The Garden Fence - proper Old Style support and chat!

mardatha

Hellebore that place sounds slavery. With cliques.
Monna, I used to love writing and now never do it. I have lovely fountain pens too. Remember when you could buy beautiful coloured inks, in bottle green and purple..

Helebore

Thanks Mar and Monna, and everyone else. I must say I feel relieved. I was supposed to be 'shadowing' yesterday, I thought that actually meant 'watching'. They are VERY short staffed. Am wondering why. I am glad, I thought to myself yesterday that I would stay for 6 months, give it time.
I think my friend may report to cqc but think nothing will be done. Private company. She knows more 'official' people down here as she worked in various care places, mostly in community before I moved down here.

Softstuff

Helebore, thank your lucky stars you're out, with sanity intact. From the sound of it, you're better off far away from that situation.

*whispers* I'm 15.7kg down. I'm about 700g off my goal weight, but despite that have almost doubled my calorie intake as of today. I'll still have a deficit overall, but I need the extra. I've been working out a lot, am now planning to muscle up and I've actually been hungry recently and struggling to keep my calorie intake as low, which is new, so I'm making changes. I'm pretty nervous and unsettled though, just scared I'll somehow pile weight on I suppose, which is silly, but when I've put this much time and effort in, it's kind of a big deal to continue working to improve. So from here on it, aiming to maintain weight overall, but lower body fat percentage and increase muscle.... Michelle Obama arms here I come

fuddle

I think for your sanity hellebore you have to leave the misgivings you saw, put it down to being severely short staffed and stick with your words describing the folk under their care as being well cared for. The care sector is flawed to the very core... and by that I mean carers, supervisors, managers, owners, social services and so on. There are rotten eggs right through the sector. I walked away from care.I loved the job. I hated the sector.

Care is incredibly difficult. Not only does a carer have to have empathy with excellent communication skills, they have to be both a Jack and a Master of all trades, switching through those at any given moment, emotionally and mentally being switched on at all times. It's hard work and it's soul destroying when there are flaws.

The weather is awfully Autumnal out there... and I like autumn usually! So much so I've started knitting socks. The rib continues to be a labour of [STRIKE]love[/STRIKE] determined frustration but I'm getting there with each project I do.

Tea will be chicken salad with my own first earlies. Youngest DD said I should be proud of myself because everything is is growing. I am hooked on growing. It is horribly windy though. I have a lot of babies to now worry about! I dunno about gardening being good for mental health. :rotfl:

Oh well done softstuff

Helebore

Again thanks! Softstuff you are soo right. Sanity intact thankfully but I can see how I could go. So easy for it to happen.
Am not at all religious, but have made several friends here who are very religious, including the local Sally Army chaplain! They would be saying it's God's intervention. I also have a friend who is 'working with Angels' so she would say that it is them! Anyway, I must say, I chanted going in to work, bizarrely something I haven't done for a long time, used to practice Nicherin Shoshu buddhism although I think it has a different name now due to stuff happening a long while ago in Japan! Whatever! It wasn't meant to be. Feel a bit downhearted but I know I made a good decision!
***am blowing kisses to you all, thank you!***
Helenax

Islandmaid

Hellebore, sounds like a lucky escape x DD worked in a care home, and always said it was the staff, that, well, 'cared' who were given the hardest time - too slow, why are you faffing around etc she got out as soon as she could, shame, as she loved the residents but the management were another story :eek:

Softstuff - well done on the weighloss, but did you have to pass your loss onto me :rotfl:

Monna/Maratha - I us3d to collect pretty wring paper, adored writing, another lovely skill gone - can't really keep love texts for long can you

nursemaggie

Fuddle you forgot one other negative, working with the elderly you are likely to get unfounded complaints against you. It goes with the territory.

Never the less I still spent most of my working life in care of the elderly. It is rewarding, there are a lot of down sides to cope with.

Helebore I had a similar experience. I lasted 3 days but for me I was the manager. There was this woman who owned a nursing home home. She was constantly on a warning from social services for not having a qualified nurse as a manager and not having qualified staff.

What she was good at was being a Social Director. The patients never lacked interesting things to do and those who were well enough had plenty of trips out. She was brilliant. She definitely had the knack.

The first day she did all of the things I should have been doing. She would not let me have the keys to the medicine cabinet. She put all the medications out on a tray with little plastic pots with names on. She did allow me to be in charge and did nothing but bully me.

The second day I fell over the cat and all the medications went everywhere. You cannot tell the difference with many of the little white tablets and mixing them up does not bear thinking about. I refused to let her just pick them up and take them to the patients as that would be breaking the law. She did have a proper medicine trolley so she had the means to put it right.

The next day she took all those well enough on a trip. By the time they got back It was well past my finishing time so I went home. She phoned me a few minutes after I got home and sacked me. By the weekend I was glad it was all over. It was obviously planned that way. I was over it by the weekend and soon got another job.

I don't think cats are safe in nursing homes with frail people walking around with there Zimmers.

Wow softstuff brilliant loss of weight. The best thing to do now you are nearly there is add things back into your diet slowly and never eat to a great extent the things that made you gain it in the first place. I have weaned myself off milk chocolate. I only have the healthy stuff 85% cocoa and only one thin square.

I have almost given up carbs completely, I'm eating lots of salads and mainly eating fish or Chicken. I'm not drinking alcohol anyway because of my cancer treatment. I have almost got off refined sugar in all it's forms. using fruit as my treats. Not cooking much. I have put on 2kg in three weeks according to my scales. I hope they need to go in the bin.

I am always slow to lose weight.

I was right. The people above have gone. It was my imagination hearing the kids still running and stamping. There are three vans outside with the Housing Association's name on them. I was woken by electricians checking the electrics, they then did some drilling so they must have done something to it. A brand new kitchen arrived. They had a new one before they moved in. I have noticed they put a new kitchen in for almost all of these refugees.

I can't miss the deliveries as my desk is sideways on to the living room window. If I did miss anything I could not fail to miss the sound of their footsteps. Despite there being electricians, plumbers and joiners there is not much sound,. The switches in all of these flats make a lot of noise you cannot fail to hear every one from every flat near you. I expect they will be here for a day or two.

Going by them disappearing in the early hours of Sunday morning I would guess they have been deported. That is how it often happens. On the day they are due to be deported they are put on the first flight early morning. I think they do this to prevent protesters.

I know this because I support a group that stands up for people being deported in unfair circumstances, e.g. A young man who was deported because he came as a child and was sent back to where he came from the day before he was due to take his last final exam at university. He got spirited away in the middle of the night. He was expected to get a first and would have been a valuable asset to this country.

I can only presume they have been anti social in other ways and they have been trying to do something all a long. It's a pity no one had a word when I first complained about them.

I hope I soon recover from the effects of this noise over all the months. I have not been able to think straight since January or retain information.

Pity you can't all come and celebrate with me but perhaps I better not, who knows what I will get next.

Hard_Up_Hester

Laptop repaired, tick.
Paper work done, tick.
Speed awareness course booked, tick.
Washing done and on the line, tick.
MOT passed, tick.
Neighbours upset, tick.
Time to put my feet up, tick.

monnagran

'swhat we're here for Hellebore. I bet your guardian Angel is rubbing hands together in glee. As I've said before, I'm firmly of the opinion that my guardian Angel drinks.

Well, one letter down and too many to come. The next one is the biggy, I think it may take a week to write. (Mar, indeed I do remember the bottles of Quink. It was one of those that froze on the windowsill of my bitterly cold bed-sit.) It's to a friend I have known since I was 11. We met on our first day at Grammar School, 68 years ago and we went through school and teacher training together. She is one of the cleverest, most talented and funniest people I have ever met. Her letters to me usually come by parcel post. They are full of things she has cut out of papers, cartoons, bits printed from books she has read, photos and lots of news of our mutual school and college friends. She is much better at keeping in touch than I am. She says that when she clears off her desk she just sends it all off to me - a form of recycling. We meet probably once every 5 years or so, and when we do it's as if we've never been app art. Friends like that are worth more than rubies. It's quite true that you can't make old friends.

Right, I'd better get on with it.

I hope this reads coherently. I'm downstairs and my glasses are upstairs. It's been like looking through a glass darkly.

CRANKY40

I started "things for arms" at the gym this morning too Softstuff. I did say to the trainer at the gym that I must have some muscles anyway to be able to heave the weight of me out of the bath. It's a council gym so it's cheap but I doubt that I would be better treated in any private expensive gym. I'm actually enjoying the running now. It's good for my sanity and coping with the HT. They're also happy to show me how the weight machines work bit by bit so I actually remember what to do.

Fuds, I also have a lot of garden babies. I'm way too excited by them :rotfl: I do enjoy being able to pick salad leaves from the garden though.

Monna and Mar I'm a letter writer too. I wrote one yesterday but it had to be done on the computer. The HT's school have linked with a school in the Solomon Islands via the Schools Partnership. Boy wonder and several of his friends were asked to write a short letter to the students there. The light of my life wasn't keen as it looked far too much like extra homework so I asked him a few pertinent questions and wrote the letter myself.