Guppy Love!

And they call it Guppy lo.o.o.ove!

In number one fish tank we have a bit of a love story going on. We have a little Guppy, we did have three but lost two. There are several other fish in there with him and he was quite happy.

Then, last weekend, we got a pair of Kribensis. They are very sweet fish with a lovely pink blush. Little Guppy thinks so to because he has fallen for the female Kribensis. He is following her around all over the tank. So sweet. Bless him he doesn't seem to realise they are different species.

The photo isn't very good but little Guppy is on the left and his 'girlfriend' is on the right.

Thank you for all your kind words about dad. He goes for a CT scan on the 5th March. Fingers crossed.

Happy Birthday (not!).

First of all thank you for all your birthday wishes and your best wishes for Jamie.

He was a star at the hospital. We always get more stressed than he does. I was more anxious about the night on the ward with him. Last time he woke at 2.30am and 'bimbled' until gone five. I spent the time trying desperately to stop him waking up the whole hospital! This time though he slept right through till 4.30, and then was quite quiet until morning proper.

He was first down on the list and so he went down to theatre at 8am. He was back on the ward, all done by 9.30am. All that for so short a time! Still it's where his fantastic neurosurgeon is based, and so that is where we have to go. I expect we will get called for a follow up appointment at Plymouth (he does outpatient clinics at Plymouth so we don't have to keep trekking to Bristol). Anyway it all seemed to go well, so hopefully that will be that for another 12 months.

The last three days have been about the most stressful of my life so far. The trip to Bristol and the lumber puncture were bad enough. But I think my birthday was worse.

My father has been having a few problems with his digestion, I won't go into detail. So his doctor sent him for the camera down the throat, to look for a hernia. His appointment was on my birthday so while we went out to lunch with some friends they went off to Barnstaple. Fine, we all thought, get it sorted out and we can carry on as normal.

We had a nice meal, Jamie had a great time watching the others play pool. We got home and did family stuff until my parents returned from the hospital. That was when the rug was pulled out from under us.

It's not a hernia, it's cancer. My dad, my wonderful, funny, happy, everything to me dad has cancer. We don't know how bad it is yet, but it looks like it's at a fairly early stage. With luck they might be able to do something. My grandmother (dads mum) had bowel cancer back in the '80's, she had an operation and went on for another fifteen years. And it was quite advanced. Maybe I'm clutching at straws, but the alternative is just too horrendous to think about.

Funny that just before I found out I had been blogging, and Frankie had left a comment saying that I was inspirational and always positive. I'm going to let Frankie down now because I don't feel the least bit positive. I feel crap, quite honestly. I had a good cry (out of sight) and then a bit of a rant (again in private). I refuse to accept it until they have done all the tests. It might not be cancer, and it it is then it might not be too serious. They might have caught it in time, he might have years. But he might be gone by Christmas, and I can't bear it.

As you can imagine my mental state is wobbly. I was already wound up about the lumber puncture, without this on top. Now we have got the LP out of the way I'm a bit calmer. And it's no more than a lot of other people are going through. Our own family have been here before several times. My grandmother died of another form of cancer nine years ago. And then there have been the sudden and/or tragic deaths. My mother in law died suddenly, but she was in her 80's. My cousin dropped dead (literally) from a heart attack age 38, to name but two.

One of the worst things is that there is nothing I can do. I can drive him to appointments and nurse him when the time comes, but I can't make it go away. What I can do is not waste anymore time. There are things I want to do with my life and I'm dam well going to do them.

Chapters 13 and 14 of MG is on WNR (and welcome Helen).

Loose Ends

This post is going to be a bit, well, bitty.

First of all thank you to all of you who wished me happy birthday.

Secondly I apologise in advance for not responding to comments or leaving comments on your lovely blogs over the nest couple of days. We are off to Bristol in the morning for an overnight stay at the Frenchey Hospital. Jamie has got to have another lumber puncture. Hopefully this time they will decide if he needs a shunt or not. I can't decide about it. There are a lot of risks with having it done, but then there are with having to keep having the LP's. Anyway think of me tomorrow night trying to sleep on the sofa bed thing on the children's ward and trying to stop Jamie waking the whole hospital up!

Yesterday we went with the Little Rays of Sunshine to The Musical Farmhouse. It's a fantastic place. The children had half an hour of music therapy and then went outside to play with the animals. Then we all went back in to a recording studio where the children made a CD. It's a really great place for special needs kids, but it would be just as much fun for any child. And it would be a lovely place for a birthday party, they could all make a CD to take home instead of the usual party bag.

On the subject of education and activity for special needs children Paulene has asked me to spread the word about a free course she is involved in. I don't know too much about it but it looks worth a visit. Go to her site to find out more.

And by the way Paulene I will be leaving the whole of Mulberry Gin on Writing not Reading until I have posted the whole thing. So you could read it all at once then if you like!

I have just finished the lovely DJ Kirkby's book. All I can say is if you haven't already got it, then go get it! It was brilliant. I want to give her so many hugs for some of the things she has been through. And Dick really is well named!! (and I can think of a few more things to call him).

So I think that's me for now. I should be back with you at the weekend. xxx.

Going Quackers!

We have got two new residents in the village.

They appeared yesterday wandering about on our verge. Today they were in a neighbours garden. We thought they had escaped from another neighbour who keeps ducks and geese. But as they are still wandering about they must be strays. They are quite tame though and I got even closer than this.

I tried to show them to Jamie. He looked at them and then looked at me as if to say 'yes they're duck, and?' So I gave up. Still he looked.

I'm in the closing stages of DV. I'm at the point of getting everyone together. I won't make my self imposed deadline of my birthday (Wednesday) but I'll not be far off. Then will come the editing. And we all know what that's like!

PS; His bottom has stopped exploding. Thank you for all your concern. Now we just have the small matter of a lumber puncture!

Exploding Bottoms.

Yes it is as bad as it sounds! Poor Jamie. If it's not one thing it's another. He is being so good about it. Needless to say he's off school. Bless him. Not that he cares much, he's on Richard's computer doing his thing and having a ball. Just every now and than there is some horrid sounds followed by horrid smells, and yet another nappy change! Too much information I hear you say, fair enough.

Ok so now I've shown you what I see from my window what do you see from yours? Might be much more interesting than you think. We get so used to what we see everyday that we don't always appreciate it.

The lovely DJ Kirkby expressed envy at the photo on my sidebar of my 'study'. I have to confess that the pic is a little misleading. It is, in fact the upstairs landing. There was a room there last year. Regular readers will have heard me tell before of having to have a new roof last spring. For fifteen years we lived with a leaking roof. The worst of the water was coming in in the small room I used as a study. Along the inside wall there was a line of buckets to catch the water. The carpet had to go when it started to rot. I had to abandon the room eventually when fungus started growing and the electrics blew. Not good. So the room was shut up and unused, except to empty the buckets.

The whole house needed gutting when we moved in and we have been slowly getting through it all. The upstairs was the last area to do. Finally we got the builders in and they got to work. We moved out for six months and let them get on with it. When they got to the 'study' it was too bad to do much with, so they took the internal wall down. We decided we liked the open landing so didn't put it back up.

When the builders finally moved out the carpet fitters moved in. I could try to describe the state of the carpets, but you wouldn't believe me. Let's just say they were put down in the '70's and lots of dubious substances must have been inhaled when choosing them. At long last they went in the skip, I could have cried with joy.

It's been a long journey, but we finally have a home I don't feel I have to apologise for. I didn't realise how stressed it made me living in a semi building site all those years until it was over. There are still jobs to do. As you all know Richard had a heart attack a couple of weeks after we moved back in so all work is on hold for now. But that doesn't matter the worst is over. Or it was until the bad storm the other night when we found a small amount of water coming in in Jamie's room!! Just a crack from the movement created when they were doing the roof I think. Hopefully it will be easy to fix. Ho hum.

Next two chapters of MG on WNR. x.

Snow Pretty!

This is what greeted us on Friday. Needless to say we were snowed in. It had been fairly bad on Tuesday but this was the worst.

And you can see from the sky that there was more on the way.

The photos to the left is from the kitchen door looking up the lane. The photo above is from the upstairs landing window, looking out to sea. Believe it or not you can see the sea behind that line of trees! And they say it's on its way back. In fact I have just been told that it had started snowing again (7.45pm).

I have to say I'm getting quite used to this hibernating thing. I can quite see why hedgehogs go in for it. Maybe I was a hedgehog in a previous life.

Chapters 9 & 10 of MG are on WNR. Thank you for all your lovely comments about it.

As I said in the last post Blu tagged me to post the 10th photo in my file. Well I cheated I bit because the 10th photo was of one of my best friends wedding, and I wouldn't want to post photos of others without their permission. So this is one that interests me.

It's Pevensey Castle. One of my oldest and best friends lives just around the corner in a lovely old cottage with a huge garden, that she actually doesn't like very much!!

Still back to the photo. Is it me or does it look like a face? Two big eyes and an open mouth? And one raised eyebrow over the left eye. I expect the whole thing is covered in snow now. They have had it bad around there. But I bet it looks so gorgeous.

Sorry, I know so many of you are having a hell of a time with the snow. But I love it. Mind you I'm a stay at home mum and don't have to go out in it. I lit the wood burner just now and Jamie has the lovely taxi people to take him to school. So I can sit for a while and look out at next doors garden covered in snow.

I can't look out over my own garden because it runs along the side of the house. The whole village was once owned by the same family, more or less, and so it didn't matter that the layout was a little strange. Next doors garden is actually at the back of our house. Next door the other side has it's garden in two halves, and a house around the corner has a path running through it to get to their garden. All very odd. In our own house we have two flying freeholds. Our under stairs goes into next door. And Jamie's bedroom sits over their barn, that is attached to the end of our house. Confused? So were we.

The lovely Bonnie asked me once what I see from my windows. On Monday I took a couple of photos from the back door. I'll put them in the next post.

Catching up!

It snowed, and snowed and then snowed a bit more!! They sent Jamie home early from school yesterday and the school is closed today. We thought we got quite a lot yesterday. And then I got up this morning! I would say about 4 inches. Nothing to what a lot of the country has had, but this is Cornwall! We don't do snow down here!

Still we were prepared for it and had a trial run by going to the Eden Project on Sunday with the Little Rays of Sunshine and the CDSSG to go ice skating. As you can see Richard got on better than I did. Someone did take a photo of me clinging on to the rail for dear life, but they haven't sent it through yet. I may or may not post it, depending on how ridiculous I look. Anyway Jamie loved it, which was the main thing.

If you have never been to Eden then put it on your to do list. Worth it for the shop alone.

Now what else is there? You see I go off line for a couple of days and you all go romping off without me! Now the seriously funny rainbowmummy gave me the lovely award you see to the right. I would like to pass it on to Debs, Bonnie, Lane, Helen, Tom Foolery and Kernowcreations. In fact everyone on my blog roll deserves it, so go get it!

Blu tagged me the other day to post the 10th photo in my files. I will do this in a separate post in case it turn out to be something interesting that might need me to waffle on about. Then again it might be the accidental one I took of the carpet!

That will have to do for today. I think I might go and curl up by the fire and sleep for a bit if you don't mind. Jamie decided 2am was about the right time to get up this morning! I disagreed, but he wasn't listening. I wish I could develope selective deafness like that, it could come in very handy. If I could still hear the chocolate calling but not hear the ironing, that would be good.

Chapters 7 and 8 of MG are on WNR.