Another catchup

Where the days have gone since 14th Feb:

A Monday trip for all 3 of us to cinema in Brighton to see The Princess and the Frog, which we all enjoyed, but didn't enjoy the half-term fullness of the cinema and the children who thought it was fine to bash their booster seats repeatedly. Was mildly surprised to find voodoo in a Disney film. 

Afterwards we went to Food for Friends - haven't been there since it went posh. Food was delicious, especially some Tom Kha soup, mmmmm. Expensive though, probably shouldn't have gone, but I did feel it did me a world of good, after a restful weekend, getting rid of the horrible cold I had. 

Talked a bit about New Orleans and about 2D and 3D (and voodoo).

Pancakes on Tuesday 16th - my batter was good but my hot oil implementation was not, so J took over that bit and we had some lovely pancakes with lemon and sugar. 

A free Wednesday workshop at the Phoenix Arts Association. It was fun - we did a bit of printmaking and some making with withies. F and I both enjoyed it. I used to work at the Phoenix as Office Manager and the guy doing the workshop used to live in the house where I lived in Brighton with a group of friends in 5 flats. We were in and out of each other's flats, sharing meals, watching things together and staying up all night playing Mah Jongg, Risk, Canasta and a ton of other things in our pre-console days. A lovely time, we all look back on it with fondness I think. So it was nice to see this guy, and meet his partner who is actually his wife, as of last year. Good to catch up a bit. We were just starting to do our arty bits when another parent arrived with her child to do the workshop and turned out to be another old friend, who I hadn't seen for over a year! So we spent a very relaxed 2 hours, catching up with old friends and printing and making. 

Thursday 18th I went to visit mum for the first time in 10 days (due to the horrible cold I'd had - hospital very strict about visiting/infection and I'm not sure I could have managed the journey at the weekend!). She was doing a lot better and starting to get seriously fed up of hospital. Her speech was much improved, I understood more of what she was saying. The clutter was bothering her so I tidied up a bit and took some rubbish away for her. I told her I was hoping to be able to bring F in at the weekend, having checked with the nurse how this might be accomplished (no children allowed on the ward but could use a little room off the corridor). 

Missed a connection on the way back and had 50 minute wait at Ashford! Grim! But was buoyed up by feeling tentatively hopeful about mum. 

Had to work right through the night.

Friday

Was tired! Stayed home! Cuddled F lots and watched a film, can't remember what it was. Hmm, think it was Horton hears a Who, maybe... Think F did a bit of LBP level making on the theme of a body, inspired by the Phoenix workshop. She also decided to write a list of all the different meanings of the word 'we', as in 'Wii', 'oui', 'wee', 'other wee' and 'wheeeeeeeeee!'. So she did.

Weekend in Maidstone with F

I took F and we went over to Maidstone. My very good friend J (from school since we were 16) picked us up at the station on Saturday and took us over to the hospital. Mum was very cheered to see F and have a cuddle and an 'I love you grandma' I think. Her friend L was there too. I took a few strawberries! Mum managed a couple I think, which will have done her good, she loves fresh fruit. F was slightly disconcerted by her grandma seeming a bit different - worst thing was that they brought mum to us in a wheelchair, when I'd assured F that she could walk. But it was just that hospital thing of putting you in a chair if they can, to save time and such... Dozy Mog sparked off a good bit of storytelling as we told L the tale of one of his 'nearly lost' events, a funny story mum loves to tell in detail, so very good for her I think too. Although her speech wasn't clear, it was helped by us knowing the story, so we could all join in in parts. Was nice.
Children bring such naturalness into a weird situation. Lovely.

Friend J then took us to mum's house via supermarket, picked up some deli stuff for me, and a pizza for F. F felt, like me, that it was strange being at grandma's without grandma. I felt it was a lot nicer with F there! We watched some Saturday BBC offerings (Total Wipe-Out and Sport Relief dancing) and ate our dinner, then I did a bit of work (have been taking everything I could find as January was rubbish for work/money). F got out one of the things she likes at grandma's - a hopscotch foam tile set - and played lots of made-up versions of hopscotch.

As it got later, we got duvets down, as we'd decided we wanted to sleep on sofas. At 11:30pm we embarked on a game of Trivial Pursuit! At F's instigation. It's the family version and we played just the children's questions. Once again F surprised me with her general knowledge - mine was rubbish at her age, I was particularly bad at geography and history on the whole. But she has quite a bit, which is good to know - things like where the Great Barrier Reef is and a bit about Henry VIII - some from telly and some from her encyclopedia-reading phase I think. She beat me anyway, by one piece of pie and we were asleep by 1am.

Next morning I did a lot of phone calls to update mum's friends - she has quite a lot of good friends locally, so I rang them and asked them to pass on the latest news to others where they could.The time seemed to suddenly go, so I was still packing our stuff up when friend J arrived to pick us up.

This time, at the hospital, mum walked to the room, with assistance, and she and F had more cuddles and giggles. I'm sure F's visits were a real tonic.

We left mum after half an hour or so, as she gets very tired trying to speak clearly and think of words.

The journey back was mostly OK apart from a bit of a bout of F shouting at me, which I think was because she was hungry. Not fun!

Magical Monday group

MMs for us on 22nd, a good session, F was off playing most of the time again, I had lovely chats with supportive friends and also idle chat about telly and stuff. A door got broken, which was not so good, but these things happen and I think it was largely a case of our kids being the last ones to slam it after a lot of other rough treatment. It turned out not to be such an expensive repair as first thought, so that was good.

Tuesday castle visit

Had a very good home-ed visit to Lewes Castle, with a tour with a guide, session handling artefacts, bit of dressing-up and general exploring of castle, grounds and museum. The guide was quite good I thought, I liked the bit where we had to imagine we were 100 soldiers attacking the castle, and talked about how many got killed at each stage before they even got into the main castle, due to various defence means applied. She struggled slightly with realizing that the parents there were each responsible for their children, so she didn't really have to do too much H&S monitoring and 'suggesting' but that's just being used to school trips. She told us a lot of urine-related stuff at one point, which maybe school kids are more thrilled by than our lot. 

F was very engaged - after the guide had told us that instead of talking about 'firing' bows and arrows we should say 'shooting', F drew her attention to one of the information plaques, which used the word 'fire' incorrectly!

F waved to her dad's work building from the top, I texted him to tell him and he texted a wave back.

The artefacts were good, lots of them, so nobody had to wait, as the boxes were rotated around the tables. Tiles, metal spurs and spears, pottery fragments, etc.

Also a little 'pretend you're an archaeologist' type box, where you put your hand in and feel the object and describe it. And a story about knights building castles out of different materials a la 3 little pigs.

After the organized bit, we had lunch and then were left to our own devices.

In the museum, we watched a film about Lewes history, which was good, not too long, just some key interesting points. We were all fascinated by the model of the town too, children and adults.

Upstairs though, a bit of rowdiness started to creep in, in an unmuseumly manner, so it was time to go. We had had a good 3 or 4 hours there though.

F and E put money together in the shop at the end to buy a bag of fudge to share.

Wednesday - friend's birthday

D's birthday - he is 1 year old! So I walked F up to theirs for a few hours, as she was kindly invited. She had found presents for him in Brighton on Monday - a top that said 'Too cool for (play) school' and another one with a little rabbit on, whose ear was a dangly separate bit, that she thought he'd really like to fiddle with. Can't quite believe he is 1, though!

Back home I worked mainly.

Today

Hospital therapy team rang to say mum is nearly ready to go home! Hoorah, much whooping here by me and F! She may be out in about a week, but could be a bit longer. I'm going over at weekend again, without F this time, will stay till Monday as mum has an observed visit to her home, with Occ. T and Physio, who want to see her in her home to judge how it will go and whether she can come home.

So after that excitement died down, it was a bit more work for me, then joined F playing Animal Crossing. Had ordered F some trainers online and they came in the afternoon and she really loves them! Am so glad, as it's a nightmare trying to find her shoes that fit her, are comfy, are 'good' for her feet, are easy to do up and undo and that she likes as well! Seem to have hit the jackpot at last with these. Skechers Hot Lights Angelics if anyone's curious! The lights are quite something...