Festive Fasting

31st October 2012 Haloween

Today we measure our meals in calories - I look up the value of eggs and tomatoes and fresh haddock and my husband writes it down. He can have 600 and I can have 500. He wants to know how many in jam and mayonnaise. I want to know how many in avocado and olive oil. In the end our fasting day feels quite festive. Apart from a dip this afternoon when I did have a tiny lick of chocolate brownie mixture ( must make a note not to bake on a fasting day) I don’t feel hungry. 

We start with a poached egg on Ryvita crispbread - it’s dry without the butter. Lunch is a quarter of an avocado, a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds - lettuce tomato celery and cucumber  with a dribble of balsamic vinegar. I miss the olive oil in the dressing. Supper is a small piece of smoked haddock,  steamed curly kale and red pepper - saved from being dull by a mega minimal calorie dressing of  chopped parlsely, lemon juice, capers, crushed garlic and roasted cumin. And a cup of tea.

Notice I miss the fat and the oil and the nuts and tahini rather than sugar and fruit and chocolate but knowing I can have them tomorrow makes it easy. .... and I think I’m not as tired as I usually am at this time of night.

Had inspiration in the night about the pussy cat getting wet while he drinks from the tap - put a towel in the bath, the edge tucked into a bin liner where the water drips...It works - he even curled up on the towel and fell asleep and his paws stayed dry. He’s still not using the litter tray properly though - lots of pee on the floor ......

It Could Be Worse

30th October 2012 

A quietly drunk young woman in long dirty clothes walks into the cafe in Totnes  where I’m having lunch - undercooked, underseasoned vegetable curry - with a dear friend.The cafe is crowded - we have an empty seat at our table. She wanders up to us but doesn’t sit down.  All through our meal I’m aware of her at a table near the counter. She orders food, takes off her coat, she’s wearing two negligees, she eats a little and orders more food, she pays for it, she keeps getting up and looking at the cutlery, she staggers a bit, she comes to our table and looks at me, doesn’t say anything. I look away. I could smile at her but I don’t.

This afternoon I make gingerbread. I hole up in the kitchen with the pussy cat. I’m struggling to look after him now.  Because he will pee anywhere in the house we keep him restricted to the kitchen and utility room which have become his domain with his food and bed and litter tray all within staggering distance. He walks very slowly, wobbly, arthritic.  He can go out in the garden but he doesn’t seem to want to. 

What he does want to do is to drink out of the running bath tap. This involves a long slow climb for him up the stairs, I lift him into the bath where he sits, sometime licking at the dripping water but mostly just sitting in it - his fur getting wetter and wetter. You either have to stay with him or close the door so that he doesn’t go and pee on a carpet somewhere - which he did today in the pink room. If you lift him out too soon, sodden feet and bottom, he sits at the kitchen door and squeaks to go back up.

Then all his bedding gets damp so you have to put the heating on to dry it off on the radiators. If I don’t let him drink from the tap I’m afraid he’ll get dehydrated. And every so often you have to sweep up the grey re-cycled cat litter pellets which he trails across the floor, and scoop the poo out, and clean the tray because he always miss fires and it ends up half inside and half outside....and you have to spray away the smell or burn joss sticks to mask it....

And all I want to do is to read gingerbread recipes in peace.

Tonight I set up a convector heater by his bed and leave it on low  - I’m afraid he’ll get cold and his feet and legs never get completely dry.....

I know it could be a thousand times worse though - imagine if he was a sick and disabled child or parent or husband.....

Wading Through Treacle

29th October 2012 Monday

Hard to write tonight  - because although the clock says it’s 10 my body knows it’s 11 and I’ve been running out of steam since 4  - wading through the afternoon like a zombie in treacle.... I think my SAD winter self has crept up on me .....my energy slowly draining away with the fading of the light.... 

Lovely to feel the stretch in my tight calf muscles in our yoga class this morning.....even better when we lie back on our mats at the end and it’s all over....at least I don't start snoring like I did last time.....

 In my coaching session feel sad for the loss of my fiesty younger self who used to play with the boys next door, always outside in the hot garden, who played netball and swam in galas, who wanted to win....think something happened to her when my brother was sent away to school in England.....can’t remember the last time I felt fiesty.....

My husband comes back from the allotment with a monster of a parsnip and I add it - or some of it - to a golden rooty vegetable stew I’m making with carrots, jerusalem artichokes and a white skinned squash spiked up with ginger and garlic....

I can hardly keep my eyes open for Nigella doing her Italian thing on telly including a not at all Italian recipe for chocolate pasta in a butterscotch sauce with toasted pecans, which I do perk up for....

And as I write this ordinariness of my day I try and imagine what it must be like to be in New York  tonight withe Hurricane Sandy hurtling through the streets.....

Only Me In The Way

28th October 2012

Tired and happy.....tired because my body clock is all over the place with the loss/gain of an hour in a different place......happy because I spent the day in the company of dear friends celebrating my birthday again with a table of glorious homemade food, wine and sweet gifts, loving words in cards, a beautiful lemon candle- lit cake, silly games, talking and laughing. Being cherished.

So, much later when it’s nearly dark and we open the front door and the smell of pussy cat poo assaults us like a bad wind, I won’t let it spoil my day......feel I can cope with anything when I remember how much goodness I have in my life - always there in easy reach with only me in the way thinking I have to do something to deserve it..... 

Scrubbing The Bedstead

27th October 2012 Saturday

Our old pine bedstead looks very grubby against the newly painted sea and sky walls of our bedroom. I start scrubbing it with lemon scented cream cleaner and a green scratchie. I hope I’ve done this before otherwise I’m removing 26 years worth of stuck on dirt. I keep remembering my father and the morning I spent with him years ago cleaning the coiled iron springs in the base of their bed. I was in awe of his patience and thoroughness. I was ready to give up within 5 minutes - so much dust, so hard to get at...

The sun filters in through the bamboo blinds, my back hurts, I abandon my scrubbing and curl up on the carpet in slatted sunlight and cry for my parents  - for the people they were and for the person I’m not - for feeling small and for wanting to give up - for wanting them to still be here - to tell me what to do...

Then I hear my mother’s voice saying, 

Oh jigger this....

and  I haul myself up and scour the top of my bedside cabinet imagining the cup of hot chocolate I’m going to reward myself with afterwards......because I think that’s what my father would do.

Cold And Calories

26th October 2012 Friday

My neighbour rings the front door bell. She is returning a glass vase which I’d forgotten I’d lent her. I stand on the doorstep and she stands outside, the lavender bush floating its scent between us. It’s nearly dark, if you squeezed the air it would drip a stream of rain drops. We talk on and on and I don’t know why I don’t ask her in. When she goes I have to  boil a kettle and fill a hot water bottle to warm my blue and white hands.

This new cold is like an alarming visitor - you know it’s coming but are never quite ready for it. We had the bedroom decorated when we were in France - all those years of gold and yellow transformed into pale Fern Frosts - but still no curtains so it’s like sleeping in a echoey draughty fridge. I notice how I close down and somehow feel smaller when I’m trying to keep warm as if I’m giving the temperature some power over me - like fighting the air with a sword. Like being a victim.

In Sainsbury’s today I start looking at the food labels for calorie values. Next week we are planning a regime of includng two days of very low calorie eating -  500 for me and 600 for my husband and eating normally the rest of the time - fasting and feasting. We have been inspired by some of our friends who have had amazing results. 

Tonight as I throw away the 200g packet of salted cashews my husband has been snacking on I ask him to guess how many calories they have. A quarter of the packet is 300 calories - half his allowance for a whole day. He says he's getting the message.

I can see how much fun I’m going to have making courgettes and cucumbers and tomatoes taste delicious without their sprinkling of salted cashew nuts or drizzles of olive oil, although it’s hard to believe a clove of garlic is 60 calories. Which is probably why I gave up this kind of counting years ago.....

The Judge and the Doctor

25th October 2012 Thursday

The Judge - neat white hair -  and the Doctor - kind lined face -   sit behind a big desk raised on a dias. We four sit in a row of chairs in front of them - more desks and a lake of space between us. The clerk sits with his computer to our left. The room is fed with light from generous windows. My husband asks for the air conditioning - cold, noisy -  above his head to be turned off. The atmosphere is sober, not smiley. I thought I would but I don’t feel intimidated because my husband and I are flanked by our two dear friends -  strong as angel wings beside us.

The judge asks my husband questions like,

If the phone rings would you answer it?

Yes, but I may not know who is speaking, or understand what they say.

If your wife was out and the plumber was coming would you be able to....

What’s a plumber?

The judge asks me,

Would your husband be able tell someone that the house was on fire.

Yes but he wouldn’t be able to say, “Get the fire extinguisher”.

When the judge says he can’t understand how my husband can still drive which is a complex and  potentially dangerous activity our friend who is representing us and has already made wonderful interventions and should be a lawyer, steps in and explains about how semantic dementia doesn’t affect motor ability. The Doctor on the dias nods his head - he has already told the judge that it is a rare condition - I'm sure he's on our side.

In the end - less than an hour - but it feels like much more - we win. Which means the appeal is allowed and my husband is entitled to Employment and Support Allowance and should have been put in the Support group in the first place which means he could continue to get a higher level of benefit.  Even the Judge smiles when he has to translate the result for my husband who looks confused. 

We celebrate with coffe and pannini and luscious cakes at Carluccios.

Later at home we read the decision letter and in the notes at the end it says that the Tribunal has no powers to enforce its decisions and that the DWP can suspend payment of any benefit awarded to you if they appeal againt the Tribunal’s decision.

Well there you go....

Home Again and a Great Aunty

24th October 2012 

This morning, while my husband is on  a train to London I plant up nine pots of birthday daffodils and tulips. A sweet Robin redbreast flits around the wheelbarrow, hoping to snaffle an earth worm - keeping me company in the moist autum air of the garden.

Another birthday treat  - lunch in a cosy cafe on the Quay with two dear friends who shower me with gifts and a warm apple frangipan tart and vanilla ice cream - the best I can remember...

The pussy cat pees on the welcome door mat in the hall when I come home after drinking from the running tap in the bath.....I have a feeling he may be getting worse....

My husband’s Tribunal tomorrow - woke feeling scared about it this morning but now I’m too tired to worry about it...and I’m so grateful to the dear friends who will be there to support us... 

And I’m happy to be home from France....picking up the threads of my life again....

One last blog from France - the day I became a great aunty again - exactly a week ago.

17th October 2012   Wednesday

She has arrived at last - in a far away country - in the Lebannon -  my new great niece -  like a perfect complete walnut  - whole and fresh, tender and sweet  - with  a beautiful Italian name....

My husband and I are walking in the narrow lanes up to an escarpment overlooking the little medieval village where we are staying in sight of the Dordogne, when I hear my mobile  ringing in my rucksack.....I know before I open it that it’s from my big sister -  texting the news that she is a grandma and mother and baby are well and safe....

I cry with happiness and we take the wrong turning in the road as we aren’t concentrating at all on the signs and have to turn back. I  don’t really take in the scenery or the views very much as I’m far away in Beirut imagining my niece and her husband and their baby girl and their lives changed forever.....

When we arrive back with aching feet, another text  pings in - this time from the cattery - our pussy cat is bad - his breathing worse ...... I ring my sister -  she will take him to the vet tomorrow......I want to go home now.....tired of this holiday bubble we are drawing round us....

Tonight my husband is sitting at the table writing his diary - asking me words, names of things, places we walked today, looking so vulnerable and tired and raw and lost, trying so hard......cracking open the hard walntut shell of my heart....

The Day After

9th October 2012

The day after.....

Wake to dull grey skies. Stay in bed reading till 11ish. A day out of time.....left over lunch..... I feel grumpy and irritable.....long walk at the back of the house in empty farm landscape, scrub oak and blackberries, a few big houses......he swims......I read - book about India - Losing Gemma.....he starts writing a blog and we stay on the terrace till the sun goes down and I need to put on socks and a fleece..... he fishes a frog out of the pool....he makes supper of scrambled eggs and I finish my book.....he drinks a lot of wine and we watch Shrek....I read his blog - feel so so sad.....

My 60th

8th October 2012  Monday 

My 60th Birthday

But I’m the littlest, the youngest - how can I be 60.....

Ist text this morning from my niece in Beirut at 7am and then all day wonderful messages and phone calls - my dear family and friends remembering me.... still in bed - opening the cards I brought with me and my husband’s sweet message in his card with the teddy bear on the front with the pearls and high heels and wonky glittery hat...

It’s misty and drizzly - he goes to buy croissant and wine - I slip into the freezing cold swimming pool  - christening my new turquoise costume - feel compelled to mark this day somehow with something from me beyond my usual limits...I swim 5 lengths and climb out shivering and blue and invigorated and the sun burns a hazy halo behind the grey cloud for a brief welcome greeting and I know it’s going to be OK.... even though my husband asks me what invigorated means and what hazy means......

He makes breakfast - croissant -  and pain au chocolat - which I didn’t want after yesterday’s ones but he forgot and bought them again. Instead of eating mine I cut a slab of the fresh crusty loaf he also bought and slathered it in butter and honey - a new resolution  - don’t put up with stuff if you can change it.....

We put on glad rags and drive out to La Terrace in Meyronne - posh restaurant in deserted village on top of hill next to medieval church. Plat du jour - piece of cod  - only thing on menu I could eat at 35 Euros.....decide we aren’t hungry enough for lunch anyway. Instead spend wonderful hours with the Barbary Apes of Morocco at the Foret du Singes - and their cutest babies with old mens’ faces and kitten skittish legs......sun comes out, autumn leaves falling on paths lined with hawthorn and their blue black berries, peaceful empty melancholic park....afterwards we sit with chocolate icecreams and I send more birthday text thankyous.

On to Rocamadour - perched high up against the rock face - we walk down steep winding path shaded with huge trees and wander round the medieval sanctuaries. My husband goes inside the chapel  housing the famous Black Madonna.

‘Whats madonna?’

Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.

Is that her surname then?

He buys me a lovely leather purse in multi colours in one of the gift shops lining the streets below -  to go in the birthday handbag he also bought me  - or rather I bought and he paid for -  at the Cider Press centre in Totnes a few weeks ago.

It’s 5pm and I’m getting shaky with low blood sugar, and toy with the idea of an omlette and salad in a terrace cafe but decide to go home instead and go out for a crepe for supper.

Back home my husband cracks opene fresh walnuts and makes me tea while I struggle with the DVD player and get Mama Mia stuck in it and get cross and snap at him when he makes suggestions which don’t help.... finally get it out...

We have a bath - more glad rags on and out to the creperie where we eat huge square gallettes stuffed with smoked salmon, cream and potatoes followed by more mini crepes with maple syrup, jam and maron glace and a coffee. I tell the waiter it’s my birthday and when we leave he gives me a little striped wooden cat because we loved and petted  the restaurant cat which sat on the chair next to my husband and it felt like we were 3 for supper....

Now my lovely husband has gone to bed with a headache after we watched the whole of Mama Mia and it’s the end of my 60th birthday and the beginning of a new decade in the shape of the old me.....looking for a way to see with eyes of kindness. One moment at a time...

Last Day Of My Fifties

Some Random blogs from our holiday........

7th October 2012 

Martel Lot/Dordogne SW France

Will be 60 tomorrow.

Misty rain all day  - a settled bleakness -  not cold but you still want to keep on your cardi.

Living in 2 dimemsions - here with my husband - eating strawberry jam with crisp croissants/courgettes, driving west under honey coloured rock face overhanging the road like a cave roof, towards Creysse, wandering round the town square lined with bric -a - brac stalls  dripping rain drops - the whole place a car boot sale, buying tomatoes and vanillla pods, on and on to Medieval Carennac and old churches and cobbled streets and a late horrid lunch - tasteless cheese pastry with salad drenched in strong dressing at a narrow cafe on the bend of the road - dirty and expensive. Home again and the bliss of reading on the sofa, late afternoon, while my husband walks towards Baladou from the path down the side of the house. 

This is the second dimension I’m living in -  always there in the shadow of my day - the book I’m reading -  Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville - set in Australia in 1860s - longing to pick it up again finish the story and not wanting it to end - stretching me twoways.....immersed in another time, another country but so alive and real in the way she writes it I think I’m there....

And accutely conscious it takes me up and away and out of my husband’s life - where he can’t share me any more - can’t read novels - can’t take himself away from his life like I can take my self away - away for a little while from the ALWAYS THERE  - the loss of him and us .....the closing in of his world like the roof of the cave getting lower and lower the further in we go  - into the honey coloured rocks of no memory...

So nearly 60 - with  my tummy round and full of our supper of garlicky  green beans and tomatoes, spinach and tuna pasta and little furrry rose red peaches their sweet flesh the colour of blood oranges and beetroots. My husband cracks open fresh wanuts and drinks red wine, while I cook to the strains of Mama Mia and the sky darkens on the last evening of my 50s......

Last Blog For A While

3rd October 2012 Wednesday

This morning  while we are still in bed and  I mention Father Christmas my husband says ‘Who’s that?’

Red coat/white beard/ reindeer/sleigh/chimney - all mean nothing to him.... I was thinking it would be good to have an iphone or an ipad  then I could show him a picture then and there without having to get out of bed......

I notice water dripping down the wall in the utility room just next to the pussy cat’s bed. The plastic roof has sprung another leak. I phone our lovely builder who says he can’t come till tomorrow.

Last minute holiday shopping - I pick up body cream instead of shampoo in exactly the same bottle and don’t discover till I get home. I buy jeans - why does going up a size make me feel a failure?

My husband pricks a kilo of sloes with the tines of a fork and makes three kilner jars of sloe gin the colour of bruises.

My sister helps me decide which paint colour to choose for the bedroom - Fern Frost. Later, over our mushroom omlette supper, my husband says he’d like to be involved in the decisons about things like the new curtains - at least feel consulted. His brain disease doesn’t mean he doesn’t have opinions. Our concepts of togetherness are wildly different.

I sit with the pussy cat on the kitchen floor while our lovely animal healer does her magic from afar. When he stands up I notice he’s limping, won’t put his weight on his back leg. We drive to the vet. One of his toes is very sore but the vet can’t see what’s wrong. He gives him a pain killer injection.

Later I call our healer and she says she worked on every part of the pussy cat's body even to the tip of his tail as he’s in a such a fragile state. I am trusting he’ll last till we come back from holiday.

The fridge is nearly empty. My suitcase isn’t packed. All the pictures are off the walls in the bedroom. Last blog for a while - I’m planning to be diverted by all things French for the next two weeks.

A Miracle

2nd October 2012  Tuesday

I can’t get an appointment with my own GP so I see another doctor - he looks about 15. At the end of the session, after he has noticed my hands are blue with cold and given me a print out for Reynaud’s Syndrome, he asks me how is everything else. I tell him about my husband. He’s so sweet and sympathetic that I nearly burst into tears. He says he did a placement with our Neurologist and offers me support through the surgery. I think they must be training doctors better now.....

Another letter from the DWP. It’s such a wierd system. We send in evidence for the third time - three more letters from our wonderful medical team -  to the Courts and Tribunal service for my husband’s appeal, and get a response from the DWP saying that as my husband can manage his bathroom needs, can use a computer, attends a ceramics class, sings in a choir and tends an allotment he must be capable of working. 

I wonder what he can do though as a job. Today he asked me what cat litter is. We bought some in Sainsbury’s or in Shakespeare as he calls it. And a large seed tray in Homebase. 

It seems to be working as there is no pussy cat pee on the floor today -  a little miracle.

But then I have been praying for one....

Why Worry When You Can Pray?

1st October 2012 Monday

9.45 am We are sitting in the Tribunal Office waiting room with our dear friend who is being a witness for us and the lovely CAB woman who is representing us. Our files and papers are spread on the table in front of us - going over final details. I’m feeling sick and jittery.

The clerk comes in and calls our CAB woman outside  ‘for a word’.

The word is ‘cancelled’.

The reason is a  death in the family of the doctor on the panel. 

So nothing to be done then - except go and have a coffee and a croissant in the sunshine.

This time my husband is tearful, more upset than I am. I’ve learned now that I don’t know the bigger picture of all this and probably another date and time would be better. More time to send in extracts of my blog as evidence of what it’s like at home - not just what the doctors’ letters say.....

Back home the pussy cat has peed on the dining room floor. The vet says it’s psychological - he’s stressed. Our lovely animal healer says he’s responding to my guilt and fear and panic about leaving him when we go to France and when I start looking after myself and bring some peacefulness and love back he will calm down. He has a snuffly nasal infection. So do I - I thought it was all those dairy products but now it’s a cold. Maybe I am the pussy cat or he is me....

Extreme illness brings everything up to be looked at.....but ‘why worry when you can pray?’  as someone said to me today. So that’s what I’ll be doing tonight.......

and keeping all the doors shut so I won’t come down to a lake of pee on the carpet in the morning.