Wedneday Hodgepodge 27/1/16

Wednesday's Hodgepodge is brought to us courtesy of Joyce at 

 From this side of the pond

Pop over there to see other posts and if you want to join in add the link to your Hodgepodge blog post to the Linky List at the end of Joyce's post and don’t forget to visit at least your neighbours on the list.

Have fun!

Well I'm posting a couple of days late - you'll see why in my answers.  It's been a difficult week but I really want to keep my blogging going.

1. Share a winter memory from your childhood. 

Getting washed in a tin bath in front of the gas fire in the back room because the bathroom was so cold.
2. What was on your blog this time last year? (Besides the Hodgepodge of course!) If you weren't blogging, what in the world were you doing with all that free time?
There were only 3 entries during the whole of last January and that was pre Hodgepodge. (I came across the Hodgepodge when taking part in the A-Z Challenge.)  I had good intentions but life, in the form of job stress and subsequent resignation and ill health got in the way.
3. Ellen Goodman is quoted as saying, 'We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.'

Do you see more flaws or more potential in your life at the start of a new year? Have you done anything specific this month to address either one? Does the new year truly begin for you on January 1, or is there some other month of the year that feels like a fresh start and new beginning?

Definitely more potential this year.  In a very different place than this time last year.  January is always a good time to take stock but I resolved before the new year to try and stop procrastinating and “Just do it” and I’m trying to stick to that.

4. Who's an athlete you admire or respect and why?

Steven Redgrave the Olympic rower.  To achieve what he did, coping with diabetes, took an enormous amount of dedication and determination.  And now he continues to work through sport to bring about change in the lives of young people with disabilities or disadvantages.
5. Do you like cream in your coffee? Whipped cream on your pumpkin pie? Cream cheese on a bagel? Sour cream on a baked potato? Cream of wheat for breakfast? Have you ever had a scone with clotted cream? Of all the creamy foods mentioned, which one sounds most appealing to you right this very minute?

No coffee for me and not a great fan of sour cream but clotted cream on a scone?  Pile it high and don’t forget the jam! 
6. Where were you last kept waiting for 'hours on end'? Or for what felt like hours on end? How well did you cope? 

Unfortunately that was last week during the final hours before my Mother-in-law passed away.  We spent all day at her bedside having been called in early in the morning.  She hung on until the following morning.  But we coped because all her eight children, myself and the other daughter-in-law were there.
7. Believe it or not, when next week's Hodgepodge rolls around it will be February. Huh?!? Bid adieu here to January in seven words or less.

We will never forget January 2016.  RIP Maureen.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

At times of loss family is so important.  I’m so glad I married into mine.

PS It's been a sad week but this wasn't a sudden or tragic death and Maureen leaves a wonderful legacy of a large but close knit family.  See here for more info.

Up and down Monday 18/1/16

Ups and downs today:

Up at a reasonable time so that was good.

Step count up.  Another plus.  This is my third week of using my Fitbit.  The first two weeks I averaged about 6000 steps per day so my plan is to push the goal up each week until I'm doing the magic 10,000 steps a day.  So this week I've upped it to 6500 and the plan is to increase by 500 per week.  It's quite hard when it's so cold to get out and walk but I do resort to doing laps of my kitchen/diner or an exercise video to get the count up.  Good job I don't have carpet in the kitchen  as I would be wearing it out!  I'm also gradually upping the amount of water I drink each day.  (And trying not to think of the downside of that i.e. more visits to the loo!)

Work rate up - I started stripping another bedroom today.  I need to get it stripped so that I can then get both top bedroom ceilings plastered.  I didn't get much done but just having made a start made me feel better.

I did get out to the shops so some exercise and fresh air gained.  The washing got done and dinner was cooked.  (Well that was a bit of a cheat as it came out of the freezer and just had to be reheated but at least I remembered to get it out in time.)

As for the downs?  Well my weight was up 1lb on last week so that was a down.  I can't think why that could happen when I'm doing all these steps and so on.  Oh yes.  The empty biscuit tin and the desserts that we had with dinner yesterday might have something to do with that.  I definitely need to up my willpower!

The other down is that my Mother-in-law is not making much progress.  If anything she seemed worse at the weekend.  Very drowsy and very confused and quite distressed by it all.  However they have now confirmed that her wound is infected so they have started to treat that with anti-biotics.  It also seems that giving her oxygen causes more problems rather than being helpful so they have stopped doing that.  I just hope we see some improvement soon.  It's horrible seeing her like this.

But blogging gives me another Up so I think I'm in credit overall today.  Although checking out some of the SoCS posts from the weekend could leave me feeling a tad inadequate.  But I'm not going down that road.  How do people cope with 2, 3 or even more blogs?  Do they ever have time to check out the people visiting their blogs.  I try and return the favour when people visit me and if I've missed anyone out apologies for the omission.  But time is limited.  Or perhaps for them it's not.  

Although according to my Fitbit I only slept for just under 4 hours last night.  Apparently I didn't get to sleep until 3.30 am.  Well I know for a fact I was in bed by midnight and I certainly didn't lay awake for 3 hours.  I also didn't wake up exhausted.  Wouldn't it be great if I could harness that missing time and put it to good use?  I could have half a dozen blogs on the go, not to mention increasing my reading rate.

Oh that was another up - I've finished 2 of the 3 books set by the reading clubs I've joined and I managed 2 more chapters of Catch 22 today.  I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.  Goodnight.

What is normal? 8/1/16

Well on Monday I wrote about things returning to normal after the Christmas Period.  Unfortunately the last couple of days haven’t been normal.  My MIL seemed to come through her operation well and when I went to visit on Tuesday they had got her out of bed and standing on the new hip in the morning.  She was tired by the afternoon and still very confused due to the anaesthetic and pain relief meds.  She was hallucinating which was a bit worrying but that’s happened before when she’s been on extra medication so not that alarming.  They were also keeping a close eye on her blood pressure as it was still very low.

By Wednesday afternoon she was much worse.  Her BP was still too low and she was also not breathing very well.  They moved her from an orthopaedic ward to a respiratory ward and had her on oxygen and under close observation.  We were all fearing the worst, especially as they were doing everything they could and would not consider invasive treatment or resuscitation if she deteriorated further.  The youngest daughter, who works as a sister in an intensive care unit in Kent so knows all about these sort of situations, stayed with her through the night.

However, she is one tough lady.  She survived the night and her BP and oxygen levels improved gradually over the day yesterday and she had a much better night last night.  We’re all feeling much more optimistic but we know she has a long recovery ahead of her and these current difficulties will hinder the rehabilitation needed for the hip surgery.

 
It’s made for a strange few days and my absence here.  I’ve just managed to post my Wednesday Hodgepodge and I’m going to try and get a Friday Five News post done later.  It’s good to have things to focus on.

Back to normality 4/1/16

 
Oh it feels strange writing 2016.  It always takes me a while to get used to writing a new year.

Today things have returned to normal - no visitors in the house and hubby back at work.  My decorations are still up - I will take them down on Wednesday - Epiphany.

It hasn't been the best of starts to the year though.  My mother-in-law stayed with us Saturday night as we had planned a family meal yesterday with our son and his wife now that they are back from the states.  Unfortunately yesterday morning my MIL fell in the bedroom and fractured her hip.  She had been sitting on the end of the bed, stood up and either just lost her balance or maybe the hip just went but she toppled over onto her side and the damage was done.

Fortunately I can report that she has had surgery today to repair it and has come through the operation.  At 87 years old surgery is not to be entertained lightly but she's one tough lady.  Hopefully she will soon be up and about and I hope it won't have dented her confidence too much.  She fell down the stairs a few weeks back and has been very nervous tackling stairs since.  This new complication may make her wary of visiting anyone, like us, where coping with stairs is a necessity.  It's a good thing that she lives in a bungalow with her eldest daughter and son-in-law living in.

As for progress on New Year resolutions I am now the proud owner of a Fitbit tracker so I will be trying to increase my step count to improve my fitness etc.  I'm also trying to implement ways of improving my habits.

One of the things recommended in the book I read about this recently was pairing habits.  I have to take medication each day and I usually take it with my breakfast so the medication was down in the kitchen.  Except of course some days my hubby brings me breakfast in bed.  This means remembering to take the tablets when I go down.  But the change in routine meant that sometimes I didn't end up taking the tablets until later in the day or not at all!

I now have the tablets by my bed as I always have water up there and I have a reminder set on my phone so that I can take them first thing in the mornings.  So far that is working well.

Another thing I used to do was sit in the bathroom and waste away time either looking at stuff like Facebook on my phone, or doing crosswords or just generally taking more time that I need.  I hope I'm painting the picture for you here because I'm not going into any more detail!

Of course I could apply the Just Do It mantra here and move out of the bathroom but it was always a haven when the kids were younger.  You could lock yourself in and get a few minutes of peace.  Still works for me especially as I'm sitting right next to a radiator so it's quite cosy.

Anyway I decided that it's ok to loiter in the loo but it must be productive so I have moved my copy of Catch 22 to the bathroom.  We have other books in the bathroom but I am trying hard to finish Catch 22 (well I'm trying and it's hard!) so I've resolved to only allow myself to read Catch 22 when I'm loitering.  I managed a chapter today so I have now read 23 out of 42 chapters.  Hopefully this pairing will produce results.  No pun intended!