Soop's kitchen extension

Nelliemoser that looks beautiful from indoors! I appear to have missed the odd flake of snow here, must have blinked. I am not complaining, I hate it. Another cold but dry day here today. I await the kitchen man- the sooner he comes the sooner he will leave.

I think a friend has lost it- she thought he was travelling Birmingham to London by train-not sure where doors and cupboards would be, never mind his tools. The work top surface alone would cause a problem carrrying it! She has recently had her house refurbished so she knew they appeared in vans.

I just HATE kitchen fitters who take up empty seats with units and work tops don't you?
I wonder when your friend last tried to squeeze onto a Virgin West Coast Pendolino with more than a handbag ?
Today we are eschewing (big word) Mr Branson's trains and hoping that the journey to the Royal Free will be effortless and much more comfortable!!

Alea it will be totally painfree for yourself and DH for once. The only thing feeling any pain will be your wallet. Good luck and I hope that you will not be hanging around waiting for too long in OPD. The entire journey there and home again will be a lot less stressful for yourself.

At least the weather is fair here if very cold- no sign of snow.

Good morning all!

I continue to exclamation marks freely and I don't care !!

I'm amazed at the amount of snow some of you have - but do love the picture Nellie . I can say that from a totally snow free Essex.

Annsixty I'm glad your appointment went well but have to agree withTizliz about the whole eye and injections thing and think you're VERY brave. I hope that your further treatment helps. I , like you, can't imagine impaired vision and really don't want to.

Alea as a past commuter I chuckled at the thought of the kitchen fitters on the train. It's bad enough with builders on the underground with their wheelie tool cases , and people who want to balance their laptops on their laps and work at 0630 ( looking I might add like naughty schoolboys who forgot to do their homework the night before !)

Our mystery shop went off swimmingly yesterday although I never make any money because Himself likes to come along and so we always spend more than I would make

Today is swimming day with DGS3 . We pick him up after preschool lunch club ( sounds posher than it is ) and head to the gym. He has his own membership and loves to go. Good habits early I think. They have automatic doors and I love to see him run up , throw his arms wide and shout 'Open Sesame' confident that he has the power to make it happen.

Hope everyone has a good day, gets where they're going quickly and without incident and that sun shines on us all.

Hope today goes well Alea and you enjoy your upgraded transport
I have to admit ( not willingly, I like a bit of admiration) that the eye injections are not as horrendous as they sound .
You do get used to them, but I will be very pleased if they come to an end.

The A54 is a major trunk road and it gets cleared ASAP. It also blocks quite easily.
At the bottom of the start of the hilly bits there is a permanent electronic sign by the traffic lights which flashes warnings when the roads are blocked.
That says a lot about the roads around there.

Hello everyone!

Alea, enjoy your day and hope all goes well for DH.

Ann, I too an in awe of your having injections in your eyes.

I am envious (I think!) of people who have had snow as it is lovely to look at.

I have just spent a lovely 15 minutes watching a blackcap, a wren and a robin on the bird feeders and hopping in and out of the hedge. My real treat was that I was eating lemon and almond cake and drinking hot chocolate. Unfortunately, I had made the cake for a meeting here yesterday and forgotten to get it out! Please eat it so I don't!!

Sounds gorgeous and I am feeling a bit peckish at present, having had breakfast around 7.30am waiting for the kitchen man to come. I will have mine with coffee rather than hot chocolate I think.

Hello...Good Afternoon...or, as some (not I) would say, Hiya

The care home is open. After almost three weeks the ladies and I carried on where we'd left off. The same memories surface and we all know what it is we believe we're discussing.

Alea travel well today. And not before time. You and your husband deserve to enjoy the pleasure of travelling in comfort with as little hassle as possible. Your response to Charleyg's post made me hoot.

Ann Good for you. That's another appointment that has reaped some real benefit. I've had cataract surgery. It wasn't painful or distressing. A nice young man held my hand throughout.

kitty your cake sounds too scrummy for words. I'm almost licking my lips in anticipation. The reason why I never bake a cake is because, unlike bags I would not ration myself and would almost certainly keep going back for "just one wee bit more..." Best to avoid cake in this hoos.

NanaandGrampy Good for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charleyg Good times they are a coming. Hang on in there. By the way, I prefer small kitchens. I always find a small house (like ours) so much easier to manage/clean/...I wish that the garden was as easy to care for. In a previous life, I was always the gardener, but arthritis and fibromyalgia have caught up with me. A bit of a buggeration I call it.

Whew, home about 3 hours earlier than if we had done the train thing! It came to £112 including waiting time , but worth it as DH was absolutely knackered from all the trailing round. You can walk MILES in hospital can't you? Liver clinic decided he needed a chest x-Ray so we had to trek down to A&E in the basement but because the hospital is having extensive refurbishments and extensions,the access was all "round the houses", hence the miles!

Meant to say DH retired to bed at 7.30 quite honestly I would rather not think about how he would not have coped with the train. And I had a wee nap in the back of the car!

We are also back from the hospital. We could not get parked in the car park, luckily we were early so parked in Tesco and walked the half mile. The clinic was running late and the news was not all good. The melanoma removed last month is clear but there are two more they want to look at. The trouble is OH worked outside during his teens and twenties so too much sun, worse when he worked in the Middle East (don't suppose there was too much sun when he worked in The Shetlands!). Still it is better that they are spotted now.

Glad to hear that you are home safe and sound. One has to be fit to go to a hospital because of all of the walking around. Gone are the days when a wheelchair would be available. That was an awful lot of money but it would appear to have been well spent. With luck you will also have an early night.
I hope that Grace survived the trauma of staying at home.

Just had a short break at a Warners Adult resort (Corton). Basically a holiday camp, but a bit more up market that I remember Butlins used to be.
Great entertainment, good food, good service, adequate accommodation, and an extremely good price. Thoroughly recommend it for a short break.

Oh fingers crossed Tizliz that your prompt action will have got them in time.

Tizliz I hope you get it all done soon. The quicker the diagnosis the quicker the treatment is carried out
Life is never worry free is it? I often think we are being tested and always hope the prizes are worth it !!!

I've been there, Tizliz - that's good news that the biopsy was negative. Once they get going, they usually get on with it fast. My feet hardly touched the ground once the biopsy came back positive, but when they dug a chunk of muscle out of my neck, surrounding the melanoma, it was the thinnest (0.1 of a millimetre) they'd ever seen at Christies in Manchester. I hope it turns out well when they have a look at the other suspects, and the sooner the better.

Hello all, I`ve been held captive by a computer virus for the last few days, really annoying, so glad to be back.
Soop, so sorry to read about the poor man in the village, it`s awful when someone can die and nobody misses them, isn`t it?
The roofer men came back on Friday, we now have a brilliant, spanking brand new fibreglass roof on the bathroom and garage. Now we`re waiting for the bill to arrive in the post.

Good Morning all.

It's raining men here ...well cats and dogs at least! We are on the pre school run every morning this week as DGS4 is still super spotty with the chicken pox.

Swimming was fun yesterday but we do come home shattered. So today we are doing something without any grandchildren first thing and we're off to the cinema for a 'Senior showing' of The Martian.

Himself fancied it and I'm going along for the free cup of tea and a biscuit!

Mind you - talk about stereotyping - how do they know us 'Seniors' wouldn't refer a dry martini and olive or a Strawberry Daiquiri and crisps? I suspect the all in price of £3 a ticket dictates the refreshments

I'm glad those that were heading off for medical appointments got it all done and dusted and hope that today will be a mellow one for recovery.

Having had the kitchen fitter here all day yesterday I was looking forward to a relaxing shower and early night. No such luck, I was up at 12.30am trying to find an emergency plumber. My hot water tank sounded like an aircraft about to take off as did the shower in the bathroom. In the end I had to leave it until this am because thankfully I had a gas safe engineer coming to switch on my hob again. He said that I need a new shower pump- only around £400 without labour. He did show me how to have a shower etc and switch everything off afterwards as a temporary measure.

I will be reserving a bed for myself in the local hospital which also has a psychiatric wing. I will not be in touch because I do not have a lap top. I need my rest I think. Goodbye for the present.

That is why I am having NOTHING done. As up thread I will stay in the 1990's flocked wallpaper and all.
Charleygirl .

It does seem sometimes that one thing leads to another and the hassle is so much you wish you hadn't started in the first place. Only minor here but after having my broadband upgraded I needed to reconfigure my Sky box but only realised when I wanted to record something - it took ages and I was cursing by the time I had finished.

I think that some you think it is me with the melanoma problems - just want to make it clear it is my husband. I have never sunbathed, far too boring, and never go out in strong sun as I burn (typical Scottish fair skin). But I will pass your best wishes on to him. Even though he has abandoned me again today as he wants to 'zero' in his new rifle and there is no wind today and a friend has offered him the use of his range (bit of a loose term I think it is just a field on his farm). It is sunny but cold here.

Charleygirl there could be a fight for a bed in the psychiatric wing - sounds bliss.

There is a lot of buggeration about isn't there!

Yesterday, after visiting mum, who talked complete rubbish for the whole hour and a half of my visit but who also needed proper responses, I spotted an empty room - shall I see if we could have it on a rotational basis?

While I was with Mum, the lady who walks all the time included Mum's (quite small) room in her circuit, a lady was shouting for help in another room and a man called John kept shouting that he had poo pooed himself - so it might not be a good idea really, it's wouldn't be terribly restful. I was quite tempted to have a quick lie down though - with the door shut!!

Oh dear, Charleygirl you are having a very stressful time.

I thought our refurbishment was two steps forward and one step back, but yours sounds like one step forward two steps back.


I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it better for everyone.
Luckily I have DGD here today who has jumped over the new furniture, so it feels a bit more homely now

Jalima

I'm home again after a morning of intense ironing activity. I've now caught up with chesty cough brigade. Sound like a fog-horn and feel lousy. Never mind, things could be so much worse.

Alea Hang the expense. You needed the benefit of the personal taxiing transportation. And, yes...aren't hospitals the worst place to find oneself wandering from clinic to clinic. I always think that the staff should be super-fit as they walk miles on end during the course of a day.

Chaleyg Sometime soon everything will fall into place. I admire your tenacity.

Kindly words, NanaandGrampy

number It transpires that the man in the village (only 54) was given to wading expeditions into the burn after a few too many tots of the hard stuff. He may well have slipped and found that he couldn't right himself. It is all very sad. He lived alone. No-one would have missed him.

kitty A big, warm hug from me to you. Visiting a care home is far from relaxing.