Just over a year ago, I couldn’t do sudoku to save my life. It was ‘one of those mathsy things I’m not good at’.
To be clear, I am really not good with numbers. I have a mild form of dyscalculia, and I often switch numbers around, 34 instead of 43, for instance.
Then I found out that classic sudoku doesn’t need maths at all! There are loads of variations – some of them quite intimidating – which I decided to leave to another time. Maybe never…
I asked my son (who is better than I am at finding good apps) and he found https://sudoku.coach/en/home. I can’t recommend it highly enough. No adverts! A course (he calls it a campaign) that takes you from zero to wherever you want to be! You get lessons, which explains what and why and how, and puzzles to practice the particular technique.
If you like challenging yourself, there is always more to do. I found that some of the more advanced techniques aren’t nearly as bad as they look.
Just look for your happy place, where the puzzles are enough to challenge you, but not infuriatingly difficult.
And keep trying the more challenging stuff every now and then. You may surprise yourself!
A catch-up on what’s been happening the last few years when I unintentionally went dark. Lots of medical info, but no gore. Rather skip if you’d prefer.
My husband has been battling Parkinsons and dementia for more than eight years now. A very rough road. He didn’t know who I was, hadn’t known for years, and often got lost in his own house.
Around September 2023 things were very bad. He needed so much care that I couldn’t cope on my own anymore and was looking for a frail care facility for him. Much against my will, but I just couldn’t anymore.
Then he started getting sick. All sorts of different things, from a thrombosis to diarrhoea. In and out of hospital like a yo-yo.
This went on for about six months. Then one morning I couldn’t wake him up. Back into hospital. A chest infection, they said. I will swear to this day that he picked up the infection a previous time in hospital. I wasn’t sick, neither was my son. (We’re still masking.)
Now, he hadn’t been coughing, or showing any signs of a fever, but this hit him like a truck. He started to respond to the antibiotics, then got worse again.
New antibiotics. Same story. He’d stopped eating and they were force feeding him. He lost so much weight, around 20 kg. The infection he’d picked up was drug resistant, another reason why I think he got it from a hospital stay.
Third round of antibiotics. One of the sisters suggested that I get the family to come and see him. That gave me the cold shivers, I can tell you. I was really starting to worry that we might lose him.
Thank heaven the antibiotics started to kick in and got the infection under control. He was still very weak, and needed the physiotherapist to help him even sit up, but we had turned the corner.
Then one day I come to visit and hear that the specialist had asked him if he wanted to go home. My husband literally doesn’t know where he lives, or what day it is, but that he understood.
What!!!?
He can’t sit up on his own. He weighs more than I do. He is just under six foot and I’m a whisker over five foot. What!!!!? He was pretty bad mentally before he was admitted, but he was fully mobile, not even using a cane or walker.
I will mention at this point that the specialist was absolutely impossible to get hold of. Long story short, I managed to get my husband approved for rehabilitation. He was there for a month, and came out in a wheelchair. They said he had plateaued, and was unlikely to improve further.
Well, at least he’s home after two months. We get home, I start unpacking, and realize they’ve changed most of his medication.
Freak out time.
This isn’t the sort of medication you can stop or start on a whim. He’d been on most of it for years, under a neurologist’s care. And they hadn’t told me a damn thing.
The only neurologist’s appointment I could get was in a few months time. Ok. Just keep on with what you’ve got, get him to the neuro and go on from there. We’ve been through tough times before.
I thought I was prepared, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.
It was something of an adjustment with the wheelchair. He could use a walker, but only for short distances.
I was just trying to cope and work out how best to do things, when something struck me.
He was improving mentally.
He knew who I was. He got some of his numbers back. He was actually watching TV. He could read again.
This is not to say that he was anywhere near what he was. And it was a gradual improvement, not just all of a sudden. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been told so many times that it was simply not possible for him to improve.
He started to improve physically as well. The neurologist was as surprised as I was. She thought it could be a combination of factors. The blood thinners that he had been put on after the thrombosis which could improve the supply of blood to the brain. Possibly some of the medication he had been taking from the beginning was not right for him.
We would just have to see if he remained stable.
We are now 18 months on from when he was discharged from rehab. I had a quiet hope that perhaps he had been misdiagnosed in the beginning, but apparently not.
He has improved to the point that he is working in the garden again, busy and so much happier. And I can manage to take care of him on my own.
He is not ‘back to his old self’. That person is gone forever. But he can eat by himself. Go to the bathroom without help. Hold a simple conversation. Make jokes.
We don’t know how long this will last. Something catastrophic could happen tomorrow.
We’ll just take this extra time for the blessing that it is.
A love letter to late-night storytelling and slightly irresponsible choices “You’re doing it again.” My wife stood at the door, arms folded like a part-time warden and full-time realist. “It’s 2 AM.” I looked up from my laptop and gave her a sheepish grin—the kind that used to work on teachers, and these days works […]
I thought I’d lost access to this blog? Hopefully I’m wrong.
It’s old, (eleven plus years…) and there’s a lot of content I’d not like to lose. This is an experiment, more than anything else. If I’m back, (shrill shrieks of delight! From me, anyway.) if not, so be it. I was following a lot of people I’d like to reconnect with again.
I’m going to publish this – as is – and see what happens. The age of miracles may not be past…
I’ve been in and out a few times over the last months, trying to work out where everything went. I’m no lover of sudden changes, and obviously wasn’t around when Things Happened.
I’ve been dodging the Block Editor for ages. I was going to start a music blog. Found I couldn’t use Classic Editor and just left it.
I absolutely hate things flickering and flashing at me. If I could shoot that little pop-up block I would. I did manage to find a tutorial on the block editor, but would have possibly got more out of it if it hadn’t kept telling me just how much FUN I was having. Not so much.
All I want to do is write a blog post, and put in a photo or two every now and then. That’s it. I have never wanted SyntaxHighlighter Code (front end only) in my life, and am unlikely to start now.
Possibly 2020 – apart from the year (first year…) of the pandemic – was the year of ‘let’s change our website and drive everyone up the wall’. I have been watching Ravelry doing a slow crash-and-burn with absolute horror. When (if…) I can figure out how, I will go back through my old posts recommending them and post warnings to stay away. I will do a blog post about it if I can get comfortable using the block editor, which at the moment seems unlikely.
And for some reason I cannot edit a draft post! I had an almost complete post that I can’t update. I had to work around using ‘cut and paste’ and a word document. I don’t doubt I am doing something wrong, but am very disinclined to put the necessary work in to find out what.
And please don’t anyone come in and tell me ‘But it’s so easy!’ I will not be responsible for my reply.
Some of my earlier posts aren’t showing up. I’m updating to see if that helps.
Lockdown continues. We have gone down to level 4, but it feels much the same as level 5 to me. But people seem to be bothering less and less. I try to go to the supermarket no more than twice a week, and as early as I can to avoid the crowds. There always seems to be a group of friends who haven’t seen each other for years and stand around in a group, blocking the doorway and – as often as not – pulling their masks down so they can have a good chat. And people stand too close. I’ve got to the stage where I just stick out an arm and say ‘social distancing, please.’ But I’m over 60 and have two vulnerable people to take care of so I have reason to be antsy. I could make a sign saying ‘$%#@ off’…
I love lace, pretty much in any shape or form. Eventually took the leap and knitted myself a lace scarf!
Swearing abounded, but it’s not too bad, even if I says it as shouldn’t. 😉 I might have had lifelines every second row in the beginning, but I learned a lot!
There are a lot of articles around saying that handwork is a great destresser. I generally do knitting or tatting for for an hour or so in the evenings, and it really helps me wind down.
The free pattern is ‘Branching Out’ by Susan Lawrence On Knitty.com.
Last night the cat brought in a mouse. I mean, she’s 16 years old, apparently the equivalent of around 80 in human years and she brings in a mouse. Live, mind you. She likes to play with her food.
We managed to dispossess her of said mouse, which left us with a problem i.e. the mouse.
Titch
Our lockdown rules are quite strict. We are only allowed out for buying groceries, visiting the doctor (if they want to see you. I have an eye infection and only got to talk to the doctor over the phone.) or if you are essential services. Mouse disposal isn’t covered. The nearest piece of open ground where I normally release whatever Titch brings home is about a five minute walk away. Did I mention that people aren’t allowed to go for a walk or jog?
These stirring events took place at around 9 pm. So my husband – who was worried about me going out alone – and I go sneaking out of the gate, carrying a brightly decorated, Christmas themed tin. (What can I say. It’s long and narrow. Mice think it’s a place to hide. Makes catching them MUCH easier.)
Mouse Catching Equipment
There’s not supposed to be anyone walking around anytime, never mind 9 at night. Of course, what we’re hoping is that no dogs start barking. If someone looks out and sees two shadowy figures, we have a good chance they could call the police and then it would be ‘please explain’.
Of course, a dog did start barking. And then another joined the chorus, and another… How do burglars get away with it? Here’s the two of us, trying to walk quickly and quietly while the barking gets louder and louder.
We released the mouse and got home safely, without being hauled off to the cop shop. I don’t think I will become a criminal. I haven’t the nerves for it.
The ‘no walking’ thing is getting to me. I normally walk for about an hour most days and it’s a ‘calm down and think thoughts’ time for me. Three days into lockdown and I was going stir crazy. Then I started walking. Around the garden. Now, we don’t have a big garden, and you can’t walk around the house. There is the garage and a couple of walls in the way. So I walk around the back yard, through the side gate and around the front yard. Kind of like a wonky figure 8. And repeat. Around 200 steps. It’s killing the grass (quite literally – there is a path forming) but keeping me sane.
Now all I need to do is figure out how to discourage the cat from bringing in any more mice…
My results are clear, and I am so thankful. However, it seems almost irrelevant against what is going on in the world.
I thought we were in lockdown before. Apparently not. Just restrictions. Now South Africa will be in lockdown for 21 days from Thursday.
I’m still teaching! Sending and receiving videos from my pupils on WhatsApp. It’s different, but seems to be working. Keeping them and myself busy.
If anyone has an old guitar stuck in the back of a cupboard, I’m going to start another blog with lessons for beginners. We have some spare time, we may as well do something useful. 😉
Our president made a speech tonight declaring a national emergency. Travel restrictions, schools closing from Wednesday until after Easter and gatherings larger than 100 people banned. There is more than that, but I won’t go into all the details.
Here is a quote.
“We must accept the anxiety this virus causes, but we must fight panic and fake news.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by fear and panic. We must stop spreading unverified and fake news. While we are facing a medical emergency far graver than we have experienced in recent times, we are not helpless. We have the expertise, means and knowledge to fight this disease. We also have partners, various countries and institutions, working with us. If we act swiftly we can limit the effects of the disease.”
He said the virus had the potential “to bring us closer together … even though we are limiting contact … we must work together and collaborate … it requires solidarity and compassion. Those who have resources must assist those who are vulnerable and in need.”
A pretty good speech, but there are tough times ahead, and at 68 and 65 my husband and I are way too close to the age groups which have the most serious problems. And I have my son to think of as well. He has a physical handicap and has had pneumonia very badly on more than one occasion.
Well, there is no way around this, only through. And stock up on the toilet paper – if you can find any… (Still damned if I know why this is such a favoured item for hording)
Strength and blessings to everyone out there battling this. Keep well and stay safe.
Well, I’ve been to the specialist, been to the hospital and had the lesion removed. I saw the specialist on Monday and was in hospital on Wednesday. Hardly enough time to get into a panic, although I did my best. Now it’s waiting for the final results.
What’s that old Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times. I would love to be bored! There is always something, and the somethings just keep coming.
Thank you to everyone who comes around. All good wishes much appreciated.
One of these days I will write a proper blog post…
notewords 
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