Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 July 2004 22:58:15
Well, where have the last few evenings gone? I really must learn self-discipline - I am spending far far too much time in the Church of Fools. Addicted? Me? Never!
Had a trying day the other day. Because my appointment with the nurse to check on my foot was postponed, I forgot I needed a repeat prescription of my allergy tablets. I have a strange skin condition called dermographia. Try googling THAT and see what you get! It means you can draw on my skin. When I haven't taken the tablets, every touch leaves a raised, itchy, red wheal... and of course, scratching only makes it a million times worse. How can I describe the sensation? Well, it's like when you get into a hot bath and discover that you've got sunburn. Know that feeling? Mingled with the undoubted results of falling naked into a bed of nettles, but I've never tried that one so I can't really compare. So here I was again, two days without my tablets, and itching everywhere, even my eyes and inside my mouth. (It's OK, you can laugh. I do! - and my favourite trick is to play peanuts with someone and then show them what they have done to my hands! )
But the side effect that I'd forgotten of my allergy tablets, is that they stop me succumbing badly to hayfever. It's been so long since I'd had hayfever that I'd forgotten... until Day Two without the tablets when I began sneezing and coughing and spluttering non-stop. My friend M was sooooooo sympathetic. I was in a sequence of struggling to prevent myself scratching, wriggling to resist the urge to touch my skin, suddenly sneezing, blowing my nose and making my nose turn red and itchy, struggling to stop myself scratching it.... and so on. M just couldn't stop laughing. She renamed my malady "Scratch and Sniff" !!!
The foot, apparently, was slightly damaged but is now slowly beginning to get better. The nurse told me to keep an eye on it. How on earth can I keep an eye on it when I can't even see it? I came home and told Tiddles the nurse had said I had to sit with my feet up and let him wait on me hand and foot. It worked ;)
We're really disappointed at the moment. My nephew in the Cayman Islands contacted me to say that he and his fiancee have set the date. We were determined to go, all of us. Granted it would cost a fortune, but it was a chance in a lifetime, and also he and I have always been very close and I so want to be there to celebrate with him. He's such a lovely guy, he deserves happiness, and I think his fiancee will make him happy, and he her. But they're getting married in December. It seems that everyone travels to the Caribbean for Christmas. We just cannot get a flight... well, not without taking nearly a fortnight off work without pay. I suggested it might be easier for him to relocate the wedding to the Isle of Wight and bring all the Caribbean family and friends over here for Christmas.
My sister is here this weekend. It's given me a break from caring for Dad and, I don't mean this nastily, but kept her in touch with how anxious and unreasonable he's getting about everything. I had a frustrating day with him on Friday. He's getting very worked up about the new way of collecting his pension from the post office, using a swipe card instead of a book. He was working himself into quite a state, telling me it might seem straightforward to me, but I didn't understand how inconvenient it will be for him. I asked in what way it was inconvenient. "Well, I want cash in my hand, money I can spend. You can't think I can manage with no money". I explained that he would still be getting cash, just using a card instead of a book to claim it. "But it's not going to be very convenient to go up to the post office to get it". I patiently pointed out that he has to go to the post office to collect his pension now. "Oh be quiet about it now, there's a good girl. I knew you wouldn't understand what it's like. It's just not convenient". How do you reasssure him when he's so anxious about everything? He must be so frightened by it all.
I have to remember to complain to the opticians. They've really really messed up his glasses order. First they didn't get the glasses in for ages. Then the tinted ones weren't here. They came four weeks later - the wrong colour! We went in to collect them again, only to find that the order hadn't been sent in. Meanwhile, Dad was really not happy with his reading glasses and went into a panic about the sudden deterioration of his eyes. He rang the optician and they told him to go in for another eye test. We got there and the optician said "No wonder you can't see through them, they're not your glasses". We reordered the correct reading glasses, and a slightly readjusted prescription for the clear distance glasses, and the tinted ones STILL had not arrived. So, yesterday we go in to collect them. The tinted ones are perfect. The distance ones are perfect. The reading glasses.... are distance glasses. They've ordered the wrong ones AGAIN! They were very apologetic, but Dad's been without reading and tinted glasses for months now and is missing the best of the summer. Also, if his eyesight really is deteriorating so fast, it's criminal for him to be robbed of some of his time with vision.
My economy drive has hit a snag. I keep spotting real bargains and thinking "We do need that, so it'd be stupid not to buy it while it's so cheap".