Summer time/s ...

... and the living ain't easy.


Well, isn't it quiet in Blogland? - people being on holiday/ in the garden / on the beach / preoccupied / doing other, better, different things..... summer time, different kinds of time ...

Plenty going on though, in other lives, countries, times, realities.
Time can go at such different rates, in different areas of one's life.


This week I have been mostly:

sorting recent vintage button acquisitions

sorting some of the above for a button swap with Donna (little things, great pleasures)

failing to spend time in the garden due to persistent rain
(at least, at the times when I've been up and feeling like gardening)
(but my repairs on leaky water butt seem to have worked, hurrah)
(but of course persistent rain means I don't need it now, doh!)

spending too much time on the computer (games, mostly .... )

bickering with LG DC (most definately DC not LG) - 11 - going on (permanently - pre-menstrual -) 14 years old
(and no she wouldn't like it if I talked to her in that tone of voice and I wasn't shouting actually yet)
WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SHOUT?

finishing painting of hall/stairs/landing - started last June - could be worse....

not thinking about work
(who? what? students? marking? essays? timetables? means nothing to me ..... )

not doing housework (hardly any, anyway ... )

making tassels (details will follow, on my other, crafty blog) (yes, its as weird and gratuitous as it sounds)

visiting parents

managing not to drink too much wine
(when there is wine in the house, that is. Not much shopping being done these days).


Easy times, at times.

Not always easy.

I'm doing extremely well in my resolve to work less and live and enjoy life more. To the extent that the house is getting a bit squalid, tbh, and there isn't much food around. In the fridge/freezer that is..... theres always enough in our famously capacious cupboards to keep us gong for at least 2 weeks. A result of being brought up with a well-stocked walk-in larder.

I'm spending time playing games on the computer, leaving the washing up, letting M. do almost all the cooking, ceasing to see dust and dirty windows, becoming hardened the sight of "needs to be done" and almost completely innured to the pig-sty which is LG's bedroom.

(almost)

So life is easy in some respects.

(M cooked a roast tonight. Yummy. But could I throw out the carcass etc.? - as we are going away tomorrow? could I b******. The stock pot is hissing and steaming even now, to make tasty, nutritious, cheap chicken stock to go in the freezer for a meal on our return. A result of being brought up by someone who grew up during the war. Dig for Britain and all that. Sigh. Though I can now sometimes leave food on my plate. If I'm seriously too full. Sometimes. It is an achievement, titter ye not.)

My grandfather fought in WW1. In the trenches at Ypres. Blimus. And there are values which I do value, imbred into me, as a result of all that. But its a dodgy business, inbred values.


Things "at home" are also getting much easier.
No more counselling till Sept., but some corners have been turned, I think, and the view ahead is now brighter. (I think) (mostly)
( :o} )

My mother is also fairly stable and comfortable at the moment. She's having chemo - purely palliative, but seems to be working for now, slowing down the secondaries. She's got v. good pain control, a wonderful Macmillan nurse who visits at home. And its her birthday on Saturday.

I've been buying dresses for her - always small, and recently shrinking because of osteoperosis, most of her is now about size 8. But she can only wear dresses now, not trousers/skirts, loose around her waist because of the main tumour and needs size 18. Maternity dresses are the perfect solution, so I've been shopping on eBay.

I'm also buying headscarves, and looking in my craft books at little crotcheted hats, as the side-effects of the chemo set in.

Not easy. And leaving is not easy, at the end of each visit. And thinking about the future is not easy.

But in the meantime - we have another birthday with her, which we'd anticipated we might have to face without her.

Keep your fingers crossed for her wedding anniversary, which is Sept. 1st.

We're off again tomorrow, myself, LG and M, to spend up to a week with her and prepare (secretly and furtively) for the arrival of the rest of the family for her birthday.
Looking forward to early nights, tassel-making - and just being there.