You know what annoys me seeing Facebook posts about how bad nursing homes are and how a old person would be better off in prison or cruising the oceans what a load of shit.

As you all know I visit my Aunty Pat who is in a nursing home once every month or so and my grandmother who is in a nursing home every week and years ago before she passed away I would visit my great-aunt who was in yet a different nursing home each week.

So I can tell you that both the nursing homes Aunty Pat and Nanna are in are nice, both have their own bathroom and their own tv, Aunty Pat shares a room with two other ladies because sharing a room is cheaper but she likes her room and isn’t interested in changing. She gets alone with one of the women in the room, the other one is more like Nanna unable to communicate.

Nanna shares her room with another lady who is usually out in the wards community room the room they often have breakfast in that room and it is the room used for games and there is a large tv in that room as well.

Nanna has her own bathroom and her own tv as well, although as most would know Nanna is bedridden and unable to feed herself or move at all really. She becomes distressed if she is hungry or has soiled herself otherwise she spends most of the day sleeping.

When she is distressed there is one man who works there that is very good with her, he sings to her as Nanna loves singing and he finds if he sings to her while he is changing her and cleaning her up she becomes less distressed. Also at times she will become distressed and want Ron, my pop who passed away in 2010, so this same man will hold her hand and say I’m here Flo and this will calm her down.

We find the staff on a whole nice, caring people and the nursing homes to be clean and don’t smell and the food for the general residents is quiet nice according to my Uncle who usual has Christmas lunch over there with Nanna.

Now the nursing home my great-aunt Joyce was in did smell sometimes the smell was overpowering and this meant that mum and I would only stay a short time, Aunt shared a room with three other women and didn’t have her own bathroom that I can remember but she liked the food and said the staff were nice and friendly and Aunt always looked well cared for.

So yes I know some nursing homes may not be that great but if your loved one is in a nursing home you don’t like move them you can do that if you want my Nan first went into a nursing home 45 minutes away that place mum and I only visited once and mum cried the whole time as they had cut Nan’s hair into a bowl cut that looked awful and it was grey and up until then Nan had never had grey hair. The woman we visited wasn’t Nanna she was someone else in Nanna’s body in face when we first arrive at the nursing home we couldn’t find her she looked so different. Well we thought she looked different her hair wasn’t blonde and it wasn’t styled and she had only been there a week.

Well last Sunday was Mother’s Day, so how was my Mother’s Day, all in all it was a good day. I received some nice presents Jessica replaced the tray the boys broke and she also got me some pj’s bottoms nice fleecy ones and a bath bomb which I will use on Friday night when I have a relaxing bath after a long day.

I also had the girls over for breakfast and Michael came as well, Kathy & Michael gave me this lovely necklace holder which Michael made himself for me and have to say I love it. Natasha gave me a new pair of jeans and a lovely top, however, the jeans don’t fit and I will return them on the weekend and either get a larger size or some other pants.

Then after breakfast Tim and I went over to my parents place for lunch, we had Henny Penny which is chicken for those who have no idea, kinda like KFC but nicer just saying. I also bought a bottle of wine to have with lunch and indeed had two glasses of wine, and on the way home I asked Tim if we could stop and get another bottle of wine which we did so in the end I had about a full bottle of wine with what I had with lunch and what I had at home after lunch.

Tim didn’t give me anything for Mother’s Day, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted, so I asked him to give me some spending money when we go on the cruise and also said the bottle of wine would be a nice present for me.

Yes we are going on another cruise at the end of the month, we are going with my parents and we are so excited about it as is my mum not sure about dad though he wonders what he is going to do all day on a ship but I have told mum there are lots of things to do, including many live shows to see.

I did have a bit of a cry on Sunday because my arm was so stiff and sore as it is again today and yesterday I am just so over this arm the shaking the aching the stiffness the needing to message and rub the arm to ease the stiffness and aching feeling. I have times when I worry about becoming a burden to my family and yes they all told me I am not going to become a burden and I shouldn’t be getting upset but at times I can’t help it I just feel that way.

If it isn’t my arm giving my pain and such it is my back which has been really bad recently I am due to go and have an epidural injection in my back tomorrow at L4-5 so we will see if that helps at all.

This week has seen me out in the front yard trying to fix my garden.  When we moved into our home 3 years ago I had every intention of maintaining a garden; I even went so far as to plant come carr…

Source: Gardening with cockroaches

Have you ever over heard a conversation and thought what the hell………………

Recently I have had that thought a few times after over hearing spinets of conversation, such as the other day while shopping I heard a couple of women talking about blogging since I am a blogger this caught my attention, what the woman who blogs said made me think what the hell………what did she say you wonder. Well she was talking about having some blog friends and was explaining how they are kind just online friends, then she said that she had discovered that this one blog friend was black. She then said she doesn’t sound black in her blog, which made me think what the hell does that mean how does one sound black I don’t get that, the way she said it was as if she was shocked that the woman was black, I thought who bloody cares what colour her skin is what matters if she is a nice sounding woman and if you like what she blogs about and such.

Then on Friday afternoon while I was waiting for Leo to get out of school I could hear a couple of people talking about Mother’s Day and how some women are missing out not having children, that they couldn’t get why some people would choose not to have children. Now these people are allowed their opinion but it was the way they said it.

I feel sad for those who want children and are unable to have them, but not everyone wants children and they may not feel like they are missing out on anything.

Also just because a woman of couple do not have children doesn’t mean they have chosen not to have them unless you know for a fact why they don’t have children you should shut the hell up and keep your opinions to yourself. That said if you know they have chosen not to have children then you need to respect that they are not you they can chose not to have children if they want to do so.

I will talk about my Mother’s Day tomorrow since I started this post on Saturday and with one thing or another I am only getting around to finishing it and posting it today, Monday.

Welcome to Wednesday’s news what is happening in Jo-Anne’s world at the moment, well at this moment I am waiting for Centrelink to pick up Natasha has to report her earnings and this she usually does online but this morning she was unable to so she asked me if I would try and if necessary ring Centrelink. Well I tried to do it online but it came up as failed so I am now waiting to speak to someone who knows how long that will take.

Also this morning I was getting dressed and went to get one of the two black polo shirts I have that I like to wear with the pants I have on and I cannot find either of them, now when I did the washing on Monday I remember when I was getting the clothes off the line that there was two places that looked like something had been removed but since I was in and out I couldn’t remember if I had removed the shirts already anyway thought nothing of it but today those two black shirts are missing. Who would enter my back yard and take two black polo shirts the are not new shirts or that nice they are just black cheap polo shirts, I had much nicer shirts on the line with them.

This morning I had to ask Tim if he would drive Leo to school while I went with mum to visit nanna at the nursing home and of course I had to go to Coles to get some more cold meat for Tim’s lunch.

In other news Blain came home yesterday afternoon from the trip to Queensland for my niece Kirsty’s wedding, and he has been unable to walk very well since as he was sitting on his foot during the trip home, thus the reason his foot is not sitting flat on the ground and because it hurts he will not put it flat on the ground because of the pain.

Then yesterday afternoon, Leo and Blain were getting along pretty good so good in fact that Leo asked if he could stay the night I asked Blain if he wanted Leo to stay and he said yes so ended up letting Leo spend the night here. I hope Leo doesn’t ask to spend the night again this afternoon as I will be saying no and this time if he cries like he did yesterday when I tried to say no he cried and sobbed which is why I gave in.

Being May you would think the weather would be cooler but not so much I am wearing long pants but have to say I am somewhat warm in them and they are light weight pants but still over all the days a pretty warm, mum mum was wearing track pants this morning I don’t know how she can wear such warm pants I often get hot in track pants unless it is really cold and then still might end up feeling warm.

I just went in to get Blain to go get Leo and he wanted to know why we had to leave so early so I said I would wait a bit longer to go but not too much longer as I don’t want to have no where to park.

I don’t have much to share today so that will end today’s ramblings

Hello everyone, been absent the last few days been one thing or another, like yesterday after taking Leo to school I went to the doctors to get the results of my CT scan that was done on my lower back turns out I have multi-level spondylotic disease which is relatively more marked at the L4L5 which is causing moderate central canal stenosis.

What that means I have no idea I have Googled it and printed out some information about it which I am yet to read, however, what I do know is that these problems are from bulging discs and posterior element degeneration. This means my back pain will just over time get more and more and I am going to end up like my mother who has serious back pain that is getting more and more server over time.

Then when I got home I spent time reading blogs and did a couple loads of washing and hang it out to dry, then I had to go and get Leo from school and when I got home at 3.30pm I had to get the clothes off the line and then just didn’t feel like doing anything so I didn’t.

Also yesterday we had the ceiling fan in the bedroom replaced as it was tripping the circuit breaker for the lights, we have ceiling fans in each of the bedrooms as ell as in the lounge room. The fan cost $60 to buy and $80 to have installed which is pretty good.

This morning when I woke up at 6am to go to the loo my head felt so heavy on my shoulders and I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I went back to bed till Leo got here and came in to wake me up, this morning I was busy reading blogs and ironing. I have to iron sitting down now as I am unable to stand for more then maybe 5 minutes without pain.

Also when I got up this morning I found Natasha busy washing my kitchen cupboards she cleaned out all the top cupboards and washed them and was 99% done when she gets a phone call and had to rush in to have a shower and then leave for work. So I ended up finishing off the bench and washing the filter from the range hood over the stove.

Also Kathy-Lee and Summer came over for a while and while here she asked Tim and changing the oil in her car and she mentioned that the oil light had been coming on the last couple of days so we asked her when she lasted checked the oil and she didn’t remember so Tim went out and checked it and the dipstick was clean no oil showed up on it, so Tim went and found some oil and put it in her car for her, I told her she was lucky she hadn’t seize the motor.

Blain should be home sometime this afternoon, in fact I just said to Tim that I thought Natasha said he would be home around 11.30 this morning but it is now 1.40pm and he still isn’t home, I will be leaving in 20 minutes to go get Leo. Yes I leave early to get him but I enjoy sitting in the car and reading while I wait for him, in fact if I leave later I often find it difficult to get a parking spot although it is easier to find somewhere to park at Leo’s school compared to Blain’s school.

That’s all my news for now, I should be back tomorrow with some kind of other post, until then my friends stay happy and safe.

Hello everyone, I am coming to you from another place not home, why because I am dog sitting for my brother who has gone to our nieces wedding in Queensland, Kirsty is marrying her partner Jacob this afternoon.

My brother is attending in place of our parents as my dad has been really sick a lot recently add to that mum isn’t really comfortable driving such a long distance. Even though Tim and I not attending I did send a present up with my niece Kelli and Jonathon, since Kelli and Jonathon naturally went this meant my grandson Blain has had a holiday in Queensland this last week and this I am very happy about as it would be his first family holiday well the first one that I know about.

I am the only person that my brother and sister in-law are comfortable with staying here to watch the dogs, the only thing I don’t like that much is the bed it is not that comfortable but it is only a few nights and I can cope with that.

This morning I went to the local plaza and did a bit of shopping then I had to go home to pick up my phone charger so while I was home I had a bath and did Tim’s medication up for the next week so I don’t have to go home tomorrow. Tim said he wanted me to go home and get him tomorrow to take him over to Kathy’s place but I really don’t want to and will suggest that he rides his motor bike here and e then go from here to Kathy’s. David only lives 5 minutes from Kathy so I would rather do what I said but we will see.

Yeah last night when I got here I discovered that I had left my phone charger at home so before I went to bed last night I turned my phone off, I rarely turn my phone off but since I was going to bed it was ok and this morning I tried charging it in the car with the car charger but it is stuffed and not working, I am going to suggest to Tim that we get another one as I do use it a lot more then I thought I would.

The reason I had a bath at home this morning is because my bath is a larger bath then the one here, it is deeper and longer and wider so a better size for this larger woman. Why is it I wonder why baths now days are generally smaller then they were 30 years or so ago, my bath is the same one we had when we moved into the place 28years ago. I also remember the bath that was in this house when it was Aunty Joyce’s house it was a large bath like mine but it was in a terrible state and when my brother did some renovations to the house they put in a new bathroom and that meant getting a new smaller bath.

Well that is enough dribble for this post.