Tag: Everyday life

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dear diary ~ a little light relief

We stumbled through last week again with the usual shopping, and a few household jobs, which included a little light dusting and hoovering just to keep on top of them. We even managed to make some tomato soup and a couple of reasonably healthy meals along the way as well as a bit of gardening…but not much. The zinnias along with the cosmos are providing some cheery autumn colour as many of the other plants are dying away and will need cutting back. Though, I rather think they will have rotted down by themselves before I get to do anything.

On Wednesday we went round to my daughter’s house to lend a hand with the ongoing preparation of getting it ready to put on the market. This week I had a go at cleaning the oven as I have one of those really useful large blue trays from Lakeland specifically for the task and it is one item I would hate to be without. I presoaked the removable racks overnight in hot detergent water and then brushed the Lakeland oven cleaner on the stubborn bits and the inside of the oven. It worked a treat and now I just have to ask one of the men to slide the glass panel out of the door so I can clean the inside of it.

Whilst waiting for the oven cleaner to take effect I sprayed more of the mould cleaner on the left over stubborn bits in the bathroom. This time I used HG Mould Spray and found it to be far more effective than either the Cilit Bang or the Dettol Mould sprays. Inbetween I had a go at cleaning up her mid century Gordon Russell sideboard which had belonged to my mum when she first married and set up home. I followed some instructions I found on the internet for restoring old real wood furniture and it has made a substantial difference.

We had an appointment on Thursday morning that we had to cancel and instead make one with the dentist as DH had the beginnings of a tooth abscess and was in pain. He was given anti-biotics to help with the infection which was a relief as on Friday we were travelling up to my younger daughter’s house to meet the girls from school and look after them overnight whilst she went to her head office party miles away near Wigan.

It takes minimum effort on our part to look after the girls now – Little L who has just started secondary school and Sweetie who will be 7 next month mostly entertain themselves. I cooked an evening meal for us all and as it was the first time cooking in my daughter’s new house it was a bit fraught finding everything and working the appliances.

On Saturday we decided to take the girls on a trip up the road to Mount Grace Priory as I had taken advantage of the free English Heritage entry coupon in the newspaper a while ago. The priory was founded in 1938 as a Carthusian monastery and only parts of it remain now in the grounds whilst other parts had already been remodelled in the 17th Century as a mansion.

The weather was glorious and we had a picnic in the grounds sitting in the warm sunshine – it was a little light relief after many days of working hard. The girls couldn’t wait to explore the ruins of the Priory and go inside the restored monks cell, which is a tiny house with an upstairs where they had a loom and spinning wheel to produce woven cloth to sell.

The staircase was so steep it advised you to walk down backwards.

Each of the 25 monks had a separate cell each living a near hermit life. Each cell had a main room, a bedroom and the weaving room upstairs. Outside was a high walled garden where they grew herbs and vegetables and a covered walkway where they might sit and contemplate or pray. There was a water closet down the garden so each cell was quite self contained and the meals were brought to them and placed in a hole which could be accessed from both inside and outside the house.

At this moment in time I would quite like to book into this place for such peace and quiet, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the world and all your food made and delivered to your door. Apart from the fact that the monks did not pay on delivery it resembles the popular Deliveroo system we have today!

The whole place has a long and fascinating history and the house which was converted from the ruins of the medieval priory’s guest house in the style of Arts and Crafts is also open to freely walk around.

The grounds have a newly laid Arts and Crafts style garden too.

It is well worth a visit.

We drove home on Saturday night and spent Sunday recovering and hardly doing anything worthwhile other than a little urgent pruning in the garden to fill our brown garden waste bin ready for emptying tomorrow.

Today the week will begin again with more shopping, cleaning and helping out with the house move. I heard from my elder daughter that the two boys have not been well over the last few days with high temperatures and coughs and now their mum is feeling poorly tonight. I am not sure if we might be on extra childcare this week! I just hope this dreaded lurgy does not come knocking on our door – we haven’t time to be ill.

Thanks for dropping by and welcome to all my new readers – I hope you will make yourselves known sometime as I love to get to know everyone who reads my ramblings!

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dear diary ~ what a long week…

We certainly came down to earth with a bump after our few days away in Cheltenham.

I had great hopes on the Monday for a good week after being thoroughly refreshed by our trip, but it soon changed; beginning with an official letter landing on the mat – one of those in a brown envelope that creates an instant jump in blood pressure. As it turns out HMRC have got their details wrong and a short letter back should put paid to their request. It appears that Rachel from accounts is looking to boost the coffers by any means possible!!

We did however get out for a lovely walk through the village allotments – one of my favourite places….

….. and then up the track towards the moors above us and the spectacular views – in all we did around 8,000 steps and took a few pictures…..we are so lucky to have this on our doorstep and autumn is such a special time of year as everything settles down to sleep through the coming months ahead. It is quite noticeable in the photos just how green the trees are still and laden with their fruits of acorns and spiky conker shells.

On our way back home we collected a few apples going free in a basket on someone’s wall. They look like Bramley’s too and will go well with the cheap punnet of plums from Sainsbury’s perfect for an autumn pudding – apple and plum crumble.

After a late lunch we popped over the hill here to Last of the Summer Wine Country to wish my brother a happy birthday. He is attempting to dig out a pond – he likes a challenge (even at 77) and the bigger the better it seems.

Tuesday has become our shopping day. We pick up our friend Margaret who is 90 next year to take her with us to the supermarket, since she lost her partner last year she has no means of getting to the shops other than the local Access bus. Ours was quite a large shop after being away for almost a week our pantry and fridge needed replenishing. We managed a couple of hours in the garden too while it was dry and DH packed the garden furniture away under their covers to hibernate as well as giving the front lawn an autumn feed.

On Wednesday we went to my daughter’s old house, which she will be putting on the market to sell very soon. I had the ‘short straw’ task of cleaning up the bathroom grouting and sealant. I was quite pleased at how well it looked afterwards – it is a task I need to do at home when time allows. Meanwhile DH was on garden duty outside, pruning back the overgrown shrubs and trimming borders to give that much needed kerb appeal to the place. This was repeated by both of us on Thursday afternoon after my morning appointment with the practice nurse for my annual ‘Mickey Mouse’ review.

I call it a Mickey Mouse review because to me it seems it is just a tick box exercise that allows the surgery to claim a payment and nothing of any significance comes out of it. The nurse takes my blood for the ‘cheap’ thyroid test that only measures the TSH (I have no thyroid gland at all after having thyroid cancer a few years ago and I am fully reliant on thyroxine medication for life). They never order a full thyroid panel from the lab which is far more helpful to get the correct dosage so that I am well balanced between being hyperthyroid and hypothyroid. She then measures my blood pressure, looks shocked and tells me it is 195 over 90 which is usual when I visit the surgery and hands me the dreaded form to take my blood pressure at home for the week to prove her reading is just a glitch and that usually it is within an acceptable range. Then apart from a few questions in relation to alcohol consumption (only needed after a visit to the surgery) and smoking…. that is it – all good for another year.

Only it isn’t…….these reviews never address the hundred and one niggles that creep up on you as you age.

Friday, we had agreed to have baby Chocolate for the day. Adorable as he is the age difference now, him being just over 2 years old and us in our early seventies, is really beginning to show in many ways….mainly the energy levels. Baby Chocolate is a little whirlwind and fearless climber; you cannot take your eyes off him for a moment otherwise you are likely to find him about to abseil from a great height off some piece of furniture or a windowsill. It was raining too heavily to venture out so we had to play games with him inside, at this age they don’t focus on anything for very long.

We had no recovery time on Saturday either as next on our agenda was the 180 mile round trip up to mum’s. Unfortunately, the M62 that joins the M1 going north was closed completely at 2 junctions and the roundabout (after a police car chase that ended with a fatality) with an endless queue and a lot of diversions. The journey was slow so by the time we reached mum there was not time to take her to the park and back in the wheelchair between her carer’s visits so had to make do with a quick trip to the cafe across the road from her apartment. She had her coffee and brownie and we had a chat but she kept saying how disappointed she was that we hadn’t taken her to the park and that we had chosen to go on Saturday rather than her preferred day of Sunday. I kept repeating that we were late because of the road diversions and that my sister was already going on Sunday to see her and take her out. Her memory is so in decline now she cannot really get a grasp on any situation.

There are little signs everywhere that our village is preparing for Halloween (I noticed this on top of the post box) and Morrisons had pumpkins for only £1. When they stayed over the weekend we got back home the grandchildren made these little Halloween treat bags. The bags are brown paper sandwich bags from Sainsbury’s and I printed off some freebies from the internet for them to colour and paste on to the bags. We had a walk to the village to buy some sweets to put in them. They took them home with them for their Halloween night but I will probably make some more for the children who come knocking at my door.

Whilst shopping I popped in to The Works and picked up a few Halloween crafts for me the children to make in the school holidays (is it only 2 weeks away next week?)

This lovely brown printed Christmas tape caught my eye – I am sure it will be useful for something…and the irresistable little snowflake cutter.

Sunday finally came and we had the day to ourselves…by this time I was almost too tired to do very much other than catch up on a few jobs around the house.

I hope everyone is having a lovely week, at least the weather seems to have settled down now. We have done our shopping again today and tomorrow it will be back to my daughter’s house to lend a hand. On Friday we will be going back up north to look after Little L and Sweetie overnight while their mum goes to her employer’s yearly get together. Our little holiday seems a long time ago now.

Back soon x

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dear diary ~ back so soon?

I know I surprised myself that I am able to write this post so quickly after the last, but I wanted to say as soon as I could thank you for all your kind words – I haven’t answered them individually as I have to be conservative still with my time at the moment.  It was so good to hear from you all and that you are still reading in blogland….there has been so much movement over to places like Instagram, YouTube and Substack it is good to know that bloggers are still relevant.

It would seem by the abrupt change of weather that summer has now drawn to a close and I am sad to see it go but at the same time I am engaging in all that autumn has to offer. I have already taken the opportunity to switch out my summer outfits of sun tops for a few warmer fleece tops and lightweight jumpers.

And the warmer brushed cotton duvet cover has made its way onto our bed.

My pantry shelf has an abundance of autumn colour – it is a joy to walk in there – baskets of apples (given by my neighbour) and dishes of plums and tomatoes – none home grown I might add, this year I stuck to courgettes only as they do manage to take care of themselves and gave us a nice little yield.

Despite being hopelessly late in sowing the seeds I did grow some annuals, pure white cosmos and glorious vibrant calendula, but my favourites are definitely the mixed jewel colours of the zinnias, and surprisingly all of them continue to flower through the recent downpours, thunderstorms and hailstones we have had over the week. Even the Japanese anemones have stood firm.

The garden has taken a back seat again this year, our hopes to turn it around after ignoring it completely last year whilst selling the cottage are now on hold until next year. Our motto is fast becoming not another project for another day, but another project for another year…or maybe two!

Everything preys on my mind at the moment and feels like I am on overwhelm. As you can imagine, where time allows, I have done a lot of thinking about what and where I go from here since letting go of our cottage and our retirement plans to live there.  My vision of the future is still rather a blank screen at the moment and I am finding it hard to find myself, let alone know what I might do…I even bring into question what it is that I like doing anymore.  And of course since I hit 70 last year I have become acutely aware that time is in short supply and quite precious.  Making a wrong move or decision now could cost us dearly and I don’t mean financially.

I have another tale of woe to add to the one about the cottage but that is for another blog post, another day.  For now I will just tell you about my little accomplishments here and there over the year.

My mum has been rather good this week, which is fortunate.  No complaints or outbursts and has been complying with the carers to drink her water and take a little walk with her walker to exercise her legs and keep a little strength in them. We visited her on the Saturday of last week and took her to the local park for a sandwich and a chocolate muffin at the council café followed by a large ice cream cone.  Her appetite for an elderly person is enormous – she can eat far more than I do – is this a clue to her reaching 100 soon I wonder?  The weather remained dry and sunny so in all it was a pleasant day and worth the 6 hour round trip to see her.

She always has a few tears when it is time for us to go and it is worse at the moment as my sister is away on holiday and won’t be popping in to see her during the week. I still continue to ring her every day just before the final carer goes to put her to bed at 6pm.  The conversation now is very limited as she is in cognitive decline and little short term memory.  She asks over and over when my sister will be back and when I will be going up to see her again.  It can be so wearing.  This week has been good because I haven’t had endless calls from her in a panic during the day to ask the same questions, which means I don’t have to keep breaking off from things I am doing to answer her all the time and I can catch up with a few jobs here.

Presently, it is almost impossible for me to form any kind of routine in my life and until we have my elder daughter moved completely and her old house on the market I am reluctant to start any projects of my own.  We have finished all the decorating we intend to do in her new house and have now moved on to resurecting the garden at her old house ready for the sale pictures. Not easy during these sudden outburst of rain and goodness knows we need to get down to some cleaning, decorating and gardening here at home…it is well overdue.  I realised the other night that my only hope is to break down projects into smaller tasks of no longer than an hour.

My bedtime reading at the moment is a book I noticed on the bookshelf (The Success Principle by Jack Canfield) and it caught my eye as I don’t think I ever got round to reading it fully.  When flicking through I noticed in the list of contents a chapter headed ‘Clean up your messes and your incompletes’ and I immediately thought this is what we need to do as I feel like we are in one big mess and it is overwhelming, mainly because we don’t have the quantity of time to match the size of our mess!

So it has given me the momentum to try and get some of the items on my list completed.  The ironing pile was the first under attack… and some got done after sorting it into smaller piles of sheets, pillowcases, t-shirts etc.  There are surfaces, shelves and cupboards that also need attention – ‘stuff’ accumulates quickly; items that have not been put away after use and those that never had a home in the first place. I need to get back to my efforts to minimise our stuff – even though I buy very little I feel it is creeping in again… even seeping in again under the doors at night as we sleep! I really don’t know how it comes in other than by fairies.

I have managed to offload quite a few things since January – clothes on Vinted, bits and pieces on Ebay and a whole box full of old photos belonging to my MIL and given to my SIL after we scanned them onto our computer. She also took away an old retro chair that was intended for the cottage and we have no room to keep here.

However, today we will not accomplish very much on the home scene as we are actually having a day off to ourselves and going on a short journey with a packed lunch over the hill to Greater Manchester to visit the Moravian Settlement in Fairfield, Ashton under Lyne which is open as part of the Hertitage Week.

Oh well, as they say – Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Have a good week everyone x

PS…I have some interesting news as well, but again that will be another post, another day…maybe later in the week.

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dear diary ~ all’s well

Many thanks for all your lovely comments I only wish I had a bit more time to read and comment as I used to on the blogs I read. Everytime I think I might have some spare time looming on the horizon it is like that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – never quite within my grasp!

Over the last few weeks I thought I would never be able to say all’s well again. I had such a bad virus that kept coming and going and I had almost learnt to live with it. I have also had to have a few medical tests and scans recently (nothing to do with the virus) which had to be cancelled due to illness and rearranged but at last I have worked through all of them and I am relieved just to have a week without any appointments.

Last Monday we had a drive up to north Yorkshire to visit my mum. She has been a little bit less demanding over the last two weeks…in fact she is quite calm at the moment for which I am really grateful and it has helped reduce both my stress levels and blood pressure.

We spent about four hours with her and I can’t think of anything that she complained about, which is unusual. The TV remote was working, the carers have been on time for the evening call at 6 o’clock to get her to bed and they have all been the carers she likes…so no grumbles which made a pleasant change and a much more pleasant visit.

Last week she was most thoroughly told off by the senior wound control person who went to see her and discuss the options for the rodent ulcer on her leg which is ‘festering’ badly and not far from becoming gangrenous. She has been turning away the district nurses who dress her leg and won’t let them put the necessary dressings on and if they do get them on she removes them but to be fair the sticky edging to the plasters do make her skin sore. The nurses want to put compression stockings on as a way to help the healing process but mum would not hear of it – she says she would not be able to get her shoes on and they would look so awful when she goes out. Bearing in mind she wears trousers all the time now and can only go out when my sister takes her to the local park in the wheelchair or occasionally to a nearby Costa or Pizza Express for a pizza no-one can fully understand her reluctance to wearing the stockings. Anyway she was told by the wound control person in no uncertain terms that if she did not comply with the treatment then she would eventually be taken into hospital, probably with sepsis, and could lose her leg or not even come out again – it was up to her now.

Harsh I know…. but it has done the trick and she didn’t mention her leg at all yesterday – normally she would say how sore it was and throbbing and how awful all the nurses are and that they have no idea what they are doing and it is them making it worse, not the fact that she leaves the wound exposed and allows it to get more infected. So now it is all dressed and wrapped and she hasn’t complained once. Result.

I don’t know about where you all live but here we have barely had a day without rain at some point and going in the garden to do some jobs has not been possible. I have managed one day so far and had a bit of a tidy up. Surprisingly, even with the bad weather it is full of colour with all the tulips, forget-me-nots and wallflowers and the amalancier is looking magnificent in full bloom.

On Easter Sunday we had all the family to tea and held an Easter egg hunt in our back garden…. in the cold although… the children didn’t seem to notice the wind chill whilst busy trying to find the hidden eggs. Master Freddie made these cute Easter baskets for us all.

On Easter Monday we went with all four grandchildren and their mums and dads to RHS Harlow Carr – even their garden was suffering from the cold and wet with many areas of the garden waterlogged.

Whilst the weather has been so bad I have continued with the major decluttering project – some things are hard to reduce in number – these little china mugs for instance – I did get rid of a couple and kept the ones in the photo. I have made a few sales already on Ebay – listing items can take such a long time… taking photos and then giving a detailed description and I find selecting the right postage a real pain with all the different parcel sizes and weights, but well worth it when our unwanted items go off to good homes and I get a little bit of money for our holiday fund.

I had to make a menu plan at the begining of this week that would leave us with an empty fridge by the time we leave for Scotland, so I had to plan carefully and only shop for the absolute necessary items to make a meal. The pantry is well stocked – perhaps a little too well stocked, but I had to buy some fresh fruit and veg to get us through the week. Over the last few weeks my stomach has not been good since the virus and the meals have been just a little of what I thought I could manage…..and that was mainly a baked potato – not the most healthy diet in the world – but thankfully all is back to normal again so curries, nut loaf and pasta bakes are back on the menu.

I am reading three quite different books at the moment, but the one I can’t put down is the Persephone book ‘The Village’ by Margharita Laski – I bought it with my Amazon voucher from Christmas and I really have to stop myself reading late into the night. The book about the Brontes was gift and How to Live is from my local library full of good advice, I just wish I could have read it years ago as the latest research on health and chronic disease is quite enlightening. I do try and implement gradual changes to my diet but isn’t the healthy choice often the more expensive. Being vegetarian we have always eaten plenty of fruit and veg but it is far more expensive now than ever.

Whilst in Sainsbury’s I picked up the May issue of Gardener’s World which has the 2 for 1 card. I was astonished to find it is now £9.50 a copy and the free packets of seeds that come with this issue has been reduced down to four, though they are all seeds that I will grow – Zinnias have become a firm favourite and I love the jewel colours in late summer.

My next project when I return from Scotland will be helping my daughter arrange the Christening for baby Chocolate – how difficult can that be? Well let me tell you it can be difficult. We live in a parish of 4 churches, but only one vicar. One church has no heating, since the boiler broke over 3 years ago, we did have Master Freddie’s Christening there one November and yes it was cold – we took a hot water bottle for my mum. Another church (the preferred one by the village hall that we would like to hire) had a Christening last week and part of the ceiling fell down and we are waiting to know if it will be repaired, the other two have services much earlier at 9.30am (rather than the 11.15am of the others) which is quite early for those relatives that live a long way off and also for preparing the Christening tea beforehand. The dates offered are near the end of May or end of October – neither being that good for us – May is a bit too soon to organise and October a bit too late in the year….but we were told there is a possibility of a date in August and that would be ideal.

Is it just me or is life getting far more complicated and complex than ever before?

Hope you have a brilliant weekend with plenty of sunshine and welcome to my new readers – it would be good if you leave a comment without completing the form if you could put your name at the end of your comment so other readers know who you are.

Bye for now x