....is what you get when you shower someone. So now I take off some clothes when I shower Ray. One day someone will come in and see me in action. What a funny sight . No wonder Trev says he has weird parents. Which is why I love Ray's shower nurses so much. They keep my feet dry!

I am still having to go to the new place, Jasmine Court, where my Mum is now three or four times a week. I understand that because she now has no speech she needs someone as an interpreter. I can't understand why they don't just ring across to the section she used to be in so someone there can tell them her likes and dislikes, her ways of signalling how she is feeling, what she wants to do, when she is in pain etc. At the moment I am the one with the clues so it is me they ring. Then I go to "Jasmine" and have a look at her to make sure she is okay. So far she is.

I went to for 20 minutes yesterday and another 20 minutes today. Yesterday they changed her room as another resident needed a room that was quiet (I'm guessing a relative complained) and so Mum is now in with three other ladies. I am not complaining as her room is now opposite the lounge area and that is where the nurses mostly are. So if she falls she should be visible! A nurse rang tonight to tell me her doctor has changed a painkiller to a heavier dose as they think she still has some pain in her hip joint from arthritis so she needs something stronger of a morning so they can dress her etc.

Today I had an odds-and-ends day, which means I tried to get rid of a lot of small jobs I had been leaving for a while. I have a pair of jeans to put up but that will have to wait. I did do some of the other mending jobs plus some gardening, some ironing and I did think about washing windows....lol. That is as far as I have got so far, thinking about it. I also sat down and wrote some of those keeping-in-touch notes I write this time of the year to say we are still alive. Not everyone has email, particularly among our older friends, so I still send out some snail mail. I can't complain that no-one keeps in contact if I fail to do the same myself.

Ray's three hour carer who was here today is a cheerful person who has little jokes he and Ray both enjoy. Today when I came home at the end of the time I was telling Ray about a young woman we know who had lost a baby at 20 weeks. The carer looked sad and said: "So did we." That is why you should be slow to judge, people are like icebergs you see only what is on the surface.

Tomorrow is Ray's stroke support group's meeting. We will be able to go tomorrow and if Ray is feeling okay we will stay on to lunch. The meeting is held at one of our local clubs so the food is reasonably good and reasonably priced. If we can afford it we have lunch out once or twice a week. Of course that works better in summer as the fruit and vegetables are fresher and nicer. Frozen beans are frozen beans whether a professional chef cooks them or I do. So I don't want to pay a high price for a handful of cooked ex-frozen green beans on a plate.

Trev has been particularly helpful the past few weeks and it seems as if he may have a job at last. Unfortunately it will be in Sydney. He will restart his cleaning business and sub-contract to a larger cleaning firm. He went down for an interview today and thinks all went well. I have enjoyed him being home and certainly in times when Ray has had a fall and needed picking up etc his help has been invaluable so I will really miss him if he has to move back to the city. I'll miss conversation too as Ray is not much of a talker but Trev makes up for that.

I can tell by reading this blog that our life is on an even keel, no ranting or raving, no long explanations of how this or that is happening. Just the humdrum sound of everyday life.