Today I am having a "bah humbug" day. I am not particularly sick, or overburdened or unhappy, I am just not enjoying my life. Which is quite common for care givers at this time of the year. After all this is when we women are supposed to arrive at whatever the current event is, wearing our best dress, our happy smiles and bearing in our hands the food we have so thoughtfully slaved over in the kitchen. Well, folks, it isn't going to happen like that. Not with a survivor in tow who really should be at home having his afternoon nap and only the thought of those extra "goodies" that he shouldn't eat anyway keeping him from falling asleep on the spot.

Ray has had a few off days, I am putting it down to an alteration in one of his meds, the extra daylight we use up by having our meals further apart, the humid weather over the weekend and the added stress of being out a lot more than usual because of Christmas parties and break-ups. I am still having trouble dealing with his wish to have me wait on him hand and foot after being in respite where 25 paid workers cheerfully hand out food, clean clothes etc even before he could make his needs known. The service here is nothing like that.

Yesterday I took delivery of our "twin" beds. Now these were part of a long process of selection, and right at the end included Ray as I wanted to make sure they were the right size, height, shape etc, that he could get up out of them etc. And in the bedding store he was fine, smiling, getting up quickly and easily, lying down, fine. But as soon as he saw them here at home they were "too high, too hard, too hard to get up off of" etc. Early this morning he woke me to say he couldn't get up off the @#$$$%%%@@ thing. Well he could in the store but that was when he was fresh and trying to impress the lady salesperson wasn't he?

The beds were expensive, if returned I doubt could be replaced before Christmas. The old bed was broken up and lays in the yard in pieces awaiting disposal. So here we are not in harmony. The beds stay, but maybe one of us will go on being unhappy about it. Of course this is partly due, as I've said all along that the marriage bed is associated with the marriage vows in some people's minds. The "till death us do part" comes at us slowly, the separation in small things leading to the final separation.

Slowly now is coming the feeling that marriage/love/ companionship is not what it used to be, that the change from wife and lover, to companion and caregiver, then on to nurse and finally....enough said. Also I would like some concessions made to my frailty as a caregiver and maybe some appreciation of what I do, day-by-day, week in week out, rather than the background murmurings of discontent. And maybe I would also like not to have to think of Ray's disabilities with every move we make but have him as a "normal" husband for a while too. I know a lot of you can say the same. What do you do as the changes appear and there is no "how to" book to buy at the bookstore that helps you make those small decisions, make those small adjustments? And how I get a "lump in my throat" when I see other couples laughing, drinking, enjoying the party, while I cut Ray's meal into tiny, edible bites.

I guess with Christmas "the season of peace and good will" coming so do our expectations of what family means. So as my computer is on and off the blink ( has been ever since the "trojan"episode), currently not picking up my emails and denying me access to chat, even this site sometimes. I asked my two computer-savvy sons to fix it for me. Big job , they cry, pull it all down, download everything, upload it all again, not a problem Mum, just not right now, okay? Naturally they are too busy right now and no doubt will be that way for a while. After all it is the "silly season". I know, I know, they have lives of their own, shouldn't be burdened with my troubles etc. But it would be nice if they helped because I asked for it, right away and at once, right? And maybe there are some other problems here they could work on too while they are at it.

And the bushfires in distant places send their ashes and cinders on the high winds that blow to the coast and affect my sinuses, and the garden is dying because of the drought and the tap is leaking under the sink in the kitchen and where do you get a plumber for small jobs like that? And it probably doesn't help that I am writing in card after card as I send them off to friends: "Shirley, Craig and family are going up to Cairns to live and I will really miss them". And that is so true.

Now is the summer of our discontent, to misquote Shakespeare

Someone tell me about the happy things in life, what I should be feeling right now, maybe that will help. My religious background tells me that these little irritants of life are like grains of sand which polish and bring lustre to the pearl within. But I don't feel a bit like a pearl. Right now I feel just like a small sullen lump of coal, under pressure, sunk in the soil of life. Maybe a few million years more of this and I will be a diamond!