Gooooood mornin' all!

I've woken up after less than 3 hours and 20 minutes of sleep and I'm feeling better mentally and physically than I usually do with around 8 hours sleep.  The only differences were that I usually take my AP at around 6pm and struggle to get out of bed, but I didn't take them last night and went to bed after midnight and almost sprang out of bed before 3.50am!

I've taken my blood pressure and it was a normal-for-me (aka low) reading too.

My early morning friend, the Eurasian Blackbird sang to me while I was taking my pills and a European Herring Gull joined in for a little bit too - thank you Green Man!

I also know that my neighbours head to bed at about 10.30pm 'cos that's when their music stopped last night, so lets see what time they wake up this morning.

I'm gonna write to the pharmacist at my GP surgery to see if there's a different AP I can try with less sleepy/drowsy/cotton-headed side effects.  I've been taking this one for over 20 years so maybe my body just needs a bit of a change of recipe?

The daily virus scan was clear again, so it's time to get today's to-do list up and ready for the day.

BBS

Mornin' all

Well, I'm absolutely knackered but ready for the potential bedlam today.  

I've taken my blood pressure which was pretty normal for me, popped my morning pills, sorted out my new clothes and found some new ankle socks that I've already bought, so I can bin the ones I'm currently wearing and I've got both phones ready for the medical appointment, so I'm good to go this morning.  The virus scan was reassuringly clear again, so that's good news.

I used a birdsong ID app to identify the bird that sings me awake every morning with a beautiful song and it's the Eurasian Blackbird apparently.  S/he's got a loud and beautiful voice 'cos the app clearly picked it up with me sat on the sofa instead of by an open door or window, so it must be pretty close by!  Thank you Green Man!

I've gotta remember that I've got a delivery due at some point today too... I hope that doesn't come while I'm on the phone to the doc this morning lol

Steve's just sent me a sign too, so hopefully that means that he'll be with me all day.

This blog post is getting a bit too long, so I'm gonna shut up and put today's to-do list together now.

BBS

Nite nite orl

It's been a loooong week, but it's over and done with now and I know that I can definitely do the charity things with my hair now, so I've just gotta get the fundraising information from both charities and a strong, recyclable envelope to send my hair off in then I can relax.  Sorry birds, no more of my hair for a while!

I've popped my last two pills of the day so I'm gonna crawl on up to beddy-byes now.

Nite nite orl

That's another...

...small soul saved and thrown outside!

There was a kinda teenage sized slug slithering along the top of the kitchen sink so I opened the kitchen window, gently picked it up and threw it outside.  I hope the slug had a trustworthy parachute just like the spider.  That's two souls saved all by myself... I can do this helping wildlife just before bedtime thing!

That's the plants...

...watered - Steve woke up needing a poo (which usually takes him about half an hour) so I grabbed the opportunity with both hands to make the most of the time that I'm allowed to do things for me as opposed to him.

I'm gonna go and make myself another drinking choccie while he's in there 'cos I'm predicting that he's left the majority of the one I made him this morning and it's higher calorie than tea and coffee so I wanna get all the calories possible into me today which means having drinking chocolates instead of tea and coffee.

The bird's water bowl is completely empty of water and there's no way that I can battle through the weeds overhanging from one of our neighbours to refill that or the feeders - it's bad enough battling to water the pots!

Time to download, resize and upload my breakfast photo now I reckon.

Mornin' all

I didn't get an early night after all last night 'cos my carer fell asleep after I got him his bottle of pop and glass of ice then he fell asleep then wanted his tea, so I put in a 12 hour 43 minute day and I've been working overtime since about 8.30pm last night.

I've run the daily virus scan, which was still clear, taken my morning pills done the forum admin and cared for my carer for 1 hour and 4 minutes so far this morning.

The seagulls are squarking their heads off and my hayfever is through the roof again, but I managed to keep my calorie count significantly under what I burnt yesterday and it'll be the same today 'cos of Steve's medical appointment, so it should be pretty easy to have lost the half a kilo of weight I need to when I weigh myself on Monday.

I'm definitely gonna have breakfast this morning after my carer wakes up and has his breakfast in front of him and I've done the watering 'cos I'm sooo hungry and lunch will only be 90 calories 'cos of it being instant soup, so I need as many calories as possible this morning so that my body can function safely.

I've just remembered that I need to charge my FitBit up, so that's getting more juice into it while Steve's in the land of nod.  Hopefully it'll be pretty much fully charged by the time he wakes up and decides that he wants his breakfast.

 

My OCD is happy with the number of steps I did yesterday - 8,880 - nice round number, which is always good. 

My loooong review for my smoothie machine was voted helpful on Amazon overnight so hopefully that's another person buying it and increasing their fruit intake which can only be a good thing!

This blog post is getting waaay too long, so I'm gonna publish it now and start having a read of my emails while Steve's deeply asleep and chasing rabbits 😁

Plants and seedlings are now...

...hydrated until about 6pm tonight.

I saw my first bee on the 38 Degrees flowers!!  S/he was just a little tiny thing, no bigger than a bluebottle, but hopefull s/he will tell his/her friends that there is some juicy nectar available now!

 

Some kind of bird has been visiting the bowl of water too, 'cos there's a huuuge poo down the inside of the bowl... ewww!  lol

Just...

...watered the plants and seedlings for the second/last time today and the buds on the 38 Degrees plant are growing and growing and growing!  I'm hopeful that I (and therefore the readers of this blog) will start to see the merest hint at flowers by the weekend... maybe not full bloom, but hopefully a strong start then I've just gotta wait for our buzzy friends to find them and make use of them!

OMGosh! OMGosh! OMGosh!

Just been out to do the watering and cleaning out and refilling of the wild birds' water bowl and had a better look at the potential flower bud... I reckon there's a good chance that I'll be getting a white flower, maybe with a purple stem soon... hopefully within the next week or so!!  It may be the only flower that I get this year, but one is better than none and will provide a bit of nectar for a few bees at least!

D'oheth

I forgot to publish the previous blog post before I did the watering, bowl cleaning out and my exercises and that was 2 hours ago now 😆.  It's done now and I don't need to move off the sofa except to go for wee's, making my carer's drinks, snacks and tea when he gets home, then I can crawl into bed but I very much doubt I'll be allowed an early night 'cos my carer will find something else for me to do before then and it'll be at least 8pm before I'm allowed to go to bed.

He's just said that he wants me to "follow me out to the door and close it behind me, yeah?"

And he's now going on about how hot the weather is, but has decided against wearing shorts, so him overheating, "sweating buckets" and wanting another bottle of pop as soon as he walks in then wanting "a hot drink later on, when I've cooled down" will be my fault too.

 

He's eaten two meals, a quarter of a cake and I don't know how many biscuits so far today but he'll want his ice cream (at least half a litre of it) when he gets home "so that I can cool down quickly" which is more than I've eaten in the last 30 hours combined.  

 

All I've had since breakfast yesterday is: 

• 2 vegan malted drinks
• a packet of crisps
• a salad
• a Graze punnet and 
• two yoghurts, 

which brings the combined total of calories for the last two days up to 1,825 calories which is just over a healthy calorie intake for one day instead of two and my carer would have exceeded that with just his tea last night 'cos he had:

• two starters
• two foot-long subs
• and I think he had a pud too 
• a fizzy drink 

and he'll be having sandwiches (at least four slices of bread and 10 slices of ham and/or cheese along with sandwich pickle or mustard) and a medium pork pie for his tea.  He'll be hungry again and want his breakfast within minutes of me coming downstairs tomorrow morning too.

 

He's gone to his medical appointment now, so I can finally breath and relax for a couple of hours.  He'll be just under an hour early which will be the start of his rant as well as having to wait past his appointment time then he'll find a reason to complain about his appointment, then there will be something to do with the parking, then he'll be complaining about the rush hour traffic and how much pain he's in then he'll want a bottle of pop and fall asleep.

 

Apparently I "doesn't do anything to support me let alone care for me" though and he "do[es] everything for her from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to bed" which is total bollox as the caring spreadsheets we've both been keeping shows.  The most he cared for me was last week which was 270 minutes and the combined total for the last two weeks has only been 440 minutes, according to his own spreadsheet, which is less than I've cared for him today alone.

 

I'm simmering down quite quickly now, thankfully, so I'm gonna go and make myself a drinking chocolate so that I can rapidly increase my calorie count before my so-called carer comes home.  I've gotta do the washing up and make myself another bottle of squash too, so I'd best go and do that while my carer is out of the house otherwise he'll be complaining about having to spend 3 minutes making it for me at 2am again, just like he has done each time he's made it for the last 2 years.

BFN

No wonder I'm cream-crackered!

Since I put the photos up, I've:

• watered the seedlings/plants
  
• taken my lunchtime pill
• done my laps
  
• made a hot drink for Steve
• cleaned out and refilled the wild birds' water bowl
• cared for my carer for over 3 hours, which takes the weekly total up to almost 65 hours.  

It's looking like it'll be a 75-78 hour week for me this week 'cos of my medical appointment on Thursday morning and Steve's appointment in the afternoon, meaning that I didn't make it to double figures of care that day.  That's a rare occurance though - I usually sail over the 80 hour week pretty easily.

The only time I'm gonna leave the sofa this afternoon though, is to go for a wee.

We're having a treat for lunch tomorrow - there's an awesome and totally independent, family-run cafe that does awesome roast dinners on a Sunday and I think we deserve a treat this week 'cos the vast majority of our meals have been home-cooked this week so Steve's booked us in and paid for it so we'll both be having the lunch preparation off for that one day this week.  I know we went to Cafe Nero on Thursday but that was gonna be an instant soup day and I deserved a treat after getting through my medical appointment, so that doesn't count lol

I'm expecting a delivery tomorrow too and I'm predicting that that'll turn up at the same time as our roast lol

I've just put my watch on to charge up, so I'm gonna go for a wee and get myself another glass of water, then charge up my FitBit so that it records my sleep tonight.

Wild birds' water bowl is...

...squeaky clean and refilled with fresh water now.  I took the opportunity of my carer being awake and in the bathroom to get it sorted out, so that I could just call for his help if my legs gave way underneath me 'cos there's no way I would have been able to get back to my feet again.  Our bathroom is right next to the back door so he would have been able to hear me while he was in there, instead of having to bellow at the top of my voice, disturbing our neighbours and risking him being asleep.

It's done and dusted until it rains again (that's what makes it so green and in need of a clean) or the birds/sun mean that it needs to be refilled.

That's the...

...seedlings watered for the second time today.  I've moved ⅔ of the pots to a much sunnier position to see if that helps them to grow even more.  Gotta stumble to three areas to water 5 pots now though lol  It'll hopefully encourage me to keep trying though and it really is just going up and down the slope and lifting my right leg out of the door that I have the biggest problem with, but I managed it last year and even felt semi-confident after a few weeks, but it's been about 8 months between when I harvested the last of the tomatoes last year and when I started going out regularly to plant then water the pots this year, so I've just gotta rebuild that confidence back up now.  It'll take a few weeks, but assuming I go out to water them and fill up the birds' water bowl and feeders, I'm hoping that I'll quickly regain the confidence again... I've just gotta keep practising is all.

Mornin' all

How are you all doing this morning?

So far today I've:

• run the virus scan (still clear)
• taken my morning pills
  
• had my breakfast (granola)
• weighed myself (50g away from where I wanna be now, thankfully)
• taken the "vegemince" out of the big freezer and put it into the small one
  
• watered the seedlings (yesterday's second watering definitely helped)
• cared for my carer for 57 minutes

The Amazon bees seeds are definitely happy 'cos there was noticable growth in about 4 hours (between the two waterings) yesterday and it's even better this morning!  If the temperature gets up to around the 19-20 degrees, I'll water them all twice a day so that they don't dry out in the heat, but I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for not killing them yet lol

I'd best go and resize my breakfast photo ready to put up for you all now.

Toodle-pip for now.

Blimey...

...it's hot/gorgeous weather out there!

I've just been to water all the seedlings again 'cos of the temperature and there's a few extra shoots in the Amazon bees pot since I watered them this morning.

Steve reckons that as it gets warmer and sunnier more reliably they will all start shooting up and we'll start getting some buzzy and fluttery visitors to the seedlings and well as chirpy visitors to the bowl of water and seeds again... I certainly hope we do!  I'd love to get just one photo (although ideally more) of our buzzing, fluttering, chirping friends, but doubt I'll be quick enough.  That's OK though, as long as I see them enjoying my handiwork I'll be happy with that.

I'd love to put a nesting box up next year, but doubt it'll happen in reality, considering we haven't even got a bird table or birdbath up in our back yard yet lol

Mornin' all

How are you all doing this morning?

The Green Man has saved me from watering the seedlings this morning 'cos it's raining atm but when it stops, I'll go out and sort out the birds' water bowl 'cos that's bright green instead of white again which only seems to happen when it rains for some reason, but that's OK, I don't mind doing it... it's why it's out there after all.  I'm glad the bowl is white too 'cos I can instantly see at a glance when it needs to be cleaned out.

I've remembered not to open my emails this morning 'cos of the weekly virus scan that is already 38% of the way through after almost an hour.

I've taken my morning pills and made us a drinking chocolate to start the day off with, so I'll go and make our breakfast and weigh myself when I've finished mine, assuming Steve stays awake for long enough to finish his too this morning.

I'm having to reinstall my chosen anti-virus on my phone so that it doesn't wipe it 'cos I've used the wrong PIN too many times <gulp>

Wish me luck!

Gotta remember to keep reading and reviewing a book too today... I'm just under half way through it, which is pretty good going I reckon.

Mornin' all

How are you all doing this morning?

Me?  

 

I'm already wiped out and have cared for my carer for almost an hour already this morning.

I finished reading a magasine last night and remembered to bring it down with me to take out to be recycled and I could pretty instantly tell that today is gonna be a very warm day.  When I said that, he looked at his "weather blob" and said that it's gonna be 16℃ so he's gonna be a grumpy sod with the fan blowing all day while I get cold, but as long as my carer isn't hot, that's all that matters, right?

I'm also predicting that it's gonna be a veeery hot Summer so I'll water the flowers twice a day to try and keep them alive.

I've just set the virus scan running and I'm charging up my phone and FitBit while I take my pills and keep caring for my carer.  When he wakes up I'll go and make his breakfast for him and I'm predicting that he'll fall asleep at least once with the bowl in his hands.

Aksherly, I'd best go and water the seeds before it gets too hot otherwise it won't reach very far down 'cos it'll be soaked up by the heat.  I need to clean and refill the birds' water bowl too, so I'll pop my pills then go and do that before anything else I reckon.

Gonna publish this now before I forget.

BBL

Mornin' all

So far this morning I've:

• started the virus scan
• taken my morning pills
• ordered myself some more batteries for the scales 'cos I think they are on their last legs and not giving me an accurate weight reading after losing the best part of 2kg in 3 days, despite eating a *very* high calorie lunch on Tuesday
• added some last minute gardening things to the order that'll help me to keep track of what's growing and seeds to help the bees and butterflies to survive potential extinction
• started charging up my FitBit and
• cared for my carer for nearly 2 hours this morning

My to-do list for today is pretty simple:- I'll go and weigh myself after I've posted this then finish charging up my FitBit while I wait for someone from Freegle to come and collect her things.

 

On the menu for today is a mug of instant soup again, 'cos of the monthly virus scan, but I'm predicting that today will be my second (and hopefully last) calorie-free day of the week 'cos I can't see my carer making lunch for either of us again even though he tells everyone who asks, that he makes all my meals and drinks for me.  So far this week he's made 2 meals and no drinks, as I predicted at the weekend <shrug>

Steve's got a medical appointment again just before his surgery closes and I'm predicting that he'll cancel the appointment and not go yet again.

Right, time to publish this, reattach my FitBit to my ankle and go and weigh myself I reckon.

TTFN

Does anyone have...

...an idea/rocket I can shove up my carer's bum to motivate him to do two things please?

The first is to pay his mum back for our hair cuts now that he's got access to his online banking again.

The second is to ask his brother and/or sister if they wouldn't mind coming over to get rid of all the dead weeds in the back yard so that I can get the bag of compost that Steve's found on Amazon and plant the wild flowers to help to feed all the bees that are rapidly dieing out and even approaching the verge of extinction.  I can't do much, but I *can* do that for them.  

The seeds are due to arrive next week so I wanna get it all sorted before then.

I'm giving Steve until tomorrow morning to contact his family about both those things that he's promised to do or I'll do it myself.  Again.

That's the...

...carer fed and wild birds sorted.  I'm wondering if they are using the water to wash in as well as drink from, 'cos I always overfill the bowl of water after I've cleaned it out and the water level was at least a centimetre down from where I left it last time (and every time) and it'd explain why the water turns green so quickly when it hasn't been hot or raining.  Totally OK with me either way, I just wanna do my little bit to help the local wildlife is all!

Time to go and make my own breakfast now.

BBL.