Well, here's my attempt at button hole wheel stitch for this week's Take A Stitch Tuesday. Am so enjoying embroidering. Far more fun than cross stitch. This is my ostrich activity - I so need to not think about things. These are called "I dropped the box of washers" in honour of the lady who runs the challenge who has a long running series of posts on her crazy quilt project "I dropped the button box". Very annoying that AFTER I take the photos I notice mistakes, however carefully I think I looked it over beforehand. I had a look at some of the other offerings, nearly all are flowers. At least I've tried something new. I'm blessed with the mental obligation to have to do something original. It comes from Mum. When we had to think of ideas for English essays she made us think outside the box.
Lovely to be able to sit on the balcony more now I've fixed the blinds. Must make myself go and do it.... tho when I'm twitchy the computer at least distracts me so I don't go trying to do things.
"Where have I put my meds ? Maybe they're where I lost them last time ..."
This morning's crisis to get up to was J having a rather dramatic nose bleed. She copes with them herself mainly now, but I needed to change her bed. Had to deal with R's bed yesterday 'cos of dropped cherries on it and it was another red stain last week on another of her new sheets last week - that one was wine vinegar.
Yesterday's morning crisis was them finding a potter wasp in the living room curtain. They were used to them in the past but it seems to have come adrift in the memory loss. The long ovipositor can look like a sting if you don't know what it is. They must be feeling a bit fragile cos often insects don't bother them. J is inclined to kill them with spraying perfume on, then put them in her microscope. Mind you a few years ago she scared herself silly - this harmless minute armadillo like thing turned out to look quite fearsome and heavily armed close to and she'd found several under her bed. :-) R took some video this week on her windowsill of a tiny red spider wrapping up a big flying ant. It then leaped on the ant's head and killed it. Gruesome.
I taught another helper how to make gravy yesterday. She put a huge amount of flour in. Better luck next time. It was her first ever attempt at this particular culinary delicacy.
This is the calendar in the toilet. (recognise it Dad ?) J crosses off the days and we all write in dates as they come up. Yes, nothing much happens, then we have 3 things on the same day. One of them didn't happen and I spent ages waiting. The other two happened both at once. The doctor was here and the delivery man rang, he was lost and I had to talk him here on the phone then take the delivery. When I got back to proceedings I discovered that what the girls had told the Dr was not really right and so he was not writing out the right prescription. He was not too pleased at the idea of having to change it, but when challenged neither of the girls could remember much in the way of what symptoms they've had and what meds they took. He had not realised how much memory loss they have. He's said they've got to keep symptom diaries now. They hate doing that. Partly it's the effort of remembering to do it and partly it's not wanting to even think about it. We work quite hard at not dwelling on it except in the instant that we need to take action to deal with something. They have to live in a very day to day manner. Not too good for planning ahead, but a very good way of dealing with worry. That's why J crosses off the days, to keep track. The seasons help a lot too. They watch what's growing in the neighbours gardens and follow the weather even tho they're not out in it.It's these things that keep us alive, part of the world and a cheerful antidote to the news (which they both follow). J writes too. I'm not sure what she writes but she has several different note books. She sticks things in scrap books too. Ruth has more difficulties with a pen, but she carefully catalogues and dates everything she makes and everything she spends. I love her systems of storage in her room. Every thing is beautifully kept in plastic drawers. She keeps some of her beads in empty spice jars on her desk. Treasure. She found out how to do a search for things that cost less than one euro and free postage so she gets all sorts of bits and bobs that way. It's a clever way of making sure she has post to open too so something to look forward to too. Ruth writes tutorials too. It comes from having taught herself to do things and other people asking her how she did it. Her first one was Webby on her site suppi.net. Some of it is out of date now but there wasn't much else around in terms of web tutorials at the time she made it. Our brains haven't stopped functioning, the process just happens rather slowly. Ruth thinks we shouldn't have lost too much on the hard disc but we don't have enough RAM to process it or to record much new stuff.
