Sadly, we’ve had to put my father into Aged Care for his own safety and MP’s mother collapsed yesterday and is in hospital and it may have to be the same with her.

Sammy was opened to check for damage but his stomach was full of crud and had to be pumped.  He’s recovering well and back to his usual habits and eating again.  Stitches come out late next week.

Not a good week.

Sorry, I haven’t felt like blogging of late.  A frail father and a sick cat have taken their toll.

Did three days work this week and today was an 8 hour slog but I’m surprised how well I handled it after a 6 month layoff.  Maybe all the biking of late saved me from too much muscle torment.  I’m doing 2 weeks in September as the major accounts guy is taking holidays then instead of January so I’ll be doing a mixture of car and walk rounds.  Three weeks a year suits me fine as the good taxpayers of Oz pay me an extra thousand bucks for my efforts.

Timely, I might add, considering the humongous vet bill.

When my father was in hospital last week, I discovered he could hear better with his hearing aids removed.  We arranged for his hearing and hearing aids to be tested to see if there was anything that could be done.  He reckons all the swimming and shooting he did in his youth had stuffed up his hearing and now he gets so frustrated that he can’t hear what’s going on around him.  It got to the stage we had to shout for him to hear and then when I removed one of the hearing aids he said, “Ah, that’s better”.  Obviously something was wrong.

So my sister and I took him in for the tests yesterday and his hearing hadn’t deteriorated in the last two years but his hearing aids needed adjustment.  The audiologist recalibrated the hearing aids using a computer, and when he tried them on, his eyes lit up like a kid in a candy shop.  Judging by his reaction to the sudden onslaught of noise, his aids had been useless for some time and we got a real kick to see that a simple thing like that had given him back a small bit of his life.

When we were driving home, I was muttering to my sister in the back seat and he was getting in for his two bobs worth.

I guess we’ll have to be very careful what we say in future. 

Had a great day celebrating Dads 95th birthday.  He loved the attention but we left it to just 2 candles on the cake so that we didn’t risk burning the house down.  My sister did a great job organising cakes and presents and so we now head into his 96th year and we take every day as it comes.

By the way, MP and I had some great luck yesterday when we had a win on the $20 million Lotto draw.  Our ticket cost $13.10 and we managed a 7th Division of $13.30.

We’re off to get some financial advice tomorrow on the best way to invest that 20 cents.

We’ve had a fairly traumatic week with my father having a mild stroke and MP’s mother having medical issues too. 

Dad had stuffed up his blood thinners and it knocked him for six and he spent three nights in hospital.  He turns 95 on Wednesday and his eyesight and hearing are shot and he suffers from a fair dose of what’s the relevance of life when the quality of it has gone but his sense of humour hasn’t deserted him altogether. 

He still lives at home with my 90 year old step mother so he had to go through a range of assessment tests before being released.  One of the questions was whether he drove a car and he said incredulously, “Are you kidding, with my eyes and hearing I’d kill everyone on the road!”.  The nurse was ticking away on her sheet and he said, “Good girl. Lots of ticks are good”. 

He was given three words to remember and when the time came to repeat them back, he remembered them all.  The sad thing was I’d forgotton two of them!

My sister lives close-by and is going to keep an eye on his meds and they also get a lot of social service support.  I’ll continue to drop in regularly and take him out for his coffee and his favourite chocolate éclairs.

I hope all that chocolate and cream doesn’t stuff up his cholesterol. 

That time of the year approaches as Mrs Maggie gets ready for the nesting season.  This cheeky sod decided that our door mat would provide good nest material.

Then she will repay us cyclists like THIS.

Not much exciting happening of late.  Still doing plenty of running and biking and have an 80k ride planned for Friday and a long walk on Saturday so that should test the aging muscles.

Getting on the bike on these chilly mornings takes some effort but we soon warm up.  Got caught in a downpour last week so cut it short but the bonus on Monday was a 17k downhill with a 30kph tailwind up our bums.  Very enjoyable.

Decided to run along the Rail Trail yesterday morning so I dropped by and picked up MM’s two dogs who enjoy such outings.  Sent a text to tell her we were off and got a reply later when she was out of the shower to say she’d just got back from a run with the dogs.  No wonder they were lagging behind when I finished!  I thought Dogbait could be loved by at least a couple of dogs on this planet but not so sure now.

A meteorologist was on TV on Tuesday telling us we were now in an La Niña event where the water surface temperature was warmer hence we could expect “above average rainfall for winter and probably for the rest of the year”.

So what happened yesterday?  It rained all day of course.

Cold, wet and miserable now but you won’t find anyone here complaining.

Winter has well and truly arrived and a freezing 6c to contend with on my morning run today.  I was finally forced into a tee shirt but soon warmed up but basement cat below found an easier way of beating the chill. 

The willows are the only deciduous trees around here and you can see they are shedding their leaves as I headed out the back gate.  By the way, most of us locals call it Bluewaters Lake.

Things are greening up again and you can see from the red marker at the top of the big tank that we’ve had a bit of rain lately but not enough to fill our main reservoirs.

The snow, ice and sleet doesn’t seem to affect the veggies though.

The reason for the trip to Melbourne a couple of weeks ago arrived on Friday.  A new 117cm Loewe LCD TV and what a magnificent beast it is. 

The German company, Loewe (pronounced Ler-va), were offering a big trade-in for old Loewe CRT TV’s which we owned and decided it was a good opportunity to get something for it before it only became good as a boat anchor.  We also lashed out on a Loewe Blu-Ray DVD player to replace our $35 Aldi DVD player and what a difference.

We had Muppet’s Mum over for dinner on Friday night and got the movie Sherlock Holmes out on Blu-ray which practically blew the walls out with it’s new audio format of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.  The detail, clarity and sound of Blu-Ray movies on a good High Definition LCD TV and audio equipment is amazing.

The local video shop and the neighbours are in for a hiding.

Seems the 13 year drought is nearly over.  Whoopee!  Now I can finally have a shower! 

This report says a few more mils of rain this weekend and we’re over the definition of a drought and this report extols the miraculous transformation of the Outback after all the rain they had up that way and which is now heading south.

All very well, but our reservoirs are only 30% full (or 70% empty if you’re an pessimist) and it’s going to take a few more deluges to get back to the dizzy days of yore.

We haven’t been able to water lawns for 4 years now and have resorted to diverting shower water to the back grass (ok, so I had the occassional one).  We planted new turf and the water bans came in a few months later and the kikuyu didn’t have enough time to root properly and this is the result……………….

Well I haven’t been too idle since MP departed.  The party the other night was a ripper!

Five minutes before she left, my computer shat itself when a hard drive partition decided to go on a trip too.  My backup image failed to recognise the hard drive and so I was left with re-formatting and re-installing everything.  A labourious job but at least I have multiple copies of my data so no real harm done.

Then my neighbour pops in and says his computer is playing up, and when I check, I find more Trojans than at Troy and so that’s going to require a re-format too.  Lucky for me he’s a plumber and a certain amount of bartering goes on.

It’s been warm days around 30c and the nights have been warm too so I’ve kept the budgie smugglers under the shorts for my daily run and I’ve been stopping at the beach for a swim during the run.  I drop the gear and plunge into the surf for a cool-off before running the 2k home and a shower.  Most delightful!

So if you want to see a fine specimen of manhood decked out in the smugglers splashing around in the surf, then check out the real-time web cam link for the OG beach on the sidebar around 8:30am each morning.

Except for Thursday as I’m off on a 100k bike ride with my mate, Alter Ego.  Luckily he’s good company!

A couple of photos that caught my fancy this week.  Basement Cat doesn’t take kindly to his partners choice of doona covers.  Sammy boy and his master slave have something in common there.

A fair whack of our superannuation fund is tied up in shares and the GFC made us all wonder how the stock market really operates.

This sunset a couple of days ago.  “Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight”. 

Hardly, as we’ve had quite a bit of this.

The weather over the last few days has been beautiful with days in the mid to low 20’s with a nice sea breeze.  Days when it’s great to be retired with no thoughts of finishing off retaining walls or other sweaty work.  It’s been a very mild February and the garden is still looking good and at this time of the year you’d expect everything to be burnt to a frizzle.

MP was off again socialising with her friends so I decided to jump on the bike and pedal over to Barwon Heads for a latte at my favourite haunt.  Via the Bluff, of course, and I always feel privileged living in such a beautiful spot where the Barwon River meets the sea.

A few people have setup in the camping ground and I think some leave their holidays until late summer when the masses have gone home.  Good thinking.

Hover your mouse over the photos for the caption.  Clicking on them opens them up but you already know that.

Slaving in the garden on and off over the last few days has been productive.  A retaining wall to the front door that was collapsing is now in good shape again and the muddy path down the side of the house has been lined with crushed concrete. 

Also, a garden bed lined with bricks has been replaced with redgum sleepers and MP got more veggie garden.  Unfortunatley, someone thinks it’s a great place to sleep.

We slaved all day and had just finished and put the kettle on when Muppet’s Mum drops in for a cuppa and a look-see.  An hour earlier and she would have been swinging a sledge hammer.  A good sense of timing, eh!

I haven’t much to report for my faithful readers at the moment.  Kiddies are back at school and some are really loving it and can’t wait for the next day.  I can’t remember being that enthusiastic about school but then I did go to a Catholic one run by the Gestapo.  I sometimes wonder if Sister Mary Aiden has moved on to where she belongs and now terrorising poor souls with her pitchfork.  

We’re flat out around the garden at the moment getting those things done we said we’d do as soon as we retired.  Retired means putting chores off until tomorrow and we’ve been doing that successfully.  New paths, repairing several retaining walls, building a new veggie garden, painting and so forth all fills in the day successfully.  We have a good work pattern going though, 30 minutes of yakka followed by a cuppa on the deck.  I can tell you one thing, swinging picks and laying bricks is a lot tougher on the old creaking body these days. 

When we get this done and the weather cools, we’ll head off with the van again and we’re thinking of a quick trip to New Zealand to burn up some Frequent Flyer points and catch up with friends.  Beats work or at least the type I used to do sitting in an office listening to bullshit all day.

Back to that veggie garden.  Now where’s my pitchfork?