Just plodding along, hoping for better days. I have a head cold so feeling down and this is another of those times when I want to scream: "Where is the person who is supposed to take care of me?". It is hard not to feel resentment after looking after Ray for so many years. I seem to have few days like this in winter every year. Yes, it is hard to be on my own when I am feeling sad and shaky but there are no money back guarantees in life and I have to remember that. I can please myself when I go to bed, when I get up and what and when I eat. But I still have to get used to the fact that freedom and loneliness go together.

There is always plenty to do this time of the year. My six week course on Better Health Management takes up Tuesday morning, and the rest of the week seems to fly by. I haven't learned anything new while doing the course but it has reminded me that now I need to take care of myself  the way I used to look after Ray. Not an easy lesson to put into practice. The long dry period has affected the garden and it looks more like late summer than early Spring with plants showing signs of stress and the lawn drying out. I do water the pot plants as needed but the August winds are drying them out so they look dessicated, not holding out much hope for Spring bloomings.

Our Lions Club has been raising money to go to farmers out West to buy stock feed. We are in the middle of a long term drought and country people have run out of water. I  can't watching the news as it all seems like gloom and doom, dying sheep in dust bowl conditions but it does affect me in other ways too as I have friends who are on the land. Sometimes it is a very hard life for them. I haven't heard from some of them for a while but if you are hand feeding stock there is not a lot of time  for anything else. I understand that.

I just had a phone call from my sister-in-law in Queensland, she is worried about feed for the few cows and horses she has on agistment that she has on her acres. She have always had a farm of sorts and worked outside the property as well as many wives do. At over 70 she is starting to find she doesn't have the strength or the energy she used to have. If she and my husband's brother were to leave there they would find life very different. She has three cats and three dogs as well all used to the country way of life.

I had a phone call from her daughter last weekend. I call Kim my best neice as she visited me when I was in hospital after the operation. She lives just out of Sydney. Unfortunately the opposite side of Sydney to where I live. She is worried about her Mum, thinks the farming lifestyle is too much for her. I guess my kids worry about me too, we older folk are too fond of our independence in their eyes. I want to be independent for as long as I can but know that like the old ladies I look out for that will only last while I am well.

Ageing is a worry and more so if we live alone. I don't know what the solution is, the government wants us to stay in our own homes for as long as possible, but as we get older we get frailer. At the moment I don't need services but who knows what the future holds? The last lot of tests showed no new problems but one of the future ones might. It certainly seemed easier when I had a partner to tell my troubles to. Now I find I exchange thoughts with some of my widowed friends who are in a similar situation.

Whether we care for someone or are the one needing care our future is undetermineable and often feels out of our control. Which is why we need to take life day by day, getting out of each day what happiness we can. I do try to live life like that. I have certainly lived an interesting life, if a trying one at times. I rather thought I had earned some peace but I guess we all think we deserve better. Roll on Spring.