Saturday 30th March - Saying NO!

Today I am unwell, under the weather, feeling seedy, lurgied - say it how you will.

Nothing serious, nothing in particular. Just a bit bunged, a bit of a sore throat, a bit of a cough, a bit jelly-legged, a bit unwilling.

Every teacher probably knows how I feel - after all, it is the first weekend of the holidays.

So yesterday, the rest of the family went out for a walk and some fresh - really fresh! air in the biting chill and freezing wind. I thought I ought to go, for the sake of family time together, and at the last minute said NO!

Today, we were planning to go to Arundel, and were all ready to set off early, but as we put on coats and got ready, I thought about it, and said NO! So we went for plan B - going in to the town to enjoy the Easter Weekend Festival. We had a coffee, as we didn't need to set off, just yet, and then, I thought about it some more and said NO!

And each time, I immediately felt better. I also felt slightly guilty -  we are meant to be having a happy family time together - my son has come back for the Easter weekend and we do like to get out and about all together as a family, and I really didn't want to put a damper on the plans and the trips.

But the more I thought about walking round and doing this and that and wrapping up warm and trying to stay warm - the more I suddenly decided I was going to say NO!

Blame my mother - she gave me a good talking too the other day about "doing too much". (hat was dangerous territory - the quickest way to really, really make me cross is to start telling me how and what I should be doing. But this time I let her have her say without reacting - not because I thought she was right, but because she needed to say it! After all, she has to spend hours listening to people telling HER what she should be doing.) Blame all the pupils - teaching is a very demanding, high energy, high output profession. Blame the end-of-term music exam and concert season, with all the myriad complexities of scheduling and dove-tailing to keep track of. Blame whatever or whoever you like.

So I have stayed home, and made a cup of tea.

And felt so much better that I have ironed a few shirts, and mended the shirt that has been hanging around for a year, and put away the pile of thick jumpers that has been cluttering up my life because until now there has been no-where for them to go, and paid my Barclaycard bill by telephone rather than adding it to the to-do list, and sorted out a couple of hyacinth bulbs and a mini Christmas tree which have all been languishing in the garden since January.

And hung some washing to dry and put away some washing.

And I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER!

I'm beginning to suspect that it is not so much "cleanliness is next to Godliness" but "tidiness is next to Godliness".

All this untidiness and half-finished-ness everywhere was beginning to wear me out.




oh, the tree is crooked. I'll have to do something about that as it has just started to snow. (Pause while I nip out and straighten it).

That's better. This time it is the photo that is crooked, not the tree.

Saturday 30th March - the waiting day

I've decided to mark this day - the strange, dulled, despaired day after Good Friday and before the joy of Easter Sunday, by listening to requiems.

Yesterday I listened to the Karl Jenkins Requiem, with its contrasts of pounding beats and meditative Japanese songs.

I've sung the Verdi, Brahms, Mozart and Faure Requiems over the years. A long time ago I had the amazing opportunity to accompany the Australian soprano, Joan Carden, singing the Pie Jesu from the Faure Requiem in a little country church in Cheshire, at an international family gathering of Cardens from all over the world.

Last night I subdued the sound of the oxygen machine with the Durufle Requiem, which I had never heard before.

I've got the Mozart Requiem loaded ready on my mp3 player.

I'm just thankful, that, unlike the first disciples, we know how the story ends.

 picture taken from a blogpost by Fr Stephen Heard
http://stenya3.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/tale-of-two-paintings.html

March 28th - Maundy Thursday - Breath of Life

So, here's the new piece of kit that has been delivered, and the reason why we have been doing all the turning out of cupboards and drawers and clearing out and re-cycling and general de-cluttering.

It's about the size and shape of a medium-sized piece of luggage - maybe just a bit too big for cabin baggage.  A very pleasant technician came and showed us how to work it ("switch it on here", she said, and that seems to be about the level of understanding one needs).

...............................................................................

So, now it is the morning after the night before. As I suspected, the gentle humming noise it made when she demonstrated it to us transformed into a rather more persistent sound at night time - similar to a car engine running outside in the street. Also the machine makes little breathing noises; a sort of breathy inhale, and then a slight "pop" noise as it exhales. If my husband made those kind of noises all night, I would have prodded him to roll over, but the machine would not take kindly to that treatment. The plastic hose that you wrap around your ears and poke into your nose isn't too uncomfortable, and I managed to remain untangled, even with glasses and earphones added to the general clutter around my ears.

Maybe we will get used to the machine, or maybe we will evict it into the next room (once number 1 son has gone home after Easter) or maybe even relocate it to the hallway downstairs. I will go and ask the next door neighbours if they could hear it. I suspect, judging by the level they have their TV, that they won't!

Do I feel better for all that oxygen? How can I tell? I would feel better for having slept through the night! 

Wednesday 27th March - 11 Questions

So, as a follow-on from the last post:

(i) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Rather depends on where in the world this Summer's day is. I will compare Best Beloved to Midsummer in the Land of the Midnight Sun (without the inconvenience of the midges which plague those parts of the hemisphere) 
(ii) How many roads must a man walk down?
Unfortunately, for every "down", there always seems to be an "up". Or maybe two "ups" if you started on the top of the hill and want to get back there again. I'm warming to the idea of moving to Holland, where there is neither "up" nor "down". Or halfway up or halfway down, for that matter. 
(iii) How long is a piece of string?
It's either too long, or not long enough. Always.
(iv) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This is a tough one. I think it is quite important to keep the custard in the fridge once it has been opened.
(v) Why did the chicken cross the road? 
ALL these answers have been used up in the Great British Menu series on BBC. The judges thought the road-kill chicken platter involving cold chicken and beetroot was excellent.  
(vi) Who is the fairest of them all?
We've developed a family tradition for ensuring that the final division of the last slice of pudding is always fair; because one person cuts the slice, and the others choose which one they pick. Seems to work very well.
(vii) What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
 Invite him to the party - he's bound to liven things up a bit.

 

(viii) To be or not to be? 

Would this be easier to solve if expressed mathematically? 2b or not 2b ?

 

Or should that be (2b)' ? I checked on Google and the notation seems to have evolved changed since Nuffield Modern Maths in 1970.
(ix) How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck could chuck wood?
Just as much wood as a wood-chuck would chuck if a wood-chuck could chuck wood. Obviously. 
(x) Where did you get that hat?
Oxfam. Or do you mean the one I knitted for myself?
(xi) What's in a name?
Letters. It's getting late.

Wednesday 27th March - Liebsters and Lobsters

Instead of doing useful things like tatting tablecloths or knitting socks I spend my evenings catching up with all the blogs I follow.

Which reminds me that my blog-roll is well and truly out of date. I'm using Google reader at the moment, but am slowly coming to terms that Google reader is to be discontinued and I will have to find some other way. Archdruid Eileen, leader of the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley, bless her probably cotton socks, put me onto Google reader, and maybe she will be able to show me where to go next.

Somewhere along the way, I came across the inimitable Eccles and Bosco.


Yesterday, Eccles announced that his blog has been awarded a Lobster award. Way-hay!  
Today, Archdruid Eileen got one too! She doesn't seem to be able to spell Lobster in the same way, but it seems to be the same thing.

One of the delights is that the recipient of the Liebster/Lobster has to answer 11 questions, set by the blogger who passed the award on to them, and then set 11 more questions.

Such as "Why did you start blogging" and "Where's your favourite place" and "What's your favourite music etc etc - all pretty straightforward stuff.

Here's Eccle's list of questions - reads like an apocryphal entrance exam for an Oxbridge College:


(i) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
(ii) How many roads must a man walk down?
(iii) How long is a piece of string?
(iv) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
(v) Why did the chicken cross the road?
(vi) Who is the fairest of them all?
(vii) What shall we do with the drunken sailor?


A difficult question to answer.  

(viii) To be or not to be? 
(ix) How much wood would a wood-chuck chuck if a wood-chuck 
could chuck wood?
(x) Where did you get that hat?
(xi) What's in a name?

Brilliant! I wish I'd thought of them myself. So my challenge is - what would your answers be?

Tuesday 26th March - Reasons to be cheerful

1) I have washed up and put away my packed lunch things for the last time this term. From today and for the next two-and-a-half weeks I will have my lunch on a plate. The same things, probably, but not all crammed into random plastic boxes.

2) I have almost completely cleared the to-do-list for this week! Including writing half a dozen postcards, and going to the bank and the building society, and taking unused medicines to the chemist, and recycling a load of plastic bags, and all those other itty-bitty here and there jobs.

3) I have exceeded both New Year's resolutions this month. We've eaten chocolate several times every week, and yesterday I took a whole trolley load of stuff to the charity shop - literally - I took one of the big ones from outside Waitrose, loaded it up from the boot of the car and wrangled it through the town to Help-the-Aged. And yes, I did return the trolley to Waitrose afterwards.

4) I have managed to stick one of my Lent resolutions - I have not played Freecell or Minesweepers once since Ash Wednesday. I've done quite well at the other - remembering to check the rear-view mirror more often.

5) I have taught the last timetabled lesson of term. There should be two more to go, but one lad has broken his finger (he's supposed to be here now) and the next one has a meeting at college, so I have finished early. It will be good to have a bit of a break.

6) I have bought four audio CDs from Oxfam to load onto my mp3 player; some Miss Marple short stories read by Joan Hicks, some Father Brown stories, a Simon Brett Murder (I do like a good murder at bedtime) and "Kidnapped". All for less than £15. I am ripping them I as type. Even better, I can feel good about spending the money as it is all in a good cause - a donation with its own reward.

7) My husband gave me his "last Rolo" - the Rolo Easter egg that everyone was given at work today. How cute is that? You can see it in the picture, behind the CDs.

I should stop here - things to do, food to prepare, programmes to watch...

Hope you have reasons to be cheerful too...

Monday 25th March - Life in Flatland

A brief long update on how my mother is getting on, for friends and family.


Maybe it should be on "how we are all getting on" - it affects all of us in one way or another.

She came back to the flat in the beginning of February, with carers coming in four times a day, some one living in for the first ten days to provide cover at night and for some of the day time (a private arrangement), and visits by all kinds of people; social workers, district nurses, the doctor, audiologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and others too numerous to keep track of. My father's calendar became covered in post it notes as the appointments for one day over flowed into the next. Each day seemed to be a ceaseless round of telephone calls, and making arrangements for this that and the other, including getting out to do the shopping.
"The sight of your father with a garlic press - well, that is something to behold" commented my mother as he wrestled with producing delicious meals...

I went in whenever I could - before starting work, or in a lunchtime gap between schools, and at weekends. My brother drove down for a couple of days, or even just a day, most weeks. Our cousin came over from France for a long weekend.   

Night-times, to begin with, were very difficult. The various medications made my mother confused and also seemed to cause vivid and disturbing dreams; one night she managed to completely turn herself round in bed so that her head end was at the foot and and vice versa - how did she manage that, when she is unable to use her left arm and leg? And however did they manage to turn her round again? Every couple of days would bring a new problem which needed sorting.

Steadily, over the weeks, an enormous improvement has taken place. The physiotherapists have been brilliant, and arranged for the "string-em-up-in-a-hammock" style hoist to be replaced by one that eases the patient into a supported standing position. We have now been trained to use this hoist ourselves, or order to give my mother extra "standing up" practise between physiotherapy sessions. There is definite progress; last week in one session she was able to get from sitting in the wheelchair to standing, using the foot of the bed as a support. It took a fair bit of skill and effort from the physiotherapist - but whoopee - that's progress!

The first 6 weeks of "home" are over, and all the initial arrangements for care by the hospital have been replaced by the new "here's your budget, how will you spend it?" system. The new care team have been coming for five days now, and so far, so good. The physiotherapy exercises assigned for between visits are well underway too. It's a painful process; as well as the cramps that have plagued her since the very beginning, she is now gtting pins and needles, and burning sensations, and itching in the affected side of the body. This is good news in one way, as it means that the brain is trying to connect with the limbs. But it hurts!

The medications have been adjusted and the night times are less confused, and the overnight carer comes just once night a week to give my father a "night off". As my mother improves, he is able to become more relaxed - hopefully, he will be taking the opportunity to go out for a while when the carers are there in the morning - maybe shopping, maybe for a walk, maybe to just have a coffee and some time to "go offline". Meanwhile he is getting plenty of training in becoming a cook, under instruction from my mother. Roast lamb, roast chicken, home-made cottage pie  - and very occasionally the odd ready-meal!

I'm looking forward to warmer weather, when we can think about going out - squeezing the wheelchair into the lift the first few times will be a learning curve, because it is such an exact fit. Meanwhile my mother can watch the children running to and from school, keep an eye on the pigeons, birds and squirrels, and check out what the people in the flats opposite are doing (mostly ironing, or watching what their  neighbours are doing!)

Slowly, things are becoming more known, more understood, and, I can definitely say, better.

Monday 25th March - Space to breathe

Dear Reader;

 May I respectfully advise you to move house every five years as a matter of principle? In the first eight years of our married life, we lived in four different houses, which meant that roughly every two years we cleared the loft and de-cluttered. We have been in this house for twenty-eight years now, and the consequences with regard to clutter are truly, truly appalling.

We needed to clear a space roughly 24 inches square for a piece of kit due to be delivered and installed on Thursday. We are not sure where it will go; one place is the hall, and the other could be our bedroom.

We've done a massive, massive clearout this weekend. It started with an IKEA trip to buy some stacking shelving to sort out the hall:

 

The two bags will need to be rehomed before they get too used to living there; one is ful of wellies which we hardly ever use, but would probably regret disposing of, and the other is my samba drum. YOU may think it looks too cluttered and untidy; well, you should have seen it before! Anyway, if the machine has to go in the hall, then it will fit in the space at the bottom of the stairs currently occupied by the djembe drum. That was Saturday.  

 

 

.On Sunday, after breakfast, we girded our loins and set to work in our bedroom. Step one was to dump everything on the bed. The space we had in mind proved to be too small, one we excavated it and were able to get a tape measure into the corner.  

 

 

That meant dismantling some shelves, (revealing the consequences of my home decorating impulse many years before) and moving some other furniture to fill the small space and create a larger space. More stuff stacked on the bed; the cat came in, ran three times round the chaos, scrambled through the debris and fled in a panic. She hates change.



 

 

However, one tip-trip and several hours later, we ended up with the furniture re-arranged, the bed revealed, 5 bags of possibly useful stuff and a rug for the charity shop, one huge bag of rags for Help-the-Aged, one bag of bags to recycle, and the bins outside over-flowing.

 

 

 

It is just amazing how smug, how light-hearted, we feel having divested ourselves of so much stuff that we probably won't miss. It also means I will easily achieve my New Year's Resolution this month (a bag of stuff to the charity shop every month). Actually, I give it ten days before we've encroached on the space....

We now have a choice of three places where the machine can go - the hall, beside the bed, and the sitting room. The machine is an oxygen concentrator; my lungs are pretty rubbish, and have been slowly getting worse. I have tripped over a threshold which means that I will need to have night-time oxygen. I'm getting used to the idea - and working hard at putting a positive spin on it. If I have the oxygen at night, it means that I put less strain on my heart and delays the time when I might need oxygen for longer periods of time.  The whole oxygen supply set-up is amazing - it appears that I can just ring up and say I'm going on holiday and apparently they will arrange for a machine to be available anywhere in the UK or even in the EU!  I was certainly able to call the help line on Sunday morning to aske about the actual dimensions of the machine, which they measured for me then and there.

Watch this space - it's being delivered on Thursday and I'll post a picture.
 

Sunday 24th March - Be sure your sins will find you out!

I think I did mention in a recent post - no idea when - that I had copied an idea I first saw on the television sit com called "No honestly", featuring John Alderton and Pauline Collins (are actually married) as the couple Charles and Clara Danby.

I hadn't remembered that last bit - I mean I knew it was John Alderton and Pauline Collins - but the rest of it I got from that invaluable source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No,_Honestly

Anyway, the point, when I get to it, is that in one episode Clara is decorating the sitting room by pasting wallpaper around the furniture. This struck me as a very sensible concept, so one weekend, while my husband was away, I used the same principle for repainting our bedroom. I'm tying to think how old the children were; I suspect my son must have been about two, because I remember that he was happily engrossed in playing all his cassettes on my cassette player while I balanced on the step ladder with paint pot and brush. He was very precocious with technology, and my cassette player more or less survived the experience. At least, it still played cassettes, which was all that mattered. My daughter must have been a baby of 6 months, and therefore asleep for a lot of the time. She was far more sociable and I wouldn't have been able to fob her off with a machine while she was awake.

Have I reached the point yet? Well the reason that I painted over the wallpaper was that when we moved in, one wall was patterned with hideous chrysanthemums and daisies in depressing shades of brown, and the other walls were dingy stripes of brown, beige and ready-faded green.

 Like this: 










and this:













Oh, the point. Well, the point is that we moved some furniture today as part of the great grand tidy-up and sort-out of the bedroom that took up all of today.


All has now been revealed!  

Saturday 9th March - Love and Temperament

We've been married for long enough now to get used to each other.

I try and view our natures as "complementary", rather than as "opposites".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boutet_1708_color_circles.jpg

So, in trying out certain kinds of ideas, such as home improvements, rearrangements of furniture, new colour schemes, my approach tends to be "let's give it a go!" I tend to plunge in, and do an experimental dry wet run. I reckon to try it all out using cheap approximations of what I am aiming for in order to get a feel for how it works. A quick trip to the shops, chuck everything that's in the way into the empty bath to clear a space, push, shove, pull, rip, cut, stick and hey presto. Then leave the debris everywhere because I'm plumb tuckered out. Let's go out for fish and chips tonight.

Once I've done it, I'll then know how it should have been done, and will be in a good position to go for the final solution. Makes perfect sense to me. I need to touch and feel and see the change in order to know what it is I really wanted.

The major, major, and insuperable flaw in this approach is, that having created the bodged together, string-and-sealing-wax solution, rickety-tickety oozy-woozy version, I will lose interest, and just let everything stop there. Somehow, I won't have significantly improved the situation. Let's be truthful. Everything is a thousand times worse than if I had left things well alone.

So what's his approach? It takes time. It involves asking and considering answers to lots of questions. It involves patience and research and investigation and measuring, lots and lots of measuring. There's all that visiting different shops WITHOUT buying anything. Pieces of paper. Plans. MORE measurements.

Then, in a weekend, or a day, or even a few hours of intense activity, the solution is implemented, in one go, everything is tidied away, and IT WORKS and is pretty near perfect.

After 35 years, I'm beginning to go with his methods. The waiting around, and the delays drive me insane with impatience, but I'm learning. His way is much better.

Usually..... 

   
 

Wednesday 6th March - fleeting impressions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_spinosa

 

This is the time of year when everything starts happening in a rush. After weeks, months, a whole season of dormancy, the hedgerows and fields are exploding into life.

Today I was keeping a lookout for the early daffodils and primroses that I have been enjoying over the past few weeks along my usual "Wednesday Route". However, a slight change to my usual schedule means that I now drive through the ancient Andreaswald or Andreadswald, which used to be the centre of the English iron industry in the sixteenth century. I have to take my turn as the road becomes single track when crossing the damns of the old hammerponds, which used to drive the water mills centuries ago. It is quite difficult to image what the district looked like then; now it is heavily wooded, with large secluded houses set back among the trees. The dragon was mercifully elsewhere (as were cyclists, tractors, horse riders and dog-walkers with dogs on those wretched elastic extending leads - all things which complicate my life on the road).

And then I saw it; the first flowering blackthorn of the year! Drifts of white flowers on the bare branches, shining faintly in the weak sunshine! I had to pinch the photo (from wikipedia). I never have time to stop and take a photograph of the things I see; drifts of snowdrops flowing down the banks, carpets of crocus in the churchyard, a glimpse of a tree with startlingly bright tan-coloured bare branches glowing in the afternoon sun.    

A promise of what's to come.

Memo to self: get hold of some twigs with catkins, and pussy willow, and sticky buds, and take them to my mother some time to have in a vase among all the daffodils and other flowers she has by her work table.

Saturday 2nd March - and another thing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lava_forms.jpg

It's been "all systems go" for so long...

and I'm just entering the busiest phase of the school term...

and there's so much to sort out...

and everywhere's so untidy...

and grubby...


I've deleted the next 50 lines of this post. It was just too, too depressing. A great long list in about 5 categories of things to be done. This and that and the other. Let's try again...






THE DONE LIST

Bought a packet of darning needles, so that I have been able to
Sew up a seam in my Father's jersey (outstanding since Christmas)
Put away the sewing things after sewing up the seam in my Father's jersey
Answer a couple of emails
Remember to go to the Women's World Day of Prayer Service yesterday evening
Remember to turn up to accompany a couple of music exams this morning
Remember to follow up an offer of help I made regarding a friend's washing machine
Remember to go to a friend's supper party this evening
File one of the many stacks/categories of paperwork that have been pending all year




TO DO LIST

Not telling.


I've just cheered myself up -


why would I want to upset myself all over again!

Saturday 2nd March - 2.3 kilos

That's what I managed to reduce the weight to.

That's ungrammatical.

That's to what I managed to reduce the weight.

Still doesn't read right.

Anyway - I am talking about my life-support-system, or in other words, my hand bag.


Let's see; gloves, fluorescent green nylon fold-up shopping bag, two (!) packets of tissues, driving licence, 2 ID cards, samba whistle, mp3 player, headphones in small tin, connector lead to connect mp3 player to USB socket, pocket-sized loudspeaker, usb memory stick, diary for petrol receipts, pencil, pen (where's the biro gone? hope I haven't lost it). Very small moleskine notebook for work, very small moleskine notebook for everything else, envelope of Special Brown Luggage Labels for Procedure for Returning Instruments (nothing else is accepted by The Office), couple of packets of pills to be taken before and after meals, and small bottle of water to get them down with (with which to get them down?),  my keys, parent's keys, pink post-it with telephone number for ?? can't remember ??, old receipts, hair slide, makeup bag which actually contains hand cream, lip salve, plasters, aspirin, 2 small nail clippers and 1 large nail clipper, large wallet stuffed full of stamps, loyalty cards and other cards but sadly lacking in money, old repeat prescription forms, old hospital appointment cards. That's about the lot. No, forgot to add my varifocals with tinted lenses.

Oh, mobile phone and small torch. And a photograph of somewhere in Cornwall. And half-a-dozen postcards as I write cards every week to a number of people.


After careful consideration, I managed to discard what I no longer required and re-filled all the pockets of my healthy back organiser bag.



 


So, I chucked the receipts and the dead tissues and sundry scraps of paper, put the hair slide and 2 sets of nail clippers away, stowed the diary in the car where it belongs, added the photograph to the chaos on the dining room table. I've also removed the tinted lensed varifocals - I've only worn them once since I got them last Summer - it's been that kind of a year.








The pile on the left is what I managed to reduce the contents by (is by what I manage to reduce the contents. I don't think I've got the hang of English grammar properly. It's a tough old language to round get your head.).

And I've got the life-support-system down to a mere 2.3 kg.   (hollow laugh)