I stopped doing yoga for a while there in the summer, but I started it again just recently. My body really appreciates this. Apart from anything else, I really find my body needs exercise in the winter, because all during the rest of the year I am outside about 90% of the time, and I really feel sedentary when I have to stay inside during the winter so much. I work away at the meditation. X said once, ‘It’s so hard to stop the barrel of chattering monkey inside my head.’ My sentiments precisely!
X went jogging with the dog before breakfast (believe it or not Y and the children have started too, all on Y’s idea after a big ad pushing the benefits).
For the umpteenth time this year he’s home – this time believe it or not because he’s tired and can’t stop sleeping. He slept 19 hours a day for 5 days and was much better for the weekend! and borrowed the car to go and see a house with 1.5 acres miles away on Monday – and now Wednesday is still in bed as he has to go and see the Dr. today to find out the results of all the blood tests he had last week.
Have I written since we went bowling in the hall? Apart from one 17 year old boy who comes with his father I was the youngest. One woman – about 4’ nothing – was 80 and frightfully good – she plays 3 times a week!
My golf (my 4th round in 5 years) was the expected disaster – 6 holes in 39! The first hole went okay. We bypassed the 2nd at the suggestion of the people in front, who obviously feared for their life (quite unjustified as I seldom manage to raise the ball above ankle level). The 3rd and 4th holes followed my usual pattern of 2 to the green and 5 more to putt. On the 5th I struck 2 triumphant blows to get to the green before I found myself suddenly surrounded by whizzing balls and irate golfers – I was approaching the wrong green at 90 degrees to the fairway! I beat a hasty retreat to the 7th hole and completed the next 3 with more speed than skill, anxious to keep well ahead of the vengeance of the indignant ruffled golfers behind me.
She got a birthday invitation today and after looking pleased she suddenly said, ‘No – balloons’ and refuses to consider going, so traumatised is she on the subject! Oh dear. I’ve promise to ask Y’s mum if there’ll be balloons, so we’ll see.
balloon terror
Altho’ sad that yet another old friend has left I feel it was a joy for her – she always worried she would go the way of her mother and aunts with what, I suspect, now is known as Alzheimer’s Disease.
I took the infants to see the animals in the field – poor X strapped in a pushchair nearly went berserk when the 4 calves as high as my hip loomed over her agog to get at our paper bag of goodies – I had to find a young enough couple who knew how to unbuckle the straps to get her out.
I was worried to see from your writing that you look either very tired or not very well at the moment. Try to get a real break in the two weeks off which are coming up. [Amateur graphologist!]
I really think X is fast heading for a full-scale nervous breakdown (to put it politely – my inclination is to say loony bin!). She swears, cusses, kicks and bosses them all and then gives them large unwanted presents so she can claim what she wants from them ’after all I’ve done for you’! Yes, I know I’m a cow but she makes me sick.
We have two couples coming to dinner Saturday night. I’m so bad at entertaining, the very thought of it has removed all my nails on one hand tonight.
You may be infuriated with your doctor’s ‘well you seem to be all right’, but that’s not as bad as my recent doctor who had the absolutely infuriating habit of listening to my dissertation of symptoms (said in a flat, unstressed voice so as not to give emphasis to those that smell of coronary or whatever) and then asking ‘what would you like me to say is wrong with you?’!
I’m going to a hypnotherapist to try and get rid of my asthma. A chap I met said it completely cured him. X tells me apparently the bloke I used to go to was one and couldn’t hypnotise me but I don’t recall his ever trying to! [Perhaps he did and succeeded!] Anyway I do hope it at least helps.
It’s most odd but he sleeps much better and longer since I’ve had my ioniser, I find it helps me much more if I keep it on all the time, instead of just night, I’ve certainly been better and clearer in the head since I’ve had it.
Have you heard of the virus that if it strikes whilst you’re taking EnteroVioform gives you some horrible disease that withers your hands and feet – nasty. X made me throw all my supplies away.
She was looking very wan, and I’m very worried about her. She’s had another very bad asthma attack, and had to rush off to get an even stronger spray thing. X packed her off to an acupuncturist at $10 a time, with no avail, except she had about 20 needles a time pushed into her, and still he smokes all over her and won’t have a window open.
She went to try and help another acquaintance with the position of her bed, because she has pulled some muscle which is not getting better, and X has a theory about not sleeping where water runs under the bed, as you know.
… feeling absolutely exhausted and unenthused for several months. I got v. worried and trotted along to my doctor, had x blood tests done and the outcome was I ought to get more exercise and move away from my sister (she is a very dominating sort of person).
I’ll certainly see if I can get a ‘frugal cooking’ – I’m so idle about my cooking I think it’s pretty frugal anyway – but we weren’t tonight which was a little shaming as it’s Ash Wednesday. We had pancakes for lunch as I forgot them yesterday – cheese ones first then lemon and honey – and as X’s last night home we had chicken legs with sauté potatoes and pear, nectarines and cream – now it’s on paper I think I am more ashamed of it! But it was very nice!
I felt absolutely flattened and a head threatening. I left their coffee ready and went to bed after dinner – and quite stupidly took half a pound of Continental chocs to bed with me – the result was a roaring migraine for 24 hours (not helped by the fact it was self-induced!!)
She’s my bete noir, thoroughly ungracious and unattractive, poor dear is huge, practically as broad as she’s long, and I suspect a lot of behaviour comes from this, foolish of her as she has super hair and could look quite attractive if she lost about 4 stone, but eats and eats, even Weight Watchers failed as she didn’t keep to the rules.
Christmas didn’t do much for the figure, I’ve gone up to 12 again, however now the kids are back at school I’m back on egg for breakfast, yog for lunch, no spuds and fresh fruit – ONE day I’ll be that elusive 9 1/2 stone – don’t know when tho’!
She’d just finished a 4 day fast too and she looks ‘as different again’. I hope it inspires her to keep up more exercise and less temptations in the food line! I might well take heed of that myself too, I was looking at some old photograph albums t’other day, and was amazed how much better I looked when I was half a stone lighter – and 10 years younger!
We’ve just had a celebration tea with homemade meringues and lots of cream (I’ll start slimming Monday!) Has everyone gone bran mad in England? The doctor said I should eat 6 tablespoons for breakfast – I think I should have worked up to it slowly – it did disastrous things to my inside! I am baking wholemeal bread tho’ – I’d forgotten how simple it was – far easier than going to the village for it.
I wonder if a homeopath Dr. would help if t’other can’t – I was put off in Toronto when I went to one with swollen glands and recurring throats and he asked if I found it difficult to keep my feet covered in bed as I was tall! Mad I thought then but really v. sensible.
It doesn’t sound as tho’ your sinus trouble has really cleared up. I went to a German? Dutch specialist and he drilled a hole through the top of one (inside!) of my nostril through to the sinus. I think I found it a relief at the time, but it was about as bad as having miles of stuff put up your nose!
Our electric blow fire finishes me and we seldom use it now – it stirs up all the dust and blows it at you and dries up the air at the same time most cleverly.
I’ve got my hearing aid – X’s altered as he’d used it no more than 3 times. I can’t think why they didn’t cut all the hairs out of his ear, it must have been impossible to put in. I find it very easy and don’t notice it, and have nearly forgotten to take it out before getting in the bath, which is the one thing that kills it. I don’t really want it but I do have the TV louder than other people like to have it.
The dr. found an unexplained ‘black spot’ on his retina. He told me he’d never seen anything like it before. As a matter of course X commented that he did often think he saw mist coming out of that eye and sometimes when he looked at the board at school he’d see a word, and when he looked again it had ‘changed’.
The mist…
The medical was to check on some swelling in an unmentionable place which our doctor here had thought might be worth having minor surgery for. However the surgeon assured me that as these things go mine had not gone very far and it’s all quite benign – so we decided to let it be for the present.
Unfortunately I got into such a stew about coming in here, getting the kids looked after, etc. I ate back all the weight (+some) that I lost whilst I was ill. Much as I hate to admit it, I think Weight Watchers is the only way for me to go. I just read an article on tension and I seemed to have 3/4 of the symptoms to a greater or lesser degree – so maybe a change to a new outlook on life would be a good thing as ‘1066 and all that’ would say. But how does one change a whole outlook on life? Start by losing weight I suppose!
The Registrar when he had finished his examination started off by saying, ‘Well, I’m glad to say you have nothing untoward growing there’ or words to that effect. I had of course wondered so it was cheering news that he thought it was just old age!
I got a stinker of a cold in the head which lasted most of the week and turned into a loose cough, rather of the graveyard variety, which I still have with me though I am hopefully on the mend.
I’ve had a stiff shoulder: after a time I went X’s doctor who ‘manipulates’ on the side – but he said it was just a strained muscle and gave me a week’s course of pills which he warned me might upset my digestion. They did nothing for the shoulder but were most effective in their side effects which started as they were finished and so far remain in full flight. I shall now have to go back to my own doctor and see if he can give me something for my middle which doesn’t cause any more joints to seize up!
I must be a sore trial to the doctors, I think, as my symptoms always seem to disappear when they come on the scene. I had this pain in the side of my chest last week, which was very inconvenient, as it hurt to cough, and often when moving, or even lying down in some attitudes. Eventually on Wednesday evening, X insisted that I should get a doctor, which we did about nine thirty. She didn’t confess until afterwards that she was being largely influenced by a doctor drama going on on TV which revolved around a man having a heart attack!
X has hada nasty ear do – she complained of deafness – we put it down to swimming but took her to the Dr. after a few days and he said it was only wax and syringed them both and all seemed well and she heard beautifully but 2 days later got awful pain in and behind the ear so of course it was Saturday again and we had to go to yet a different partner who said there was some ‘infection and it was a mastoid process’ – whatever that means – but mastoid anything frightens me. He put her on gigantic doses of antibiotic which has improved it but she finishes them today and it still hurts. I’m not sure she shouldn’t go to a specialist willy-nilly.
I actually got around to the ‘barium meal’ x-ray he ordered months ago. ‘Where is the pain?’ said the operator and I couldn’t remember!! The ‘meal’ was revolting – the result quite negative, d.g.
Having boasted the day after we got home of our freedom from all bugs and tummy upsets I developed one the next day, which failed to respond to my usual white pills. So eventually I went to a young man who was standing in last week for our doctor who didn’t seem a bit perturbed and told me much the best thing was to let the bug ‘burn itself out’, and that the last time he went to H-K it took him 3 weeks. Mine, I am glad to say is d.v. now burnt!
People were fantastic during X’s comings and goings [to hospital]. Apart from having us to meals and looking after kids, we were given biscuits, pies, fruit enough for an army and masses of people visited X. Even an old dear of 85 insisted on having us to tea and providing us with fruit and biscuits – and then phoned me up 2 days later at 7.10 a.m. and told me to send one of the kids round to collect some warm scones for our lunch!
We had some rather shocking news of her yesterday. She was due to have an operation on Thursday and her husband rang yesterday to say that the Surgeon had started but not been able to do anything as she has a cancer which has spread and is now inoperable and he gave her a few weeks only to live.
After 3 weeks of the 2 months, X discharged herself from hospital not upsetting the Dr. or nurses by so doing as she’d been so bad tempered she’d upset everyone! I’ve had 3 v. lengthy letters since she returned and she sounds as tho’ she’s in full flight again – she really is remarkable.
I can now actually see the cards at bridge as I’ve had my old black glasses reglazed (?) with the reading prescription of my bifocals and if I sit well up to the table and ‘bosom’ my cards I can keep all in focus.
I have put on all I lost and more. The doctor’s jolly hormone pills seem to have made me swell up round the middle but he swears it’s just because I’m so much better!!
We had difficulty in getting a doctor to come (you know how they expect you to rise from the dead to go to the surgery here…)
He’s also had to have some atomic isotype something to do with the brain – which the brain man says he’s almost sure will be negative – I asked what it meant if it was positive and X said it meant he was mad!! Oh dear, oh dear.
I’m not sure if I’m glad for X or not – it must be awful for her and all the family if it’s just a matter of lying in pain and waiting poor dear.
We heard from X who seems to have completely forgotten not only that she had told us of her accident but also that we had exchanged more letters and sent her some flowers.
I think we’re both a bit tensed up. It’s too depressing the number of people who regale us with tales of how they’d planned a trip abroad when they’d retired and one of them died at the crucial moment – not good for one’s morale!
I’ve just put my hand on the stove to see if it was working – it was – HELL.
I’ve been doing all the things we’d done before X died, fixing the funeral and putting down money for it and writing a new Will, all of which has made me feel ‘proper poorly’!!! But it will be a load off my mind when I’ve tidied it all up.
There’s virtually no flower beds but all grass and trees, there’s 5 acres practically flat with a stream running through it, milking shed for both cows!, a good sleep out which would take two bunks, and I can see X sitting on a mowing machine and being able to cope indefinitely, and each year we could let the sheep graze nearer and nearer the house as we got more and more senile.
[searching for a word before the days of Google] ‘Ponentially’ is a nice word but I don’t actually recognise it. Opponentially, perhaps, or potentially? … [and added as a PS] I woke up this morning at 5.58 saying to myself ‘The word is exponential’ – and there is such a word, but does it mean anything? [and indeed it did – just the word to describe the growth in the number of plants I had achieved and hadn’t been able to describe because I couldn’t find the word for the previous letter.]
I’m quite worried about X – I haven’t had a letter for some 3 months and the briefest signed X card. Her daughter wrote on hers that X had been v. taken aback about her sister-in-law’s death – they never got on – but X didn’t expect to outlive anyone. She’s incredible – 70 and 3 big cancer ops since she was 34 plus endless other complications.
The last 2 days I’ve been worrying I have Alzeimers (?) decease [sic] – I had to see a solicitor about putting the house in my name… I remembered the man asking if I had a safe place to keep something or should he keep it for me. I was a bit high hat about it but couldn’t remember what it was we’d been talking about. I must have wasted hours hunting for a new strange bit of paper – to no avail, so I phoned this morning and admitted I couldn’t find it – BUT actually he hadn’t given it to me – I felt more than silly!
The trouble about the big retirement village is that while you are more or less sure of nursing provision for any sort of demise, it is liable to cost you dearly. First you buy a house, which costs you all your present house, though much smaller. Then when you need an apartment, with meals provided in a restaurant you have to swap that for the house, and finally, when all you need is a bed where they look after you, that costs you your apartment. This business of getting old is very trying!
Retirement village death cycle!
X has a great clean-up urge on at the moment so I spend my time rushing between the lawyers and the funeral home checking on the preparations for casting off this mortal coil, and getting them up to date – when I’m not busy with our Income Tax for the year.
Of course it’s that darned memory again! Which reminds me that your comments about the Banville made me go and have another look at it – we read it in my group some months ago – and I looked in disbelief – had I really read this? I barely recognised it at first, tho’ bits did start coming back, but not enough to make any intelligent remarks. As you say, Hey Ho. … I now write down everything I read or else I can’t remember. Fortunately a recent radio prog I heard on the subject made me think I am maybe not that abnormal!
We then have exercises (very gentle but made to cover every muscle in your body) – I must get back to my 10 minute daily ones – I’m so bent over it depresses me I know I must be looking 90 as so many people try to help me and ask if I’m still driving!!
X only sits in the TV room all day and goes up and down. We have one medium dog who keeps him company. He is incontinent now, so senile at times too, walks very slowly and often needs help to get up from chair to dress and wash etc. … I hope they don’t hear me shouting at X too often, he can be so frustrating! I will be away 3 weeks and I really do need it.
It was a super surprise to see you but I do apologise for the number of clothes all over the floor and the general confusion which greeted you – how could I be so senile not to have put the date in my diary? Your flowers give me enormous pleasure – I took them downstairs to show them off – even the dotty residents loved them.
Yes, I think (and worry a bit) about how I am going to die. What will happen after that I can’t imagine but am optimistic that it will be enjoyable, though I hope I shall have time (and inclination) to appeal to Our Lord for the help I shall need to come to Him.
It is a bore getting old! In that connection, I was moving the power plus by a yard last week because X wanted to move her furniture round, and found it very exhausting kneeling on the floor to do it! And made a very clumsy job of it in consequence. I felt stiff for the next two mornings as a result, which I suppose means that next time I should get the man next door to do such jobs for me. But it’s a comedown for a self-respecting do-it-yourselfer!
We were a bit late leaving. I said I’d follow her down in my car; we set off with me in pursuit, it struck me she was going a very odd way, and then she disappeared, I hadn’t a clue where I was and tiptoed through two wet gardens knocking on doors for directions, to find I was in an unknown bit of X: I had been following the wrong car! It was now 15 minutes after the meeting was due to start, so you can imagine the trauma. I just can’t see in the dark especially when it’s raining and the car headlights coming at me; however I eventually got there, and spent 5 minutes trying to get in, by which time she had rung home and her husband was out looking for me! Anyway they were all very nice about it.
She really should give up, her back has packed up again, this crumbling business, and has to have another op.
X and I played together at the Bridge Club (my appointed partner most timely lost a relative-by-marriage at an advanced age and just the right moment) and came second, which pleased us greatly.
I realised that my brand new small case had 2 holes – because of the weight of my shopping it had dragged on the ground, so presto I hitched a lift for the rest of the way – very thankful to my Guardian Angel!
Today they have gone back to eat the remains of the feast, except that X can’t eat much having been in hospital last week; her colon is inflamed and must be on a diet before they operate! She is none too pleased, but she has lost 3 pounds in 2 days, and was glad to tell me.
I’ve had 3 happenings. I thought I’d lost my great great uncle’s ring and spent a morning hunting for it – then was just going to go out when I thought I’d better ask our neighbour as we’d had tea with them and there it was under the couch I was sitting on. Joy. Then X collecting luggage and bits for our jaunt put his hand in the top of the linen-cum-everything cupboard and found the pair of glasses I’d lost some six months ago AND I had a phone call to say I’d won the raffle of an Aran knit cardigan.
We were doing some rush shopping and got back just as the traffic cop had ordered a tow away – he rushed to his bike and managed to cancel it just in time – so her ticket was $20 instead of $40 – she played the organ at a funeral the next day, she said it would just pay it!
I’ve got flu or something at the moment. About half the school is down with it so I suppose I would hardly miss getting it. It’s a blessing in disguise really cos they’ve had to cancel house drama which was going hopelessly anyway. I was going to be a headmaster in my play but I was terrible at it. That just leaves us with a musical evening, a bio/geog trip and market day – all of which I’ll probably miss (hopefully) at this rate.
The agent’s visit occasioned a certain amount of activity such as doing a clearance in the garage – which for the moment is startling (at least to me) in its orderliness!
I heard from X last week. She remarked that although it was easier to read my typing and I got more on the page, she felt she’d lost the spirit of adventure when reading my letters!
It seems to have been a busy time – at my desk as well as elsewhere, and just recently (i.e. the last few months) I have found that I have to use my glasses for reading and writing, or else I quickly get squiffy-eyed. So it becomes less attractive to sit there all day.
I think I’m going senile – frightfully interesting things to tell you keep flitting through my mind and I can’t catch hold of them before they go out the other side!
Vanishing ideas
One letter was from X: they have had such bad luck healthwise. He has been in hospital again and is constantly under the doctor and can’t do anything, and her eyes are worse and she can’t get the other one operated on until May, and to help things along she broke her back this winter skiing, and, as she has no car, life must have been more than maddening.
A member of the bridge club was playing last night after doing 18 holes of golf, had a stroke this morning – that’s the one depressing thing about this place, it makes you realise you’re in the zone, so to speak, all too often.
She hoped she could keep driving her car whilst she was at her present house, as she wouldn’t enjoy being graciously given a lift to town once a week to shop! How I agree with her.
X has taken a new lease of life since his eye was ‘done’ – he can see much better than me! I can’t get used to his 8 pills he has to take for his heart tho’ – one of which is the cause of his gout so he has another for that!
We took meals on wheels to a lady in much the same state as your friend last week. X (who does the going in bit) was busy for quarter of an hour trying to encourage her to get out of her large and empty house, complete with tennis court, which she has been alone in for about 13 years – and go and live in one of our retirement villages instead. She told X that she was now so frightened of people that she never goes out of the house. But it seemed to have done her good to have got some of it off her chest.
Filed words 