I am sad

I can feel the tentacles of senility moving inexorably through what is left of my brain.
I cannot hold a thought for more than a few seconds.
My memory memory is practically non-existent.

Yesterday I was checking on my friends dogs.........while I was there I talked to her with her home phone.........still chatting away I locked her front door............then she asked me if I was taking her phone with me.

The phone is problematic......I ring someone but forget I am on the phone...........I forget to hang up the phone.......so I am walking around the house with the phone tucked under my ear.......!

Words are deserting me.........in the middle of conversations I forget a word........or
can't figure how the word is pronounced.   In the middle of writing a familiar word it no longer makes sense to me.

I am afraid..........I want my mind back...........I really want my mind back.

Lost within reach

The last time I have some items are the last time I see them.  For instance.................I had some stewing steak........................I know I bought it but I could not find it.  I cleaned out the whole fridge and still nothing.  I definitely remember putting it into the fridge but its whereabouts..... a mystery.

The answer is that I cleaned the fridge out during the week before and in a moment of madness threw the steak out with the soggy greens, mouldy cheese, and left over left overs from meals dating to pre-history.

I found it in a stinky bag of smelly rubbish..................in the bin.........................in pristine packaging...............sadly never to be cooked and eaten.................. too rotten to even be made into dog food.

One would think I would learn not to dispose of meat in such a cavalier manner.  Last year I deposited chicken drum sticks onto the top of the fridge and into a basket full of receipts.  I only found them because of the increasing odour that turned out not to be a dead mouse or puppy poo.

I don't restrict myself to losing food but other goodies, more expensive than chicken and steak.  I started going to a quilting class and decided to cut out a lot of fabric to be made into cushions.  I enthusiastically cut out about fifteen lots of material...................I was on a roll but the cushions never made...........................I threw out everything in the re-cycling bin.  For an unknown reason I put the fabric in the recycling basket..............................needless to say.........................the fabric departed along with old papers, cereal packaging, dog and cat tins and so on.

This week I have lost the Red Hat ladies fabric that I planned on making something for my friend. I thought of making her a shopping bag or a cushion.  She belongs to a Red Hat Lady group and was so pleased when I showed her the material.  The fabric was expensive and not something that can be replaced easily.

I am making a resolution.  I will not tidy up.  I will not throw things out.  If I do have to throw something out I will make sure that I am only throwing out the thing I need to.  Perhaps I can get a person to police my out going........................a sort of Sargent at Arms........................  A Rubbish Whisperer.

I do believe I am on a down hill slope......................................slipping bit by bit into senility.  

Once upon a sewing machine.

Once upon a time I had an old Wertheim Sewing Machine.  It was a treadle and went just as fast as I wanted it to go.  Someone gave me the machine when I was about 13 or so and I used it for years.

I was forced to do dressmaking for four years in high school.  I hated it but I did learn a lot about not wasting material, drafting patterns and learning to decipher paper patterns.

Mum couldn't afford to buy me material so the school supplied it.  Of course there was the expectation that I would make something that looked good and was not wasteful.  The last thing I ever had to do was to make a suit.  I did the skirt but the jacket had me stumped.  I was supposed to do bound buttonholes but as I did a pretty bad job of ordinary buttonholes my failure was a certainty.

The teacher was not happy but I think they gave my dreadful travesty of a jacket to someone who really could sew.

When I left school I made most of my own clothes on the trusty old treadle.  The treadle, made in the days when the utilitarian was also beautiful.  My machine has mother of pearl flowers, marquetry and black iron work.  I know it has all this because it is in my lounge room.  I have kept it for all these years and it is capable of sewing.

It amazes me that when I had to do some sewing for a course that my machining skills had not only atrophied, but morbidly atrophied.

I decided to buy a machine and picked a Toyota Quilting machine.  Yeah well I thought it would be good, it had quilting on it, right?  I should have thought it out more clearly, if something is made by Toyota it would necessarily be fast!!!!  This machine should be called the Ferrari of machines.

I need slow.  I need a dear old thing that puddles and muddles along as I puddle and muddle with it. Never mind I will find something that lets me sew slowly...............very...........very..............slowly.

I want to learn how to quilt, really quilt................not dabble but really make something that someone would like to have on their bed.

I have learned how to do so many things and this is the next phase in my arrested development.  If I can sculpt, pot, silk dye, mosaic, draw and paint then surely I will get back some of the expertise that I must have had in a different life time, in a different time of life.  From 68 years on I will be a quilter by hell or high water.

P.S. I should point out that I can do all of the above but as a craft rather than as an artist.  I do not have an artistic bone in my body.

Birthday

I will be sixty-eight years old in another hour and a quarter.  Amazingly this does not fill me with joy.

I should be doing a little happy dance because I am healthy and my mind appears to be working as it always has done.  I am perhaps, more than a little vague but this not not changed markedly since adolescence.

I don't want to leave the Child of my Loins and Henny the puppy plus old grumpy Gracie Cat. I want to continue to follow our own Days of Our Lives in miniature.  I want to know what happens next..............I really want to know what happens next.

So at one minute past midnight I will be sixty-eight but not well pleased.







 

The Little Girl and the Old People

Once upon a time there was a little girl.  This girl was the only young person all around.  All the other people were really old.  Her Mum was old, her Mum's friends were old.  The teachers at school were old.  On the bus everyone but the little girl was old.  At the beach, all the ladies with fat tummies and wrinkly bathers were old.  There were old gardeners, old shop assistants and old engine drivers, even the doctors and nurses were old.

What was she to do in her world of old old people?  She did the only thing she could do.........she grew up.

Once upon a time was an old old lady.  Everyone around her was so young.  The doctors were young and so were the nurses.  The shop assistants were young and so were the bus and taxi drivers.  School teachers looked as if they should still be at school.  All her friends were younger than she was.  Everyone was young. The old old lady did not care that everyone was young because she knew in her heart she was just a little girl with a wrinkly exterior.

So the old old lady with the twinkly eyes did not care if she looked old or young.  The old old lady knew that she still had her imagination, her memories and something to look forward to.  She wondered just what would happen tomorrow, what she could learn tomorrow, who she would meet tomorrow.  The old old lady was happy.

Once upon a time there was an old lady...................................who died.

Patience

My vacuum cleaner and I have a hate hate relationship.  We have been partners for over twenty years and for the most part our relationship has not been amicable.

Damien Spawn of the Devil plays dirty, he hooks himself around door frames, furniture, my legs. He deliberately twists up his hose and rids himself of his wand  He sucks up small objects so his vac doesn't vac. To be fair, I have had so many tantrums with Damien that he bears the scars.  He is broken and battered, has great chunks missing and his wand cracked in half.  Said wand is tastefully repaired with masking tape and is extremely fragile.  I have been known to pick Damien up by his hose and shake him. shouting "Let that be a lesson to you."

I find Damien's head the most annoying.  It sucks up the curtains, stray bits of wool and string and falls off regularly.  It is the most important part of Damien and costs the most to replace.  I have replaced his head at least four or five times since we became unhappy partners.  I think we are so incompatible that we should have been divorced years ago.

Because Damien is so difficult to get along with I have gone behind his back and bought a lovely light vacuum that is also a dust buster.  No more will I wait until the carpet starts to grow fungus or even disappear under coats of dust, cat fur, dog fur and etc. before I am forced to take my mortal enemy out of the cupboard.   My lovely new vac does not grab onto stray bits of furniture, nor does it clog, wind, hook, any or all of the above.

My new vac is so lovely that I have decided to call her Patience.  I predict Patience and I will have a wonderful and loving relationship.  I don't want to be precipitous in my evaluation so will wait for a week or so before I make up my mind.   However, I believe Patience and I will become the best of friends.  If we continue as we have commenced I will leave feedback for readers (should I have any) in case they might want to purchase their own Patience.

Ps. Would that patience be purchased in a store.

Dental hygeine

Always put toothpaste on the bristles of the toothbrush otherwise it feels like the cat is licking your tongue.

Epiphany

My epiphany today is............................................in this heatwave we need to spare a thought to the birds and little animals.......................they need someone to put out water for them.  Even the koalas have come down from their trees to drink bottled water supplied by Good Samaritans.

The elderly and the very young are particularly vulnerable on the hot days.................................however, my real epiphany is an answer to the homeless out in this dreadful heat..............................FREE admission to the Ice-arena.

The homeless on ice......................................................the new reality programme for 2014.................where would they park their trolleys?