Just when you think...

....life is going to get easier, it doesn't!

This has to be my longest blogging break to date and again today's post is likely only to be an excuse/explanation for my continued absence rather than a 'real' post. I wish it wasn't but sadly that's the reality. I do however genuinely intend to find the time somehow to get back to normal at some stage! Yeah yeah I hear you say, but really, I will!!

For the last month my mother has been in hospital, I will regale you with the detail when I have more time but suffice to say for now all is not particularly well, she is home now but requires a great deal of support and so what was my daily 40 mile round trip to spend hours at the hospital has now turned into mine and my brothers daily rota taking care of her in her home. My sister for her part has been trailing up and down from the Midlands as often as she possibly can to try and give us a break.

Our lives have been reduced to a daily cycle of trying to juggle work and caring, with little time left for anything else, it's been, and continues to be, an extremely stressful period in our lives, I thought caring for my father was tough going at the time, and it was but it wasn't this tough.

Oh....and I never thought I would say this but my faith in the N.H.S. has been sorely tried, very sorely tried and if I have any faith left in the system at all it is minimal. More on that another time too.

So there you have it, my latest 'why I haven't been blogging' excuse. There is so much I want/need to say here but for now it will have to wait along with most other things.

I'll be back. ;)

*Apologies for grammatical/punctuation errors, no time for all that.

Filing in the gaps

So, for the last year or more much of the little I have posted has been a bit vague to say the least. The reason for this was that I was unsure if I should talk about issues that concern others close to me. However, I have had time to think, time for the dust to settle and time to discuss the situation with important others and the upshot is that I have decided it's not disloyal, it doesn't detract from how much I love those involved and my needs matter too. This blog, among other things has been cathartic for me and I have missed that aspect of it, along with all the other obvious aspects I enjoyed about blogging.

That's it then, names and places may be changed to protect the innocent and all that, one or two posts may be elsewhere and password protected but in the main I intend to do the one thing I always used to do here...blog what I need too and tell it how it is.

Some of you may find some of what I say seems harsh here and there and it is in some respects because it's honest but it doesn't mean that I love or care for those involved any the less, it just means life can be harsh sometimes, life has many facets and the old chestnut of 'don't judge a (wo)man until you have walked a mile in his/her shoes etc', may apply at times.

Tis the season to be......?

I was charged today with the task of sourcing the household Christmas tree and to be entirely honest I wasn't looking forward to it. The last few years I have gone with my dad to the local 'Christmas tree farm' (yes, we have one called just that) and it has been a something of a tradition for he and I......this year was obviously going to be different and not in a good way.

I did endeavour to get said tree from elsewhere but to no avail and so I took the bull by it's proverbial horns and this afternoon went on my own to do the deed.

My father, a man of immense integrity - annoyingly so at times - must have been spying on me because having selected a suitable tree and paid for it I realised that instead of charging my card with the full £22 price, they had charged just £2!

I will fess up here, there was some intent in my mind to walk away feeling pleased with myself, I even began to leave the pay point but somehow I just couldn't....and half way out of the place I turned on my hell, went back and pointed out their error. Dammit!

Their gratitude and praise for my honesty only served to make me feel more guilty for my momentary lapse!

On a more positive note, my initial anticipated sadness was lessened by the discovery of these two beautiful and very large creatures who apparently now reside at the tree farm over the festive period....


(Apologies for quality, phone cam.)

One of 'those' moments!

Today was dreaded dentist day, those of you who have read here over time will know that me and dentistry do not a happy combination make by any stretch of the imagination! I hate it and nothing on God's green earth seems to prevent me from turning into a useless heap of quivering jelly from about 48 hours prior to any appointment....today wasn't any different and added to that it had a kind of horrible extra significance.

You see, despite my being, um.... a great big useless coward 'forty something,' wherever possible I have taken someone along with me for moral support...and usually that has been my dad over recent years. Given my age and my degree of fear this had become something of a tradition that caused amusement among the reception staff, a fact that was to prove quite difficult on this occasion!

This was to be my first dental visit since my dad died and my first alone for quite some years. The lack of my dad by my side chivvying me along with his unending humour was pretty much on my mind anyway when I walked in alone on very wobbly legs and with somewhat wobbly emotions this afternoon but I was about to get a whole lot worse.

I was greeted with a cheery 'hello' and a smile by the attending receptionist....who then continued by making a joke of my managing to be their alone for once and asking where on earth my dad was this time!

I hesitated for a moment and then without thinking just said "he's dead". I perhaps could have said it with a little more tact but I was taken by such surprise that I just blurted out what came, what followed was one of 'those' seemingly unending silences which spread throughout the reception area, while someone thought what to say next.

Rarely lost for words for long, even if they aren't always entirely appropriate words, it was me who broke the silence with another knee jerk sentence...."I suppose while I'm here then I should ask you to remove him from your list of patients shouldn't I". I don't think it was perhaps my best line but distracted said receptionist from her embarrassment and I shuffled into to the lions den so distracted I forgot to be scared anymore.

Maybe my dad helped me in his absence just the same!

Un-birthday!

Today is my 'un-birthday'!

On my actual birthday in a few days time there will be only myself here so today my sister and nieces are here and we are having a little family lunch, there will be chocolate and there will be cake!

It feels very odd this year, it's my first 'occasion' since my dad died and life with my mother has been pretty 'challenging' since so this little gathering will be different to those that have gone before. It will be good to be together and to do something nice for a change, family soirees of late have not been happy fun filled occasions needless to say, but this one will be! ;)

Bring on the cake then.....

Homeward bound

Today I go back home, my holiday is over, this is not a good thing as you can imagine!

My motivation to get packed up and hit the road is what one might call virtually non existent, life has felt pretty 'normal' and happy the last fortnight and I suspect that is about to change.

On a more positive note I have found a few jobs to apply for and managed to get myself through one interview, one may not be many but in comparison to opportunities of late, it's a 100% improvement!

Ok, I have the hump today, best I shut up and just concentrate on getting my head back around reality....

A health warning?

So, I'm on my holiday at my sisters, all is well, a wonderful time is being had by all and then suddenly, yesterday evening, water begins to pour through the dining room ceiling! I will add here that the local friendly plumber was ensconced upstairs apparently fixing a minor problem with the heating system, things were obviously not going to any plan he had in mind!

This is not a good thing as you can imagine particularly on the day that is supposed to play host to my nieces sixteenth birthday celebration.

Minor panic ensued, I was the only adult in residence at the time (wouldn't you know it!), the kids were hastily organised into a small army of bucket collectors and mopping up-ers after I had located the electrical supply and killed it. Turning the water supply off was apparently irrelevant, the problem was a split in the base of the tank, whatever we did it was going to drain through the ceiling....all of it!

It began to resemble something from a Carry-On film, the place was chaos, the children were panicking worried the house might actually fall down, the plumber was mortified and cursing under his breath madly while trying his best to stem the flow, the house phone and my mobile were ringing off the hook with my mother trying to get ahold of me and more than a little ironically a rep. for an electricity company turned up on the doorstep and was particularly persistent, despite my explaining the situation and then left in a rather rude manner when it became apparent I wasn't going to 'entertain' him any longer!

Eventually the tank drained, new plans were hastily made for the birthday celebrations and everyone but myself and the plumber left. He did his thing, installed a new tank and got it up and running and I began the clearing up process. Only the electrics remain to be sorted out now.

Why do these things always seem to happen when I'm in proximity? I'm beginning to think I should come with a bloody health warning pinned to me!

The countdown has begun...

....to my small holiday-ette! Only three more sleeps.

Friday morning, bright eyed and hopefully bushy tailed I am off for about a week to my sisters in the Midlands. It may not sound like the usual salubrious kind of holiday destination but there's no flight costs, it's a change of scenery and I can get back quickly should it be required....always assuming the crap car doesn't disintegrate en-route! Hey, it's a break, that's good enough.

Alternative arrangements have been made for my responsibilities here and thus far it appears to be a go, famous last words but with a little luck and a prevailing wind it will happen....and I can't wait!

A whole week of less stress, the highly entertaining company of my two teenage nieces, my sister and brother are always good company, different places to investigate, uninterrupted time to dedicate to looking for a job and time to just 'be' and get my head together some. Oh, and there's the rabbit of course! :)

Bring it on!

....and repeat

When my father was ill and my life was centered around caring for him, in retrospect I had something of a blinkered and perhaps naive view of the future it would seem now.

I suspect that in an effort to cope when the going got tough I cultivated a mentality that didn't see beyond his inevitable death, I was completely focused on the day to day practicalities of the care regime and on trying to keep him as comfortable as possible whilst supporting my mother and I just didn't look beyond that.

Looking back I think I imagined that whilst we all dreaded my fathers demise, as any family would, somehow, once it was over my life could return to some semblance of normality, yes, we would grieve and we would feel the loss acutely but among that I assumed I would be freer to live my own life, to try to find a job and begin to rebuild myself some kind of acceptable way of life.

As it transpires that assumption was pretty naive or ill informed on my part for my mother, who very sadly seems not to have coped with the loss of my father as we had imagined, now takes at least as much caring for as my father did, albeit in a very different manner.

It would be unfair of me to go into details here, aside from myself my family are very private people and I have to respect that but since my fathers death, things for me have become even more challenging, as they have for my siblings, but it is me who is here 24/7 coping with the aftermath and me who's life once again is on hold.

That may all sound pretty harsh and selfish to an onlooker and perhaps it is but believe me, unless you have been where I am at right now, you have no idea.... or at least I didn't. We all hear about those that are carers by default for family members, we see the support groups advertised, we think we know but we really don't.

My life is completely taken over again, it is stressful and heartbreaking and frustrating.... but maybe it was better that I was blinkered when my dad was dying in seeing this coming, because I suspect if I hadn't been I couldn't have coped at all.

We are as a family attempting to improve the situation but as with so many of these things it's a long slow process with an as yet unknown outcome.

I feel like all I do is moan lately, grumble about 'my lot', I know I have been judged for it and I know people go through much greater difficulties in their lives but I am not a saint, very far from it, I am just another individual with my own weaknesses, my own foibles and my own dreams and if that makes me appear selfish or unable to cope very well at times then so be it but I defy anyone to live the last year of my life and not have a few moments struggling!

I am stuck for now in a mire I can't find a way out of, I have well meaning people assuming they know what's best and I have others making hurtful judgements of me which is less than helpful. I do have my low moments, I do lose my motivation at times and I'm sure I make mistakes but I am not superwoman and I don't need added pressures and upsets, I'm doing my best in the only way I know how, enough already!

Really, the option of packing a small rucksack, getting a cheap flight somewhere and just never coming back is sometimes becoming a very tempting prospect.

Happy birthday dad

Thinking of you and missing you.

xxxxx

Turning a corner?

The last year of my life has been without doubt one of my toughest, second only to one other many years ago....which is a whole other story.

Subsequent to the demise of what had been the most important relationship of my life to date, hotly followed by having spent better part of a year nursing my father to his death from cancer last November and then the unexpected degree of difficulty my mother has been having coping with her loss and the required degree of emotional and practical support that has been necessary, there were times, and many of them, that I thought I might just crumple up into a useless heap of hopelessness.

But somehow I didn't. Don't ask me how I didn't, I'm not sure but let's just say the alternative to coping was perhaps an even less appealing prospect.

Things however seem to be a tiny weeny bit easier, this week one or two things have changed almost intangibly, the pressure seems to have eased fractionally and maybe, just maybe, we are getting through this. Maybe the light I have been trying to see at the end of what has felt a very long, dark tunnel, is finally considering showing itself?

My mother appears to have turned a small but significant corner and in turn the constant pressure I have been under has eased slightly. Probably this will continue to be a very fine line with many ups and downs but at last I am beginning feel a little bit hopeful. I still have a long way to go to get my life back on track, I still feel like I have an almost impossible mountain to climb ahead of me but it's a start.

Famous last words? .....or is that too much negativity?! ;)

Ejaculation not allowed!

Picture the scene, it's Christmas night, the family, myself, my mother, my sister and her husband and the two teenage children, plus one miscellaneous boyfriend are sitting around the table playing the obligatory Christmas games. There are carols playing gently in the background and all is relatively peaceful.

The game, don't ask me to name it, involved making models from 'play-doh', one person per team modelling the damn stuff against the clock, the other guessing the word the model represents.

There was some small degree of cheating going on and in the excitement of the moment my modeller, youngest teenage child, tried to indicate to me what it was she was modelling, exasperated at my apparent lack of ability to identify the blue 'blob' infront of her.

Oldest teenage child at this point, much miffed at the bending of rules was heard to shout across the room at hight decibel levels and in all innocence........."you are not allowed to ejaculate".

I suspect the word she was looking for was probably'gesticulate'.

There was one of those silent moments, offending teenager utterly confused and the rest of us trying our damnedest not to fall about hysterically.

We failed dismally!

Love it!

It's official....

...that I have failed dismally this Christmas one way and another and as a result I should apologise here and now!

What for?

Well, I haven't so much as purchased a Christmas card, let alone written or posted any, so if you would normally expect to be seeing one from me popping through your letter box, I am sorry but it won't be happening this year. I'll say again, I'm am sorry but pressure of circumstances and all that, I just didn't seem to get to it. In fact Christmas is pretty low key here this year for obvious reasons. None of us can really get into it so my mum and I will head off to Leicestershire tomorrow to stay with my sister for a few days, we will do Christmas for the children but that will be about the extent to which we go, it will just be nice to be together.

So, again, my apologies but not much festive to see here this year.

On pride and falls and getting marooned!

Bugger! So last night full of confidence and against my overly worrying mothers advice I went out in the car, I know how to drive in the snow, I have some experience (that's another tale)and thus far in my life I have never got stuck! Thus far!

Off I went and when all around me were abandoning vehicles and causing minor bodywork damage I made it to my destination, albeit only a mile away and albeit having taken me a half hour.

Things were looking good. I parked in a place suitable for making good my escape later in the evening and enjoyed my evening. At 2am I decided it was time to go back home and set off on my one mile trip. All was well....until 500 meters from home where my pride took a considerable jolt.

Suffice to say, much digging of snow from around my wheels, much clutch burning and swearing, an hour later I had moved approximately five foot, just enough not to have to abandon the car right in the middle of the road, I arrived home at three bloody thirty! One mile, one and a half hours! Ooppsss. *Blush*

The remaining short distance home was on foot and this morning I am off with a shovel to try again....failing that I may have to completely swallow my pride and get my brother and his Land Rover over here.

Tomorrow my mother and I are supposed to be travelling to the Midlands to spend what will already be a pretty strange Christmas with my sister and her family....not making it is not an option!

The snowmum!

Intrepid as ever, at eighty, in six inches of snow, 7.30 in the morning, minus 5 degrees, slippers on feet and without even a jacket, the snowmum feeding 'her' birds on time!

There is just no telling some people!;o)


(Apologies, poor image but I was so surprised I didn't have time to organise my camera properly!)

Organised!

Well finally, after what has been a manic two weeks both emotionally and logistically, I think we have everything arranged. Hurrah!

I really began to think we wouldn't get it all done, despite having such a long wait until the funeral, but unless my usually obsessive organisational skills have failed me badly (and believe me that's distinctly possible at the moment) we are all done and dusted and ready for my fathers funeral next Tuesday.

Really I think we just want it over with now, the wait has been too long and just as we begin to feel a tiny vestige of normality for a few minute, now and then, we will be flung headlong back into the harsh reality of our loss.

It will be very good of course to pay him our respects, to say our final good-bye's, to publicly celebrate his life and the very special man he was and to begin to get some real closure but at the moment I think mostly we are just dreading it.

Hey ho, tis all set now, we just have a few more days wait....

It's over....

....my dad (TP) died peacefully in the early hours of yesterday morning with my mum, my brother, my sister and myself all by his side. He retained his stoicism and sense of humour until the end.

"Wherever you are dad, let the jazz be cool and the red wine be a damn good one."

My mum....

...is 80 today!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!

Short dog, steri-strips and sleep!

Meet Alfie, AKA 'short dog', the reasons being obvious, he like myself is somewhat challenged in length of leg!

He belongs to my brother (@Mattyboy500), who is enjoying a weekend away and I as a consequence have been charged with the sole care of short canine creature. It has had it's 'moments'.


Short dog has three philosophies in life.


The first is that he would like please, to be walked for at least half the day and that he will pull on his lead for the entire time, the second, that he requires me not ever to be out of his sight for more than a millisecond and the third, that sleeping is a full body contact sport! The result is that he sleeps very well whilst I lie awake all night trying to ignore the fact that he feels it necessary to squish the length of his hot furry little body as tight up against me as he possibly can, my arms and shoulders ache like hell from the pulling and I can't even go to the bathroom without company!

He's fabulous and lovely and cute... but it takes a little getting used to, I feel like I have a permanent shadow.

Add to that we had a minor mishap last night when I managed to extricate myself from him for a few minutes while my mother entertained him in the garden. I had barely got to the top floor of the house when I heard my mother, in her best,'I'm trying not to sound panic stricken but would you come and help me NOW' voice, calling me.

Back down the stairs I raced imagining something wrong with my father who is suffering the after effects of the latest bout of chemo, to find nothing of the sort, but that short dog had made a slight 'miscalculation of claw' whilst playing and had caused a reasonably unpleasant laceration to my mothers forearm.

My nurses hat, only briefly removed from my head was rapidly shoved back in place while I hunted for steri-strips and dressings.... said dog looked on wondering why all play had been stopped!

Bless!

(Click for the big ones)

The good the bad and the ugly

The anniversary weekend! As follows.....

The good:

1. My parents had a fab 50th wedding anniversary.

2. I got to spend quality time with my siblings and nieces.

3. Which resulted in my 'house and rabbit sitting' for a week, next week in the Midlands. A whole four bed house all to myself!

4. No one took a picture of me in the dreaded 'frock'. Result! (For those who are desperate, and you must be is all I can say, there's a pic in the Sept' 08 archive somewhere if you care to root around.)

5. The sun continued to shine on us all day.

The Bad:

1. I was the only single adult there.

2. It made me feel very lonely.

3. I couldn't sleep and had no wifi or A/C, not sure to this day how I managed!

4. I couldn't get drunk, I was the 'nominated driver'.

5. I couldn't get drunk but I've had a headache ever since regardless!

The ugly:

1. Eating wayyyyy to much cake

2. Wearing the dreaded 'frock'.

3. Forgetting to remove my make up at night and seeing the result in the morning.

4. No A/C and a ground floor room necessitating that the windows remained closed!

5. Imagining being married longer than I have lived! ;o)