So last Wednesday it was time to say goodbye to Grandma.

I drove down on Tuesday via Wales (in order to pick Simon up.) This made my entire journey approx 900 miles in three days, ouch.

We had a cremation at T.Wells crem at 12, and then a memorial service at Hartfield church at 1pm, followed by a wake at The Anchor afterwards.

There was a bit of a panic mid-morning, as 

lucy_pointycat

rhandolph

My Aunty Val (who is a florist) did all the flowers, and they were lovely. Grandma would have loved them.

I think most of us were in tears at the crem. I lost it halfway through singing Psalm 23. By the time we got to the church, we were pretty much cried out, and Mum and I managed to give our two-part eulogy without breaking down, which was good, and by all accounts we did a good job.

The wake was extremely subdued - as our Lucy remarked, "Our family don't really know how to have fun, do they?" I suppose having several alcoholics in the family tree does tend somewhat to put the dampers on.

Walked down to the village with Lucy, Rhandolph and Simon. Went into Pooh Corner, where Grandma worked for several years. It's expanded quite considerably since those days. Chatted with the owner, Mike, for a while, but had to leave before having an unfortunate wallet accident. Everyone knows what a sucker I am for Pooh memorabilia. When Grandma was working there, every Xmas and birthday would bring me a present that was Pooh-related :-)

Walked up to the rec (recreation ground aka playground) with Simon and Rhandolph, where they both had a go on the slide and swings. Rhandolph got muddy trousers, and I got muddy boots.

Everyone left by about 5pm, so we went back to Mum's for a cuppa, and then I drove L&R back to Brighton, where we played with their incredibly cute kittens for a bit. 

Wednesday I drove back, via Wales. Simon was very clingy and did not want to go back at all, so we had one of those sessions just before I dropped him off. Very exhausting, especially on top of a funeral. Still, he was very very well-behaved the whole time we were there, and it was such a short visit, I can't ask for more, really. 

I was so exhausted on Friday that I called in to my boss to ask for an extra day's holiday, or alternatively I'd have to take it as sick since I was waaaay too tired to work. There has now been a fuss over that since she was on holiday (which I didn't know since she'd said to me on Monday "see you Friday") and didn't pick up her voicemail. More on that later in the week, probably.

Hey nonny nonny, nearly two weeks without an update, but nothing has really happened!

I took a couple of days off work since I was feeling a bit poo after taking Simon back to his dad's after Lucy's wedding. My boss has been really supportive, which is nice. So I just took a couple of days out, to chill and relax and catch up on sleep (not been resting very well.) Am now feeling much more with it and sleeping better again.

Re-read my way through the entire Sandman series, which as always helped me feel more grounded and centred. Which is passing strange for a fantasy series which has some of the most surreal and dreamlike imagery and storylines in the medium, but there we go :-)

Also managed to overcome my neurosis about letting the kittens go outside. I was terrified one or both would wind up running away and either getting hurt or killed, or never coming back. Really quite an obvious sublimination of my loss of control over Simon's parenting and anxieties thereof. Once I realised that, I was much more calm about things, and I took the big step a couple of weekends ago.

They both came out kind of nervously, and they were sniffing away like mad at everything they could reach. I had to clean the existing crap from neighbourhood cats off the lawn before they would go near the grass, but once I did, they decided they liked it. They even said hello to next door's dog (through the fence) and although they bolted inside when he barked, they came straight back out again and went on making friends with him. (He was not barking aggressively, just in that "Hello I'm friendly and very over-excited. Let's play!" way that dogs do.)

I also managed to teach them to climb in and out of the kitchen window so I don't have to leave the back door open. No, of course I didn't teach them by example... LOL. I accomplished it by means of calling them from the window, and brandishing bits of crabstick (their favourite treat) out of the window at them. Scamps got the idea within a couple of minutes, but Sarah, being a bit more "intellectually challenged" than her sister, took about 20 minutes to work out how to get in. She also has a very strange technique: rather than leap up onto the window ledge like Scamps does, she kind of jumps on her hind legs and hooks her front paws over the sill, then just hangs there for a couple of seconds before hauling herself up, pushing with her hind paws. I swear she looks like someone just threw her at the window and she splatted there :-D I have to get some video footage of her doing it but so far, no luck!

Also, their feeding habits are making me go "hmm". I kept switching their food around because they were leaving large amounts untouched, and I stopped buying the Sainsburys really-basic-and-cheap catmeat, because it smelled utterly foul (and I normally quite like the smell of catfood) and they weren't eating it at all. but I was determined not to get into the "Oh no, my babies aren't eating! Let me try a more expensive brand!" thing, because ultimately you end up giving them smoked salmon and caviar... while you're eating Tesco Value noodles :-p But having received some vouchers for free samples of Whiskas dry kitten food and Whiskas pouches, I thought I'd get some. Well, at first they were yumming the pouches down, and I bought quite a lot, because I had a discount code for bulk purchases which made them cheaper than the supermarket stuff. But then after about 5 days they stopped eating it again! So this weekend I thought Bollocks, and I just bought the Morrisons bog standard one. I opened a tin this morning and it looked FOUL and I thought, bloody hell, there's no way they're going to eat this... but they polished off the lot!

In other news, it was Simon's birthday on Sunday. For some reason, my mum decided to send her card, Grandma's card and Aunty Sally's to my house so I could send them on. But she didn't post them until Wednesday. In normal weeks I might have still been able to repost them with my package, but the Post Office had chosen to call a 24-hour strike last week on the Thursday evening. In addition, the gift I ordered for him over a week ago still hasn't arrived, despite their terms being delivery within 3 days. So unfortunately he did not receive his cards from me and mine until Monday, and won't be getting his actual gift until I've had it and sent it on. GRR. :-( Still, he sounded pretty chipper when I spoke to him on Saturday; they'd gone out to eat at Old Orleans and he'd polished off a full rack of ribs! He is also now minted with the amount of spending money he was sent, so I told him he can take ME out when he comes up in the Summer hols!

Speaking of which, only 4 weeks now until I can pick him up and we get a whole week together :-) With any luck the weather will be somewhat improved - so far it's been the wettest June and July on record in Sheffield, even without mentioning the floods - but even if it pisses down every day I know we will have lots to do and just enjoy being together again :-) I only wish we had more than a week, but I couldn't get any more time off work - one of the drawbacks of a small team with every member being a parent: everyone wants the school holidays off! And as the newest team member, I don't get first pick...

Lucy and Rhandolph are back from their honeymoon with loads of great photos which has made me really, really want to go on holiday again. Haven't been away since I went to Mallorca last May with Pat in our sort-of last-gasp attempt at reconciliation, which wasn't exactly relaxing. And prior to that, we'd not been away for 3 years.

Mum and I had been planning to go away together this year, but then Grandma fell and broke her wrist, and of course since then Mum has been looking after her all the time. So there's no way we can get away until we get Grandma into residential care, which the council aren't exactly falling over themselves to arrange. Trouble is, it's hard enough getting people into residential care because they're physically disabled, but the places for dementia cases are even rarer. Lucy and I have told Mum that she'll have to give the social a deadline - just say "I'm going back to work on X date, at which point there will be nobody to look after my mother, so pull your finger out and find her a place, or I'll be leaving her on your doorstep." It's horrible, but she's looking at getting repossessed if she doesn't sort things out soon.

Of course I could go away on my own, but then I'm essentially paying (more) money just to be hotter - I might as well just take a week off, stay at home, and book a sunlamp session.

Also considered taking Simon away (if Pat would consent) but I couldn't afford to go during termtime, and his schooling has already been disrupted enough. Also, he'd want to be in a resort with other kids around to play with, and I don't think I could handle being stuck with pikeys for a week, which is always a risk in a family resort.

Anyway, no point talking about it for now, what I'll do is research average costs at various resorts and times between this autumn and next Summer, try to save a little wonga, and then see how things pan out with Grandma.

Best get back to work for now...