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"What have you eaten" Parallel Chat

A girl I used to work with husband used to colour and cut her hair after he seen how much it cost her for her hair - my last hair do was £85 - so a positive I suppose out of the hairdressers being closed just now is I will save myself some money (handy with not working at the moment) - I ended up having to cut my own fringe during the last lockdown in April as it had got so long and pleased to say I did a not bad job!
 
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During the last lockdown my neighbour taught herself to cut, style and colour her own hair and made such a good job of it that she carried on doing it and she says she's saving more than £100 a month. The only downside is that she used to find her weekly trip to the hairdressers very relaxing and doesn't get that pampered feeling any more.
 
Mrs T 123 said:
Reminds me of the time one of my friend's dogs only got half a haircut at the groomers as he growled at them halfway through - so funny seeing her dog posing with only half of his coat done totally oblivious to it - so funny!
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Archie only ever went to the groomers once and 'sang' the entire time.... they did him quickly and rang us to come collect him early because they were both getting headaches. Actually.... he did the same thing at the Vet's when he came round from being neutered - we could hear him serenading them down the phone. For a dog that's almost mute indoors he's very loud when he's unhappy.
 
Was up visiting my brother again having recovered from this bug (as has Hubby who also succumbed to it and of course blames me for sharing). I'm afraid he has deteriorated in two weeks. Thankfully, he still has no pain and is still eating well (not surprising due to steroids) but he's dozing off a lot and "sounds" more frail. My niece and her daughter are staying put for the time being as she's trying to organise care. I've already told her she on a losing battle. Even with Roger & Georgette (the siblings who died of cancer in 2018) I could not get care organised as they just didn't have the staff and still don't 3 years on. We didn't have the added complication of covid either. It's looking like it will have to be Private care yet again. One of my friend's, her DIL works in a hospice and she said it's nigh on impossible to get respite care in a hospice either as they are really busy with people like my brother who were "missed" due to telephone check ups with no tests/scans or "missed" due to not being diagnosed/treated.
My other niece who lives in Canberra, has obtained permission to fly over and she expects to get here in the next 7-10 days. I don't know what the requirements are for getting clearance to fly out of Australia but she's been told she satisfies all the criteria. She knows about the negative test requirement so she's got that booked and ready to go. It's just a case now of keeping an eye open for any further added restrictions although short of fitting us with electronic tags it's difficult to know what else they can do. We had 12 new positive cases on Friday in our county, 9 on Saturday and one death each day. Not exactly staggering figures.
My brother is correct though. You can only take one day at a time and do the best with what is in your control. So we're helping as we can with shopping, cooking etc. Just have to soldier on.
 
@maglil55 pleased you’re over the bug, but that all sounds really tough. Thinking of you.
 

@maglil55, I wanted to say something comforting, but what could anyone say that wasn't trite? All I can do is send a hug and pray for him to suffer as little as possible and for all of you to find the strength you are going to need over the next while.
 
Breakfast (not until noon) was porridge with cream.
Lunch (mid afternoon) was some bits of cooked potato fried in butter and a fried egg on top.
Dinner is going to be lamb korma - cooking at the moment and I'll have it after my weekly phone call to my brother. Smells good just now.

I ordered some dried mango powder (amchoor) from Amazon and it came yesterday. I wanted something more sweet than spicy to add to a spice mix. I thought it would be made from dried mango flesh, but it is the skin of green mangos, dried and ground to a powder. Taste is a bit what my mother in law would have called "wersh" (not sure how that should be spelled) but mixed with some other, not too hot, spices (maybe some ginger and some sumac) it should be OK.
 
Thank Ann. I've been through this so often now I think my mind kind of switches off to a degree. My Hubby was quite stunned how Roger (the brother who died) and I could sit and chat "normally" as well as make sure that everything was cut and dried about what he wanted done. Focus is just the same this time and to ensure no regrets. Currently, I'm more upset as I finally got to the bottom of why they couldn't treat him. I'm not stupid and I know brain cancer is never good but, it didn't make sense that the only sign of the secondary is these "two small leisons" (consultant's words) and no sign of the primary elsewhere in the body. The reason they can't treat the leisons/tumours is a Catch 22 situation. They only picked this up because of the bleed on the brain a few weeks back. Bleed was caused by a swelling on the brain due to the tumour. They had to use steroids to control the swelling but to use immunotherapy they'd have to stop the steroids. Radiotherapy the steroids could continue but Radiotherapy increases any swelling on the brain. Bottom line is the available treatments could kill him quicker than doing nothing. What's bothering me now is what if he had received even one of his scheduled scans? The June 2020 one? If it had been picked up then before the swelling caused problems would it have been treatable? I'm not torturing myself with what ifs as the outcome may have been the same. Nor do I blame the doctors as they were told to stop everything but I can't help wondering if this decision is going to kill even more than covid?
 
Just back from having a blood test. Amazingly the nurse only had to have 2 attempts to find a co-operative vein. Neil took me to the supermarket on the way home but there was precious little to be had there. Not much milk (I can do without for a day or so), no natural yoghurt, no cream (other than Elmlea), meat limited (quite a lot of sausages), paper goods a bit thin on the ground. I thought it was Northern Ireland that was having problems with supplies, due to new regulations re EU, but it's looking a bit doubtful here as well.

Anyway - had porridge early today in order to get out in time for my appointment. Pretty hungry now.

Lunch will be a couple of crackers with ham with some cucumber. Don't suppose I'll last out beyond noon for that.

Dinner will be more of the lamb korma - I have 2 servings of it left from yesterday.
 
Amazed to have received a phone call from the GP about the blood test I had this morning. That was amazingly fast. She hasn't gone through it all yet - just one thing jumped out at her. Apparently my potassium level is too low and I have to reduce the amount of Furosemide that I am taking. Not sure if the urgent response is a matter of concern or not. Whatever, I will drop to 40 mg of the diuretic from tomorrow. No doubt I shall swell up like a balloon. What you lose on the swings ...
 
maglil55 said:
I'm not torturing myself with what ifs as the outcome may have been the same. Nor do I blame the doctors as they were told to stop everything but I can't help wondering if this decision is going to kill even more than covid?
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In some areas, I think that is true. Here in the Western Isles, we are lucky in that some "ordinary" treatment is still available, if a doctor decides it is needed - other things like teeth, podiatry, dietary advice, are not available and even there, early treatment could avoid later troubles, but despite difficulties in getting to see a GP, advice is available over the phone and, possibly, even face to face appointments. But I did see an interview with a hospital doctor on the mainland yesterday in which it was made clear that some unnecessary deaths will happen because the hospitals are so busy with covid issues and can't see people who might need treatment to ward off later, more serious issues. They keep urging people to seek help if they think they have a problem, but then, the whole thing falls apart for some. I'm pretty sure that this is what happens in places like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and others. Hospital (and even GP) services are overwhelmed.
 
In my local hospital of about 550 beds over half are filled with COVID-19 patients. It is no surprise that other things are left for the moment. Perhaps those people should also have COVID on their death cerifiicates.
 
That's where the whole thing collapses @Annb. My brother wasn't seen until the symptoms appeared by which time it was too late. As I said I don't blame the doctors. Currently though, he's much the same thankfully. I'm still managing to fit in visits around home schooling for eldest grandson.

We've been trying since last Thursday to access his Google Classroom. There's a technical issue which is affecting a lot of schoolchildren. Youngest one can access no problem but we just have to wait and see if they can resolve it. Meantime, since this is the source of all the online work I've had to extract lessons from available online sources which I've now subscribed to. I had a look at the so called Curriculum for Excellence and promptly switched to England's Curriculum. I'm focusing on reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic & maths. I am horrified at things they don't know. Their writing is ghastly. I spent 1 hour on it on Monday and already we are getting joined up writing. We did some reading & comprehension which led to more writing practice and a wordsearch with a little difference in that you had to add the correct prefix to a word then find the new word in the grid. Thought that was enough for Day 1.
Yesterday we did a full scale Mystery that involved problem solving, maths and a lot of reading and comprehension. I discovered they don't know Times Tables so I printed off a chart and we had a close look at the sequences. Today he was starting to remember some of them. I was also astonished that they don't know how many days are in each month. They now know the good old "30 days ...." chant. We needed that to break the code in one of the many clues. He didn't know what prime numbers are (he does now). Add to that we did some simple geometry with angles & triangles. I discovered today that he had taken it on board since, when I made his sandwich for lunch today, he told me his sandwich was a square but it was also a Quadrilateral! Even better he remembered that the internal angles were 360° but I'd cut it into 4 triangles. We also did a lot of work on adding, dividing, subtracting and multiplying with decimals and fractions.
Today we added in simple algebra and yet more on fractions but using Fraction Jigsaws where you had to solve the sum to find the answer. He'd done fractions before but by jigsaw 3 he had to simplify them which he "got" after a couple of minutes.
He's been going home as happy as Larry with all the new things he's learning, taking copies of everything so he could show Mum & Dad. I cannot help wondering if he is just not being stretched enough. Again I can sympathise with the teachers as it must be horrendous trying to give attention to 29 to 31 kids but you have to focus on the basics to prepare them for senior school. He actually told his Mum he's looking forward to the next day to see what else I come up with. He doesn't even notice the time passing.

Perhaps the old teaching methods were a bit regimented but I'll bet we can all remember our tables, the chants we learned to remember things and in most cases without even thinking about it. I can't help thinking about "If a thing isn't broke, then don't fix it". It's good exercise for my brain though!
 
Bildad said:
In my local hospital of about 550 beds over half are filled with COVID-19 patients. It is no surprise that other things are left for the moment. Perhaps those people should also have COVID on their death cerifiicates.
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Sadly, I think it's going to come through in the excess deaths in the next year or so.
 

I have to agree with you @maglil55, I don't think Em, clever as she is in many ways, is anywhere near the level of reading, writing or maths that even her dad and uncle were, never mind me. Not that I was ever any good at memorising anything until I understood how it worked, so I did struggle a bit with tables at her age (8). But that was just me and it was an obstacle I had to overcome not one that hindered the learning of anyone else in my peer group. At the stage when I was in school (1949-1961) Scottish education was famously the best available. Somehow, over the years, it seems to have slipped. Not that I know what English education is like these days - it might have slipped even further.

I am completely off the low carb diet now. All it seems to have done is make me ill so I am back to eating some carbs (sometimes a bit too much probably) and trying to get my systems to play ball. At present - due, I think to unwise medication prescribed by a doctor who hadn't seen me and didn't know me - I am short on potassium. Even on the low carb diet, and having issues with green veg, I should have been getting sufficient potassium in my diet, but the large amounts of diuretics must have leeched it all away. I am to have a chest Xray on Friday to see if there's anything to show why I have such shortness of breath and angina type pain (don't think it is angina, the pattern is all wrong for that). Other tests are planned (ECG and US scan of my heart), just to make sure but no appointment for those yet. Meantime, I have shifted the timing of my meals so that I cook and eat in the early afternoon - before I run out of steam and decide not to bother with a proper meal. Today I had a banana shake for breakfast, fairly early on and lamb korma with some frozen chips around 3 pm! An odd combination, but I enjoyed it.
 
I agree @Annb that the standards have slipped dramatically. I knew there were issues as I was told about them by the pre school we switched them to after the issue with "her". It's only now that I am experiencing just how much they have slipped. Classes are far too big and behaviour has gone out the window. As you said, Scottish education was something to be proud of - not now! I don't know the standards in England & Wales but the material for the English curriculum is much better that the Scottish stuff.
I noticed today they were saying there's not much chance of schools going back 1 February. It was perfectly obvious it wasn't going to happen and honestly I'm glad as it gives us more time to work on grandson's anxiety.
 
Where have all the regulars gone?
I'm worried about @Annb and @Antje77 and @ianpspurs and @Chook in particular. Think I've seen some of the others on other threads but its gone so very quiet on here?
 
MrsA2 said:
Where have all the regulars gone?
I'm worried about @Annb and @Antje77 and @ianpspurs and @Chook in particular. Think I've seen some of the others on other threads but its gone so very quiet on here?
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I'm right here!
Still struggling a bit with depression, which seems to be getting slowly better, and also having been busy with helping a friend and her one year old getting settled in her new home after leaving the father of her child and living alternately with me and other friends for two months before finding a place for herself and her daughter to live.

I'm still reading though! (And doing some moderating work in the background.) Just not finding the enthousiasm to post.

But I'm sure you'll be happy to hear my midnight snack will have set just about now so I'll go check the fridge before heading to bed. I've made the chocolate/peanutbutter/nuts thing again, but this time with a ridiculously expensive hazelnut-almond spread instead of peanutbutter because I'm really not a fan of peanut flavoured chocolate .

Tomorrow will be Brussels sprouts with gorgonzola and tuna melt things; despite depression I've been taking pretty good care of myself!
 
MrsA2 said:
Where have all the regulars gone?
I'm worried about @Annb and @Antje77 and @ianpspurs and @Chook in particular. Think I've seen some of the others on other threads but its gone so very quiet on here?
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Annb is still around - reading posts but not joining in. That's because I've gone right off-piste in terms of low carb (probably will have to find a happy medium and try to make it moderately low carb instead of seriously low carb). Currently finding it difficult to keep carb levels under control - once I start, I don't want to stop. So I don't think I have anything to contribute right now. That's partly why I haven't posted on the main "what have you eaten" thread - also felt unwelcome there, so went off in a huff. I have, until recently, been posting on this thread, but it was a very one-sided conversation, so kind of gave up. I have been keeping my eyes open though. I have been hoping that everyone was OK but busy and had no time, or energy to bother posting. I still hope that that is the case.

Struggling hugely with BGs and weight right now - for whatever reason I am gaining weight very fast - 16 lb in the last 2 weeks. It's mostly fluid. That's leading to all the problems you might expect. Had to reduce the diuretics which were keeping the fluids under some sort of control because my kidneys were in trouble. It's getting the balance right that is the issue, I suppose.

So, don't be concerned about me - I'm still around. Just hope everyone else is at least as OK as I am (hopefully better than me).
 
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