I don't know whether you believe in global warming but I certainly did on Friday when the day was from early morning one of overpowering heat and there was no way to get cool. I just stayed still most of the afternoon and tried to survive. So many people put their air con on that we finished up with blackouts all over the area and we didn't have power here for two hours. Poor Trevor got caught up in that, he was in the operating theatre about 3pm having an operation on his nose and throat when the power went off there. Thank goodness they had generators they could use as auxillary power and the operation was concluded successfully.

You may have seen that Australia has been in the grip of bush fires and has had record breaking temperatures for over a week inland. Everybody of course sympathises with our inland folk but secretly enjoys the added comforts of living near the big cities. We here on the Coast who rarely finish the day without a cooling sea breeze really suffered on Friday, sweltering in heat more than 110 degrees. That would be normal for the inland and when we lived in Narrandera we always had some days that hot in our summers and sometimes a week over 100 degrees before a cool change arrived. But here on the coast we ALWAYS have cool nights except on some occassional overly hot days as Friday was.Now we can empathise instead of sympathise!

So a cooler weekend, gentle drizzle when we could really do with heavier rain but at least it has cooled our days down and made sleeping easier at night. I used to toss and turn all night when we lived inland and the days were hot and the nights not much cooler. Only exhaustion meant every few days we did sleep, otherwise our bodies would have just shut down I think. We didn't have air conditioning there either just one of those old fashioned water cooled fan driven coolers, so up every couple of hours to feed more water into it so it didn't burn out. Luckily we were so much younger then.

So I shopped on Saturday instead of Friday.I have learned the significance of getting together with other widows now. I go out to lunch after Sunday service with a group of widows, not every week but whenever I can. Saturday I went to the shops and joined a couple of widows from the church for coffee and spent over an hour chatting, they apparently are there every Saturday morning around 11am so asked me to join them whenever I am able to. Today I went out after church to lunch with the widows and by the time I came home I was ready for a nanny nap. I didn't have ironing to do, the floors looked reasonable, no dishes to wash, so a sleep was permissible.

I still feel as if I should be doing something every hour of the day. When I sit down for a while I jump up again thinking that I am somehow neglecting a vital task. All of this is left over from the years of caregiving, the years of working every daylight hour supervising and serving others. Now I simply can't get my head around the fact that it is OVER. So I need to learn to live life in a different way. I need to replace my old life with a new normal.

Another widow I bumped into told me she was going back to water aerobics soon and asked if I would like to come and try it out so I may do that too. I met her in the days when I used to take Ray to the pool for exercises and would speak to several ladies from the group as they warmed up in the heated pool before going into the big pool to do the aerobics class. She has always stopped me and asked me about Ray, was sad when he died and has been waiting to see if I would like to join her in the class when they start back in February. So I might just do that, no good saying I want to do new things and then being shy about starting.

My nephew was to have open heart surgery on Monday but that has been postponed, no explanation or new date for the operation as yet. I postponed my trip down south to visit my daughter and her family because of Trev's operation and Bill's so I hope if I make a new date to go down to Shirley's that they don't clash again. Family is important and sometimes it is hard to choose between two events and prioritise the needs of various family members. I wanted to spend some time with my grandson Christopher before he goes up to high school and I love to spend time with my grand daughter Naomi doing craft and all the other things she loves to do.

Caring is what a mother does, what an aunt does, caring to me expresses what it means to be family.