Sunday:
Yesterday we had lunch with family before going to see the movie "Warcraft". We took the kids even though it was rated M, even Harry Potter movies are rated M. We all play the computer game that it was based on, World of Warcraft. It was quite a good movie, not stellar. Everyone seems to agree that it would be a bit confusing if you don't play the game. I ate m&ms in the movies but did not partake of the ice cream everyone else had afterwards. Ice cream is ok, not my passion, not something I want to spend calories on in winter.
I went to bed really early, exhausted. Had two sessions of night sweats paired with bad dreams. Got up exhausted this morning. Pelvic pain, sore foot, no sleep, headache, feeling sorry for myself today. Cranky with my fitbit that tells me yay you got 10 hours 20 mins sleep! Really, fitbit? I may have been lying quietly in bed that long, doesn't mean I got a restful night!
On to nicer topics, today was a birthday lunch at a café, the booking was for 1:30pm so by the time everyone gets there (through pouring rain), reconnects with other guests, orders, it was 2:30 by the time we got any food. Very late lunch for me! But it was nice food, and good company. We stood around chatting for a while afterwards.
When we got home we finished off watching the last Hobbit movie. Next weekend we'll start the Lord of the Rings saga.
Showing posts with label Hobbit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobbit. Show all posts
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Sunday, June 12, 2016
The Desolation of Smaug
Sunday:
Here's a suggestion, don't weigh yourself the morning after a Chinese banquet dinner! I'm not taking this weight as official, but still, I need to get back to eating healthy. I keep making plans, but then giving in at the first hint of temptation.
This afternoon we watched the second Hobbit movie with the kids. Great movie, very long! One day we'll have to do a weekend of all six movies (including The Lord of the Rings) in extended version, back to back. About 20 hours total run time. I did something like that once back in my uni days, with a couple of seasons of Twin Peaks. That was a freaky show to watch while sleep-deprived!
Here's a suggestion, don't weigh yourself the morning after a Chinese banquet dinner! I'm not taking this weight as official, but still, I need to get back to eating healthy. I keep making plans, but then giving in at the first hint of temptation.
This afternoon we watched the second Hobbit movie with the kids. Great movie, very long! One day we'll have to do a weekend of all six movies (including The Lord of the Rings) in extended version, back to back. About 20 hours total run time. I did something like that once back in my uni days, with a couple of seasons of Twin Peaks. That was a freaky show to watch while sleep-deprived!
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Weekend
Sunday:
It has been absolutely bucketing down all weekend, really heavy rain and windy too. So it's definitely been an indoor couple of days. It's so dark it feels like evening even in the middle of the day. This is not a well- lit house at all, we have plans to change the lights and also add a window looking out into the backyard. What seemed quite cosy and welcoming in summer might be rather gloomy in winter. We want to get solar panels fitted on the roof and I have no idea if I need to do that before or after changing all the light fittings. Something to investigate, when I have the energy.
Yesterday and today a lot of time was spent (by Tim and the kids) working on Jasmine's science experiment. She set up a long (can't think of the word) thing in her room where she put a book in a basket which made the basket sink and the other end string pulled something up that knocked over a chain of books that made a pair of scissors cut a string that made a marble roll into a chain of dominos which knocked a spoonful of ice cream into a glass of fizzy drink, creating what we call a "spider" in Australia. They filmed take after take while things didn't go quite perfectly, but eventually it worked.
Yesterday evening we watched the first "The Hobbit" movie which we decided the kids were old enough to see. Five more to go in the franchise! They both loved it.
I continue to get terrible sleep for all the reasons previously stated. I am getting to the end of my ability to cope with this, which means tears and snapping at people. Not sure what I can do about it. I am turning to food for energy and I don't see that changing any time soon and I'm not apologising for it. Whatever gets me through the day, at the moment. If I can at least get this pelvic pain sorted, that will help with the second half of every night. But that appointment is still weeks away. I am reconsidering that decision to stick with the closer gyno, I might at least ring around on Monday to see when I could get appointments elsewhere.
It has been absolutely bucketing down all weekend, really heavy rain and windy too. So it's definitely been an indoor couple of days. It's so dark it feels like evening even in the middle of the day. This is not a well- lit house at all, we have plans to change the lights and also add a window looking out into the backyard. What seemed quite cosy and welcoming in summer might be rather gloomy in winter. We want to get solar panels fitted on the roof and I have no idea if I need to do that before or after changing all the light fittings. Something to investigate, when I have the energy.
Yesterday and today a lot of time was spent (by Tim and the kids) working on Jasmine's science experiment. She set up a long (can't think of the word) thing in her room where she put a book in a basket which made the basket sink and the other end string pulled something up that knocked over a chain of books that made a pair of scissors cut a string that made a marble roll into a chain of dominos which knocked a spoonful of ice cream into a glass of fizzy drink, creating what we call a "spider" in Australia. They filmed take after take while things didn't go quite perfectly, but eventually it worked.
Yesterday evening we watched the first "The Hobbit" movie which we decided the kids were old enough to see. Five more to go in the franchise! They both loved it.
I continue to get terrible sleep for all the reasons previously stated. I am getting to the end of my ability to cope with this, which means tears and snapping at people. Not sure what I can do about it. I am turning to food for energy and I don't see that changing any time soon and I'm not apologising for it. Whatever gets me through the day, at the moment. If I can at least get this pelvic pain sorted, that will help with the second half of every night. But that appointment is still weeks away. I am reconsidering that decision to stick with the closer gyno, I might at least ring around on Monday to see when I could get appointments elsewhere.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Christmas contrasts
Saturday:
I'm back in Canberra for a few days before I return to Sydney (alone) to spend more time with mum.
So I found out Monday afternoon that mum had been in hospital since Friday, and my brother hadn't told me. I debated whether I should drop everything and go, but my brother said she was in no immediate danger and we decided to spend the afternoon scrambling to get ready for Christmas and leave in the morning. I didn't get a lot of sleep after that decision! How much could I trust my brother's assessment? I did try ringing mum's mobile, but apparently she put it on a lunch tray and it got taken away and never returned - probably in the trash somewhere - of course I didn't find that out until later so I kept trying; and I called the hospital but at the time she was off having an MRI. So I spoke to a nurse but not to her.
Anyway, Tuesday morning we each opened one present because they weren't all going to fit in the car - we each opened the biggest one! Then the car was carefully loaded, including bags under feet and on laps. Not the most comfortable for a four hour drive. But we are big on presents in our family, especially on my husband's side. We got to Sydney and picked up mum's house key from my brother then went to the hospital.
I saw her only two weeks before and at that time she was obviously tired and unwell, but still very much herself. On Tuesday she was much worse. She didn't recognise me for a minute when I walked in, she thought I was someone else's visitor looking for a chair. Scary. She only realised it was me when Tim and the kids followed me around the curtain. She was better the rest of the visit, alert enough most of the time to go through some mail with me - we opened Christmas cards and arranged for me to pay a bill for her - but she needed to close her eyes and rest often. She needed assistance to get from bed to chair briefly so they could change her sheets. My brother said she had barely eaten in the weeks before she went into hospital, and she still wasn't. She'd had a drip for a few days but it was making her fluid retention worse and they had taken it out.
She made it clear to the doctors that she no longer wanted the cancer treatment which was making her feel so sick and not doing much good, she just wants palliative care to make her last days easier. All she wants is a private room instead of being in with three others, she is waiting for one to become available. With no hope of improvement, she doesn't see the point of hanging on. I accept this, as it is how I would feel in that situation. It is interesting that my husband's family feels the opposite, they think she needs treatment for depression so she'll have the will to live longer. Yet Tim's mother died very slowly after decades of gradual decline (MS), with a loss of all physical and mental function, and I think that would be much worse than dying relatively quickly.
We left at dinner time and weren't sure if my brother had planned for us to have dinner with him and I couldn't get through on the phone so we went to a restaurant. Then when we got back to the house he had just got back from visiting mum and was starting to prepare food for us. We pretended to eat a little bit (very late for the kids!). We were a bit dubious about eating anything he had arranged. He has OCD and hoards food. Decaying, rotting food. The house stinks and now mum isn't there (he lives with mum) it's only going to get worse. We stayed there the night, in the smell and the dust. Tim's asthma got quite bad overnight.
The next day we visited mum again then went to the other side of Sydney to our hotel. My family and my husband's live about as far apart as possible in the same city. The kids swam in the pool, we set up out little travel Christmas tree, and had dinner with my husband's family.
Christmas morning was hard. The contrast between getting all the material things I wanted, and my mother terminally ill in hospital, was very strange and upsetting.
We had lunch with my husband's extended family. I enjoyed the socialising part but not the food. They just don't have the same taste in food as I do. Tim's mother was English and their food traditions reflect that. They can have eight desserts on the table with not one I like! Good for me, I suppose. Not that I went hungry. I filled up on chips and chocolates.
Long drive through Christmas Day traffic and a sudden thunderstorm, back to the hospital to see mum. She had deteriorated even more over the couple of days since our first visit. She spent most of the time lying with her eyes closed. She was too weak to open her presents - which were totally inappropriate anyway since I had bought them when she was still relatively well. I can't see her reading the books now, and she barely glanced at the digital photo frame that we set up with lots of family pictures.
My brother said he hadn't had time to buy presents - and for once I didn't blame him, he's been doing pretty well looking after mum - and he'd grabbed a few things he already had. He gave us chocolates, which would be ok, but I checked the use-by dates later and threw them all out. Expired in 2009. Not sure how rancid chocolates get in five years, but I didn't want to take the risk.
We went to my grandfather's house for dinner with my side of the family. We got there so late they had given up on us but there was enough food left, if a bit cold, and we got to have dessert with them (desserts I like!) and a chat. Only an hour or so then the cousins with small children were leaving so we did too. We had a different hotel, near Poppa's (grandad). One of the hardest things of the day was everyone talking about mum. Not that I minded talking about her, but it seemed I had to say the same things over and over to each person or group of people as someone else asked how she was. It boiled down to: she's dying. But you can't say it quite like that.
We saw mum again the next morning, she barely knew I was there. The kids have been so angelic all through this. They would visit with grandma a bit then Tim would take them off for a walk around the hospital or to sit somewhere and play with their Nintendo DSs. They never complained or showed distaste for how she looked or got impatient. And Tim drove me back and forth through stressful city traffic every day. I have such a lovely family.
It's Tim's father's birthday on Boxing Day so we always get together for lunch again, it was an even bigger group than Christmas when people have other commitments. A few more presents from people we hadn't seen yet. I don't want to sound mercenary, but it actually healed a bit of hurt I was carrying from last year when I felt a bit forgotten by some of Tim's family. This year I felt showered in presents, and therefore love. It's not about what I got, it's about people showing they care about you. I usually feel very much a part of his family, I fit in better with them than I do with my own family although they are lovely people too, so it was nice to feel included again in the present orgy.
Then we saw The Hobbit, in two shifts so there were babysitters for all the children. This is a big family tradition too, major fantasy movies seem to get released on Boxing Day here and we are all fantasy geeks so we saw all the Lord of the Rings movies together and now the three Hobbit movies. Next year it will be the new Star Wars.
Stayed at my brother-in-law's house then drove home today. So nice to be home, and I am looking forward to my own bed so much. Stress and worry have kept me awake a lot, last night even though that spare bed is horribly uncomfortable I just crashed and actually had a good sleep. But I need lots more. I actually feel a bit less stressed now. I have spent some time with mum, so I no longer have the panic of "what if she dies before I get there?" Of course I am sad and worried, but less frantic.
My plan it to have a few days at home then go back to Sydney by myself to spend more time with mum. I'll be staying at her house which will be horrible, but I'll do my best to clean and I'll just stay out of the stinking kitchen - I'll probably have to eat out every meal. I can't imagine cooking there with all of my brother's stuff everywhere. But the good thing is that the house is only 5 mins from the hospital. Tim has time off work so he can look after the kids at home and I'll only have to worry about mum. I really don't know how long I'll be there or what is going to happen.
I'll try to keep myself healthy but weight loss really isn't my focus at the moment.
I'm back in Canberra for a few days before I return to Sydney (alone) to spend more time with mum.
So I found out Monday afternoon that mum had been in hospital since Friday, and my brother hadn't told me. I debated whether I should drop everything and go, but my brother said she was in no immediate danger and we decided to spend the afternoon scrambling to get ready for Christmas and leave in the morning. I didn't get a lot of sleep after that decision! How much could I trust my brother's assessment? I did try ringing mum's mobile, but apparently she put it on a lunch tray and it got taken away and never returned - probably in the trash somewhere - of course I didn't find that out until later so I kept trying; and I called the hospital but at the time she was off having an MRI. So I spoke to a nurse but not to her.
Anyway, Tuesday morning we each opened one present because they weren't all going to fit in the car - we each opened the biggest one! Then the car was carefully loaded, including bags under feet and on laps. Not the most comfortable for a four hour drive. But we are big on presents in our family, especially on my husband's side. We got to Sydney and picked up mum's house key from my brother then went to the hospital.
I saw her only two weeks before and at that time she was obviously tired and unwell, but still very much herself. On Tuesday she was much worse. She didn't recognise me for a minute when I walked in, she thought I was someone else's visitor looking for a chair. Scary. She only realised it was me when Tim and the kids followed me around the curtain. She was better the rest of the visit, alert enough most of the time to go through some mail with me - we opened Christmas cards and arranged for me to pay a bill for her - but she needed to close her eyes and rest often. She needed assistance to get from bed to chair briefly so they could change her sheets. My brother said she had barely eaten in the weeks before she went into hospital, and she still wasn't. She'd had a drip for a few days but it was making her fluid retention worse and they had taken it out.
She made it clear to the doctors that she no longer wanted the cancer treatment which was making her feel so sick and not doing much good, she just wants palliative care to make her last days easier. All she wants is a private room instead of being in with three others, she is waiting for one to become available. With no hope of improvement, she doesn't see the point of hanging on. I accept this, as it is how I would feel in that situation. It is interesting that my husband's family feels the opposite, they think she needs treatment for depression so she'll have the will to live longer. Yet Tim's mother died very slowly after decades of gradual decline (MS), with a loss of all physical and mental function, and I think that would be much worse than dying relatively quickly.
We left at dinner time and weren't sure if my brother had planned for us to have dinner with him and I couldn't get through on the phone so we went to a restaurant. Then when we got back to the house he had just got back from visiting mum and was starting to prepare food for us. We pretended to eat a little bit (very late for the kids!). We were a bit dubious about eating anything he had arranged. He has OCD and hoards food. Decaying, rotting food. The house stinks and now mum isn't there (he lives with mum) it's only going to get worse. We stayed there the night, in the smell and the dust. Tim's asthma got quite bad overnight.
The next day we visited mum again then went to the other side of Sydney to our hotel. My family and my husband's live about as far apart as possible in the same city. The kids swam in the pool, we set up out little travel Christmas tree, and had dinner with my husband's family.
On Christmas morning we opened all our presents. My main present was an iPad air, my first tablet. Also many other things, like this cute teacup and a retro kettle and toaster. The teacup is sitting on a colouring book I bought myself after I bought my daughter one and then remembered how much I enjoyed it as a child and even a teenager.
We had lunch with my husband's extended family. I enjoyed the socialising part but not the food. They just don't have the same taste in food as I do. Tim's mother was English and their food traditions reflect that. They can have eight desserts on the table with not one I like! Good for me, I suppose. Not that I went hungry. I filled up on chips and chocolates.
Long drive through Christmas Day traffic and a sudden thunderstorm, back to the hospital to see mum. She had deteriorated even more over the couple of days since our first visit. She spent most of the time lying with her eyes closed. She was too weak to open her presents - which were totally inappropriate anyway since I had bought them when she was still relatively well. I can't see her reading the books now, and she barely glanced at the digital photo frame that we set up with lots of family pictures.
My brother said he hadn't had time to buy presents - and for once I didn't blame him, he's been doing pretty well looking after mum - and he'd grabbed a few things he already had. He gave us chocolates, which would be ok, but I checked the use-by dates later and threw them all out. Expired in 2009. Not sure how rancid chocolates get in five years, but I didn't want to take the risk.
We went to my grandfather's house for dinner with my side of the family. We got there so late they had given up on us but there was enough food left, if a bit cold, and we got to have dessert with them (desserts I like!) and a chat. Only an hour or so then the cousins with small children were leaving so we did too. We had a different hotel, near Poppa's (grandad). One of the hardest things of the day was everyone talking about mum. Not that I minded talking about her, but it seemed I had to say the same things over and over to each person or group of people as someone else asked how she was. It boiled down to: she's dying. But you can't say it quite like that.
We saw mum again the next morning, she barely knew I was there. The kids have been so angelic all through this. They would visit with grandma a bit then Tim would take them off for a walk around the hospital or to sit somewhere and play with their Nintendo DSs. They never complained or showed distaste for how she looked or got impatient. And Tim drove me back and forth through stressful city traffic every day. I have such a lovely family.
It's Tim's father's birthday on Boxing Day so we always get together for lunch again, it was an even bigger group than Christmas when people have other commitments. A few more presents from people we hadn't seen yet. I don't want to sound mercenary, but it actually healed a bit of hurt I was carrying from last year when I felt a bit forgotten by some of Tim's family. This year I felt showered in presents, and therefore love. It's not about what I got, it's about people showing they care about you. I usually feel very much a part of his family, I fit in better with them than I do with my own family although they are lovely people too, so it was nice to feel included again in the present orgy.
Then we saw The Hobbit, in two shifts so there were babysitters for all the children. This is a big family tradition too, major fantasy movies seem to get released on Boxing Day here and we are all fantasy geeks so we saw all the Lord of the Rings movies together and now the three Hobbit movies. Next year it will be the new Star Wars.
Stayed at my brother-in-law's house then drove home today. So nice to be home, and I am looking forward to my own bed so much. Stress and worry have kept me awake a lot, last night even though that spare bed is horribly uncomfortable I just crashed and actually had a good sleep. But I need lots more. I actually feel a bit less stressed now. I have spent some time with mum, so I no longer have the panic of "what if she dies before I get there?" Of course I am sad and worried, but less frantic.
My plan it to have a few days at home then go back to Sydney by myself to spend more time with mum. I'll be staying at her house which will be horrible, but I'll do my best to clean and I'll just stay out of the stinking kitchen - I'll probably have to eat out every meal. I can't imagine cooking there with all of my brother's stuff everywhere. But the good thing is that the house is only 5 mins from the hospital. Tim has time off work so he can look after the kids at home and I'll only have to worry about mum. I really don't know how long I'll be there or what is going to happen.
I'll try to keep myself healthy but weight loss really isn't my focus at the moment.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Ready for Christmas
Monday:
Spent today cooking for Christmas and sorting all the clothes I washed after our holiday and packing bags. Heading to Sydney tomorrow for several days of family Christmas. And seeing The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug on Boxing Day.
I think we're ready for Christmas!
Merry Christmas one and all, have a great festive season.
love,
Natalie
Spent today cooking for Christmas and sorting all the clothes I washed after our holiday and packing bags. Heading to Sydney tomorrow for several days of family Christmas. And seeing The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug on Boxing Day.
I think we're ready for Christmas!
Merry Christmas one and all, have a great festive season.
love,
Natalie
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wrapping up Christmas
I got on the scales this morning with a certain amount of apprehension, but I had been right about not putting on weight. Despite holiday fare and no formal exercise, I am back down to 77.8kg, 700 grams less than six days ago. I was on my feet a lot and ate less than usual because I was so busy and tired.
Christmas Night I was again too exhausted to sleep well. The bomb going off every couple of minutes in the lounge room didn't help, and neither did waking early and thinking about what I needed to do for the day. I think I got about five hours, which isn't terrible but was the third night in a row of poor sleep, leaving me with a pretty big sleep debt.
Ten of us went to see The Hobbit, which was great. Tim's family are all fantasy nerds like us and there was some talk of dressing up but in the end it was just Tim's cloak and Matthew's Darth Vader hoodie. We left the children at home with my pregnant sister-in-law who said she would be too uncomfortable sitting so long (it was a three hour movie).
When we got home we had our traditional Boxing Day BBQ (very late, the movie finished at 2.30). I sent Tim out with the meat and quickly threw together the spicy vegetable skewers and fried some fish for those who weren't eating red meat. Since I'd used up my salad ingredients the night before, the skewers were all the vegetable I had and I don't think there was even enough for one each, I certainly didn't have one. We also went through a loaf of bread, I totally forgot about the garlic bread I had in the freezer. I made ice cream sundaes for dessert. A couple of hours later I just put out all the many and various left-overs for a light dinner, and made a simple pasta to go with it. No one was really hungry yet, but we had to feed the kids and get them to bed.
More games and fun, but the night did end on a slightly sour note with an acrimonious conversation about a disputed inheritance issue between a couple of the older members of the family. Tim broke it up after a while and we all went to bed, here or at motels. Tim and I lay awake for a while and talked about the inheritance thing and then about the movie to get our minds off the inheritance dispute. I finally got a good night's sleep.
Yesterday was the final day of visitors and I was so ready for them all to go home! Our houseguests helped us put all of the furniture back in its usual place and do a final clean-up (people had been helping all along, so while I did nearly all the cooking I did no washing up at all, just a bit of fussing around) then they went, and the rest of the family dropped in throughout the day after checking out of their motels. I heard the final pair arrive just as I was lying down for an after-lunch (leftovers) nap and I couldn't drag myself up to go and talk to them. I slept for half an hour before going out to say goodbye. And the Christmas celebration was finally over.
Despite another good night's sleep last night I am still feeling totally wiped out. I think it's going to take me a couple of days to recover. But it was an excellent Christmas, and well worth the work.
photo of boxes by scotproof
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)