Catch Up

I'm going to do a quick catch up to let everyone know where I've been lately and to apologise for not visiting or commenting for so long.

Harry had to be admitted as an in patient at the Bristol Oncology Centre.  His pain level was way out of control. That was two weeks ago now and he's entering into his third week. I've been spending as much time at the hospital with him as possible as well as trying to keep house and garden up together as well.
I've been very tired but have managed to catch up on my sleep at night.
He is due to be discharged soon...... and he'll now be an invalid so I'll have my work cut out to look after him with my own health problems too. However, I naturally want to do this and will give it my best shot.
He is known as a *bed blocker* and they want him out of that hospital.
The thing is....... I'm having a big central heating change over (boiler update) next week and will have absolute chaos in most rooms. The job is desperate to be done and now is the time of the year to do it. The system is simply gushing out heat in the bedrooms in hot weather and I'm unable to stop it .....perspiring badly as I write this........ or it is too cold in winter.
There is an intermittent smell of gas from behind the boiler so I have just got to have it done. Harry will be discharged very soon.
To make things worse, my new daughter in law's mother had a major stroke over the last weekend and is in a city hospital, lying helpless. Every one is on the verge of exploding with stress and exhaustion.
So blogging has been the last thing on my mind.
I have a phobia about lifts (elevators) and I have to walk up many flights of stairs to avoid them  when I visit these two patients and I am wearing myself out with this and carrying all the washing that I'm taking home daily and bringing back clean things etc, even though this is my own fault as people tell me. So the hospital visiting is not easy .....many because I'm making things hard for myself because of the lift phobia.
Will keep you all posted.
In the mean time Harry's pain level is more acceptable which a good outcome.

Pain, pain, go away

It is really dreadful to watch someone you love having to put up with severe pain. Even more horrifying  to have experienced that particular pain myself before having my course of radiotherapy three years ago.

Unfortunately, Harry has this pain in several different areas of his spine, hip and shoulders due to advanced prostate cancer spread.

He is on painkillers that seem to mask it for a while.

His face goes white when the pain gets bad and he nearly cries.

He is normally a *toughy* and used to be on building sites all his working life, so he is used to roughing it. However, this pain is unbearable at times. He cannot walk very well and sometimes not at all. He has to get up in the night and have the lights on and be helped to the bathroom. By the time we get back to bed, he falls into a deep sleep and starts to snore loudly. I lie awake until the dawn. I am feeling really tired and totally uninspired when it comes to blogging, as well as all the emotional stuff.

Hoping everyone will understand.

Getting Steamed Up.

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

 My daughter had come over from the east coast with my grandsons to spend the four days of the Easter holiday with us, so when we realised that Saturday was a warm, dry day, we packed a picnic and travelled by car setting off mid morning for the Brecon Beacons, which is situated in Wales. We crossed from Bristol via the Second Severn Bridge (three miles long) on which I once did a sponsored walk across and back, the day before the bridge officially opened a good few years ago.

As it turned out, we were wise to choose Saturday for that trip as the two remaining days went much colder with rain.

My grandsons are steam train fanatics and they've visited many different lines in Britain but so far hadn't been to this one and neither had I. I'm getting used to doing this kind of trip with them though Harry didn't feel at all up to going, so he relaxed at home and I'd left him a cold lunch which he had with some soup. I worried about him a bit but he answered all my texts to let me know he was Ok.

We had a lovely time and when we were almost home, I popped into a fish and chip shop that we think are the best in Bristol and I brought home a steaming hot portion for Harry, which he really enjoyed.

It seems very quiet now that the family have all gone and we are just the two of us again.

Hope you all had a happy time too.

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

Happy Easter

Wishing you all a Happy and blessed Easter time.

I shall probably do my share of eating chocolate, but to Christians, Easter is more than eggs, chocolate little bunnies and chicks. 

Jesus died for me (and you) and is now risen!

Is This Love?

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

Since I reluctantly had to re-home my rabbits back in September, visitors are now able to bring their dogs round if they wish to.

My son inherited two Cavapoos when he got together with and later married Sandy and the dogs come round at fairly regular intervals. They are a cross between Cavalier Spaniels and Poodles. One looks very like a Cavalier and the other other one has curly, fluffy hair that doesn't moult, more like a Poodle.

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

The Jack Russell belongs to Harry's twin and his wife and she comes regularly to visit here. So far, the three dogs have never met but they are all aware and a bit disturbed when they sniff the scent that has been left in the house and they search around nervously at first before settling down.

Early one morning, Sam brought round his two dogs when he had to drop the girls round before school and as it was a fine, dry day, I made the mistake of letting them out in the garden and I had noticed them rolling about on the path at the far end.

When they came back in, there was the most terrible smell. Farmyards and muck spreading is the only way I can describe it. 

We live in a small city house with a tiny garden but we do get foxes passing through. I can only assume that they had rolled in fox mess and before we could stop them, they proceeded to  roll all over the carpets in the back room and the kitchen floor leaving the foulest of smells everywhere.

Sam immediately took the dogs home to bathe them, not pleased as it had upset all his plans for the day.

One of the girls started to cry as the smell was really bad. I filled a bucket with soapy hot water and disinfectant, got down on my hands and knees and washed the whole place down and that took a lot of washing. All through the day, the smell persisted and in all, I had to repeat the carpet washing twice more until neither Harry nor I could detect any odour.

I then took a bucket of water with disinfectant to clean off the path outside.

I had certainly had my early morning work out that day!

After a week or so, I'd forgotten all about the incident until the Jack Russell next visited and she seemed very disturbed and rolled all over the carpets and then went into the kitchen which is fortunately tiled, and did a huge pee.

Is it a sign of my love for them that I just clear up their messes or is it that they do these things because they feel at home and love us?

Little rascals.

Pink Beginnings......

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

Six years ago, I'd never heard of a blog let alone owned a computer. I didn't have the faintest inkling how to use one nor did I ever want one.

However, my son, who lived in Japan at that time, must have wanted me to email him instead of using the snail mail and he hated writing letters anyway and phone calls were expensive.

Sam must have been visiting and was here in the New Year and he generously treated me to my first ever computer which happened to be a pink iMac, pictured above.

"I'll never be able to use it," I protested. He was leaving for home within a few days so I tried to learn fast, making copious notes that I don't even understand to this day.

Before leaving, he had told me that he thought I'd be good at blogging so he set one up for me. I was panic stricken. How would I cope when things went wrong?

Anyway, I started blogging in earnest early in 2008.

It was quite a while before I received any comments and what a big day that was! Someone had actually read my post and bothered to leave an answer.

There seemed to be a whole community of bloggers out there and very soon I got into the swing of things and back then it seemed to be the fashion to give and receive awards. That seems to be a thing of the past now, thankfully, as it did involve quite a lot of hard work putting in links and sending them on. I can still remember the thrill of my first one though, even though it seems slightly ridiculous now.

I often wonder if Sam regrets getting me that computer, as he has been the first port of call when things go wrong (and they frequently do) and even though I've got through several different models since that first iMac, I still live in dread of breakdowns and I don't really understand much more about computers now than I did in the first place. I regard myself as a technophobe though I'm really trying to get out of that.

Looking back, it seemed totally different to the blogging life today. 

Not many of my original blogging family are still writing now, though some are.

I think Facebook and Twitter have taken away most of them and I don't take part in either of those.

I really appreciate my present blogging friends and value comments very much but I don't take it as seriously as I used to and only seem to write a post  once a week, whereas I'd publish at least three in the old days.

I live a fairly full life, have many interests, family, friends, church and other activities and hobbies...... so why do I keep thinking of the many people who I considered to be good blogging friends and wonder what they are doing now and how they are? I really miss them.

Is that pathetic or what?

Golden Moments

We will be celebrating another Golden Wedding at the weekend. (You might remember that Harry and I celebrated ours early last December, when he narrowly missed it through collapsing and being taken to hospital). He was sent home the day before but was too ill to attend any kind of *do*.

This time it will be his twin brother and wife who will be celebrating. They got married three months after we did and I can still remember at their wedding, overhearing my newly acquired mother in law telling everyone that she had lost two sons within three months.

Not a brilliant way to start off a relationship.

Still it's all water under the bridge now.

The four of us are hoping to have a quiet meal together in a restaurant in town. We won't risk going too far because neither of the twins is particularly well and we will be relying on public transport to get there and back. So nothing too complicated was arranged and we are hoping that there'll be no snags this time.

Harry is not walking very well at all right now but I do go out with him once a day for him to get some exercise and to give him something outside the home environment to think about afterwards. However, it is very slow progress and we manage to do very short walks and allow plenty of time to complete them with the aid of a stick, which he hates to use.

He was such an active man and very strong and it does make me sad to see the way he is being so limited by ill health. However we still have much to be thankful for.

The weather has gone very cold again but it is officially Spring now and all the bulbs have been flowering away in the tubs in my garden and in the parks that I visit and now there are trees  blossoming too........ cherry, magnolia, forsythia to name a few. The clocks will go forward one hour at the weekend and the evenings will get lighter. Definitely my favourite time of the year.