Monthly Archives: June 2016

My Son, the Professional.

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Wow.

I am still pinching myself.

Our knucklehead is now a fully qualified, PADI certified, Dive Instructor, passing his exams with distinctions and sporting a CV chock-full of related qualifications like Rescue Diving and Emergency First Response training.
He’s now adding Free Diving Instructor to that list, and he is on cloud nine.

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Last Sunday, the day after his exams, we went to celebrate with him and the other newly qualified candidates, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the knucklehead happier. He didn’t stop grinning, and if you asked him how he was, he threw his arms in the air and literally whooped!

If you had told me, even two years ago when he had just started his internship, that we would reach this point, I would probably have smiled, hesitant to take it as a given, even though I had all my fingers and toes crossed that he would make this work!
And it has been ALL him. He has had to work and study and look after himself – cooking, cleaning, doing his washing… We paid for his internship and supplied him with groceries, but he had to do all the work!
He has matured and grown up so much.
He is so proud of himself.
And we are so proud of him.

Feeeeed the Biiiirds…

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This is the view from mi kitchen window. Doesn’t look like much, I know, but where the red arrow is I’ve hung a bird feeder in the tree, and the top of the carport roof is one HUGE bird feeder!
I don’t know why it took me so long to click to use the roof! 😀

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I put a bird bath on the wall in my front garden months ago – a big salad bowl that is fairly deep filled with round river stones – and the birds love it. I have been racking my brain to work out where I could put a bird feeder that it would be safe from the dogs and the neighbourhood cats, and still visible to me, and suddenly one morning about a month ago I saw it – the carport roof in the back garden!

So I started by chopping up bread crusts and throwing the bits up onto the carport roof. It took about three weeks for the birds to find the food and decide it was safe – and now I have a regular crowd waiting for their breakfast! Its amazing to watch and we can hardly wait to see what birds come down!
Unfortunately the roof isn’t properly flat, and its tipped away from me so I can’t see the birds when they’re on the roof unless I stand on my tippytoes – but I can see them coming and going. 🙂
To date we’ve had Crested Barbet, Bulbul, Grey Loerie, Mossies, Masked Weavers, Laughing Doves, Ringneck Doves, Glossy Starling, Olive Thrush, Black Collared Barbet, Cape White Eye, Cape Robin, and (unfortunately) Indian Mynas, all eating on the roof! The Hadeda come too, but they seem to just watch.

About a week ago we hung the bird feeder – an empty 2L cooldrink bottle with the sides cut out and a 10mm dowel through the bottom, and I put a suet ball in it. It took only a day for the birds to start eating from the feeder – mainly the Mossies and Starlings, and occasionally doves. I’ve now found a couple of suet recipes so I’m going to start making my own!
Along with the bread I now throw fruit and veggie off-cuts, and we’re going to start buying wild bird food to add as well, and I have a lovely big seed bell to hang next to the feeder!

Birds need a little extra food in the winter, and I have always loved bird watching, and my Glugster now enjoys it too, and bringing the birds to our garden is just so cool!

Daddy Darling…

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Today is fathers day, and as soon as I think about it I start crying.

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My daddy darling has always been my hero.
When I got my drivers license, the first thing my dad taught me to do was change a tyre, and that has served me well a few times. If any of us got stuck somewhere, my dad would come and get us at the drop of a hat. When we lived at home, and went gallivanting, my dad would stay awake until we got home and he was sure we were safe. My dad went to school meetings with me when I was a single mom with an ADHD son and couldn’t face another judgmental panel of teachers.
I had a couple of boyfriends, and one of them described my dad as “a big oke with a gun” as my dad was wearing his big revolver when they first met. My dad loved torturing our suitors, who had to come to the house and ask my dad’s permission to take us out. My dad would sit in his chair, all big and intimidating, then going down the passage to his room and laughing his head off at the boy’s sweating in silence while trying to pluck up the courage to speak to him.
And now he looks small and frail… :'(

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My daddy darling is being stolen from us. Its a little at a time, but its happening really fast. 🙁
Special days – Christmas, birthdays, Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Easter – were big occasions for my dad, and he loved celebrating them with all of us. We didn’t make plans to spend Fathers Day together this year, as it seems having too many visitors and people in and out in a day stresses my dad too much. :'(
I don’t know if he even knows its Fathers Day today.
He’s confused and fearful and sad. My mommy darling can’t be out of his sight for more than a minute without him panicking. He’s not sleeping, restless and wandering around the house. He can’t use the TV remote anymore. He keeps asking my mom when they’re going home.

I wish Dementia was a person so I could smack it upside the head and tell it to fuck off.
I’m angry and frustrated.
I don’t think I have never felt so helpless in my life.

A whilst part of me doesn’t want to talk about it, another part of me wants to talk to everyone about it.
And every time I think about what is happening to my dad, I start crying. I feel like I am already mourning my dad, but he’s still here, and it is so confusing.

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I see a rack full of Asterix comics in a bookshop and I start crying. I see a Clint Eastwood movie or a war movie on the TV guide and I start crying. I get excited about feeding the birds in my garden – a love of bird watching in instilled by my dad, and I know he won’t remember us speaking about it.
I have caught myself speaking of my dad in the past tense already, but he’s still here…