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dear diary ~ that frustrated feeling…

“I wanted to figure out why I was so busy, but I couldn’t find the time to do it.” 
― Todd Stocker

It must be a defect in my personality but I rarely do what I set out to do.

I believe mentioned in my last post that I would be going outside to wash my downstairs windows at the back of the house and then tidy the shed.

So how did I end up cleaning out the freezer?

Well, I had to wait by the phone for the so-called ‘callback’ from social services. With my hearing impairment, I have to have the phone on speaker phone to hear people and so I don’t want to be out in public when they call.

So I hung around the kitchen and found things to clean during the morning….

The drawers in the freezer are looking good though, all neat and tidy. I am always cross with myself if I find things that should have been eaten and have been dwindling in there. There were two very old (Dec 2024), small, cheap 8″ pizzas in there which I often get in case I need a quick meal for one of the grandchildren. They looked very dried up so I had to bin them as the life of a bread item is not very long. I also found a couple of wraps of a similar age and we had them with some curry that night in place of a chapati, and they were OK.

Most of the items in my freezer are standby products, a pizza, a bag of chips, garden peas, broad beans and edame beans (all the vegetables we neither grow or buy and cook fresh). I also keep it stocked with bread, grated cheese, stewed apple or plums, fresh herbs and a few bits and pieces like fish fingers for the grandchildren. At the moment we need to make more nutloaf – it is on the list.

Thankfully, nothing else was wasted or too old to use and I have made a note of anything that needs using up quickly.

….the morning went, but still no callback.

I then took the phone out to the greenhouse and began sowing more seeds…..

…..the afternoon disappered, but still no callback.

So no call back that day as promised and the shed and windows remain on my to do list.

It was Tuesday by the time I managed to speak with someone. It is now becoming urgent that my mum’s case is resolved as her capital will soon be down to zero even though the legal disregarded capital is £14,250. I was told that mum can no longer use the care agency she has now. It was arranged by a social worker back in 2023 when mum came out of the care home after her fall. Because mum’s capital back then was well above the disregard limit she was self-funding but the social worker failed to mention that the local authority would not be able to pay this care agency rate once my mum was no longer a self-funder.

So I have been told that she will have to sign up with a new agency (local authority approved on cost alone). The local authority have a capped rate of £23.60 an hour maximum, mum’s current homecare provider is £36….so a big gap and not one that we could fill by putting money towards to allow mum to keep the same carers. I told the social worker she will have to be the one to tell my mum as she will be devastated, she is used to all the carers with the current agency and as you may know, elderly people do not like change.

I am not looking forward to the meeting with the social worker at mum’s next Thursday when she will deliver the bad news.

Mum has not been good this week – her rodent ulcer on her leg is bleeding badly and no one, not the doctors, nurses, skin viability nurse, paramedics or me and my sister have been able to persuade her to go into hospital in order for them to deal with it and stop the bleeding, even though she has been told the consequences…which is she could eventually bleed to the point of needing a transfusion. She is happily sitting there at the moment with blood running out of her leg wound, quite unconcerned about it and repetetively asking if the carer will still be taking her across the road to the cafe for her chip butty and brownie!

She has used her pendant alarm call twice in the last 24 hours and this results in an ambulance being sent out each time and then she has a little chat and sends them away as they cannot take her to hospital against her wishes, even her doctor can’t. She has now been prescribed some tablets by the visiting doctor to try and halt the bleeding, but she won’t get the prescription until Monday as they have to be actioned on the surgery computer system. No longer do doctors carry a prescription pad with them it seems.

The amount of blood is quite substantial according to her main carer who has been marvellous and coped as best she can washing the bedding in the bath (mum has no washer in the flat) and cleaning up the blood stained carpets. I learned this morning that she had removed all her dressings again last night and was found in bed this morning with an open wound. The district nurses have been called out again to redress it. They will not be pleased as we all know she will remove it when no-one is around.

I am beginning to think she likes all the attention of the doctors, nurses and paramedics fussing around her, especially when myself or my sister are not able to visit (my sister is away again at the moment). Mum knows that she is not able to summon a doctor or the District Nurses instantly but has learned that with the press of her call button she will get a visit from the paramedics as they are obliged to go and check on her. It appears that if there is no-one else to visit mum she will make do with a visit from the paramedics and they will have a nice little chat with her between the carers visits. We are all helping her play this game by responding to her, but we can’t ignore her either and she knows now that no-one can force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do or stop her from being such a nuisance.

There really is no answer to all this. I just have to keep moving forward.

When I can, I keep escaping into the greenhouse and sowing a few more seeds. I have at last got the courgette seeds started. I log everything in my note book and I was quite surprised when I looked at the date on the courgette packet – they should be sown by…2022, however they did grow last year successfully so fingers crossed.

The African lilies that I set last year in a tub have some nice green shoots, they died right back over winter despite covering them with a plastic cloche. I thought I might have lost them.  There were no flowers last year, but I set them late – I am hoping they might bloom this year.  I had some beautiful clumps at the cottage and I am looking forward to have a nice display down here.

The tulips I planted last autumn with more subdued colours are looking really nice too and not too tall either, so they haven’t been beaten down by the wind and rain.

The honesty is in full flower now and looking pretty, it self seeds like foxgloves and moves around the garden each year at the back of the borders.

And this is the little pot of daffodils still flowering well, that I bought a while ago reduced from £12.99 to £6.

This is my buddleia alternifolia it normally hides my washing pole quite nicely but, the framework was so out of shape and the only answer was a severe hard prune.

Each of these stems has a little bud or two and I am crossing my fingers that, when it recovers from the shock, it will grow back. Of course, I will have to sacrifice any flowers this year.

I had ended up with a few unused courgettes in the fridge this week. One of them, DH used in the curry, and the others I used for the stuffed courgette bake. It turned out well and gave us 2 meals. I will add it to the drop down menu tab above. The mushroom soup recipe is there for those readers asking for it.

The play we went to see last Saturday night was amusing and the actors did well. The main actor never noticeably stumbled over his lines and he had a lot of lines to deliver. In the interval, we had a much needed cup of tea and a biscuit. Wine was available too, which is a nice touch.

In and amongst all the drama with mum and the subsequent phone calls, I am trying to keep up with the housework and laundry. To keep the place tidy and everything in its place I am spending an hour each day just organising and cleaning any one of a number of areas where things tend to collect, like the top of the fridge in the laundry room and my desk in the office.

This Persephone pamphlet came in the post yesterday with a free new bookmark. I always enjoy reading it as they review a selection of their books and the authors.

I am also really enjoying the book I got from our library on the history of our little township – but what hardship many of the residents endured, we should all think ourselves lucky that we are alive today and in easier times, because many of the people who lived before us, our ancestors, thankfully survived, against all odds, long enough to have children, who also survived.

The mortality rate for infants has been exceptionally high at times and from entries recorded in the Middle Ages around 1297, during the reign of Edward I, it is documented in the Parish records that the people living in our little township would walk to Almondbury and back to attend church, a round trip of 14 miles, taking their new born infants, often in the middle of winter, to be baptised….and then back again a few days later to be buried.

I am looking forward to going in the garden this weekend, weather permitting. It has been an awful week for doing any washing, so I need to catch up.

We signed our LPA’s yesterday at the solicitors and checked through our updated wills, which we will return to sign when the amendments are completed. That will be another of our financial tasks off the list. Next on the list is renewing our passports.  All these official items and form filling take time, but I  feel we are getting somewhere at last, and once done, we will only have to review them occasionally.

So that has been my week, I feel exhausted and the thought that next week will be another battle with mum exhausts me further.

And now I am going back out in the garden, it soothes my nerves and calms me down. DH is raking the moss out of the final patch of lawn and I have some perennials to move (which should have been done earlier if it wasn’t for this continuous rain). The pretty pale pink aqualegia I moved last week has recovered and looking as if it will flower.

Thank you for all your comments about the library and the hedging. I apologise if I have not answered you all. I do have the Libby app – I will check on Country Living. I will miss having a paper magazine though as I often tear out pages with interesting ideas for my notebook. The hedging project I can see will be delayed until all this uncertainty about mum is resolved with social services.

Have a lovely weekend.

Thank you for dropping by, back soon x

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dear diary ~ this and that

Waking up to the sun streaming through our bedroom window (albeit dirty windows upstairs) is always a treat, maybe it will last a bit longer today…there again maybe not. The weather at the moment is as temperamental as my dear old mum. It is heartening to know that on 17th April 1745 Arthur Jessop, doctor of this little township I live in, recorded in his diary ‘Sharp frost. Cloudy. Some hail, sleet and snow.’ In the last few days I have recorded similar in my journal, so nothing much has changed over the years.

Yesterday, I had to contact social services in Stockton on behalf of my mum to find out if there is any progress with our application for help from her local authority. They will keep phoning and writing to her and she is not able to understand all that is happening. She cannot pass on any information from a phone call as she can no longer retain that information long enough or understand what they are saying. We found an unopened letter recently to say they were visiting mum on 31st March, but SS did not tell us so I am presuming they did not gain access to her flat.

And now I have to sort it all out.

Of course her named social worker was not at work yesterday and so rather than wait by the phone all day I will ring in again today.

I also had to ring the Hearst magazine group. I had taken out a subscription for Country Living at the end of last year, taking advantage of their 5 issues for £5 offer. It was on auto renewal at full price over £35 but in the T&C’s it said you could cancel, and I did using the form on their internet site. I stated the reason as asked and sent the email.

I got a reply email 4 days later saying could I state the reason. In the intervening days I also noticed they had taken the full subscription money. I emailed another 5 or 6 times telling them I had contacted them to cancel and because they had delayed asking for the reason again the auto-renewal had kicked in. I was rather annoyed about this especially as I had no reply to my subsequent emails, or apology. So I had to ring them and eventually after the customer services person had tried to persuade me to have any of their other magazines instead, and after having a word with his supervisor, he reluctantly agreed to refund my money…….so it was worth pursuing.

Country Living has changed quite a lot now and for me has lost its appeal and affordability. I will instead buy their Spring, Summer. Autumn and Christmas special issues which are a compilation of their magazine features covering that period.

After lunch DH and I had a walk to the village, collected my library books, had a chat with some neighbours and then settled down to doing a few jobs outside, between being pelted with icy drops of water occasionally, as yet another dark cloud moved over. I washed the downstairs windows at the front of our house and cleaned around the front door, sweeping any cobwebs away as I went. DH cut the grass. He has spent many a day recently raking both lawns, front and back, to remove the worst of the moss that builds up here in the wet weather.

Meanwhile, I weeded over the front border, redefining the edges as I went along. The whole of the border between the end of our lawn and the pavement is due a transformation soon once the tulips are over. We had a mixed shrub border here at one time but some of them have been badly frosted over the years or just outgrown themselves and become woody and shapeless. Most were over 30 years old and most of them have been removed, so we need to redesign this area.

Built during the eighties, our small group of houses have open plan front gardens, which can be a nuisance at times. We are allowed hedges, but not fences or walls. We are planning a low box hedge, or something similar, to create a bit of a barrier, and a bit more privacy and prevent those dog owners who think it is OK to let their dogs poo in our border or on the lawn and then leave it there. It will have to be something that does not mind being constantly sprayed upon either by all the passing dogs.

Our neighbour above, with their adjoining garden, planted a box hedge and we might continue this along our stretch. I do worry about box blight though and have been looking at alternatives. I have a few singular box plants in pots that I want to plant into the front borders and keep them clipped as rounded mounds amongst the perennials.

I have a shed to tidy today, more seeds to sow and hopefully make a bit of time to clean the downstairs windows and make a pear and chocolate pudding.

So I had better get a move on.

Have a lovely day and thank you for dropping by.

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dear diary ~ a long week of ups and downs…

Like the weather

As I write this post and we emerge from the Easter week, I am greeted with a snow shower falling outside my window. DH and I have just returned from our morning walk which was both brisk and cut short as the bright, but bitterly cold, spring day soon turned into a cold hailstone shower not long after we had walked down the road. There was little point heading upwards along the lane towards the moor and we circled round the block quickly and were glad to get back home.

Many of the tulips in the border at the front of the house are in full flower, such a cheery sight and the local neighbourhood’s children have not managed to land a football onto them…yet! Although I love the pink, purple and moody colours I find they don’t come again as easily as the Apeldoorn variety of vibrant reds and yellows that I have had for a few years now, and they do keep coming back. It means I do not have to keep planting and removing and replanting each year.

The tulip Sun Lover which is a vibrant orange with yellow streaks has also made another appearance and will be in full flower soon to add to the display. They all contrast well with the deep blue grape hyacinth and the forget-me-nots. I have yet to find out if any of the unopend buds are Queen of the Night, a rich velvety purple colour.

The ones in the picture below have still to open – if I remember rightly they are double early mixed that I planted before Christmas. I am eager to know what they look like.

The Amelanchier Canadensis (Snowy Mesipilus) has abundant delicate white blossoms and the whole tree will look like a cotton wool cloud as they all fully open (if this windy, wet weather doesn’t whip them off the branches).

My dicentra, as always, steals the show in the front garden, no matter what the weather it seems to survive our harsh temperatures and gives a good dispay.

The camelia that had one flower last year is flowering and has been moved to the front of the house.

And the primulas keep on giving…

How different is the weather again now to that one day last Wednesday when the temperatures soared and I had to rummage in my summer wardobe for some suitable attire. And today I am glad I decided not to pack away the three thick jumpers I have been wearing all winter, because I am once again wearing one of them right now. They are so old and bobbly I had thought I would put them in the charity rag sack, which will force me to buy some new ones next winter….but just in case I am hanging on to them.

If you asked me what I have done this week, I would have to search my brain to remember. We visited mum last Sunday, surprisingly the weather was sunny and not too cold, though only 5 minutes after leaving her apartment a large dark cloud went overhead and we were pelted for a few minutes with hailstones. It was quite unpleasant but in true style my mum braved it all and thankfully it was fine for the rest of the time in the park. She devoured her toasted teacake and cappuccino and then had an Magnum icecream.

We left her in good spirits with the mid-afternoon carer and went off down the road to Thirsk to call in at my younger daughter’s home and deliver Easter eggs to Little L and Sweetie. I always get a bear hug from Sweetie, apparently granny tops the list of her favourite people! We had a chat and a cup of tea and then got back on the road homewards.

It was an early night for us and I slept like a log.

Monday morning the washing marathon began. I had brought down 4 black bin bags of washing, all bedding and underwear, from my mum’s. What with her leaky rodent ulcer on her leg, that bleeds and issues a fluid continually onto her sheets, and a number of accidents in the past week, the carers had to strip the bed more than once. Everything needed soaking and stain removal and some of it took two washes. Luckily, I could get it all out on the line, dried, ironed and packed ready to get it all back up to my daughter in Thirsk on the Wednesday by means of a friend of hers who was going to see her. My daughter will then pass it on to my sister when she returns back home from holiday this weekend. My sister usually does all mum’s washing but in this instance there was no way I could have let my sister arrive back from her holiday to all that washing.

In between I did some weeding and pruning and set a few more annual seeds in the greenhouse. I usually grow a few cosmos, zinnias and calendula and all but the calendula are sprouting already. We have late frosts so I don’t sow too early as it is late May or beyond before I can plant out here and be reasonably safe from overnight frosts.

On Tuesday we reluctantly decided to do our weekly shop because we were expecting Master Freddie on Wednesday and Friday to play while mum and dad were at work. Baby Chocolate goes to nursery so Freddie had our undivided attention on both days.

He is seven now and loves to have some time on my computer (with a little supervision from me so he doesn’t accidentally delete or uninstall anything). He had a vision to make a puzzle book and we sat together like the contestants on the Apprentice when they are developing a new product with the help of a design agency. He told me exactly what he wanted and I helped to show him how he could achieve that using blank sheets in the Microsoft Word program.

He designed the front cover using a clip art from the internet.

He was so definite he wanted a bar code on the back cover but I couldn’t figure out how to do thin and thick lines in Word, but happily settled for this – a seven year olds world is very simple!

He had a tagline selling point saying ‘over 10 puzzles’. He also wanted the price sticker to say 30p or 50p depending on people’s means to pay, which I thought was very sweet and thoughtful!!

Inside, he created 10 pages of different puzzles by himself, including this simple ‘word search’ and this colour puzzle as well as a couple of mathematical puzzles.

It was impossible in Word to find a way to draw a maze or a dot to dot picture so we had to cut and paste something from the internet. When all the puzzles were finished he wanted to put all the answers on the back page just like a real puzzle book.

We had great fun with it and once printed out and bound together with a bit of sparkly cord he was so proud of it and couldn’t wait to show mum and dad.

So today both DH and I are recovering and would have ventured into the garden if the weather had been better. Our garden furniture is still under wraps; keeping dry so we can paint it and the projects we had started are waiting for the better weather. It has been hard work trying to sort the garden out in very limited fine weather – it must have been the worst year for rain here.

I decided as it is one of those stay at home and inside all day, days I would dust, tidy and hoover, the house certainly needed it. I have packed away the few Easter decorations I had out on display – although I have kept the odd one out for a bit longer, it sems a shame not to as Easter was over so quickly. I am just debating whether it is worth swapping my winter wardrobe for the summer one just yet.

After an early tea we are going to a local theatre production of a play called ‘A Bunch of Amateurs’. We enjoyed their last production which was a murder mystery; we do like to support the people who are willing to put their time and energy into these productions so they don’t die away like a lot of things are due to the coming of Netflix and takeaway suppers.

I took advantage recently of the Gardeners’ World offer of 6 issues for £12 plus the 2 for 1 entry card into many gardens. With the first issue I also got a free packet of cosmos seeds which I will sow this week. I note from the cover it is a special subscribers issue so maybe there is some content left out or fewer pages than the full price version.

I need a new mini wooden greenhouse. DH has in the past managed to repair the one I got in 2014 for £42.49 from Homebase, but now he is repairing the repairs. We saw that Aldi had some in their March gardening event but we were too late to the party and they had all gone. So we are looking to find one elsewhere. Although I have my ordinary, small (6×4′) wooden greenhouse, the mini one is great for hardening off the trays of plants and holding the plant pots over winter.

Whilst in Aldi though I noticed one of those picture frames that will display and contain many pictures – great for the children’s drawings they leave and only £3.99. I am sure they were more like £12 on the internet.

I had to return a book to the library this week and whilst I was there picked up an interesting one about the history of the village I live in from before the dark ages to recent times. I am engrossed – I love a bit of history.

Our village is really a town as we have a town hall and a market place – though no market these days. It grew to quite a size with the industrial revolution and the valley is littered with old mills, some demolished now but others have become housing. I was keen to know what kind of place it was before it was taken over.

Looking at the 1677 Court Roll there were a few scoundrels back then and no changes today.

I seem to be mentioning my mum a lot these days and that is probably because she takes up a lot of my week and sometimes her actions make me laugh, but sometimes they make me want to scream.

This week has been an absolute nightmare.

One afternoon something was not right with her phone when I rang. It started off OK but then suddenly the volume went and I could hardly hear her. She is not able to rectify this kind of problem anymore so I told her to wait for the carer who was due in half an hour so they could look at it, but suspected it was running out of charge. Within that half hour she called me 14 times – each time just to check the phone and each time it was no different and I told her she was running the charge down further.

As well, for some reason she had decided she wasn’t going to eat or drink at breakfast and lunch at all – she told the carers she had no appetite because she was not getting any fresh air. I could see where this was going because she has no problem eating the chip butty, chocolate brownie with cream and drinking her large cappuccino across at the deli cafe on a Wednesday and Friday, and knowing my mum she was probably hoping the carers would take her across to the cafe every day if she wouldn’t eat what they made for her. The carers were very concerened for her and tried to coax her to eat as you would a child, but were met with some unpleasant reactions and words from mum. The care agency manager had to have words with mum about her behaviour towards the carers. I am sure they are used to it, but it is not pleasant. My mum denied all charges and dismissed the concern over her not eating and drinking saying they had all lied about her. Then mum left a few nasty words for me on my voicemail!

Anyway, since then she has been a bit better the last day or two and has eaten again and been pleasant with the carers. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.

The OT went to see her yesterday as she has been struggling to get out of her chair and doesn’t leave it until a carer is there, not even for the toilet. The OT offered her a reclining chair and different walker and a few other aids to make her mobility better – she refused everything. I did say to the carers that she would. I think she actually likes having everyone think she cannot do anything for herself or get up out of her chair without their help.

She can do things when she wants though because during the not eating episode and betwen carer visits she did manage to get up from her chair herself and walk with her walker over to the bin to deposit her sandwich and then told the next carer she had eaten it. Unfortunately for mum, the evidence had partly fallen outside the bin and lay on the floor. She still said she had eaten it and denied putting it in the bin!!!!

I wake up every morning now and wonder what the issue is going to be today. Who needs Coronation Street… my mum is enough of a drama for me.

Well I will stop rambling now – I have a play to go to.

Have a good weekend, back soon x

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dear diary ~ a quiet Easter 

What disappointing weather for Good Friday, it started off fine and I planned to go into the garden, but my plans had to change with the weather and I caught up with some ironing instead whilst watching YouTube.

DH made the tomato soup and stewed the plums, I had emails to answer, things that couldn’t wait and a couple of discounted items I wanted to buy online using the Easter offers that had dropped into my inbox.

I was also disappointed that I didn’t find the time to make any Easter cards this year. I had in mind to do another lino cut like at Christmas, but I couldn’t really carve out enough time.

After our family get together last weekend it has been unusually quiet here, a funny kind of Easter and in fact, I haven’t done many of the things I would normally have done this year at all – so much time has been taken up with the car and my mum, both are getting old and cranky now and each day I brace myself wondering what the issue will be today.

Mum seems to be sliding down hill at the moment, not so much in her health but in refusing to co-operate fully with the carers.  Last night she decided she wouldn’t change into her pyjama top and went to bed in her jumper.  I think she may have just been too tired.  She is also reluctant to change her clothes too often or have the bed linen changed (partly because her cataracts don’t allow her to see all the stains that we can see and partly that she doesn’t want to generate more washing for my sister).  Some days she is eating very little other than the chip sandwich on a Wednesday and Friday from the deli cafe across the road, even worse she is not drinking very much so that she doesn’t have to walk down the hallway to the bathroom.  I am not sure what can be done. If we say anything she becomes even more stubborn…it is frustrating.  I think she just gets too tired to be bothered much now. When she isn’t on the phone calling me, she is sleeping a lot in the day but not through the night. I expect anyone would get drowsy from the boredom of sitting in the same room day after day with nothing to do. My heart goes out to all the elderly people who are at a similar stage in their lives as my mum. We all try to do what we can to help but we cannot make her well and young again.

By the time you read this, we will be on our way to visit mum and I am hoping the weather is fine enough this afternoon to take her to the park; she lives to go out now. I have no plans for the rest of Easter, I find it too busy now to contemplate going anywhere and I would welcome a nice relaxing day in the garden, but that will be weather dependant.

At last the car is working again…just in time for the petrol shortage. Sainsbury’s had closed their petrol station completely on Tuesday – I was shocked to see the cones across the entry and the shutters down on the little shop where you pay. It seemed at odds with the government’s message that there are no shortages! Luckily, we will have enough to do the 180 mile round trip to see my mum.

We haven’t unpacked the garden furniture yet, we need to keep it dry so that we can sand and paint the wooden bench with a fresh coat, and spray the metal furniture, after giving it a good brush down to remove any rust patches. I managed to order a can of spray paint online from Dunelm, taking advantage of their special offer and using the free click and collect service. We can pick it up next time we pass through town. It is yet another job that is waiting for a run of good weather.

Thursday was a lovely dry and sunny day and we went for a longer walk than usual – I needed the fresh air and time to reset myself and being in nature does that so well. We took in a few steep hills for a good cardio workout!!

The pretty celandines along the roadside….

….and everywhere the trees have little buds about to burst open.

The hidden resevoir down the track was like a mirror…..

….with the ducks gliding across to see if we had food.

In the garden the primroses are still covered in flowers creeping over my broken pot. The white camelia is about to flower and everything is starting to grow in the borders. We just need some sunshine and warmth.

Have a lovely day today, whatever you are doing.

Back soon x

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