them. And I wore them again on thursday.

r nI 've been on a bit of a journey with those red jeans... I bought them just after I started losing weight the first time, in 2003. I thought they wouldn 't fit but they did. Then I lost more weight and I had to buy a belt to wear with them or else they fell off... then i lost more weight and even with the belt they had to go. At that stage the only way you could say I was wearing them would be if you considered permanently falling down to around my ankles to be "wearing them ".

r nMonths past and I gained weight, out came the jeans once more. As more time past the weight continued to pile on and those favourite red jeans were relegated back to the cupboard, to the clothes I can 't wear pile. But this time it was because they were too small.

r nAnd then we reach today, my brown cord type jeans I bought in January have been retired as too big and I 'm wearing my comfy old red jeans, a thought that makes me happy. Hopefully in a few months these jeans will once again be retired. But this time, it will be for the last time. And it will be because I 've lost weight and once again they swamp me.

r n

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r n

A few links.

r n

An FAQ I wrote about my medical stuff. I did it as a page which means its permanently linked on the side bar but didn 't show up on the main page. I 'd love to know what you think! I have three other page posts linked there at the moment and I have two or three more planned so check them out and keep an eye on it.

r n

One of the many things you didn 't know you wanted to know about until you clicked a random link on the internet and ended up on it 's webpage can be found here.

r n

Dumb.com Songs these crack me up especially "double diet " and "it could happen to u2 "

r n

My sister 's blog that entry has a picture of her in it too... she won 't let me post one of her on here so I shall send you to her place on the 'net. I have a picture of her in the same dress as the desktop on my phone and my friend Neil saw it today. He took one look and went "she looks like you. I 'd do her. " and then informed me that the best thing I could do to keep losing weight would be to go to bed with someone for an hour and do all the work - i 'd soon burn off the post swimming chocolate bar I was eating. Such a charming guy - gotta feel sorry for his wife!

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