Weds 30 Oct 2024 post begun 2334GMT

Right, so the UK clocks have gone back but US ones have not. Makes scheduling phone calls a bit tricky especially since newest granddaughter has been in a US Level3 NICU since a half hour after birth. My son is over the moon about having a daughter and walking around in a happy daze while my dil is coping with having to travel two hours to be with the wee lass and two hours back so she can spend some time with their son (just turned three). She had to have an emergency C-section so riding in a car is not her idea of a great way to spend the day. 

Meanwhile the scramble is on to assemble a preemie layette including nappies - say what you will about Amazon but you have to admit when it's crunch time, Amazon comes through. Baby wasn't due until 15th November and was estimated (by the OB-GYN) to arrive weighing between 7-8lbs. The grand and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, besties have been delivering no end of things - and not one thing small enough to diaper and clothe a preemie. Seriously, Amazon is a life-saver. I am especially grateful I can use Amazon USA from the comfort of my UK living room to send birthday presents and infant supplies.

Meanwhile on my UK home-front, between sending preemie nappies and onesies and sleep sacs to the newest granddaughter in America, I've had to replace ALL my black plastic (nylon and silicone and yeah I had a lot of it) kitchen utensils because the news filtered across the Pond the black plastic material is TOXIC owing to the recycled materials it is made with and that includes the spatulas used to stir a pot of beef stew bubbling on the hob AND stir raisins into the oatmeal biscuit mix, DAMMIT! Black plastic is toxic because hot or cold use, the toxins leach into whatever food it comes into contact with.

I JUST BLOODY BOUGHT THOSE!! OK, what happened was I discovered, two years ago, hand washing my wood spoons was futile, who knew how disgusting wooden spoons are, ffs?! Some bright spark put her wooden spoons that looked spotless in a pot of boiling water and honestly seeing that video nearly had me throwing up. 

Most of my cook and bakeware is stainless steel but my vitreous enamel and My Precious, er, I mean my Cuisinart 5-in-1, have to be used ONLY with nylon or silicone utensils. 

In 2022 I replaced ALL my kitchen utensils with 'black plastic' and thought I was Kitchen Queen 2022. 

 

When Amazon delivers my 14pc set of RED silicone kitchen utensils, I hope to have the decency to avoid thinking myself Kitchen Queen 2024 because bloody hell knows how long it will be before red silicone is found to be as toxic as black. 

Hopefully newest grand will be home from NICU by early next week. She's holding her own, off all the tubes and CPAP and O2 and... She's only lost 2oz since her arrival four days ago, her lab work is good. She was under the blue light for jaundice but should be out from under in a few hours. 

Posted 31 Oct 0022hrsGMT

 

 

10 Oct 2024 post begun 1148hrs BST

 

I'm just about finished with Christmas and winter shopping - feels good although I know we'll be deep in 'the bleak midwinter' and I'll discover I've missed something vital.

 

Still, all stocked (again) with long johns and janes replaced (imagine that - those clothing items need replacing every five or so years, sheesh!), base layers I think it what we're meant to call them nowadays based on what the invoices call the fleece lined leggings and thermal cotton long-sleeved tee-shirts I've stocked in for Paul and me. New duvets washed-dried-folded-stored (OK, I admit it, duvets at my house need replacing as often as every two years because I wash duvets-covers-etc once a week on a hygienic 60C wash with Dettol AND detergent). Tins of soup for those days I can't face cooking, bags of charcoal for the barbie (so so so useful when power is out but we still need to eat and boil water for cleaning), spare batteries...all the standard winterising preparations done. 

This winter looks to be just a bit more worrying than last - if we're lucky it won't be a harsh winter (but I doubt we'll be lucky, after all, we have a Labour 'government' and that is the most unlucky of all). Many of my kitchen gadgets are now manual as opposed to electric, decluttering is just about finished (for this year any road) and routines are settled in.

All lessons learned during my 'Gulf of Mexico' years - be prepared or face the consequences, lessons my dear Paul once thought extravagant and not really appropriate in the UK...until that first winter I was here (2010-2011) and if I'd not been 'extravagant' with preps we would have frozen and gone hungry and so would the young mum with two under 7yo children we carried through ten days of ice-encased roads meaning fuel and food lorries couldn't make the trek up our glen. 

 

Every year since that first winter I have prepared just as I once did back on the Gulf. This year is no different than previous ones - again I have Christmas-Boxing Day-NYD dinners including trimmings in the freezer and store cupboard. 

 

Harsh or mild, winter cometh. We're as ready as I can make us. The big 'problem' now is how in the bloody hell to cope with the uncertainty this evil Labour 'government' has dropped on all our heads. We Scots thought the SNP 'government' up here at Holyrood was bad and bordering on evil, how gosh-awful is it the UK now has a Labour 'government' demonstrating how evil evil can be?

 

 

8 Oct 2024 post begun 1128hrs BST

 

Life goes on, especially if the event happened thousands of miles away to people completely unrelated to you save by one - I have Jewish ancestry (paternal grandfather).

 

Life goes on even in the face of the utterly indescribable. You listen to the news, you read the news, you fume as most news outlets seek to blame the victim and justify sharp upticks in increasingly violent anti-Jewish attacks 'right here in my own town!'. 

 

The horror you feel as you learn more and know already how savage the terrorists are, it numbs you. As you go through each day you feel contempt for yourself as 'life goes on' and you have to do the monthly Big Shop and laundry and housekeeping tasks and preparing for winter, you ask yourself wth is wrong with me that I haven't cried? 

 

Yeah ok, I pray every night for the survival and return of the hostages, I pray for the comfort of the bereaved coping with the unimaginable even though I know just what unimaginable is 'thanks' to my training (oh yes, I do know just how inhumane Man can be) and I know there is no comfort for what the bereaved are struggling to cope with.

 

I began to think I hadn't quite managed to put my training behind me and regained my humanity the way I thought I had once I was out of it, that training that made it possible to sift through crime scene photos and witness accounts without going mad. I didn't like myself. Because I hadn't cried.

Until I read Alison Pearson's account of her visit to Israel to talk to some of the affected. The survivors, the families, the workers who gathered personal effects (including body parts), the workers who prepared what remains could be gathered. When I got to the part Ms Pearson quotes a mortuary team member who quietly said not even one victim of the hundreds of girls her team tried to prepare for burial could be seen by the grieving family. Not one, not even the youngest of the female victims of a breathtaking savagery could be brought out to aid a family in saying goodbye.

I cried. Quiet, no sobbing, no gasping for breath. But a river of tears I worried would flood the keyboard. I didn't try to stop crying. 

I think inside I am still crying. 

Here in the UK a recent poll indicates a large number of our 18-24 year olds support the terrorists. 

Pro-Palestine marchers block urban streets all across this oh-so-disUnited-Kingdom. Honestly? I honestly keep waiting to wake up to see on the news a 21st century  Kristallnacht has happened. I keep expecting to hear of an atrocity overnight.

The mainstream media stubbornly refuses to report when yet another anti-Semitic attack has occurred, BBC and SkyNews both insist on calling the terrorists 'militants' or 'soldiers', they insist on 'equalising' by reporting briefly on terrorist attacks and the shocking increase in anti-Jewish sentiment (and actions) here in the UK then bigging up 'islamophobic attacks' in a shocking 'whataboutery' as if to justify what the terrorists have done and continue to do. More blaming the victims - the Jews.

 

My husband asked me not to put the Chanukiah where the neighbours might see it, he asked me that last year and he's asked me again this year. 

 

We both think maybe WWIII really is about to be declared.

Yet life goes on. Winter is coming and we're bang up in the middle of preparing. I need to buy new duvets, I need to finish the semi-annual declutter. 

I need to stop wondering if bombs will drop on the house or the household supplies will be looted by rampaging marauders...ONE battalion is 1000 troops and over 40 battalions of 'illegal migrants' have landed to the UK shores, taken in fed and housed by our so-called government.

In the midst of all this horror, life goes on.