NST April 2023: April adventurising

Thrifty_Taylor

Sending hugs @Starlight_at_Sea, hope you get chance to take things easy a little. Good you've been able to help your relatives.
Hope tomorrow is a better day for you @grandmanerd.
@ditty1234 we've got a cosori one, it has one drawer. Cost @£109 last October. DH uses us lots (he does all our cooking).

NSD#3
A gorgeous day, & my last day off before heading back to work tomorrow... Hoovered the car out, dug up some clumps of grass in a border, then walked just under 5 miles, listening to the radio.
Tackled a sewing job I've been putting off. Even more so when I took the jeans out the bag (very smelly & had a brown stain on the inside back bit 🤮). Don't think I'll be doing any more jobs for them.
Rewarded myself by sitting outside afterwards & reading a couple of chapters of my book.
After tea I did the ironing & had a soak in the bath.

Grateful for signs of spring - primroses, lots of lambs, teeny tiny wild pansies, catkins & a couple of bees, time to read in the sun & I've got the sewing frog job done & out the way!

Thrifty_Taylor

Why settle for a single sleeping lamb, when you can have triplets! 😍
(Btw the red number on the sleeping one is also sprayed onto its mum, so that if they get moved to another field, they don't get separated)

Starlight_at_Sea

So cute to see the lambs Thrifty! But gosh that sewing job sounds grim. I have many questions but don't think dwelling on it will make any of us feel less 🤢

Your posts @grandmanerd always remind me of the healing power of a bit of self care. I took time for a long shower and hair wash today and felt a lot better for it. 

Mostly things have sort of settled here today, though I clearly am stressed underneath the tiredness. An unknown to us doctor rang today and insisted I wake mum as she needed to come in for urgent treatment, but wouldn't talk to me about anything before waking her to consent to me being told (despite the fact that all other medical info from this hospital has come through me and I am all over her notes as nok). Anyway, we all got very stressed and it turned out to be nothing relevant at all - an offer for COVID treatment to reduce her symptoms (she is asymptomatic) and that is not available if she is having the type of treatment that she had just 36 hours ago at the same hospital. I am usually very tolerant but this pushed me to the edge of politeness and it really didn't help today go well across the whole household. The thing about getting frustrated is that it stays with me as a bad aftertaste I mull over for far longer than the person it is targeted at, as most of it happens in my head! 

MS things today: 

prepped a load of parsnips from ol1o for soup; remembered to pick up the spices I needed for it on a brief trip to my house, so I can make this tomorrow at my folks with all ingredients from stores. 

Spoke to my current lodger and 🇺🇦D about getting a third lodger in short term. Have been chatting to a possible person on spare room so perhaps this will work out. It's clear I won't be spending much time at the house for quite a while longer so we don't need to keep a double room empty for me.  Everyone is very positive and it also opened the opportunity to ask 🇺🇦D to pick up the costs of her music lessons now she is earning. We also began the messages together to the DWP about her new job so hopefully she will understand soon what this means about her universal credit.  

I took stock of the jobs needed to be done at the house ahead of another tennant, and began a few of the more straightforward ones (moving clothes etc) and also cleaned the slats on the blind in that room - not a straightforward task at all! I am going to try to reseal the shower this coming week, taking a leaf out of all of the DIYers on here!  Have found a really useful step by step guide online and think I can do it. 

Greatful today that some symptoms continue to improve, for friends and family members checking in with me, and that it may be possible to mitigate the financial vulnerability of the main rental bedroom being only booked until start rather than end of July. Also grateful for all the wonderful people who have stayed with us over the years 

facethemusic

I'm on 8 NSDs, and have half a cupboard sorted out, so progress on the pile of stuff is being made. The weather has been good so I've been in the garden- got all the grass mowed for the first time this year. 
Through a friend I think I've made a new friend- is it just me or is it quite difficult to make friends as an adult? I have lots of "people I know" but very few that I am genuinely close to. 

weenancyinAmerica

@grandmanerd - I switched to very lightweight crocs so my shoes weigh almost nothing. They are so lightweight, they float if I wear them in the pool and then take them off in there. I use them as my slippers also. Good luck finding shoes that weight less.

f0xh0les

@Starlight_at_Sea. Have you thought about getting a Power of Attorney for your elders?  You can get a medical one as well as a financial one, and your mum can still make all of the decisions herself up until she can't, but you can play your Trump card with jobsworth busybodies on the phone....
I had one with my step-gran for 9 years before I actually  had to use it. They don't go out of date. 
@facethemusic it is not just you, it is fiendishly difficult. Unless you start inviting people to coffee etc outside of whatever normal activities you do together (work/sport/naked darts).
School starts back today. One has left the house already, the other two have collected their lunches and scuttled back to their rooms to get ready.  9 gone, only 5 more years of secondary education to go. It is seriously starting to chafe.  Roll on the summer holidays 😁

Starlight_at_Sea

Oh gosh foxholes, that's a long stint of secondary ed! I had just one daughter, and that felt long enough Now she has flown the nest am sort of dipping my toe into it all again, albeit on a part time basis as am very involved in day to day lives of a relatives two little ones. She supported me when I was a very young single mum, with lots of babysitting and practical support, and now I am repaying that I hope! 

We do have both PoA in place, and am glad that is the case. I found it quite daunting and upsetting to invoke them last year but as you say it generally proves useful, just not with this one person.

I have sent a fairly measured (I think) email to the Macmillan nurse who is our main link with the hospital, asking her to check that the records are all updated with my details, and explaining that it was a very upsetting call for us all. I realise all in the medical system are very overstretched just now, so not making a complaint, just want to do all I can to make sure it doesn't happen to us again. 

I agree @facethemusic, it is really hard. Ironically made some good friends as an adult during the pandemic, as we volunteered on a free food delivery service together, and made sense to also reduce our exposure to others  by meeting for the daily walk etc. I think those were the first real new friends I had made for about a decade. Am now cultivating a network closer to my parents, but that is more practical efforts to connect with neighbours etc, and people at my exercise class, as a safety net than anything else. I hope you enjoy your new friendship! 

grandmanerd

weenancyinAmerica said:

@grandmanerd - I switched to very lightweight crocs so my shoes weigh almost nothing. They are so lightweight, they float if I wear them in the pool and then take them off in there. I use them as my slippers also. Good luck finding shoes that weight less.

Thanks for the thought but it isn't the shoes that are the problem - my left ankle and both knees are hurting (probably from the 'housework' I did last week and building a bit of wall before that). My ankle has been badly sprained at least twice in the past and it tends to ache when it's  hot, when I've done too much, walked too far or twist it awkwardly (or in this case, cleaning the floor by using rags and moving them round with my feet). I've had my ankle strapped up (I've learned that if I do this as soon as I notice it aching it heals more quickly) but that obviously isn't enough (I've currently got it raised on a heap  of pillows).

I'm not allowed crocs or slippers - because of my diabetes I have to wear lace ups that support my foot all the time (my preference is to be barefoot as much as possible). DS2 bought me 2 pairs of slip on shoes to wear for DS1's wedding - he didn't approve of the metallic finish 'converse hightops' I'd picked to go with my dress. I asked him to get one pair in a larger size in case my feet swelled during the day but  I really hated them and they went to the charity shop as soon as I got back from Sorrento. I've never been good with slip-on shoes, they slip off again all the time. I need them to be fastened onto my feet.

I'm staying upstairs as long as I can. I went downstairs before having my shower to get a yoghurt for breakfast and a bin bag to tidy my room and really struggled getting back up the stairs. I probably need to go down at some point (I'll  add extra strapping) but I'm working quietly up here (very slowly and need to stretch out again after being upright) and have \a list of things it's possible for me  to do.

Toni'sfriend

Starlight - I hope your Mum is Ok and you're feeling a bit more settled. 

I've had a kind of upsy/downsy few days. Sorry for not posting. I had a long chat with my next door neighbour this morning. Probably the longest in all the twenty or so years we've lived next to one another. He's been having treatment for lung and neck cancer for the last nine months. That conversation has done more for me than all of those that I've had with doctors and nurses. He's made me laugh, made me feel that I'm not the only person going through all these emotions and made me feel so much more positive about what will happen (whatever that may be).

So bought some more plants and my little "garden" is looking so cheerful.

Love and hugs to all. xxx

lcc86

Hugs to everyone who needs them, sounds like a tough few days but turtles can power through!

Today was my 12th and final day off on annual leave (boooo). Can't WAIT for my secondment to be over and go back to my "normal" job. I committed the cardinal sin of checking my work emails earlier. A few urgent things I'll have to deal with but I feel better for having done so as I can be more prepared. At least I hopefully won't wake up during the night tonight wondering what's in store.

Today has mainly been a pottering indoors day. Went to the gym first thing, got a load of washing on and hung outside as well. Have done a few small indoor jobs, finished a book and read through a magazine that I get for free from the bank (never a great offering but not terrible).

Going to get dinner started shortly and then head back to the gym for spinning class.