Extreme Knitting Redhead: Of Mice and Men

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Of Mice and Men

.....The best laid plans, that is!

2019 didn't start quite as I'd planned as I had to put on my sensible head and forgo my marathon on New Years Day due to a niggly pain in my right foot which I don't want to aggravate. Whilst I ran round the village delivering cards on Christmas Eve I knew that I shouldn't be running and ended up walking 4.5 miles with a slight limp.

Bother!

I've been icing and resting it as much as possible whilst making sure I keep moving, which is a fine balance, and will be off to see Mary Massage Lady tomorrow in the hope that she can work her usual magic and get me running again.

Christmas is now a memory and I'm completely focused on my challenge for 2019 so being sensible and letting my foot get better is more important than risking further injury by running. Mike and I been doing lots of short walks just to keep me ticking over.

The recipients of my Christmas knitting/crochet gifts were all delighted with their presents and Jane and Malcolm sent me photos of them wearing theirs during their traditional tandem bike ride on Christmas Day:

Malcolm with his snuggly purple cowl

Jane wore her purple leg-warmers underneath her boots!

Jane and Malcolm teach yoga in our village pavilion and I go to their class each week. It's really helped with my flexibility, or rather lack of it. I chose to make their gifts using a violet purple yarn as the colour is the chakra for the head/brain and I added a tiny red bow and glass heart to Jane's leg-warmers as red symbolises energy, action, passion and strength. We work with chakras a lot in yoga.

Remember the squirrel I was delighted to see on the window feeder? I wasn't quite as delighted when i saw the damage his claws had done to the window ledge!

I tried moving the feeder higher up the window but that only resulted in the squirrel launching itself from the flowerbed opposite and pulling the whole thing off the window. Clever Mike came to the rescue and cut a length of metal strip to fit over the ledge to protect it.

On Christmas Day the light was really beautiful with a heavy dew overnight and I wandered around the garden snapping anything that caught my eye:

Having only recently found Candlesnuff fungus for the very first time a few months ago, I was very excited to find it sprouting out all over the place. Weather conditions and the state of decay in the tree stumps must be perfect this year:

I haven't identified this fungus yet - it looked like squirty cream

This one looked as if someone had splatted emulsion pain over the bole of the tree!

The day after Boxing Day we felt the need to stretch our legs so we headed off bright and early to beautiful Rye Harbour Nature Reserve for a short walk (3 miles).

Then we headed into Rye for a well-earned coffee and cake at The Apothecary, one of our favourite coffee shops. Their gluten-free orange and sultana cake never disappoints. I've shared so many photos of Rye on my blog previously that it was hard to find anything new but I know I haven't shared this before:

The old Grammar School, built in 1636

I found someones memory of the school here.

On the ground floor is a record shop selling LPs, CDs and DVDs. Whilst the floors above are 2 apartments with a communal garden. Their entrance is via the handsome old door below and I loved the brickwork surrounding it.

On the knitting front I'm on the second sleeve of my jumper so won't bore you with any more photos until it's finished. Not long to wait until Kate's knitting club starts so I need to get all my unfinished projects completed.

I'll leave you with this sweet duck who came running up the garden the other day looking decidedly worse for wear:

She must have been very hungry as she went straight for the bread I'd thrown out for the smaller birds rather than heading to the barn for grain. Her right wing was hanging down and didn't look good at all. I wondered whether to contact the wildlife rescue people over in Lewes but decided to give her a couple of days to see if she improved and thankfully, although she isn't flying yet, her wing looks almost normal now so I'm hoping she's going to be OK.

Good luck Mrs Duck!

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Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.