Logs, Hedge, Grass and Peas

 My brother and I are adopting a two-pronged approach to our mother’s on-going recovery following her fall and ensuing operation. He has adopted the ‘good cop’ role, which, by default, means I am ‘bad cop.’ I am NOT being ‘bad cop’ but if it makes him happy to think as such then I’m not going to argue. 

Anyway, we are being gently persistent regarding her daily strength exercises and the fact she needs to eat more. She is insisting she sees no reason why the exercises that are done lying down will be ANY use WHATSOEVER, and that she isn’t interested in food and she doesn’t need to eat much anyway because she doesn’t do anything. We said - good cop and bad cop - that if she wants to get properly mobile again and potentially have a full hip replacement, she needs to build up the strength in her legs by doing the chuffing exercises and making an effort to eat more because one cannot live on cup-a-soups, Ryvitas and yogurt alone. We have been discussing ways to get calories into Mum in the form of oily fish and avocados because she actually likes both of these things. 

One of my nieces made her a chicken-in-some-sort-of-sauce thing for her dinner this evening. My brother asked her what sort of vegetables she’d like to go with it - some peas, maybe? ‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll have three.’

My brother told her she couldn’t have just three peas and that a tablespoon might be more appropriate. He has just reported to me that she ate all the peas. 🙄

In between all this business, which has been an all-day saga, I have made the most of the overcast, yet dry weather to:

a) stack two cubic metres of logs in the woodshed. This involved carrying them from the driveway where they were dumped, up the step in the courtyard, across the courtyard and into the shed. I used a trug to do this because previous experiences using the wheelbarrow have proved annoying. 

b) prune the hornbeam hedge that borders the orchard. This involved: a step ladder, a pair of shears, the loppers, a wheel barrow, some robust gloves and the leaf rake. And a lot of upping and downing and telling Nell the Poo to stop digging chuffing holes everywhere. I’ve shown her where we want to build the p. Will she dig there? Will she heck. 

c) mow the grass. I managed most of the grass mowing, but then rain stopped play just before 4 p.m and by then I was feeling a bit achey and done in, so I packed up, came indoors and went for a shower and  a sit down. 

It has been a day of achievement, and that is good. I have also ordered myself three new tops because I have been feeling scruffy of late, and the pinafore dress and skirt I bought last week are really very nice and have made me feel more put together and presentable, if you get my meaning. 

Tomorrow, I plan on not doing very much at all…