Friday, February 24, 2017

How the day goes when you sleep til 11

The Doc offered pills but I have enough to be arrested as a dealer but I promised to come back if life gets any darker.  It worried him that I've gone off chocolate and ice-cream and haven't been to the pokies for over 3 weeks.  Buying patchwork fabric on line is a good substitute because I don't have to go outside the house but even there I'm going to have to have an intervention because I spent the food money. I'm not hungry, most unlike me but it sends the sugar screwy.  Everywhere I look there is something I must put away or wash up or wash but it's just too much.  Living two lives is finally taking its toll on me.  

The Home is giving me the horrors and getting there is like a step too far into breakdown.  I am still suspicious that the residents coming in are all in various stages of Dementia.  Not their fault but they are walking around, my mother is confined to wheelchair or bed, her chum is the same.  They haven't forgotten the last demented walker who slapped and punched one and would creep around mum's bed to see what she could take - in the middle of the night.  Now we have an "ohgodohgodohgod" all day, a screamer, a hitter and a crap thrower.  You can bet none of this was on their records when they came in.  
Not only do I have to worry about any of them getting near my mother but I saw the worst of the worst PCA yesterday.  She forgot the bed control but remembered the emergency bell which mum had to use.  She's on oxygen all the time now but felt she wasn't getting enough by the time she was put to bed so back comes the prize dill and puts up the oxygen to 3.  10 minutes later mum is getting a bit distressed so back she comes, oh so sorry about that, I've put the machine on the oxygen line and don't we all remember that scene from "Flying High".  After I left, some one else discovered that the nose line for the oxygen was in upside down so instead of going into the lungs it was freshening up the room.
No cups of afternoon tea either, staff were all over the road having another meeting and only one to organize the Thursday Happy Hour.  If I could I would have been down to the kitchen to complain but I still had to hide the garbage bags, the Home was buying them for each resident but they were disappearing faster than they could be replaced. Mum especially needs them so I was taking my grocery bags down and they disappeared.  The tissue boxes disappeared during the night so I've taken to buying 10 boxes at a time and hiding them on the bottom shelf of her table because no-one goes that far down to clean anything.  Add to this 2 boxes of colostomy bags which takes me 3 hours at home to fix up and I have to put 20 in one bag, 10 in the other with a big note which says when this box is opened please ring for replacements.  Still I did get a pat from an agency nurse who couldn't believe how I could cut them out to the exact fit, everywhere else she goes, she has to do it herself. On behalf of my two mangled fingers, thank you.
Did I remember everything? 2 butterfly motifs for her T-shirts, boxes of tissues, garbage bags, colostomy bags.  Fix up the phone charger, wrong one.  Write cheque for postage when I get home.
I'm a bit dry, have you any tictacs?  Did you have lunch? No, walking with all the crap I couldn't be bothered. I didn't even have any water, thinking I would at least get a cup of tea, ha!

I grabbed a cab at 3.45, got the mail, fed the cat and fell into bed and woke up around 6 with the cat cuddled up to me and a nice dose of the shakes and pain in every joint.  Erring on the side of caution I took one happy pill and two Panamax, should have done it the other way round and the shakes would have stopped a lot sooner. The pain in my head will have to stay since I can't take Telfast with everything I've just taken.  Cat decides to go out so I leave the door open and turn the lights out, that usually fixes him, rolls in at 1.a.m and curls up with me to get warm and I know the bloody door is still open.  Get up to shut it and in my multi-tasking way sprays a huge cockroach on the curtain.

I don't have the shakes today, no pain in the head, no aches but it cost a load of $$$$ in fabric. 

Friday, February 17, 2017

Don't go shopping after speaking with mother.

My birthday is in July, you have time to practice and save up for the shipping.  I was saving this for another post but since my taxi nearly got wiped out by a chocolate truck this afternoon, I felt it was appropriate.
Work was being done on the gutters and the road is divided by a concrete and tree arrangement, the truck felt it didn't have enough room so without a signal it swerved in front of us, rounded the divide and swerved back in front of us.  I swear there was only a gnat's whisker between truck and taxi. Since he didn't slow down in the swerve, I have visions of the back of the truck being a full mixed box.

And mother, dear mother, almost permanently on oxygen or she turns a delightful shade of blue, has decided she doesn't want the glasses that were ordered and I don't blame her.  She always has a slight pink tinge to cut down the glare and the pair that came this week had lens of lovely Cartland pink. I even attended the Relatives and Residents meeting to voice complaints but copped one of the bigwigs
of the Aged Care group going on and on about Dementia.  It would have been useful for the relatives but his audience except 4 had Dementia but it was a captive audience until I'd had enough and told him my mother didn't have Dementia when she came to the Home and he said it often developed as they aged.  I said he was missing the point, that this Home was for high care residents who couldn't walk or look after themselves because of physical trauma but now they are still bedridden or in wheel chairs in a place where the demented can walk around and terrorise them.  My dramatic exit was somewhat diminished by having to be levered out of the too small chair.  Of course mother was pleased that I spoke up and then told me if anyone came near her she could always poke their eye out with her Chinese fan.  So glad you're not in any danger from the demented.  

The point of all this is that she wants her optomotrist from two years back. She knows her first name but not the second. Her friend wants her back as well, she knows the first name but not the second and by the time I got off the phone, they couldn't agree on the first name.  Finally I've found her name in the cheque book.  It was October 2014, okay so we'll go for 2 years ago and Lens and frames cost $285 with the blush tint. This time I was told over the phone, $500 and everyone was charged $500 including the residents with dementia.  Please let dear Susan be still in business or I'll go totally round the bend...like a chocolate truck. 

Thursday, February 09, 2017

Fire and Ice

Map of Iceland showing locations of these volcanoes
Hekla

 Bardarbunga
 Grimsvotn
 Katla

Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland said that Katla, Hekla, Bardarbunga and Grimsvotn are restless.

Katla is the least recently-active volcano of the four, last erupting in 1918 but is now shaking with over magnitude three tremors. It averages about two eruptions each century. It's especially dangerous since it is partly covered by the glacier Myrdalsjokull which fills a caldera depression and covers the eruptive vents so when it does go off it releases hot molten mud flows called Lahars.  These are uber Lahars, the last eruption in 1918 extended the southern coast by 5km just with laharic deposits.


Hekla, otherwise know as the "Gateway to Hell" has been quiet for 16 years but data collected in June last year revealed it is building up magma, and it's internal pressure is currently higher than before its last two previous eruptions.  It's ready to go, erupting once every 10 years, from 1970 to 2000, it's been dormant until now. Professor Einarsson said that tourists should stay away but what do you do with the 20-30 planes full of passengers flying right over the top of Hekla every day.

Bardarbunga volcano had a red alert issued at the end of August 2014 to February 2015 when it experienced a small eruption but only because it lies underneath the Vatnajokull glacier. The volcano sits in a 700metre caldera beneath ice but the majority eruptions come out of the fissures in the side. Not small fissures either, the Veidivotn fissure extends for over 62 miles to the south west almost reaching Torfajokull volcano while the Trollagigar fissure extends 31 miles to the north east towards the Askja volcano.
The last eruption was the strongest of its kind in Europe in more than 240 years and with earthquakes starting up, it suggests that magma could be building below the surface.


Grimsvotn is a near neighbour to Bardarbunga and likely to be fuelled by the same source of magma.  It erupted in 2011, sent a huge plume of ash skywards leading to flights being grounded.  Seismic activity is steadily rising. 

These are only four of the volcanoes that dot the island of Iceland.  Between the lot of them you have just about every kind of volcanic activity documented.  All we need now is for the other side of the world to start rumbling, Yellowstone is already doing that but I mean rumbling in a really vicious Presidential kind of rumbling and then I might worry.

What a night to frazzle

I just couldn't sleep even with the fan blowing over me. It was toss and turn until I finally got up and put on the computer by the light of a small torch. I have a small fan by on the desk and a jug of cold water.  So begins the surfing and remembering Andrew's plaintive cry for a video to show how to fold a fitted sheet, I did find this.  The woman of the house would realize just by looking that this sheet has been ironed first, it's far too smooth to have come out of a dryer but it's a good demonstration.  Although I don't know why he isn't like the rest of us who crunch and fold and sit on the damn things until they're flat.

Coming up for the weekend is Wild Time in the skies.  We have a full moon called a snow moon in the northern hemisphere, an eclipse on top of that and a passing comet. So time for something crazy and I won't be dancing in the nude, mosquitoes are hungry down south.   Unfortunately we don't see the eclipse or the comet but we feel the effects.

Iceland is about to bust out in volcanic eruptions, four are rumbling and grumbling. This is a job for drones instead of planes, lose a drone, lose money, lose a plane and lose people.

Wednesday, February 01, 2017

I want it now and I want it all, gimme gimme!




Iced Vo Vo Pavlova.

I am hypnotized by the luscious.

There are ten layers.

I mean TEN layers of sugar induced coma just sitting there.

I will electrocute myself if I keep drooling on the keyboard.
The only other cake as yum as this was the ganache covered trifle cake.

But I'm true to my roots, Pavlova Rules.