Probably because I don't know how!  Give me a clue what to do. Caz

I have always loved Mother's day especially when my Mum was alive.  It doesn't have to be over priced a bunch of daffodils is just as nice.  Anyway I seem to have some cards and gifts to open tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it. So there!!!!!  Have a lovely day miss Grump xx

It seemed a lot more sincere when I was younger or is that just the rosy mists of time?!

I’ve got some lovely presents but I set a limit on what they could spend. It ought to be about what the present means  not what it cost. 

Suppose it’s just the creep of commercialisation.  Now I really do sound like my mother!

It probably is the rosy mists but it's nice to be appreciated.  Mine didn't know what to get so I said surprise me, so it is a surprise as I have no idea what it is.  Very exciting

My lot were clueless as well sooo, got new wheel covers for my car, definitely needed! My lovely daughter is taking me out for breakfast tomorrow, slightly ulterior motive as we are meeting up with her boyfriend, his bother and his mum. The two boys don’t get to see much of their mum without her partner so this was cooked up so that they could. 

I gave my slightly detached son a couple of ideas when he asked so I’ll see what he comes up with, if anything. 

So I live in hope that I might get a cup of tea in bed but by 9.20 am I realise this is not going to happen, I think bringing tea up on the stair lift may have something to do with it!   I make tea and open my gifts whilst hubby stays in bed drinking his.  Silver three star earrings from older daughter but a printed card which I'm a little disappointed with as she has beautiful caligraphy handwriting and it's lovely to behold, but times are changing (not for the better )  so I ignore it and open younger daughter's cards,  Harry has written his himself and it's lovely and I have a beautiful hexagon mirror engraved with a personal message and white and milk chocolates saying I love Grandma.   I am so blessed with my family and feel apprecitation from all.  I go for the papers and a lovely gentleman reaches for them as he's getting his and passes them to me, I bump into one of my Legal clerks from the Court and we catch up on hubby and her Mum, who has just had cataract surgery and has been ringing her to say she can see the snow!  I get home, grab a coffee and set off for Scorton with pan a raisin for me and Sue.  Lovely catch up, back home and hubby is struggling with his leg but we go for a drive, we call at the Stanwick Arms for a drink but he can't walk and is in pain, so back in the car, he's upset but I say not to worry as we have been invited out for Joe and Mary's 48th wedding anniversary on Wednesday and I'm having my 1920 themed afternoon tea at Hardwick on Thursday.  We are chilling out and he is OK now, we hope his new leg will be here soon.  Happy Mother's day to all of you struggling with cancer or caring for someone,  we all need special days to keep our spirits up.  Love Carol x

We have a quiet day, I catch up on household duties and hubby is helping when he can.  After yesterday trying to walk he has caused his wound to open again and I can see he is concerned.   I have kept out of interfering in this ongoing matter because he won't take anyone's advice.  So he asks me what he can do and I lay it straight on the line and tell him I'll only help if I can do what I think is best.  He's agreed and I'm hoping this will help heal it as he still has holes in his skin from weeks ago.  Cancer is vile and the treatment not only kills the growth but everything else, I know we are told this at the beginning but you hope it won't , how naive we were and one year on we are still coping.  I sometimes wonder if you met those going through it you would have a better understanding , but is it better to be ignorant ànd cope with the unknown?  We will see how long this new dressing stays on before he comes up with some excuse to remove it, I won't hold my breath!  

We are up early due to an electrician coming to do some work.  I am finally having a lamp fitted that automatically comes on as you walk towards it, this should help when I come home tiddly from nights out!  I manage zumba, get back and a friend has come to see hubby, the electric guy is still here but says the lights are working.  So I grab a shower wrap a towel round me and lo and behold I've got no electric.  I try shouting out the shower  window but he can't hear me, so I shout down the stairs and as usual hubby is shouting the wrong answer back at me!  Eventually our friend comes to the rescue and the electric guy comes running up the stairs whilst I'm naked but for a towel!  I hide in another bedroom whilst he checks everything and ten minutes later we are with light again.  I have to pop into town and the blinking lifts aren't working again,  this is so annoying when you have to lug your shopping up three flights of stairs.  Back home and we need to get some beer for neighbours birthday but hubby can't remember which one, San Miguel,  no, Stella,  no.  I give up so we pop to the village shop, go through the same guessing game with them,  I remember he says, it's corona, right we'll have some of that,  oh sorry she says we haven't got any!  So we just buy something else, get home and he's exhausted so he's now asleep in the warm conservatory.   I hope he manages to stay awake for our meal out tomorrow

We have just arrived home after a lovely evening out celebrating our best friends wedding anniversary.   Although they know hubby's state of health they still parked as far away from the restaurant door as they could!  Hubby hobbled and struggled and I was so mad that Mary said nothing and Joe thought he could cope.   No one understands how hard it is having cancer, the treatments that destroy you and the anxiety the partner has.   Hubby would have been cross if I had said anything so I had to bite my tongue.  I think I have to accept that others will never comprehend the struggle , so I'm not going to let it spoil our night, it was nice to be out together .  See you tomorrow. 

Hi.  Glad you enjoyed your evening.  It so often happens that things that seem so very clear to us are not at all apparent even to close friends.  Perhaps by the time they realised how hard it was the situation had become too difficult to raise for anyone.  We humans can be a bit strange sometimes even with people we know well.

Keep on keeping on as the saying goes.  You post so straightforwardly but I sometimes wonder how you cope with your darkest thoughts.  Thanks so much for making us feel what is happening in your world.  Annie

Hi ANNIE,  you're right, people don't get it, how could they, there's no way of comprehending other people's pain.  I try not to have dark thoughts, it doesn't help you cope!xx

Hi ANNIE,  you're right, people don't get it, how could they, there's no way of comprehending other people's pain.  I try not to have dark thoughts, it doesn't help you cope!xx

I am still awake at 2.00 am with a song going round and round in my head.  Why am I not asleep?  I get up have some pain killers, nod off and hubby wakes me up at 3.00 am needing the toilet after all the guiness!  By 8.00 am next doors window is being knocked out and a new one fitted.  Hubby is up first as he has an appointment,  great a cup of tea made for me!!  I should have known better.   He's put a tea bag in a cup but used all the boiled water as he wasn't sure when I was coming down he says.  I hang around in my night gear as I'm going out at 11.30 this morning,  this just makes me feel tired and I seriously think about cancelling my do.. But I don't and it was brilliant.   My dress was much discussed (borrowed from a friend who bought it in Egypt) loads of Charleston dancing displays, beautiful afternoon tea and I won first prize in the raffle  Everyone congratulates me and say I deserve it after the year I've had.  How lovely to say that to me.  So I call Mary and say we will enjoy it together as a thank you to her.  So Hardwick Hall thanks for the gift of tea for two and we are really looking forward to it.  Hubby is good today and has been my chauffeur he looked very handsome in his new jumper.   See you tomorrow. 

A good night's sleep for us both but hubby still has a horrid morning cough.  I think I will have to get used to it but it reminds me of the cancer invading his lung and my mind takes time to recover. All I have to do today is food shop and cook, it's 4.5 degrees again and so cold I have to wear a winter coat.  So hubby has gone to check his golf buggy, which means he wants a ride out!  So I'm watching TV on my new Now box instead of poor people's tv as my husband calls it.  So wrap up warm all of you and take care. Xx

Hiya.  So pleased you had a good day out.  Ups and downs; ups and downs.  The return visit of the Beast from the East hasn't reached London yet; in fact the last couple of days have been comparatively pleasant.  When I took Muffin (my little bichon frise) to the park seven of his doggie friends were there, of all sizes, and they zoomed around the park playing doggie games and eventually tired themselves out.  The cold does make me miserable, it always has so I am longing for spring to be finally here.  I imagine you are too.  Sorry about hubby's encroaching cough; nothing I can say really except you are doing great stuff.  Thanks for keeping us up to date.  Annie

Hi ANNIE,  lucky you with a little bit better weather.   I had to go out in a sleeveless thin flapper dress for the 1920 do.  I was frozen after jeans and boots for months!  A few new clothes for spring hang in my wardrobe I'll be lucky to wear them this year.  Love dogs but too much to cope with nowadays.   Take care  Carol

It's a blizzard again!  I have had to buy another winter coat due to leaving my new coat down south last February and because of hubby I couldn't go any more.  Each time my younger daughter comes to us she forgets it!  So I put the new one on plus hat scarf and gloves and am chauffered into town.  I buy Easter presents for the children and an Egg for older daughter as they are coming home before going to the Isle of White, (surprise phone call last night ).  The others are off to New York again,  so money for them.  Ella is excited about coming and they have been talking about moving nearer but son in law works down South. Ella says he can catch a train up here each day,  it must be lovely to be five years old and make plans that you can only dream of.  So I've bought some wool to knit her a cardigan for the summer, she's  very fussy so let's hope she likes it!!  It's beef curry for tea (protein) and batten down the hatches.  See you tomorrow. 

I have to dig my car out again and battle my way to get milk and Sunday Papers.   I have to find another hat as mine blew off in the wind yesterday and by the time someone retrieves it for me it was filthy!  We think about going out for a bit of lumch but common sense prevails and we batten down the hatches again and stay warm.  Hubby is still suffering with wounds and I am upset that they still look red and livid, when will they heal?  He seems to have accepted that they are not healing but thinks they look better.  The treatments have halved the tumour but caused many other problems.  It's never ending but you actually become used to it.  So take care all of you.x

Oh dear, a mixture of good and bad for you.  I cannot imagine going out dressed as a flapper in the awful cold!  The snow returned here yesterday.  When I walked Muffin to the newsagent I had to walk backwards part of the way home as the snow and bitterly cold wind was blowing into me and stopping me breathing properly; I was getting very shaky.  Fortunately  - or unfortunately - there was noone else around to either (a) think I was mad or (b) to help me if I collapsed in a heap.  A bit frightening but I made it.  Definitely staying in at home weather; the dog's walk was even shorter than yesterday.  This is going to last a couple more days unfortunately.  Annie

Despite the snow, wind and minus 4 degrees I manage to get hubby to run me too Dunelm Mill.  When the family came home they just shoved all the toys into  the small wardrobe leaving no room for clothes!  So I spent two hours clearing out the room and using my baskets to stack everything neatly.  This had a knock on effect of leaving my room like a bomb site, so we needed new storage.  I would prefer to go on my own, meander around and have coffee and a lemon poppy seed muffin but hubby is desperate to get out!  He's getting his new leg on Friday and we're hoping this will help him cope better.  He's chatting to our window cleaner through the kitchen window, freezing the kitchen out, so I'm warm in the front room writing this blog.  The cancer sems to not be discussed by either of us but it's underlying existence is evident when things go awry.   This morning he is meant to be on four steroids however he insists it's six, anger at being wrong and not in charge flare out of him, so I tell him to overdose as I'm not arguing with him.  Needless to say this makes him think and I write down the dose for him day by day.  I then tell him he needs to lose the attitude when I disagree with him.  Silence for half an hour then a kiss and a hug show me it's been taken on board!  Cancer is anger, rage, loss of a normal life and all in all a nasty bit of work.  See you tomorrow .

I check hubby is OK and escape to my class, we all look at the photos taken last Thursday and agree we all looked pretty good for our age!  Back home hubby seems OK but apparently my  mathematics on  the countdown steroids is obviously wrong as he has loads left!   I should have known he wouldn't accept the status quo but explain that he has a month's supply, oh he says I didn't realise,  the treatment has frazzled his brain and he doesn't listen to more than half a conversation,  but I do or he wouldn't still be here!  Yesterday I tried to sort the new tax codes out as my filing system is full so I thought he could help by putting aside the last three years codings,  you would have thought I had asked him to sit an exam, he made it so difficult.   I didn't give in though as this seems to be his way of not doing a thing that stretches his mind and it needs stretching!  So he managed and seemed quite pleased with himself, I am going to try and do this a little bit more when he gets his new prosthetic leg and can expend more energy into everyday life rather than TV and newspapers.   I have been invited out to lunch tomorrow as a belated birthday present by my sister in law as so much has happened we have never got round to it even though it was last November! ! So a nice day ahead.  

Hi Caz,

Just noting a bit in your post there about flashing at each other and encouragement to do stuff. I'm cogntively impaired though thankful for it as it keeps away any deprression and negative thoughts and allows me to live in the moment. It does mean though that I miss loads of conversation and I can see that other people are either not recognising it and expecting too much or become frustrated such that I can quickly feel that I'm being bullied.

Same with any encouragement. Although I see it for what it is, I can feel bullied.

I'm not being bullied, I'm being cared for and actively thought about but my immediate feelings can be wrong and make me feel this way. Again luckily, these feelings are transient, lasting only a few seconds.

I also find that my wife and I occasionally, with just a word or expression, suddenly end up rapidly escalating nothing into an argument/ slanging match but it soon blows over.

Regards

Taff