And here we are again

Five years ago, I was amazed to see it had been five years since the previous post. I managed a second post, then life got in the way again.

And it was a good life. Happy, healthy and fulfilling.

Until it wasn't.
Last November, the scans associated with gall bladder issues revealed a mass on the pancreas. At that moment life changed forever.

In some ways we were lucky. The early detection and treatment bought us some time. The chemo seemed to be helping at first, but little by little it started to do more harm than good and we agreed he would stop treatment and move to just palliative care back in May.

The last two months were hard, but we spent them together. Constantly together. He finally slipped gently away in the early hours of 7 July. My wonderful, annoying, larger than life, enthusiastic, loving, kind, adventurous and gentle husband - the man who brought joy back to my life - was gone.

And once again I have to ask myself the question. What now?

Shhhhhh!

A brief site meeting this morning to discuss the positioning of a small shed beneath the large conifer to hide the oil tank had to be postponed.

The neighbours were complaining about the noise!

Can it really be five years since I last posted?

So many adventures between then and now. Far too many to recount.

Work on the little house in the moat stalled and restarted several times. The coldest, snowiest winter in years certainly didn't help. On Friday we went back for the first time in over six months to clean, take stock and plan what to do next.

There is still no proper floor downstairs and we sleep, eat and cook in the upstairs bedrooms. But at least the house now has the full complement of windows!
The ToDo list for inside the house is never-ending, but the sun came out for the bank holiday weekend, so we chose to tidy the minuscule veg garden instead of anything more constructive. We call this getting our priorities right!
The leeks, lettuce and spinach are last year's crops. Newly sown are broad beans, more salad, spring onions and radishes.

And Robert's garlic...

... and a few herbs don't go amiss either.

There is so much left to do outside though. This is the next area to be tackled. I'm thinking a tiny lawn and a dwarf apple tree. And perhaps a little flower border. There will eventually be steps and a path leading round to the front of the house, but that will come later. Lots of digging and weeding to be done before that.

Worrying

Back in the Before, I rarely worried about anything. What will be, will be. That truly was what I believed.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

I don’t know whether this was the arrogance of Youth, or simply the confidence of a person who had not yet experienced any life-shaking events. But, of course, one day the worst thing did happen, and it shook that little belief system to its foundations.

Since then I appear to have become a world class worrier.

It would be nice if worrying actually resulted in something in terms of action. But no. I simply freeze and become overcome with inertia.

It also doesn’t help having just married a man who does this sort of thing on a regular basis.

Note the high-tech safety Birkenstocks, invisible head protection and Kevlar walking shorts...
It did nothing for my blood pressure to look out of the window one afternoon and find him doing that.

Nursing the two broken ribs that resulted helped even less. Thinking about what could have happened if he hadn’t managed to throw the chainsaw out of the danger zone before the ladder fell makes me feel physically sick.

And yes, we have had words about it!

I rarely worry about myself physically though, other than a vague concern about what the long-term future might hold. Seeing my Mum struggle with the slow onset of Alzheimer’s, I worry about losing my marbles and my dignity, but hardly ever about physical illnesses or problems.

So when my 50^th birthday coincided with my first ever invitation for a mammogram, it provided a whole new opportunity for worry. I have seen the awful and devastating effects of breast cancer at close hand among my friends, but since there has been no incidence in my family as far as I am aware, it had previously escaped my worry radar.

Older friends also had no hesitation in telling me horror stories about squashed and painful boobs during screening, which didn’t help at all either. I am a complete wuss about this sort of thing, and I’m not afraid to admit it!

I did find it completely surreal that the screening would be done in the back of a lorry on Tesco’s car park. But in the event, the lorry proved to be something of a Tardis, and I was welcomed in by a kindly and efficient lady who bore a very striking resemblance to Claire Rayner, thus increasing the surrealism quotient severalfold.

And of course waiting for the results was equally fraught with worry, despite the fact I had given the issue barely a moment’s thought for the previous n years. Three weeks later, however, I am very happy to report that my lovely postman arrived this morning to deliver the all-clear letter. So that’s that then. I can stop worrying about that.

At least until 3 years’ time when I am invited for screening again.

The demolition stage

Work has now started on the big kitchen.

We decided to go away for a few days around my birthday, largely to avoid being jollied into arranging a party as I have never had much enthusiasm for those. And – as you do – the last thing we did before going away was to demolish the much-hated arch that used to divide the room in two.

It put up a surprisingly good fight, but we won in the end.
Just that single act seemed to make the room double in size, and greatly increased the natural light reaching the previously dingy work areas.

While we were away, the window was enlarged to make a doorway to the outside and most of the old, damp plaster was removed. We came home to a freezing-cold house, a pile of rubble and a layer of dust about an inch thick.

Today the electrics and plumbing are going in and more holes are being made in the two-foot thick stone walls. Yesterday’s sunshine has metamorphosed into damp, bone-chilling Welsh fog, so I am huddling by the woodburner with my laptop, trying to work while ignoring all the drilling and banging in the next room and the arctic gale blowing in under the door. Internet access has been reduced to ten-minute bursts between power outages.

And when the noise stops, I shall emerge to clean up another inch-thick layer of dust and ascertain whether we yet have a working cooker. Tomorrow there will be another carload of plasterboard to take to the tip.

Am I downhearted?

No. Not in the least. I have been waiting ten years for this, and it will be worth every last bag of dust and crap I sweep up.

The end result may not quite live up to the megalomanic, magazine-worthy image that I held in my head for so many years, but that’s OK too. The budget has been significantly reduced for a start. Slashed, in fact. So no Welsh slate floor or handmade freestanding kitchen units. The finished room will be light and cheerful though, and it will look clean when I clean it. And, most importantly, the big table can now go right in the heart of the room, in the place where it has never fitted, but has always belonged.

I'm still standing

When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I remember looking forward to the Year 2000. That’s what it was called then – none of this Millennium business. Back then I remember thinking that I would be like THIRTY-SEVEN when it happened. My life would be over. I would be an Old Person who couldn’t truly appreciate such a momentous event.

Actually it turned out to be something of a damp squib.

R was working in IT for an insurance company, and had been bribed with a seriously large amount of money to come into work on January 1 2000 to do the Millennium Bug testing. So I spent the evening backing up my computer in anticipation of the chaos that would ensue the next morning, then we went outside to watch the fireworks with the neighbours, drank a couple of glasses of fizz and went to bed shortly afterwards rather than partying all night.

Last week I turned 50.

That 37 year-old seems to be a whole different person, almost from another country. So young, so full of ambitions and plans. With a whole life left to live, with a house move and complete change of lifestyle still to come. That was, of course, in the Before.

The 50 year-old face that looks back at me in the mirror doesn’t look all that different on the outside. Sure there are a lot more lines, and the jaw line is starting to sag a little. There’s rather more grey in the hair than I really want to see. The body is starting to slow down more than I like to admit, and I seem to spend a lot of time searching for my glasses. But on the whole it is pretty much the same as it was 13 years ago.

Inside, though. That’s a whole different matter. There are lumps and bumps. Tender spots. Scars. Closed-off doors to rooms that aren’t visited any more. Emotional muscles that are only just coming back into use.  But it is healing. Slowly. Even though some of the tender spots will be there forever.

The 50 year-old me doesn’t have many ambitions any more. She just wants to live and enjoy living for as long as possible.  Having experienced at close quarters the sheer crappy randomness of the whole life and death thing, it really is enough just to be here. To walk out in the glorious crisp, cold sunshine on a day like today and feel its warmth on my skin. To live in the present and make the most out of every moment.

50 not out. It’s not a bad score.

I wonder what the next half-century holds.

New shoes

Because I shall turn 50 next week and have never owned such a frivolous pair of shoes in my life. So it's about time I did.

Because I like the way he looks at my legs when I'm wearing them.

Because every girl needs a pair of ruby slippers.

Just because!