Blog for Wednesday 23rd April 2025

Today it is Justin's - our youngest grandchild - seventeenth birthday! What a lovely age to be celebrating and enjoying life!

A new day arrived quietly at our glass front door. It arrived beautifully wrapped in layers of soft, grey gossamer mist, bearing a note warning of rain to come later today.

Ken had had another restless night’s sleep – his hip is uncomfortable and at times downright painful, plus he cannot sleep on his side which is how he would normally sleep. All that adds up to not such a good night’s sleep, poor man.

Added to that I was laughing my head off during the night apparently, so that too would play into his having a restless night’s sleep.

I went out early this morning to feed the chooks and the guinea fowl - as it is my job now with Ken out of commission – and we had only had 2mm of rain over night, This morning I had to replenish their water and thankfully I had put their seed under cover yesterday  so the remaining seed was still dry before I added the new seed for the day.

Today I decided to try and wash the large fluffy leopard skin patterned blanket we normally use in winter. My last washing machine could not wash it, but today this new washing machine that our children gave me, washed it beautifully, and I was able to tumble dry it too. Hallelujah! What an exciting discovery that I am now able to wash this blanket.

Today Ken was up and about, did his exercises and slept or lay down for most of the day. I was not feeling that crash hot today – as I kept having dizzy spells, so I thought I would limp through today slowly.

I did.

In the afternoon, I sat on one of the maroon Lazy Boy armchairs and crocheted as I vaguely listened to TV.  I half-watched and half-listened to quiz shows in order to break the monotony of my crocheting. I am busy doing the last twelve edging rows and there are simply hundreds of stitches per side, and it is so tempting to just stop and take a break!

I am delighted that I went through to town yesterday because by mid-afternoon today we had already had 17.5mm of rain and that could mean that the river will come up again, leaving us cut off from the maddening crowds! Thankfully, I am organized should that happen again.

At the moment I am in a sort of limbo – I have finished listening to my audio book, finished reading my Kindle book, and have only just begun to read a physical - a real book, and have two baby shawls to finish which are taking me forever and a day to do!

Yes! That is what I did this morning – I began to unpack one of those large wooden boxes that Paddy and Matt’ brought in from outside for me. Shoo! What a job! I only did half of the one box and then allowed myself to stop. I will continue that tomorrow.

I will burn all the ruined bedding when the sun is out again and that will give me some more room to continue unpacking. I have to create spaces and places to store things. We have burnt several of the original cupboards that had been damaged by the floods we have had come inside our shed. But with this huge storage area Paddy is creating that will not be a problem. It is in the interim though that I need some solution!

Tonight, both Ken and I decided on soup and toast for our supper. Nice on a rainy evening.

What lesson did I learn today? In order to complete a task one has to sometimes be creative to do so.

What am I grateful for today? That I went into town yesterday to get a few supplies.

My saying for today is …