Tag: Everyday life

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dear diary :: getting back into the swing

Home again and back to normal daily life and all that entails. Already there have been ups and downs in the couple of weeks we have been at home. Mum has had another urine infection – they make her say and do the oddest things as these infections disturb the brain. It is generally known now that a lot of the ‘dementia’ in elderly people is actually a lack of fluids but even though they are told to drink more they don’t as it means more trips to the toilet. For mum this is not easy as her mobility is so reduced she is on the verge now of not being able to walk at all.

We had a trip up to see her last Sunday after having Little L and Sweetie to stay on Friday and Saturday night. As they left we jumped in the car to drive the 90 miles to see mum – she hates being alone on a Sunday and my sister was away for a rest (though you can hardly call it being on her own as the carers go in 4 times a day).

I have started a course of acupuncture to see if it might help my ear problems and the peripheral nerve damage in my legs and feet from the ruptured disc I had over a year ago. I have never minded needles and quite frankly the doctors are at a loss so I will have a go at anything.

Last Monday we woke to a phone call from my younger daughter who, if you have been following my blog may remember, we helped to buy a new used car – the one that had a burst tyre on the motorway 14 minutes later. Perry’s in Rotherham have been very good and sent a cheque to her for the replacement tyre and we are hopeful we might recover some of the money for the recovery charge we paid to get her off the motorway. Anyway back to the phone call….”mum, the car is at the garage again”, “oh no” I said, ” what has happened this time?”…….. “a taxi driver came out of his driveway on the school run and straight into me and then drove away – I am waiting for the police”.

Daughter, Little L and Sweetie were shocked but OK, my daughter is now having to have physio because of bad whiplash.. the taxi driver eventually came back to the scene after his neighbour, who had seen the crash, rang him to tell him to come back. He has had a similar accident before coming out of his drive. Obviously he doesn’t have great timing and luckily daughter was not going fast. The car is not quite a write off but badly crumpled. Such
a shame.

On Wednesday it was such a beautiful sunny day we used our free NT coupon and went to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire for the day. It must be over 30 years since we last visited and there is now a huge car park which was almost full and a new visitor centre. When we previously went you parked almost outside the door in the car park that had all of about 10 cars in it and the cafe was in one of the old kitchens. It was very interesting as the volunteers had time to chat and tell us quite a bit of the history and odd quirks of the place.

The little book on the left was found hidden behind one of the wooden panels in the dining room. There are never as many little artefacts of this nature in a place of this date as you find in later Georgian and Victorian properties so this was quite unusual.

We had arranged to go to help my elder daughter this week, who lives nearby, with her young baby but unfortunately baby Chocolate was unwell with a virus and a high temperature at the same time as her husband was also ill in bed. We could only help wash dishes and do a few household chores and nurse the baby to give mum a break as no way was he being put down in his cot – all he really wanted was to snuggle up with his mum. He is no better today so we will have Master Freddie here tomorrow to help out. I did have plans but of course I can put them aside.

I seem to have got quite a few unfinished decluttering jobs on the go now as it has been quite a broken up week one way or another. I am still wading through old paperwork and managed to scan on to the computer a lot of documents that I feel need keeping. I know you should not keep things ‘just in case’ but we have been saved a few times by hanging on to things. When we had the flood we could produce every receipt and got a good price for our contents, when there was all the endowment policy scandal we could produce plenty of evidence and more recently when the Skipton B.S. failed to transfer our ISA savings we could tell them the day and almost exact time that we had dropped the transfer request forms (that they claim they had not received) into the branch because I had kept the dental card machine receipt which showed the date and time we paid and the appointment was prior to us dropping in the forms. With each of these issues there has been a lot of money at stake that we might have missed out on if I wasn’t quite as diligent at keeping old paperwork.

It is so easy to keep a record digitally and I can then archive all these documents onto a memory stick. I hope I will never need to look back at them but you never know!

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dear diary ~ space clearing

It’s been a while, it’s also been quite frantic here and as usual it’s been stressful and joyful in equal quantities….well almost, perhaps a little more on the stress and a little less of the joy!

I just thought I would pop by as I can’t believe it is the latter part of February already and I have only completed a few tasks on my long, long to do list. I decided that the beginning of the new year called for a major declutter in our house to regain some lost space. I intend for this mad clear out to also include the loft, shed and garage….though at the moment it is far too cold to be in any of those places for any length of time.

I am hoping it is a case of it will get worse before it gets better as the whole house is in a mess now with piles everywhere destined for charity or recycle or a friend or craft group. Hardly anything is rubbish, very little has gone in the bin – it just needs rehoming…. either at my house or hopefully someone elses.

As I go through every drawer and cupboard, every box and bookshelf I am finding that as I remove more and more I am loving the space and it is becoming much easier to part with things.

After Christmas I sorted through all the decorations before I packed them away and took a bag full down to the charity shop – I have found as time goes on I am putting out fewer and fewer decorations each year.

I did have a box full of lovely cards that friends have handmade for me over the years – I picked out the best and then photographed the remainder before putting them in the recycle. Such a shame but I can’t keep everything.

Christmas seems a long time ago now. We had a large family gathering at my sister’s house for Christmas dinner and we managed to get my mum there too though the one little step at the front door was quite a challenge for her.

The grandchildren were busy before Christmas making their traditional place name cards which were wonderfully decorated and have now gone into my keepers box with the others.

I even managed to make a few cards myself and had a bit of a production line going one day. Thank heavens for rubber stamps as they are quick and easy to use when I run out of time to do my own lino cut.

Since Christmas it hasn’t been all work and no play…. during January we celebrated Master Freddie’s 5th birthday (at one of those ear splitting play gyms with a party room) and my mum’s 98th birthday – a much quieter affair. The weekend after her birthday my sister and her husband took mum out to a posh hotel for a meal during which mum suddenly stopped eating and went unconscious at the table – her head slumped but her eyes remained wide open staring ahead and they could not get a flicker of a response from her for over 10 minutes, it was only the fact that they could detect a faint pulse that they knew she hadn’t actually died! During this time my sister got reception to call for help – they wouldn’t send an ambulance – obviously not thought urgent enough but passed her over to a 111 person who asked my sister a load of questions to establish mums condition.

Eventually, mum finally rowsed and started talking as if nothing had happened and finished her meal – she didn’t even realise anything had happened. The 111 person then ended the call as they thought she sounded OK and said they would refer her to her GP who did actually go and see her next day and take some blood tests. The results showed a blood abnormality but the GP said they would not do anything because of her age – so far she is a write off then and so far no-one knows why she went unconscious for so long!

For her birthday I bought her one of those large button TV remote controls as she was having difficulty changing the channels with the tiny buttons on hers and was always pressing the wrong thing. She had been intent on getting a new TV just to get a different remote (her mind works in a mysterious way these days) even though I told her it would not be any different to what she already had. The new remote has been wonderful – it has fewer buttons for her to press so she can’t press something she didn’t intend to and end up on the shopping channel or mute it by accident and best of all she doesn’t get it muddled up with the telephone anymore either and try to call me on it.

So far this month we have spent a good deal of time researching a new but used car for my daughter. It is unknown territory for us as we have only been used to new ones – DH had a company car and we always saved up to buy my small car outright and traded in the older one in part exchange. The big question was who do you trust …..we do not know much about cars to buy at one of these auction sites or from a private individual so we resorted to a local Kia dealer as that was the make she wanted with the 7 year warranty….or as in her case the remaining years of a 7 year warranty.

After two days of trawling websites and a spreadsheet to capture all the information we fnally found one that ticked all the boxes at Perry’s in Rotherham. It was a 2020 reg with only 11,000 miles and one owner. It looked like new with good quality Michelin tyres hardly worn. We took her and the girls down last Saturday to pick it up. It is a long story but she had only driven it for 14 minutes along the M1 northbound when we got a call from her saying mum I have broken down!!!!

It was no joke.

Whilst driving the tyre pressure sensor suddenly came on the dashboard at the same time as the rear passenger side tyre blew and went completely flat. She couldn’t even make it to the next exit to get off the motorway.

Of course she rang her breakdown company but they had failed to mention that by switching the cover from her old car to the new one there was no immediate cover and it would not kick in until the next day.

Perry’s in Rotherham could not recover the car but they gave me a number to ring for a local recovery man. Imran came to the rescue – he was so lovely and got my daughters car on his breakdown truck and off the motorway so he could swap the wheel for the emergency one in the boot – that was the first expense of £200.

The next day my daughter got the tyre examined at our local Halfords – it had a few holes in it and one still had a visible nail head embeded in it. Halfords showed her where a nail must have popped out when she was driving and had been the cause of the sudden flat. On examination it was found that the tyre had already had a repair in the past so it had to be a new one – another expense of £99 ….luckily only the one was needed as the other rear tyre was like new.

It is yet another mystery as my daughter did not notice anything on the road at the time and had only been on a normal A road before getting onto the motorway – she had not been down any rough tracks. Once my daughter is back from her holiday Perry’s are going to look in to it but as it is a punctured tyre I expect there will be no come back on them.

We are now in Scotland to rest and recover for a few days and where I can plot and plan for more space clearing when I get home. I have brought some bits and pieces to do up here along with my knitting in the hope of finishing baby Chocolates little hooded jacket.

I hope everyone is well and enjoying 2024 – many apologies to anyone coming over on the 15th for the ScrapHappy Challenge I will try my best to show something for March, and welcome to new readers – as you will have realised by now my blog posts are a bit hit and miss!

How is your new year going so far this year?

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dear diary ~ finding my way back

I have been quite neglectful of my little space here recently….time has just evaded me.

As much as I have wanted to write, and the intention is always there, somehow I just never found that moment….and then when I did WordPress decided it was not going to let me preview my posts. But all good now – I solved the problem before they did.

A lot has happened since my last entry and thankfully I do manage to keep my little journal going that sits by my bed and is a useful memory bank and reminder of why I am not finding the time to write here very often.

I have no doubt that followers, readers and fellow bloggers will be eager for an update just as I am when someone disappears off the scene for any length of time – and I thank those of you who have been in contact, checking I am still here and OK.

And now for the news.

Mum is home now and settled back into her little apartment. It was touch and go whether she would leave the care home or not but she decided to give it a try and in fact we found out during the arrangements that due to the possibility of requiring council funding in the future she had no option but to go back home (*see more details on this below).

She came home on 18th September and from then ’till now she has taken this long to settle in (well as much as she ever will). I do not like to speak ill of people but the social worker appointed was next to useless. One day out of the blue in August I had a phone call from her to say she was going to carry out an assessment on mum and could I be there. Well given I live 90 miles away and she arranged this assessment for 9am one morning, no I couldn’t and my sister was away on holiday too so she couldn’t attend either.

The social worker chose not to rearrange for a time convenient for us and saw mum on her own. Once again she, as the previous social worker, assessed mum as having capacity (which I always question as she cannot retain or undersatnd a lot of information). She assessed her as being able to go back home but NOT requiring 24 hour care even though she had 24 hour care in the care home and required help to get to the toilet in the night. I believe this assessment was more to do with the fact that the council will not provide or pay for 24 hour care outside of a care home if mum wasn’t able to pay her carers privately.

*The shocking side of all this, which mum’s social worker just ‘happened’ to mention and I hope anyone in our situation will take note, is that if an elderly person is assessed as not requiring 24 hour care and they themselves decide they would prefer to be in a care home which is of course 24 hour care and then they become eligible for financial help provided by the local council (once the magic figure of £23,500 of savings has been reached) then the council are not oblidged to step in and pay for your 24 hour care if you were assessed as not needing it. This is very worrying for anyone who does not have enough savings to pay their way privately.

Once the social worker had done the assessment she promptly went on annual leave for 2 weeks without putting in place a leaving date for mum and this cost us another £2,000 in care home fees for a further two weeks delay. It would have cost us over £4,000 as the care home work on a 4 week notice period but the manager decided she would waiver the 2 weeks after mum left because of the failing of the social worker to act promptly.

When the social worker came back from holiday we set a date for mum to leave (Monday 18th September) and she said she would make all the arrangements for a home care package and transport to be in place for that day – which was the following week. Luckily, I rang social services on the Thursday (four days before my mum was due to go home) for an update as I had not heard anything and found that the social worker was not only on holiday again but had done nothing towards getting my mum home. It was now urgent that something was done but social services would not supply another social worker to sort this out so I had to do all the arranging with the care agency and book transport myself with the help of the admin clerk in the social services department who stepped in and was a great help and could only apologise for the social workers lack of arrangements.

Mum now has a care agency going in four times every day as required by the social workers assessment. Her first visit is at 9am when the carer goes in to get her up, washed and dressed and on her last visit at 6pm she is put to bed – which is quite early for mum but the only time the carers had available. She has to eat her lunch around 11.30 and her evening meal around 3.30 when she has the other two visits from the carers during the day. After the last visit she spends 14 hours on her own with no one to help her until the carer appears at 9am again. During this time she cannot get a drink other than water at her bedside, if she is cold she cannot put her heating on -she can just about get herself out of bed to the commode beside her. If she falls or has an emergency she can use the call button she has around her neck. In the care home of course she had a buzzer to summon help to go to the toilet or get a drink made. It is all very sad and this is happening to elderly people up and down the country.

My sister continues to visit her on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday and cooks ready meals for her feezer, does all the washing and cleans throughout the flat. She works full time and has to do her work in the evening on the days she visits in the week. I ring mum every night and visit as often as we can to help my sister and ease mum’s boredom but she is definitely getting worse with her memory and her anxiety levels become so high when my sister is away that she often won’t get up and says she feels ‘off colour’ so the carers will leave her in bed as she feels safer in bed when my sister is away.

Mum pays for her care privately at the moment as she has savings above the £23,500 magic threshold – it costs her almost £800 for the week. Yes you read this correctly! Plus she has all her bills and food on top and the service charge for the apartment and council tax. The care home in comparison was £1090 a week but it was all inclusive and it was one of the cheaper places around Yarm – most of them are about £1,300 to £1,500 per week and this is only if you do not require specialist nursing care or have dementia.

If the local council do have to help with the fees their contribution is of course capped, so if you choose a more expensive place then relatives are expected to put in the additional money called a topup.

My advice is not only to start saving now for your old age but to keep fit and healthy so you can look after yourself as long as possible!!

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Our life of course is not all about mum and we have had little snippets of time to take our new baby Chocolate to the park once or twice and we had a free admission day to the National Trust property at Dunham Massey.

During the school holidays we all went to see a local Halloween pantomime called the Haunted House put on by a group of amateur dramatics in the next village. It was exceptionally good – though my back was exceptionally bad and has been recently with a lot of travelling up and down to North Yorkshire to see mum. After the panto we all came back to my house for a buffet tea and the grandchildren had spent the morning making (what has now become a bit of a tradition here) place name cards – in the theme of Halloween.

Granny was a pumpkin.

We had another invasion two weeks later when everyone decended upon us again to celebrate Sweetie’s 5th birthday. She is quite taken with Hello Kitty and my SIL manage to find some stationery from the Hello Kitty era when her girls were young. We made chocolate buns with Hello Kitty toppers and of course more named place cards.

On a cold Saturday evening in November we had a little adventure with master Freddie and baby Chocolate (who slept through the whole event) in Cliffe Woods at Clayton West a village near Denby Dale (of the pie fame and not too far away from us). The event was named ‘Light up the Woods’ – a firework free zone – a trail through woodland that was alight with a wonderful display of recycled rubbish made by local groups and school children.

Since then I have been busy crafting and other such delights and all being well I should be able to give you a glimpse of my ‘efforts’ in the next few days.

Hoping you are all well – I can see most of you are happily blogging away and I am slowly catching up and you may even get a comment or two.

Until next time ……xx

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dear diary ~ the sound of emptiness

I felt an overriding sense of sadness yesterday knowing that the grandchildren are now in school and my house is so very, very quiet. No little voices saying ‘granny can I……’

Over the summer months I have felt like I have been living in Legoland whilst every flat surface has been claimed to display one or other of the Lego sets that once belonged to my two daughters. I had the good sense to squirrel them away in the loft when they left home for such an occasion as having grandchildren. We have the airport, police station, fire station, restaurant, riding school, hospital and chalet and the grandchildren have just loved building each one with some expert help from grandad the architect.

Over the last 2 or 3 weeks we also introduced them to the fun of a nature walk, gathering blackberries to make crumbles and searching out bits and pieces for granny’s nature table – swapping out the beach pebbles and shells for pine cones and sycamore keys and discovering magical things like skeleton leaves. I especially love displaying our autumn finds with the earthy colours and lots of textures. I didn’t have time to glycerine the leaves though so they will soon shrivel and crumble away, but no matter part of the fun was in finding them. I am watching the laden Spanish conker tree that is overhanging the wall in someone’s front garden on the way to the village and waiting patiently for the first ones to fall onto the pavement.

I am already missing the energy that they bring to the house but Sweetie left me with this lovely picture she made to cheer me up.

Yesterday morning we deposited DH’s car at the garage and then went to Sainsbury’s for some food. We each have a trolley and do a scan shop so that we can take advantage of all the smart shop reductions, the general nectar reductions and the nectar points, but it is hard work co-ordinating everything. Often for the same item DH will be given more points than me or vice versa, so of course we use the nectar card that will provide the better reward. Being as frugal as possible takes a good deal of time.

When we arrived home on Saturday we had very little in the fridge and no fresh fruit and veg but luckily the pantry is well stocked with tinned and dry goods and we had bread and a pizza in the freezer. It is good to see the fruit dish full again and although I have a few tomatoes ripening in the garden (I bought Totem patio variety again this year and mine are the assortment of sizes below) we needed to buy extra so we can make soup. This week the large Jubilee variety were on offer – excellent for tomato soup and DH got points for the cherry vine ones.

I often make ice lollies to keep in the freezer from cartons of juice for the grandchildren and these packets of Cawston pressed fruit caught my eye – no added sugar or sweeteners and of course so much cheaper than buying lollies.

Sainsbury’s is currently having a sale on homewares and electricals. I am now on the lookout for little Christmas presents and these two items caught my eye. I think I might make up a little basket of a bottle of homemade drink and some nibbles to go with these little wooden coasters and I will make table mats with the tea towels. The coasters were reduced from £8. to £5.33 and the tea towels £6.50 reduced to £4.33.

Looking through the old photos for yesterday’s post I came across this one from 1966 which made me smile. I mentioned in recent posts that I am always left pushing the pram when we go out with the family (I love it of course) and this picture shows me in training when my younger sister was born. This is certainly a vintage pushchair haven’t they changed so much over the years? This one no doubt would have been second hand like the cot – people didn’t often buy new in those days.

I would have just finished my first year at grammar school when this was taken so would be about twelve and my dad had bought me my first sewing machine a year before because I was mad keen on sewing. Mum of course would have knitted the cardigans. I cannot believe how young she looks here. I remember making my sister’s little dress from this pattern – I think my gran made mine (she was a tailoress by trade and started me sewing at age 6) – the A line and shift styles were so easy to make I was soon making my own dresses and a few tunic tops for my mum and a neighbour.

Not only does the house seem empty but I too feel empty – I didn’t sleep well last night as my mum is constantly on my mind. The social worker had another meeting with her and the home care carers yesterday and of course being so far away I couldn’t attend. Although the social worker said she would ring and update me afterwards it was perhaps too much to hope she would contact me straight away. I am concerned that she has got everything in place for mum to go home next Monday and that she has rung to check that the lift is now working in the apartment block where she lives as it has been out of order many times recently.

Since all this started with mum’s fall back in May I have had to keep notes of every conversation that I have and jot down who with on what date at what time. It is exhausting. I feel like I am always chasing and complaining and that isn’t who I am and it is making me feel like I am a bad person. It appears unless you get a bit stroppy nothing gets done.

I think there are many people going through the same issues with the care system. It is not until you are involved that you realise how complex and useless it is. I am so worried now about DH and I becomming ill and what our daughter’s might be up against in the future as we age (which inevitably we will do). Something needs to be done but who is going to listen?

It was quite heavy rain yesterday and much cooler, quite refreshing really and the dry borders will be well soaked. To help cheer me up DH made a hearty leek and lentil stew for our evening meal which we had with a crusty roll – proper comfort food.

Oh well…… here’s to a better day today. x