Garfield Had It Right

I was going to blog about those chance conversations you have in the street, when you live in an odd little place like Trelawnyd, but a set of strange morning circumstances have taken over somewhat and these have overshadowed a somewhat surreal conversation I had with Mrs Frazer outside the pensioner bungalows yesterday which culminated with her pulling down her blouse in order if I could confirm her GP's preliminary diagnosis of shingles!

Now, the sun is shining, and all is well with the world.
Earlier, this was not quite the case.
I was out last night until 1.30 am and crawled into bed around a quarter to two.
The Prof's alarm went off just after 5 am I was due to drive him to the station at 6 am in order to catch the Edinburgh train!
You with me?
Anyhow things were ok until I dropped him at the station where he realised that he had forgotten to locate the whereabouts of an important document.
No problem.......could I find it and email him the fact!
He caught the train
I drove home and ripped the cottage to pieces to locate the document
No luck.
The prof got off his train somewhere in England, and promptly caught another returning to the station where I picked him up. Again, I, drove him home where he located the aforemntioned document within 30 seconds of walking through the door!!!!
I could have ripped his smug expression right off his face!
Then for the third frigging time I drove him back to the staition so that he could recommence his journey.
By this time I was late taking William to the vets for his appointment so he and I shot up to the surgery via Mc Donald's drive through where I ordered an egg McMuffin and large coffee for me and hash brown for him!
Even a stressed middle aged homosexual and a half blind Welsh terrier needs breakfast!
Anyway
I stopped at the  busy T junction at St Asaph where I took a massively comforting bite of muffin and a huge swig of coffee and in front of several school children standing for their school bus  promptly sneezed my whole mouth's contents onto the steering wheel and windscreen.....

What did Garfield always say at the beginning of the week?

" Ok Monday........hit me! "

La La Land

I was in two minds about seeing LaLa Land.
On the one hand come the multiple plaudits from the critics
On the other.......anecdotal so so reviews from ordinary cinema goers.
So I went with an open mind.

As it turned out, La La Land is a sweet movie; a modern day musical which starts as it means to go on with commuters stuck in sunbright LA traffic singing and dancing around their cars in a multicoloured explosion of bon vivre! 
The story is suitably cheesy.
Aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) meets up with Jazz bore Sebastian ( Ryan Gosling) a pianist down on his luck.
Over a year we witness their courtship in Los Angeles, the " city of dreams" as both try their best to attain their dreams in Hollywood and it's a courtship punctuated with a whole plethora of musical set pieces with the leads singing and dancing on the Hollywoods Hills, on the Warner Brothers' back set and and in one magical sequence weightless inside the city's planetarium!
Gosling is delightful as the puppy eyed Sebastian, playing the piano as easily as he sings and dances.
Stone is impressive too and almost steals the film with a plucky charm and warmth. They are incredibly sweet in their many scenes together.
La La Land doesn't quite reinvent the Hollywood musical, but it does kick start the genre somewhat.
Having said this I could done without the Jazz ( I am not a lover of it) and some of the final quarter of the movie sags just a tiny bit, but I dare you to watch the powerhouse sequence of Mia's final audition    
( sung by Stone as the camera revolves around her) without crying...it's a lovely bit of cinema.
8/10

Gravitas

A rough looking type and his missus parked their car behind the cottage in order to check over the plot of land which is up for sale just up the lane
He half blocked old Trevor's driveway and returning home Trevor beeped his horn for the bloke to move.
" You can get a fucking bus through there!" the man snapped angrily and taking an instant dislike to him I stopped the dogs as I passed
" He's an old man and he needs you to move your car!" I said carefully giving the man a very direct look and irritably he did as he was instructed, scowling at me as he did so
Only when I returned home did I realise what I was wearing

My " plucked chicken" hat does not quite give me the gravitas I thought I possessed!

I'm sick of all of this bad news.....

....hate....all of the bad feeling..........

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm had the right idea

Let's be optimistic 

U-S-A

The Prof and I have just been watching the inauguration on tv

Baby Boomers

I found myself explaining the phenomenon of " The Baby Boomer" to a 25 year old colleague the other day...they had not heard the phrase before, and why would they? What do they know of those " oldies" that were born between 1948 and 1964.
I was born in 1962, so just came in under the wire as did one other nurse on duty, and the younger staff seemed genuinely  surprised as we brainstormed baby boomer norms! Norms that would make modern parents run screaming to child protective services!


As children my sister and I would sit in a living room as my parents would chain smoke cigarettes until the walls ran brown with nicotine.

My father would drive us all home after babysitting my sister's kids on a Saturday night much the worse for drink!

No one ever Ever wore seat belts!

We used to walk 2 miles to and from school alone and in the dark with shorts on!

If you ever was allowed to use the home phone you had to sit in a cold hallway to do so ( and were timed! )

One playtime venue was the local rat infested public tip!

The coal fire heated a small square of the living room nothing else

We ate left overs on Monday and were often served things like mince, liver and onions and offal

Had a bath only on Sunday nights!

We coped with three tv channels and no daytime tv on weekdays ( unless you watched school programmes!)

Relatives and perfect strangers could reprimand you and be supported in the fact by your mother and father

Every winter there was snow

Being Heard

I once nursed a woman who had been seriously ill for several months.
For much of that time she was unconscious, floating between life and death and that strange half world in between,  where the body is propped up with drugs, and machines and that tenuous strength a body shows when the chips are down. Later during her admission, her sedation was finally turned off and her tracheostomy uncuffed in an attempt to get her body to function on it's own.
In the middle of the night as I was administering medication through her nasogastric tube, her eyes opened, they were watery red and tired .
I asked her if she was in pain and she shook her head .I asked her if she knew where she was and she mouthed the word " hospital" and as I pottered around doing nursey things she reached out a weak arm and touched my face with her hand.
Moments later she cried out with an unearthly wail.
This was followed by another and another... each one louder than the last and there was something almost animalistic in the way it sounded.
I hurried to the bedside.
No she was not in physical pain, that was the first question I asked again, but again and again she cried out like a baby does when it is distressed in the night .
I tried to placate her. I massaged her hands with cream in an effort to sooth her and I tried to engage her in a way of diverting her distress but finally, as she half spoke half whispered the words " I want to " I realised that finding her voice was a final statement of " I'm here and I feel so bad" 
Her cries validated her.

It was hard but I gathered my nursing notes in order to write a report of the night and closed the side room door to the main ward. With them on my knee I quietly sat next to her and started to write my notes as she shrieked and wailed like an banshee.
Twenty minutes later she had cried herself to sleep..

*****************************************************************

Postscript to this week's dog attack.

Arrrhhh the power of the blog......this afternoon the owner of the husky called around to the cottage to discuss the dogfight on Tuesday evening.
She had read the blog and wanted to put things straight which was very big of her and we had a frank and open discussion about the incident.
The husky, as I thought,  is a somewhat damaged animal. She is clearly cared for by a devoted owner who understands dog psychology but the bitch indeed sounds a bit of a nightmare to care for due to previous abuse and trauma and by the sounds of things the owner has done everything in her power to rectify her problems.
I finally suggested a dog trainer I have heard of who specializes in aggressive large dogs and we parted on good terms.
I wish her and her dog well.

Frantic Fanny Friction

I'm glad I'm working tonight.
I'm somewhat jaded with ideas that backfire, and need a night of peace with bleeping ventilators and screaming monitors.
Talking to like minded friends and colleagues would be good too!

Mary and Winnie ( like women do I am reliably informed) have synchronized their seasons and as the elderly eunuchs William and George sleep their relaxed old dog sleep, the girls have embarked on an extended, strenuous and rather unsavoury bout of simulated sex play.
When we first bought Mary we played around with the plan that one litter of puppies would be a grand idea but with all of this puffing and panting and rubbing of toilet parts upon toilet parts

I think I have changed my mind.