Month: September 2020

Brain Fog

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Well, that’s how it feels to me. There is quite a lot going on in there, but I can’t access it. It seems that there are things I need to remember, or remember to do, but there’s so much I can’t sort it out. A bit like my brain is scrambled. If I were to draw a picture of it right now, it would just be a big old scribble.

There is currently a guy “doing things” in the garden. He has replaced the disintegrated back gate, the broken man hole cover, flattened the trip-hazard flagstones in the back garden, and is currently mending a sort of fence panel at the other side of the house from the back gate.

Also digging up a huge, ugly, aggressive phormium. This nearly died a few years ago when we had a dreadful winter but has recovered. It pokes people in the eye when they come to the door though. Not nice.

I have already ordered a lovely soft pretty Miscanthus sinensis Gracillimus because I’m so excited about having the space for a nice plant. I think it’s the same as this one, in the back garden. I hope so. It’s very similar anyway. The one we have looks gold or silver depending on the light. I cut it right down to the ground in spring and look how it grows!

So between making this guy endless cups of tea – well it is quite cold outside and it’s hard physical work – I have wrapped and got ready to post the Christmas and (January) birthday presents for the New Zealand granddaughter. Harder than it sounds, because part of that involved a jigsaw. Well, the jigsaw box was too big and heavy to include, because size as well as weight is restricted when you’re posting so far away. So I ordered a smaller gift box to put the jigsaw in, which worked, but then I found a piece of the jigsaw on the floor. Luckily (!) before I’d wrapped everything up. That meant I needed to actually do the jigsaw to make sure all the pieces were there. The recipient is going to be 5 years old and boy did I struggle with it. I expect she’s better than me at such things though. Hopefully.

Anyway, all the pieces are there, it’s all fitted in the box all wrapped up with a separate envelope with the jigsaw picture printed on an A4 piece of card, and the whole thing weighed less than 1.5kg. Excellent.

This sort of thing leaves me absolutely wrecked though. It’s such a simple job but it really takes it out of me. It’s done now. But no ironing today! the shopping was delivered and that’s me done for today.

Binge Reading

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I’m on a roll at the moment. Maeve Binchy books for the most part, with something else in between for variety. I love her stuff. Love it. Currently reading Sandi Toksvig (Between the Stops, I think) and have also just read Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey. It’s just so lovely to pick up my Kindle and feel as if I’m in a different world. The current real world is a bit depressing, to be honest.

We are also mid way through Season Two of The Bridge, which is an excellent Swedish/Danish collaborative series. It’s just so interesting that the various characters talk to each other in their own language and everybody seems to understand everybody else. I have been wondering whether it would be comparable to an English person conversing with somebody with a strong Scottish/Irish/Welsh accent and everybody just understanding. But Scotland, Ireland and Wales each have their own language too, so not quite the same.

Just had to water the pots in the garden. In the UK. In September. I know!

Sorted out the muddle in the craft room, where I currently have various birthday and Christmas gifts awaiting wrapping and posting.

Went through Mother’s commemorative coin collection – the Queen, Prince Philip (!), WWI, WWII, Peter Rabbit – and none of it complete. A whole box full of empty presentation folders. If I was remotely interested in any of it I’d have a proper look. Luckily I have a good friend whose husband sorted it out, and then I went through it to see what’s what. I expect somebody, somewhere will want it.

Slept all day yesterday. Not a great day. But the pain in my hands is slightly less, which is good. Strange feeling of ants under the skin where the injections went, though, but that seems to have passed.

Tomorrow my jobs are to post several parcels at the Post Office, get my prescription from the chemist and see if they have cheese sauce packets at the Co-op. Yeah, that’s it. But for me that’s quite a big task, so I have no other expectations for Monday.

Off to read my Sandi Toksvig book.

Little Things

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Well, I was going to show you pictures of the shoes I dyed. But you can’t really tell the difference in photos. They were brown, and I dyed them black. You can see the difference in real life though. They’re Birkenstocks and very comfy, and I couldn’t find any other shoes I wanted to buy, so I dyed them instead. Very pleased with the result.

Yesterday I spent over an hour on hold on the phone. Forty five minutes to the doctors, and twenty minutes to the Department of Work and Pensions, who pay my benefit. Hubby gets really impatient and frustrated when he’s on hold, but I try not to. I play computer games instead. Crosswords, jigsaws, Solitaire.

It could be argued, and is regularly harrumphed about in our house, that it’s a deliberate government strategy to make everybody so cross about the NHS that private medicine becomes the preferred option. I’m sure that is the case. But we both strongly believe in a health service that is available free to those in clinical need.

I’ve started Christmas shopping. Yes, in September. I usually start about now. Amazon and Marks and Spencer do particularly well out of this household. The lists have been in progress from very early on in the year. All the teenage grandchildren get multi-shop vouchers now. Wish lists are only consulted for adults, and even then we sometimes use them as a basis for buying something else connected. There will be lots of parcels arriving shortly. (We also keep the Post Office and various other parcel delivery services in business.)

And Covid. What a mess. Government playing Whack a Mole again. I don’t understand why pubs are allowed to be open. It’s madness. I understand that it’s awful for businesses too but, surely to goodness, health comes first. Or so you would think. Mm.

Baby Steps

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Well, I feel as if I’ve been really daring this week.

I went to the osteopath on Tuesday – both of us masked and all precautions taken. It felt great, if painful!

Today we took the cat to the vet for her annual inoculation. It’s always a major performance getting her there. Recently we’ve started putting a little harness on, and only putting her in the carrier when we arrive. That works much better but she still yowls the whole time in the car on the way there, and some of the time on the way back. When she’s actually in the vet’s surgery she is very interested in everything except what the vet is doing, and tries to jump off the examination table and investigate the whole room. Anyway, that’s done, although you have to wait outside the vet (masked up) while they take in one animal at a time and bring the card machine out to you. That’s fine, but it was raining today!

And best of all I finally have an appointment at the doctors next Thursday to have steroid injections in my hand. I am so relieved. It’s felt like a long time.