Driven out by the noise

 Having said yesterday that I thought I was getting used to the noise, today it's been bloody awful, a digger thing going all day building up yet another mountain of rubble to be taken away, plus the terrible whine of a powerful electric circular saw cutting up a load of stones.  And then there's the 4 or 5 builders (including Mr X and his brother) all yelling at each other to be heard above the terrible racket.  Ironically, a couple of them are wearing ear defenders - I think we need them more than the builders, at least they're used to all the noise!  At this rate they'll be ruining our entire summer, there's no way we can sit out in the garden with all that racket going on.  We were forced out this afternoon to get a break from the noise, went to Blue Anchor for the  boot sale, we were going to have a walk along the prom as well but, although it was sunny, it was extremely windy there.  They've knocked off now and are going home by the looks of things - early finish since they started at 07.30 this morning.

At least I got a bargain at the boot sale - a large brand new dog bed, Betty's asleep in it already.  The lady bought it for her dog who apparently refused to get in it 😂.  She only wanted £20 for it, they retail at £69.99!

Also got a lovely fleece blanket, also new and with the shop sales ticket still attached, just £2 - I'll put it in her bed in the winter, as an extra layer of warmth for her.  Pampered - much?! 😂😉

It's turning back into salad weather again, lovely, I do like a salad.

Annabeth, that bakery used to do special offers on 'pasty of the day', we had them several times.  Hopefully they still do!  And Scarlet, the cathedral is spectacular isn't it, I'm always in awe of how the workers centuries ago managed to build it, and so beautifully.  I see they now charge an admission price of £14 each (and that's a special offer for summer, normally £15.50), used to be just a donation.  I think it's a bit of a cheek charging admission for what is essentially a place of worship.....although, to be fair, it is beautiful and must cost so much for the upkeep, especially with 1000s of visitors.

Booked!

 I've gone ahead and booked us a week's holiday in a cottage - well, a large wing of a farmhouse, in September.  It's just over an hour's drive away and is located in a rural farming area very near where we lived when we first moved down to Somerset.  The last time we went away was in September last year, a 5 day stay in a beautiful lodge on a small holiday park in north Devon.  It wasn't a success, husband was dissatisfied with just about everything and we came home a day early as I was fed up with him complaining.  

Well, I was determined to find nice accommodation in a lovely area, not built up, with rural views and not too far from amenities and nice places to visit, something that gave husband nothing to moan about in other words, I think this place ticks all the boxes.  I showed it to husband before booking and even he was impressed.  The cottage itself is gorgeous, old with exposed beams and stonework, beautifully furnished, large rooms, a nice conservatory, big decking area with plenty of outdoor seating and a huge, secure enclosed garden which Betty should enjoy.  Typically, the first thing that husband asked was what size is the TV and does it have satellite channels 😂😒 Whereas I'm looking forward to sitting on the decking - or in the conservatory if it's raining - with a mug of coffee and a good book, looking out over the fields (it's a working farm) and watching Betty enjoy the garden.  One of the good things about the location is that it's not far from Wells, which remains one of my favourite ever places in Somerset.....in the 2.5 years since we've lived here we've not been there as it's too far to drive from here, it would take over 1.5 hours which is a bit too much for husband, but it's only about 20 mins or so from the holiday place.  Clark's Village (the retail outlet), Wookey Hole and several nature reserves are close by too, so plenty to do.  There's even a tea room not far away, and you all know by now how much I like those! 😁  I'm really looking forward to it and can't wait to go.  With the conservatory and large garden - and the working farmers encouraging guests to walk round the farm and even help feed the animals and collect eggs - there'll be ample opportunity for me to be by myself for a break from husband, if necessary.

There's quite a bit of noise coming from the building site next door but it's not bothering me as much now, I'm obviously getting more used to it.  They're certainly cracking on with the work now, although there's not much difference externally, I assume they're working inside.  They've still got the rest of the scaffolding to erect, still only the one gable end of that done, and then they'll be taking off the roof slates, building up the walls to double height and putting the roof back on, I expect it'll be noisier then.  I just hope they keep the overall character of the building, it's a lovely ancient stone barn.

Bit of a disappointment, and contemplating a holiday

 Husband is having a bad day (which impacts on me), he's already very grumpy and argumentative.  He's also tripped twice, bashing my knee the first time and treading on Betty's paw the second time.  Hopefully, he'll be in a better frame of mind once my lovely cleaner Hayley arrives, he likes a bit of banter with her.

I've got a small list of jobs to do this morning, I like to make sure I've got things to do in the kitchen whilst she's here, to keep out of her way so she can get on with her work.  I've suggested a couple of jobs husband can do in the garden at the same time, which he's moaned about (of course!) - if I don't give him something to do he'll just sit in his armchair watching the TV and talking at Hayley all the time, distracting her.

This low Fodmap diet (I'm still sticking to it) is working wonders with my insides, I've had almost no gut or bowel problems since I've been doing it.  However, having weighed myself I was disappointed to find that I've put on 3 or 4 lbs....not a lot I know, but I need to lose weight, not gain more!  It's not meant to be a weight reducing diet, I know that, and I know why I've put on weight - it's quite carb-heavy.  Somewhat surprisingly, quite a few carby things are allowed on the diet - breads and pasta, providing they're GF and don't contain any other banned ingredients or flavourings.  Rice is allowed, as are potatoes.  All of these carby things are things I know bloat me and thus I don't normally eat a lot of them.  I suppose subconsciously I was so pleased I could eat them on this diet that I kind of thought "ooh yummy" and have been eating them too much.  I found a sourdough loaf (it was recommended on a low Fodmap group I belong to) that is known-irritant free, it's Tesco's own Finest range San Francisco Sourdough, on their instore bakery counter, and it is quite honestly the nicest commercial sourdough I've ever tasted.  I've been eating a slice or two every day, along with GF pasta (which has improved enormously over the years), rice and potatoes, albeit our own new homegrown potatoes.  So that's why I've put on some weight, I expect.  To lose the pounds I'll have to restrict the carbs, so I'm going very low carb for a week or two.  After that I'll try to stick to only one carby meal per day, that should do the trick.

I've had a letter from the opticians saying my eye test is due - the last time I went the optician recommended I have them every 18 months instead of 2-yearly, as the cataracts I have forming are growing quicker than he would have expected.  I've noticed my close up vision in my right eye is getting to be a lot more blurred, I don't know whether that's cataract related but I'll find out when I have the test, I'll ring and book it today.

It's overcast at the moment and we've had a few spots of rain, there's a breeze and it's about 17 deg - not particularly warm but not really chilly either, quite pleasant after the awful heat and humidity of last week.

I'm sort of contemplating possibly booking a holiday for September - last year we went to a beautiful lodge on a small quiet holiday park, I loved both the lodge and the park but husband did nothing but moan from the time we arrived.  We came home a day early because I was so fed up with his complaints and thought it was probably the last time we'd go on holiday....I thought if he was going to complain all the time then we might as well be at home.  Still, I'd like to go away for a change of scenery - not far obviously as husband doesn't drive far nowadays, but I'd be happy to go to a different part of Somerset, probably countryside rather than coastal.  It won't be a holiday park, I'll look for a cottage in a nice area with places to walk nearby.

Am I patient?

 It turns out the food and drink festival is on this coming Saturday, not yesterday, I got the date wrong.  Husband was delighted at that - he always gets dates, appointments and times wrong so gleefully and smugly told me "See, it's not just me!" 😒  I get something wrong once, he does it all the time 😜

Some of you have said I must have oodles of patience.....I wouldn't ever have said before that I was a particularly patient person, the opposite in fact.  But yes, in dealing with husband on a daily basis I have to be extremely patient.  For instance, this morning he was doing his weekly dosette box pill fill up - he does it, at his insistence, with me supervising.  He's actually pretty good at getting all the pills sorted into the twice daily little boxes, with the occasional slip up which I help him to sort out.  What he has trouble with though is actually getting the pills out of their packets safely - he tends to ping the pills around and every Sunday, 2 or 3 end up on the floor, with both of us scrabbling around on the floor looking for them.  Which worries me, as I'm always concerned if we can't find one, Betty might, and I don't want her eating random human pills!  About a month ago, I bought husband a gadget for extracting pills safely from packets, it's a bit like a stapler with a container that the pill falls safely into.  Well, that's the theory, and it does actually work quite well, although is a bit fiddly to use.  Husband can't stand anything fiddly though, so now refuses to use it, nor will he let me do it for him.  He's extremely obstinate, as I've said before, if he doesn't want to do something then he won't, and there's absolutely no budging him.

He asked me this morning what one of his pills is for - it's Dapagliflozin, one of his heart pills, it's a mild diuretic and helps lower blood pressure and ease the heart's load.....it's also a diabetes medication, I take Empagliflozin for my diabetes, it's in the same family as the Dapa.  Well, husband then insisted it was for his diabetes (he's only borderline diabetic and takes no medication for it), I said no, it's for his heart.  So, as is his custom, he then began an argument insisting adamantly that he was given it for diabetes.  No he wasn't, the GP - on the advice of his cardiologist - prescribed it for his heart.....I was there in the surgery with him at the time, so I know!  This is where my patience comes in - husband is so bloody-minded, when he thinks he's right about something he is so scathing and talks down to me, treating me as if I'm an idiot.  It takes all of my restraint and tolerance not to do what I really feel like doing - which is to whack him round the ear with a frying pan and walk out the door.  Instead, I just have to walk away, seething inside.....so yes I guess you could say I'm very patient now.

It's quite upsetting, the man I've loved since I was 21 and married at 23 would never, had never treated me like that up until a couple of years ago - that man doesn't exist anymore, which is so sad.

The oppressive heat and humidity has gone, it's beautifully fresh - and even slightly cool - today.  Such a relief, my body's not built for hot humid temperatures.  Once again, we've got a week with no medical appointments....I said that last week though and we ended up with a last-minute podiatry appointment for husband.  Oh, just remembered, husband's key worker is due to ring for a phone appointment on Wednesday.  I suppose it's nice that they're monitoring his mental state, albeit on the phone once a month, but I really don't think it's much use.  Whilst she's nice enough, seems caring and very earnestly asks questions about how he's feeling and we're both coping, the problem is she insists on speaking to both of us at the same time, on speakerphone.  Which means husband talks over me, as usual, I hardly get a chance to say anything, and in any case I have to be careful about what I say, as if I say something husband doesn't like or disagrees with, it rebounds on me as he has a right go at me later once the call has ended.

Too hot for ice cream!

 Well, no ice cream yesterday, nor the frozen fish I wanted - all of the supermarket's freezers were roped off with notices pinned on them saying the food was dangerous to eat as the freezers were out of order.  A lot of their chiller cabinets holding the fresh food were empty too - same reason, chillers broken down.  A staff member said the chiller and freezer cabinets just couldn't cope with the heat.  Apparently, it was the same with all their freezers in the stock room out the back, they were going to have to discard ALL of their frozen food....that's an awful lot of food to throw away!  Terrible isn't it, but of course they have to be safe, if someone got ill as a result of eating food from a freezer that had broken down, the store would be in big trouble.  At least two other food stores in town had the same problems, according to local social media.  Makes you wonder how other countries that generally have hotter temperatures than ours cope - I guess they're more geared up for it, as the heat is normal for them.  But it looks like these extremes of temperatures/weather conditions are becoming normal for this country too, so it's time to get their acts together I think.

The car journey to and from husband's podiatry appointment in Taunton yesterday afternoon was deeply unpleasant, traffic jams and boiling hot temperatures, 32 deg according to the car thermometer.  And then when we got there, it was a pay and display car park with machines that didn't accept cards, it was a pay by phone thing which I'd never used before, I figured it out though.  It did accept coins (correct money only, no change given) but husband had no cash at all and I only had 40p(!!) as I almost never use cash nowadays.  If husband had been on his own he'd have been completely flummoxed.  I guess that's a lesson to always ensure we have some coins in the car.  Honestly, this cashless society is a downright nuisance at times.  The podiatrist said that husband wears the wrong shoes, almost all his shoes are slip ons which the podiatrist said don't stop his feet from sliding forwards inside them when he's walking, causing his toes to bunch up at the front.  He said he should ideally wear lace ups, which husband finds difficult to do up because bending over causes him to become breathless and dizzy.  The chap did say that velcro fastening ones would be a reasonable alternative.  Incidentally, husband's cardiac nurse told him ages ago that instead of bending over to do up his shoes, he should bring his feet up towards him, i.e. put his foot up on a stool, so he doesn't have to bend over so far.  Does he do it though?  No of course he doesn't, despite me reminding him umpteen times. 🙄

It's noticeably cooler this morning and was a much more comfortable night, thank goodness, it's still warm but not blisteringly hot and humid, breezy too which is nice.  There's a food and drink festival on at the seafront today, basically local food and drink producers selling very nice but also very expensive wares - we'll go and look anyway.  I'd better get some cash out of a machine on the way there, just in case!

We had a phone call from husband's sister yesterday, the one with lung cancer (he has 4 sisters and 3 brothers still living).  She and her daughter are coming down for 3 nights next month, daughter will be driving, they're staying in the Premier Inn less than 2 miles away so will be spending most of every day with us.  Being realistic, it's likely to be the last time husband and his sister see each other - as her illness progresses she won't be coming down all this way (around 175 miles), nor is husband able to drive that distance either.  So we'll have to make the most of this visit.  And then his daughter and son in law are coming down for a long weekend in August, it's always nice to see them.

Aggravation all round

 Last night was the worst one this year, it was incredibly hot and sticky, Betty and I were both suffering.  Poor thing, she just couldn't settle, was very restless and prowling around, panting a lot, throwing herself down on her 2 beds (1 in the lounge, the other in my bedroom), her cool mat, the sofa, my bed, the floors.  I had the fan on in my bedroom but it's only a small one and not very powerful, so in the end we both went in the lounge and I switched the big fan on and opened a couple of windows.  I got out the cloths I'd earlier wrung out in cold water and put in plastic bags in the fridge, I had one round my neck, the other I spread over Betty as she was lying on her cool mat.  Trouble is, she won't stay still for long enough, she was up and down constantly, so the cloth kept falling off.  I lay in husband's recliner chair for a while, then a thunderstorm started up around midnight, which unnerved Betty even more - fortunately, it was much quieter and a lot less violent than the one the other day, just a few claps of thunder, a bit of lightning and a few showers that went on for an hour or so.  Eventually, we both went back to my bedroom and endured a very restless night.  It is a bit cooler so far this morning, although still sticky.  Betty does drink water often, I make sure of that.  She seems ok right now, she's sleeping as she's clearly very tired (I know the feeling!).  She's not eaten her breakfast but that's ok, I'm sure she doesn't feel like eating right now, nor do I.

Husband had a phone call late yesterday afternoon, offering him a cancellation appointment for podiatry for this afternoon (he's had trouble with his feet for years, it's flared up again).  Unfortunately, the appointment is at a clinic in Taunton, so a blinking 45-50 minute drive on a hot day again.  Such a blimmin nuisance, I don't know why they can't hold the clinics in the Minehead hospital, instead of forcing us to go on long journeys - which eventually we won't be able to do.

The upside of having to go out this afternoon is that it'll give us a break from the constant racket going on next door.  The builders arrived early again, there's been a cement mixer going non-stop since 7.30 this morning, along with metallic clanking noises as the scaffolding is going up.  They're not having professional scaffolders, neighbour Mr X bought a vanload of second hand scaffolding and he and his brother are erecting it themselves.  I have no idea if they're trained or experienced at it, I presume not as they took all day yesterday to erect just the gable end scaffolding, whereas professional scaffolders would have the whole lot done in a day.  Let's hope for their sakes it's safe!  And all the blokes are shouting to each other again, to be heard above all the noise.  Before anyone says it, I do know that we could report the noise and flagrant disregard for time starts to the Council, but I'm not going to do that for 2 reasons:  1)  We have to live with our neighbours in harmony for years to come, and 2)  If the Council did put a restriction on their working hours, then the work would take even longer to complete.  So we just have to put up with it, even though it means we cannot sit out in our garden for probably the whole of the summer.  And we thought we were moving to a lovely peaceful retirement community!!

We're popping out to the supermarket now for a top up shop of fresh stuff (and a bit of ear relief!).  I think I'll buy a tub of nice ice cream - not on my low Fodmap diet but I've pretty much stuck to it for more than 2 weeks now, and I think we deserve a treat!

Too hot to think, let alone do anything

 We're all suffering the effects of the heat now, well myself and Betty more so than husband, he likes the hot weather but still has to be careful.  I have to remind him to keep drinking water or squash, he doesn't drink enough, especially since he sweats excessively in this heat.  I've also suggested he stays indoors today, since we're on red alert for high temperatures.  Betty had a short walk at 7 am, for the past few days that's been her one and only walk each day, the rest of the time she goes for a wee on the lawn at the front of the house, the paved areas and gravel in our back garden are far too hot for her.  We have the fans going, windows open and curtains closed, it's actually not too bad indoors although it'll probably be much worse this afternoon.  Betty has, for the last couple of days, actually been lying on her cool mat, thankfully.  If it was bigger I think I'd join her 😂.  Thank goodness it'll be much cooler tomorrow, this heat has done me in, when I got up just after 6 this morning I felt like a hot, sweaty, sticky, headachy mess - a cool shower made me feel much better.  Oh, and husband was out with Betty, so no chance of the shower water stopping!  We're forecast thunderstorms late tonight.

One of the good things about having the fans going all day is that it helps to mask the constant noise from the building works next door!

I need some shopping, but might get it delivered for a change, I certainly don't feel like going at the moment.  Actually, it could wait a few days, we have plenty of food in, just getting a bit low on fresh fruit and veggies, and of course it's going to be cooler from tomorrow.  So actually we might go on Sunday morning, the supermarket is usually quiet then.

Nothing else to say, sorry, it's too hot to do anything so therefore nothing to write about!