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Cheery_Daff

Excellent work. Well done on accepting help too. I'm sure you've wanted to help others plenty of times and had them refuse - it's nice when people accept! Sounds like you're making real progress xx

PennysIntoPounds

You are absolutely smashing it.
Including or perhaps especially in accepting help!

We're all in it together trying to get through life as best we can, being able to say 'yes please that would be helpful' even through gritted teeth is an amazing life skill 

Humdinger1

Congratulations @redofromstart on everything!  When you say accepting help is political, I suppose the boys' views are also needing to be negotiated? You're doing brilliantly.   Love Humdinger xx 

EssexHebridean

It's such a big thing to ask for help, but it's also a big thing to offer help, so I think you've done a good thing all round being able to accept that assistance from your friend. I can well imagine that there is a bit of delicate navigating to be done around the whole situation too, so having someone who can quietly assist with that is going to be helpful all round. 

doingitanyway

PennysIntoPounds said:

We're all in it together trying to get through life as best we can, being able to say 'yes please that would be helpful' even through gritted teeth is an amazing life skill 

So, so true!

doingitanyway

Good job on all the clear spaces that are opening up

Seasidegal58

Great to hear you are open to accepting help and the decluttering is going well. 

My DD has a pair of thermal curtains between the main hallway and the passage way into the back door (which also serves as a utility room). They consist of a heavily quilted plastic type material and when you walk through them the curtains snap back into place via magnetic trim. These are so useful for the dogs who like to wander in and out all the time and means the back door to the garden can be kept open. They keep out the cold extremely well (I was sceptical at first but they do!) plus they also keep out midges in the summer which are a plague as anyone who lives in the Highlands will know!

redofromstart

Thank you everyone.

Progress in so far as all of the windows are now in. Not finished, but in. Some rooms are warmer and quieter and hopefully the snagging bits will be sorted this week. Then they have the drive work to do.  

This means that there is now some point to me doing bits of painting and damp treatment. Predictably I have done far too much and am straight back into fibro flare. My elbows are throbbing and my feet hurt so I have given myself today off.   I'm off to meet a friend for coffee later which should stop me from accidentally doing too much again. 

GP you asked about current craft stuff, have to admit my hands are fairly bad which limits my options but I am very very slowly working on a crochet Grace blanket from made by Anita, plus knitting a simple throw with some lovely super chunky merino wool.   

Humdinger  asked Why the politics? Several levels to that, I've rediscovered the joy of space and emptiness and I am ruthlessly exiting things from the house. Huge change for the residents and for visiting step sons, and it does look very different as a result. Change resistance. It's part of the pathway to selling up which is also emotional for them all. And finally my choice of helper in itself is controversial and might cause some upset but the difference is that they don't make suggestions based on emotion, do actually turn up and do things rather than just talk about it and know me well enough to intervene if I am
over committing so I'm past caring what anyone else thinks. 

Health wise I am rapidly sliding back into living on convenient junk which just does not help. I haven't even picked my tablets up from the pharmacy, must do that. I've got a blood test in three weeks to see if they are working and the answer will clearly be no so I must reschedule that too.  

greenbee

Much better to have help that doesn't have any emotional attachment. Oddly they are often better and identifying the things you might regret getting rid of as well as pointing out that receipts from DIY purchases 20 years ago can probably go... 

Hope the rest works, and that you can pace yourself a bit better on the next stage of work once you've recovered. 

PennysIntoPounds

Hope you have a calm and healing Sunday