Summer days spent swimming
And picnics on the sands
Strolls along the seafront
Lovers holding hands
Autumn leaves are falling
Golden leaves lay at our feet
Halloween and Bonfires
Kids going ‘Trick or Treat’
Winter and its freezing
Kids sledging down the hill
Holidays and presents
The season of goodwill
Spring brings new life with it
As nature’s cycle starts again
The leaves and flowers grow once more
Refreshed by winter’s rain
I have come to the conclusion that I am quite a contradictory person. My actions are quite often out of sync with my personality. I will think one thing and then do another….
For instance, for someone who is still quite shy, and awkward when meeting people, you would think that the last thing I would want to do is blogging! I mean, by its very nature, it is putting my thoughts and opinions out there for all and sundry to read, and comment on. By the same token, I also comment on other people’s blogs.
This means that I have to interact with people who I do not know, in fact have never even met! I could well be opening myself up to a great deal of criticism if someone objects to, or misunderstands one of my posts,
I have even put videos on my blog of myself reading my poems as I wanted to ensure they were conveyed in the way that I intended them to be. What kind of dunce does that when they are very conscious of how they look? Not only that, I haven’t even used my name but have plastered my image all over the place….
Another irony is that I suffer from depression, but like to try to write humorous posts! What is that all about?! I know that laughing is good for the soul, so I like to try to see the funny side of things. One of my great pleasures in life is to make others happy. If I can do that by making them laugh then so much the better, However, it can be one hell of a struggle coming up with funny posts when that is the last thing that I am feeling (especially recently)!
I am a huge fan of music, and yet I can neither sing nor dance! Many is the time that I have gone to my sister’s house for a [arty and they have ended up getting out the karaoke machine.Now her and her husband used to do this as a business, and they both can sing very well (my brother-in-law is also a musician).
It doesn’t stop me from snatching the mike and screeching my head off to one of my favourite numbers, and this is sober as I don’t drink! I can see my brother-in-law frantically twiddling knobs trying to drown me out or make me sound better, or something!
Dancing is a bit more of a problem! Despite my two left feet, I will strut around my front room when the mood takes me, but I still hate dancing if I am out anywhere. What I hate even more is if someone attempts to dance with me. A family friend once grabbed hold of me and started trying to twirl me around, but I immediately went stiff, and then trod all over him! He complained to my mum about my lack of rhythm!
My personal space is a standing joke with one of my good friends that I used to work with. I have about a 2 feet no go zone, I really am not keen on people getting too close at all. Anyway, we used to have this colleague that could not have a conversation unless she was almost on top of you. This really used to freak me out, and I would try to avoid talking to her if at all possible!
It didn’t stop her talking to me though and, as she kept closing in on me ,I would be backing away further and further until I was literally backed against the wall, and no option but to talk to the face that was about an inch from my own!
Why then choose a job now where I physically have to touch people?! It doesn’t make sense, but I love my job, and I will very often give my patients a hug, I am forever holding their hands when I talk to them, or stroking their faces when they are very poorly, but for some reason this does not bother me at all!
I suppose that I am someone who has ‘hidden depths’ and not just bloody odd!
I’ve been doing a bit of spying today… Well, its not so much spying but more kind of undercover reporting! It all started yesterday……
I had to attend a meeting as the nurse representing my patient, with a couple of social workers plus the patient’s daughter in order to ascertain the best course of action for the patient’s discharge. We had to go through everything from the patient’s cognition, skin integrity and mobility, to nutrition and behaviour. Eleven categories in all, and the meeting lasted for about 2 hours (they can take longer)!
Anyway I had been warned in the morning that the daughter could be quite difficult and that she was also an MP (Member of Parliament). Great, everyone hates the good old NHS so no doubt she’ll put a complaint in and we’ll be slagged off AGAIN in the newspapers!
Well, I had the usual manic day and by the time the daughter had arrived for the meeting, I had hardly even looked at the patient’s notes. I escorted her to the meeting, and I noticed that she did seem pretty scary; very forthright and no-nonsense, but we joined the others and the meeting began.
The first section was behaviour. This is where I had to mention that her mother quite often pushed us away, shouted at us, and had in fact, tried to bite someone. This amused her greatly, and she said that her mum had always been a ‘stroppy old bugger’!
Anyway, we continued discussing each section, and myself and the Care Manager would put our perspective of the patient which very often differed from the other two (who had met the patient for 5 mins beforehand). This meant that we had to argue our case, stand firm and provide ‘evidence’ which we did!
Eventually a decision had to be made, and I was no longer needed so I went back to the ward with the daughter in tow as she was asked to come back in 15 minutes. On the way back, she asked me if I would have a word with the carer who was assigned to look after her mother. This carer was ‘live-in’ as the daughter lived in another county, and because she had promised her mother she would keep her at home, she paid this agency a lot of money for the carer to be available full-time.
Anyway the daughter had asked how often the carer visited her mother in hospital, and was told that she did come every day, but stayed only for an hour at most! This enraged the daughter so hence she asked me to have a ‘diplomatic’ meeting with her and the carer.
I agreed but dragged the Ward Sister in on it as well! I tactfully suggested that the carer might like me to help wash the patient as she was more used to her and maybe would not be so anxious and lash out. I also thought that my patient would benefit being fed her lunch by a familiar face (she had already been asked to this by the daughter, but had buggered off at those times)!
We agreed that she would come to help us from 10-5 every day starting today. The daughter was thrilled, and praised me up to the sister. The carer however, shot me daggers!
Fast forward to 10am. No carer. I had given my lady her breakfast of course but was waiting for the carer to come to help me wash her. 10.30, and in she breezes! She sullenly asked me where the washbowls etc were, and I showed her with a flourish – and left her to it! I had been summoned to break and there was another nurse in the bay if needed so off I trotted!
I came back not half an hour later and she had GONE! The daughter was on the phone asking me where she was, and did she wash her? I said that I gave her the bowl so I assumed she had washed her and that I didn’t know where she was. I told her to ring back after lunch about 1pm so I could give her more of an update!
Well just before 12.30 (lunchtime) the carer is back. I greeted her and she suddenly asked me,
“Do you wash legs?”
That’s a bit personal isn’t it, I thought! It took me a moment to twig that she meant did I wash patients’ legs.Still a bit weird, are legs self-cleaning and I never realised?!
I told her that yes I did wash patients’ legs as well as everything else, and then she informed me that she hadn’t washed my lady’s legs; When I enquired as to why not, she looked at me as if I were stupid and said,
“because she has dressings on both of them”.
Oh yes, the dressings that I took down two days before, as the ulcers had healed up but the skin was extremely dry and scaly and did not need to be bandaged.
I ‘diplomatically’ told her this, and mentioned that not only should they have been washed but creamed as well! That news pleased her no end. She huffed for a bit and played with her phone!
Lunch duly arrived, after about 10 minutes, and whilst I was feeding another patient I was checking that the carer was feeding her lady. She did manage to do this and got her to eat something which was good in itself. I asked her to write-up the food chart, but had to go through it with her as she thought I was joking!
Two minutes later, her coat was on…she was off to get her own lunch! Fair enough, it is hungry work sitting down playing with your phone, and glaring at people! I asked how long she would be, and was told she had to go into the town centre to get food (a bus journey away). I informed her that we have canteen and also a shop or cafe to get food. No of course that wasn’t what she wanted, It had to be KFC!
She disappeared for another hour or so. Meanwhile my new best buddy phoned me and asked me to give a lowdown on the carer’s movements. She was apoplectic when I relayed to her where the carer had gone for lunch, and resented the fact that it was most probably her money that had paid for the meal. (I think she was offended at the choice as much as the cost).
I did feel a bit bad doing my undercover bit but it does seem a pretty cushy number to me, this live-in carer arrangement! They get paid an absolute fortune, but it is a business and the patients are ‘clients’. How sad that they can’t even do the bare minimum for their ‘customers’ like give them a decent full body wash! (No offence intended to genuine and bloody hard-working carers).
Isn’t it strange how much TV can influence our lives? It can educate, shock, entertain; bring us to tears even; and you could get all of that in just one episode of your favourite soap!
Now, I don’t actually watch any soaps anymore, but recently, an actress that had been on a very long-running British soap had died at the age of 60. Anne Kirkbride or Deirdre Barlow as she was known to many, burst onto our screens 44 years ago as a fresh-faced 17 year old. She had the nation gripped with her numerous marriages, and relationships, before finally ending up with dear old Ken (again). Even our Prime Minister became involved when one storyline sent her off to the clink for a bit! And he demanded that she be freed!
It was the same with Dallas. I can sill remember the ‘who shot JR?’ saga. People even had t-shirts emblazoned with ‘I shot JR.’ Staying with Dallas, what about the uproar when Bobby died, and then came back a few years later, clean and sparkly from a nice shower! (He didn’t even have that wrinkled skin you get after a while, let alone a few years)!
Many people have grown up with some of these characters, and they almost feel like they are part of the family.We laugh with them, cry with them, and can’t wait to tune in to the next episode to see what they will get up to.
As for the Christmas episodes, well, you can’t wait! You know there’s going to be a MEGA disaster of EPIC proportions! What will it be?? Will it be a tragic accident that wipes out half of the cast? Will it be a shocking revelation? Or will there be an almighty punch-up? Whatever it is , you can guarantee there will be legions of fans, glued to their TVs in order to find out!
How many of us have also been guilty of using TV to ‘babysit’ our kids? I have to own up to this one. When my daughter was very young, I have plonked her down in front of the TV, watching one of the kids’ channels whilst I have got on with a bit of housework or something! She has never had a long attention span, so I used to make the most of however long I got!
Reality TV has really taken off now too. Oh how we love to see poor unfortunate people (mainly celebrities) making utter fools of themselves, either being locked up in a house with a load of other people who they have nothing in common with, for a few weeks, or being sent to a jungle , again with others who they don’t know and have very little in common with! Deprive them of a few home comforts, make them compete with each other for ‘treats’ , then sit back and watch it all kick off!
I am rather partial to the crime channels. I don’t know why, but they fascinate me. It is amazing how they uncover the whole story from start to finish of a crime that has been committed, sometimes with just the smallest amount of evidence. I am surprised though at the amount of spouses that get ‘bumped off’ for the insurance money, and the sly and devious methods used to try to fool everyone that the death is genuine! Hmmmm, STILL haven’t got Mr Grump insured…..
Happy viewing, I’m off to sort out some paperwork!
My daughter seems to have got two speeds…slow and even slower! Ooooh it does drive me mad! She has the attention span of a gnat, and whilst cutting out pictures to stick into her art project, she starts curling up the leftover strips with the scissors! Aaaggh! This has to be in tomorrow (she has had 2 weeks to do it though) and she is faffing about, playing with scraps of paper! There is no sense of urgency with anything at all, least of all homework!
Getting ready in the morning is nothing short of an ordeal for me and Mr Grump (when I am there as most of the time I am already at work).We are both very organised; we get up in plenty of time to get ready. Not so Miss Hap!
We wake her up, she mutters;we call up to her, she grunts;we tell her that she now only has 15 mins left and to hurry up! She gets stroppy; the front door bell rings, she clomps down the stairs like an elephant with hobnail boots on! She’s gone, and our nerves are shredded! Thank God for breakfast Club at school, as God knows how long that would take at home!
You would think that having us for parents, she might have picked up some of our habits, like for instance, packing the stuff we need for the next day, the night before…no, why do that when you can get the school to phone whilst we are at work asking us to bring in her dance kit/science book?
My daughter has boundless energy and is always dancing, skipping, shuffling and generally running around except when I ask her to do something for me. She then seems to go into reverse (probably a ploy so I don’t ask again)! How long does it take to make a cup of tea?!! God help me when I decide (soon) to get her to help me with the washing up!
Maybe it’s me?… perhaps I am the one who should relax more, instead of running around like a blue-arsed fly, getting het up, in my haste to get things done on time!
After all, I’ve lost count of the times I have been somewhere way too early and have had to sit twiddling my thumbs waiting for everyone else to turn up! Or I have got ready so early for a function that my outfit has got creased from sitting about in it for ages, and my make up got smudged!
There must be a happy medium!
I have come to the conclusion that I rather like blogging! I have been amazed at how many new people I have ‘met’ in the last 4 months since I started, and I even think of a few of them as friends. However, it is still a bit of a minefield for me, but luckily I am not the only one who is struggling with some of the aspects of blogging, which would never have occurred to me, before I started blogging myself!
I came across a post from My Thoughts On a Page who raised some very valid points on some of the dos and don’ts of blogging etiquette, as it were. Many of these thoughts had already crossed my mind as well….
Things like commenting, liking, reblogging articles etc are all very well and good, but I was very nervous of doing any of these things at first (especially on blogs with loads of followers) as I didn’t want them to think I was just doing it to promote myself. However, I in my opinion, blogging is supposed to be all about putting your work out there for others to see and enjoy! so if I like something, I will comment on it now, like it , and I have even reblogged one or two posts.
Yes, of course everyone wants their blog to be noticed, and they share it on social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest etc, as well as Twitter. Now I have a bit of a problem here as I don’t use my real name so can’t use my accounts to share my stuff! In fact only a handful of my friends and family even know that I have a blog. let alone what it is called!
I have set up Facebook and Twitter sites for my blog which is bloody pointless as I have less than 5 friends on each, and they have already seen my blog on WordPress anyway!! I am nothing if not a trier…..but I always get it wrong!
Lastly, no matter how many times I read about ‘tags’ it didn’t really sink into my thick skull and enter my brain However, today, as luck would have it, I saw in my reader this post by Opinionated Man. Fantastic, now I get it, and I will show off in a minute by tagging my post appropriately for once! (Well. I’ll give it a go)!
Even in writing this post, I had a dilemma! I got the inspiration for it from the two blogs that I have mentioned. Now, decency and good manners dictates that I should credit these blogs for giving me some ideas. However, will I have caused offence by drawing attention to my blog daring to pingback to TWO blogs?!
Well I don’t know, but as I bumble and blunder my way around this crazy blogosphere, trying to dodge the ‘mines’ along the way, I hope I continue to meet lots of new friends and discover many more new and interesting blogs. Oh yes, I hope that more people get to see mine too! 🙂
I might have mentioned before that I am pretty awkward at the best of times, but particularly in social situations…I get myself worked up over the ‘greeting’ stage of the evening, so that certainly doesn’t bode well for the rest of the night…
Although I am a very affectionate person, I am not overly tactile, so I may come across as aloof or stand-offish which couldn’t be further from the truth! (Funnily enough, I am different with kids and with my elderly patients, I don’t find it hard at all to behave more naturally with them, probably because they are so unjudgemental)!
When being introduced to someone for the first time, I am inevitably nervous and, particularly at a job interview, my hands will be all clammy and I dread it when they go in for the handshake. Now I was taught that a limp handshake is a sign of a weak person, so of course I clasp their hand firmly and then dread it in case they recoil and surreptitiously wipe their hand on their clothes when they think I’m not looking!
Us Brits tend to just go for the one kiss if we are greeting someone; even that can be an ordeal! Do you actually kiss the person on the cheek? Should you air kiss them? What if you bump heads if you both go the same way?! Should you hold their hand or give them a hug as well? The opportunity for getting it wrong and making a fool of yourself is endless!
Then you have the Europeans, some kiss both cheeks; some go for 3 kisses….oh there are just too many choices! what’s wrong with a friendly “Hello” and a little wave?! Mind you, I have even got that wrong on occasion as well!
The ordeal is not over though, of course not; you have got the whole saying goodbye thing to go through as well….
Have you ever done that kind of circling around each other thing at the end of the evening? You know, when friends that you know quite well have been to visit and are now about to leave. You go to say goodbye but are not sure whether to give them a kiss, hug or a wave, so you dance about for a bit, waiting for your cue from them. It doesn’t come, so you decide to go in for the kiss as they give you a wave as they turn around, leaving your peck on the cheek in mid-air!!!
No wonder I’m a hermit!!!!
Now I’m a woman who likes to be comfy! I am guilty of getting into my pyjamas after work so that I feel more relaxed, not to mention unrestricted! (Especially after the inevitable large dinner). However it doesn’t mean that I want to live in them…..
There has been a huge rise in the popularity of the ‘Onesie.’ There are so many varieties too…the novelty ones, the cute ones, the fluffy animal ones…the list goes on. Some even have kind of little bootees attached to them, as well as a hood. All very nice I’m sure but how the hell do you sleep in them?! Surely it is liked being slowly cooked in your own juices. YUCK!
As well as not being very flattering to the less than perfect figure, many of them don’t have any openings, if you know what I mean! How are people supposed to go to the loo in the middle of the night, half asleep with a onesie on?! By the time you have wrestled with the fastenings,manoeuvred your arms out of the sleeves, and pulled the bloody thing down, not only are you wide awake in your bleary eyed stupor, but you have unintentionally dropped the sleeves down the toilet and peed on them! Of course you don’t notice this until you go to shove your arms back into the dripping sleeves! Nice!
Now the onesie is ideal for babies (we used to call them babygros or romper suits), They are cute and practical. Toddlers and young children look adorable in them and again, they are quite practical. Who thought it was a good idea to make adult sized ones, for Goodness sake? Yes, they are funny. Everyone likes to see their husband dressed like a large, fluffy bunny right? Or their wife, slouching about in a grubby, banana onesie? Yep, passion killers! Even if the mood takes you, it would be long gone before you managed to find your way out of them!
Lastly, (and this is my pet hate) Why would you want to go SHOPPING in one for Christ’s sake?! I have seen people shamelessly doing their weekly shop in their onesie. The other day in my local shop,a mother and daughter were parading their choice of onesie, and it was only about 2 o’clock in the afternoon!
Are people too lazy to get dressed? There have been times when I have been unable to motivate myself to get dressed, but I wouldn’t go out like it! I won’t even answer the door in my pyjamas. I am shocked by my sister who puts her washing out in her dressing gown!!! No way.I don’t want my neighbours mocking my night attire, and I CERTAINLY don’t want to see any of them in the jammies either.
Am I alone in my dislike of the adult onesie?!
Further to yesterdays’ post about some of the advantages of getting older I have come up with a few more:
You can get away with being sexist! This is a particular favourite with some of the elder gentlemen that I have encountered, Carole Parkes commented on my post about her 95-year-old father making an inappropriate remark to a pretty young woman, whose boyfriend was not impressed!
I know that my step dad was fond of making such comments as well.I would cringe if a busty young woman would come on TV as the inevitable comment ,
“You don’t get many of those to a pound” would come out, and he and my mum would titter (sorry couldn’t resist it) together. He would not be shy in making such a comment in public either. I think in his opinion, it was a compliment!
Most of us women ‘of a certain age’ have encountered the ‘dirty old man’ at some point in our lives. Now I am a fan of innuendo, dirty jokes and the like, but it creeps me out a bit when there is some old codger perving over a smutty punchline! By the same token, some of us have been unlucky enough to meet the ‘octopus’ on our travels as well. You know, the old man that pinches your bum as you walk past, or accidentally brushes past you and touches you intimately! Hopefully in this day in age, you don’t get too much of that!
I tell you what else you can do when you are old too – tell people off, or boss them about! Now going back to me dear old step-dad, he was quite an imposing figure to my friends. Although he was not very tall,he had a really BOOMING voice, with a thick west-country accent that, if you were not used to it, could be hard to understand!
Anyway, I remember a friend had called for my sister, just after we had dinner, and my sister was doing the washing up. Her friend was waiting for her to finish and my step-dad walked past and hollered,(excuse my feeble attempt to convey the accent)!
” Don’t just bloody stand there, get thik teacloth in thee hand and dry up”! Terrified, her friend did as she was told! (Hmmm, I can see some advantages here, getting Miss Hap and her friends to do my bidding)!
Last but not least is the ability to pass wind, with no hint of embarrassment whatsoever! This one I have encountered many times, and it seems to be a very common trait amongst the elderly regardless of background. There are several categories to this that I have noticed, which are as follows:
As I am writing this, I am actually getting less and less worried about getting older. There is a lot of bad behaviour to look forward to if nothing else!!!
I have been pretty negative about the process of aging recently and how I am starting to feel (not to mention look) old. I have decided that there must be some positives to being older, and here are a few things that I have noticed….
You can say what you ‘bloody well like’, in the words of my 82-year-old mother! Yes, once you reach a ripe old age you have earned the right to say what you like about anything; regardless of whether or not it causes offence or hurts anyone’s feelings. I have been in the supermarket with Mum when she has told the assistant on the deli counter that she ‘doesn’t want that plastic ham’ or she’s ‘not paying that much for a bit of cheese’ etc. They can’t decide whether or not she is joking but soon get the message when she turns on her heel and just stomps (well hobbles nowadays unfortunately) off! I. or my sisters (whoever has the pleasure of being with her) are left cringing in her wake, rolling our eyes at the bewildered assistant.
She likes to say what she thinks about members of the family too. Either directly, once she told me that a trouser suit I had bought would look better on my sister as ‘she has got the figure for it’. Very true, but I was gutted, and never wore it again! Or indirectly, as in when someone has left the room and before they are even out of earshot she will remark about how much weight they have ‘piled on’ or how awful their outfit is!
Another advantage is selective hearing. This can come in very handy when you don’t want to do something. For example, my Mum hates putting her heating on, and would rather sit there shivering under a blanket than be nice and cosy in a warm room. So when any of us walk in to her little icebox, the conversation goes something like this.
“Why haven’t you got your heating on?”
“What?”
” I SAID, WHY HAVEN’T YOU GOT YOUR HEATING ON?”
“I cant’ hear a bloody word you are saying!”
Leaning over and bellowing in her ear,
“WHY IS THE HEATING NOT ON?!”
” Can you put my hearing aid in, it’s over there?”
By now, I have lost the will to go on, but will dutifully get the hearing aid which is whistling and shrieking, and put it in for her, and then just go and turn the heating on myself. It’s easier.
However, if I had whispered to my sister a bit of gossip about someone, she would have heard that and put her two penneth in!
When you are older, and supposedly wiser, you are an asset to any quiz team! There are always questions about the old days. Games like Trivial Pursuit and other question based games normally require a good range of general knowledge, and of historical events.It stands to reason that n older person on the team is a bonus (providing they have their hearing aids in, of course)!
You can dress with abandon, wearing whatever you like in whatever colour combinations you choose when you are older. Who cares about being colour-co-ordinated any more. Many elderly people I have encountered (which amounts to quite a few), are very uninhibited in their dress sense. Why shouldn’t you wear reds, green and blues ALL at the same time! Who gives a toss about what others think?!!
You can nod off at the drop of a hat. Think Grandpa Simpson here, and his amazing ability to fall asleep, even mid-sentence! Yes, when you are older,nobody thinks it odd if you fall asleep at inappropriate times. How great is that? If you have a social function that you are obligated to go to but are not keen, it doesn’t matter! You can just have a snooze whenever you want and no-one will think you are rude. Far from it, they will probably think you are very sweet and endearing!
Those are just a few of the benefits I have come up with to being older…. are there any I have missed?
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