Can't stop coughing, and a challenging day ahead

 Danny is out all day today - has to work in the office and then wait for Emma to finish her massages before heading back.  Won't be here till 9 ish.  I have little " I" to care for and put to bed.  I also have the rubbish to put out (it didn't get done last week because I was prostrate on the sofa all day) and I have to go into town to pick up Keith's prescriptions, so will have "I" in tow.

Keith couldn't walk at all yesterday (Danny had to practically carry him up the stairs on Sunday night).  This virus has stopped his meds working.  He was in bed, and will be in bed all day today too.  I need to get in touch with the District nurses to ask about turning him (on my own).  Of course he wants to be sitting up straight so he can watch tv.   He's eating and drinking ok but I worry about bedsores and have been slathering him in cream.  I am also worried that there may be no comeback from this, he may not be able to walk again.

One positive, we have confirmation of the acceptance for carers twice a day.  Need to phone up today to see when this commences.

Meanwhile, I can't sleep for coughing - it's 3.30 and I've been awake two hours now.  I'm running on about 65% in the daytime - tomorrow with 3 hours less sleep, it will be worse.  What fun . . .

Mother's Day

 I had a nice one.  T&J came over with the riser chair, which works really well for Keith and is a great help.  I had a sit on it last night and have to say, sitting there with your legs up is very relaxing.  I am checking there are no kittens in the works before it moves though!  Danny bought me a pretty Moth Orchid, and cooked a roast and Gabby phoned.  A relaxing day.

Emma is working in Carmarthen for two days now, so I have "I", though she has a Dance Class later on.  We will bake a cake this morning.

On Wednesday I'm going to see Tam now she has given up work to await the arrival of Rosie-posie.  Her feet and ankles have been swelling, and her Carpel Tunnel problems haven't eased much.  She will be glad when the baby has arrived although of course that brings a whole NEW set of challenges!  

I have risen to the Elderberry Bunny challenge and am now half way up her body.  One slight error as I did one too many rows of plain so now she has a garter!  Hopefully it will be hidden by her dress :)  I am hopeless at ripping back on knitting and didn't want to totally mess it up.  Head next.  I have also found much of a teddy that I was given by my friend Annie's daughter after her mum had died.  Annie had knitted the head, and I've done the jacket and then remember making a big boo-boo on the body, so it got abandoned.  Now I have a reason to return to it.

The sticky-out bits with holes are the feet.  You sew up the holes later, the instructions say.

Shadow was downstairs this morning and after a little hissing from Lulu the warrior, he mooched around exploring.  Alfie will be the real challenge but they met at a distance yesterday and I made a fuss of Alfie, handed out Dreamies, and so far so good.

Sarah - you have led me astray - just been over to Ebay to order Mexican Fleabane seeds!!!

An odd weekend

 Trying to catch up with bits and pieces.  At least I FINALLY got the Jumbleberry jam remade today so can take it down to my friend who ordered it.  

Here's what I began recently, to brighten up the steps from yard to garden. Just the most common of Alpines, but they are sat on just a little soil and compost, then rock! I'm hoping they will cope.

I began to add another row to the sashing strip on the wretched crawler quilt  and it's shot - too long.  I have really and truly screwed up with the whole thing and have just been unpicking that offensive row.  Back to it in the morning.  I unpicked and reset two central motifs too as they looked not 100% square.  Mind you, as Danny said today, any slight OCD tendencies I may have developed over the years have brass knobs on nowadays!  Stress I guess. Concentration in my brain seems to have Gone Missing.

E working on the revamp of the Summerhouse.  WHAT a difference it makes to have it that dark green.  The white has only ever been undercoat so that needs rubbing down and having a top coat.

I watched the jumps racing with Keith this afternoon and actually go my head around the Elderberry Bunny increases in the pattern (literally from the get-go).  With little "I" here, prattling on beside me last week, I stood no chance as you have to count stitches for the increases (8 stitches with increase 1, knit 1 in a block etc).  Now I've done the foot and have started on the leg and am enjoying it.  It's for Rosie-Posie, as I call her, hoping she will be Rosina as there are nearly a dozen who went before her.  I will make another for "I" but it won't be in time for Easter as I'm SUCH a slow knitter.  I won't give her this one as she loves pink and this is creamy white with understated ashes-of-roses pink feet (this from two skeins of tapestry wool.  I didn't want baby pink).  I will do a brighter pink for "I" and may even do the whole bunny pink.  Like her mum, it's their favourite colour.

This is just the first coat.

We have a quiet household as "I" went to stay with her father yesterday, and D&E are off to a music gig tonight, staying over with friends.  I am praying Keith and I will have no problems getting him to bed, but I can tell you now, he's going up straight after our evening meal, just in case! T&J arrive tomorrow with a riser-chair so that should be a game-changer for us, as getting him out of his current chair and into the wheelchair at night can be challenging sometimes.

Back to my knitting this evening, and I may have a Brew Dog IPA as it's the weekend, and hopefully I am on the mend now.  Have a good weekend.

Lulu of the Zulus!!

 Both the cold, and work on the quilt are lingering. . .   The quilt has been up here since last Friday . . .  I can just about function now as long as I have Ibuprofen every 4 hours.  Not ideal, but necessary at the moment. I had legs like chewed string this morning but I needed to get some pudding rice from the Health Food Shop in Llandod (only place I can buy it locally) and wool (for the knitted Elderberry Bunnies) and so went to Tescopolis too and topped up.  Now  it's an afternoon of Drew Prichard antiques programmes and rest.  "I" is on the sofa with us in here, watching a cartoon on her ipad.  Not ideal, we try and limit screen time but Emma isn't well and is upstairs struggling to keep on top of  her accounts.

Below is Shadow, Emma and "I"'s cat.  He wants to make friends to the four down here now but he's had a run in with Lulu, who - feeling adventurous - went upstairs and met him and he chased her down.  Now it's War and we should call her Lulu the Zulu Warrior as she is SO brave - he is twice her size but she sits down here and swears at him.  Today they nearly had a set-to when I was upstairs but apparently Pippi rushed to her sister's aid and they saw him off!  He nearly got leapt on by Alfie recently (who was on the table, so Shadow hadn't spotted him).  I had to grab Alfie darn quick as he'd have marmalized him. Alfie needs to go back on the Happy Pills I think.  

He looks quite like Little Whale and Ghengis may have thought that he was as he didn't look twice and walked past him, and once sniffed noses with him before walking away.

Lulu en garde . . .

On our recent walk - in the sleet/snow - on the day Ghengis left us.  The rose bush arrived today so I will get it unwrapped and having a drink.  We will plant it by Ghengis' grave at the weekend.

Perhaps I will now have a look at the Elderberry Bunnies pattern.

Feeling half dead

 It started with a tickly cough.  Caught from Danny, who had had a cold last week.  Then yesterday my nose streamed non-stop and I went deaf in one ear and that same ear was very painful and I felt rough.  I went to bed early and Danny dealt with Keith. I didn't sleep at all before 5 a.m. and then when I did finally drop off, I was awake every half hour with what felt like a UTI - I had cystitis and bladder pain and a temperature.

Today I  can do NOTHING.  I have been asleep on the sofa all morning ("I" playing on her own and watching things on her i-pad.)  I have been first shivering and now boiling hot, I probably have  a chest infection as I coughed up  brown gunk (sorry if tmi).  I can barely walk and have no appetite.  I'm rather hoping it isn't another round of Covid.  If someone offered to take me out and shoot me, I am inclined to think I might agree right now!

Hoping you are all well anyway.

I am related to Churchill . . . apparently

 This is what Family Search tell me, but I am somewhat suspicious of their research. In fact, downright sceptical!  View the tree HERE.  It is a nice thought, to be his 11th cousin.  The name Clotworthy Skeffington is wonderful . . .

Lulu finally in possession of the Amazon bag

Well, progress has been made on the quilt and in the garden.  Yesterday, I finally sewed the first bit of sashing in and I have to say, the inaccuracies have backed off now and aren't so visible (except to my eagle eye!) Hoping to make more progress today but it's childcare day today and tomorrow, so I'm not holding my breath.  I have promised baking and sowing some seeds.  I  need to make another super-calorie rice pudding and Potato Dauphinoise too.  

Emma and Danny put the staging together yesterday, so I'm ready to go in the greenhouse (though I fear not much progress will take place for a while as it's currently minus 3 C . . .)  They also got cracking with the Summerhouse and Danny put some easing oil onto the screws and managed to get the jammed door off, and then sanded it top and bottom where the winter damp had swelled the wood. We managed to get Emma's heavy massage table up the steps and not fall in the pond with it :)  So things are taking shape and they will start decorating it next weekend, inside and out.  They cleared away leaves from the pond and we had a tidy up that end of the garden.  They bought two packs of wildflower seeds from Tesco to strew in the bottom paddock, so that should look pretty this summer.  It was sunny all day, and warmish despite there being a covering of snow on the hills round about here.  All in all we got plenty of fresh air, and little "I" had great fun outside.

I managed to force myself to make jam on Saturday, but the strawberry had to be boiled up again - did it in the microwave as a small amount, and then of course, it exploded, so ended up an even smaller amount in jars.  I also did Jumbleberry jam (had an order) and that hasn't set as I had a conflict with it being apparently ready for the jars, and Keith's lunchtime. So I will need to boil that up again today.

Keith is looking forward to warmer weather and has asked Danny to wheel him out to his workshop for half an hour or so when the weather is warmer and it's dry.  I have been grateful for Danny's help as sometimes it's a struggle getting Keith out of his chair (hoping that Jon will be able to manhandle into the car the riser chair we are buying from his mum - delivery on Saturday if so). Mealtimes are taking longer and longer and I always end up feeding him at some point.  We have a phone call from the Dietition on Wednesday afternoon. We've also had an NHS letter which says we note you are waiting for an appt., in Geriatrics, please let us know if you still need it . . . What use is that, no details of what the appt. might be for!

Right, onwards and upwards.  Hope everyone has some welcome sunshine.

R.I.P. Ghengis

 

Sadly when I got back from town this morning, Danny told me that Ghengis was on the way out - he had spotted him staggering across the lawn, unable to use his back legs, and it looked like he had had a stroke.  He had laid him on the sofa, and the poor old boy just looked so flat and frail.  I knew his time had come and so we took him straight down to the vet's to be pts.  He went very quickly as I stroked him and told him how loved he was.  He had a lot of love in his long life, spending all but 3or so of his probable 18 years with us.  

He arrived as a feral tom, and was never very big, but was a thug and a bully to all the other cats until we got him tame enough to go and be neutered, and he was a different cat after that.  No more rape and pillage.  He had a good life with us - only this morning he was sat next to Pippi up on the bank in the little bit of sunshine we had today.  I will miss him so - he sat beside me on the sofa every night, and sat beside me as I was on the computer, sitting on my mouse hand!  

As always, Danny stepped into the breach, went to the vet's with me, and came home and went out to dig a deep grave for him.  I will plant a rose by it - in fact I ordered one only last night, which I had in my garden at Ynyswen, and really loved, called Tuscany Superb, a deep crimson Gallica shrub rose with a lovely perfume.

D, E, I  and myself went out for a walk through the woods in the wet snow earlier - too wet for anything to lay but the distant hills have a sprinkling of white.  It was good to clear my head anyway, but a sad day here.

It's hard to hold back the tears, as all the grief I feel in losing Keith inch by inch has been released too.