The Food Comes in Two by Two

 

14th Aldi - £34.83

This is the post I was going to do on Monday, but I simply did not have the energy and needed to decompress after Sunday ... and then I needed to get it all out of my system yesterday. 

We called to Aldi on the way home from visiting Mum, and I think you can tell that I needed some treats as well as a few necessary bits.  Two bottles of wine, chocolate, two packs of cheese and pasta, two of so many of the items in my trolley.  I think I just get in the habit of picking up twos when I am running out of something, which is no bad thing really.

I did limit myself to one block of chocolate ... but only because I already had some at home.  😁

The receipt for posterity.  

The wine and fish definitely bumped the cost of this shopping up, but I was still happily surprised that this was all I spent, I was expecting it to be more.

When I got home I realised that I had taken the photo of the shopping in the trolley before I had added the eggs to it.  So I laid it all out again for your perusal.

I really could have gotten way with not shopping this week, but sometimes your sanity tells you that it needs some wine and chocolate.  

I did sort of need more pasta though, as I had tipped the last of my smaller sized bags of penne into my large pasta jar on Friday.  It used to come in 500g bags, now it seems to be only available in 1kg size. I seem to have lots of spaghetti in my store cupboard but I was down to no replacements of penne, which is obviously my favourite.

So, that's the rice jar and the pasta jar freshly filled, and the shelf is looking very healthy at the moment.

Sue xx

Not Normal Service

Morning Coffee    by Mary Bradish Titcomb 1858-1927

Mum was rushed into hospital once again, in the early hours of Sunday morning this time with breathing difficulties.  We were literally ten minutes away from visiting her at her care home on Sunday morning, at the more respectable time of 10am, luckily we were still on the motorway when my brother phoned to say that a voicemail message had just come through on his phone, it had been left in the middle of the night but he has his phone off then.  My phone is always on, but for some reason this time they didn't call me. 😕

Anyway a quick re-programme of the Satnav and we were headed for the hospital where after a lot of chasing round departments and wards, as she had only just left the A&E department, we finally found Mum looking very frail and very confused.

We are quite confused too, as there is nothing they can do for her except make her comfortable and give her oxygen, something they could very easily have done at her care home, especially since she has instructions on her paperwork not to send her to hospital except in a real health emergency.  Which happened a few weeks ago when she had yet another bowel blockage.  They are a nursing and hospice type care home as well as residential, so they have a lot of very qualified staff.  

We were most concerned that the hospital seemed to know nothing about her.  Luckily we arrived just as the cutlery was being delivered to the beds ready for lunch, she was about to be given a 'normal meal', something she cannot eat now as she is on a NHS Level Five diet.  They also didn't realise that she is completely bedbound, doubly incontinent and has dementia, so is unreliable to ask any medical questions of, hence them being told by her that yes she can have any sort of food.

I had a good chat with her nurse and then we had to come away as you can't visit during lunch time.  You wouldn't think that this was that stressful really, well I wouldn't have years ago, but when it's been going on in one form or another for over two and half years on a very regular basis it's starting to have a real build up effect.

I sent an email to the care home when I got home, not complaining as such but asking why I wasn't phoned this time, and also suggesting they had some sort of Patient Passport type document, just a photocopy from their file, that could travel to hospital with residents when necessary to give the nursing staff at least a head start.  It would save a lot of stress.  It turns out they have this in place already, although the system keeps letting them down and the document goes missing somewhere between the paramedics and the A&E staff and then never makes it to the ward.  They are now going to be raising this matter urgently.

I needed to get all this down in writing so that I have it for future reference, and my blog seemed as good a place as any. 

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.  😄

Sue xx

'There's a Woman in My Mirror ...'

 

Art by Lisa Asiata

There’s a woman in my mirror

And she looks a lot like me,

Though there’s lines around her eyes,

And her hair is wild and free.

She is plumper than myself,

And she is definitely grey.

Did I miss the day this happened

Has she always been this way?

And this woman in the mirror

Has an air of something calm,

Like a tide that’s going out,

And a beach that’s soft and warm.

She has seen the world in colour,

She has learned to know the truth.

There’s a wisdom in her wrinkles,

There’s a knowledge brought from youth.

And she seems to move more freely,

As though released from earthly binds.

Is she made of something lighter?

Perhaps the weight she left behind.

Like the press of expectation,

And the need to yield and bend.

I like this woman in the mirror,

She’s fast becoming my best friend.

Donna Ashworth

From ‘to the women’:

https://amzn.eu/d/0j4xR15k

Tomato Ketchup Jackpot ... and Books

 

Alan hit the tomato ketchup jackpot today when we went to Booths for breakfast.

The guys that are rendering the outside of our bungalow couldn't come and do anymore today due to the heavy rain that we currently have.  So Alan said he fancied a later more leisurely start to the day, and a bacon butty and a coffee in Booths while we had a catch up on all things renovation related, before he headed to the bungalow to continue stripping the wallpaper off the ceilings.

He ordered his usual bacon bun and was given two tomato ketchup sachets without asking, and as I have him so well trained he just accepted them without question.

They were added to my little stash as soon as I got home.  I haven't had to buy ketchup for a long time now.    

Yes, they are all lined up in date order ... I am that organised. 😁

On the way out of Booths we have to pass the charity book table, and after weeks and weeks of me being very good and not buying anything, suddenly there were four books that looked well worth a read.  So they came home with me too.  It was only when I got home that I remembered I was being so good so that we would have less books to move house with.

Oh well, at least I have my reading mojo back at the moment, so I will continue to donate all the books that I read that are deemed not really worth keeping.

The book I am currently reading, which also came from the book table a while ago.

What are you reading at the moment?

Sue xx

This Weeks Shopping ... and Right Door, Wrong Furniture

 

6th - Aldi  £11.42

This weeks shopping was from Aldi at the weekend, again I was just buying the things that I either really needed or really wanted.  I'm just keeping it simple while I slowly eat my way through the things in the freezer, buying just the few  fresh things that I need to compliment what I already have.

The receipt for posterity.  

I wonder if one day I will look back on this and marvel at how cheap everything was.  😄

6th - Booths £6.65

While we were in Booths having some breakfast I bought a couple of things that I needed.  I bought two cartons of milk as it was on special offer again. One carton lasts me about ten days as I only have it on my Weetabix.

9th Booths - £6.65

That confused me briefly looking at the photos, as the total for these two small shops was exactly the same.

I called into Booths yesterday as Alan asked me to get him some bread, and also a sandwich and drink for his lunch while he was at the bungalow.  He takes a flask of coffee and a banana every day, but as he was staying longer he wanted something else.  

The new front door had been installed the day before so this was the first time I was seeing it.

Sadly although it is the right front door, it has all the wrong door furniture on it.  It was supposed to be in black so that it ties in with the anthracite grey window frames a bit better.  It looked relatively okay on the photos Alan had shown me the day before, but in person the chrome was a bit insipid.

The French doors in the main room look fantastic though.

The room is now flooded with light, which is exactly what you what you need when it's the main living area in such a small property.  These door handles are right as they need to match the chrome and steel elements of the kitchen.

The main jobs of this week are having the outside of the bungalow rendered in brilliant white, and Alan is indoors stripping off remnants of wallpaper from the walls and the ceilings, ready for the plasterers to come in later this month.

Sue xx