The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Onebrokelady

cornishchick said:

hello Peeps. day 10 of my SI and I am only now feeling human, still have a headache along with a dry cough but it is showing signs of cracking, lots of steam and vicks.
for about a week only thing I could manage was to sleep and sip water.
don't think I will be back at work tomorrow, but as My manager seems to have quit in the middle of all this not even sure who to contact, as it seems nearly all the staff went down with a positive PCR, to varying degrees of Illness. 

Thankful for prepping and neighbours. 
 edit to add, THANK YOU for all the wellwishers and thoughts from you guys, so many to remember,  I am blown away by your kind thoughts. x x

Speaking from experience definitely don't go back to work yet, I went back too early afterwards back in October and I'm still not right now, my chest is not good and I've been left needing an inhaler everyday, take as much time as you can to recover,the symptoms of this virus come and go so you can feel ok one day but not be able to do anything the next. I'm still feeling tired all the time, either can't taste anything or things taste different. I've also had the odd thing of smelling smoke or cigarettes in odd places......it's very weird 

pollyanna_26

-taff said:

pollyanna_26 said:

Oh I missed this. I love a good pocket or two. I used to follow Dottie Angel's blog and managed to track down some skirt patterns she'd done for Simplicity with big pockets. No idea how many of them I made but like the cobbler's wife,family and friends would beg for them so it was a while before I had a few of my own.

pollyx

Don't suppose you'd be able to find them again would you?

There are a small number of the Dottie Angel patterns on Ama*on UK. They're by Simplicity and only the dottie angel versions are her designs. She wrote books too. She wrote as Dottie Angel and Tif Fussell the latter is her real name and Dottie is her alter ego..

She's a brit who found herself living in the suburbs of Seattle. Dottie has the lfe Tif imagines . Tif has copied the thrift store obsession love of doilies ,crochet ,knitting make do and mending etc and has a sewing machine called Miss Ethel. She is a lover of clogs and quirky things . A bit off the wall at times.

I've just found all ten years of her main blog still online. She used to be on instagram and sold on etsy etc. The dottie Angel blog ran from 2007-2017 which were pretty stressful years under this roof at times so I now know why my nightly read and creating all things dotty happened.

Looking on Am there are a few of her books. One sitting with my precious French General collection on a  bookcase is for sale Used for £146.43 plus p&p! It is a lovely but tiny paperback so someone is having a laugh

However it has reminded me that never being able to do the full Kondo was a good idea. i always had a niggle in my mind whether I could always afford or access books ,knitting yarn ,fabric etc.It's amazing how many things I kept have been there in the present situation no buying required so a good form of prepping.

pollyx

Onebrokelady

mothernerd said:

As an occasional visitor I've hesitated to post this mental health tip but something a poster said about the sameness of the days and having nothing to look forward to resonated with me. I would say that having something to look forward to is important for mental health and for general wellbeing (resilience and looking after our own health as far as possible are prepper traits aren't they - keep the thread on track).
In the current situation we need to create our own 'moments to look forward to eg
1)   I have just had 3 barm cakes (baps, rolls etc whatever they are called where you live/ were brought up) with bacon and tomato ketchup (don't start any brown sauce arguments please). This is a rare treat for me. I don't generally have bacon in the house (cooking bacon for soup with green lentils and barley) but mum does. On Sunday I made her bacon with mash and cabbage (both already to heat up). Then I started to lay out my bacon reusing the plate I'd used for mum's. I started to lift the plate up but it ended up on the worktop and on the floor in lots of pieces, several chunks and myriad slivers and I had to throw the bacon away and ate the last portion of veg curry instead. Now I had been thinking about bacon buns for weeks but when I had them in either the bacon or the buns would be used for something else or another thing was in urgent use of eating. So I took another pack of bacon from the freezer and today I had my bacon barms. They were absolutely wonderful and I enjoyed every second.
2)    My feet are very dry. I might have neglected to moisturise yesterday as it was a back and forth day - several times I was deflected from the task I had in hand (mum needed help, she broke the tv, I fixed it, she broke it again, couldn't fix it, found her something on the laptop to watch, could she have a cup of tea, could I find the pill she had dropped, could I go to the post box - outside the gate - to see if there was a letter from a cousin who has been doing a family tree - no but 2 more items to put on my to do list). you get the picture. So my feet need moisturising and I'm going to make a little occasion of it. Slather my feet (using a 'facial wash' that was in a gift box for mum and has sat in the cupboard for a year or 2) and wrap them up and not move from the bed until it's all absorbed and then add more if needed. 
3)    I've just had today's excitement/ adventure. I went to wash myself and took my glasses off in the bedroom. When I came back i couldn't see them so I felt my way round the tray were I knew my bifocals were and then I could see the reading glasses. A treasure hunt, a sensory experience, the joy of finding the glasses.

Sorry if I'm teaching my cousin/ niece (not sure of my age relative to the poster but don't want to insult her) to suck eggs but hope this helps. I live with long term fairly severe depression and manage to be happy every day. Mum upset me yesterday so I went outside moving buckets of stones so most parts of my body are threatening to quit if I am anything other than slow and gentle today (hence loz-ing around now).

Gratitude is also a great help as it allows you to focus on the good parts of each day (some good bits in the worst of days and something interesting to look at on even the most miserable grey day - the pattern of bare branches against the sky). 

Humour is also a great survival tool (what doesn't kill us gives us a very dark sense of humour and some unhealthy coping mechanisms). Picture of man and dog on the sofa looking out of the window. Man is saying to the dog "I never understood until now, why you got so excited every time someone went past the window".

Making little changes to your routine can help. I worked as a cleaner for some years (anyone who has been to my house would laugh their socks off at this). I decided that whilst I was a cleaner, I would be the best cleaner I could be and I was very good (had to keep turning jobs down to stop my hours getting out of control). However sometimes doing the same thing day after day takes it's toll and you get stale. I found that even something like going round a room anticlockwise rather than clockwise could make a difference. You noticed bits that needed attention, saw things from new angles, maybe even found a short cut or something out of the window (one of my jobs was in a four storey building - one of the only jobs were I had co-workers and we swapped floors at the beginning of each month to make things more interesting and the view from the top floor showed most of the town).

I worked as a cleaner for years and also used to do things in a different direction to shake things up a bit 😀

Thriftygifty

Onebrokelady, I oddly smell smoke and cigarettes occasionally not from covid but I do have cineus problems, I can't smell quite a lot of normal things, yet when I was pregnant I could smell everything it went into hyper drive.

The weather is awful here today quite depressing. I think I may be having a midlife crisis and thinking to much. 

pollyanna_26

Thriftygifty said:

Onebrokelady, I oddly smell smoke and cigarettes occasionally not from covid but I do have cineus problems, I can't smell quite a lot of normal things, yet when I was pregnant I could smell everything it went into hyper drive.

The weather is awful here today quite depressing. I think I may be having a midlife crisis and thinking to much. 

Oddly as  sinus sufferer since childhood I found the same thing when pregnant.

I'm finding the scenes from the Royal London and other places really harrowing.but people need to see the terrible toll on all involved whether staff patients or the bereaved . This isn't fake or something people think they wont get. I hope at least some of the deniers or those who carry on doing their own thing will think again. However I doubt they'll even watch it..

I think many of us are thinking too much. All we can do is find some diversion. It doesn't mean we don't care. The NHS will face a terrible time some time in the future with patients mental health issues from . the small children to the elderly. and also those who were already struggling who may have lost support over the months.. Minimising that toll as much as possible is all we can do.

pollyx

pollyanna_26

Onebrokelady said:

Does anyone remember !!!!!! Strawbridges series It Not Easy Being Green with his first family, I loved that show 

I loved "Its Not Easy Being Green" with himself ,first wife and the sons. I have the book! Never took to The Chateau far too faffy . His first venture was real down to earh self sufficiency and I watched it over and over.

pollyx

jamanda

When I smell smoke when there isn't any, I get a migraine.

VJsmum

Ooh, i smell smoke  - specifically cigarette smoke - at strange times too.  I am also a sinus sufferer - i had never related this issue to that before.

Mother nerd - fabulous post, thank you.  You might like the 5 'OS' pleasures thread from that point of view then.  

We've run out of fresh milk - bad prepping - and it's pouring outside and i need to make a fish pie...  We do have long life but it's not the same.

Si_Clist

Just popping in in passing, with a bit of news that I guess Doris won't be sharing with the nation next time he's on telly ...

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/one-in-three-covid-patients-in-uk-readmitted-within-five-months-20210118-p56v33.html

pollyanna_26

Youngest has sinus problems but over the last week has been complaining of blinding migraines. It's difficult to figure things out when one is shielding elsewhere but it's been common since last spring to listen think and hope to settle her mind well everything is flaring.

She took refuge in a darkened room and was pretty well sleepless.

Yesterday I had a memory of sometimes dragging myself to the bedroom and closing the curtains often with a baby in a cot to keep an eye on. I was told it was Migraine. Decades later the Consultant mentioned Fibromyalgia sometimes featured migraine attack from time to time. That was during my diagnosis. I rarely have one now but mentioned it to dd in the next email. It has calmed the anxiety. I'm keeping an eye on the situation from a distance but will see her either tomorrow or the next day as part of the tiny bubble and hopefully things will be ok

I've never tasted LL milk VJ but would take anything rather than venture out in these wet,wet and windy conditions.

pollyx.