Hoarding - Springing Ahead

GreyQueen

melodramaticme wrote: »

All spiders in our house are named Matthew, after one which made its home by the front door when my children were small and who was named so that he was less scary. he was excellent at catching flies:rotfl:

Most excellent.

Spiders have bad PR, we need to re-brand them as Organic Fly Catchers and have double-page magazine spreads of celebri-dweebs introducing their very own pet houses-spiders. Celebri-spiders could end up with their own tw*tter accounts and followers and all sorts. Stranger things have happened, it's an idea whose time has come, you mark my words.

My flat has only one kind of spider, those spindly-legged jobbies which somehow fail to trigger my arachnophobia. I wondered at their exclusive control of my domain until I read a nature column; they're called pod spiders for short and are cannibals of other spider species.

So, if the occasionally 'airy big spider wanders in under the front door, I capture it and toss it back outside for its own safety. Me and the Tribe of Pod have reached an understanding; no spider will be vacuumed unless it is dead and no cobweb greater than 2 feet in length will be tolerated in my direct line of sight. Other than that, we're good to go.

anirtak191

afternoon all,
i been trying to think of some things to help my nan a bit more, some things i am worried about. one of them her eating, yes she is eating, but i odnt think she is eating quite right, if you now what i mean.
since losing gramps, she is constantly on the go. and i mean constantly.
a typical day for my nan, is get up around 4, spend over an hour probably close on 2, washing and using moisturiser creams, and yes i mean creams (at least 3 different ones on her face at one time, twice a day, plus everywhere else, different ones for different parts iykwim) then she starts cleaning, tidying dusting etc. until around 9 am. then she sits down to have breakfast and a quick drink, usually porridge and either a t or a coffee, used to have fruit juice but she doesnt have that now. then she is agian cleaning tidying dusting again until between 12 and 1. then she will do her dinner, a full packet of fresh green beans i think either green or runner. with them she will have either sausage, pasty, pork chop, once a week fish and chips witch she cooks in the oven with a cup of t. then starts cleaning etc again. around 5-6 she will then have a sandwitch witch normally comprises of 1 slice of bread, and whatever she fancies at the time, banana, cheese, pickled cucumber, or occasionally 1 slice cheese on toast.
she buys the frozen meals to have as a sunday lunch but shes not very keep on them and i wonder how much of them she actually eats.

what i was thinking was making up some meals or her she could keep in the freezer, but im not sure what i can do that she will eat that will freeze.
could i plate up sunday dinners when i cook them and freeze them, and would they be ok, or would i have to be careful what veg/meat etc i use for freezing.
she wont eat pasta so bolognaise and lasagna is out, she dont like curry, so thats out. and all i can think of is cottage/shephards pie.
possibly a stew, she eats them but weather she would eat them after they have been frozen i dont know.
are there any uick easy meals that wont take long to heat through that i can make for her and put in the freezer for her.

she keeps saying about how much weight she has lost and even tho she is eating she is not gaining any weight, but trying to explain to my nan that she needs to eat more because being on the go as she is constantly shes basically only eating enough to just about keeping her weight steady is in a way a waste of time.
but if i can sort a few meals for her at least that will be one thing i dont have to worry about.

im hoping ive sorted out the scratching she does in her sleep. i dont know how she manages it but she scratches the skin off her back while she is asleep form time to time. quite often i find new scratches old healed ones, and once she even scratched a mole on her back and made it bleed.
she refuses to go to the drs, dont like/trust them. but when she tells me about having an itch in her ear that wont go that she gets a cotton bud to try and sort the irritation and digs so hard she makes her ear bleed i have to start wondering what else she is doing i dont see.know about or she tells me about.
her memory is another thing she keeps saying about, and how bad its gotten since loosing gramps, im wondering if it was just as bad before but gramps was there to remind her she left a key here or there, and shes only just noticing having to manage 98% of the time on her own.

family is annoying me. my uncle visits a couple of times a week, but seems to upset my nan trying to get her to do things shes not comfortable with liek pay bills via direct debit rather than leaving her pay them the way she has paid them for the last 55 years. but he only stays about 20 minutes at most when he does visit. when she came ot stay i had to check through 13 weeks of lottery results cos every time she asked my uncle if he could check them for her he didnt have time and would do it next time. same answere with paying some bills.
my dad i know he has a lot on his plate at the moment with his fil, he had a stroke at the same time we lost gramps and hes been trying to sort out everything there that needs to be done. but all he does is take nan shopping once a fortnight, she prefers weekly but i cant always get down to do the week in between my dad does. but rarely stays long enough to drop the shopping off. and he goes on a saturday to take my niece for a visit, but again hes barely there any time before he has to leave again, anything from 10-20 minutes he stays. this is the only contact from family a week, witch probably only amounts to about an hour and a half at most.
my nan would probably not allow my step sister to help or go there, and i dont think she has a lot of time to be able to.
and i would ask my cousin as i wouldnt trust him as far as i could throw him, and with the size of him that wouldnt be very far (historic drug abuse, and present alcoholism. on top of that my nan doesnt trust him as she has had money disapear form the house when he has been there, if he visits with his dad my nan makes sure all the upstairs doors are locked so the only room he can get into is the bathroom.)

she still does cleaning for a lady she knows once a week, so at least she has contact there with someone and she goes out to visit 2 friends a week. but all in all she probably only has company for about 15 hours at most a week, the rest of the time she is on her own, im going to try and talk my nan into coming hme with me more often. she doesnt liek letting mrs h down by not going round there once a week, so i think i can get round that by saying i will pick her up on a tuesday afternoon after going round mrs h's and take her back home the following wkend or monday. start off doing that every couple of months, then try and increase the amount she is here. the only problem she has baout where i live is the lack of shops, but im hoping as she gets a bit older thats not going to worry her so much.

im starting to rethink my dining room as well, wont do it just yet, but i have allready said to my husband we might have to sit down and talk about nan maybe coming here. i honestly wouldnt trust my uncle and cousin moving in with her, and i dont think my dad would like her to move in there and as my dad has his problems i dont know if he would manage. but i know my nan would refuse to move there any way.

im not sure what to do for the best, my nan is stubbornly independant.

she was saying how lonely she feels sometimes. and i suggested she maybe give my dad a ring when she is having a bad day, and just aks him if hes near by and bring some milk or something, even if hes only there a few minutes to drop it off at least it s a break in the monotony of whats seems to be her day.
but she doesnt want to be a burden and always said she owuldnt be a burden to her boys!
so i suggested she walk round to the shop, theres a little street of shops round the corner that she usually goes to on a thursday when she getting low on something. i said she doesnt have to buy anything, just walk round the shop then go home, maybe drop into mrs. h for a cup of t on the way home, but she says she feels like crying and shes a very private person and doesnt like doing that when shes out and has to run down a side street and hide when she feels like shes going to cos she cant stop it.
so i said just litereally walk round the block, 5 minutes doing that might make her feel better cos shes out. she wont visit friends more often that she allready does cos she doesnt want to be a nuisance, an old friend that used to live next door, she says does that with her neighbours and she doesnt want to be the same cos she knows how much these random visits annoy some people.

sorry about the rambling, but back to why i originally came on, at least if i can sort something out with her food it will be one less thing for me to worry about.

i feel guilty that i live so far away, but my husband says he is glad that we dont cos then everything would be left on my shoulders when it shouldnt be, she has 2 sons that should be doing more than they are. on one hand i agree with him, but on the other, why shouldnt i try and do what i can for my nan, as i feel nan and gramps were the only people there for me when growing up, ok their interaction didnt quite get rid of the negativity in my life to stop me from being so messed up, but id hate to think what mess i would be in if it wasnt for them being there.

but if tehres any suggestions on the food front of things any one can give me i would be very gretaful

whitewing

I get the impression that older people eat less if there is too much on their plate. So if you do portion things up, make sure they are small portions and encourage her to have a variety.

Could you do a big batch of chicken soup and then do different variations.

Cottage pie and casseroles sound great.

Fruit crumbles with flour and oats.

Does she use a microwave? Could she do jacket potatoes?

If she is doing a lot of cleaning, could she help you with decluttering? You could feed her and send her back with left overs?

anirtak191

she prefers to use the microwave if she can as the food cooks qiocker and she doesnt use as much electric, or gas for the cooker. she uses the cooker as little as possible to save on what the gas costs.

i thought of nan maybe helping here, but i normally try to not let her do anything like that when she comes and my husband would prefer she didnt. we have a dishwasher and he doesnt like that she insists on taking plates out and washing them. she thinks she helps when she does that, actually she probably thinks im being lazy by using a dishwasher lol. but as we have oil for out hot water and heating, i usually run out/low by around march (depends how cold the winter has been)so the only hot water until i can afford more oil is heated in dishwasher or through the shower.

she eats apple crumbles, when i make them. but i usually find it cheaper to buy a pie. but then that could just be the size of the ones i make, or maybe start learning to mix somethign in with the apples instead.

as far as i know the only soup nan will have is h3inze tomato.
jacket potatoes i dont know if she eats, but she rarely cooks potatoes, because they take too long to cook and tehres no point in her using teh pressure cooker for 2 small potatos, or should i say 1 cut in half.

she uses the oven once a week to do fish and chips, cos even tho she spent a fortune on buying a new chip fryer, its hard to clean and empty, she gets the oil every where as she believes it has to be emptied and cleaned after every use. so she has stopped using it.

so im looking for stuff that can be defrosted and put either into microwave or if i use the foil trays to portion up the food they can go striaght in the oven.

i know as some people get older they eat less, but when my nan stays here, ok i odnt give her my husbands or even my portion sizes, they are smaller, but they are bigger than what i see her doign for herself, and she seems to eat it all without a problem, unless its bacon as she cuts the rind off, and same with cops, she will not eat any type of fat like that. very health concious that my husband feels is sometimes over the top.

maybe just do a couple of cottage pies to start with see if she eats them, then add a few more things in.
can roast dinners be frozen or is this a tricky thing to do with the
meats.
i know i keep getting told that once cooked things like pork can be refrozen, and are fine as long as it is defrosted properly and reheated properly, but pork isnt normally one meat i like to freeze once cooked. beef is about the only thing i do that with in bolognaise/cottage pies for me and my husband.

IrishRose12

:eek:I don't do spiders! Any spider that is brave enough to come anymore near me or into this house is brave enough to see the consequences - namely death. Oh even thinking about then makes me shudder:(

silvasava

Oh IrishRose - Spiders are fantastic little creatures. They're all female 'cos when they come indoors the first thing they do is put up their curtains. They catch & eat all the 'nasties' & dont eat anything of yours or contaminate it. If you don't like them just gently sweep them into a dustpan & put them outside.
We also had one called Fred who was VERY large & lived behind our long curtains. We had a power cut one night & DS1 & I were sitting in the dark while DH sorted the fuses. DS1 & I heard a noise & laughed & said it must be Fred with boots on - when the lights went on she was sat there in the middle of the carpet:eek: Sadly she's no more

IrishRose12

silvasava wrote: »

Oh IrishRose - Spiders are fantastic little creatures. They're all female 'cos when they come indoors the first thing they do is put up their curtains. They catch & eat all the 'nasties' & dont eat anything of yours or contaminate it. If you don't like them just gently sweep them into a dustpan & put them outside.
We also had one called Fred who was VERY large & lived behind our long curtains. We had a power cut one night & DS1 & I were sitting in the dark while DH sorted the fuses. DS1 & I heard a noise & laughed & said it must be Fred with boots on - when the lights went on she was sat there in the middle of the carpet:eek: Sadly she's no more

Are you having a laugh:eek: I don't flippin think so:eek:. If they're big brave and ugly enough to come near me, then they're dead. And they're lucky if it's me killing them as usually I'm squealing as far away as possible from them!

I'd swear the ones that have been around here lately are on bloody steroids! Either that or they've been eating mice cause they're mahoosive

anirtak191

im not a fan of spiders either, ever since i was about 10 and had a not very nice dream after someone one gave one flying lessons, i declutter them when i see them or rather i shout for hubby and he declutters them for me.
problem is he laughs at me but i know hes as bad with them as me :undecided
same with moths and teh flying spiders whatever they are called

parsniphead

I don't mind spiders and will catch them and put the out. DH is terrified and turns into a 'big girls blouse' when he sees them. I have to catch them before he kills them but if he does kill them he gets bellowed at by me.

He also gets told off if he gets all scared around the little one as I don't want him picking up his fears.

Cockroaches on the other hand.....urgh......vile, ugly things with clicky little feet.

silvasava

I used to be scared of spiders until DS1 had a rubber one with a sucker on the back that he used to leave in odd places - on the door handle, in the cutlery drawer under my car keys. I got so used to it that real ones no longer scared me! Isn't that what they do with people who have phobia's to desensitise them?
I always say if spiders had pretty wings they'd be butterflies so why be scared of something so small & fragile?

Now I'm with you Parsniphead although I've only ever seen one dead cockroach - Yuk. Flies are far more disgusting than spiders & rats & squirrels are on my list too haha.