Just another chatty post, to keep in touch...
Always proud of my three sons! My eldest boy turned 26 this week (26!!!), and I managed to catch him at work to wish him the best. He and his delightful wife live on a property just out of Dubbo in NSW, and while they've got enough water for now, the ongoing severe drought is really biting hard... there's not enough water enabling them to stock any more animals apart from two cows! But he and his wife are going well, working hard, and enjoying life as land-owners now – bless 'em!!! They are "good people".
Walking home from the library on late Friday afternoon… passing a young couple (and their dog at their feet) sitting in the sunshine on their front porch, sipping a cold drink together and obviously chillaxing… "It sure looks like Friday!", I smiled, and they laughed and agreed. Gotta love rural Aussies.
Receiving a Skype phone call from a great online friend on Friday evening – all the way from Spain – still blows my little brain-box away! Always good to chat, and have a laugh, all complete with no agendas – we both have MS, so we appreciate each others' ups'n'downs. I'm very grateful for her friendship and great sense of humour… we laugh a lot.
I was enjoying watching the first days' play of the Ashes test cricket last night – altho lot of our wickets were falling, it was still great cricket… but I did end up falling asleep on my couch, all the same [laffs]. You've got to appreciate those pleasurable creature comforts of my little homey home. Ended-up a GREAT win by the Aussies – they claimed 10 wickets in 1-1/2 sessions on the final day, to roll the Poms – yay!
We've encountered some amazingly thick 'sea poop' foggy starts to the mornings' here – when my groceries were being delivered on Saturday morning, I physically could hardly make-out the outline of the truck from my front door. And cold! The poor delivery driver was rugged-up like Nanook of the North, but was still freezing. The same weather greeted me on Monday morning, when I'd planned getting on down to the local library (a 25-minute walk with my walker, so I can access the internet – STILL none connected at home – an ongoing seemingly-endless pain in the @ss…) – thankfully the fog lifted to a bright sunny day by about 10.30am. Thank goodness… it was my turn to dress-up with my own Eskimo impression, but then the fog lifted as I was about to walk out the door…
My brother and his delightful wife dropped-in on Saturday afternoon – as always, good to catch-up and make sure we are all travelling OK. He's my only brother, and while he's 10 years' older than I am (he always has been! Lol), it's rather quite amazing how much more similar we are to each other, as we get older - in certain ways our bodies are playing up, even in ways we react to certain situations. It's all positive tho.
I was aware of what might happen after a 'good' weekend, but I wasn't able to stop it, sadly – the down-side of "Black Dog" depression slowly started creeping-in again… just made me miss a lot of Monday and Tuesday by sleeping. I wish there was some magic wand I could wave to make this foggy-energylessness (?) clear my head, alas, sometimes it doubles-up with my MS and makes me sleep for hours on end. I'm OK tho, just feeling washed-out as a result, now on Tuesday evening. It all kinda took me by surprise, because I've been feeling so well for so many weeks now. Tis just part of my lifes' journey with this bastard (depression, that is), I guess. "She'll be right, mate!"
On another note, I accidentally rediscovered a great simple recipe for Banana Pancakes! One banana, two eggs, mix together into a batter, and cook! Too easy (I'm not the world's greatest cook – I burn water! lol) – and super-tasty to boot. Sure – classic 'bachelor' food, but I'm actually eating well, after a few weeks of not being able to afford weekly fresh groceries, and living off my stockpile of tinned food, for such occasions. Tis part of the joys of living life as a Pensioner… then we hear the story of a Member of Parliament complaining he could not survive on an income of $220,000 a year – poor bastard! Pah!
My MS is behaving itself at the moment, thankfully. While it hasn't necessarily got any worse, I'm still so aware of the numb hands, ambling unassisted walk, endless lack of energy (among other slighter things [ malkiely.co.nf ] )… I am so thankful that I do not experience any pain, but I so empathise with people who have to suffer hourly through such awful situations. I honestly don't know how they do it. One of the main reasons I miss having the internet on at home (for the moment), is that I'm able to connect with a fantastic international 'family' of like-mined MS sufferers on Twitter, and we are freely able to share all our ups and downs together – it's great feeling a part of an open sharing mutually-beneficial 'community' - even tho it's online, it's very real, encouraging and supportive. Being only able to access that every few days is a real downer for me, I have to admit.
What music have you been enjoying lately? I've been delving into my radio-music hard drives' 4,000+ albums, and rediscovering some absolute beauties! Like Andrew Peterson's gentle folk-pop album from 2012, "Light for the Lost Boy"; the easy melodic pop of Swan Dive's 2014 album, "Soundtrack to Me and You"; and Anais Mitchell's gentle folk-pop of "Young Man In America", also from 2012 (I must be having an old fart's 'being mellow' mindset today)… lovely to have lovely music burbling away, as I'm writing this. 'Tis always positive to have a nice diverse and eclectic mix – and, of course, I usually enjoy listening to whole albums, compared to singles' playlists… but that's just me.
This week, I enjoyed the visual feast that is "Life of Pi" once again… even on the small screen it's a wow! I remember seeing it at the cinema on QLD – and walking out afterward feeling totally positively overwhelmed, and it still makes my jaw drop for it's stunning vistas alone, let alone a great story and acting. If you haven't experienced "Life of Pi" yet yourself (or the awesome book), "Do yourself a favour"…
One of the funny things you rediscover not having the internet at home… I've had to use my old 'hard copy' dictionary and thesaurus… they date back from when I started High School back in 1977! They are well thumbed and appreciated, but I had to dig deeply thru one of my bookcases to find them! A "Rhyming Dictionary" was also a great buy, which dates from 1986 – all three are great simple resources. One of the side-effects of the MS and medications is that I often get "Brain Fog" when I'm writing… thoughts or ideas simply fade away mid-sentence, and sometimes my attention-span/short-term memory is fairly limited! Spelling etc suffers too – it's really frustrating for me, because I love to write. Do you own a copy of any of these yourself (or used them at all lately), or do you just use the online spellchecker etc?
Peas bee with ewe
Mal
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