Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Operations

My mum had major surgery yesterday. She had a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. The operation took ten hours. We took mum to the hospital on Monday night, and felt quite bad about leaving her there. Then we went back last night and were there when they brought her back from surgery. She looked much better than I had expected, but had lots of tubes coming out of her.

I then went back to the hospital after work today and mum seemed ok. They removed some of the tubes while I was there, which was clearly very painful for mum, but definite progress. We’re hoping that she will be released on Saturday.

It will be really good when mum gets to come home.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Doubts

There is a quote from Shakespeare that says “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt”. Those words have been at the back of my mind of late when it comes to exercising the Right to Manage where we live. I had shied away from pursuing this course of action as I wasn’t sure what the other leaseholders would think. Although my head said it was the right thing to do, I didn’t know if others would agree and the reasons piled on one after the other about why not to explore this further. Those doubts held me back from even trying.

But then, what with the freeholder being so rude and unreasonable of late, I wrote myself a note, and pinned it to my noticeboard, that said “I will exercise my right to manage”. Each time the doubts crept in, I looked at the note and focussed my mind. As it turns out, the other leaseholders really want to pursue it and they came up with their documents and paid their money very promptly, each of them seemingly not wanting to be the one to let the others down. Over the last few days on a few occasions it has washed over me again that we will probably soon be free of being bullied by our freeholder and instead will be in control of our own homes and money. Our doubts are traitors indeed.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Age is all in the mind

I have realised that my boss and someone I work with who is the same grade as me are both about seven years younger than me. I think that is s sign that you don't realise that you are getting older and still believe you are much younger than you actually are.

My grandad used to took about some "old boy" or other that he had seen, but the person was probably 20 years or more younger than him. Admittedly I am considerably younger than my grandad was when he made such comments, but I feel it is a slippery slope. Maybe I don't really want to have an accurate view of getting older though.