Masterchef J

Tonight for dinner we had vegetable soup & potato wedges with spicy tomato dip - all cooked by J! He's really taken to cooking. At his next lesson he's doing fruit flapjacks. Yum.

P's Dad doing really well, has walked a little bit!

It was actually quite sunny today but it's supposed to rain heavily tomorrow.

Crocuses & snowdrops beginning to appear.

J off school again yesterday. Took him to doctor who said it was a virus & was quite concerned but today he seems a lot better. He was just whizzing round on swivel chair & fell off & hurt his wrist so can only play piano with left hand. How many times have I told you not to spin round in that chair?

Rain, rain & more rain

I can't believe it but it's pouring with rain again! Is it ever going to stop? Bet J wishes he'd listened to me & worn his coat. Yesterday I picked him up in a blizzard

Last night

Last night I was supposed to be going to an Italian restaurant with a couple of friends but it had to be rescheduled. When I told P I wasn't going out he said 'Oh no!' Then we had to have pizza to console him & J for the fact that I wasn't going out. What, I wonder, were they planning to get up to?

P's Dad

P's Dad has continued to be in a lot of pain so they gave him a nerve block to dull it & tried to get him more mobile but they couldn't. They tried more x-rays but still couldn't see anything so decided in the end to take him to theatre & open up his hip. When they did they found the ball of the socket was cracked but obscured by arthritis on x-ray & they replaced the joint. Poor old man it must have been so painful. The doctor said it will probably take quite a while to recover after having been immobile for several weeks but at least he's on the right track now.

Okapi

I don't know if you remember but a while ago I went to a quiz & they asked what family an okapi belonged to & I hadn't a clue what an okapi was. Anyway...

Here he is

Well here he was in Cambridge Zoology Museum, a bit on the dead side, but a real okapi!!

P's warm up treat

View from lift

If you ever go to Cambridge go to John Lewis & go up in the lift because the back is glass & you get this amazing view.

Another view from lift

Giant snowflakes

The other day these really huge snowflakes started coming down, seriously they looked about half the size of my hand. But I didn't get a very good photo. P says if I'd used the other camera, leaned out of the window & used flash...ok, ok.

Wet Monday

I think J forgot to try & get out of going to school this morning! Both his cold & his foot seem a lot better anyway. He had a bit of a disastrous hair cut last week & has a sort of scalped look. Hope he doesn't get teased about it.

Can't believe how much rain we've had, plus a few flurries of snow. Roads quite flooded in places.

Police phoned yesterday & said that there have been a lot of shed burglaries in our area. We've got extra security now, hope that keeps them out in future.

Update

Yesterday P & I were out at Pierrepont,a healing centre I've been to a lot where they were having a birthday celebration. Had good time. We went for a 'walk' at lunchtime as weather nice & dry. On way home started snowing again. Today raining. Tomorrow risk of more snow. Wish it would warm up a bit. Very, very glad not in caravan.
Both P & J got colds & J dropped a chisel on his foot & is limping. But he's going to school tomorrow whatever.
Got to go, dinner ready.

Cambridge in the rain

Today P had the day off & we decided to go out. After some debate we decided to go to Cambridge. This could have been a really nice place to visit except that the weather was terrible. First we had thick frost & it was freezing cold, then we had a misty sort of drizzle, then we had rain & then we had sleet. It was just wet & miserable all day. Also it was hard to get round on the scooter because there were quite a few pavements without dropped kerbs, it was hard sometimes to get past all the parked bicycles & there were a lot of very clever looking people who seemed to walk round in a dream & simply didn't notice they were in my way. We had a good look round a bookshop & also went to the Zoology Museum which reminded me of studying Biology at university. Actually it reminded me of just how boring it was - learning all that endless classification of the Animal Kingdom & the lifestyle habits of obscure invertebrates that lived in some muddy bank somewhere about whom I couldn't care less. I've always wished I'd done English instead.
J & I came out of the museum both saying we just wanted to go home. We were cheered up by a pizza lunch, I had a nice one with chicken & roasted veg & artichokes. I love Globe artichokes (I loathe Jerusalem artichokes).
Then we did a bit of shopping & ended up buying a new radio/CD player cos our one doesn't work properly, we also got a DS 'game' for J which consists of 100 books - a good way to get him reading the classics. I got a very reduced check shirt in a nice bluey green colour, don't know if it fits as I'm still too cold to try.
It's so nice to be home & dry.

Rainy day

Last night J had Tim over for a sleepover which went very well. Now Becky's taken them both off ice skating & I'm sitting here looking at the rain, feeling bad about having eaten the chocolate, feeling I should do some of my theology course (once I've got past the next bit about reading Revelation I'll get to the bit when I can start writing essays) but really I just feel like going to sleep.
Later I'm going to make some pancake batter for P to make pancakes when he gets home, perhaps I'll cheat & do it in the food processor.

Snow

I should have mentioned - it snowed today.

Problems

I felt quite burdened at church this morning. There are several people I know quite well who are having a hard time. One woman's brother has just had a brain haemorrhage. The person sitting next to me is feeling really down. She's going to come round for a chat sometime as I know what's it's like to feel really low. And Mavis who I bring to the coffee morning is also in a really bad state. She's had a very difficult life & has been badly rejected but something has happened recently to make her feel very unwanted & she was sitting at the back of the church looking terrible. I sat near her at coffee but then Kate, with whom I'm quite friendly, came & sat the other side of me & I really wanted to catch up with her & she's got her problems as well, so I ended up hardly talking to Mavis.

I just want to make all these people better & I can't. I suppose I just have to accept that while I'm doing my best to help them & pray for them ultimately they're not my responsibility.

I've told J that if he helps me tidy up tomorrow he can have a friend for a sleepover. We shall see.

Pie

Here's a bit of lemon meringue pie to get me in the mood.

Pudding & prayer

This morning while I was in the bathroom J was outside the door singing a song that basically went:
'Mum is mad, Mum is mad, Mum is mad...' I thought the lyrics lacked a little something personally.
'Look, you're meant to be pleasant, well-mannered and sensible,' I said.
'That's just at school,' he replied.

There's two things I never feel all that good at, well there's more than two but I'm mentioning these two in particular: praying and organising things. So how has it come about that I'm organising a 'Pudding and Prayer evening' at church. Well, how it's come about is: I suggested to our minister that such an event would be a good idea and he said 'Yes it is, I'll leave it to you then shall I?' The moral seems to be don't suggest anything unless you want to organise it.

So this evening I've been writing an article about it for the church magazine and I hope lots of people come. It's not until the end of April so I have a bit of time. Last night I was looking for creative prayer ideas on the internet. One said:

Materials required

Water
Towel
Large bowel

The mind boggles!

School report

According to J's school report he's sensible, pleasant, well-mannered, conscientious, hard-working & a pleasure to teach!
He is though very quiet in class & especially lacking confidence in oral language skills & his PE teacher did sort of imply he's a bit unfit. In fact I think the comment for PE that 'he has tackled each new challenge with a positive attitude' is a way of saying 'he tries hard but...' Really considering the genes he's inherited poor J doesn't have much of a chance of excelling at sports. P did a lot of cycling & was super fit but he's never been into team games & as for me, I was like every PE teacher's worst nightmare - completely lacking in aptitude & enthusiasm & so shortsighted I couldn't see the ball anyway.

A difficult interview

Yesterday I went to Becky's house as I'd agreed her nephew could interview me for a project he's doing on 'the emotional aspects of physical disability' for his psychology degree. This nephew was born with major health problems & not expected to live, among other problems he has a curved spine, no abdominal muscles, short stature, deformed fingers, dyslexia & is doubly incontinent. He has had about 70 operations. He has been through so much & yet has achieved so much & is such a lovely person it sort of breaks my heart. I can't explain it really, people like that just get to me because they are so brave and compared to them I feel pathetic. Anyway this made the interview quite difficult for me, I was just so aware of how much worse his problems are I found it hard to talk about mine. Apart from which really I just don't like talking about my illness. I might whinge about it on here sometimes but normally I just don't talk about it. P had a major illness when he was young & he was the same, for years he hardly spoke about it. It wasn't until I too became ill that he felt even able to talk to me about it.
I just hope Becky's nephew does well in his degree & manages to get a job.

Amaryllis

This is an amaryllis my brother gave me. It's an amazing plant, not only did it produce seeds which I've planted & they're growing but it's just bloomed for the third year running.

A lot of travelling & some boots

Today J was invited to spend the day with one of his new friends. This friend lives 12 miles away so we all set off with me navigating. We found it alright and his really nice parents asked us in. They live in a huge house - it's got 16 bedrooms, but they're ever so nice & not at all snobbish. In fact they worked really hard to be able to afford it. We ended up staying over an hour drinking tea & chatting & looking round house. Then we decided to explore nearby town, went into a pub for lunch, looked round several charity shops, a bookshop & a supermarket. By the time we got home it was only an hour until we had to leave to pick J up. On the way we came across a car stuck in the ditch. P & several other drivers stopped & managed to get it out, turned out to be someone P knew from village. This was the same road on which we had an accident several years ago, ours was a bit more dramatic though, not only in ditch but smashed car & broken glass everywhere & me with badly bruised arm. Could have been an awful lot worse though. Half way through out of control car spinning across road I started praying & suddenly felt like arms were round me holding me. P felt the same. Someone we knew who saw our car in ditch but didn't know it was ours said she'd really prayed for the passenger because they must have been so badly injured.
Anyway then we got lost in my effort to use 'short cut' through country lanes & it's 7 o'clock & we've just got back & I feel like taking J to his friend's has taken all day. Still he had a really good time.
I'm quite pleased because my new brown boots have arrived. My winter wardrobe only works if I have brown boots but the ones I had were falling apart. (The other boots I got recently are grey). I looked on ebay & found these ones which were brand new & they fit! So that's good.

Eyebrows

I just want to clear up something that seems to have caused a bit of confusion. A while ago I said I lived with three males. Well one of these three wonderful males is the hamster.

This morning I got up early & made an anniversary card for my Dad & his wife. Then I drove J half way to school, delivered something for P in the village & raced home as the car mechanic was coming to pick up the car for its MOT. I left it outside with a note saying 'please take car' while I had a bath. I emerged to find it gone. After our theft experience I'm just hoping it was the mechanic who took it.

Then Sophie picked me up for the housegroup. There wasn't much to talk about as there wasn't a sermon on Sunday just a family service. We had a reading from Ephesians about gifts. I don't know if I'm paranoid or something but when we have housegroup sessions about gifts no-one ever says to me 'Oh you've got such a wonderful gift for so and so...' so I end up feeling like I haven't got any gifts. I have got some though, they're just a bit hidden at the moment.

At the end I stayed behind while Emma, who's a beauty therapist, waxed Sophie's eyebrows. This quite amazed me because I just didn't know that people had their eyebrows waxed. How is it I'm so much out of the beauty scene? Should I get my eyebrows waxed too?

Robogator

Here he is - the 'robogator'. This was before his accident. He is on my new rug which is currently my pride & joy. I'm still trying to come to terms with one of my friends calling it 'retro'! I just like orange ok! And apparently it's coming back into fashion.

An optional Mum and a burglary

It seems that my opinion that the unity service was 'brill' was not shared by everyone as when P was in the queue at the post office on Saturday he was accosted by someone from the Anglican church who complained the music was too fast and loud for that sort of service, this fast and loud music having emanated from our church band. Oh dear. Seems quite a few people from other 2 churches didn't find it quite their cup of tea. The thing is though when we've gone to unity services in their churches they always just have the normal service they would have had anyway irrespective of some bits not being in accordance with everybody's beliefs. I'd thought this service was quite a good 'middle ground' with contributions from all 3 churches. Is there any way of satisfying everyone? Or should it be about satisfying us? Should we perhaps be wondering if God enjoyed that song that was giving glory to Him, or was He just thinking the music was too fast?

When P got home from this J called out:
'Dad can you come and see what I've done with my robot? Well, Mum can come too but she's optional.'

After lunch P popped down to the shed and discovered that it had been broken into and some tools stolen. Apparently some of our neighbours had an almost identical theft. The insurance will pay up but it's still a lot of hassle getting quotes & buying new stuff & our premiums will go up. And it's really not a nice feeling that someone has been on your property nicking your stuff.

French evening

Today I felt really tired & at 11.00 decided I just had to have a nap before lunch. At 3.15 P came home early from work & woke me up! And I was having such an interesting dream!

J's piano teacher is now teaching from home instead of coming here & he lives quite some distance away, it's quite hard to know what to do long term as it's a lot of time & money to get there but he is so good with J and ever so nice (P says him being nice has nothing to do with it). Anyway P had these vouchers for a French restaurant in town which were almost due to expire so we decided to go there afterwards. This was where my French let me down because I ended up with cheese on toast and chips (with a little bit of smoked salmon). This was on the menu, in amongst all the main courses - 'croq au saumon fume'. I suppose I should have remembered from holidays in France that 'croq monsieur' was a sort of cheese on toast thing but I envisioned this thing as a salmon and cheese croquette. And then it arrived - two slices of cheese on toast sandwiched together with a bit of smoked salmon in the middle. And J kept nicking my chips.
P had a really nice chicken & mushroom dish & J had lemon sole which he loved.
The deserts were just wonderful - J had chocolate ice cream & lemon sorbet, P had lemon tart & I had a trio of creme brulee - vanilla, dark chocolate & fresh raspberry. Creme brulee is always a bit of a risk cos I love it when it's creamy & hate it when it's slimy but this was creamy...

(I won't mention hooking a ladies cardigan on my wheelchair & dragging it off with us as we went past).

Frosty Monday

J got a lot better over the weekend & went back to school this morning. Very frosty & roads icy. Yesterday we had a brill Unity Service with the churches meeting in the village hall instead of in a church as usual. One of our local churches has this heating system that scorches your head while your feet turn to ice & the other has the world's most uncomfortable pews so being in the village hall with comfy seats was bliss. As well as that it was a really good service & loads of people came.
Some days I just don't seem to have a grip & this is definitely one of them. I'm quite gripless. Have spent most of the morning surrounded by paperwork I'm trying to sort out. Yawn, yawn, yawn.