Accident prone

Now for a long overdue thank you to Carol at Not Only In
Thailand for this Beautiful Blogger award which she gave to me back in April. It is a good job that you can not see me as recently I have been anything but beautiful, more often than not cut and bruised!

Today I had my final dentist appointment and I am hoping that it has brought to an end the jinx of minor ailments that has haunted me over the last few months. Recently life seems to have a continual fly in the ointment. As healthwise, it just seems to have been one thing after another. The infected cyst was on the mend when washing my hair and trying to keep my neck dry, I either got shampoo in my eye or tilted my neck at an awkward angle resulting in a badly blood shot eye. The eye had about cleared when we had two fine and sunny days. I made the most of the good weather by spending time in the garden. My reward was about a dozen insect bites on my arms and shoulders plus two on each ankle. I looked like I had the plague! And boy did I itch! I took a leaf out of Maggie May's blog and found an ancient bottle of Aloe Vera Gel - purchased abroad several years ago when husband got sunburnt. It had no expiry or use by date but whatever its age it did the trick, for a time. Then I applied some more.

By the following weekend the bites had faded and I managed to bang my arm on the corner of a cupboard in our utility room, giving myself both a cut and a bruise in one fell swoop. Later the same day while eating our evening meal, extremely cold ice cream caught a sensitive tooth. An indescribable sensation travelled up my head like lightening and the next thing that I knew husband was picking me up off the floor. Two bumps to my head, a bruise on each shoulder and a whopping bruise on my left thigh were the result of this incident. Then on Tuesday afternoon, while at work, I noticed that one of my fingers was bleeding. I had not felt any pain. I am not sure if I have become accident prone or if this is some sort of jinx. Maybe I should simply stop getting out of bed.

I realise that by comparison with what some in Blogland have gone through or are going through healthwise, my problems are nothing more than minor irritations. Looking back this all started when I had swine flu back at the end if May and I had to stop going to the gym. So it is back to the gym and soon, hopefully, I shall be both fit and healthy.

Paradise Lost

I expect that you are wondering what I have been doing with myself for the last few months. Well, I have been here in Paradise.


Earlier this year, I had noticed this sign outside a house about half a mile from where we live. It is not the name of the house, so I wasn't sure what it was all about. I had been intending to take a photo of the sign for some time. Eventually I remembered to take my camera with me so that I could take a photo of it. I made sure that I was alone on the lane, or so I thought, even though it is unusual to see company of any sort. As I pressed the shutter I heard a car behind me, turning into the drive of the house. The driver glared at me. Too late, I had my photo! The next time that I drove by the Paradise sign had disappeared. Now that I have had the chance to enlarge the photo I have noticed that it actually says Paradise Autos which was the name of a second hand car showroom on the outskirts of Chester.

Perhaps where we live is Paradise even if the sign has gone. I realise that we are lucky to live in a cottage up a country lane. When the weather is good, it is idyllic, although I realise that it may not be to the taste of everyone. However, I have been out with my camera and have taken a few photos of the area to share with you.

I have started with the view into the farmer's field from the top of the lane.


The next photo looks back down the lane.


Here are the dairy farmer's cows in the field at the end of our garden. Out of interest, it did not rain until about a week after the photo was taken. So much for the old wives saying that when the cows sit down, it is going to rain.

So far pretty idyllic, but half a mile away this is the scene.

The end of the nearby motorway. When the trees are bare we can see this from our bedroom window. So maybe it is not so idyllic after all and recently the idyll has been shattered from another point of view. There have been a spate of burglaries in the village. Our little community on the edge of the village had escaped the thieves until last Thurday when our next door neighbour was burgled in broad daylight. That evening the lane was a hive of activity. We had two visits from a uniformed police officer wanting to know if we had seen anything. Then early on Friday morning we had a visit from two female detectives in jeans and trainers. Not quite Barnaby and Troy/Jones.

Until last week life here has been fairly uneventful. However, there have been a few incidents which I shall write about in detail over the coming weeks. Happenings worth a brief mention have been written about below. As neither husband or I had to go to work the following day, we stayed up on election night to watch the results come in, going to bed at about 3.30am. Something that we had not done for several elections. I was laid low for ten days, at the end of May, with what I initially thought was a cold, but after six days decided that it might be swine flu. It certainly was no ordinary cold but six days in it was too late for Tamiflu, which I would not have wanted even if I had thought about it on day one. At the beginning of June we had few days holiday in Ireland. Two and a half weeks later found us on the road again. This time we were heading down south to Wimbledon for the tennis. And for the last six weeks I have been trying to get myself caught up with everything once and for all, while struggling with an infected cyst on my neck which has meant several visits to the GP and his nurse. Also I am in the middle of some protracted and expensive dental work. I seem to have been spending my life in doctor's and dentist's waiting rooms recently. I realise that I have been fortunate and have taken for granted good health and teeth that rarely need attention. I am too busy for all this hanging around in doctor's and dentist's waiting rooms and as Tony Haywood infamously said 'I want my life back'.

Over the next few days/weeks I shall try to visit and catch up with my friends in Blogland. I have often thought about you all and wondered how you are getting on.

Landslide

I am not trying to predict the result of the general election. At the moment I am snowed under with jobs that I have been putting off and trying to avoid doing - letters to write, phone calls to make, sewing, mending and ironing so that I have some clothes to wear. Then the cottage needs Spring cleaning. Everything in the garden is now staring to grow and needs attention. Also there is the day job. I know that it is only part time, but it can not be ignored. So reluctantly, I have decided that I shall have to have a break from my blog to allow myself to catch up with things.



For now I shall leave you with this recently taken photograph of daffodils in the lane where I live, taken from the opposite direction to the one on my side bar.

Say it with chocolates, flowers and sunshine

Happy Easter to bloggers and chocoholics everywhere! I snapped this blow up Lindt golden bunny a few weeks ago outside the Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet. It does not look very happy but it is a bit cold up there at the best of times, so that probably explains the frozen smile.











For those of you who are not chocoholics or are maybe on a diet here are some daffodils. Not from our garden, unfortunately the wind and rain got to our daffodils before I was able to get out to take a photograph.





Now for what we would all like, some sunshine, which I am afraid is in the form of an award, for which I need to thank the delightfully named Strawberry Jam Anne.

I am supposed to pass the award on to twelve bloggers. I have noticed that several of you already have the award, so I am going to give the award to any blogger who commented on my previous posts, A Family at War and/or The home strait. Thank you all for your support. It is much appreciated. I hope that it will not be too long until we have some real sunshine to cheer us up!

The home strait

Back in January, when I was visiting my mother at the residential home where she was a resident, the manager took me to one side and had a chat with me about my mother. She explained in what can best be described as carer jargon that the staff at the residential home were struggling to cope with my mother's 'needs'. At first I did not quite understand what she was saying. Then the penny dropped. The manager was telling me that my mother had deteriorated to the point where I needed to consider moving her into a nursing home. I asked if the could move Mum into the nursing home next door, which is run by the same company. Yes, they could do that, but would check all possibilities that could be behind her apparent deterioration before they decided to move her. The next time that I saw the home manager she said that Mum had improved, which led me to think that the possibility of a move to the nursing home had been cancelled or rather postponed .

On another visit I was a bit disturbed when the carers asked me to take my mother's rings off her, as they are now too big for the ring finger on her left hand. Apparently she had been playing with them and had lost her engagement ring down the back of a chair. I managed to get her eternity and engagement rings off her on the pretext that I would clean them for her. She still has her wedding ring. Now my jewellery cleaning solution looks as if a dust pan has been emptied into it from all the gunk that came out of the rings. It was a bit of a shock to realise that Mum will never wear her rings again. They have been valued and are now hidden in a safe place.

A few weeks later I suppose that I should not have been surprised, but I was, to get a phone call asking me to go and have a look at a room in the nursing home. Although not perfect the room is pleasant, on the top floor under the eaves, with a lovely view of the surrounding countryside, the Dee estuary and the Welsh hills beyond, but I very much doubt that my mother is going to notice it. I did try to take a photograph of the view but the window only opens about one inch and when I tried to open it further an alarm went off! I quickly shut it. However, the alarm continued to ring, so I think that something else must have set it off. The room was newly decorated and a bit bare, so I though what a nice touch, when I went up to Mum's room a couple of weeks ago, to see a rug on the floor. As I tidied up Mum's clothes I stood on the rug and again noticed an alarm going off. Thinking nothing of it I carried on. Then there was a knock on the door. It was carer come to switch off the alarm. The rug is more of a mat, there to detect when Mum gets out of bed in the night. Since then I have avoided walking on the rug/mat.

The move into the nursing home took place about a month ago and Mum now seems to have settled into it. I have been to visit her several times and have found that many of the residents from the residential home are now in the nursing home. It has a captive audience, but it has certainly made my life easier. As it was only a year ago that I was looking at residential homes for my mother. Choosing this particular residential home has certainly been the right decision and has saved me the hassle and aggravation of having to find a nursing home now that Mum's dementia has progressed to the point that she needs nursing care. Then there would have been the upheaval of moving my very confused and now practically immobile mother. Sadly we are now on the last lap, the final furlong, the home strait. However you look it, the end is coming into view. By anybody's standards my mother has had a good innings. She was born two months premature long before the days of incubators and last month she celebrated her 91st birthday. The nursing home staff are brilliant with her and we are not having to start all over again with the staff getting to know her likes and dislikes etc. I would hate to have to do their job, but I am so grateful that they are prepared to do it.

One crumb of comfort in this whole debacle is that my mother always knows me when I visit her once or twice a week. But she does not know my brother, the son on whom she doted for so long. He visits about once every two months and has been asked 'do I know you?' and 'are you my father/husband/brother?' So much for dementia being short term memory loss!

Thank you for all of your comments on the previous post. The DWP have taken four weeks to stop paying Mum's benefits to me. In that time I have hung onto what had been paid to me and have built up a cushion which I hope will last for as long as Mum needs it. I intend to send onto my brother the larger bills and invoices for him to pay.

A Family at War

There must be something in the air and it is not Spring. It is just over a year since I wrote the post Happy Families about the turmoil within my family. Now I find myself penning another post along the same lines. What is it, I wonder, about this time of the year? After I brought my mother up to Cheshire from Sussex, in April last year my relationship with my brother improved and recently when he has visited my mother I have invited him back here for a cup of tea. Only a few weeks ago the two of us enjoyed a chat and a cup of tea in our snug. Little did I know that behind the scenes he was up to his old tricks. I now regret that second chance that I gave him. I should have known that a leopard does not change its' spots.

Last month one Saturday morning there was a telephone call for me, just as I was sitting down to breakfast. I know that we are not early risers at the weekend but this call was from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). I thought that they were a Monday to Friday 9-5 operation. And this is the second time in a few months that they have phoned me at this time on a Saturday. It won't happen again. The phone now stays switched off, at the weekend, until after we have had breakfast. Husband watched with puzzled concern as he listened to my half of the conversation. My brother had written to the DWP asking for my mother's benefits to be paid to him. I was furious. When I managed to get my mother into a residential home near to me in Cheshire, he agreed that I would be responsible for my mother's welfare which strictly speaking includes her benefits. At that time the only benefit that she was getting was the state pension as my brother had not bothered to apply for the attendance allowance to which she was also entitled by virtue of being over 65 and having a long term health problem. So it was me who went to the trouble of completing the lengthy application form, on my mother's behalf for attendance allowance. After weeks of deliberation the DWP awarded my mother attendance allowance and decided to pay it to me, in the full knowledge that my brother was in the process of registering Power of Attorney in my mother's name. DWP rules meant that Mum's state pension would also be paid to me. Up until then that had been paid into my mother's account, which my brother had access to.

I use the money to pay for any clothes that my mother needs, toiletries, sweets, hairdressing, chiropody and dental charges and at the end of each month I have transferred the unspent money into my mother's bank account, which meant that my brother had access to it albeit a week or two later than if it was paid to him. But that is not good enough for my brother. He wants the benefits paid to him, which means that I have to spend my money, rather than my mother's money, on my mother. Then claim back from him what I have spent. Since I brought my mother up here my part time job has become very part time, as I have had to turn down some offers of work, which means that I really do not earn enough to support the level of spending necessary some months. As it is I have to buy everything for my mother separately and keep the receipts. Claiming back what I have spent is another unnecessary hurdle in my already complicated life. How much money does he need? He already has access to my parents/mother's savings and now that my mother's bungalow has sold, he has the six figure proceeds from that to think about. I know that he pays the care home fees out of the savings, but does he really need Mum's benefits as well? It is a matter of principal and I have to ask myself how much lower can he stoop?

The DWP have advised me that benefits do not have to be paid to the holder of Power of Attorney, but because my brother has asked for them to be paid to him they have to do so.

Make do and mend

My previous post, Christo's Legacy, was a post too far for my ageing laptop computer. The photographs were slow to load and as I was putting the finishing touches to the post, blogger swallowed half if it. My attempt to resurrect it, from the ruins that I was left with, were in vain. I had to remove all of the photographs and start again, which meant that time that I had allocated for visiting was used for post writing. A couple of days later I had more problems when I was trying to re-arrange the widgets on my sidebar. The widgets were all over the place, including places that I would never get them into, if that was where I wanted them to go. At this point husband decided that we would look at blogger's help pages. We found that other bloggers were having similar problems but there did not appear to be a solution to the problems. Then just as we were putting the laptop to bed for the night it expired on us. The following day husband decided, after fiddling with it, that the hard drive had gone. Perhaps blogger was not to blame for the problems after all.

I was slightly dismayed when husband talked about repairing my laptop. This is the third time that it has let me down in the last nine months. It is husband's hand me down and is approaching five years old. I am not sure what that equates to in human years. About pensionable age I would imagine. Last time that it let me down, we had agreed that the next time it let me down, that it would be replaced. So husband reluctantly agreed that I could have a new laptop but he was also going to repair the old one and sell it. I was expecting a trip to PC World but no, husband maintained that a higher spec. less expensive laptop could be bought via the Internet, which is what we did with a two day delivery. I saw the brown and gold UPS delivery van reversing down the lane, from the bedroom window, and husband was standing on the doorstep before the driver had got down the path. The box was opened in the kitchen and as I was about to put the packaging in the recycling bag, I thought perhaps we should keep this in case it doesn't work. Husband set about commissioning the laptop, but you have probably guessed by now that it didn't work and it was soon back in the packaging which thankfully we had not had to fish out of the rubbish. So that hard drive, that husband had ordered, came in useful after all and my ageing laptop has had yet another reprieve and is back in business. But before it has chance to let me down again I intend to replace it. However, for now I am going to catch up with all of your posts.