Colchester 24 update

Today, I found out that one of the three photographs I submitted to a local project called Colchester 24 is on display at the central library in Colchester.
Colchester 24 was a photography project where people living here were asked to take photographs during a 24 hour period and submit some for a chance to be used as a record of our town on this day.
Thousands of photographs were entered.
I only sent three and so am really quite amazed that one of mine was chosen and that it now sits proudly, among around only 30 others on display at the library. Even the Mayor is going to be there tomorrow opening the exhibition officially. Sadly, I won't be able to make it as we have an important Colchester Circle-D meeting here at the house and that's more important.
Here is the picture.
I called it "The little chef".

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We hosted Janet's funeral (Frank keeps calling it a "carnival" and we have taken to using this word too. Much more positive, eh?) this Wednesday and all went well.
Andrew is doing OK, feelings ebb and flow at times but he's strong.
We have a busy weekend ahead with lovely Circle-D friends tomorrow and my birthday on Sunday.
I will be back soon, with tales of it all and finished house and knitting projects.
Have a great weekend everyone and thanks so much for all your kind comments and thoughts this past week.

Perspective in sad times

This time last week, almost exactly to the hour, we received a call from Colchester General Hospital to say that Andrew's Mother, Janet, was about to pass away and that Andrew and his father should head up to the hospital.
She had only been admitted the day before and during his visits to her over those two days Andrew felt she wasn't really there.
She was sleeping a lot and not very lucid.
He went to the hospital with his father to say goodbye and then returned home, sad but not devastated.
Janet had been ill and her quality of life has deteriorated a great deal over the past few months.
She was 81 years old.

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The following morning Andrew was online and read the news about Ryan Schumacher, the husband of our dear friend Meri in California.
And there it was: a huge amount of perspective on our own situation.
Meri was one of the first people whose blogs I read when Frank was first diagnosed and her stories offered a great deal of support to me, all at sea with the business of managing the beast that it Type 1 Diabetes.
She helped me to be a proud D-Mama and to let nothing stop me from doing my best every day.
She is never anything but positive and supportive.
Meri is one of THE MOST IMPORTANT people in my life as the parent of a child with Diabetes.
For anyone new to the wonder that is Meri (and I am aware that most people reading my blog know her already!) let me say a few things:

Meri and Ryan have four great sons.
Three of their boys have Type 1 Diabetes.
Three, not one, three.
All the fear and hard work and finger pricks and hypos and hypers that Andrew and I deal with are dealt with by Meri and Ryan three times over.
How the woman has the energy to blog used to amaze me but I do now understand the need for it; the release that comes from putting those words down on the page and the joy and peace when comments roll in and people respond telling you they feel the same way.
Meri is always there for every other parent in the Diabetes Online Community (DOC).
She gives support constantly and asks for it when she needs it too.

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So, here it is:
last Tuesday, Ryan Schumacher, Meri's husband of 19 years, was diagnosed with six cancerous brain tumours as well as other tumours in his abdomen and legs.
He is 40 years old.
Talk about perspective.
Big time.

And as we plan Janet's funeral I am also thinking constantly about Meri and Ryan and the long and scary fight that lies ahead for them and their boys.
My Mum and Dad gave me some money for The Diabetes Society last week (they meant JDRF but can never get it right!).
I have sent it to the Schumachers.
It was the only thing to do.
I am telling this story here not to point out how great I am ( I am really not as what I want to do is jump on a plane to California and help somehow!!) but to ask any of you that might be reading to check out the Schumacher's story for themselves and if moved to do so, to contribute in any way you can.
It is very possibly the only thing to do.
Love to all.
It is a sad week but may we all find peace in our hearts.

light :: chai :: smoothie moustaches

Our breakfast table this morning saw us enjoying Berry Blast smoothies from Heather's Wholefood Kitchen and, for balance you understand, croissants alongside!
Today saw crisp clear blue skies, the like of which are so very welcome in February and which lift the spirits so immediately.
The light in the dining room at breakfast time (around 8am) was just gorgeous and here you can see our usual set up of diabetes kit, Lego instruction manuals and breakfast.
In this rather foodie post I must also mention that Andrew and I have been enjoying the odd chai made with rice milk of an evening. It has been lovely on these chilly evenings to sip something so gently spicy and warming.
I managed to give up tea and coffee about ten days ago.
I love both but had such a snotty heavy cold that I couldn't face the cow's milk I normally have in tea and the thought of a milky latte made me feel ill, so I went cold turkey on the caffeine and thus the milk.
After a couple of days I had a few hours when I would have gladly sold a kidney for a cup of really strong tea or coffee but then it was fine.
I had been using oat milk in cooking and smoothies but this week tried rice milk and prefer its taste. The problem here can be that these things are not so easy to come by. The big supermarket near me, for example, sells oat milk but not rice milk. For rice milk I have to travel further. I suppose it all boils down to me getting organised and buying in bulk as all these things are long life products anyway!
And, of course, how could I not post this picture of Frank with a great big smoothie moustache?! We've had smoothies twice this week already and I am finding them a great way to sneak all kinds of goodies into my suspicious around food boy!
The Wholefood Kitchen course is going really well and my intention for the course is to really increase my intake of veggies. I love them but admit I am lazy about eating loads of them. Fruit I manage more often but veggies take a bit more prep and I have committed myself to taking the time to make this happen.
This evenings meal of curried vegetable chowder was soooo tasty and will last two more meals, so the prep time really isn't wasted.
Happy Sunday to you all.

cyclamen :: snow :: our hearts

At the front of the house we have two pots of pretty cyclamen.
They do well in the cold weather, but last week week we had a night of temperatures of -12 here in Colchester!
They are holding onto their petals but I dare not touch them in case they all tumble to the ground.

And our snowman was such fun to make!
Frank and I had a great time making him and burrowing through the coal in the shed to find pieces small enough to decorate him.
He is all but melted today as we now have warm temperatures and are all out and about and mobile again.


And we made each other little Valentine's cards yesterday.
Toast was cut into heart shapes for breakfast and we made a yummy dinner to mark our love for our little family.
Sounds sappy, but we take any reason we can to have a special meal!
We love our food.
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Whilst on the subject of hearts and love, I have to admit that Andrew and I are rather heart sore this week, having delivered his Mum to her nursing home last Friday.
Seeing her leave her home of more than forty years and worse, her husband of nearly sixty years was tough on all of us.
In a kind twist of nature, and indeed fate, she has very little short-term memory left, I think, and we hope this might help her feel less stressed as the days go by.
The home is lovely and she is cared for by people who know how to help her.
Andrew's father did as much as could be expected of anyone, let alone someone of 84 who is not that mobile themselves, and is now resting after what must have been a tough six months before defeat was admitted and help sought.
He is the hero of all this.
We are visiting her daily at present, hence another week having gone by without writing.
We are spending quiet days reflecting on the nature of family and old age, and in taking in this new phase in which we find ourselves.

snow :: favourite gloves :: sweet days

Our garden still looks like this! It's so clean and fresh and I love it.
Frank and I have been very conscious of putting out fresh food for the birds these past days, even more so than usual.
And we have been rewarded with so many garden birds popping by to cheer our days.
So much so that we have taken to recording them in a little notebook, and indeed Frank has taken to shouting "Muuuuuum! Biiiiiiird!!!" at the top of his voice every time he sees one and I am not with him.

I love to knit but gloves, with fingers and all that jazz, have never called to me.
Mittens, I might well go for soon.
Socks too.
So, these beautiful teal-coloured gloves are my favourite this Winter.
I tend to have a new pair each Winter as inevitably one is lost each season.
These are from a fab shop in Frinton called "Great Danes", full of Danish and Scandinavian designs.
I am a sucker for Scandinavian stuff.

And Frank and I have been watercolouring crazy these cold, snowy days.
I got a set of watercolour postcards for Christmas and we use those to drew our own mandalas and pictures that we then paint.
I love this photo for the concentration on Frank's face.
Oh, and the Moomin's bottom mooning at the camera!!
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I will, I promise, post about the lovely Wholefood Workshop that we started on Monday but we are dealing with some family issues at present and time is short for writing.
Andrew's Mum is needing to go into respite care as she isn't well at the moment.
Andrew has found a really lovely place, close to us, and we hope she will be cared for and actually enjoy a change of scene and some new company.

pancakes :: snow :: a quilt

In an attempt to record and share more of our days (because they are so immensely fascinating, you understand!) I am going to try to post often in the same way as Heather, whose daily posts have been a wonderful source of beauty and out-breaths recently.
We have taken to having pancakes for breakfast every Sunday and that little routine sees me jumping out of bed before the boys to pad downstairs and mix the batter, so it can sit for a while before we start cooking.
We each have our favourite topping.
Frank goes for agave syrup (although having read about it recently I will be removing it from the pantry soon) and Andrew and I go for lemon juice and maple syrup.
We get two pancakes each (big, thin ones like crepes) from a mix of 4floz oat milk, 1 egg, 4oz spelt flour, pinch salt and 1 tbsp oil.
It leaves us rather wanting a little more but that's no bad thing.

And the table always groans under the weight of Lego. Every meal!

We had snow last night.
About five inches and it drifted so in parts of the garden it was quite high.
Straight after pancakes we headed out, all layered up, to throw snowballs at each other and get thoroughly cold.
Today was the day when I realised I have a hole in my wellies and my feet were very cold very quickly.
My lovely blokes longjohns worked a treat though!

And in the late morning I managed to complete my first ever quilt. Here you can see it on the big bed, although it is for Frank and his little bed next to ours.
The fabric was from the V&A stall at a Knit & Stitch Show two years ago and is all based on fabrics from the V&A archives.
They are beautiful and I am so glad to have been able to keep them together.
You can see in this picture how we sleep.
Frank sleeps directly next to me in a little bed (Andrew cannily took a saw to a regular single bed and made a kind of Frankenstein's monster of a bed!).
Frank didn't used to sleep here, except when he was tiny, but I never rested well with him away from me.
This way we all sleep better and I can check on him frequently because, let's face it, the deep sleep we all used to enjoy pre-kids and especially pre-diabetic kids is AWOL for a while.
It works for us, for now.
He learnt to make snowballs today.
And throw them.
His little snow suit is one brought back from a Finnish flea market by a friend.
We rarely get this much snow but this suit is fabulous when we do.

Tomorrow the Wholefood Kitchen starts for Andrew and I.
Will post more on that in the morning.

Instead of stories ...

Sometimes, of an evening, Frank and I discuss what stories he might like to hear.

I love reading and being read to. Thus talking books are great for me, especially as I can cook and potter whilst following a story.
I have very fond memories of being in my mid-twenties and sharing a house with two other young female teachers, one of whom is still one of my best friends, Alex.
Alex is from Ballymoney in Northern Ireland and after a few years teaching here in Essex, followed her heart home and works now in Belfast.
On special occasions Alex would read out loud to me as we both lay on sofas in the lounge of the house we shared. He gorgeous northern Irish accent made every story extra special to me.
Well, Frank loves stories too, but is in that in-betweeeny phase at the moment of not really enjoying longer stories and wanting the same very young children's stories over and over.
I have no problem with this unless it has been a long day and I am in need of something a little more peppy!
This was the case the other evening and so I suggested we took paper, books and pencils and his bedtime snack upstairs with us and planned our Chinese New Year celebrations on the big double bed INSTEAD of stories.

We had a couple of books for ideas of dragons to draw and Frank erected a pillow barrier to prevent me from seeing the dragon he was drawing.

Here you can see his snack (apples slices and an oat biscuit) and in the background his little monster design book. This is just a small Moleskine book that he has by the side of his bed and in which he draws any good ideas for monsters when he's allowed ten minutes reading or designing alone before lights go out.
Monsters don't frighten him and he loves to design weird and wonderful ones.

We came up with this version of a dragon for our Chinese New Year celebration and Frank had a ball using his new chalk pastels to colour it in as they were so bright.

My point with this post is that we spent a long time drawing and reading and talking about our ideas and I think both of us felt energised by this new activity.

I firmly believe in routine and the support it provides for all of us but on the occasion that I have stepped outside the routine and done something creative I have felt amazed by the energy I have tapped into.
Rather than feeling more tired by our slightly later night we felt great and had shared some creative time and most definitely strengthened our connection to each other as two people that like to create, albeit he monsters and gross creatures and me slightly less gross things!
Instead of stories, create ...
Any other ideas for great bedtimes?