The Highs:
A birthday gift from Dorina in NYC and a Get Well card from Eva in NY state, both arrived in the same postal delivery! Thank you dear friends for thinking of me, your friendship is much appreciated x
Outside knitting and eating.
Ben having fun building a wooden shoe rack for the hallway.
A Saturday morning cooked breakfast only a five minute walk from our home.
Beginning to make contacts and friendships within our church community, most especially there are three other church folk living with MS that also attend our Sunday mass!
A new lounge carpet and bathroom flooring upstairs.
The Lows:
A perfect storm of a dodgy u-bend, a sink that was slow to empty and a knocked tap equals a flood in the upstairs bathroom! Hence the need for new flooring as well as a complete redecoration of the lounge and dining room ceiling. It quite literally never rains but pours!
Who knew that Pringles plain crisps also contained yeast extract? No, me neither!! One of the very offending substances that I have painstakingly avoided for an entire year, so no wonder I am now dealing with another horrid candida flare :-( Thankfully the GP has prescribed a systemic treatment so things will settle eventually.
Pip has been increasingly unhappy at school. In addition to the issues with one of the girls she is also struggling with the relentless pace of work. She was off school last week due to a virus and a reaction to the MMR vaccine and despite being sick was relieved that she did not have to go to school. For the last few weeks she has felt a complete failure because she is struggling to keep up. I had a meeting with her teacher today and in order for Pip to have a hope of managing next year we would have to guarantee 100% attendance as well as Pip working at 110%; both of these goals are totally unrealistic!
It has been an interesting journey trying out mainstream school and it has confirmed my thoughts that schools are just number crunching machines with little regard for the well being of the children in their care. Needless to say Pip will be home schooled as from September with the longer term view of her attending Myerscough college once she is fourteen. So with a bit of luck I should be hopefully posting our usual home school stories as and when they occur :-)
15 comments:
Hello San, I'm sorry about the flood, but glad new flooring and lounge carpet was installed! I think you still have a ceiling to deal with? Good luck with it. We have several home improvements that need taking care of, but keep procrastinating . . plus finances are going to schooling instead these days (Morgana's turn now). Speaking of schooling, you're right about the system, and I hope you and Pip soon enjoy more homeschooling adventures. I'll certainly enjoy hearing about them. I miss those times with my girls. There were ups and downs, but overall I only remember the happy moments! (well, maybe there are a few frustrations I remember! lol). Your church community sounds very nice and it's good you are connecting. Good luck to Ben with his shoe rack. We looked at Ikea for new ones to replace our old bins, but didn't see anything we liked. (Glad you are doing better after the Pringles yeast attack . . ) xoxox
P.S. I'm glad it was such a fun postal day! xoxo
Ugh, so sorry about the flare up!! Food is so challenging. I cannot eat any sort of processed foods at all (just plain eggs, fruit and veg for me).
And the flooding pipes, ergh. So glad to hear though that it is getting all sorted out ...
Ah schooling. Really very sorry to hear how it has all gone for Pip. Praying for a happy return to homeschooling :-)
Love and prayers as always :-)
And the WhatsApp chat was the icing on the cake!! What is Morgana up to? Love to you all xx
I think you need an extra gold star for coping with all your food related issues :-).
The lounge carpet was pretty awful but we were prepared to put up with it, so that is the silver lining in the flood cloud!
Really proud of Pip for giving it a go but it seems after all we are a home school family, the good Lord knew it all along 😜 Sending love to you too xx
I wonder if Dorina's and my mail got already put together in this country, after all, it is all New York :).
I hope our flooding problems did not visit you in England. We still have to clean up many things in the laundry room that got so dirty when it flooded!
The yeast extract problem reminded me of a reaction Jonathan had in London when he was six. He had just been diagnosed with gluten sensitivity and a wheat allergy. We bought some kind of cereal that was labeled gluten-free. He felt miserable and first we did not know why. Then we looked at the ingredients of the cereal and it had wheat starch! In the U.S.A. you cannot have gluten-free products with wheat starch, so we never thought there would be wheat in a gluten-free cereal. We stopped giving him the cereal and he recovered. There are so many things you have to watch out for in places you never dreamed of! Charlotte used to be very allergic to cornstarch and corn syrup. We found out that most salt and most powdered sugar here has cornstarch in it! Very tricky when your salt is not salt anymore.
Did you change your security settings? I had to find fire hydrants . . . .
I hope that Pip will get back to her usual happy self. And I think it is great that Ben is building things! Reminds me a bit of Jonathan, although he has not done things like that recently.
I think it is great you found some church families you can relate to!
I am not aware that I have changed security settings what difficulties did you have?
My parcel from Dorina was posted in London! Morgana carried the package across the pond and then posted when she landed 🙂
San, the difficulty is the “I'm not a robot box” ... If I click on that I am led through a nightmare round of matching photos that I can never get out of, and therefore never get my comment posted (not just here, on any blog that requires it) ... Luckily, it is possible to click “Publish your comment” without first doing the robot ...
I see, maybe ours went to London too and then they sent them on together.
I had the same as Penelope! I have to click on a lot of pictures to find the fire hydrants. And I also had one with cars.
Ok will definitely take a look and get it sorted cos I also detest playing that game xx
Thanks will try and sort it later today x
Good decision about Pip.
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