Birthday and Beans

10 days worth of catchuppery, here we go...

I came down with a cold/cough thing just before my birthday weekend, thought it would be a quickly gone thing but it lingered on and turned out to be slower as Freya has only just got it over a week later and J is just showing some signs too. Was quite a draining thing where you can't do much, plus I got eczema on my eyelids and other annoying places, so not at my best generally and a bit grumpy.

However, I had a nice birthday weekend despite doing lots of not going to places - not going to the cinema, not going to the Lewes raft race, not going to Undercurrent Weekend in Shoreham. Had nice food, lots of baths, tried to sleep but coughed too much.

My birthday prezzies and lovely birthday surprises from J and Freya were just lovely. On the actual day I was prohibited from going downstairs for a while and a smell of chocolate cake baking drifted up. Freya brought me a cup of tea in bed and a bowl of strawberries, pineapple and banana. Yum!

When I did go down, apparently a very norty pirate had hidden all my prezzies around the room but left a treasure map for me to find them, so I did that and discovered some lovely Sanctuary bath and body items, some nice notebooks, a solar/USB charger for my phone, and the King's Speech on DVD. I also had Marks and Spencer vouchers and Amazon Kindle vouchers too - I don't use a Kindle but use the app on my phone a lot now. Looking forward to choosing some books now my eye eczema has gone. Fab prezzies! And cake! J and Freya had made a vegan chocolate cake, complete with 2 layers, sprinkles and sparklers. Very tasty it was too!

We also went in the pool, all 3 of us (me hoping cold and chlorine would work magic on cold/cough germs rather than finishing me off), as it was sunny for a bit. Still freezing in the pool but eventually you sort of get used to it. Freya goes in most days and swims and floats a lot.

Later we had a takeaway and watched Life of Brian, having watched Holy Grail a couple of days before.

Other days have gone to:

Freya playing up at L's on Wednesday and me going up and having a cup of tea when time to pick her up, nice to hang out and chat.

Another activity day at the Mohair Centre - a horse and pony session, so Freya had 3 rides on Cracker the pony there.

Freya's friend L staying over for a sleepover - they desperately wanted to go in the pool but the sleepover didn't include any afternoon time and it is really too cold morning and evening, which was a shame, hoping L can visit again soon one afternoon. They stayed up waaaayyyyyy too late! After J and I had gone to sleep by several hours.

Trip to my mum's to take her to the dentist for an extraction, all went OK thank goodness. Mum doesn't reliably recognize me now, but seems to have decided I'm a nice lady and can be let in with a smile, so thank goodness for that at least. She usually does get the hang of who I am at some point but with slight shifts or embellishments.She mostly calls Freya by my name, except when Freya does something particularly Freyaish I think. She's still in good spirits and I'm still dithering about how long she will be OK to stay in her home, etc.

A visit to the Petits Haricots, which was really lovely. Have never managed to get to theirs before and hope now that I've done it once I'll manage more often! Had a smooth journey, arrived just as HH was free from work so she gave us a lift to theirs, where we were made very welcome, introduced to rabbits and vegetables (nicer garden attributes than ours - cats and corpses) and enjoyed a very relaxing time. The evening was one of takeaway, wine and chat, wished I hadn't been so tired due to not sleeping well with cold and cough, but managed to stay up nearly to midnight anyway. Freya was mostly playing DS with SB I think. 

In the morning, we were all preparing for their party, my contributions were couscous-of-course and paddling pool inflation and cleaning duties. Freya did decorating of small cakes with PLENTY of glitter. People started arriving from middayish I think and it was lovely to see lots of people I hadn't seen since Christmas camp and to have a proper chat with Em, which NEVER happens, among other things. Kirsty kindly gave us a lift to the station. Freya developed my cold/cough rapidly and is now very sniffly and snuffly, poor thing, with a temperature last night. Really hope we've not given it to everyone at the party :(

When we got home we watched Mars Needs Moms, which wasn't as bad as we were expecting!

We were supposed to be going out with J's dad today but actually collectively we're all below par and suffering various including lack of sleep so we've cancelled, which means I'll be able to have another long bath with my Sanctuary stuff in a bit :)

This coming week we have friends visiting Tuesday I think, hoping Freya's friend L will be able to come for a play/pool visit on Monday afternoon. Thursday Freya has an activity day at animal sanctuary. Wed and Fri are free so might do some geocaching or something, depending on how Freya is.

This morning Freya made a sort of sculpture and poem/reflection piece that go together, about me and her and our relationship. The sculpture is 2 mini Lego figures, close together, with some similarities between them and some differences. The poem says: 

even if we are very much different in background 

together we can do better 

finding we are stronger 

and more very much the same

I like that!