A pruning Tuesday

Posted on May 22, 2025 by thepogblog

My Tuesday posts tend to focus on Mum. This is mostly because it’s Mum I’m actively doing stuff with so Dad can have a few hours of (mostly) uninterrupted rest. And partly because Dad reads the blog (hi Dad! 👋🏻) which makes it a bit weird to write about him.

But this week, between shopping, washing, the now regular knicker argument, a coffee shop outing, cooking (turns out my ‘variation on a Cornish pastie’ is liked by both of them!), and a few other bits, I got to do a bit of gardening with Dad.

An elderly man in a blue shirt sits on a chair in a lush garden, using gardening tools while an orange bucket is placed nearby to collect cuttings.

Dad has always been an amazing gardener. At one point he was a gardener for people who lived in big houses with even bigger gardens. I am not a gardener but I do try. And I don’t Google to find things out, I message Dad, because he usually knows better than Google.

Dad’s breathing is not good at the moment. By the time he’d walked up the garden and cut a few bits of the rose he wanted to rectify he’d probably done enough. So after I finished some rather enthusiastic pruning with Dad’s electric saw (something I am not allowed to use at home after a few shall we say…interesting experiences…) Dad directed and I rectified the rose for him. Between us we did a fair bit. And maybe we’ll get to do a bit more together, because I still have an awful lot to learn 🙂

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Friday joy

Posted on May 16, 2025 by thepogblog

I think it says something about my mind….and possibly not a good something…that I just squealed with joy over this:

Yes.  That’s a mop and bucket.  but it’s not any old mop and bucket…oh no!  I mean, actually, the mop is pretty standard, but the bucket has magical powers; magical powers dressed up as a pedal.

You see, you do the mop in the water bit, them squeeze it out a bit in the basket, turn it 90°, squeeze it a bit more, then press the pedal and…it makes the mop go round and round really fast and takes all the excess water out and you don’t turn your entire kitchen into a great big puddle that may or may not dry before dinner.

I actually squealed.  I do hate mopping though, and now I might almost like it. And sometimes you have to find the joy in the little things.

Happy Friday 🙂

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The random bits Tuesday

Posted on May 15, 2025 by thepogblog

This Tuesday my new and slightly unexpected job was…wait for it…mattress surgeon:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(New mattresses have now been identified, negotiated, ordered and will be delivered on the Tuesday I have my mattress receiving hat on).

Next I was promoted to shoe pair-er support person when Mum bought one shoe at a time out of her room and against the odds, ended up with these three:

We got there in the end though.

In other news, Mum has a bit of a focus on stealing at the moment.  She had no idea where her brand new shirt with tags that we found in the wardrobe had come from and she wondered if she’d perhaps stolen it.  (She hadn’t; she’d bought it on a shopping expedition with Sister 2). She’d also hidden her handbag to stop ‘the girls’ (me and my sisters) from stealing her money.  Her money is not kept in her handbag.  Her Blue badge is though, and it took a bit of searching to find it in the corner of her wardrobe floor underneath a few random trainers… 🤦🏼‍♀️😬

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The not everything is the truth Tuesday

Posted on May 8, 2025 by thepogblog

Do not be fooled by this innocent, happy looking face:

Below the surface (and this week not very far below the surface), there lurks a grumpy, often shouty, frequently obnoxious old lady who, given half a chance will swear black is white and white is black.  And be warned, she is very convincing and will have anyone not on their guard believing that what she says is absolutely, completely and utterly the truth.

This Tuesday included – among other things – a trip to have Mum MOT’ed.  It was actually a visit to the ‘Community Mental Health Services for Older People’ for an annual physical health check.  We seem to have moved from fighting for Mum to see someone – anyone –  medical to pleading with people not to add any more things to her list of issues.  I think the nurse got that when she commented that we’d been able to answer ‘yes’ to every ‘have you had / do you have?’ question she asked.  The only exception was ‘do you have a respiratory illness such as COPD?’ and I was able to say no; it was Dad with that one.

The nurse and I did give Mum the chance to answer the questions, but she struggles with finding the words to answer…until she disagrees with what you’re saying.  The nurse asked what Mums diet is like.  I said she has a very sweet tooth with a love for biscuits and cakes.  Mum talked over the end of my sentence in her obnoxious old lady voice that ‘I do NOT eat biscuits and cakes’.  Now, there was no way to disprove this, so in these situations I’ve just started to agree with her.  But a little later the nurse asked about mammograms and I explained that having had breast cancer many years ago, Mum only has one boob.  The obnoxious old lady came out again with ‘I do NOT only have one boob!’  I pointed out that it would be pretty easy to find out which one of us was right on this topic and for once it was Mum who went quiet and from that point the nurse checked every answer with me…

So I guess this Tuesdays message is that not everything you see and hear is the truth, in any situation (but especially with my Mum) 😁🤦🏼‍♀️

PS: To keep it real, while I do my best to make light of this, it can be really hard to deal with so while I find the smiles to write this, for me, my sisters and I imagine my Dad…and everyone else who looks after someone whose light is slowly going out…there are tears too.  If you are one of those people, I get it and I send you my love. x

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A tea and cake Tuesday

Posted on May 1, 2025 by thepogblog

After taking Mum to see her sister last week, and Mum then telling my sisters that I went without her (how did she remember that I went but forgot that she came too?!), I did think twice about how much effort should go into her outings.  Apparently she was quite cross that I hadn’t taken her…🤦🏼‍♀️

But I guess even if she doesn’t remember a few hours later, she does enjoy doing things in the moment, and people spend forever learning how to live in the moment, so maybe I should just accept that Mum has actually attained a higher level of…something.

So this week, at Lovely Friends suggestion, we went to  ‘Cafe on the Green’ a weekly event at a nearby village where older people gather for tea and biscuits, a good natter and occasional activities.  This is something Mum would usually hate and walking in I had butterflies in my tummy.  She loved it.  I think it helped that Lovely Friend came to sit with us while we were there, but Mum also loved that the helpers chatted to her (and cleverly didn’t ask her any questions so she didn’t have to do anything other than say hello in return).  It was Valerie’s 90th birthday.  Valerie didn’t look a day over 79.  We all sang happy birthday to Valerie and in return were given a slice of  birthday cake.  That was also a highlight for Mum.  She’s a sucker for a piece of cake.

So we will go back to Cafe on the Green.  I imagine it might be a new experience for Mum each time we go.  I’m just hoping she doesn’t decide that I’ve been going without her…

I also drove Mum to see this wisteria….it’s absolutely stunning.  She’d forgotten that before we even got back home though 🤦🏼‍♀️

 

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Dear Royal Mail…

Posted on April 24, 2025 by thepogblog

Dad told me a story this week that is one of those really lovely ones.  I’m writing a thank you letter as a result, as it’s one of those times that reminds you of the loveliness that is out there.  This is the letter that I am writing:

Dear Royal Mail,

I’m writing this to say thank you very much to the post people  from your delivery office who have reminded me just how lovely people can be.

Here’s a bit of background:

My Mum has advanced Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.  My Dad has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).  Essentially Mum’s mind and Dad’s lungs don’t work.  It’s a tricky combination which ultimately means that they rarely leave the house together.

Over a year ago, I wrote out  a card for Mum to have by the phone at home so that should anything happen to Dad she had instructions on calling 999 and the basic information to get an ambulance there.  On the back of the card are mine and my sisters numbers in the hope that the paramedics would call us.  All it actually achieved was highlighting that Mum couldn’t read anymore and no longer understood how to use the phone.  But I’ve left it there incase maybe it’s useful to someone in the future.

What I didn’t know is that on the occasional trips Dad manages out, he carries the card incase something happens so that he can be easily identified and we can be contacted (he wont hear of wearing an alarm around his neck).

Dad made one of his trips  last week – maybe the fourth this year – which included posting a birthday card.  He got out the car next to the letterbox, posted it, got back in the car and realised that he no longer had his card with him.  He’d popped that into the box too. His other stop that day was the bank in town, where he managed to leave his reading glasses on the ATM, so I suspect the excitement of the outing might have got a bit too much!

Anyway, it was only an index card with the hand written details on them, but the very next day it was posted, along with his other mail, through his letter box.  That means that the post person who emptied that mail box, presumably a sorter of mail and Mum and Dad’s postman all cared enough to get it back to the right place.

And I can’t tell you how much that has made me (and Dad) smile.

If there is a way for you to identify who these people are, please could you thank them very much?  It might seem like a small thing, but to us it really wasn’t.

Warm wishes,

Pog.

And in other Tuesday news, after washing and dressing (we’ve moved on from ‘how many pairs of pants should one person wear at a time?’, and moved onto ‘should socks go under or in top of slippers?’ and ‘how many socks should each foot have?’), we went to see Mums sister and then for coffee and toasted sandwich as a bit of a lunch treat on the way back.  By the time I left Mum couldn’t remember what she’d had for lunch, who we’d visited or what my name was. But that’s thats the way of this thing; it is what it is. 🙂

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Salon Pog Tuesday

Posted on April 10, 2025 by thepogblog

What do you do when Mummy W – who can no longer understand the concept of time – becomes obsessed with having her hair cut? (And by ‘obsessed’, I mean asking many multiple times a day when she will be going, repeatedly putting her shoes on and getting ready to leave the house to go to the appointment and making hysterical phone calls to sister 2 about when she will go as she’s stopped believing Dad when he says it’s ‘not today’). It was getting a bit desperate as Sister 2 has made her and Dad an appointment and will be escorting them to it…but it was over a week away.

What do you do? Well, you look for your lockdown hair haircut scissors, fail at finding them and instead grab the first aid scissors, rock up at Mum and Dads (after an epic 2 hour cross country adventure after half a mile of the road you needed to go on was closed) via a Tesco shop and picking up bags of medications from their surgery, and inform Mummy W with absolute confidence that you heard she wanted a hair cut and in fact, you’ve been cutting peoples hair for years *** and can absolutely make her look gorgeous, just as soon as we have done the showering and hair washing…

So I did.

And for the record, it tuns out that first aid scissors that cut bandages are not necessarily sharp enough to cut hair 😳 But they were just about sharp enough to trim sufficient ends that they needed sweeping up and Mum mostly thought that she’d had a haircut. And I only had to remind her twice that day of this fact when she asked when she was going to the hairdressers. (I’m just hoping it stays that way until the actual appointment. And that the hairdresser forgives me).

So that’s what you do when Mummy W becomes obsessed with a haircut that isn’t happening for a while. And I’m kind of excited / worried / interested what other new careers I’ll be convincing Mum I excel at in the future. I’ll keep you updated 😁

*** I’ve actually only trimmed Mr Rs and the two stepsons in lockdown. Stepson one cried because it ‘hurt his hairs’. 🤦🏼‍♀️

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Muddled Life Practical Tip – ReSPECT process

Posted on April 4, 2025 by thepogblog

In a post a few weeks ago I mentioned creating ReSPECT forms for Mum and Dad.  A few people have asked me about it, and it’s something I was totally unaware of until more recently, so I thought I’d pop a bit of info here.

To make sure I don’t get anything wrong, the following text (apart from my note at the bottom) is lifted direct from The Resuscitation Council UK

What?

ReSPECT stands for Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment.  The form is not legally binding but they provide valuable guidance that should not be ignored during emergency decision-making.

Why?

The ReSPECT process creates a personalised recommendation for your clinical care in emergency situations, where you are not able to make decisions or express your wishes.

In an emergency, health or care professionals may have to make rapid decisions about your treatment, and you may not be well enough to discuss what is important to you. This plan empowers you to guide them on what treatments you would or would not want to be considered for, and to have recorded those treatments that could be important or those that would not work for you. Many treatments that can be life-sustaining for some people carry a risk of causing harm, discomfort or loss of dignity. Many people choose not to accept that risk if the likelihood of benefit from treatment is small. This plan is to record your preferences and agreed realistic recommendations for emergency situations, whatever stage of life you are at.

ReSPECT may be used across a range of health and care settings, including the person’s own home, an ambulance, a care home, a hospice or a hospital. Professionals such as ambulance crews, out-of-hours doctors, care home staff and hospital staff will be better able to make immediate decisions about a person’s emergency care and treatment if they have prompt access to agreed clinical recommendations on a ReSPECT plan.

Who?

This plan can be for anyone, but will have increasing relevance for people who have complex health needs, people who are likely to be nearing the end of their lives, and people who are at risk of sudden deterioration or cardiac arrest. Some people will want to record their care and treatment preferences for other reasons.

How?

The plan is created through conversations between a person and one or more of the health professionals who are involved with their care. The plan should stay with the person and be available immediately to health and care professionals faced with making immediate decisions in an emergency in which the person themselves has lost capacity to participate in making those decisions.

Where?

This is a UK initiative.

ReSPECT was initially introduced in some localities as part of a formal research evaluation taking place over three years. Alongside this, a network of health and care communities that are adopting and implementing the process is developing. Implementation will be a gradual process, with different health communities adopting and implementing ReSPECT using different timeframes, according to local or regional circumstances. If ReSPECT has already been adopted in your locality then you will be able to work with your health care professional to develop a plan.

Many parts of England and Scotland have now adopted the ReSPECT process, while Northern Ireland and Wales are yet to adopt ReSPECT.  Have a read through this data to find out if it’s been adopted where you live.

Note from me: 

A DNR or DNACPR (Do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)’) form is a separate form specifically about resuscitation in the case of a cardiac arrest or sudden death.  (This is not legally binding unless an Advance Decision to Refuse Treatment (ADRT) has been made).

The ReSPECT form states whether a DNR and/or ADRT is in place, but is a much wider document (‘process’ is the correct word according to Google, as it includes the conversations and guidance from a medical professional that are an essential part) covering details including – for example – preference of being treated at home vs hospital and what degree of advanced care the individual feels is appropriate, and where they would prefer to die.

This is rather heavy and made for a few uncomfortable conversations, but to my mind, getting the right care for someone you care about set out (with them where possible) is so important that it’s worth a few moments or ‘urgh’ 😬

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The leaf collecting Tuesday

Posted on April 3, 2025 by thepogblog

I’m not sure if Mums legs are not working so well or if she is getting tired faster, but this Tuesday after the shortest walk from car to coffee shop, Mum had mostly had enough.  So we went for a drive instead. We seem to be past the point where she enjoys music and instead finds too much noise offensive, so we mostly drove in silence and I watched her watching the world go by.  She seemed to like that.

I did suggest a party afterwards, and while she wasn’t up for the dancing, she was up for the cake (surprise, surprise!)

You may have seen on my last post that I am about to attempt composting.  The flaw Mr R and I realised last week though is that we need a green and brown mix, and veggie cuttings are only one of these (I’m not sure which), but the other is mostly leaves and grass cuttings.  And while we have many veggie cuttings, we don’t have a lawn or a tree that has dropped sufficient leaves in the garden to collect up.  But Mum and Dad live with a wood either side of them and one thing they have an absolute excess of is leaves.  So I popped out into their garden to gather a sack.  And it was so lovely that I collected many, many leaves on the shady side of the garden to help out a bit.  While I was doing that, and Mum was standing in the kitchen doorway asking if I’d finished yet and telling me she felt sick when I said no (she likes being the focus at all times), Dad thought he’d come out to ‘see if I can get to the top of the garden, do a bit of pruning and still breathe’.  I thoroughly approved of testing this while I was there to help out should he need either a piggy back or an ambulance, so between leaf piles I rushed up and down to check if either were required.  And the good news is they weren’t 🙂.  Which is a good thing as I’d realised the logistics of piggy-backing Dad were probably not something I could manage successfully alone…

So this Tuesday there was cake, more cake, leaves, pruning and sun.  And I think that makes for a pretty good Tuesday 🙂

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Advanced composting

Posted on March 31, 2025 by thepogblog

I really enjoy having a nice garden.  I am, however, pretty terrible at actual gardening.  Both my parents and Mr Rs parents are amazing gardeners and I am often asking for hints, tips and help (and on Tuesdays I am occasionally accompanied to Mum and Dads by a plant in dire need of resuscitation, which they put in plant hospital and get looking better than it ever did at my house).

Mr R’s Mum and Dad have a compost heap and I became really interested in this last year as maybe that was the magic ingredient my plants were missing…decent compost.  Also, we throw out so many vegetable cuttings and peelings and surely composting would be more eco friendly?  And bless them, they bought us a compost thingamy for Christmas.  We just need to set it up. Only we don’t really know what we are doing.  But it’s ok!  The day has been saved!  As last week I saw the Village Repair Cafe cross post to the Village Gardening Network on facebook that the next guest at their monthly meeting was going to be a compost expert.

To my amazement, Mr R agreed to come with me.  Stepson 2 nearly fell off his barstool laughing.  Mr R told him there would be a rave afterwards and Stepson 2 commented that was clearly the only reason his Dad was going.  Being the older in mind than everyone else, I explained that even if the village garden network meetings were rounded off with a quick rave, we’d not stay that long as we’d have to get back with enough time for a nettle tea before bed.

We went.  Stepson 2 requested evidence if we weren’t actually the youngest people there.  Evidence was provided (I meant to write ‘youngest’. We weren’t the oldest either though).

And actually, of the 45 or so people there, at least five (In addition to the baby) were younger than us, and it was a really interesting evening.  I mean, we probably needed a basic level composting talk before going into that, but there was some amazing information about getting serotonin (the happy chemical) from the soil and the importance of the soil biome on the gut biome (I think that’s what he said).  And we know now that…well, we know it’s probably more complicated than we’d thought, but I have ordered a bokashi bin in addition to the big green thingamy so we can get started as soon as possible as one thing we did discover is that our soil is not great, shop bought compost is not great and…I’ve forgotten to plant the blimin’ tomato seeds again.  I’m hoping Beryl up the road has some sparsies again this year otherwise I’m going to have all the compost and nothing in it.

Still…one step at a time, eh? 🙂

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