Did you miss me? I missed you all. Especially those who meet in Tuesday night's Caregiver Chat and all my friends in Blog World. I am just back from my little getaway. For most of it I was a long way from where I thought I would be, on a rural property on the Southern Highlands, not on a busy road running alongside Lake Illawara. It all turned out much different from what I had planned. I thought I was going down to mind the grandchildren for the last week of the school holidays to let their parents get on with their work of community welfare in the Salvation Army. I went down on the train on the 20th and was prepared to settle in. Not so. I was told:"Mummy and Daddy are still on holidays so we are taking you away with us".

So off we went to a small property in the Snowy Mountains in the south of New South Wales, a dot on the map called Dry Plains. It is above 1700 feet above sea level so it is much colder than here, cold for summer, cold at night and at one stage only 11c (18f) degrees and that was the highest it got on that day! Just as well I had taken jeans and my daughter found me an old sweatshirt and I managed to stop shivering. You can guess the swimsuit didn't get wet!

I had a lovely relaxing time and so did my daughter as I made her an honorary member of my January reading club and we spent whatever time we were at leisure reading on her back verandah (yes, she has one too on the back of the little two bedroom cottage). The grandkids (bless them) were co-operative so if Mum and Granma had to have a sit down for a while they also found something quiet to do. We read the Readers Digest condensed books, good , bad and "what is this???" and enjoyed each in it's own way.

Yes, I did worry about Ray, about Mum and about Trevor and Edie and Lucas moving from here to their new rental home two suburbs over but for once I did not let any of that disturb my peace. I have got to have a break sometimes, I have had a hard twelve years and now I need to let go of some of the anxiety and try to rebuild my own confidence in life in order to keep strong for Ray. Ray and Mum both have others to take care of them now and I need to trust that those others will be competent and able to deal with day-today caring for them. And if anything does go wrong they have the boys' phone numbers.

We had a good joke about the weather. Craig has a barometer in the window over the sink so when he was washing up he would call out: "I thought you said it was cold, look it's 21 degrees, 22, 23, 24... look it's 30 (84f)...we ought to go swimming!" Even though we knew it was the steam warming the barometer we still laughed every time he said it.

It was great to be in a place where the night is black as pitch, the only sounds during the day the infrequent vehicles travelling into town on the dirt road, the only night noises being the "baaaa" of faraway sheep and the occasional night bird. The land has a very small house on it so I shared the 2nd bedroom with my grandchildren and okay, Granma snores so they would throw stuffed toys at me to try and make me stop. A lot of giggling each night until "Mum" told us all to "pipe down and go to sleep!"

We had BBQs and day trips out, often stopping for morning tea or lunch somewhere nice. We had walks along Lake Eucumbene and we explored the little villages close by. We had plenty to do and see and of course plenty of good fresh country air so we all slept well at night. We did some walking locally too and I found a nice patch of everlasting daisies that Shirley can dry and put into a vase. We saw kangaroos at dusk and saw plenty of birds and sheep of course as it is high country pastures all around.

I must admit I can feel myself slowing down now and found it hard keeping up with the little ones. Christopher is 12 now and taller than me with a long stride so he takes some keeping up with. Naomi at aged seven is still clingy so loves to walk hand in hand. It was great to be able to spend some time with them.

I have been sad for over a year now and sometimes close to depression so I need to work on that now and make myself mentally stronger. I will always have worry about Mum and Ray I know but I need to handle it better. I love them both but it is counter-productive to make myself sick with the worry. I need to be more logical and less emotional in what I do. I had a lot of thinking to do and the peace and quiet of the country allowed me to do that.

I have really valued the prayers of so many people, including my friends on here. Each time I visit the Salvation Army Corps Shirley and Craig are in charge of, people come up and tell me they are praying for Ray and for me, we are Captain Shirley's parents and important to them. It is that and many other kindnesses that keep me going on.