If I was a singer I would sing a sad song. The bogged down in winter blues. Yes, it is still raining, wet, cold and miserable and Ray has had pneumonia since early last week so I have been spending five or six hours a day at his bedside and I am tired. There I've vented so maybe I will feel better soon. I also have sinusitus so I guess that is making me less able to cope too. Ugh, I hate winter, please, please, please roll on summer.

I went to three funerals last week. The second and third were old parishioners, at the same home as Ray for the last segment of their lives. They might have been old but they were well-loved too and we will all miss them. It is strange that people are never visited while at a nursing home but the hordes come to the funeral and say how wonderful Granny or Aunty Betty was, how much they loved her, how much they will miss her etc. I don't think it is hypercritical I think it is true they loved her, just felt uneasy visiting her in a nursing home with other old folks dying around her.

I had a quieter week than the week before when I had my visitor. I really missed someone else being in the house and having the incentive to go out somewhere every day. I missed the talks in the evening and waking up to have breakfast with someone to chat to. I guess once more it emphasised the loneliness of the life I lead now. I am sure I will feel better when the days are longer and drier and I can get out into the garden without the water sqeezing out of the ground and making my shoes wet and soggy. Whoops, more moaning.

My lovely neighbour who has the little dog Tina is moving back to Sydney. Sydney is where the work is and the better money so as she has a twelve month contract with one of the bigger clubs to improve their training courses she said she might as well move there and save herself the travelling. It has been hard for her with the rain etc commuting when she has been getting home well after dark and still having to walk the dog, get herself an evening meal etc. We have become good friends so I hope she'll feel free to come on by when she is up on the coast.

With Ray in bed for the last five days I have missed the company of the others we usually sit with. Sitting in a four bed room with a curtain halfway around the bed is a pretty bleak situation. I know I seemed to do that most of last winter as Ray was in hospital from June till September so I feel as if I was repeating that experience again. Not the way I want to feel at all. And you all know the sound of that deep seated hacking cough and how that makes you feel. I just want Ray to get better, get stronger and WANT to get out of bed. I know it is comforting to snuggled down under the covers as the rain drifts down outside the window but the old rule still applies - move it or lose it and he has already lost so much movement.

I have been crochetting for lack of something better to do, working on a small rug in shades of pink for Alice to go in her cot. She is growing, now in 0000 and 000 clothes, she looks cute in pink. My facebook buddies have seen far too many photos of Alice but as yet no-one has made an adverse comment. All grandparents think their grandkids are the cutest things and so we tolerate the photos, the comments about their cuteness, the besotted captions on photos. In summer I will hopefully put on photos of my flowers and herb garden instead. Or maybe the occasional beachscape if my luck holds and there is some beach weather.

I've been reading everyone's "summer heat" blogs and know that I will be posting something similar around January 2013. If you have a long hot summer we have a long hot summer. I will be going swimming in a friend's pool, I have warned her already. She is in her mid-eighties and has been feeling the cold this year and hasn't been at as many church events as usual. It is true as we get older there seems less and less point in leaving a warm house for a draughty church hall but then the socialization is what that is all about anyway.

I am not really depressed, just have rain depression, when the rain goes the depression does too. I know how the walls here can seem to be closing in on me some weeks. Hopefully five or six more weeks of winter and then a warmer spring sun to warm the bones and give us a brighter outlook on life. I've been watching old movies to pass the time and like to think that helps. The philosphy in some of the story lines can be quite enlightening. One of my favourites is "Hope Floats", a story of putting hard times behind you. I agree, when I look around at what others are going through then I can see my life in some kind of perspective.

I need to keep in mind that many have more to deal with than I do and I need to be grateful for what I have instead of moaning about what I don't have. And slowly but surely I need to more forward into a brighter future.