Follow Up – Older People’s Conversation

Published August 22, 2022 by helentastic67

Follow up – Older Peoples Conversations

I mentioned to a friend these were the conversations I’d been having plenty of. Rather than asking me what these “old and nonsense” conversations were about exactly, he told me I would have them one day.

So, I’ll allow you to pick from this next excerpt which three things qualify this as nonsense old people conversations.

Which I loved by the way because it gave me the perfect opportunity to tease him. Purely a statement.

“I made some brown rice the other day! It’s been about twenty years since I last made brown rice. It took ages! I’m never doing that again!”

Oh My God! Can you just feel that nonsense? It’s my jam. I have recently been making it more than I have in the last twenty years, I think because, while slow to the party, I discovered the rice cooker.

You know I insisted he get one but he’s still got it in the box and I now understand the old people thing about why they keep them in the box even after using it’s so they don’t forget all the bits and pieces that go with each gadget.

Is this what your “Old Person” does too?

Nonsense, Older Peoples Conversations

Published August 15, 2022 by helentastic67

Nonsense Older Peoples Conversation

Lately I’ve completely nailed how to get the most from my conversations with old people and if you want to know? Just keep reading…

In recent years I’ve timed my outreach calls to my father by booking it every two weeks. I call one fortnight and he is to call me the next. If he doesn’t, I will prompt him with a text… “Your turn!”

Recently, my beautician has mentioned she misses the nonsense old people conversations, so now I call him on speaker when I’m with her being tortured. It starts off dad being rather anxious. My beautician uses a few Italian words here and there which he often needs reminding what she is referring to. It’s a part of his memory he doesn’t use much. My beautician is often hungry as I’ll arrive too early and she has yet to eat.

She asks my dad if he’s had lunch? His response… “I had a sort of salad sandwich!” I hold up a finger to indicate for her to wait. She tells me to let him go. I interrupt him because I smell a rat, please define this word “sort of” and “salad?” I will cut to the chase, there was neither “sort of, nor salad”.

What he had was a very tasty sandwich which was fried chorizo on bread. A great treat I hope he’s not having every day.

Later in the conversation, beautician getting hungry enough to threaten to hit one of us; and not wanting it to be me, we stop talking food. We will mention this myth “sort-of-salad” in a teasing way and we all have a good laugh. In the end he usually tells us when he’s had enough. Beautician laughs and informs him he’s her favourite of my parents.

It’s turned out to be the highlight of my treatments. My torture is in the form of electrolysis to my face. Originally, it was to fix the damage from years on steroids for brain swelling, now it’s for my crazy hormones. I’m not going to be in the nursing home with a beard.

Lettuce – How much for an Iceberg?

Published August 8, 2022 by helentastic67

Lettuce – How much for an Iceberg?

Oh, Australia. Remember we had the fires, then yes, the plague thing, yeah, Melbourne has been through six lockdowns. I think Singapore is the only place that has lived through the same.

We struggled to get our hands on toilet paper and the term Karen was born. Did I mention, that was when I started a liver cleanse? Yeah, that’s right, ME, I made a one-off purchase of the dreaded home brand of Toilet Paper I can guarantee I’ll never revisit. The packaging claimed it was embossed. Um, it was Single Ply, I would have traded that little extra for another ply. Then, we’ve had floods, right.

Everyone caught up.

Now, we have the horrid prices and reboot of boring conversations about which lettuce is best and how much you need to pay to get one.

Seriously, it’s probably easier to get hard drugs. I was faced about a month ago with paying $13 for an iceberg lettuce. That’s my go-to. I had sent a new carer to grab me a lettuce while I got something else. She saw the price and called it out to me. I said “I’m sorry, what!” She repeated and another shopper came over to discuss this ridiculous notion. I recalled a newsworthy story I had seen and I told this other shopper. “Apparently KFC have started substituting cabbage for lettuce” He looked surprised. I told him… “I have to tell you I don’t eat their burgers for the lettuce!” I eat salad for my lettuce and I do like lettuce to be a staple in my crisper.

So, now I’m posting and bragging on social media I managed to get a lettuce the size off my head for $8.00. My last lettuce was down to a tiny heart and I wanted to list it on marketplace for $50 like when some smarty pants posted a Toilet Paper roll with its last two squares.

Lastly, I’ve been having plenty of nonsense old people conversations. But again, more of that later. Yes, it’s worthy of its own post and I haven’t written it yet. Next.

How To Get Looked After Better in Hospital

Published August 1, 2022 by helentastic67

How To Get Looked After Better in Hospital

Be nice to nurses, they do get paid but, they don’t get paid enough for you to be a princess or a bitch. (Gee, was that harsh? Brash? Yeah! I don’t care)

If you want a hot meal later in a hospital, be a bit cheeky, not a problem patient, but friendly, humorous and not a pain in the ass. Nurses will go out of their way to help you. That’s an extra.

This is my dessert haul:

My nurse comes around to check my vitals (Temperature, pulse, respirations and blood pressure). So, the next time, I greeted her with “not you again!”

Something I’m surprised at how much I get away with. But I do manage to build rapport really quickly and I do often attract my kind of people quickly. It’s just the contact is fleeting. So, I try to leave a long-standing impact.

A Bit of Fluff

Published July 25, 2022 by helentastic67

A Bit of Fluff

On a lighter note, I’ve always been a really social person and on Wednesdays when I’m in the Fields of Fair (Fairfield) at my weekly Chiropractors appointment, I visit the pet shop where I got Mika from (she was a surrendered cat from the Neko Lounge) They also have bunnies. Check out this cute bit of fluff.

Guess his name?

The poor little guy, Stephen.

Just seems mean.

Apparently, it’s a family In-Joke named after an “Aunty”.

Update on a Few Things

Published July 18, 2022 by helentastic67

Update on a Few Things

So, I have been intending to follow up on a few things lately, but I’ve been slack in my efforts to use speech to text. Some things are hard to say out loud.

I’ve been meaning to follow up on the bullying I received from the not-for-profit self-advocacy group I’ve been volunteering at for over ten years. I’m letting the dust settle on that for a little bit longer, but the baseline is that my time with them is going to come to an end soon as they took my blog link off their website, making such statements as ‘it’s not even about brain injury’. Clearly, they didn’t look very hard because I’m sure I stated in my profile its brain injury done differently. It’s a lost cause and it’s time to find a new tribe.

Add to this the Gaslighting I’ve been receiving from my mental health care provider. They have done very well at the opposite of their job. Ever wonder why I don’t name and shame providers? Yeah, now you understand.

I’ll unpack both things another time in more detail.

I often hope how I teach organisations to respect and treat me, is how they will continue to treat all their clients or patients. Some are slow learners and if they don’t learn, I take my funding elsewhere.

I have been doing too much as last Thursday I had a migraine that whipped me out for a day and another four of feeling seedy. But I now have injectable Tramadol in my home and no, I do not intend to inject myself.

Minestrone

Published July 11, 2022 by helentastic67

Minestrone

So, let me tell the older generation what you’re doing wrong in life. No, hanging in there with how I spent four or five days with my father over Christmas at the end of 2020. (I’ll get to the younger generation soon enough, never fear!)

It was the abomination year that wasn’t! Damn you Covid!

I went to the supermarket with him and he, so help me God, told me every recipe for all the things he buys and makes. Which, Lord love him, every recipe was a variation of minestrone.

I made him my version of a minestrone which has added ingredients over the years including Lamb shanks because my last boyfriend needed more meat in his “soups” how dare he.

These days, I make my minestrone in my larger slow cooker on the bench so it doesn’t stick to the bottom, and the yield is usually 7-9 bottles.

In between lockdowns in 2021, I even managed to Mule more minestrone to my dad via a friend, because logistics and “Muleing” things have become my superpower.

To be continued………….to be sure.

Can’t Pick ‘Em

Published July 4, 2022 by helentastic67

Can’t Pick ‘Em

More recently when I had my regular carer away on holidays for two weeks, I had a replacement carer. This lady had three shifts that week of more than three hours each shift to cover.

On the Tuesday, I had carer “A”, she quickly unpacked all of her emotional baggage. There is a tendency for friendly banter. She was very new to being a carer and she was telling me all about her husband’s first wife’s impact on her marriage and how he didn’t understand why at her age, she had gone back to study.

She was in her fifty’s and she had chosen to change her career and being a support worker requires qualifications. She was expecting me to be her mental health care provider.

On the way home from this shift, I received a text that this carer “A” would cover the rest of my shifts while my regular was away. I knew I would not cope so put a block on her. It seems to mean, but I’ve worked out in my short time which carers I can cope with and which ones I can’t.

Life One-handed

Published June 27, 2022 by helentastic67

Life One-Handed

You may have noticed; despite it’s having half the title of my blog. I don’t really write much about living life one-handed. I know, ironic much. It’s because I started to have weaknesses in my late teens so I had started to adapt.

Mum gave me every hot drink to carry to the lounge room and as I’d spill the drink in my left hand, I’d carry one drink at a time. She was very grumpy and impatient as she would carry two cups at the same time.

“Drop your left shoulder!”

Alas, I started adapting. But mostly when she wasn’t watching, I’d carry one at a time. By the time I was 16-17, I was a full-time student, part-time worker at a supermarket, an unpaid babysitter and was building a portfolio to go to college.

I had NO SOCIAL LIFE!

My first job at a supermarket saw me on the left-handed checkout, I wasn’t super-fast. With the right-handed checkouts I was so fast, forty items a minute, that I often had to call the front-end controller, the Prima packs in the trolley and then reconcile it so that on the receipt because the register couldn’t keep up. The trolley looked like a bomb had hit it, but that’s another story for another day.

Ok, times I’d be growled at for not packing the trolley neatly enough. I argued, you can have fast or neat, you can’t have both! Pick one! The end!

I’m also going to seriously kill the carer who insists on doing up the buttons on my men’s pyjama tops because at 1am when I’m naked and trying to quickly get into my pj’s, I cannot work out why it’s not as easy as it should be. It’s because one of my very caring but not so thoughtful, lovely assistants has done the buttons up on my tops.

Update on the Plague

Published June 20, 2022 by helentastic67

Update on the Plague

I feel like it’s been too long since I mentioned the thing, I like to call the Plague. Don’t make me use the word.

Occasionally, I find a reason to do a RAT for when I have an appointment somewhere if I even reach for a tissue, I will be interrogated like I’m going to cause the whole world to shut down.

So, I do a RAT and present a photo, then announce my favourite line! “NOT PREGNANT!” Then after a brief pause “NOT COMPLAINING!”

If you are not familiar with the reference? The RAT thing looks much like Home Pregnancy Tests. Never done one of those, still not complaining. Not a dig at people desperate at wanting to be pregnant.

I’m not bragging when I say I’VE NOT YET HAD THE PLAGUE!

Although I wouldn’t mind being able to say “I lost the 10 Kilo’s I gained during the lockdowns” I’m still not complaining.

One of my young carers had the Plague in early 2022 when all the young ones were getting out to all the festivals and coming home with gastro or the Plague, I heard from her and she told me she’d lost 5 Kilos. I responded I needed the Plague: TWICE! She was so delirious she didn’t get my joke, until days later.