I say this every single Boxing Day but this year I really - really - really mean it...NO MORE BATTERY POWERED CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON THE TREE AND IN THE WINDOW!!!!!
I received quite a nice pile of much appreciated and useful Christmas gifts this year including a 'universal' battery recharging station and 12 rechargeable batteries each of the two sizes I use in our Christmas lighting - BUT THIS YEAR IS THE YEAR I HIT THE BOXING DAY SALES (online, do I look mad enough to venture forth into the maelstrom of Boxing Day High Street shopping, do I?! Don't answer that)!!!
Blimey, we've gone through so many AA and AAA batteries this year I've lost count and we still have two weeks to go before it all is packed away for next year. I was so fed up from Christmas 2018 The Changing of the Batteries that this year I didn't bother putting batteries in my candle bridges or the illumination ball - I honestly could not face the effort required.
I put the Christmas tree, lights in and out, etc, up on 1 December 2019 - First Sunday of Advent. I meant to do it on Thanksgiving Night. Yes. I live in Scotland, UK. No, we don't 'do' Thanksgiving here. But we should - if we have Black Friday (and we do), we should have Thanksgiving - and the Christmas decorating should commence on that night.
But this year has been different. Well, actually 2018 was a bit different as I knew something wasn't right with 'my stoopid little heart thingie' and I was so genuinely afraid I wasn't going to live to see Christmas 2019 that I couldn't bring my self to put away the Christmas decorations until July. Oh, I took them down when I was supposed to (more or less) and the tree and garland went into the storage bags in the shed, but the baubles and lights and figurines were carefully stacked on shelves in the curio cabinet - and stayed there until late July when my husband pleaded with me to please-please-please box it all up or he would.
Any road, this year I didn't get the decorating done until First Sunday owing to the thought of doing it all - I simply lacked the real will to go all out on my usual Father Christmas Grotto look. I went very simple (for me) this year in the end - mains powered pre-lit fake pine garland across the electric fireplace mantle with a few baubles and five inch acrylic icicles, the 24 inch 'most realistic' PE Christmas tree dressed with the smallest baubles and...those battery operated Christmas light in multi-colour this year.
The Crèche took centre stage on the mantle nestled into the pine garland. Two 'most realistic' battery powered candles flanking the Creche. A few of the Father Christmas figurines on the small bookcase next to the electric fire with one of the candle bridges behind and the Father Christmas Advent 'calendar' (a long notched block with a Santa perched on a star to move down the notches - no need for a 'real' Advent Calendar with chocolates and boiled sweets when there are no children in the house).
Christmas cards stood atop the interwar tallboy chest (replaced the attractive but useless for storage postwar curio cabinet), the Advent Wreath on the dinner table...done.
Battery operated outdoor lights on the front door flanking potted boxwoods, inside the kitchen window (the only window facing the front door - the bathroom window does not count!) a string of multi-colour lights to simulate the Aurora Borealis with a string of novelty star lights hung to look like The Plough (Big Dipper for the Americans reading here) - both strings battery operated as is the Christmas Candle I put in the window Christmas Eve night to guide the Christ Child. It also goes in the window the night of 5th January to guide The Wise Men.
And even that small bit of Christmas decorating knocked me for six. And then there was the monitoring of the lights to be sure the batteries were changed as needed to maintain the brightness.
So far this year I've had to 'refresh' the batteries on everything battery powered at least twice - and we still have two weeks to go before the end of the Festive Season.
Paul and I worked out the cost of replacing the batteries is close enough to the cost of running the lights off the mains to justify shifting the lighting scheme to mains power from now on. Even though I did get a lovely battery recharging station and a supply of batteries - we'll still use the two outdoor light sets, and the candle bridges, and the crackled illumination ball (so pretty with the ice skating pond scene!), and those take batteries.
But for the window and tree next Festive Season displays, we're going mains powered.
Online Boxing Day sales - here I come!
26 December 2019
21 November 2019
Yes, alright, the straight up truth is I lay there yesterday morning on the surgical table thinking 'I can't die now, I just got the new cutting dies from Sixxiz!' Oh. Dear.
Yes, it's true, the 'papercrafting' bug has struck and struck hard. Honestly don't think I could have made it through the past eight months without it. Bonus - we made all our Christmas cards this year and I sold several boxes at a craft fair. My dear husband now thinks perhaps this papercrafting lark has some merit - I made back a fair bit of my initial investment.
See, what happened was, back in early March 2019 I had what was to have been Round1 of root canal treatment - without prophylactic antibiotics thanks to the surgery (GP practice) I'd been registered at until we moved to our downsizer in a smaller town six miles away, the surgery that for some insane reason shredded the medical records I'd hand-carried from America. The surgery that labelled me a complainer for wanting my heart condition checked on schedule. The surgery that told the dentist office 'No, she doesn't have a heart condition!'.
So the dentist (a replacement for the old one who could tell by looking at me I did indeed have a heart condition and he'd be wise to order prophylactic antibiotics for anything more extreme than a simple filling) went on with the treatment and within a week I was on the verge of cardiac tamponade (when the pericardial sac around the heart fills with fluid and squeezes the heart to the point of stopping it...).
I ignored the symptoms, putting it down to 'a cold', 'the flu', overweight and out of shape...anything but what my brain kept insisting (GIRL! You have endocarditis or at least a whomping case of your recurrent pericarditis, FFS go to the GP you numpty!').
Until I returned to the dentist for Round2 and he realised I was probably in the midst of a heart attack (I wasn't but only because he made my husband drive me straight over to the GP surgery to register and be seen as an emergency). The GP took one look, one listen, and had me in the Rapid Access Chest Pain unit so fast my head was spinning. One thing led to another but the short story is my medical records have been corrected, my multiple heart conditions 're-diagnosed' and noted, I'm under the care of a rather superb cardiologist, and every time the dentist looks at me it's only after a course of antibiotics.
Right, so we owe the dentist. The GP, the cardiologist, and all the techs I've seen since say the same thing - 'The dentist saved your life!'. And he did, I know this, and we're sending him a Scottish Dentistry approved thank-you gift for Christmas - without him I wouldn't be seeing another Christmas...something my cardiologist pointed out yesterday just before the angiogram I was sure I wasn't going to survive.
Without being overly maudlin (hard to do when I think about it), the cardiologist and the surgeon and not a few of the nurses thought I was leaving there without at least some stents and more likely quadruple bypass (yeah, well, it really has been that bad here these past eight months). I went in there yesterday genuinely afraid my ticket was about to be punched.
Of course, I did make it through, and I was alert enough to be discharged the same day! During, though, I really didn't think I was going to make it through that angiogram AND right heart study - the angio went through my wrist, my dislocated biceps got in the way and the artery there decided to spasm when they were withdrawing the wires; the right heart study went through my groin AND IT WASN'T AS 'FUN' as the angiogram. But I did come home, and with a rather good result - no blockages, no need for anything...except the finding I am in smack up in the middle of yet another pericarditis flare. sigh
The reason for yesterday? My cardiologist (very-very good and I do trust him, I want to point that out) had never heard of pericarditis (which I knew was the problem - but I didn't go to med school and then specialise in cardiology so I wasn't about to argue overmuch with his training!) causing angina, had never heard of pericardial effusion causing angina, had never heard of Dengue Fever Stage2 (which I had in '95) causing pericarditis much less recurrent pericarditis that also caused angina. He was certain I was in terrible shape and on death's door and maybe even surgery wouldn't help, and did I make out my will and leave instructions for my husband? He wanted to be sure I had all the stents and bypasses he was so sure I was going to need. He kept saying I should be on statins. He was absolutely certain angina doesn't happen without blockages...
Now? Bottom line, he promises never to offer me statins again as my arteries are completely clear, and my heart-lung function is so good he wishes he had my stats. And he told me 'You're right, I did some checking before you came in this morning, and Dengue IS well known to cause recurrent pericarditis AND angina pain in Dengue endemic countries. I'll be following your case for years to come, I won't be discharging you back to your GP for years if ever.'
Could be worse, he could have insisted I take the standard medication (which gives me such horrible side effects it isn't worth trying to use). He could have given in to the other surgeon saying I should be kept in hospital under the effusion 'is sorted' (takes months, ask me how I know this...).
Instead I'm walking a half mile once a week to the GP for her to listen for pericardial rub and in the New Year (probably the second week of January) I'll be having an MRI to see how bad the inflammation is after I've been home-caring myself until the MRI. The GP says she'll see me Monday for the first listen and she's already been told how to reach the cardiologist if the rub sounds worse. Endless pots of chicken soup here I come!
So, I didn't die, and I can get back on the papercrafting once my wrist heals and stops this aching - suits me, there's another crafts fair in three weeks I want to set up a stall on.
Yes, it's true, the 'papercrafting' bug has struck and struck hard. Honestly don't think I could have made it through the past eight months without it. Bonus - we made all our Christmas cards this year and I sold several boxes at a craft fair. My dear husband now thinks perhaps this papercrafting lark has some merit - I made back a fair bit of my initial investment.
See, what happened was, back in early March 2019 I had what was to have been Round1 of root canal treatment - without prophylactic antibiotics thanks to the surgery (GP practice) I'd been registered at until we moved to our downsizer in a smaller town six miles away, the surgery that for some insane reason shredded the medical records I'd hand-carried from America. The surgery that labelled me a complainer for wanting my heart condition checked on schedule. The surgery that told the dentist office 'No, she doesn't have a heart condition!'.
So the dentist (a replacement for the old one who could tell by looking at me I did indeed have a heart condition and he'd be wise to order prophylactic antibiotics for anything more extreme than a simple filling) went on with the treatment and within a week I was on the verge of cardiac tamponade (when the pericardial sac around the heart fills with fluid and squeezes the heart to the point of stopping it...).
I ignored the symptoms, putting it down to 'a cold', 'the flu', overweight and out of shape...anything but what my brain kept insisting (GIRL! You have endocarditis or at least a whomping case of your recurrent pericarditis, FFS go to the GP you numpty!').
Until I returned to the dentist for Round2 and he realised I was probably in the midst of a heart attack (I wasn't but only because he made my husband drive me straight over to the GP surgery to register and be seen as an emergency). The GP took one look, one listen, and had me in the Rapid Access Chest Pain unit so fast my head was spinning. One thing led to another but the short story is my medical records have been corrected, my multiple heart conditions 're-diagnosed' and noted, I'm under the care of a rather superb cardiologist, and every time the dentist looks at me it's only after a course of antibiotics.
Right, so we owe the dentist. The GP, the cardiologist, and all the techs I've seen since say the same thing - 'The dentist saved your life!'. And he did, I know this, and we're sending him a Scottish Dentistry approved thank-you gift for Christmas - without him I wouldn't be seeing another Christmas...something my cardiologist pointed out yesterday just before the angiogram I was sure I wasn't going to survive.
Without being overly maudlin (hard to do when I think about it), the cardiologist and the surgeon and not a few of the nurses thought I was leaving there without at least some stents and more likely quadruple bypass (yeah, well, it really has been that bad here these past eight months). I went in there yesterday genuinely afraid my ticket was about to be punched.
Of course, I did make it through, and I was alert enough to be discharged the same day! During, though, I really didn't think I was going to make it through that angiogram AND right heart study - the angio went through my wrist, my dislocated biceps got in the way and the artery there decided to spasm when they were withdrawing the wires; the right heart study went through my groin AND IT WASN'T AS 'FUN' as the angiogram. But I did come home, and with a rather good result - no blockages, no need for anything...except the finding I am in smack up in the middle of yet another pericarditis flare. sigh
The reason for yesterday? My cardiologist (very-very good and I do trust him, I want to point that out) had never heard of pericarditis (which I knew was the problem - but I didn't go to med school and then specialise in cardiology so I wasn't about to argue overmuch with his training!) causing angina, had never heard of pericardial effusion causing angina, had never heard of Dengue Fever Stage2 (which I had in '95) causing pericarditis much less recurrent pericarditis that also caused angina. He was certain I was in terrible shape and on death's door and maybe even surgery wouldn't help, and did I make out my will and leave instructions for my husband? He wanted to be sure I had all the stents and bypasses he was so sure I was going to need. He kept saying I should be on statins. He was absolutely certain angina doesn't happen without blockages...
Now? Bottom line, he promises never to offer me statins again as my arteries are completely clear, and my heart-lung function is so good he wishes he had my stats. And he told me 'You're right, I did some checking before you came in this morning, and Dengue IS well known to cause recurrent pericarditis AND angina pain in Dengue endemic countries. I'll be following your case for years to come, I won't be discharging you back to your GP for years if ever.'
Could be worse, he could have insisted I take the standard medication (which gives me such horrible side effects it isn't worth trying to use). He could have given in to the other surgeon saying I should be kept in hospital under the effusion 'is sorted' (takes months, ask me how I know this...).
Instead I'm walking a half mile once a week to the GP for her to listen for pericardial rub and in the New Year (probably the second week of January) I'll be having an MRI to see how bad the inflammation is after I've been home-caring myself until the MRI. The GP says she'll see me Monday for the first listen and she's already been told how to reach the cardiologist if the rub sounds worse. Endless pots of chicken soup here I come!
So, I didn't die, and I can get back on the papercrafting once my wrist heals and stops this aching - suits me, there's another crafts fair in three weeks I want to set up a stall on.
08 November 2019
I. Am. Not. A. Foodie.
But I do have to confess to a salt and pepper mill obsession. It's not my fault. I've come to the obsession late in life - despite decades of fine dining (meaning watching the waiter ceremoniously twist a mill over my dish, and having a qualified chef for a son), and the occasional meal in someone's home where the mills were passed casually and don't you dare wonder where the shakers are, diddums!
I just wasn't all that interested in mills. Especially after my sodium intake was ordered restricted (WAH!) and I've never really been a pepper fan; I couldn't wrap my head around other diners being so blinking obsessed with finding THE perfect mill and who really truly could spend the entire meal (and afters, crashing bores, I thought them) going on about the things including how they found the most marvellous set whilst on holiday at (insert name of eye-wateringly expensive holiday destination here).
And then I had a revelation. It all started when we moved house last year and Aspie Paul went behind me to 'repack properly' every bloody box I carefully packed and clearly labelled and stacked in the...wait. I've moaned about this before.
Any road, arriving to the new home, having the removals men stack boxes according to my clear large labels (bedroom boxes to the bedroom, kitchen boxes to the kitchen...) then opening box after box to find Paul had 'repacked properly' - bloody GDit, even the 'essentials' box I'd packed to come in the car with us so we'd have, you know, the essentials like the kettle, a jar of premium instant coffee (there is such a thing, it almost fools you into thinking it's real coffee), mugs, plates, two microwavable cooking vessels, cutlery (BritSpeak for eating and serving utensils)...AND THE BLOODY SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS!
Grrrrrrrrrr - opened that box to find the kettle missing its heating plate, no coffee, in fact nothing I'd packed in that box including THE BLOODY SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS! Instead I found his fishing kit. Really. His reason? The box was just the right size.
Restraining myself from giving Paul a right good telling off (what's the point with an Aspie, they only stand there blinking at you wondering what the hell you're on about, and if they're at all like Paul, going into an hours long sulk because you were mean to them), I grabbed my purse and stalked down to the ironmongers - OMFG kettles, mugs, 'cheap but good enough to get us through' cutlery, all eye-wateringly expensive and in my foolishness I thought I could do better down the local Co-Op (supermarket chain here in Britain, proper name is Co-Operative). Worst, the ironmonger did not stock salt and pepper shakers, they only had shockingly expensive 'mill sets', which admittedly did come filled, so there was that. But on to the Co-Op, sure I'd find shakers there. And cheap cutlery and kettles...
No salt and pepper shakers there but I did find salt and pepper 'refills' - that can't be used to do anything but actually refill. Sigh. I did find disposable cutlery and serving ware plus some over-priced glass bowls promising to be 'microwave and dishwasher safe', and a more reasonably priced travel kettle (1.5L instead of our 2L one I'd packed...).
Back to the ironmonger where I forked over more than £25 (I was that angry with Paul at that point) for the mill set.
Went home and managed to get a halfway decent meal on the table...
And fell into a serious obsession with dining table mills.
OMG, who knew?! Well obviously everyone but me (including my son who couldn't believe I'd managed so long without a proper mill set). I'm going to restrain myself but I will say there is something so luxuriously divine about twisting that mill over your pot/serving dish/dinner plate...
Right. So ever since I've been on a sort of quest to find a seriously good quality mill set - the £25+set being alright in a pinch but clearly better surely exists out there somewhere (finer milling, for one - I have some expensive dental work threatened by the occasional large chunk of sea salt, I'll have you know!).
FF to this morning when my favourite UK homewares store email circular landed to my inbox.
I thought, oh why not, let's see if they've got any nice new mill sets on offer. Er, no, but it did make me slightly smug to see my locally purchased name-brand set (oh ok, Cole and Mason, supposedly the best for things like mills) was A-the most expensive set 'on offer' (20% off) and B-three times the price I'd paid locally even though the one in the circular was 20% off.
Which is both good and bad, good I'd got my set on bargain but not good it's rated as the best. I've now officially given up 'retail' shopping for a top quality mill set and will be looking at restaurant supply. Bad as I hate having to try finding a restaurant supply shop locally or even within the 50 or so miles one way I'm willing to travel to find a shop where I can see and touch and perhaps see a demonstration.
Worst, worst, worst, looking at the circular I realised KitchenAid stand mixers are still horrendously expensive, and for what, I ask, for what?! £550 regular price, £350 on offer - and I still would have to buy attachments that run from £40-£200 each!
I sat here on the sofa looking at that asking myself who in there right mind buys something like that just to bake a nice sponge in their home kitchen, who?! My son has one (and all the attachments accumulated as gifts or purchased one at a time over time) - he's a professional, he needs a decent stand mixer and who makes a better one than KitchenAid, it's the gold standard. But my Kenwood hand mixer+several good silicone spatulas and a nice collection of wooden spoons are more than enough to serve my baking needs, and surely enough for the average home baker barring Mary Berry (who's not really yer average home baker anyway).
sigh. My search for THE perfect salt and pepper mill set continues.
On the bright side, all the Christmas shopping is done. Now I'm onto a small bit of sewing (dressing gown and PJs for Paul), and finishing up a crochet 'Napper's Blanket' for his fishing mate.
Weather wise, the rains have stopped up here in NE Scotland - for now - and it has turned bitterly cold. The first set of winter bedding is on the bed (three sets washed and vacuum packed in late March so ready to go when cold weather hit), the spring, summer, and autumn sets having been washed and vacuum packed away in their turns to await the return of their seasons.
Meals shifted from summer-autumn lighter meals to heavier winter fare. It came earlier than usual this year, and our Indian Summer lasted a mere two days in early October. It's been cooling rapidly with leaves beginning to turn in late August and the last having fallen the beginning of this week. Winter boots now lying dangerously scattered in the entry hall...
I love autumn, it truly is my favourite time of the weather year. Winter comes a very close second, there is something so soul-satisfying about the way a winter sun (oh, that rare beast!) comes through the windows as I cosy up on the sofa under a Napper's Blanket to stitch or read or...
Speaking of the Napper's Blanket...I love a good cosy on the sofa. I love an afternoon winter nap on the bed I made that morning. But I don't love struggling to feel cosy under a standard afghan - why are those things so meagre?! The patterns for those things are never big enough to cover anyone older than ten for a nice kip! You lay there trying to cover feet and shoulders and hips if rolling over, and the futility of it all kills your deliciously sleepy interest in the nap.
So I designed one myself. Depending on the yarn weight, it's 100% acrylic (around 3500m/4000yds total, I like stripes so usually 2600m main colour, 1000 contrast stripes and border+extra for joining yarn when making colour changes) ch200 (aran/4W, 25-50 less or more if 3W or 5W respectively to reach 78-80 inches long so feet and shoulders are cosy at the same time), sc/dc (US/UK) into the back ridge across for the foundation row then sc/dc back-loop only across, ch1 and repeat across working to 65 inches wide (so the roll over covers hip and back nicely). Then I go around in sc/dc in a complimentary contrast border band 'until it looks right'.
Machine wash 40C delicates/sensitive/synthetics, tumble dry low (air drying tends to flatten the texture created by the BLO stitching). Napping bliss, these blankets are amazing if I do say so myself. Paul likes his so much he spent most of the summer sleeping the night under his on top of the made bed - he was a little grumpy when I changed the bedding and folded his Napper's Blanket to the end of the bed. He tried sleeping under it again a few nights ago and had to admit he should have gone under the covers instead. And he's grumpy about that, btw.
Mindless crochet once the foundation row is done, I'm quite enjoying the mindlessness whilst feeling I'm actually accomplishing something during my semi-invalid state (more on that in a later blog. I'm ok but am having to have some more invasive testing soon. yay. not)
I've made three so far and everyone who sees them wants one.
But I do have to confess to a salt and pepper mill obsession. It's not my fault. I've come to the obsession late in life - despite decades of fine dining (meaning watching the waiter ceremoniously twist a mill over my dish, and having a qualified chef for a son), and the occasional meal in someone's home where the mills were passed casually and don't you dare wonder where the shakers are, diddums!
I just wasn't all that interested in mills. Especially after my sodium intake was ordered restricted (WAH!) and I've never really been a pepper fan; I couldn't wrap my head around other diners being so blinking obsessed with finding THE perfect mill and who really truly could spend the entire meal (and afters, crashing bores, I thought them) going on about the things including how they found the most marvellous set whilst on holiday at (insert name of eye-wateringly expensive holiday destination here).
And then I had a revelation. It all started when we moved house last year and Aspie Paul went behind me to 'repack properly' every bloody box I carefully packed and clearly labelled and stacked in the...wait. I've moaned about this before.
Any road, arriving to the new home, having the removals men stack boxes according to my clear large labels (bedroom boxes to the bedroom, kitchen boxes to the kitchen...) then opening box after box to find Paul had 'repacked properly' - bloody GDit, even the 'essentials' box I'd packed to come in the car with us so we'd have, you know, the essentials like the kettle, a jar of premium instant coffee (there is such a thing, it almost fools you into thinking it's real coffee), mugs, plates, two microwavable cooking vessels, cutlery (BritSpeak for eating and serving utensils)...AND THE BLOODY SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS!
Grrrrrrrrrr - opened that box to find the kettle missing its heating plate, no coffee, in fact nothing I'd packed in that box including THE BLOODY SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS! Instead I found his fishing kit. Really. His reason? The box was just the right size.
Restraining myself from giving Paul a right good telling off (what's the point with an Aspie, they only stand there blinking at you wondering what the hell you're on about, and if they're at all like Paul, going into an hours long sulk because you were mean to them), I grabbed my purse and stalked down to the ironmongers - OMFG kettles, mugs, 'cheap but good enough to get us through' cutlery, all eye-wateringly expensive and in my foolishness I thought I could do better down the local Co-Op (supermarket chain here in Britain, proper name is Co-Operative). Worst, the ironmonger did not stock salt and pepper shakers, they only had shockingly expensive 'mill sets', which admittedly did come filled, so there was that. But on to the Co-Op, sure I'd find shakers there. And cheap cutlery and kettles...
No salt and pepper shakers there but I did find salt and pepper 'refills' - that can't be used to do anything but actually refill. Sigh. I did find disposable cutlery and serving ware plus some over-priced glass bowls promising to be 'microwave and dishwasher safe', and a more reasonably priced travel kettle (1.5L instead of our 2L one I'd packed...).
Back to the ironmonger where I forked over more than £25 (I was that angry with Paul at that point) for the mill set.
Went home and managed to get a halfway decent meal on the table...
And fell into a serious obsession with dining table mills.
OMG, who knew?! Well obviously everyone but me (including my son who couldn't believe I'd managed so long without a proper mill set). I'm going to restrain myself but I will say there is something so luxuriously divine about twisting that mill over your pot/serving dish/dinner plate...
Right. So ever since I've been on a sort of quest to find a seriously good quality mill set - the £25+set being alright in a pinch but clearly better surely exists out there somewhere (finer milling, for one - I have some expensive dental work threatened by the occasional large chunk of sea salt, I'll have you know!).
FF to this morning when my favourite UK homewares store email circular landed to my inbox.
I thought, oh why not, let's see if they've got any nice new mill sets on offer. Er, no, but it did make me slightly smug to see my locally purchased name-brand set (oh ok, Cole and Mason, supposedly the best for things like mills) was A-the most expensive set 'on offer' (20% off) and B-three times the price I'd paid locally even though the one in the circular was 20% off.
Which is both good and bad, good I'd got my set on bargain but not good it's rated as the best. I've now officially given up 'retail' shopping for a top quality mill set and will be looking at restaurant supply. Bad as I hate having to try finding a restaurant supply shop locally or even within the 50 or so miles one way I'm willing to travel to find a shop where I can see and touch and perhaps see a demonstration.
Worst, worst, worst, looking at the circular I realised KitchenAid stand mixers are still horrendously expensive, and for what, I ask, for what?! £550 regular price, £350 on offer - and I still would have to buy attachments that run from £40-£200 each!
I sat here on the sofa looking at that asking myself who in there right mind buys something like that just to bake a nice sponge in their home kitchen, who?! My son has one (and all the attachments accumulated as gifts or purchased one at a time over time) - he's a professional, he needs a decent stand mixer and who makes a better one than KitchenAid, it's the gold standard. But my Kenwood hand mixer+several good silicone spatulas and a nice collection of wooden spoons are more than enough to serve my baking needs, and surely enough for the average home baker barring Mary Berry (who's not really yer average home baker anyway).
sigh. My search for THE perfect salt and pepper mill set continues.
On the bright side, all the Christmas shopping is done. Now I'm onto a small bit of sewing (dressing gown and PJs for Paul), and finishing up a crochet 'Napper's Blanket' for his fishing mate.
Weather wise, the rains have stopped up here in NE Scotland - for now - and it has turned bitterly cold. The first set of winter bedding is on the bed (three sets washed and vacuum packed in late March so ready to go when cold weather hit), the spring, summer, and autumn sets having been washed and vacuum packed away in their turns to await the return of their seasons.
Meals shifted from summer-autumn lighter meals to heavier winter fare. It came earlier than usual this year, and our Indian Summer lasted a mere two days in early October. It's been cooling rapidly with leaves beginning to turn in late August and the last having fallen the beginning of this week. Winter boots now lying dangerously scattered in the entry hall...
I love autumn, it truly is my favourite time of the weather year. Winter comes a very close second, there is something so soul-satisfying about the way a winter sun (oh, that rare beast!) comes through the windows as I cosy up on the sofa under a Napper's Blanket to stitch or read or...
Speaking of the Napper's Blanket...I love a good cosy on the sofa. I love an afternoon winter nap on the bed I made that morning. But I don't love struggling to feel cosy under a standard afghan - why are those things so meagre?! The patterns for those things are never big enough to cover anyone older than ten for a nice kip! You lay there trying to cover feet and shoulders and hips if rolling over, and the futility of it all kills your deliciously sleepy interest in the nap.
So I designed one myself. Depending on the yarn weight, it's 100% acrylic (around 3500m/4000yds total, I like stripes so usually 2600m main colour, 1000 contrast stripes and border+extra for joining yarn when making colour changes) ch200 (aran/4W, 25-50 less or more if 3W or 5W respectively to reach 78-80 inches long so feet and shoulders are cosy at the same time), sc/dc (US/UK) into the back ridge across for the foundation row then sc/dc back-loop only across, ch1 and repeat across working to 65 inches wide (so the roll over covers hip and back nicely). Then I go around in sc/dc in a complimentary contrast border band 'until it looks right'.
Machine wash 40C delicates/sensitive/synthetics, tumble dry low (air drying tends to flatten the texture created by the BLO stitching). Napping bliss, these blankets are amazing if I do say so myself. Paul likes his so much he spent most of the summer sleeping the night under his on top of the made bed - he was a little grumpy when I changed the bedding and folded his Napper's Blanket to the end of the bed. He tried sleeping under it again a few nights ago and had to admit he should have gone under the covers instead. And he's grumpy about that, btw.
Mindless crochet once the foundation row is done, I'm quite enjoying the mindlessness whilst feeling I'm actually accomplishing something during my semi-invalid state (more on that in a later blog. I'm ok but am having to have some more invasive testing soon. yay. not)
I've made three so far and everyone who sees them wants one.
11 October 2019
Well, that's it done and dusted except for the gift wrapping. Christmas shopping 2019 is sorted.
My husband is hard to shop for (said nearly every wife ever) and the more Christmas' we spend together the harder the gift giving becomes. The first few years we were together I gave him things like dress shirts and stocking filler desk toys (you know, those endless motion toys, tension relieving squeezy balls), and games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno...I've progressed, finally hit the 'what to get the husband' jackpot last year - flat caps, sleeveless jumpers (aka vests to the American readers:), moleskin trousers and Tattersal shirts, wind-up lanterns, solar shed light... I dropped an 'old mannie' leather key pouch into his stocking, and a few similar small gifts, and really he did seemed quite pleased with his Christmas 2018 haul.
Oh dear - how to 'top' 2018?! I think I've managed it, actually, which surprises me when I look at the Santa Sack I've filled, and the carefully stashed 'big gifts' bag. The Santa Sack is his new preference for a stocking - suits me as I still can't bring myself to finish the needlepoint stocking I started for him years ago. I love needlepoint but something about that design is not inspiring. The Santa Sack, however, is one he unbeknownst to him picked out from an online catalogue - he liked it better than the other offerings and when he went back to what he was doing I ordered it. I've been filling it as things arrive in the post and will wrap everything Christmas Eve when he's banished from the living room so I can watch my Christmas movies in peace (and wrap Christmas presents).
The big gifts bag has been a bit more of a struggle to keep hidden - it's a single (twin) sized bed sheet folded in half length wise, seamed at the sides and a drawstring casing to keep it closed against accidental peeks (don't laugh, the man is in his early 60s and hovers at the front door hoping to catch the postie and couriers then claim he 'accidentally' opened the parcels).
I try to make a low-key big fuss of Christmas. He swears he's 'not into' Christmas - but he really is and I worked that one out after one year I took his word for it and really didn't make any fuss at all, you'd thought us Puritans for all the lack of Christmas Spirit that year.
He used to loath Halloween, didn't think Thanksgiving was worth his time, and when I married him had one - yes, one - Christmas 'decoration' to his name.
That decoration was a Christmas foliage 'pick' consisting of a few plastic holly leaves, a two-branched faux pine bough, and a reasonably attractive small red-gold plastic apple. I used it along with some bargain table Christmas ribbon and a sprayed silver twig fairy wand to gussy up a wreath I made from some honeysuckle vine he cut down from our back garden the first summer after our wedding. It's still our front door wreath.
We moved house to our 'retirement cottage' in September 2018. We've had Harvest Home (Michaelmas, 29th September) using all local foods for our meal. Although he made a great show of laughing derisively at my charity shop bought 'plastic pumpkins' (three stacked Jack'O'Lanterns) he is the one who made sure those went out on the front stoop last year and this year he is eagerly awaiting 'testing' his repair (it lights up and has a motion sensor activated 'Happy Halloween - hahahahahaha' announcement) on the night. We don't get Trick or Treaters but he loves those plastic pumpkins:)
He has acquired the Thanksgiving habit and has already asked me three times if I've ordered the Thanksgiving Bird yet - we order a huge fat chicken from the butcher as turkey doesn't hit his shop until mid-December - and I've reminded him I don't do that until the first week of November (we celebrate the day same date as the American one).
His favourite part of Thanksgiving is grumbling about the Christmas tree and decorations going up after his really favourite part is cleared away and he's snooping around in the kitchen for chicken sandwiches and leftover pumpkin pie. But he makes constant forays into the living room to check progress on the tree decorating ('That bird isn't sitting right...you need to move that red bauble...are you absolutely sure the cat isn't going to bat that glass church/nutcracker/toy soldier/Father Christmas off the lower branches?!') and he LOVES going in and out of the house to admire the lights I've strung. He hangs the wreath as soon as he's finished his Thanksgiving meal, he offers to help string the lights and hang the window displays knowing all the while I'm going to politely decline his help as we've agreed over the years his idea of stringing lights around in-out of the house doesn't make for a pleasing display - and since we've moved to this cottage he's much more interested in making a good display. (Our neighbours had rather spectacular displays last year, so good we did the walking tour and didn't bother with our usual driving tour down to Dundee.)
He's definitely into all things festive since we married and far more so now we've moved house - he's even made a guy for the town bonfire (Guy Fawkes Night, 'Remember, remember the 5th of November...').
He loves his birthdays (well yes, I do make a fuss, of course!) - he didn't used to.
All in, marriage has been good for Paul. We were talking about Brexit last night, and the way it looks as though between the actual climate and the political one, Winter 2019-20 is going to be harsh and rocky and wild. He made a point of saying if he didn't have the festivities to look forward to, if I'd not married him and made such a fuss of these celebration periods, he doesn't think he could have faced the coming winter as well.
I have always-always-always been a preparedness kinda gal, I plan Christmas and birthdays a year in advance, start looking for pumpkin pie filler in September, make sure the linens cupboards are stocked with plenty of blankets, and I make sure pantry-first aid-off-grid cooking supplies are well stocked.
He threw a wee strop when the kettle BBQ arrived last week and it took me a while to calm him down - pointing out the many uses a good quality BBQ has finally slowed to the strop to a few grumbles but what really turned the trick was unboxing the thing and waving the ticket under his nose - I paid a whole £16 for a branded top quality 'starter set' consisting of a brand-new in-box kettle barbie with a three piece BBQ utensil set and-and-and the heavy duty BBQ cover (yes, I won it in an online auction although really the seller should have put that thing on a reserve, I do feel a bit like a thief having got that thing for a mere £16 including post). He grumbled all the way to the Co-Op for BBQ coals, he grumbled while I put the thing together and loaded the coals in. He grumbled the entire 90 minutes wait for the coals to really get going and the transit oil to smoke off so I could start cooking, and he continued to grumble right up to the moment the burgers began to send lovely aroma wafts of grilling beef across the back garden.
He wants BBQ chicken next.
The beauty of a BBQ grill is never-ending, the equipment is not limited to only being used in high summer - I've BBQ'd year-round all my life. As long as the coals get started, BBQ on a kettle grill is seasonless, I've even barbied in the snow. BONUS - the power went down while I was smoking off the transit oil and I was able to point out to my husband we now had the cheap and easy where-with-all to boil water for cooking and cleaning EVEN IF THE POWER GOES DOWN.
I do think we're in for a 'wild and woolly' winter this year. Hopefully I've prepared well enough we can manage in reasonable comfort barring outbreak of armed conflict in our own wee lanes. I'd laugh but it would be a grim laugh - I've lived in countries at war and if ever a country looked and felt as though war could erupt, it is here in Britain with all the Brexit fever going on.
God help us, and God be with us - there are 5th columnists at Westminster trying desperately to kill democracy by stopping us leaving the fascist totalitarian EU, we've never needed God and all His angels more since 1939.
My husband is hard to shop for (said nearly every wife ever) and the more Christmas' we spend together the harder the gift giving becomes. The first few years we were together I gave him things like dress shirts and stocking filler desk toys (you know, those endless motion toys, tension relieving squeezy balls), and games like Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno...I've progressed, finally hit the 'what to get the husband' jackpot last year - flat caps, sleeveless jumpers (aka vests to the American readers:), moleskin trousers and Tattersal shirts, wind-up lanterns, solar shed light... I dropped an 'old mannie' leather key pouch into his stocking, and a few similar small gifts, and really he did seemed quite pleased with his Christmas 2018 haul.
Oh dear - how to 'top' 2018?! I think I've managed it, actually, which surprises me when I look at the Santa Sack I've filled, and the carefully stashed 'big gifts' bag. The Santa Sack is his new preference for a stocking - suits me as I still can't bring myself to finish the needlepoint stocking I started for him years ago. I love needlepoint but something about that design is not inspiring. The Santa Sack, however, is one he unbeknownst to him picked out from an online catalogue - he liked it better than the other offerings and when he went back to what he was doing I ordered it. I've been filling it as things arrive in the post and will wrap everything Christmas Eve when he's banished from the living room so I can watch my Christmas movies in peace (and wrap Christmas presents).
The big gifts bag has been a bit more of a struggle to keep hidden - it's a single (twin) sized bed sheet folded in half length wise, seamed at the sides and a drawstring casing to keep it closed against accidental peeks (don't laugh, the man is in his early 60s and hovers at the front door hoping to catch the postie and couriers then claim he 'accidentally' opened the parcels).
I try to make a low-key big fuss of Christmas. He swears he's 'not into' Christmas - but he really is and I worked that one out after one year I took his word for it and really didn't make any fuss at all, you'd thought us Puritans for all the lack of Christmas Spirit that year.
He used to loath Halloween, didn't think Thanksgiving was worth his time, and when I married him had one - yes, one - Christmas 'decoration' to his name.
That decoration was a Christmas foliage 'pick' consisting of a few plastic holly leaves, a two-branched faux pine bough, and a reasonably attractive small red-gold plastic apple. I used it along with some bargain table Christmas ribbon and a sprayed silver twig fairy wand to gussy up a wreath I made from some honeysuckle vine he cut down from our back garden the first summer after our wedding. It's still our front door wreath.
We moved house to our 'retirement cottage' in September 2018. We've had Harvest Home (Michaelmas, 29th September) using all local foods for our meal. Although he made a great show of laughing derisively at my charity shop bought 'plastic pumpkins' (three stacked Jack'O'Lanterns) he is the one who made sure those went out on the front stoop last year and this year he is eagerly awaiting 'testing' his repair (it lights up and has a motion sensor activated 'Happy Halloween - hahahahahaha' announcement) on the night. We don't get Trick or Treaters but he loves those plastic pumpkins:)
He has acquired the Thanksgiving habit and has already asked me three times if I've ordered the Thanksgiving Bird yet - we order a huge fat chicken from the butcher as turkey doesn't hit his shop until mid-December - and I've reminded him I don't do that until the first week of November (we celebrate the day same date as the American one).
His favourite part of Thanksgiving is grumbling about the Christmas tree and decorations going up after his really favourite part is cleared away and he's snooping around in the kitchen for chicken sandwiches and leftover pumpkin pie. But he makes constant forays into the living room to check progress on the tree decorating ('That bird isn't sitting right...you need to move that red bauble...are you absolutely sure the cat isn't going to bat that glass church/nutcracker/toy soldier/Father Christmas off the lower branches?!') and he LOVES going in and out of the house to admire the lights I've strung. He hangs the wreath as soon as he's finished his Thanksgiving meal, he offers to help string the lights and hang the window displays knowing all the while I'm going to politely decline his help as we've agreed over the years his idea of stringing lights around in-out of the house doesn't make for a pleasing display - and since we've moved to this cottage he's much more interested in making a good display. (Our neighbours had rather spectacular displays last year, so good we did the walking tour and didn't bother with our usual driving tour down to Dundee.)
He's definitely into all things festive since we married and far more so now we've moved house - he's even made a guy for the town bonfire (Guy Fawkes Night, 'Remember, remember the 5th of November...').
He loves his birthdays (well yes, I do make a fuss, of course!) - he didn't used to.
All in, marriage has been good for Paul. We were talking about Brexit last night, and the way it looks as though between the actual climate and the political one, Winter 2019-20 is going to be harsh and rocky and wild. He made a point of saying if he didn't have the festivities to look forward to, if I'd not married him and made such a fuss of these celebration periods, he doesn't think he could have faced the coming winter as well.
I have always-always-always been a preparedness kinda gal, I plan Christmas and birthdays a year in advance, start looking for pumpkin pie filler in September, make sure the linens cupboards are stocked with plenty of blankets, and I make sure pantry-first aid-off-grid cooking supplies are well stocked.
He threw a wee strop when the kettle BBQ arrived last week and it took me a while to calm him down - pointing out the many uses a good quality BBQ has finally slowed to the strop to a few grumbles but what really turned the trick was unboxing the thing and waving the ticket under his nose - I paid a whole £16 for a branded top quality 'starter set' consisting of a brand-new in-box kettle barbie with a three piece BBQ utensil set and-and-and the heavy duty BBQ cover (yes, I won it in an online auction although really the seller should have put that thing on a reserve, I do feel a bit like a thief having got that thing for a mere £16 including post). He grumbled all the way to the Co-Op for BBQ coals, he grumbled while I put the thing together and loaded the coals in. He grumbled the entire 90 minutes wait for the coals to really get going and the transit oil to smoke off so I could start cooking, and he continued to grumble right up to the moment the burgers began to send lovely aroma wafts of grilling beef across the back garden.
He wants BBQ chicken next.
The beauty of a BBQ grill is never-ending, the equipment is not limited to only being used in high summer - I've BBQ'd year-round all my life. As long as the coals get started, BBQ on a kettle grill is seasonless, I've even barbied in the snow. BONUS - the power went down while I was smoking off the transit oil and I was able to point out to my husband we now had the cheap and easy where-with-all to boil water for cooking and cleaning EVEN IF THE POWER GOES DOWN.
I do think we're in for a 'wild and woolly' winter this year. Hopefully I've prepared well enough we can manage in reasonable comfort barring outbreak of armed conflict in our own wee lanes. I'd laugh but it would be a grim laugh - I've lived in countries at war and if ever a country looked and felt as though war could erupt, it is here in Britain with all the Brexit fever going on.
God help us, and God be with us - there are 5th columnists at Westminster trying desperately to kill democracy by stopping us leaving the fascist totalitarian EU, we've never needed God and all His angels more since 1939.
11 September 2019
'Please, can you call my wife?'
Every single morning of the 11th of September since 2001 I wake up hearing that man pleading with me - or someone, surely it was a nightmare and he might have been begging someone else to telephone his wife and tell her he wouldn't be home that night to read bedtime stories to his two wee sons. That first morning, on waking before I knew what was happening, I didn't understand the dream - who was he and why was he standing in the middle of a burning high-rise office area looking straight at me asking me to call his wife, why was a youngish man standing to his left saying 'I don't want to die' over and again, who was he and why was he asking me to telephone his wife?
I didn't connect the dream to what was happening in NYC once I turned on the television to listen to the news - and the news knocked the memory of the dream out of my head until a few days later - suddenly it dawned on me and since then I've never doubted there truly are experiences people have that have no supposedly rational explanation.
And frankly it did not help me get over the thought I'd somehow telepathically connected with a mid-30ish man (saying he was trapped on the 103rd floor and tried to tell me his phone number so I could ring his wife) when a few weeks later a grieving widow-mum of two young boys weepily told one of the ghoulish interviewers about how she was sure her husband had died in the tower as he was always-no-matter-what-always-home every night to read bedtime stories to their two young boys. I've never been able to get past the feeling of guilt I didn't telephone her - if she'd believed me at all, surely it might have been a comfort that his last thoughts were of her and their small sons?
Of all the memories of 9/11 and the days after, that pleading voice is what has stayed with me more than anything else bar one - the voicemail message my friend Joey left on my mobile just before the South Tower collapsed in on him the rest of the people trying to flee down one of the stairs. 'Don't come here', he said, his voice strange, echo-ey and breathless, 'Don't come here no matter what. Once the dust is settled, don't come here.'
A few minutes after he left the message I missed as the mobile was turned off whilst being charged, the tower fell. I'd woke up about the same time he was leaving that message, got downstairs and turned on the box just in time to watch the tower collapse on live telly. I found the message in my voicemail after the mobile towers were switched back on the next day. For 18 years I've mentally kicked myself for missing the chance to say goodbye to him owing to having the phone turned off during the charging - and since then I've never charged my mobile with it turned off. Ever.
Waking on the anniversary morning to find the sun shining in the same way as it had that day makes me angry and terribly sad at the same time. I remember pushing myself out of the house after seeing the North Tower fall to walk down to the complex management office to see if what I thought was happening was real. I remember walking through the complex, eerily silent with clear blue skies, bright sunshine and a small crisp autumnal breeze lifting the American flags hanging from several of my neighbours front doors (mine included).
I remember praying, hoping I was in the midst of some sort of brain-tumour induced hallucination, that on arrival to the manager's office I would discover I was in need of immediate medical attention instead of having just watched hundreds if not thousands of people die as the towers came down. And as I walked I remember thinking having a brain tumour was a much more desirable thing to what I hoped I'd imagined.
But of course what was happening was real. No brain tumour, no hallucination, no 'dream brought on by a bit of bad beef'.
How can the autumn sunshine, the crisp breeze, how can these signs of nature-on-course mock us so after such a terrible thing, how? Every single 11th of September no matter where I am in the world, if the autumn morning dares be as lovely as was on that hideous day, I am angry and sad.
This morning as I type this (at 10am BST) our Scottish sky over my small town is dull, leaden and threatening rain.
Good, the very skies should open and pour down saints and angels tears at the memory of the horror inflicted that terrible day. Every single anniversary day across the entire world until the end of time.
'Please, can you call my wife?'
Every single morning of the 11th of September since 2001 I wake up hearing that man pleading with me - or someone, surely it was a nightmare and he might have been begging someone else to telephone his wife and tell her he wouldn't be home that night to read bedtime stories to his two wee sons. That first morning, on waking before I knew what was happening, I didn't understand the dream - who was he and why was he standing in the middle of a burning high-rise office area looking straight at me asking me to call his wife, why was a youngish man standing to his left saying 'I don't want to die' over and again, who was he and why was he asking me to telephone his wife?
I didn't connect the dream to what was happening in NYC once I turned on the television to listen to the news - and the news knocked the memory of the dream out of my head until a few days later - suddenly it dawned on me and since then I've never doubted there truly are experiences people have that have no supposedly rational explanation.
And frankly it did not help me get over the thought I'd somehow telepathically connected with a mid-30ish man (saying he was trapped on the 103rd floor and tried to tell me his phone number so I could ring his wife) when a few weeks later a grieving widow-mum of two young boys weepily told one of the ghoulish interviewers about how she was sure her husband had died in the tower as he was always-no-matter-what-always-home every night to read bedtime stories to their two young boys. I've never been able to get past the feeling of guilt I didn't telephone her - if she'd believed me at all, surely it might have been a comfort that his last thoughts were of her and their small sons?
Of all the memories of 9/11 and the days after, that pleading voice is what has stayed with me more than anything else bar one - the voicemail message my friend Joey left on my mobile just before the South Tower collapsed in on him the rest of the people trying to flee down one of the stairs. 'Don't come here', he said, his voice strange, echo-ey and breathless, 'Don't come here no matter what. Once the dust is settled, don't come here.'
A few minutes after he left the message I missed as the mobile was turned off whilst being charged, the tower fell. I'd woke up about the same time he was leaving that message, got downstairs and turned on the box just in time to watch the tower collapse on live telly. I found the message in my voicemail after the mobile towers were switched back on the next day. For 18 years I've mentally kicked myself for missing the chance to say goodbye to him owing to having the phone turned off during the charging - and since then I've never charged my mobile with it turned off. Ever.
Waking on the anniversary morning to find the sun shining in the same way as it had that day makes me angry and terribly sad at the same time. I remember pushing myself out of the house after seeing the North Tower fall to walk down to the complex management office to see if what I thought was happening was real. I remember walking through the complex, eerily silent with clear blue skies, bright sunshine and a small crisp autumnal breeze lifting the American flags hanging from several of my neighbours front doors (mine included).
I remember praying, hoping I was in the midst of some sort of brain-tumour induced hallucination, that on arrival to the manager's office I would discover I was in need of immediate medical attention instead of having just watched hundreds if not thousands of people die as the towers came down. And as I walked I remember thinking having a brain tumour was a much more desirable thing to what I hoped I'd imagined.
But of course what was happening was real. No brain tumour, no hallucination, no 'dream brought on by a bit of bad beef'.
How can the autumn sunshine, the crisp breeze, how can these signs of nature-on-course mock us so after such a terrible thing, how? Every single 11th of September no matter where I am in the world, if the autumn morning dares be as lovely as was on that hideous day, I am angry and sad.
This morning as I type this (at 10am BST) our Scottish sky over my small town is dull, leaden and threatening rain.
Good, the very skies should open and pour down saints and angels tears at the memory of the horror inflicted that terrible day. Every single anniversary day across the entire world until the end of time.
'Please, can you call my wife?'
09 September 2019
My dad would have been 98 today (he died in 1985).
My divorce from Crusty has been final for 20 years - signed into history by a SE AL circuit court judge at 0909h on 9 September 1999. Every time I think about that timing I like to think my dad was 'up there somewhere' having a hand in setting Fox and me free of a living rat bastard who'd done little but blight our lives since the day I discovered I was pregnant with Fox.
My dad never liked Crusty. Pop always was a good (and instantaneous) judge of character.
1921 was a good year for most Southern California residents, my family included. The ranch was (I'm told) doing well, the state and especially our area of it was booming, even. My gran was smack in the middle of a long-running feud with W. Mulholland - the details of which my father declined to share aside from one oft told story of Mulholland getting the 'good ladies' of a local Salvation Army chapter to bring a Thanksgiving Basket (charity food basket to 'help poor families enjoy a bit of Thanksgiving fare') out to the ranch and the story went Gran drop kicked the basket from the front steps all the way to the good ladies Model T (wood cladding, open air) parked several yards from the veranda.
Pop would have been a few months old so the story (never told while Gran was alive as the speaking of it would set her off ranting for hours and days about that 'horrible man') was one he got from his much older brothers and some of the ranch hands who happened to be there to see it happen.
Chinatown (the movie) was released in '74 and was one of the last movies she went to see. She came home saying the film was so close to the truth it was more documentary than fictionalised recounting of his later years.
When Mulholland 'popped his clogs' via a stroke (Gran called it a 'fit of apoplexy') in '35, she didn't throw a party or do a wee jig in the kitchen garden - she supposedly prayed for his soul daily hoping he'd 'turn his heart back to God' including the day she read in the LA Times he'd died. She (I'm told) nodding grimly and said she hoped he'd repented his ways before dying but wasn't surprised at the way he'd died (although I'm sure she thought a bolt of lightning would have been more appropriate) then went about her day.
So I never really knew what started the feud (although I did hear rumours it was down to his making inappropriate advances to her, and that he'd tried for years to get her to sell the ranch owing the ginormous artesian spring on the property - that one of his descendents finally succeeded in forcing the capping of so his water company could have the exclusive use of - I was nine and the day the County capped that well my life changed forever), never knew if his being Irish (we were and are firmly Scottish) was the beginning of it or the cause of Gran's lifelong 'distaste' for the Irish and in particular 'jumped-up shanties' like the Mulhollands. All I really know is there was a furious feud between them and she would go miles out of her way to avoid driving Mulholland Drive - and enforced that rule with the rest of us. In my entire life I have only been on Mulholland Drive one time and as soon as I realised I'd turned onto it, I got off it immediately (and somehow ended up in Compton in a particularly dodgy part of town). We weren't electrified until the well was capped and that capping and bringing electricity to the ranch made her especially bitter, btw.
By the time I was born in 1956, Gran was an 'old lady' who was hard to get to know, really. Although she did share Life Lessons (cooking, sewing, weeding out 'the good 'uns from the bad 'uns'), she wasn't big on reminiscing the way my friends grans were so I never did hear from her what my father was like as a child, or what the wars she lived through were like for her as cattle ranch wife, or what it was like to watch motor cars replace horses and carriages, or to see a man walk on the moon.
She did say once - one time only - my father was a difficult birth (he was a 'late in life' baby) and child. She did tell me a small bit about the Great Depression years - mostly that she was proud the family had never been stupid enough to get into the stock market, never had debt, and managed to put her surviving sons through uni, again without debt. Most of what I learned from her I learned by watching her, not listening to her (she wasn't much of a talker, I've no clue which forbearer I take after, Chatty Cathy that I am). She made every movement count but never looked as though she was putting in a hard day.
And she never-ever-ever boasted about her going down to Hollywood and getting herself a paid job as a costumer for one of the biggest movie studios of the time. Her Depression era census entry lists her as a head of household and clothing designer making the eye-watering sum of $500 PER MONTH on top of her earnings from the ranch - yes, by that time my grandfather was splitting his time between ranch and his 'legal, real family' and his adulterous union with a Mexican girl down in San Luis (Sonora) Mexico and apparently Gran was just spiteful enough to greet him on the front steps with a loaded .12ga when he'd roll up. Yet when he died she had his body brought back to the ranch and they are now buried together in the Fontana city cemetery family plot holding my family remains going back to the first years after the ranch was Spanish Land Grant awarded in the late 18th century. (Long story, but an interesting one).
She wasn't a 'soft woman'. Everyone who knew her as a young woman said she was one of the county beauties but was 'bookish' with a uni degree in mathematics and hard to know. And I do know she was not the kindest of mothers, which explains my father in a lot of ways. One story goes he got off the train home from WWII and she gave him a hour to 'catch up' with his wife (my mother who'd come over from Britain as soon as 'war brides' were granted passage) before sending him out to ride fences. Gran was in charge, and there was no discussing it.
I come from a long-lived, long-line of civil and mechanical engineers. Progressive people - I was expected to 'be a lady' but also graduate uni as either a civil or mechanical engineer, and I ended a great disappointment when I turned out to be 'little Suzy homemaker' (Gran's scornful 'final word' on what a disappointment I'd become to the family). My birthday gift from my father the year I aced geometry was a handed-down family heirloom slide rule (which my older sister stole while I was at USCG Basic saying it was wasted on me and it should have been hers all along any road).
With my father's grudging approval I toyed with the idea of studying psychology but the truth was I was only interested in it to discover if I was doomed to become as evil a person as the woman I was raised to believe my mother - the second I realised that was my only motivation, found out Dirty Dort wasn't my biological mother, and most importantly that even were she my real mother I still could choose to be completely different, I sold my books for pocket money, dropped out of the classes I was monitoring (long story, I was in uni at the same time I was forcing myself over to the local high school every week-day morning to meet state law I had to be in my 'age appropriate schooling' whilst monitoring uni-courses I could later turn into 'CLEP' grades towards my degree), and really, never looked back.
My dad died 21st December 1985, just a few months after his 64th birthday - his WWII war wounds finally catching up with him. Was he the greatest father ever, no, and I'm the first to say that. But he was my dad, and I still miss him.
Crusty I don't miss at all - although I do, when I think of it, pray for his soul. For what he did to Fox, he will answer to God even if he repents - God is ever merciful so if Crusty genuinely repents what he did to blight that boy's life, God will forgive. But I never want to see or hear of him again, not in this life or any other.
My divorce from Crusty has been final for 20 years - signed into history by a SE AL circuit court judge at 0909h on 9 September 1999. Every time I think about that timing I like to think my dad was 'up there somewhere' having a hand in setting Fox and me free of a living rat bastard who'd done little but blight our lives since the day I discovered I was pregnant with Fox.
My dad never liked Crusty. Pop always was a good (and instantaneous) judge of character.
1921 was a good year for most Southern California residents, my family included. The ranch was (I'm told) doing well, the state and especially our area of it was booming, even. My gran was smack in the middle of a long-running feud with W. Mulholland - the details of which my father declined to share aside from one oft told story of Mulholland getting the 'good ladies' of a local Salvation Army chapter to bring a Thanksgiving Basket (charity food basket to 'help poor families enjoy a bit of Thanksgiving fare') out to the ranch and the story went Gran drop kicked the basket from the front steps all the way to the good ladies Model T (wood cladding, open air) parked several yards from the veranda.
Pop would have been a few months old so the story (never told while Gran was alive as the speaking of it would set her off ranting for hours and days about that 'horrible man') was one he got from his much older brothers and some of the ranch hands who happened to be there to see it happen.
Chinatown (the movie) was released in '74 and was one of the last movies she went to see. She came home saying the film was so close to the truth it was more documentary than fictionalised recounting of his later years.
When Mulholland 'popped his clogs' via a stroke (Gran called it a 'fit of apoplexy') in '35, she didn't throw a party or do a wee jig in the kitchen garden - she supposedly prayed for his soul daily hoping he'd 'turn his heart back to God' including the day she read in the LA Times he'd died. She (I'm told) nodding grimly and said she hoped he'd repented his ways before dying but wasn't surprised at the way he'd died (although I'm sure she thought a bolt of lightning would have been more appropriate) then went about her day.
So I never really knew what started the feud (although I did hear rumours it was down to his making inappropriate advances to her, and that he'd tried for years to get her to sell the ranch owing the ginormous artesian spring on the property - that one of his descendents finally succeeded in forcing the capping of so his water company could have the exclusive use of - I was nine and the day the County capped that well my life changed forever), never knew if his being Irish (we were and are firmly Scottish) was the beginning of it or the cause of Gran's lifelong 'distaste' for the Irish and in particular 'jumped-up shanties' like the Mulhollands. All I really know is there was a furious feud between them and she would go miles out of her way to avoid driving Mulholland Drive - and enforced that rule with the rest of us. In my entire life I have only been on Mulholland Drive one time and as soon as I realised I'd turned onto it, I got off it immediately (and somehow ended up in Compton in a particularly dodgy part of town). We weren't electrified until the well was capped and that capping and bringing electricity to the ranch made her especially bitter, btw.
By the time I was born in 1956, Gran was an 'old lady' who was hard to get to know, really. Although she did share Life Lessons (cooking, sewing, weeding out 'the good 'uns from the bad 'uns'), she wasn't big on reminiscing the way my friends grans were so I never did hear from her what my father was like as a child, or what the wars she lived through were like for her as cattle ranch wife, or what it was like to watch motor cars replace horses and carriages, or to see a man walk on the moon.
She did say once - one time only - my father was a difficult birth (he was a 'late in life' baby) and child. She did tell me a small bit about the Great Depression years - mostly that she was proud the family had never been stupid enough to get into the stock market, never had debt, and managed to put her surviving sons through uni, again without debt. Most of what I learned from her I learned by watching her, not listening to her (she wasn't much of a talker, I've no clue which forbearer I take after, Chatty Cathy that I am). She made every movement count but never looked as though she was putting in a hard day.
And she never-ever-ever boasted about her going down to Hollywood and getting herself a paid job as a costumer for one of the biggest movie studios of the time. Her Depression era census entry lists her as a head of household and clothing designer making the eye-watering sum of $500 PER MONTH on top of her earnings from the ranch - yes, by that time my grandfather was splitting his time between ranch and his 'legal, real family' and his adulterous union with a Mexican girl down in San Luis (Sonora) Mexico and apparently Gran was just spiteful enough to greet him on the front steps with a loaded .12ga when he'd roll up. Yet when he died she had his body brought back to the ranch and they are now buried together in the Fontana city cemetery family plot holding my family remains going back to the first years after the ranch was Spanish Land Grant awarded in the late 18th century. (Long story, but an interesting one).
She wasn't a 'soft woman'. Everyone who knew her as a young woman said she was one of the county beauties but was 'bookish' with a uni degree in mathematics and hard to know. And I do know she was not the kindest of mothers, which explains my father in a lot of ways. One story goes he got off the train home from WWII and she gave him a hour to 'catch up' with his wife (my mother who'd come over from Britain as soon as 'war brides' were granted passage) before sending him out to ride fences. Gran was in charge, and there was no discussing it.
I come from a long-lived, long-line of civil and mechanical engineers. Progressive people - I was expected to 'be a lady' but also graduate uni as either a civil or mechanical engineer, and I ended a great disappointment when I turned out to be 'little Suzy homemaker' (Gran's scornful 'final word' on what a disappointment I'd become to the family). My birthday gift from my father the year I aced geometry was a handed-down family heirloom slide rule (which my older sister stole while I was at USCG Basic saying it was wasted on me and it should have been hers all along any road).
With my father's grudging approval I toyed with the idea of studying psychology but the truth was I was only interested in it to discover if I was doomed to become as evil a person as the woman I was raised to believe my mother - the second I realised that was my only motivation, found out Dirty Dort wasn't my biological mother, and most importantly that even were she my real mother I still could choose to be completely different, I sold my books for pocket money, dropped out of the classes I was monitoring (long story, I was in uni at the same time I was forcing myself over to the local high school every week-day morning to meet state law I had to be in my 'age appropriate schooling' whilst monitoring uni-courses I could later turn into 'CLEP' grades towards my degree), and really, never looked back.
My dad died 21st December 1985, just a few months after his 64th birthday - his WWII war wounds finally catching up with him. Was he the greatest father ever, no, and I'm the first to say that. But he was my dad, and I still miss him.
Crusty I don't miss at all - although I do, when I think of it, pray for his soul. For what he did to Fox, he will answer to God even if he repents - God is ever merciful so if Crusty genuinely repents what he did to blight that boy's life, God will forgive. But I never want to see or hear of him again, not in this life or any other.
30 August 2019
20 August 2019
Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of my arrival to Scotland to see if Paul and I were as good a match in person as we seemed to be through two years of telephone and email conversations. The plan was we'd see if we could get along sharing one small Scottish bathroom and if we could, we'd marry - which we did.
Looking back now it seems insane that I took such a chance - one friend contacted me three days after my arrival to make sure Paul hadn't killed me and hidden my body under the floorboards. A former colleague kept checking in until I'd been here a few years to make sure I was still breathing. She still sends a Christmas email 'just to be sure'.
At the time I took that Atlanta to Edinburgh flight (via Chicago and Copenhagen, the layovers were interesting), Fox and his sister and I were still estranged so they had no real input and honestly had we not been estranged I quite likely would never have got on that plane in the first place. Four months after I'd arrived to Scotland and Paul and I were knee deep in planning a wedding, a friend I'd kept in contact with told Fox I'd flitted off to Scotland the way I had, was being married in the New Year, and gave my son the phone number. He immediately telephoned to tell me he was flabbergasted and worried that I'd done something so daring 'at your age, Mum, wth were you thinking?!' (I was ten days shy of 54). His sister, on the other hand, mostly shrugged and left it at 'Are you happy?' then plunged straight into her woes and worries and well-beings - she's always been that way, I don't let it bother me ('Oh, it's your birthday? Happy Birthday. Mom, that idiot son of mine has only gone and...').
And of course, there were things Paul and I both had to work out and through once it dawned us about three months in that we were a rather good match despite some rather large differences in personality, habits, opinions.
Adjustments have been made in all areas and over all our life together is good - he's learned to trust me to make decisions about running the household (and using hand and power tools, he's now at the point if he needs a screwdriver or small claw hammer he asks me if he can borrow mine, and he doesn't flinch when I break out the jig and circular saws to, say, build a quilting frame or bookcase). I'm gardening again and the exercise is good for me and the way our front, back and sides are shaping up - he no longer argues about what and where to plant (yes, well, he does moan a bit about the containers I keep buying to use in the front garden as everyone's drains run through there so I can't plant anything in the actual ground). He's still an absolute horror as a motor passenger so I'm still on that provisional driving licence and haven't been behind the wheel since 2013; his eyesight and reflexes aren't what they were - he sold the motorbike when we sold the house and he's reluctant to take long driving trips these days but refuses to have his eyes checked or go see the GP for what we laughingly call an 'MOT' (car inspection that must be done annually) - thank-heavens for the 60+bus pass or I'd never get out of the village:). We're not a wildly romantic couple, rather we bumble along nicely and are good for one another in so many ways.
The older we become the even easier things are, moving house to this small cottage has been a real boost to us both. Everything is on level easy to navigate ground here so I can get out to walk for exercise or a quick nip down the shops (and he won't admit it but it's easier for him as well). Living costs are lower in a smaller property even with the inevitable expenses incurred 'settling in' - money is usually an issue for an Aspie like Paul so the savings help in more ways than just the bank balance.
The plumber is coming next week to change kitchen and bath basin taps, and fit a water bib through the bathroom wall to the front garden - and Paul only wanted three months to agree with me those had to be changed. Which is a huge improvement for Paul - it took seven years at the old house for him to admit we needed to do something major to the bathroom (and then of course a year later we sold the house and moved here). Next spring the bathtub is coming out and a shower cabinet fitted in its place, and the kitchen will be renovated (re-wire and plumbing for the dishwasher, tumble dryer, and relocated fridge-freezer, cooktop, vent-to-the-outside extractor fan, and raised oven; new cabinets with pull-out drawers and slots - ageing-in-place work that will make the kitchen usable for us both no matter how old we manage to become). I'd love to fit a small water closet where Paul's bedroom closet is (mine is being used for a 'pantry of doom' - medical supplies, kitchen and toilet roll, bottled water, tinned food, rice, etc - and yes I rotate. Coming from Hurricane Central USA, preparedness is my real first name!). But I think that WC may be a far distant dream. Unless we win the lottery...
Although this is only a one bedroom cottage, this house is perfect for 'two old gits'. We love it here. Despite the cottage being next to a historic landmark tourist attraction, the solitude here is superb - the landmark garden, open and busy four days a week between 10am and 4pm April through September, is sited relative to ours in such a way as to not be intrusive; we get no foot or motor traffic past our windows. The couple in the other semi-detached are friendly without being overly so. The peace is just the ticket for an older Asperger's person, Paul is so much more relaxed here. As for me, I can get out and about on my own (Paul's not much for socialising and visiting local attractions), and owing to his Asperger's induced need for 'personal space' I am able to sew-crochet-needlework for hours without interruption. The galley kitchen is a marvel for cooking in - plenty of cabinets so all my equipment is easy to fetch and use, and once the reno is done, this kitchen will be absolutely perfect in my opinion. This property suits us and I think we can honestly say moving to this cottage has made a huge improvement in our lives. 1st September will be the one year anniversary of moving here and Paul still can't believe we're here but then follows saying that with 'But it feels as though we've always been here.'
Last night I asked him if he was truly happy and he said he couldn't believe it's been nine years, that he can't imagine without feeling sick ever going back to the way his life was before I arrived.
Works for me:)
Looking back now it seems insane that I took such a chance - one friend contacted me three days after my arrival to make sure Paul hadn't killed me and hidden my body under the floorboards. A former colleague kept checking in until I'd been here a few years to make sure I was still breathing. She still sends a Christmas email 'just to be sure'.
At the time I took that Atlanta to Edinburgh flight (via Chicago and Copenhagen, the layovers were interesting), Fox and his sister and I were still estranged so they had no real input and honestly had we not been estranged I quite likely would never have got on that plane in the first place. Four months after I'd arrived to Scotland and Paul and I were knee deep in planning a wedding, a friend I'd kept in contact with told Fox I'd flitted off to Scotland the way I had, was being married in the New Year, and gave my son the phone number. He immediately telephoned to tell me he was flabbergasted and worried that I'd done something so daring 'at your age, Mum, wth were you thinking?!' (I was ten days shy of 54). His sister, on the other hand, mostly shrugged and left it at 'Are you happy?' then plunged straight into her woes and worries and well-beings - she's always been that way, I don't let it bother me ('Oh, it's your birthday? Happy Birthday. Mom, that idiot son of mine has only gone and...').
And of course, there were things Paul and I both had to work out and through once it dawned us about three months in that we were a rather good match despite some rather large differences in personality, habits, opinions.
Adjustments have been made in all areas and over all our life together is good - he's learned to trust me to make decisions about running the household (and using hand and power tools, he's now at the point if he needs a screwdriver or small claw hammer he asks me if he can borrow mine, and he doesn't flinch when I break out the jig and circular saws to, say, build a quilting frame or bookcase). I'm gardening again and the exercise is good for me and the way our front, back and sides are shaping up - he no longer argues about what and where to plant (yes, well, he does moan a bit about the containers I keep buying to use in the front garden as everyone's drains run through there so I can't plant anything in the actual ground). He's still an absolute horror as a motor passenger so I'm still on that provisional driving licence and haven't been behind the wheel since 2013; his eyesight and reflexes aren't what they were - he sold the motorbike when we sold the house and he's reluctant to take long driving trips these days but refuses to have his eyes checked or go see the GP for what we laughingly call an 'MOT' (car inspection that must be done annually) - thank-heavens for the 60+bus pass or I'd never get out of the village:). We're not a wildly romantic couple, rather we bumble along nicely and are good for one another in so many ways.
The older we become the even easier things are, moving house to this small cottage has been a real boost to us both. Everything is on level easy to navigate ground here so I can get out to walk for exercise or a quick nip down the shops (and he won't admit it but it's easier for him as well). Living costs are lower in a smaller property even with the inevitable expenses incurred 'settling in' - money is usually an issue for an Aspie like Paul so the savings help in more ways than just the bank balance.
The plumber is coming next week to change kitchen and bath basin taps, and fit a water bib through the bathroom wall to the front garden - and Paul only wanted three months to agree with me those had to be changed. Which is a huge improvement for Paul - it took seven years at the old house for him to admit we needed to do something major to the bathroom (and then of course a year later we sold the house and moved here). Next spring the bathtub is coming out and a shower cabinet fitted in its place, and the kitchen will be renovated (re-wire and plumbing for the dishwasher, tumble dryer, and relocated fridge-freezer, cooktop, vent-to-the-outside extractor fan, and raised oven; new cabinets with pull-out drawers and slots - ageing-in-place work that will make the kitchen usable for us both no matter how old we manage to become). I'd love to fit a small water closet where Paul's bedroom closet is (mine is being used for a 'pantry of doom' - medical supplies, kitchen and toilet roll, bottled water, tinned food, rice, etc - and yes I rotate. Coming from Hurricane Central USA, preparedness is my real first name!). But I think that WC may be a far distant dream. Unless we win the lottery...
Although this is only a one bedroom cottage, this house is perfect for 'two old gits'. We love it here. Despite the cottage being next to a historic landmark tourist attraction, the solitude here is superb - the landmark garden, open and busy four days a week between 10am and 4pm April through September, is sited relative to ours in such a way as to not be intrusive; we get no foot or motor traffic past our windows. The couple in the other semi-detached are friendly without being overly so. The peace is just the ticket for an older Asperger's person, Paul is so much more relaxed here. As for me, I can get out and about on my own (Paul's not much for socialising and visiting local attractions), and owing to his Asperger's induced need for 'personal space' I am able to sew-crochet-needlework for hours without interruption. The galley kitchen is a marvel for cooking in - plenty of cabinets so all my equipment is easy to fetch and use, and once the reno is done, this kitchen will be absolutely perfect in my opinion. This property suits us and I think we can honestly say moving to this cottage has made a huge improvement in our lives. 1st September will be the one year anniversary of moving here and Paul still can't believe we're here but then follows saying that with 'But it feels as though we've always been here.'
Last night I asked him if he was truly happy and he said he couldn't believe it's been nine years, that he can't imagine without feeling sick ever going back to the way his life was before I arrived.
Works for me:)
04 August 2019
SEMPER PARATUS AYE!
Happy 229th Birthday to the USCG. I joined because I wanted to be a life saver, not a life taker and am proud to have served as one of the first women back into active service in 1974 after women were demobbed in 1946. S-91 FOREVER!
Happy 229th Birthday to the USCG. I joined because I wanted to be a life saver, not a life taker and am proud to have served as one of the first women back into active service in 1974 after women were demobbed in 1946. S-91 FOREVER!
- We're always ready for the call,
- We place our trust in Thee.
- Through surf and storm and howling gale,
- High shall our purpose be,
- "Semper Paratus" is our guide,
- Our fame, our glory, too.
- To fight to save or fight and die!
- Aye! Coast Guard, we are for you.
02 August 2019
We live on the border of the conservation area - and I do mean 'on the border' as our back garden (which is really mostly a lovely small patio) shares a dry stone garden wall with a historic landmark garden. Just now there is no privacy when the garden is open to visitors (and the garden gets a lot of visitors) and most of those visitors have no shame about looking over into our property. Hopefully by the end of summer we'll have erected a privacy screen - but the plan has to be approved by the Historic Trust operating the landmark garden and must comply with their 'in keeping with' rule. The screening plan has already been granted provisional approval but the national office has yet to approve it 'officially'. No doubt it will be granted but the wheels turn slowly...
Any road, another consequence of living right on the border of a conservation area is outdoors anything has to be done in a way that doesn't detract from the historic appearance of the area - no flashing Santa and Sleigh displays on the roof at Christmas, for example, and any garden art can't be 'too modern'. No worries, we're not 'too modern' (we tend to vintage decor indoors and 'tasteful' cottagey garden ornaments and planting outdoors).
SIDEBAR MOMENT:
Our town is a town, officially. Unofficially it is more like a large village and we can't say enough about how happy we are to live here. Every month we have an open air market in the town centre, we enjoy travelling concerts and theatre performances (including the obligatory panto at Christmas), and at Christmas the locals gather in small congenial groups to do walking tours of the Christmas lights more and more residents are putting on display. Here in the conservation area most of the main road residents go Victorian-Edwardian with their displays, the shopkeepers, also in the conservation area, do the same, and it really is such a satisfying round Christmas 2018 Paul and I didn't even bother driving down to Dundee to do a driving lights tour.
The designated 'front' of our property is best described as secluded and next to tiny (which suits us at our age as it's less to have to maintain) so technically I suppose if we were interested in lining the front with, say, 4 foot tall plastic snowmen or a Nativity scene, we could. (I suppose here is where I must confess I've long dreamt of a plastic pink flamingo flock but some dreams aren't meant to come true and the pink flamingo flock is one of those not meant to come true dreams)
The neighbouring lane residents (also in the conservation area but nearly as secluded as we are on our goat track) 'go to town' with their Christmas lighting - one house in particular seems serious about attempting to be seen from the ISS. Luckily all we get from their display is the flash reflection as their display changes colours and 'twinkle' speeds - not a problem, really, it is akin to the Aurora Borealis in colours and 'flashing'. Of course, the neighbour who prefers more tasteful Christmas lighting (his tree is on display through the front bay window from afternoon until 10pm when his wife draws the curtains), loathes the 'excess' - the lights go on at dusk and continue to light up the lane until after midnight and shine straight into every window on the front elevation of the poor man's home...
As for Paul and me, we liked our 2018 display of a bit of white lighting on the topiaries flanking our front door. I loved the twinkle effect but it drains the batteries so I kept the display on steady. If I'd been thinking when I bought the battery 'micro lights' (OMGoodness, those new-fangled 'micro lights' battery or solar are AMAZING!!) I would have gone for the solar version, but heigh ho, live and learn as me old dad used to say.
Paul generally leaves these things to me with the request being 'Please, don't go overboard' and I like he trusts my judgement. Last year I used just two 20bulb light strands for the topiaries - which was nice enough but not really. So I watched the January sales on the two online lights retailers and scored some more white micro light sets, and some coloured micro lights sets, and one tasteful 'stars' drop light set for the kitchen window (which fronts our front garden and path and can be seen by the lovely 80ish year old lady from her upper floor living room window in the property two goat tracks over).
And I've just now bought the last of the 2019 Christmas (and beyond, I now have everything for making a tasteful 'in keeping' Christmas lights display) lights. Yes, I've bought 2x100bulb solar fairy lights (traditional as the 100bulb solar micro light strands are a bit over of my budget). I will string these atop the border fencing and my outdoor lights display will be lovely - simple, nothing flashy or over the top, and best of all, nothing so extravagant the walking lights tourers will not be drawn down the goat track to gawp but will see the lighting as a sort of peripheral effect as they stroll the goat track connecting to the 'seeable from the ISS' property goat track.
The heat, humidity, and torrential rain here across the UK continues on, and yesterday Down South a reservoir was partially breached causing an entire village to be evacuated for fear of dangerous flooding.
Wednesday afternoon we had to go down to Dundee but were 'waylaid' by the gardener at the historic property - stood out there in the heat and humidity for nearly an hour chatting and paid for it once home several hours later - swollen limbs, shortness of breath, some angina pain, and a few other unpleasant heat-humidity related effects. The older I become the harder it is becoming to cope well with heat and humidity. As advised by the cardiologist, I have been keeping track of temperature and humidity (LOVE my cheap Chinese combi-thermometer/hygrometer!) and am dismayed to find any temp over 22C/72F+70% humidity is a sure trigger for heart symptoms.
My 'stoopid little heart thingie' is now a 'stoopid biggish heart thingie'. dammit.
Any road, another consequence of living right on the border of a conservation area is outdoors anything has to be done in a way that doesn't detract from the historic appearance of the area - no flashing Santa and Sleigh displays on the roof at Christmas, for example, and any garden art can't be 'too modern'. No worries, we're not 'too modern' (we tend to vintage decor indoors and 'tasteful' cottagey garden ornaments and planting outdoors).
SIDEBAR MOMENT:
Our town is a town, officially. Unofficially it is more like a large village and we can't say enough about how happy we are to live here. Every month we have an open air market in the town centre, we enjoy travelling concerts and theatre performances (including the obligatory panto at Christmas), and at Christmas the locals gather in small congenial groups to do walking tours of the Christmas lights more and more residents are putting on display. Here in the conservation area most of the main road residents go Victorian-Edwardian with their displays, the shopkeepers, also in the conservation area, do the same, and it really is such a satisfying round Christmas 2018 Paul and I didn't even bother driving down to Dundee to do a driving lights tour.
The designated 'front' of our property is best described as secluded and next to tiny (which suits us at our age as it's less to have to maintain) so technically I suppose if we were interested in lining the front with, say, 4 foot tall plastic snowmen or a Nativity scene, we could. (I suppose here is where I must confess I've long dreamt of a plastic pink flamingo flock but some dreams aren't meant to come true and the pink flamingo flock is one of those not meant to come true dreams)
The neighbouring lane residents (also in the conservation area but nearly as secluded as we are on our goat track) 'go to town' with their Christmas lighting - one house in particular seems serious about attempting to be seen from the ISS. Luckily all we get from their display is the flash reflection as their display changes colours and 'twinkle' speeds - not a problem, really, it is akin to the Aurora Borealis in colours and 'flashing'. Of course, the neighbour who prefers more tasteful Christmas lighting (his tree is on display through the front bay window from afternoon until 10pm when his wife draws the curtains), loathes the 'excess' - the lights go on at dusk and continue to light up the lane until after midnight and shine straight into every window on the front elevation of the poor man's home...
As for Paul and me, we liked our 2018 display of a bit of white lighting on the topiaries flanking our front door. I loved the twinkle effect but it drains the batteries so I kept the display on steady. If I'd been thinking when I bought the battery 'micro lights' (OMGoodness, those new-fangled 'micro lights' battery or solar are AMAZING!!) I would have gone for the solar version, but heigh ho, live and learn as me old dad used to say.
Paul generally leaves these things to me with the request being 'Please, don't go overboard' and I like he trusts my judgement. Last year I used just two 20bulb light strands for the topiaries - which was nice enough but not really. So I watched the January sales on the two online lights retailers and scored some more white micro light sets, and some coloured micro lights sets, and one tasteful 'stars' drop light set for the kitchen window (which fronts our front garden and path and can be seen by the lovely 80ish year old lady from her upper floor living room window in the property two goat tracks over).
And I've just now bought the last of the 2019 Christmas (and beyond, I now have everything for making a tasteful 'in keeping' Christmas lights display) lights. Yes, I've bought 2x100bulb solar fairy lights (traditional as the 100bulb solar micro light strands are a bit over of my budget). I will string these atop the border fencing and my outdoor lights display will be lovely - simple, nothing flashy or over the top, and best of all, nothing so extravagant the walking lights tourers will not be drawn down the goat track to gawp but will see the lighting as a sort of peripheral effect as they stroll the goat track connecting to the 'seeable from the ISS' property goat track.
The heat, humidity, and torrential rain here across the UK continues on, and yesterday Down South a reservoir was partially breached causing an entire village to be evacuated for fear of dangerous flooding.
Wednesday afternoon we had to go down to Dundee but were 'waylaid' by the gardener at the historic property - stood out there in the heat and humidity for nearly an hour chatting and paid for it once home several hours later - swollen limbs, shortness of breath, some angina pain, and a few other unpleasant heat-humidity related effects. The older I become the harder it is becoming to cope well with heat and humidity. As advised by the cardiologist, I have been keeping track of temperature and humidity (LOVE my cheap Chinese combi-thermometer/hygrometer!) and am dismayed to find any temp over 22C/72F+70% humidity is a sure trigger for heart symptoms.
My 'stoopid little heart thingie' is now a 'stoopid biggish heart thingie'. dammit.
06 July 2019
'...California's shaking/like an angry child will/who has asked for love/and is unanswered still...'
My daughter is there. My oldest friends and their families are there.
I'm not because Life and I took a path leading away from Southern California, the Desert SouthWest, and the Pacific NorthWest in 1974 - the last time I was there was autumn 1999 and I remember at one point during the flight back to Alabama, a voice in my head said 'look down' and I looked down to see the plane was over Red Rocks. The voice in my head said 'You'll never pass this way again' and I sat there quietly crying and watching until the plane cleared The West and we were over the MidWest.
My daughter is there. My oldest friends and their families are there.
I'm not because Life and I took a path leading away from Southern California, the Desert SouthWest, and the Pacific NorthWest in 1974 - the last time I was there was autumn 1999 and I remember at one point during the flight back to Alabama, a voice in my head said 'look down' and I looked down to see the plane was over Red Rocks. The voice in my head said 'You'll never pass this way again' and I sat there quietly crying and watching until the plane cleared The West and we were over the MidWest.
The papers lie there helplessly
In a pile outside the door
I've tried and tried, but I just can't remember what they're for
The world outside is tugging like a beggar at my sleeve
In a pile outside the door
I've tried and tried, but I just can't remember what they're for
The world outside is tugging like a beggar at my sleeve
Oh, that's much too old a story to believe
And you know that it's taken its share of me
Even though you take such good care of me
Even though you take such good care of me
Now you say "Morocco" and that makes me smile
I haven't seen Morocco in a long, long while
The dreams are rolling down across the places in my mind
And I've just had a taste of something fine
I haven't seen Morocco in a long, long while
The dreams are rolling down across the places in my mind
And I've just had a taste of something fine
29 June 2019
Oh dear. Lately I find myself consciously refraining from answering the casual 'Hello! How are you?' with a tedious recitation of my heart health. I promised myself as a teenager I would never be one of those dreadful old people banging on about their health (well, lack of health, actually) and I continue to be determined to not be one.
So, I joined an online heart health forum to use as my space to mourn-complain-seek comfort and managing tips (love the tip about using a trolley in the supermarket or chain store to lean on - anything to avoid a Zimmer frame, eh old girl?). Now when I met someone in the shops or in the library vestibule or the church car park I am not tempted to respond to 'How are you?' with a complete rundown of my latest consultant appointment/ache/outright pain/meds schedule...
Now. Here's where I stress (and really, this part should be highlighted - if, dear reader, you are inclined to 'eye-ball glaze over', read this following part and then go off skipping the rest of this post): NEVER 'SOLDIER ON'/MAN UP/BE BRAVE/KEEP A STIFF UPPER LIP SO YOU WON'T BE THOUGHT A MOANER; ABSOLUTELY NEVER OMIT OR LIE OR MUMBLE OR OTHERWISE MAKE LIGHT OF SYMPTOMS YOU KNOW DAMN WELL ARE GERMANE AND IMPORTANT FOR THE GP AND CARDIOLOGIST AND ALL OTHER HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS TO KNOW!! Never. Ever. So when they ask - do you get chest pain only when you exert yourself, or does it happen when you're sitting/lying there doing absolutely nothing - ANSWER MEDICS QUESTIONS TRUTHFULLY! Not doing so will mean they don't have the information they need to decide what is maybe going on and which tests will help them know for sure what may be/is wrong, and that means you won't get the right treatment AND YOU COULD DIE.
A quick word about terminology. In the USA where I first had my 'fun' experience with pericarditis, once it became apparent to the medics I was having it again (ok, and again, and again, and again...) they told me I have 'idiopathic chronic pericarditis' most likely owing to the Rheumatic Heart Syndrome (RHS) developed as a child predisposing me to 'all sorts of things'. swell. groovy. not. Now I'm in the UK I have to learn to say 'recurrent' for 'chronic', and leave off the 'idiopathic' until they know for sure the recurrent aspect isn't down to a discoverable reason. Now, I can use the 'RHS' as it's called that here as well, but there are some other terminology differences between the UK and the US and using the wrong ones for the country I happen to be can be a real problem getting proper medical attention especially in an emergency - which is one of the reasons I booked an appointment with the GP to get some answers to questions I didn't know to ask the cardiologist when I saw him 18th June.
Yesterday afternoon I saw the GP and she told me I should order a MedicAlert bracelet to wear 24/7/365. The engraving my GP wanted is: Angina, Recurrent Pericarditis - she said when I fill out the online forms I will have a space on the e-record to note the RHS, and the pericardial effusion, and the aortic valve scarring (and when she said that 'RHS' part she made a point of saying 'And you do have it, it's officially official we agree with the US diagnosis') but the only actual engraving should be the angina and recurrent pericarditis. Apparently here in the UK they say 'recurrent' for chronic - and they now also agree with that diagnosis.
The angina can't be noted just now as stable (angina pectoris) or unstable as 'they' still don't know for sure which it is, or what has caused it to be a constant since around 1999. Hence her instruction it should be on the bracelet as 'Angina' without specification so First Responders have a hint should I collapse on the pavements. Likewise the recurrent pericarditis - if it's acute it could squeeze my heart and they need to know to do an echo to discover if that is why I've collapsed.
Paul and I walked to the health centre for the appointment; after the appointment we meandered home on foot - stopped in a few shops, chatted with encountered neighbours, and got home last night just in time to 'put the tea on'. A few hours later I had interruption-free time to concentrate on ordering the bracelet.
BLIMEY, who knew? I struggled two hours completing the online forms to order the bracelet (really, does it all have to be so exhaustingly complicated, really?), finally got through all the virtual paperwork with the end result I am now a fully paid up member of a 'get the info to the emergency medics quick' organisation, and am awaiting the arrival of the bracelet. The engraving is as the doctor ordered with the MedicAlert 24/7/365 contact phone number also engraved on the bracelet disc. All the First Responder and/or hospital has to do is ring the phone line noted on the disc and they will have all my information to hand.
Right. In all honesty the thought of having to wear a MedicAlert bracelet is simultaneously galling and reassuring. Reassuring in that should the information be required in an emergency (NHS number, name-address-date of birth info, conditions and meds, cardiologist and GP names and numbers, ICE designee - my husband of course), all the info is all on an e-record - if the First Responders and/or hospital have an working phone line, and if the computers don't go down. Really, it IS reassuring, I feel as though I will regain a bit more independence with that bracelet strapped around my wrist - for example, I can now feel confident to use my 'over-60s' bus pass to go off to Dundee or Aberdeen on my own without the worry no-one will know what's going on if I drop in the shops:)
But. It's galling - I've known most of my life I have a 'stoopid little heart thingie' and for all of those years until now I've managed to avoid prescription meds and things like MedicAlert bracelets. But now I need the meds and the bracelet, and did I forget to mention the worst-so-far?
The 'worst-so-far' is the cardiologist said on 18 June if I'm not able to say the angina only-only-only happens on exertion at our next meeting (scheduled for late October 2019), he's going to order a cardiac catheterisation.
OH BLOODY DEAR!
So, I joined an online heart health forum to use as my space to mourn-complain-seek comfort and managing tips (love the tip about using a trolley in the supermarket or chain store to lean on - anything to avoid a Zimmer frame, eh old girl?). Now when I met someone in the shops or in the library vestibule or the church car park I am not tempted to respond to 'How are you?' with a complete rundown of my latest consultant appointment/ache/outright pain/meds schedule...
Now. Here's where I stress (and really, this part should be highlighted - if, dear reader, you are inclined to 'eye-ball glaze over', read this following part and then go off skipping the rest of this post): NEVER 'SOLDIER ON'/MAN UP/BE BRAVE/KEEP A STIFF UPPER LIP SO YOU WON'T BE THOUGHT A MOANER; ABSOLUTELY NEVER OMIT OR LIE OR MUMBLE OR OTHERWISE MAKE LIGHT OF SYMPTOMS YOU KNOW DAMN WELL ARE GERMANE AND IMPORTANT FOR THE GP AND CARDIOLOGIST AND ALL OTHER HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS TO KNOW!! Never. Ever. So when they ask - do you get chest pain only when you exert yourself, or does it happen when you're sitting/lying there doing absolutely nothing - ANSWER MEDICS QUESTIONS TRUTHFULLY! Not doing so will mean they don't have the information they need to decide what is maybe going on and which tests will help them know for sure what may be/is wrong, and that means you won't get the right treatment AND YOU COULD DIE.
A quick word about terminology. In the USA where I first had my 'fun' experience with pericarditis, once it became apparent to the medics I was having it again (ok, and again, and again, and again...) they told me I have 'idiopathic chronic pericarditis' most likely owing to the Rheumatic Heart Syndrome (RHS) developed as a child predisposing me to 'all sorts of things'. swell. groovy. not. Now I'm in the UK I have to learn to say 'recurrent' for 'chronic', and leave off the 'idiopathic' until they know for sure the recurrent aspect isn't down to a discoverable reason. Now, I can use the 'RHS' as it's called that here as well, but there are some other terminology differences between the UK and the US and using the wrong ones for the country I happen to be can be a real problem getting proper medical attention especially in an emergency - which is one of the reasons I booked an appointment with the GP to get some answers to questions I didn't know to ask the cardiologist when I saw him 18th June.
Yesterday afternoon I saw the GP and she told me I should order a MedicAlert bracelet to wear 24/7/365. The engraving my GP wanted is: Angina, Recurrent Pericarditis - she said when I fill out the online forms I will have a space on the e-record to note the RHS, and the pericardial effusion, and the aortic valve scarring (and when she said that 'RHS' part she made a point of saying 'And you do have it, it's officially official we agree with the US diagnosis') but the only actual engraving should be the angina and recurrent pericarditis. Apparently here in the UK they say 'recurrent' for chronic - and they now also agree with that diagnosis.
The angina can't be noted just now as stable (angina pectoris) or unstable as 'they' still don't know for sure which it is, or what has caused it to be a constant since around 1999. Hence her instruction it should be on the bracelet as 'Angina' without specification so First Responders have a hint should I collapse on the pavements. Likewise the recurrent pericarditis - if it's acute it could squeeze my heart and they need to know to do an echo to discover if that is why I've collapsed.
Paul and I walked to the health centre for the appointment; after the appointment we meandered home on foot - stopped in a few shops, chatted with encountered neighbours, and got home last night just in time to 'put the tea on'. A few hours later I had interruption-free time to concentrate on ordering the bracelet.
BLIMEY, who knew? I struggled two hours completing the online forms to order the bracelet (really, does it all have to be so exhaustingly complicated, really?), finally got through all the virtual paperwork with the end result I am now a fully paid up member of a 'get the info to the emergency medics quick' organisation, and am awaiting the arrival of the bracelet. The engraving is as the doctor ordered with the MedicAlert 24/7/365 contact phone number also engraved on the bracelet disc. All the First Responder and/or hospital has to do is ring the phone line noted on the disc and they will have all my information to hand.
Right. In all honesty the thought of having to wear a MedicAlert bracelet is simultaneously galling and reassuring. Reassuring in that should the information be required in an emergency (NHS number, name-address-date of birth info, conditions and meds, cardiologist and GP names and numbers, ICE designee - my husband of course), all the info is all on an e-record - if the First Responders and/or hospital have an working phone line, and if the computers don't go down. Really, it IS reassuring, I feel as though I will regain a bit more independence with that bracelet strapped around my wrist - for example, I can now feel confident to use my 'over-60s' bus pass to go off to Dundee or Aberdeen on my own without the worry no-one will know what's going on if I drop in the shops:)
But. It's galling - I've known most of my life I have a 'stoopid little heart thingie' and for all of those years until now I've managed to avoid prescription meds and things like MedicAlert bracelets. But now I need the meds and the bracelet, and did I forget to mention the worst-so-far?
The 'worst-so-far' is the cardiologist said on 18 June if I'm not able to say the angina only-only-only happens on exertion at our next meeting (scheduled for late October 2019), he's going to order a cardiac catheterisation.
OH BLOODY DEAR!
19 June 2019
Right, so I've been a bit under the weather since March and yesterday I heard the results of some testing done since (finally) getting myself into the GP to (ahem, yes, I know, my very bad) register at the new surgery.
Hmm. My 'stoopid little heart thingie' reared its pointed little head after round one of root canal treatment in early March. Long story short, it looks as though (according to the cardiologist) it is coincidental that I apparently suffered yet another bout of pericarditis about five days after the root canal treatment, so no order for prophylactic antibiotics despite the echo also showing some 'trivial' (according to the cardiologist, his word, that 'trivial') scarring on my aortic valve (rheumatic heart back in childhood). yea.
The fluid in my pericardium is so minimal he's 'going to watch it' rather than 'go in after it' (oh thank-God because really, pericardiocentisis is a wretched procedure to go through). No constriction, and no sign of endocarditis so all in, a reasonably good result and I've been given his permission to formulate and implement my own fitness programme. 'See you in the autumn', he said as he showed me to the door.
I am not going to complain about the service rendered by NHS Scotland, all things considered they reacted to my presenting that day to the GP surgery with unusual rapidity according to just about every lab tech and nurse I encountered. I will say, however, had I been whisked that day to an echocardiogram they would have seen what I know was pericardial constriction - it was nearly a month after that first visit that I was having the echo and by then I was so much better I told the tech I felt a bit guilty taking up her time.
So I now start a self-managed fitness regime hoping to have some real results to show-off when I see the cardiologist in the autumn.
Hmm. My 'stoopid little heart thingie' reared its pointed little head after round one of root canal treatment in early March. Long story short, it looks as though (according to the cardiologist) it is coincidental that I apparently suffered yet another bout of pericarditis about five days after the root canal treatment, so no order for prophylactic antibiotics despite the echo also showing some 'trivial' (according to the cardiologist, his word, that 'trivial') scarring on my aortic valve (rheumatic heart back in childhood). yea.
The fluid in my pericardium is so minimal he's 'going to watch it' rather than 'go in after it' (oh thank-God because really, pericardiocentisis is a wretched procedure to go through). No constriction, and no sign of endocarditis so all in, a reasonably good result and I've been given his permission to formulate and implement my own fitness programme. 'See you in the autumn', he said as he showed me to the door.
I am not going to complain about the service rendered by NHS Scotland, all things considered they reacted to my presenting that day to the GP surgery with unusual rapidity according to just about every lab tech and nurse I encountered. I will say, however, had I been whisked that day to an echocardiogram they would have seen what I know was pericardial constriction - it was nearly a month after that first visit that I was having the echo and by then I was so much better I told the tech I felt a bit guilty taking up her time.
So I now start a self-managed fitness regime hoping to have some real results to show-off when I see the cardiologist in the autumn.
27 March 2019
Yesterday Fox turned 37. (Blimey, my youngest child is 37 years old!) He hoped for and got a low-key quiet day - made MY day when he said he'd heard from two most important people in his world (his son, and me:). I looked at the International Wall of Clocks (one for here, one for where Fox is, and one for where his sister is) at the moment he was born 37 years ago and like all mums everywhere, was instantly transported back to the moment. I do remember a surprising lot from that morning, surprising as I'd been heavily morphined up for the C-section and after the first look at my newborn son had to call for a sick pan owing to the drug.
Spring is happening - but per the old Scottish saying strongly recommending not putting away the winter kit until mid-May, I'm contenting myself with strolls around the garden planning where and when. This is the first year in many years I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of full-on Spring so I can get out there and get some serious landscaping done. Paul is the same, fidgeting to get out there and get going on projects we've been planning all winter. The sheds are in dire need of better organisation. I want to build an insulated cupboard at the back end of the veranda, Paul wants to build the hedge troughs for the two 'postage stamp' beds in the front of the cottage plus build a decorative screen for the bins.
And now Spring is beginning to happen I am seriously over the moon to discover a rather large clump of stunning hostas smack at the foot of my craft shed, naturally right at the door so opening the shed to fetch supplies out is pretty much a non-happener until I can divide and relocate that huge clump. I've always wanted to have hostas in a garden and thanks to the lovely previous owner, I am the happy inheritor of a really beautiful variety of the species.
We knew about the daffies as those were in full glory the first time we saw this property nearly a year ago (will be a year in late April). Those are beginning to bloom now - I'm flagging the clumps so I can divide them at the proper time to fill in some of the bare spots.
Between hard and soft scaping, we're going to be busy once Spring is really here. The big push is for the hedge troughs - to gain instant height whilst keeping roots out of the drains, we're planning raised beds in a trough style then planting bare root box (probably the slow growing dwarf Korean variety) to give a little 'kerb appeal'/minor privacy, and some draught protection.
So, Fox's birthday celebrated and Spring welcomed. Win-win:)
Spring is happening - but per the old Scottish saying strongly recommending not putting away the winter kit until mid-May, I'm contenting myself with strolls around the garden planning where and when. This is the first year in many years I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of full-on Spring so I can get out there and get some serious landscaping done. Paul is the same, fidgeting to get out there and get going on projects we've been planning all winter. The sheds are in dire need of better organisation. I want to build an insulated cupboard at the back end of the veranda, Paul wants to build the hedge troughs for the two 'postage stamp' beds in the front of the cottage plus build a decorative screen for the bins.
And now Spring is beginning to happen I am seriously over the moon to discover a rather large clump of stunning hostas smack at the foot of my craft shed, naturally right at the door so opening the shed to fetch supplies out is pretty much a non-happener until I can divide and relocate that huge clump. I've always wanted to have hostas in a garden and thanks to the lovely previous owner, I am the happy inheritor of a really beautiful variety of the species.
We knew about the daffies as those were in full glory the first time we saw this property nearly a year ago (will be a year in late April). Those are beginning to bloom now - I'm flagging the clumps so I can divide them at the proper time to fill in some of the bare spots.
Between hard and soft scaping, we're going to be busy once Spring is really here. The big push is for the hedge troughs - to gain instant height whilst keeping roots out of the drains, we're planning raised beds in a trough style then planting bare root box (probably the slow growing dwarf Korean variety) to give a little 'kerb appeal'/minor privacy, and some draught protection.
So, Fox's birthday celebrated and Spring welcomed. Win-win:)
02 March 2019
Well. First blog post of the year. I think I meant to post something earlier. Not I've been 'too busy', more I've been too involved. Getting the house well and truly sorted is taking a bit longer than anticipated but we are getting there. I chip away every day. I've finally worked out the curtain designs, and the last of the kitchen organising should be finished at the end of next week.
I've joined the local crafting group, and an afternoon book club. The book club, oh, that was interesting - I met all the people you meet at groups like this - the nice one, the shrewd one, the one who thinks the world revolves around her, the one who thinks she owns the book group and is the most important and her family is the oldest and best and most Scottish. Turns out she and I are cousins and she was not at all happy to find out I come from the oldest and most senior rather than her sept association, quite put her nose out of joint. Oh, and I met the one who shudders at the thought of reading anything less edgy than Train Spotting. The crafting group is more congenial - just three of us now although hope floats the group will enlarge with spring. Friendlier, less competitive. Ah well, both groups meet a two minute walk from the cottage and get me out of the house once a month:)
Also getting me out of the house is the 'nip down the shops' including the butcher who I've just discovered is also the green grocer (of a sort, he doesn't stock much but what he stocks is local, and delicious). Once a month or so I go in with a large order meant to get us through the month - I lug it home (the butcher's shop is less than a three minute walk) and spend the next hour or so vacuum packing it for the freezer including making my own hamburgers with the incredibly good steak mince.
But I've also taken up a new hobby - meant to provide a bit of 'egg money', God willing. I'm afraid to write of it just yet for fear of jinxing it. And I'm still working on crochet and embroidered table linens, and Paul's needlepoint Christmas stocking.
Mostly this blog post is meant to commemorate the three anniversary of my catastrophic fall in the front hall at the old house. Life-changing injuries so I think I can be forgiven for wanting to commemorate the day. I still can't reach completely behind my back, and the thought of taking up a tennis racket again really does give me shudders - I tried to do 'wall press-ups' last week and learned that I may never be able to bear real weight on that arm again. Still, I soldier on - I have the rowing machine at the ready, and free weights beginning with 1.5lb'ers. Hope floats.
I've joined the local crafting group, and an afternoon book club. The book club, oh, that was interesting - I met all the people you meet at groups like this - the nice one, the shrewd one, the one who thinks the world revolves around her, the one who thinks she owns the book group and is the most important and her family is the oldest and best and most Scottish. Turns out she and I are cousins and she was not at all happy to find out I come from the oldest and most senior rather than her sept association, quite put her nose out of joint. Oh, and I met the one who shudders at the thought of reading anything less edgy than Train Spotting. The crafting group is more congenial - just three of us now although hope floats the group will enlarge with spring. Friendlier, less competitive. Ah well, both groups meet a two minute walk from the cottage and get me out of the house once a month:)
Also getting me out of the house is the 'nip down the shops' including the butcher who I've just discovered is also the green grocer (of a sort, he doesn't stock much but what he stocks is local, and delicious). Once a month or so I go in with a large order meant to get us through the month - I lug it home (the butcher's shop is less than a three minute walk) and spend the next hour or so vacuum packing it for the freezer including making my own hamburgers with the incredibly good steak mince.
But I've also taken up a new hobby - meant to provide a bit of 'egg money', God willing. I'm afraid to write of it just yet for fear of jinxing it. And I'm still working on crochet and embroidered table linens, and Paul's needlepoint Christmas stocking.
Mostly this blog post is meant to commemorate the three anniversary of my catastrophic fall in the front hall at the old house. Life-changing injuries so I think I can be forgiven for wanting to commemorate the day. I still can't reach completely behind my back, and the thought of taking up a tennis racket again really does give me shudders - I tried to do 'wall press-ups' last week and learned that I may never be able to bear real weight on that arm again. Still, I soldier on - I have the rowing machine at the ready, and free weights beginning with 1.5lb'ers. Hope floats.
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