22 Foxhole East

f0xh0les

I am back down to 12.2 but not for long - I am 12.2 fully dressed! I am going to be 12.1 in no time. 

Took DS3 and 4 out for a run this morning - just a hopeful '2km with no stopping' and DS3 (the bouncy springy 4km distance kid) whined and whinged, and kept stopping after 500m, and DS4, the 'I can't run! I need to stop! Argh! I'm dying!! 500m maximum distance runner' ran happily and bouncily for pretty much 2km, and managed a pretty impressive sprint finish. 

The world is upside down today,  Now they are fighting and bickering and doing my head in.  I am trying very hard to ignore them and let them sort it out between them.  DS3 is 12 and starting to smell, so I assume it is hormones.  Urgh! Nearly teenagers!

Breakfast was fruit salad leftover from last night.  Coffee was blissful after the run.

Kids are asking me to referee  their fight.  I am bored of them already.

Secret armchair gift fund is now at 40% and still secret with 4 days to go until delivery.  I am hilarious!

I am £7 over budget, probably due to the £36 of school uniform, but they have everything they need, except shoes, and the £20 spend on the rest of their c/s clothes. So really I am doing ok.

DH has just nipped out for a run - the swine -  I thought he was going to do his long indoor bike ride today, but we have agreed we will run together tomorrow.  He is now 11 stone 12  and lean.  Even the kids have noticed.  He looks very good. Lucky old me! (Eta - 24.39 for his 5k)

Just got off phone with highly distressed step-gran. She fell yesterday and spent 4 hrs on the kitchen floor. All her wristband button contacts are off on holiday, so she sat there until the carers came in,  The dr has told her this morning she can no longer bend to pick anything up as the bones inside her head that allow her to balance are shot.  She is going to be dizzy and fall on her face if she tries, and would be better off in a home. So now the woman was hysterical and distraught. 

The doctor is a young woman with the bedside manner of Josef Mengele and is not great with the over 80s!

So I have talked her down, and put the idea in her head that she would be better off choosing where she would like to go and getting her name on a list (that she can turn down should she choose) rather than being wheeled into anywhere with a space when she falls and breaks her leg.   Either way I will be the bad guy.   So that has piddled all over this morning's happiness.

f0xh0les

Today is another NSD - I pootled down to the charity shop and saw they have sold a huge amount of stuff, mostly to be delivered on Monday (I read the delivery notes)   so I assume the van will come loaded with new stuff, and leave full of the deliveries. In and out very fast. Blink and you miss it.

DS4s school return date has changed, and the older 3 have had letters to say how the return will be managed.  That's nice then. No real information, just hints and 'more will be revealed later'.  Start and end times have all changed as well. Will be interesting to see how this works out.

DS1 got a letter to say he had been awarded a grade C in his higher maths AS level exam that he has not taken.  I have informed them that there are going to be a lot of mock exams and testing immediately from school restart, throughout the next 9 months in case the schools get shut again and they will have the data to do estimated grades.  So they need to hit the books NOW!!  Will see if that works on them.

Frith

Would the Epley Manoeuvre work on step-gran, or is it something else? 

f0xh0les

Sadly not, it is down to a mixture of all the procedures and interventions she has had done, the damage the cancerous nodes caused up her spinal column,  her heart problems, and the medication she has been on for the last 30 years.  The dr thinks this is permanent.

badmemory

I can fully understand her not wanting to go in a care home.  My sister & I visited quite a few when it became obvious that my mother needed to be in one.  The most expensive one frankly was the worst, we barely got in the door before my sister began to gag, we didn't even wait for our appointment there!  A moderate one was very good from appearances with plenty going on (good for dementia) but they wouldn't take her because she was refusing to walk with no medical reason, if that had happened whilst she was there they would have kept her on.  The one we put her in (& how bad does that sound) was actually the next to cheapest, but they had lots of volunteers going in doing things.  So if you land up going over there to sort this you know what to look for!!  It is a thankless task & I'm sure like us you will worry if you have made the right decision.  There was another moderately priced one that frankly felt more like a jail!  Some of them sound great if you just see a brochure.  The one my mother was in certainly didn't let them "escape" but it never felt like a jail.

f0xh0les

There is one that sits in quite large grounds, with shrubs and  trees and flowering bushes and overlooks a large park - she likes the idea of sitting and looking out. That is all she is considering doing until she falls off the perch.  She needs to be around people (in my opinion) but has deliberately isolated herself for the last 10 years as that is what people in a wheelchair who are disabled are supposed to do (inside her head).  So I might request a brochure - I think she visited a good few of her friends when they were incarcerated, and so has seen these places.   But she is still of sound mind and I do not want to take that control away from her.  No matter how  much she wants me to.

This seems to be a 12 monthly thing now doesn't it?  I end up having to have 'that' conversation with her.

badmemory

You'd probably find that if she found herself surrounded by people "about to fall off their perch" & in wheelchairs she would announce that she isn't one of  "them" & demand to be out of there.  That would have been my mother a couple of years earlier & if I'm honest I was hoping that that is what would happen.

kerri_gt

My uncle announced to my mum he is never going into a home (i believe it was akin to 'I'm not sitting dribbling my last in one of those places') and that he would be off to Switzerland well before that. Given he got married (the first time i think) without telling the family I am quite sure he will. Still, at least he'll have  no worries about quarantine upon return (sorry, there's some very odd humour genes in my family...i seem to have inherited a few).
I am in awe of your OH 5k time f0xh0les. I can just get sub 30 (29 something). I've done two 10k runs this week as my running partner has been staying over this way, we've been out ay 6.30am and its still been like running with an oven chasing us. 
Its cooler here today thank goodness. Started tackling Mt Ironmore which has built up as hot weather great for washing, ironing not so much. 

f0xh0les

He is pretty impressed with his time as well,  if you take 'impressed' to mean' shocked as all hell'.   It was the first time since he restarted his running 4 weeks ago that he has managed anything like that time since we lived in Sheffield 6 yrs ago.  The difficult part will be stopping him doing it too often and injuring himself. so I am making sure he is running with me pretty much every  other day, which will shorten his distance but keep him slower than he would do it, and then when he goes off and does it on his own he will surprise himself.  He is speed. I am endurance.  

Right, off for a half hour of merry torture in a public place.  

They stuck a covid testing tent up yesterday in the park, so maybe I will have more of an audience than I am expecting..... wish me luck, I'm going in.

kerri_gt

How did your half hour go F0xh0les? Worst case they may have had a defib in the tent had you needed it   
I had a lovely long lie in today, catching up on the sleep missed this week. Not sure there's any running involved for me this weekend.  As it's unlikely I'll have any long races this year (can't see the half marathon with 15k participants going ahead in Nov) i just want to keep my pace and distance at a reasonable level until next year without overdoing it.
Nowt exciting planned here today, second leg of Mt Ironmore to scale and perhaps a crumble to make.
How many days til 'the' delivery ?