Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 11 December 2016

Margo: I'm sorry that your life has been so hard. My thoughts are with you.

Also thinking of Heather and her OH; sending hugs.

Best to everyone who has illness in the family.

Diane: Thank YOU. Just got in an hour ago and saw you'd beaten me to it. What a gorgeous flower - is that a rose?  And are you safely tucked up in Indiana?  Saw the videos of all the traffic accidents and the talk about the "lake effect snow."  Brrrr.

dibnlib: That's so funny about the "inconvenient" free parking.  :-)

Very low cloud cover here and constant drizzle at daughter's house. Woke up this morning to the sound of the irrigation system starting off, but it was 4:30 and I didn't feel like rushing out to the garage to turn it off. Must do it before it cycles on again or adjust it for the cooler temps.

Only two weeks to Xmas.  And I've still to send any cards!  :-(

Thanks Diane for starting us off.

{{{HUGS}}} for Margo and Heather & her OH.

I returned from church to find OH armed with vacuum cleaner. Miracle! He usually promises to do the cleaning for C-mas, then leaves it so late, there isn’t time to do it properly. “No point cleaning this early, blah, blah”, he says. I reply that it is easier to to whizz round later if we’ve springcleaned earlier. He didn’t do a great deal today – just where The Tree will stand. Before lunch I put together the tree and since then I have been decorating it. I tried to put all the cute things at 2½-year-old eye level. Now the carpet is littered with tiny scraps of tinsel!

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Last Tues nanny duty was fairly easy. It was Miss5’s kindy concert afternoon. Next Tues is her graduation and on Thurs is the breakup party. Er, how many end-of-year activities for one child for one kindy? Then there’s the swimming breakup, the Girl Guides breakup and goodness only knows what else. All needing a plate of food. No wonder Dau is stressed.

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Getting back to my nanny duty. When I arrived MissL was asleep. Not MissJ, no way. We read 13 books together, inspected the C-tree, I fed her lunch. Cruskit & peanut butter or vegemite? Out came the little pointy finger to vegemite. Then a banana. While she was munching I started the dishes. At 2.25 pm out toddled a bright-as-a button MissL. I fed her lunch – similar but peanut butter. Twins played happily together, dashing into another room to have a play-picnic, then made me pretend pizza. At last Dau returned with Miss5. I stayed on so Dau could get tea. I took twins outside & supervised trampoline & climbing frame. MissL would find climbing much easier if she wasn’t trying to hold a frog & turtle at same time. A disagreement over a brown dog had the twins yelling. Excuse me, it is Miss5’s toy.

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Nearly time for tea, we come inside. By now MissJ is overtired, cranky. She falls over, wants her mum. At last the cavalry arrives ie s-i-l home from work. I can escape. It was much easier than I expected. I rashly offered to babysit if Dau needs some free time for shopping. Me and my big mouth LOL.

Good Morning to All, and Thank You to Diane for starting us off again so prettily, with the peony. I hope things are going well for you.

AQ -  Your descriptions of your nanny days are always entertaining. (What are Cruskits? - I assume they're baby rusks) We have similar problems here with endless "end of year" events for nurseries and schools. The children get exhausted before Christmas even arrives, and their mothers rush around trying to get them to everything on time, wearing the right gear, and as you say, often taking food with them. Tomasz has in addition, had about a dozen birthday parties to attend, with small presents to take.

It's Sunday, but instead of rest, I seem to have soo much to do today. Lots of clearing out is half done and in addition my OH wants to dig out our outside lights from under the stairs, ready to put up, even though he has been too poorly to do much in the last two days. I've had my fingers crossed that I don't catch his bad cough and cold, myself. He was really poorly yesterday and it's unusual for him to rest so much, but he needs to give himself time to get better. (Not always a good patient when he's ill!)

My OH has recovered enough to start to organise the outside lights, so I guess they'll be going up tomorrow.  I've been sorting out lots of old music cassette tapes (remember those?!)  

As the new stereo does not play tapes, decisions have had to be made.  (I am a hoarder!)   I do, however, have a gadget for copying them onto digital media - I've owned it for at least two years and its never been taken out of the box!  Now that about three quarters of our music collection on tape has gone either into the bin or into the charity bag, maybe I'll finally find the time to do them.

This had freed up a HUGE drawer in the sideboard, which is sorely needed as we keep leaving bits of paper around and Bonnie just loves to eat the gas bill or the latest shopping list!

Thinking all morning about dear Margo and also hoping Heather and her OH are coping.

Thought you might all like to meet OWLBERT -  he joined us when we went to Wales last time, and we visited RSPB Conway.  He's fluffy and so enigmatic, I just couldn't resist him!

He will, of course, have to live in our bedroom upstairs well away from Bonnie, who probably wouldn't be able to resist him either!

Side view, in case you're not entirely going "Aaawwwww!" already!

Edit:  I think it was the punk hairdo which got me!

Hello all - Thank you for the many kind thoughts, they are much appreciated.

I'll just give you an update - OH is not able to mobilise independently, even with his wheely thingy. He is just too off balance plus leaning to the left. So, reluctantly ,I have obtained a wheelchair for those moments when his legs are just too shaky to carry his weight. We have made our sitting room into a bedroom for us both. We still have our dining room and the small family room. Our conservatory is quite large, so we have stored the larger of the two sofas in there, plus a large wall unit. I have curtains which cover the wall/doors leading into the conservatory, they are needed in the winter. So out of sight, out of mind. It looks like a furniture repository, which I suppose is exactly what it is! There were various options including a stair lift but we needed to arrange something very quickly as OH collapsed on the stairs the other day. It took two of us to carry him down.

We are very contented in our new quarters with the bonus of having the 'big' TV in the room.

OH has been referred to the Care of the Elderly team on an urgent basis. Current thinking is that his original hearing and balance loss was caused by a small stroke. He may have had a couple more since then, going by my observations.

His voice is weakened but his personality is still the same as ever - he told my youngest daughter this morning that my driving skills with the wheel chair are pretty bad! He is not wrong, there. Paintwork has suffered, that is all I'm going to say....

Lindy, if ever Owlbert needs a new home, please send him here!  He's gorgeous.  Yes, good idea to keep him away from Bonnie.

Heather, so sorry to read about your OH's continuing problems.  Good to hear you are getting help and support so quickly.  And good to hear he hasn't lost his sense of humour.  I'm sure he will not miss an opportunity to criticise your 'driving skills'!