Rosemary's Ramblings

Blog for August concerning July 2013

For a stay-at-home month, a lot of things seem to have happened.  Mostly boring old people stuff, like visits to dentist, optometrist, audiologist, and even the Medical Centre.  Mostly it was I, and not Ray who was involved, but the optometrist was his department.  We made numerous Op Shop visits, and that was mainly at Ray's instignation.  One begins to wonder if Op Shopping might be called an obsession!  If so, it is a relatively harmless obsession.  The puzzlement comes when he brings stuff home and I have to find somewhere to put it.  Unless it is clothes he buys, and then he can himself have the problem of where to put them!

We finally came to an end of the regimen of eye-drops for Ray's left eye.  He visited the optometrist for an eye examination and had new lenses put in his glasses.  He is disappointed that after all that  he has gone through, he cannot see any better than before.  However, it was necessary that the cataract be removed before it got worse, which it inevitably would, and eventually cause blindness – if Ray lived that long!  He has second thoughts about getting the other eye done, and I cannot blame him.

On July 4th we had our special anniversary.  60 years ago on this day we met in Wales.  We booked to have a roast dinner at the Putaruru Hotel to celebrate.  Luckily it happened to be their $10 day! It was in general our lucky day altogether.  I had an appointment with the audiologist in Tokoroa that morning.  Ray as usual accompanied me, and as usual began talking with people. A middle-aged or maybe elderly man came in. Ray said he was Maori, but I was as usual too unobservant to notice his ethnicity.  They were talking together when I went out. Then the man gave Ray $20 and told him to take his wife out to lunch!  I presume Ray had mentioned the anniversary, though Ray does not remember whether he did or not. How amazing! The man said he was single, and had more than enough money, and wanted to do this for us!

That was not the only unexpected good event of the day.  Often when we are out Ray does not want to come straight home. He wants to do something extra to make the journey worth while. He now thought of going to Whakamaru, but changed his mind on remembering we had to get back for our dinner date – and recalling that petrol had just gone up again!  He mentioned the only road hereabout that we had never explored.  I knew which one he meant, Newell Road.  I too had wanted to drive up it, and was actually thinking about it at the time. Well, actually I had wanted to walk up it, but driving was the next best thing.  I had a fair idea of where it ended, at far edge of Cougar Park of the mountain bike tracks.  This turned out to be so. 

Ray parked the car and I went around the gate into the forestry area.  Ray succumbed to the inevitable and locked the car.  We walked through just a narrow band of bush to find ourselves on a dry firm track between the forest pine trees and the boundary fence.  So there was the forest on our right and open grazing and low hills to our left.  The sun was now shining, the air was just right for walking and we both enjoyed the experience.  I have no doubt I enjoyed it more than did Ray.  Of course I just wanted to go on and on, but stopped before the track delved mystically into the forest, Ray as usual remarking that he wondered if he could make it back.  After all, we must have walked all of a kilometre!!  Perhaps one day Ray can bring the bike and cycle while I go on walking...  Hope springs eternal!  So that was the second serendipitous happening.  We enjoyed our dinner too!

We visited Cambridge one day and walked around the lake.  It was a lovely day.  Another day we went to Te Aroha and walked around the Wetlands.  If only there were an LDS chapel at Te Aroha! Tirau of course we visited quite often.  It is great to drive through the countryside to get there.  Ray has 'girl friends' there to talk to in the various shops.  We often go to the Subway there for lunch.  Well, that is mostly for me to have lunch.

After one appointment in Tokoroa we were coming home along the Old Taupo Road and Ray turned down Jack Henry Road.  This used to be a forestry road.  Now much of the forest has gone. Margaret and I walked part way along the other end of Jack Henry Road when we walked the Waikato River Trail downstream of Waipapa.  Now it was a paved road.  How far along it was thus surfaced we did not find out, because we came to one of those newly-created farm consortiums, if that is what they are.  A sign said, Maxwell Farms, private property.  We ventured just a little past the  sign and came up to an intersection and saw a row of 23 mailboxes.  I am puzzled how so many people can make a living off such raw farmland.

Another fortunate happening was losing my hearing aid on my way to Melbourne.  A blessing well-disguised.  Of course it would have been a greater blessing if I had lost both hearing aids, but then I would have been even deafer in Australia, so that would have been a much mixed blessing!  How the hearing aid became lost is one of the mysteries of the universe.  I was travelling on the Road Cat Shuttle from Putaruru to Auckland. It was the middle of the night. I was dozing with my head on my jacket against the window.  I took out my hearing aid because it was hurting my ear as I leaned on it.  I put it carefully in my zippered pocket.  When we got to the airport it was not in my pocket.  Neither was it in the van.  The driver removed that could be removed, and shone a powerful flashlight under everything else.  I examined all my clothing to see if it was attached to me.  It was nowhere. Okay, so that's impossible. It was not to be found.  I determined not to let the loss spoil my holiday, and it did not.

Back home after my holiday I went to make an insurance claim.  The upshot was the insurance would pay most of the cost of replacing the lost hearing aid, and if I had to get a new set, it would pay for half the other one.  I had to get a hearing test.  This is where the blessing came in.  My hearing has deteriorated in the four years since I got my last aids.  Furthermore, new technology has resulted in much better hearing aids.  So much better in fact that a new set would cost twice as  much as the old set.  This was the bad news.  The good news was that the insurance would pay for the replacement aid and half the cost of the other, as on the policy, despite the double price.  So instead of paying $6000 for a brand new pair of superior aids, I paid $1525.  I call that a blessing!  I could not believe the difference they make.  The singing in church is incredibly loud.  I can  hear the soft-spoken teacher and much of what the class says response. I do not like wearing them, but they do not irritate my ears as much as my old ones, and often I can forget I am wearing them.

One more adventure for me in the month of July was that I did a typical old-person trick and fell.  The occasional tumble does not bother me.  I am used to tripping or slipping on backcountry trails. My folly this time was to trip going up a set of concrete steps.  I peeled back a rather large piece of skin from the front of my shin.  Ray coming behind me said I fell gracefully, and he did not think I was hurt.  I jumped up immediately because it was at someone else's house and I made out there was nothing wrong.  Until I got indoors and started bleeding profusely over floor and carpet!  You might say hell broke loose!  My hostess wanted to bathe the wound with suspiciously unsterile-looking equipment.  The men were trying to mop up the floor.  I had one glance at the wound and adamantly refused to let anyone touch it.  I slammed on tissues and paper towels and a tea cloth and covered the lot with a large sock until I could get medical aid.  Then the hostess wanted to phone the doctor, and I would not let her.  We had been invited for lunch, and for lunch I was going to stay!  Actually I think it was a wise move, because by the time I got to the Medical Centre a couple of hours later, the bleeding had subsided, and the Practice Nurse could see what she was doing.

The District Nurse comes to the house three times a week to change the dressings.   I was supposed to be at the temple the following week, and had booked to stay at the apartments all week.  I had to cancel that.  Ray said some people will do anything to avoid going to the temple!  Neither did I go to church. I was really glad I had done a lot of work in the garden before this happened.  Otherwise I would have been somewhat frustrated.  As it is, I enjoy having time to lie around and catch up on my reading!  Actually I feel a bit of a fraud, but the nurse said they are treating the wound as a skin graft, and I have to comport myself accordingly.  No standing around and no sitting with my foot down.    Thus endeth the month of July.