The Thoughts of Inya

My mother had a fall this morning and broke her wrist. She tripped up the kerb. She also has a scrape on her cheek and a lovely black eye. I went to the hospital and met her in the Accident and Emergency Dept, where she was quite happy having been given a morphine injection and "gas and air".

She's home now, and I've given her strict instructions not to use her injured hand. Unfortunately it's her right hand, and she's terribly bloody-minded.

So, relief that it's not as bad as it might have been.

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Our internet access is still patchy. Often, we can't get on line at all. Every day, another call from the very friendly man in India who is working on it. Every day, the service is no better. I suppose to send a man with a ladder to come and fix the wire would take a long time, if he has to come from India.

So, I'm sorry I'm not around much. I *am* here, staring a that little "round and round" thing that has replaced the eggtimer, while the flashy light changes from red to amber to blue and then turns itself off completely.

I've been taking photos of bubbles, after reading a project idea in Practical Photography. It took a while to get it to work, but eventually I got some results.  Takes me back to my hippy days!


 

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My husband sent me a text this evening, while I was at my mother's.  He said: "NORWICH". 

I looked at the text and mumbled something about not being able to read it... 

Naughty hubby.

I just had a very long, interesting phone call with a gentleman in (presumably) India about the awful number of errors on my pc. I let him carry on until we got to the part about me clicking on "allow remote access". No thanks, I'm not happy with that, goodbye.

Googling "Microsoft event errors scam" reveals what's going on. But... he knew my name (I think I'm on every Indian spam-callcentre database), and said he was from Microsoft. Yeah right. Put me on to Bill, I'd like a word.

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Daughter has an appointment with the Juvenile Mental Health centre about Patrick. From the lady who, when pre-school suggested that there might be something wrong, accused Daughter of being paranoid about Patrick because of his difficult birth.

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Daughter also today told me that her friend at the course she's doing just told her that she's dying. She has terminal, multiple cancers. The lady was a midwife and delivered Alex. What can you say??

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Alex did a classic cartoon-like skid on the ice today. I took him to the park to feed the ducks (frozen duck pond) and there was a patch of ice on the path. "Be careful, it's slippery" says I. "Alex can run on the iiiiiiiiiiice.... " says Alex, as he slid away gracefully on his bum.

Looking up the hill at bare trees.  This was earlier in the day, before the sun came out:



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The main worry was the central heating boiler in my daughter's house breaking down on the Friday before Christmas. They had no heating and no hot water. All those "24/7 - 365" plumbers/heating engineers who advertise lie. All they could get was answering machines. (It broke down in a dramatic fashion - flames and smoke. It could have been worse.)

So they managed to scrounge a couple of fan heaters and an oil-filled radiator which just kept the house from being freezing, and they came over to us for a few nights for showers/baths/defrosting. Thank heavens it wasn't as cold as last winter. Poor daughter, she was planning a Christmas for us all, and we did manage to have Christmas Day with them but it was stressful.

On the day it was fixed (last Tuesday), their tumble drier broke down. That was also the day that Daughter started being ill. The kids had had sore throats/colds, but when she got it, she got worse and worse and eventually the doc came to visit and declared it was scarlet fever. Not a problem with high dose antibiotics, but you can imagine the reaction of my mother and m-in-law. Horror! They remember it being deadly.

Her hubby took a couple of days off work to look after them all, and I had a couple of days off too.

She is recovering now, but feels like she's been in a boxing match.

We had Middle Son and his partner staying with us over Christmas/New Year, so with them and the extra family we had quite a houseful. The number of toilet rolls we went through...

And you know about the problems we're having with the phone line. The engineer was booked for Monday but I've just spoken to someone (in India, where else?) who says there is no appointment booked... I'm ready to scream at them.

We had planned to have a quiet week between Christmas and New Year, when we would go out for long walks in the countryside and enjoy some peace and quiet. Ha. Well we did get out last weekend, to Fountains Abbey. We've been many times but it's a good place for a walk - we went along the river and managed to get lost, which we haven't done there before. Tried for a short cut back to the car park, and it wasn't. Never mind, we enjoyed the day very much.

What else? Oh yes, Eldest Son's girlfriend has been trying to sell her house for a long time and they had a buyer at last. But he pulled out at the weekend.

The New Year is going to be perfect. I know it.

Mary with her baby - the school nativity:

I've been looking for some holly to decorate the new mirror, but I found this in a garden centre and liked it:



There's supposed to be a dove sitting at the bottom, but it's lacking so I got it half price. I think it looks fine without a dove anyway!

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Hubby opened a bottle of wine this evening, and it was corked. Ugh. So he opened another, but the cork got stuck - it fell *into* the bottle. He tried to get it out, and ended up having a wine shower. Yes, I laughed.

I think we might have offended our Tomte... He makes wine sour, doesn't he?

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I am going to be so busy tomorrow. But then... I can chill! We're going out with the family for a meal tomorrow evening, Christmas Eve we'll be at Eldest Son's, at Daughter's for The Day, then all here on Boxing Day. Middle Son will be home the day after, so we'll do some more celebrating then.

I probably won't be around, so...

HAVE A REALLY GOOD ONE, ALL MY FRIENDS!

I haven't been around much, and probably won't be now until after the Event.

It's just really busy at work, I foolishly thought that the workload would diminish this week. Hah. Everyone wants results *before Christmas*. We can only do so much.

And I have so much to do. The house is a health hazard. Relatives will be visiting. I feel more like diving under the duvet than tackling all the jobs that I should.

My hubby hurt his knee during the summer, resulting in a swollen and painful joint. It's almost better now, but he has been careful not to kneel down while it's been healing. This week he noticed... he has developed hairy knees!

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Work Christmas meal last night, which was really good. The boss paid for everything too, which makes it taste even better! (Not the one that we weren't invited to. We found out what had happend. It was a case of miscommunication. There hadn't been enough room for everyone, so we were left out. I don't mind that, I was just upset that someone might have said "Don't invite that lot, we don't want them".)

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Snow today. A return to the fun of trying to get to work. I set off very early, and made it only slightly late. One of the others took hours to complete a short journey. I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow.