Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Made with Love
Sunday, 18 May 2025
Because of motherly love
Thursday, 24 April 2025
I think it was well worth it
Saturday, 22 March 2025
I won't succumb to it...
I am currently unwell. My spoons have evaporated and everything that can ache or pain me, is. I am in a fibromyalgia flare.
We Aussies are in to our autumn or fall but the weather has been erratic with many days over 30C or 86F. With lots of rain to make it humid and steamy. It's bad weather for a Fibromite.
We have air conditioning but I have missed being able to go out into our back garden. So with temperatures forecast to be in the high 20's, I find I will be able to do that later on today.
I have managed to do some basic household chores. Our beds are made. I have tidied the kitchen and done a load of washing.
There's a tray of sirloin steak out on the benchtop thawing. Later on in the afternoon I will peel some potatoes to mash and some pumpkin to go with it.
The birds are calling me. I am going to change the washing over and put it in the dryer then rest. Every Fibromite knows if you don't rest on bad days, a flare will last longer.
After the next few chores, I am planning to go outside and read...and I won't succumb to false guilt.
Wednesday, 9 October 2024
First we have coffee!
As you probably know, my twin sister is ill and has been living with us for the last five months.
She has now moved into her own new rented home and my son, her carer has moved in with her. She's in need of a carer.
Helping her has left both Chris and I spoonless and that condition is not going to improve any time soon. We have now found a new rented home two minutes away from them and the move is happening in a few weeks.
Although we feel the effort will be worth it, finding the spoons to move is a hit or miss thing. I must force myself to keep going.
I am suffering from an expected fibromyalgia flare, my knees are hurting and I cannot move my neck thanks to polymyalgia rheumatica.
I am happy to be moving but not so good with the pain. But I pace myself taking frequent breaks and drinking endless cups of tea.
My kettle is constantly boiling for a cuppa and it is the first thing I do each day. I join millions of others in enjoying to lifting qualities of coffee or tea to start each day.
Like I read in a book, "First we have coffee!", it has proven to be true for me, only my lifting beverage is tea!
Monday, 26 August 2024
It is what it is! indeed!
Tuesday, 20 August 2024
When you got no spoons everyone has to help!
No, I knew from 20 years experience that my respite from pain would be short-lived and it was. But because of planning for it, it hasn't seen me in a total mess, overwhelmed with meals and mess.
I had my dishwasher and I kept up with the dishes. I did a load of washing a day and I dried it in the dryer. But my greatest life saver was my frozen dinners I have in the freezer. They saved the day.
In all honesty, though I haven't kept the house running smoothly all by myself. I have had to enlist Chris to help me with stacking and unstacking the dishwasher and I asked him to put his own clean clothes away as soon as they came out of the dryer.
He has been really good actually- a blessing really. He also encourages me to take a nana nap, and feeling so fatigued and sore, I am so glad. We all need a hand when we are feeling so wretched and when you got no spoons everyone has to help!
Thursday, 8 August 2024
My cactus sofa
Saturday, 20 July 2024
The only perk of being old
Wednesday, 3 July 2024
We walk that path together.
It's a sad fact that lately Chris and I wake up each morning feeling exhausted. We can sleep for 8 hours or sometimes 9 and still feel tired.
We ache all over and carry the "just woken up" brain fog all day. Our morning routine consists of bloods to check the blood sugar levels and then an insulin injection for Chris followed by a hearty breakfast of pills swallowed down with a nice cup of tea.
Our love language is spoons and our song of lamentation is that we don't have any or that it won't be sufficient for the day's activities. We live just to take another nana or grandpa nap.
Of course I have a double whammy of woes, with my diabetes and fibromyalgia. The pain never departs except for the brief few minutes Chris rubs my feet. I have the combined effects of peripheral neuropathy, in my toes especially and the foot pain that comes with fibro.
With ongoing chronic fatigue, I am certain to fall sleep just 5 minutes into my foot rub. I joke and tell Chris that these days it's better than sex!... only between us- I think it's true! I mean when everything hurts and it's hard to breathe with angina and pulmonary hypertension, foot rubs now are the only pleasure in life that steadies my breathing and still relaxes me..
And talking of breathing, that RSV flu type virus is still hanging around. Not as bad, but bad enough to have me keep my asthma puffers strategically placed at my dining table, computer desk and bedside. It too drains my energy and adds to the joy of a fibromyalgia flare.
Statistics show that more women have fibromyalgia than men, but I often wonder if Chris' chronic fatigue and constant body pains are indeed fibro... there's no particular test to find out, but it wouldn't surprise me at all...
Meanwhile, he lives the horrible life of a fibromite, but at least he doesn't have to validate himself with me. We walk that path together...
Saturday, 22 June 2024
Not any time soon
These last few weeks have been difficult to say the least. We have been moving my sister in here until she finds a new home for rent. With fibromyalgia flaring, the spoons have not even been seen.
To top it off, RSV has been in our house and we have been knocked down like flies.With Chris, Julie and I all suffering from heart and lung problems, RSV hit us hard.
I caught it off my great-granddaughter when she came for a visit a week before she developed symptoms. Being a sharing person, she passed it on to her mother, Chris and Julie then me.
Chris only had symptoms like a bad cold and was ill for about a week, I was very ill with it lasting two weeks and Julie was sickest of all with hers lasting three weeks. Julie has lupus so it played havoc with her health.
This is not a virus to be played with. It honestly nearly carried Julie and I off. Julie told me it was worse than when she had Covid. I can only attest that it made me sicker than when I had pneumonia. I have never had Covid, and I tested myself at my sickest point. It was negative.
Now I am feeling a bit better but it has left me very exhausted and requiring frequent rests and/or nana naps. Maybe it's that and my fibromyalgia flaring. It was hard work moving my sister..
So to today: I am slowing trying to get my home into order. My floors need vaccuuming and mopping. My toilets are in need of a good clean and I need to conquer Dish City and Mt Laundry.
I will get there but not any time soon.
Sunday, 2 June 2024
I. have. never. felt. so. weary!
Thursday, 16 May 2024
Sex isn't everything!
This picture reminds me of Chris and I in the kitchen... I often can be washing the dishes and he will come behind me for a cuddle.. I still blush and giggle like a school girl! I usually go weak at the knees when he kisses the back of my neck, and I turn around and kiss him passionately. Finally, we break away, breathless with romance and laughter! Most times, he then pitches in and helps me finish washing up.
Wednesday, 10 April 2024
A permanent thing
Sunday, 7 April 2024
It's gonna be a PJ's day.
Wednesday, 6 March 2024
It was good while it lasted!
Wednesday, 28 February 2024
He's getting very rusty!
Wednesday, 21 February 2024
I am not lazy!
Usually by the end of the day, you will find me resting in my recliner rocker or in bed. Especially when I have a fibromyalgia flare or a bad day with breathing difficulties.
Apart from the usual taunts such as "but you don't look sick" and the need to validate my need for rest, I find that the latest taunt is "you are so lazy!"
But appearances can be deceiving. If I were truly lazy I wouldn't even be resting or pacing myself in order to do a household task or cook a meal. I wouldn't even be entertaining the thought of cleaning or cooking.
People presuming to know my situation are often getting it all wrong. And it used to hurt. But these days, I have decided to let it run off my back like water off a duck.
I no longer let those unkind remarks get to me... Chris and I know the truth and that's all that matters.
Like looking well when I feel like death warmed over, resting to enable a task to be done does not mean I am indolent or don't care about my husband or my home.
Taking care of myself in order to take care of others may appear selfish. But nothing can be further from the truth: I am not lazy!
Saturday, 10 February 2024
Xena's still upset with me!
For those of you who follow my sister blog, Morning Cuppas With Glenys, you may recall that recently I had to rescue a sparrow from our little white cat, Xena's mouth.
Although it's been 2 weeks since that rescue, my relationship with her has gone south! She ignores me. When she lays on the floor in front of me, she keeps her back to me and if she walks past me on my computer desk, she presents her bottom to me as she passes me to drink from her drinking fountain on my desk.
I can't work out why she's so upset and why her grudge has continued for so long. She is well fed so the bird affair must have been for sheer pleasure of the hunt. And although the hunt was successful, she didn't get to enjoy the fruit of it...
Maybe she was trying to please me by bringing this poor bird home like the time she brought home a dead mouse and laid it on my back doorstep.. perhaps my rejection has hurt her feline feelings...
With a very nasty fibromyalgia flare and extreme fatigue, I have been having frequent nana naps and she does still come into bed with me...
But the feeling of companionship is lacking now and I want it back. But how does one say sorry to a cat?
I fear that our relationship is permanently damaged and I am fully expecting her to put out her tongue at me to air her feelings..
I am checking her little claws as she sometimes accidentally scratches me in the night when she's curled up beside me.
Come to think of it, maybe it's not accidental- maybe she's still fuming... I will never know. What I do know though, is that Xena's still upset with me!