Saturday 17th August - Getting Old

We're not getting old, oh no. We've stayed the same for the last thirty years. Although
I'm a bit creakier when I get up, and I never used to need glasses and now I have two pairs, varifocals for all the time and bifocals for playing the piano...

The cats. Let's start with them; McCavity now has her medicine every night - the vet said she has arthritis, although I suspect any self-respecting animal would yowl the way she did when the vet was 'manipulating' her back legs. We've just about finished the first bottle, and it may have made her slightly more active - hard to tell. She behaves very much like a set of car keys; you know, you put them down and they stay they for ages, until you turn around again some time later and 'hey presto' and 'how did that happen' and 'I never saw them move'.

I suspect McCavity is related to my friend Anne's teddy bear; she swore it was magic and would talk after dark, but I could never stay awake long enough to see this happen. I wanted to tell her she was making it all up, but what if she was telling the truth?

Moving on; Leo has the most peculiar fur. The outer hairs are long and waterproof. She proved this once again, by deciding to spend the evening sitting on the mat outside the patio door for an hour or so in the pouring rain. I wasn't going out to look for her at bedtime, but shone a torch round and caught her eyes in the gleam. So she slowly got up, stretched, and ambled in, glistening as though someone had sprayed her with Christmas glitter. I took a piece of kitchen paper and gently wiped off the droplets. Her skin was still completely dry, protected by her undercoat of fine fur. This fur is the cause of a bit of a problem; Leo is too stiff to reach over and groom her back, and this fine fur quickly forms dense felted clumps close to her skin. Every day or so we have to rummage through her fur and tease out the tangles before they become a real problem. She's not keen...

And toenails. Now that they are old (sixteen and a half, probably) they don't go out much. So when they walk around indoors you can hear their nails clicky clicky clicking. I sneak up on them when they are asleep (the cats or their toenails, makes no difference) and snip them (the toenails, not the cats) before they wake up (the cats, obs. I don't think toenails do go to sleep, thinking about it).

Then there's me. I'm fine, like I said, still as young as ever, and I can still reach my own toenails which is something. But I do have to manage and schedule appointments at three hospitals with four consultants and any consequent tests and treatments, and 6-weekly blood tests, and deliveries from two pharmaceutical companies, and the oxygen machine maintenance schedule. and the prescriptions from the GP. It's a full time job. I need a personal assistant.

Which brings me to Himself. He IS my personal assistant, bagman, roadie, housekeeper chauffeur; I wouldn't dream of commenting on his age - he's far too busy to be allowed to be old.

We are also keeping an eye on my 90-year-old, soon to be 91 years-old, godmother. We manage to get up to see her every week - it is a three hour round trip if the traffic is in our favour and we stay a couple hours (maybe hoover round, or cut back some bushes, quickly clean the bathroom when she's busy showing Himself some photos). She much prefers us to sit and chat rather than do housework, so I just sneak some essential stuff in when she's distracted. I'm a bit peeved because I spent yesterday morning hemming some trousers for her, and then left them here when we went in the afternoon.

And my father? You'll have to move fast if you want to catch him;

 he may be a slow walker but he is quite the jet-setter, going off somewhere every month! When I get old I'd like to be like him!