(Mostly) Thursday

We were up at Rupert and Hugo's place on Wednesday night.

For most of the night, Hugo slept across the bottom of our bed and Rupert slept on Lindsey's bed.

For most of the night it was very windy. Things went bang in the night. Lots of times!

For a good part of the night there was a baby elephant wearing tap shoes, dancing in the roof space. Or that's what it sounded like. In all probability it was really a possum.

All of this meant that every now and then one or other of the dogs would start barking, which started the other dog barking and both dogs would leap off their beds and rush about, looking for the originator of the noises.

It was not a restful night - although at least Rupert wasn't trying to squish onto our bed and I had a space.

Jim, of course, slept peacefully through it all.

Thursday morning saw Jim and me heading down to our place nice and early, to await the arrival of the district nurse for Jim's shower. The nurses can come any time between 8:00 and 13:00 although they usually come mid-ish morning. Generally they ring around 30 minutes before they come but sometimes they only give a few minutes notice. It seemed wise to pack Jim in his pyjamas and dressing gown into the car and have breakfast at our place.

The nurse came, Jim was showered and dressed and he and I headed back to Hill House to play with Rupert and Hugo, make lunch - and wait.

Until Lindsey, and Freyja and Simon arrived and we could all have lunch together.

On Wednesday, I had been out to Delacombe and bought lots of potatoes and vegetables. I had chicken and cheese sausages and some vegan sausages. I had zucchini from my garden and tomatoes from the Yendon tomato farm. It made a mighty feast. Well, mighty for a lunchtime. Then Freyja and Simon went home. We went home. And Lindsey was left with all the dishes 😄

Thursday was a good day, despite the wind and the elephant in the roof keeping Rupert, Hugo and me awake overnight.

Jim's Wednesday carer is now being funded by the Commonwealth Home Support Service and so he will have a new carer. She wasn't available on Wednesday so someone else came as a substitute. This is one of the two substantial improvements on the private arrangement I had with another provider. Under the new program, if the regular carer can't come, they will send someone else. And it is considerably cheaper to have a commonwealth funded carer.

It is possibly just as well that Covid shut down the aged care facility that Jim was going to this weekend. A large volcanic eruption off the Tongan coast has created tsunamis around the Pacific Ocean, causing havoc among the Pacific Islands and alerts right around the ocean. Including, late yesterday, a marine tsunami alert from Lakes Entrance and east along the Gippsland Coast. There wasn't an actual land tsunami there but it would have been a bit disconcerting to have been staying in the Marlo Hotel and to be waiting to hear if we needed to evacuate. Much less fraught in Mount Helen which is quite some distance from the coast, and in any case is nearly 500m above sea level