Oh, Frabjous Day ...

The Party Boys have moved out.  The 'incident' last Saturday night was their swan song/farewell party and as they probably knew that they had already forfeited their bond they went for broke.  The poor man across the corridor from them did a huge clean up in the passage and I understand from our wonderful cleaning person that the carpet in the corridor was sticky.  I was contacted for the Incident Number which I obtained from the police and there is to be an enquiry.


Anyway  -  they are gone and I understand that they are to be replaced by a mother and baby which will be a nice change even if the baby is teething and fractious.


Two days ago a friend and I went to visit Herself in hospital.  We got dreadfully lost trying to find the place; it is not well signposted and when we finally found the right road there was a fence across it so my poor friend had to go round and try to find another way in.  We got there eventually but it took 45 minutes.  D2 says that the hospital is marked for closure so probably no-one cares about being helpful with signage.


Herself is almost completely on the ball mentally although there were a few lapses, mainly I suspect due to helpful advice from Himself who is desperately trying to make her life as easy and comfortable as possible but perhaps not explaining things as clearly as she needs.  For example, she has hemianopia so she only sees half of the visual field.  Most people adapt by moving their head to a place where the other half of the visual field comes into focus but herself wants to be able to read and says that she has been told to read from right to left and not only is that going against a habit of a lifetime but what she is reading doesn't make sense.


Her left side has flaccid paralysis and sensory neglect but she is having fairly intense rehabilitation so maybe she will get some function back; I am not holding my breath though.  The plan is for her to be moved to a halfway house and to eventually go home but she is going to need a great deal of help if she is to be maintained there.


My Advanced Health Directory is now in place but I need to send a copy to Medic-Alert and give a copy to my general practitioner.  I also intend to get a Medic-Alert dog tag and probably replace my bracelet to have AHD engraved on it.  I will not go as far as some doctors have gone by having "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on my chest just where the paddles are placed.


The cats have to have their teeth scaled but it will have to wait a week or two; I seem to have suddenly got very busy which is good but my spinning output has dropped.  A good thing, perhaps; I have a lot of knitting to do to catch up.

Full of Sound and Fury

The Party Boys excelled themselves last night with a noise level which shook the double glazing. 

A couple of years ago, after a series of noisy parties, I had a word with the apartment's owner and said that, as I was not able to report the nuisance to the Corporate Body without first contacting the police that is what I would be forced to do in future.  Since then they have moved inside at about midnight and that has been fine since it is the partying on their patio which sends the sound straight up to my bedroom.  I told the owner that I would be forced to report the nuisance to the police before the Corporate Body would even listen to my pleas.

So last night I phoned the police to get an incident number so that I could report the noise (for the record  -  Incident number 477 469) and was told that if the noise had not abated in 30 minutes I was to phone again.  I went down and hammered on the door because they were not answering their doorbell and shouted into the ear of someone that I had contacted the police and was about to contact GP from the Management  who is there to field complaints.

I went down and told them this to give them a chance to quieten themselves down and when the door was opened there was loud pulsating music, strobe lights  -  the works.  Incredible  -  in an apartment building.

Thirty minutes later I phoned the police again only to be told that a car had already been sent and, barring MVAs or something else to delay them, they would be there at any time  -  which they were.

I received a phone call some time later to say that the Party Boys had been told to turn off the music and keep the noise level down, which they did  -  but the police hung around and as soon as the Party Boys thought that the coast was clear they turned the music on again so the police returned and everybody was sent home except for those deemed to need a taxi. I was asked to contact the police again if the music started up again and they would be around to confiscate the sound equipment.  The policewoman told me that when they opened the door their first impression was "So many people!".

GP phoned me this morning to say that enough was enough and he would be  reporting to the management this morning; it sounds as though there have been other complaints  -  not surprising.

Anyway, the police were incredibly nice and helpful and kept me in  the loop so that I knew what was going on and I was really impressed with them; they did a great job.

This morning I have a crashing headache and I hate to think how the party goers feel  -  and the mess down there is enough to send a person into a decline just to look at it  -  and I assume that the Management will be doing that.



Click on the picture to get a better view.  This is only a small part of the mess; I need a fisheye lens to get it all in.
 

Signng away my life

I spent most of yesterday morning signing documents to put in place Enduring Power of Attorney, Enduring Power of Guardianship, a Codicil to my Will and an Advanced Health Directory.  Now I have to get my daughters to sign various documents relating to their powers and it is a bit like herding cats; there is a list of people allowed to witness their signatures and there have to be two witnesses, both of whom have to sign and add printed name and profession along with the date which must, obviously be the same for all the signatories.  So, particularly for D2 is will take some time to get it all done


D1 lives in Sydney so all the documents will have to be couriered over to her, signed and then sent back after which some of them are to be returned to my lawyer.  Hopefully Australia Post will have got their act together and will safely deliver the documents over to Sydney and back to Perth without mislaying them or losing them altogether.


And I have a headache.  I was beginning to relate my headaches to chocolate consumption so last night I purposely ate some and  -  today I have a headache as expected.  I can cope with a small amount but no more binging; which is a good thing but a pity.


I had coffee with a friend yesterday who is also a friend of Herself and we are going to visit next week if we can arrange a suitable time.  It is good because I need someone to drive me and she needs a navigator  - and hospital visits are always easier with two people so that if Herself gets tired and drops out for a short while we can carry on a conversation while she gathers strength.  There is to be a family meeting tomorrow to decide on her care in the future so Himself will not be at COTA. 


We are having problems with internet connection at COTA and the Tuesday teacher has approached a higher authority about it.  It is sort of OK when we use the COTA computers (except that the one I use doesn't have any email facility on it) but people are, more and more, wanting to bring their own laptops in so that we can set things up the way they want them, as often their families do rather strange things.  I had one client whose son set up her computer with email and Skype BUT  NOTHING  ELSE.  Now that the banks are getting difficult about cheques it is going to be essential to teach people about internet banking and the safety rules which apply.


I only have one client tomorrow and he is bringing his own Windows 8 computer so hopefully we can connect it or he has a dongle and can do his own thing with it.

Going home?

Himself has told me that Herself is now ready to go home.  A few days ago he told me that he had been told that she would never be able to stand on her own and still could not sit unsupported but now she can sit unsupported and use a slide board for transfers.   Hmmmmm ...


I worked in the system for many years and know the rules; move patients on within 28 days unless there is a very good reason to keep them a bit longer or the hospital loses its Government funding.  So Herself was moved to a regional hospital  a week ago and now they want to move her on and out.


I know the scenario  -  a review meeting which would have decided that she is not going to improve further and Himself was probably given the details of six nursing homes for him to look at and put her name onto the waiting list of at least a couple of them.  However Himself and daughter have resolved that she will never be placed in a nursing home  -  hence the decision to take her home.  However, I can't get through to Himself that he will need major modifications to their house and he needs urgently to visit the Independent Living Centre and have an OT visit to see what needs doing as far as those modifications are needed.  And I could give him some tips on how to delay the move; but he is not listening to me.


Meanwhile, in two days I will be off to the lawyer's to start signing all my end of life stuff and as far as I am concerned tht sooner it is all finalised the better.  I enjoy my life and hope that it will go on for a while longer but I greatly fear a painful death or total dependence on others to function.


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I keep getting error messages so I will finish this post and hope that it stays where it should after which I will do a virus check and an error check and hope that it fixes the problem.


It didn't ...

I think that my computer is losing its mind.

I will start off my admitting that I have five computers and an I-Pad but it is my main desktop computer which is giving me grief at the moment.


Since I teach computer to the fearfully inept (sadly a large number of my generation who didn't grow up with computers are a bit scared to use them) I feel that I need to keep up with what is being sold and I doubt if it will be possible to buy anything except a Windows 10 computer in a year's time.  Windows 10 was made available on July 29th and for a year it is a free download.  My desktop computer (which has been upgrading itself almost every day for quite a while) has been deemed suitable for the upgrade and yesterday I bit the bullet and started to download it. 


It was OK to begin with but eventually told me that it would be turning itself on and off quite a few times and that I should just sit back and relax while this happens.  So I sat and sat, the computer didn't turn itself off but the screen went blank and I became more and more worried that something had gone dreadfully wrong and that I had lost everything.  I tried to reactivate it by tapping the keys and by moving the mouse and nothing happened so I tried to turn it off using the switch on the computer.  That was when I realised that the whole thing had frozen so I gritted my teeth and turned it off at the switch to 'timeline' it.


When I turned it back on the screen came alive again with the message that the download had failed and that my original operating system was being restored.  So  -  I am sort of back where I started from.  I have a new program called 'Journal notebook" or something of the sort and I received a message to say that Family Tree Maker 16 was incompatible with Ancestry.com which would be fine if I actually had FTM 16 on my computer but I have FTM 14.


I have almost a year to download Windows 10 and will have one more try before I ask Techie to do it for me; he offered to "let me have a look at it" last time he was here to sort out a problem on my Windows 8.1 laptop on which he downloaded Classic Shell.  I don't think that Windows 10 is all that different to Classic Shell which is easy enough when that computer is working properly but it has installed a trial version of MacAfee Antivirus which has expired and I can't uninstall it and it is blocking Trend Micro which I had installed before.


I rarely use that computer so I have installed a free version of AVG and activated Windows Defender so hopefully that will work until the next time I get Techie to sort out all the problems which I am encountering.  I guess that it keeps me on my toes but I am beginning to think that downloading fixes for problems just  causes more rogue programs to install themselves.

Yes, I AM D1's mother

The day before yesterday I had an appointment with a lawyer (not the ambulance chasers' firm) who looked at my Will and said "So you are D1's mother!".  It turns out that he knew D1 in the olden days when we were young.  Anyway, he was just the sort of lawyer I had been looking for -  listened to what I wanted, discussed the legal issues very knowledgeably, agreed that there was no problem about writing a Codicil and did not try to persuade me to change my mind about my instructions regarding the Advance Health Directive.  I was very satisfied with my visit and hopefully it will not be too long before things are all organised.


Himself told me a few days ago that Herself had a blister on her back.  I thought that it might be the beginning of a pressure sore but poor Herself has shingles.  If she wasn't uncomfortable enough before she must be in great distress now; I understand that it is a very painful affliction.  My general practitioner advised me to be vaccinated against it as there is a new vaccine; so I am protected.  Most of my generation had chickenpox so we are all at risk of developing shingles.


I had no clients at COTA today so I spent the morning buying myself some new jeans and loading my new slow cooker up with the makings of a lamb stew.  The new slow cooker is much superior to the old one which was starting to flake at the edges and worried me a bit that it might start showing its internal workings and become dangerous.


I am more than halfway through skein two of the Ankh Morpork/Cardamom spinning and suspect that the combination of the two will be similar to the waters (?) of the Ankh River  -  sort of grey, green and greasy.  There will be enough to knit a sweater and I am looking forward to seeing it knitted up.  I have tried photographing it but however much I tweak the picture I cannot get the colour right so I will not post it here.  I will start knitting it before I have finished the spinning and as soon as I have finished the scarf now in progress from the colourway Cupcake which I obtained from GreenwoodFiberworks.com .

Almost run over by an ambulance chaser ...

In view of the CVA suffered by Herself and her struggle to retrieve something of her former function I decided that perhaps the time had come to finalise my 'End of Life' arrangements.  I already have a Will but want a codicil to change the ages at which the GBs inherit.  There is a law firm opposite the bus stop by my hairdressers so I and decided to make an appointment to see someone there to get my affairs organised.


I telephoned them a couple of days ago and explained what I needed done so that I would be directed to the correct person for my needs and was immediately interrogated about exactly what I wanted.  I was initially told that the fee would be $400.00 per hour and then I was asked name, address, phone number, email, age and how much I was worth.  I don't think that she asked me for my knicker size but that may have been an oversight on her part.


She then informed me that it was not possible to write me a codicil and that I would have to have a new will written in their format.  I could see that this would take as many hours as they could squeeze in and End of Life instructions and Enduring Power of Attorney would no doubt take many hours more to write them in there own format.  I was beginning to realise that they thought that they would have me for the rest of my life and plague my executors after I was dead.


Anyway I made an appointment for next week.  They then sent me a long form to fill out with questions about every possible relationship and marital connections, covering things which are never going to be relevant such as step children, step grandchildren, husbands, defactos, ex-husbands ex-husbands step children etc.  Having digested all this I received a call to say that the lawyer I was to see was not able to see me and I would have to see someone else who was not able to write a codicil either.  I said thank you very much but I thought that I could probably write a holographic codicil my self (as a genealogist I have read enough wills and codicils to get an idea of what is required) and cancelled my appointment.


I now have an appointment next week with a small  (possibly a one man) practice with someone who asked a few relevant questions over the phone, says that he can't see any reason why he should not write a codicil but that he will need to see my will to make sure, will organise enduring power of attorney and End of Life stuff and I am seeing him next week.  I don't even care of he writes a new will and charges me more than $400.00 per hour;  I think that he will do what is necessary without swallowing me up in some legal maelstrom.


Watch this space ...