Tag: general chit chat

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dear diary :: the ups and downs of caring

Some hard playing today – both Master Freddie and I are worn out! He has gone home now and after we have had our tea and I have rung my mum I will be unwinding and then an early night. It was a bit of a rush this morning trying to get showered and my hair dried and styled (if you can call it that as it has now grown out of all recognition of a hairstyle) before Master Freddie appeared.

We love watching Toddler Club together but all that singing, twirling, bopping and jumping around does tell on me, but he always likes me to join in and do the actions with him. At least the music covers all the creaking I make!

And who doesn’t love Hey Duggie – it is far too good for just children to watch – it reminds me of the Magic Roundabout that we all watched as a family just before the news and a lot of the humour in that was perhaps aimed at adults.

The utility room progresses…..s l o w l y……but is at least progressing. I have my doubts that DH can get the floor down now in time but it will be what it will be and at least the new washer will be plumbed into new pipework that doesn’t leak.

We had our usual walk today – Master Freddie loves to post a letter in the big red box outside the post office in the village so today we made a card using some of my stamps and inks for his mummy and daddy. It was a master piece (sorry forgot to take a picture) and then put it into an envelope and put it in the post. They will get a nice surprise in a day or two – and maybe Freddie will when it arrives and he recognises it as the one he posted. Of course both Freddie and granny had more ink on them than the card – but it was fun.

We saw the ducks in the tiny garden of one of the houses, counted the dongs on the church clock when it struck two…..

….and found little pockets of daffodils – even in some gloomy corners.

Despite the tiredness looking after Master Freddie is such a joy although not much housework is getting done here – a quick run round with the vacuum cleaner (does anyone else refer to it as the hoover?) to remove the Play-doh bits from the carpet (thanks for the warning Mary – no lasting damage thank goodness) and that was it – everything else will have to wait until the weekend…..well Saturday as we are planning on going up to see my mum on Sunday to give my sister a day off.

Caring for my mum is not proving to be the same kind of joy especially for my sister who lives near to her and sees her on the days the carers don’t go in. We have just had our Covid test which was negative so we like to go when we know we are at our safest and not likely to take anything in to her flat. My sister is struggling and there is little I can do to help ease the burden for her at the moment. Mum is very down with her situation – not just the virus and the lockdown but more because she cannot do anything by herself anymore and is reliant on others and they never do anything in the way she wants it doing. She has got into the habit of sitting all day and this is actually not helping her hip or shoulder as the lack of movement, the consultant told her, is costing her muscle tone and exacerbating the problem. She is not able to look after herself properly but would hate to go into a home and in any case would make the carer’s lives and ours a misery with complaints. At the moment she has a carer going in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 4pm and they can never do anything right and one or two have had their rotas changed so they can have a break from her. Many of the other residents just avoid her now wheras at one time would pop in. She is definitely becoming more negative as time goes on and doesn’t have a good word to say about anyone at the moment, not even my sister.

Last week she refused to eatany of the shopping my sister had taken her because she had bought it from Tesco and not Sainsbury’s. Apparently she cannot eat Tesco’s food and the corned beef wasn’t very nice even though she had not even opened it, she could tell it wasn’t very nice just looking at it. She is even convinced that Heinz tomato soup does not taste the same from Tesco – it is inferior to Sainsbury’s so she won’t eat that either. So guess who will be going to Sainsbury’s on Saturday to pick up some food for her. Should I be indulging her? Sister quite rightly is often in tears.

Mum has always been one of life’s complainers – but she is my mum and I want to do the best for her and so does my sister but she is not making it easy to care and look after her.

Life, I think, is about to get much more difficult.

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dear diary :: progress (maybe)

There may be progress but I am not sure – DH continued in the utility room today – for one of the smallest rooms in our house we are experiencing far too many problems. The hot water pipe was disconnected and a new piece of that white plastic stand pipe purchased ( the one at the back of the machine that you hook the rubber hose into for the water to drain away) as it needed to be a few centimetres taller for this new washer (wouldn’t you just know it). DH came out of Wickes yesterday with the wrong circumference size in error and luckily I spotted it as he was loading it into the car so he had to return it only to find the 40cm he needed was out of stock. Back to B&Q.

When he was replacing the pipe into the ‘U’ bend trap or whatever it is (see how technical I am here) it did not fit and he realised the old pipe had at sometime been modified and rammed in – but not very well. So back again to town this morning to get a new trap thingy. That is all in place now and the wallpaper steamer was rolled out to remove the old wallpaper and paint which has been flaking off with all the moisture in there. The paint came off like a dream in the kitchen and dining room right down to the bare plaster – in the utility it is not budging…..an inch!

The washer comes on Friday and DH has not even started on the flooring yet.

I took Master Freddie out for a walk; down to the village to post a letter and then round the back way, which is a little longer than going straight home, to give DH more time to himself. I didn’t take any photographs today but I do have some from last week’s walk when we went through the pleasure grounds and I snapped a few more snickets and ginnels, so I will show you these.

The pleasure grounds were made for the mill workers and run alongside a stream that once served the old dye mill further up the valley – we used to live over the bridge on the other side. You follow a winding path through a wooded glade along the valley bottom.

Evidence here and there of a little yarn bombing or is it pom-pom bombing?

And many fairies live here…..

As well as some pretty frightening animals.

Eventually you pass the waterfall and come to a small fenced playground at the end which is well used by the little ones. Just a swing, a slide and a rocker but they provide hours of entertainment.

As we leave the pleasure grounds we are in a very old part of the village with some lovely old cottages……

….and the old co-op – established in 1827, it was one of the first co-operative societies and was formed nearly 20 years before the more famous Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. It is unusual to find Georgian buildings in and around Huddersfield, which is mainly dominated by the heavy Victorian buildings, so this little Georgian terrace is one of my favourites.

And this is what I would call a ginnel – a passage way between a row of terraced houses that leads you round to the back.

This house has an even more unusual ginnel not only leading to the back of the house but also to the downstairs.

We made our way back through the maze of snickets which link this old part of the mill village to the main town and the main road. Pushing a pram up here was quite a workout.

Master Freddie will be here tomorrow – it is playdoh day I think. I am sure he would rather help out with the paint stripping so I have to keep him distracted – playdoh will do just that! I hope.

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dear diary :: moving swiftly into March

It feels like winter again here – we awoke to a dense grey landscape of fog this morning and I could easily have pulled the covers over me and stayed put. There was no wind but the damp coldness seems to penetrate through to the bone and after a jaunt around town for paint samples, plastic water pipe and screws I was glad to get back home and in the warm.

It is perhaps just as well no gardening was undertaken this weekend as the little shoots springing up here and there are better off hidden and protected by the dead leaves and stems of last year’s plants which I leave for this reason. Our garden is 700 feet above sea level here with the Pennine hills looming above us at about 1600 feet over the ‘Isle of Skye’ road (a local name – you can read about it here) …..and Holme Moss not far away at about 1720 feet. So we know about cold and chilly weather and I can guarantee we will lose some of the plants over winter.

I bought a nice little terracotta planter from B&Q for my friend’s birthday. I would have planted it up with herbs but couldn’t find any so I bought 3 pots of dwarf bulbs instead. I took it round to him later in the afternoon, rang the doorbell and stepped away. He was delighted with his gift and once the bulbs are over he will be able to grow herbs in it.

Before tea I looked at the February task list to see which of the tasks remained – anything without a satisfying tick against it is rolled over to the March list – to my surprise there were only 3 tasks out of 28 not completed (two of which are craft related and not urgent by any means).

  • Sand down the DAS clay tags I made
  • Cut out the interfacing for the tablemats and tack together
  • Email the new owner of the caravan site by our cottage

I like to have my plan of action mapped out for the month in my year book. I assign a few pages each month for jotting down any tasks and ideas, books to read, websites to browse…..whatever takes my fancy. I stick in cuttings from magazines of recipes, decorating ideas that catch my eye or a new beauty product I might try. It is basically a catch all. Each year I begin a new notebook and the old one is placed on the shelf for reference. This month will be all about Mother’s day and preparations for Easter and I have no doubt a lot of gardening notes.

And birthdays…….. there are lots of those in March.

I am not sure how much longer we will have Master Freddie with us but I know I am going to find it hard when he goes back to nursery; I have got so used to having him here and taking him for walks. He is an absolute joy.

Must go and get some sleep now ready for the early start tomorrow. x

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dear diary :: Sunday snooze before the Monday madness

Do you have days when you feel more on top of your game only to find yourself a bit lethargic the next day? Sunday (yesterday) was my day of very little achievement and after lunch I found myself curled up on the sofa watching Pauline Collins in Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and trying hard not to fall asleep.

DH was under the floor most of the day yesterday, literally, trying to sort out the leak we had discovered when he had taken some of the floorboards up beneath where the old washer had stood. It smelled damp and further investigation uncovered a pipe with wet lagging. It was the hot feed pipe to a previous washer and although the valve was off it had obviously been leaking a tiny amount of water over 16 years (as that is how old the washer is now). So then more floorboards had to come up in the pantry to trace the hot water feed back to where it diverts off to the kitchen hot water tap. As most washers are cold feed only now and my new one is (we checked) DH was able to cut off and cap the hot feed so there should not be any more problems.

I had to spring back into life and leave the comfort of the sofa when I suddenly realised that it was the last day of February and the 1st March is the birthday of a very good friend and a milestone one too. During this lockdown I have tended not to bother with the date very much – as long as I know when it is Tuesday and I am ready for Master Freddie’s arrival (Mary called him that in her comment and I like it so much that is his new name!) then all is well in my world.

I had to set to and make a card quickly – I copied one I had done before for another male friend’s 60th birthday a few years ago and luckily he likes gardening and has an allotment so I should be able to pick up a gift for him from the garden centre. I wish I had realised before though as we were only up there on Friday getting the seed potatoes. Still any outing no matter how brief is welcome at the moment.

Ideally, as it was a sunny day (though still bitterly cold here) I should have been busying myself in the garden, as all my neighbours have been, but I didn’t want DH to think I had left him with all the rotten jobs whilst I had fun gardening. Not that I can do much to help him at the moment until he gets the pipes sorted and the floorboards back down – I am only the tea maker and plumber’s mate……….so during the morning I had turned my attentions to making a batch of soup for lunch with the bowl of very ripe tomatoes in the pantry – I have stopped keeping them in the fridge now and they do gain a lot more flavour. The pantry is cool and perfect for keeping the fruit and ripening avocados – it always looks quite colourful and healthy in there at a glance. Whilst the soup simmered I finished the last of the ironing pile. I ironed all the bedding on Saturday and changed the bed so apart from a shed load of washing I am at a straight edge with the laundry.

So today is going to be spent whizzing round to B&Q (for paint and sundries), Screwfix (for more screws – never the right ones in the garage) and possibly a garden centre to pick up a gift. I will pack a flask of hot chocolate in case it takes longer than we think. Then I need to gather pace at home to try and make some order of the chaos – we have the big larder fridge from the utility standing in a corner in the dining room and a table full of the utility cupboard’s contents covering the table. Master Freddie is going to have a whale of a time getting into all sorts if it can’t be moved.

DH will also have to gather pace putting down the new flooring – he has lost a good two days now because of the leak and the clock is ticking.

In and amongst all this I have decided that it is time I reorganise all our financial paperwork – I have been using the same system for many years now and it has been fairly good and reliable but I need a change and one that reflects the fact that we have many bills and receipts come in by email and all my banking is done online.

But that is another post.

Have a good day x