April update
Apr. 12th, 2019 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaIt has been a good long while since I updated – a good long while since I did much of anything online, beyond a few stolen minutes here and there!
So what has been happening? I would cut a long story short, but who am I kidding? I never cut any story short!
So, on Thursday 7 March, I broke up with my boyfriend of 5 years – and about time, really, the split has been a long time coming. Should have done it sooner. And that's all I want to say about that.
On Friday 8 March, my 3-year-old niece Layla-May came for her weekly sleepover, as usual. Layla-May, I should add as a reminder, is being raised by my parents, who are her legal guardians, because her own parents completely flaked out on her, but I won't go into all that here.
On Saturday 9 March, I had a message from Dad that he'd taken Mum to A&E and she was being admitted immediately to have her long-awaited hernia surgery as an emergency procedure, therefore could I keep Layla.
Mum's post-op advice said at least six weeks with no bending, stretching or lifting of any kind – not having a toddler bashing into or jumping onto her stomach (or accidentally kicking it in the night) kind of goes without saying. The hernia was very large and was on the brink of perforation, so recovery has to be slow and steady, can't risk any tears, which would almost certainly lead to necrosis.
Therefore, Layla been with me ever since – five weeks as of tonight.
The first two weeks, I took annual leave from work to look after Layla – although I did go to work the first Monday, as my sister Deb was down from Yorkshire, so she had Layla for the day while I ran into work to handover work and rearrange/cancel a bunch of stuff, like my annual appraisal and training courses I was booked on, organise cover for meetings I was due to attend, etc.
That first Monday, Layla's mum Chelsea also came over to 'help out'…but turned up with her friend's one-year-old, who she'd agreed to babysit for the day, and then promptly left all the actual looking after to everyone else. From Layla's point of view, it really knocked her for six. Her little world had already been turned upside down, so for the mum she loves but who doesn't look after her to turn up with another baby, and then later leave with that baby, on top of everything else going on, was really unsettling and confusing for her.
Deb returned to Yorkshire on the Tuesday - left Cardiff at 10am and arrived home at 2.55pm for a meeting at 3pm with the social worker!
I was then off work for the rest of the next two weeks, keeping Layla with me as much as possible so that Mum could have total rest, while also taking her there to visit every day, so that some sense of normality could be maintained. She needed to at least see her Nanna every day, even if she wasn't being looked after by her, plus their place is much easier to get her to and from nursery…although she caught a heavy cold and was off nursery for quite a few days out of the fortnight. Taking her there every day also meant I could take on some of the cleaning and cooking that Mum wasn't able to do, and provide support that way as well. That first week in particular, Mum couldn't really do anything more than sit in her chair – any movement of any kind was painful, even just leaning forward slightly. She couldn't even sit at the table to eat, but had to have a plate alongside her (with the food already cut up).
On the Wednesday of the second week, Layla's health visitor came out for her three-and-a-half year check, which went well. Layla's growth has plateau'd slightly – she's gone down from the 110th centile to the 98th! She's the height of an average six-year-old! The health visitor also provided a lot of really useful post-surgical advice, as she used to be an intensive care nurse!
That afternoon, even as I was walking to collect Layla from nursery, they called to say she'd had an accident. She describes it as a three-way collision of peddle-cars, which ended with Layla's mouth smacking into the apparently cast-iron head of another child, leaving her with a mouthful of blood and a loosened front tooth – cue emergency trip to the dentist, only for Layla to fall asleep in the waiting room and sleep through the entire consultation! I wish I could do that! The dentist phoned twice that evening to check up on her, he was worried she might have concussion, but she was just tired and stressed. So we had to put her on soft food for quite a few days, and teach her to chew and drink out of the side of her mouth, to protect the tooth while it re-settled (which, touch wood, it seems to have done).
Week three, my brother Simon and I juggled days off work, and then week four Simon had off work completely, which meant I could return to work knowing there was an extra person there to look after Layla so that Mum could rest, but she was still with me in the nights, and remains so this week, the first week post-surgery when it's been just Mum and Dad doing childcare during the day. This is, of course, standard operating procedure for them, as Layla's legal guardians, but ordinarily Mum does the bulk of the childcare, and while Dad is very well-meaning, he does have a bad habit of falling asleep leaving Layla to her own devices, or thinking to himself 'she's quiet, so I'll just go and do so-and-so', and then getting so absorbed in that other task that he completely loses track of time, plus he isn't the most patient person in the world where childcare is concerned, which is why we made sure there was always someone else to look after Layla for those first four weeks.
Mum is getting a lot better now – still a way to go, and it's been a slower recovery than she'd hoped, but she's getting there. I think she has found this week quite a strain, though, which is worrying, as I'm not sure I can take any more time off work just at the moment.
So that's been the last five weeks of my life! It's been quite an upheaval and a bit tiring and stressful, with lots of running around trying to be all things to all people, but we're coping, just about!
On that note, though, I was talking to a colleague the other day and mentioned some of this, not in great detail, but just to explain why I haven't been in much lately – and this is someone I thought of as a friend – but they just laughed and said, 'you should try having a baby', and that was actually a bit upsetting and made me feel inferior and inadequate, in a way that a certain type of parent often can make childless people feel inferior and inadequate for not having children of their own.
But actually, no, I don't think it's the same situation at all. Because yes, having a baby is a hell of a big deal and is all kinds of hard work and all the rest of it, but having the care of someone else's child thrust upon you unexpectedly, for an extended period of time, is both tiring and stressful in many of the same ways, while also having a whole host of completely different stresses and strains piled on top.
I mean, when you have a child of your own, you generally know in advance that it is going to happen, and you usually know roughly when it is going to happen, so you get a period of months in which to prepare both yourself and your living arrangements for the arrival of that child. The birth of your child is something to be anticipated and celebrated. The child is yours, and you therefore organise yourself so that everything you need for the child is right there, in your own home, where it is needed – including a dedicated bedroom (and wardrobe) for that child. You get a period of time off work after the birth in which to adjust to having this new little person in your life. By the time you return to work, you have had time to arrange both your and your child's daily routine around your working hours and childcare arrangements. When your child goes to school, you have generally picked out a school close to where you live, so that the logistics of coordinating the school run with your daily commute to work are that much simpler. And so on. You are in control of all these arrangements.
But when you have the care of someone else's child thrust upon you without warning, you don't get any of those things. You don't get time to prepare, you don't have full control of all the arrangements, and because it isn't permanent there is only so much adjustment you can make – plus, it generally happens as a result of some kind of crisis, which is in itself stressful and worrying.
Although I have a lot of stuff in my flat for Layla, including a bed, there is a big difference between what is adequate for one night sleeping over a week, and what is suitable for full-time residence. Her child-bed, for instance, is in my back room, which is also the access route to the kitchen, so that when she is in bed, I can't use the kitchen without disturbing her, which makes it difficult both to get on with stuff in the evenings and to get ready for work in the mornings – it is also the only room in the house with decent wifi, which is one of the reasons I'm not online much even after she's asleep in the evenings (another being that I'm just generally really frazzled at the moment). And there isn't much I can do to change any of that, this being a one-bedroom flat and a temporary arrangement, although I have replaced the decorative curtains in that room, which let in a lot of light, with blackout curtains, so that she gets a better night's sleep. Layla doesn't have a wardrobe here, so has to live out of an overnight bag, which must be constantly checked to make sure we don't run out of anything, since given that she goes back and fore between my house and hers every day, her clothes also migrate to and from, sometimes randomly depending on where she gets changed any given day! If we have a lift back to my house from hers, the pushchair doesn't always come with her, which means it isn't always available to me when needed. Her school is a 40-minute walk from my flat, and I don't drive. Her daily routine is not synched with my full-time work routine, and there's only so much that can be done to shift either routine.
And so on, and so on, and these are all small things, but those small things can be quite wearing over time. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I think I am entitled to say that the last few weeks have been a bit tiring and stressful, even if the child I'm looking after isn't permanently mine. 'Parenthood is difficult and stressful' and 'looking after someone else's child unexpectedly is difficult and stressful' are not mutually exclusive statements! It isn't a competition.
But I won't belabour the point (she says, having already done so), except to add that there have been all kinds of added complications, of which Wednesday just gone is a prime example.
Now, since I've been back in work, we've developed a sort-of routine wherein my dad comes to my house each morning at around 7.45am – if Layla is still asleep (which she often is at that time) he sits with her while I run for the bus; if she's awake, we both get into the car and he gives me a lift to work before taking Layla back to his place for the day. Wednesday I was on a training course, so didn't have to be in till 9.30, so we'd arranged for Dad to come at 8.30 or thereabouts – a chance for a very slight lie-in, we thought! But then at 7.30am Mum phoned to ask if I could walk Layla to hers instead of having a lift, because Dad had had to go and take Chelsea to hospital, as she'd phoned to say she thought she had accidentally overdosed on paracetamol!
How do you accidentally overdose on paracetamol, you ask? Well, she had a cold, so her 'landlady' gave her some paracetamol, and every time she felt a bit rough she took a couple of pills without reference to either the clock or the instructions, because she is an idiot, and she'd suddenly realised that she had taken 29 pills in 48 hours! So Dad took Chelsea to hospital, and my arrangements for getting Layla to Mum and myself to my training course were completely up the creek.
Now, I can walk to Mum and Dad's in 20 minutes, but Layla can't – and of course I didn't have the pushchair, because it had been left at their house, for the nursery run, rather than at mine, as we were supposed to be having a lift. For that matter, Layla was still asleep, because we were expecting to have another hour before we left the house. So I had to wake her up, get her breakfasted and dressed in record time (and she is Not Good At Mornings), walk her down the hill to the bus stop (a 5 minute walk for me but more than 15 minutes for her, so she grumbled and asked to be carried the whole way), bus her as close as possible to our destination (only a little over halfway, since there isn't a convenient bus that does the whole journey), and then walk the rest of the way (again complaining and asking to be carried the whole way). Then, having dropped her off, I had to run back to the bus stop, catch a bus into town, and then run across town to the training centre (another 20-minute walk, since again there isn't a convenient bus that does the whole journey), and arrived just in the nick of time!
And then spent the day fretting about Chelsea instead of focusing on the training. She is okay, by the way – they admitted her and put her on a drip, medication to protect her liver, but she then had a bad reaction to that medication, so when her bloodwork came back and was reasonable, they sent her home again.
And that was just one day, one example of what my life is like at the moment.
What else has happened these last few weeks? Well, my sister Deb and her husband Ray have decided not to move forward with the sibling group they were being matched with for adoption, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was how farcical the whole process was becoming, with the children's current foster mother (keen to keep the children for herself because she is being paid extravagantly for having them) being given way too much power to prevent any forward move, and doing so repeatedly. Not to mention that they were expected to commit to meeting up with the fourth sibling (who the three have currently never even met) and its adoptive parents no less than six times a year, which a) is more than D&R see their own families, and b) might prove difficult once Ray is moved to his next posting, which could be anywhere in the country. And there were various other concerns, such as how close they live to the family the children were removed from plus how distinctive and identifiable their names are, and so on. D&R have been pushed toward this particular match since before they were officially approved, but I think felt pressured to go with it rather than believing it was genuinely right for them.
So they decided, with regret, to reject this particular match – knowing that Yorkshire is crying out for adoptive parents, and that since they were approved in January their social worker has had about 12 family finders approach him to ask about them, so there are plenty of children out there in need of the home they can offer. However, their stupid social worker (who I've had issues with throughout this whole process) then decided, in his so-called wisdom, that they need at least six weeks to 'grieve' for children who were never actually theirs, and therefore won't contemplate returning them to the matching process until sometime in May.
So impatient Deb decided to register with a family finder agency, which holds profiles of children available for adoption from all around the country – that agency then contacted Yorkshire on their behalf, to verify that they are approved to adopt, and despite their social worker's apparent qualms about plunging straight back into the matching process they were verified immediately and have now been sent an 89-page dossier. That's over 800 profiles of children available for adoption – not 800 children but 800 profiles, many of them for sibling groups. A very dangerous thing, because now Deb and Ray are sifting through this dossier and Deb keeps phoning to talk about this and that profile that she has fallen in love with – at this rate, she'll end up wanting to adopt all 800!
What else? My very frail Aunty Lel, my dad's sister, had a nasty fall in the garden and broke her arm in three places, but can't have the surgery she needs for it because she isn't strong enough for the anaesthetic, so she's been moved to a rehab hospital for physiotherapy – and Dad having to go back and forth, visiting her, meeting with her doctors, and looking after her cat, has been just another thing for us to juggle on top of everything else. Plus my Mum's sort-of aunt, Marge (her stepmother's first husband's sister), also had a fall and has broken her leg – and she is nearly 93 and already on a bit of a downward slope, so that's been really worrying.
And there's probably been more stuff that I'm just not thinking of right now. It has been quite a month! I'll stop here, though, and offer commiserations to anyone who has actually read this entire screed. Sorry to have moaned so much.
So what has been happening? I would cut a long story short, but who am I kidding? I never cut any story short!
So, on Thursday 7 March, I broke up with my boyfriend of 5 years – and about time, really, the split has been a long time coming. Should have done it sooner. And that's all I want to say about that.
On Friday 8 March, my 3-year-old niece Layla-May came for her weekly sleepover, as usual. Layla-May, I should add as a reminder, is being raised by my parents, who are her legal guardians, because her own parents completely flaked out on her, but I won't go into all that here.
On Saturday 9 March, I had a message from Dad that he'd taken Mum to A&E and she was being admitted immediately to have her long-awaited hernia surgery as an emergency procedure, therefore could I keep Layla.
Mum's post-op advice said at least six weeks with no bending, stretching or lifting of any kind – not having a toddler bashing into or jumping onto her stomach (or accidentally kicking it in the night) kind of goes without saying. The hernia was very large and was on the brink of perforation, so recovery has to be slow and steady, can't risk any tears, which would almost certainly lead to necrosis.
Therefore, Layla been with me ever since – five weeks as of tonight.
The first two weeks, I took annual leave from work to look after Layla – although I did go to work the first Monday, as my sister Deb was down from Yorkshire, so she had Layla for the day while I ran into work to handover work and rearrange/cancel a bunch of stuff, like my annual appraisal and training courses I was booked on, organise cover for meetings I was due to attend, etc.
That first Monday, Layla's mum Chelsea also came over to 'help out'…but turned up with her friend's one-year-old, who she'd agreed to babysit for the day, and then promptly left all the actual looking after to everyone else. From Layla's point of view, it really knocked her for six. Her little world had already been turned upside down, so for the mum she loves but who doesn't look after her to turn up with another baby, and then later leave with that baby, on top of everything else going on, was really unsettling and confusing for her.
Deb returned to Yorkshire on the Tuesday - left Cardiff at 10am and arrived home at 2.55pm for a meeting at 3pm with the social worker!
I was then off work for the rest of the next two weeks, keeping Layla with me as much as possible so that Mum could have total rest, while also taking her there to visit every day, so that some sense of normality could be maintained. She needed to at least see her Nanna every day, even if she wasn't being looked after by her, plus their place is much easier to get her to and from nursery…although she caught a heavy cold and was off nursery for quite a few days out of the fortnight. Taking her there every day also meant I could take on some of the cleaning and cooking that Mum wasn't able to do, and provide support that way as well. That first week in particular, Mum couldn't really do anything more than sit in her chair – any movement of any kind was painful, even just leaning forward slightly. She couldn't even sit at the table to eat, but had to have a plate alongside her (with the food already cut up).
On the Wednesday of the second week, Layla's health visitor came out for her three-and-a-half year check, which went well. Layla's growth has plateau'd slightly – she's gone down from the 110th centile to the 98th! She's the height of an average six-year-old! The health visitor also provided a lot of really useful post-surgical advice, as she used to be an intensive care nurse!
That afternoon, even as I was walking to collect Layla from nursery, they called to say she'd had an accident. She describes it as a three-way collision of peddle-cars, which ended with Layla's mouth smacking into the apparently cast-iron head of another child, leaving her with a mouthful of blood and a loosened front tooth – cue emergency trip to the dentist, only for Layla to fall asleep in the waiting room and sleep through the entire consultation! I wish I could do that! The dentist phoned twice that evening to check up on her, he was worried she might have concussion, but she was just tired and stressed. So we had to put her on soft food for quite a few days, and teach her to chew and drink out of the side of her mouth, to protect the tooth while it re-settled (which, touch wood, it seems to have done).
Week three, my brother Simon and I juggled days off work, and then week four Simon had off work completely, which meant I could return to work knowing there was an extra person there to look after Layla so that Mum could rest, but she was still with me in the nights, and remains so this week, the first week post-surgery when it's been just Mum and Dad doing childcare during the day. This is, of course, standard operating procedure for them, as Layla's legal guardians, but ordinarily Mum does the bulk of the childcare, and while Dad is very well-meaning, he does have a bad habit of falling asleep leaving Layla to her own devices, or thinking to himself 'she's quiet, so I'll just go and do so-and-so', and then getting so absorbed in that other task that he completely loses track of time, plus he isn't the most patient person in the world where childcare is concerned, which is why we made sure there was always someone else to look after Layla for those first four weeks.
Mum is getting a lot better now – still a way to go, and it's been a slower recovery than she'd hoped, but she's getting there. I think she has found this week quite a strain, though, which is worrying, as I'm not sure I can take any more time off work just at the moment.
So that's been the last five weeks of my life! It's been quite an upheaval and a bit tiring and stressful, with lots of running around trying to be all things to all people, but we're coping, just about!
On that note, though, I was talking to a colleague the other day and mentioned some of this, not in great detail, but just to explain why I haven't been in much lately – and this is someone I thought of as a friend – but they just laughed and said, 'you should try having a baby', and that was actually a bit upsetting and made me feel inferior and inadequate, in a way that a certain type of parent often can make childless people feel inferior and inadequate for not having children of their own.
But actually, no, I don't think it's the same situation at all. Because yes, having a baby is a hell of a big deal and is all kinds of hard work and all the rest of it, but having the care of someone else's child thrust upon you unexpectedly, for an extended period of time, is both tiring and stressful in many of the same ways, while also having a whole host of completely different stresses and strains piled on top.
I mean, when you have a child of your own, you generally know in advance that it is going to happen, and you usually know roughly when it is going to happen, so you get a period of months in which to prepare both yourself and your living arrangements for the arrival of that child. The birth of your child is something to be anticipated and celebrated. The child is yours, and you therefore organise yourself so that everything you need for the child is right there, in your own home, where it is needed – including a dedicated bedroom (and wardrobe) for that child. You get a period of time off work after the birth in which to adjust to having this new little person in your life. By the time you return to work, you have had time to arrange both your and your child's daily routine around your working hours and childcare arrangements. When your child goes to school, you have generally picked out a school close to where you live, so that the logistics of coordinating the school run with your daily commute to work are that much simpler. And so on. You are in control of all these arrangements.
But when you have the care of someone else's child thrust upon you without warning, you don't get any of those things. You don't get time to prepare, you don't have full control of all the arrangements, and because it isn't permanent there is only so much adjustment you can make – plus, it generally happens as a result of some kind of crisis, which is in itself stressful and worrying.
Although I have a lot of stuff in my flat for Layla, including a bed, there is a big difference between what is adequate for one night sleeping over a week, and what is suitable for full-time residence. Her child-bed, for instance, is in my back room, which is also the access route to the kitchen, so that when she is in bed, I can't use the kitchen without disturbing her, which makes it difficult both to get on with stuff in the evenings and to get ready for work in the mornings – it is also the only room in the house with decent wifi, which is one of the reasons I'm not online much even after she's asleep in the evenings (another being that I'm just generally really frazzled at the moment). And there isn't much I can do to change any of that, this being a one-bedroom flat and a temporary arrangement, although I have replaced the decorative curtains in that room, which let in a lot of light, with blackout curtains, so that she gets a better night's sleep. Layla doesn't have a wardrobe here, so has to live out of an overnight bag, which must be constantly checked to make sure we don't run out of anything, since given that she goes back and fore between my house and hers every day, her clothes also migrate to and from, sometimes randomly depending on where she gets changed any given day! If we have a lift back to my house from hers, the pushchair doesn't always come with her, which means it isn't always available to me when needed. Her school is a 40-minute walk from my flat, and I don't drive. Her daily routine is not synched with my full-time work routine, and there's only so much that can be done to shift either routine.
And so on, and so on, and these are all small things, but those small things can be quite wearing over time. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I think I am entitled to say that the last few weeks have been a bit tiring and stressful, even if the child I'm looking after isn't permanently mine. 'Parenthood is difficult and stressful' and 'looking after someone else's child unexpectedly is difficult and stressful' are not mutually exclusive statements! It isn't a competition.
But I won't belabour the point (she says, having already done so), except to add that there have been all kinds of added complications, of which Wednesday just gone is a prime example.
Now, since I've been back in work, we've developed a sort-of routine wherein my dad comes to my house each morning at around 7.45am – if Layla is still asleep (which she often is at that time) he sits with her while I run for the bus; if she's awake, we both get into the car and he gives me a lift to work before taking Layla back to his place for the day. Wednesday I was on a training course, so didn't have to be in till 9.30, so we'd arranged for Dad to come at 8.30 or thereabouts – a chance for a very slight lie-in, we thought! But then at 7.30am Mum phoned to ask if I could walk Layla to hers instead of having a lift, because Dad had had to go and take Chelsea to hospital, as she'd phoned to say she thought she had accidentally overdosed on paracetamol!
How do you accidentally overdose on paracetamol, you ask? Well, she had a cold, so her 'landlady' gave her some paracetamol, and every time she felt a bit rough she took a couple of pills without reference to either the clock or the instructions, because she is an idiot, and she'd suddenly realised that she had taken 29 pills in 48 hours! So Dad took Chelsea to hospital, and my arrangements for getting Layla to Mum and myself to my training course were completely up the creek.
Now, I can walk to Mum and Dad's in 20 minutes, but Layla can't – and of course I didn't have the pushchair, because it had been left at their house, for the nursery run, rather than at mine, as we were supposed to be having a lift. For that matter, Layla was still asleep, because we were expecting to have another hour before we left the house. So I had to wake her up, get her breakfasted and dressed in record time (and she is Not Good At Mornings), walk her down the hill to the bus stop (a 5 minute walk for me but more than 15 minutes for her, so she grumbled and asked to be carried the whole way), bus her as close as possible to our destination (only a little over halfway, since there isn't a convenient bus that does the whole journey), and then walk the rest of the way (again complaining and asking to be carried the whole way). Then, having dropped her off, I had to run back to the bus stop, catch a bus into town, and then run across town to the training centre (another 20-minute walk, since again there isn't a convenient bus that does the whole journey), and arrived just in the nick of time!
And then spent the day fretting about Chelsea instead of focusing on the training. She is okay, by the way – they admitted her and put her on a drip, medication to protect her liver, but she then had a bad reaction to that medication, so when her bloodwork came back and was reasonable, they sent her home again.
And that was just one day, one example of what my life is like at the moment.
What else has happened these last few weeks? Well, my sister Deb and her husband Ray have decided not to move forward with the sibling group they were being matched with for adoption, for a variety of reasons, not least of which was how farcical the whole process was becoming, with the children's current foster mother (keen to keep the children for herself because she is being paid extravagantly for having them) being given way too much power to prevent any forward move, and doing so repeatedly. Not to mention that they were expected to commit to meeting up with the fourth sibling (who the three have currently never even met) and its adoptive parents no less than six times a year, which a) is more than D&R see their own families, and b) might prove difficult once Ray is moved to his next posting, which could be anywhere in the country. And there were various other concerns, such as how close they live to the family the children were removed from plus how distinctive and identifiable their names are, and so on. D&R have been pushed toward this particular match since before they were officially approved, but I think felt pressured to go with it rather than believing it was genuinely right for them.
So they decided, with regret, to reject this particular match – knowing that Yorkshire is crying out for adoptive parents, and that since they were approved in January their social worker has had about 12 family finders approach him to ask about them, so there are plenty of children out there in need of the home they can offer. However, their stupid social worker (who I've had issues with throughout this whole process) then decided, in his so-called wisdom, that they need at least six weeks to 'grieve' for children who were never actually theirs, and therefore won't contemplate returning them to the matching process until sometime in May.
So impatient Deb decided to register with a family finder agency, which holds profiles of children available for adoption from all around the country – that agency then contacted Yorkshire on their behalf, to verify that they are approved to adopt, and despite their social worker's apparent qualms about plunging straight back into the matching process they were verified immediately and have now been sent an 89-page dossier. That's over 800 profiles of children available for adoption – not 800 children but 800 profiles, many of them for sibling groups. A very dangerous thing, because now Deb and Ray are sifting through this dossier and Deb keeps phoning to talk about this and that profile that she has fallen in love with – at this rate, she'll end up wanting to adopt all 800!
What else? My very frail Aunty Lel, my dad's sister, had a nasty fall in the garden and broke her arm in three places, but can't have the surgery she needs for it because she isn't strong enough for the anaesthetic, so she's been moved to a rehab hospital for physiotherapy – and Dad having to go back and forth, visiting her, meeting with her doctors, and looking after her cat, has been just another thing for us to juggle on top of everything else. Plus my Mum's sort-of aunt, Marge (her stepmother's first husband's sister), also had a fall and has broken her leg – and she is nearly 93 and already on a bit of a downward slope, so that's been really worrying.
And there's probably been more stuff that I'm just not thinking of right now. It has been quite a month! I'll stop here, though, and offer commiserations to anyone who has actually read this entire screed. Sorry to have moaned so much.
