How Good are Old People

Published July 13, 2025 by helentastic67

How Good Are Old People

So, this is my fifth post in a sitting and I will finish this on a positive.

A few weeks ago, I was at the supermarket with a carer I don’t often have. I’ve had her before but it takes time to build a relationship with a carer so they can know my preferred products and how they manage my busy brain when I just wanna do Social Helen. Also how to navigate my low eyesight and the trolley and all the things.

We were at the checkout and she had unpacked the trolley and then moved around behind me to the outside of the checkout. In front of her was an elderly man and I mean Elderly. I caught sight of him in my good peripheral vision on my right. He had a trolley and was without speaking out loud communicating to someone on my left in my blind spot that they were there and they had a trolley. I turned to my left and saw the equally elderly lady who obviously matched the man on the outside on the checkout. I said to her “You are in my blind spot and I don’t have a husband, but I understood everything he was trying to communicate to you.”

I swear to God! This is what I love about the elderly. She responded with “Be careful what you wish for!” I asked how long they had been married, I think she said, “Sixty years” “You get less for murder!” I told her.

It’s a standard Baby Boomer reply to such circumstances which always sounds wrong but is very amusing.

Fun Exercise

Published July 9, 2023 by helentastic67

Fun Exercise

In recent years my once family proud handwriting has gone to shit! (As diplomatically as possible) I know, I can’t understate how terrible my handwriting has become illegible. Even hieroglyphic. Is that a word?

I mean, I write it and even I can’t read it. It might be when I swear the most in the week and that could be saying something.

Who wants to play?

Here is a portion of my shopping list. Take it as a challenge to decipher my handwriting? I feel I should tell you now, for my own amusement, I call my shopping list “Shop Lust!” Because it amuses me to do so and on the top left corner are the grocery items I require.

It goes as follows…
Lasagna sheets
Vanilla Essence
Marmalade
Betty Crocker
***************

Honestly. WTF is that? My carer states “You really wanted them; it’s got several exclamation marks after it!” when this happens, we play it by ear and as we do the aisles getting me some steps in my never-ending battle to get some tiny amount to compete with my blog administrator Noelle.

8pm Friday night……
Me: How many did you get? I did 3,000.
Noelle: 27,000 so far!
Me: how many can I have?
Noelle: 5,000
We both know this is not how it works but it certainly amuses me to ask.

Doing the aisles I reach for the items I remember I need just by going down the aisles. It’s my carers job to check the list as we go to make sure we haven’t missed anything. The ********** remains. We give up as it doesn’t jolt my memory. We head home. Unpack.

My carer departs, the tasks are completed. I’m pulling towels from the clothes dryers hours later and I let out a swear word. The one ending in “Me!”

I get my phone and text my carer those exact words followed by, “sultanas!” At least I worked it out, it would have driven me crazy until I remembered.

How to improve my penmanship? Well, I’ve given up handwriting my blog posts and now I smash them out on my iPad. Not as cathartic but avoiding the issue.

And hit Like and leave a comment.

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.

Staff

Published December 9, 2018 by helentastic67

Staff

It’s surprising how often I am mistaken as staff. As in “Do you work here?” or I wish people would bother to ask, but no don’t be ridiculous. That would make sense.

Do you work here

Today I was in my local supermarket and I had a man come up to me as I was waiting to pay for my one item. The man asked me if there was a rest room for the public there. Now, I don’t know any supermarket that do. It was not in a shopping complex and I imagine not, but I suggested the man ask a staff member.

Restroom

I didn’t at all think I should be misconfused/mistaken as working these since I was sitting on my mobility scooter at the time.

Mistaken

WTF

A staff member came past so I asked her.

“Why yes they do.”

What?

What 1

Milk

Published August 13, 2018 by helentastic67

Milk

MILK – for want of a better tittle.

Have you ever wondered about the cost of milk? Often there are lots of hidden issues with having a disability that the average person wouldn’t consider. Now, it’s going to annoy me to explain the intricacies on this very simple topic, but I’m by all means not crying over spilt milk.

Spilt milk

I shop with a carer every Friday, they collect me from home and drive us to my local shopping complex. It’s not a huge Westfield, so thankfully has the basics of what I need. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Supermarket, you know.

Shopping list

Whatever, foodwise I’m going to need I must get or I run out, paying more for it at a smaller independent supermarket, carrying it around for a period of time or risking it spoiling because it’s out of a fridge for too long, like milk.

Shopping list

About once monthly I buy an extra litre of milk, so I don’t run the risk of having to resort to using sweetened Condensed milk in my coffee. Year, nice but that’s diabetics right there.

Condensed Milk

The following Friday arrives and I check the fridge for my supply of milk. Sometimes I’ve still got an unopened bottle. The Use by date is the following day, now being unopened, it’s possibly going to last beyond the Use by date, but can I be sure.

Check fridge 1

Lately, I’ve been joking if I eat something I’ve had in the fridge a little too long and I ask if the worst that happens is I spend the night on the toilet and loose five kilos, that’s a lazy diet right.

Getting sick

So, I throw out the milk, which is wasteful and go shopping and get more. Maybe the guilt plays on my mind so I under stock milk and the next week, I ration a bit.

Ration milk

By Wednesday during my busy punchy/stabby/foodie , mental health post day, I need to debate picking up milk in my travels. I am near two independent supermarkets, one of which I walk past later in the day.

If I get one at either of the independent supermarkets, they cost more than a coffee. Outrageous. Aside from the risk of how long the milk should be out of the fridge.

More than coffee

Fun Fact: – Did you know, every degree milk loses (after coming out of the fridge) it loses a day of its shelf life.

Fun fact

The other issue is of course, how I need to carry the milk. I wear a bag that has a strap, which sits on my left shoulder and the bags sits on my right glute. My Gluteus Maximus.

Gluteous Maximus

Despite disc bulge surgery, my lower back is always at risk when carrying anything home, no matter the length of time I carry it.

My lower back twinges and when I get pain down the back of my good leg, it’s a sure sign any heavy lifting or excess carrying of heavy things is temporarily banned.

Lower back pain

So, while to the outside world I’m portrayed or seen as this confident, flexible and mobile semi-broken woman (my term), underneath the cost of a simple litre of milk is either my pocket or my back.

Strong Independent Woman

Both require medication and time out to not spend money. So, that was actually not as painful as I thought. Maybe I didn’t do it justice.

Doing Justice

Public Attitude – Part 1

Published March 30, 2017 by helentastic67

Attitude

Public Attitude Part 1

I confess to say PUBLIC ATTITUDE towards people with disabilities has always annoyed me. Even before I had my disability.

I’ve been with a carer shopping at a local market. Said carer at the time was desperately in need of a hip replacement so I helped her lift my shopping from the shopping trolley to her car boot.

Attacking people with disability

A guy walked past with his two young impressionable children, his other half trailing behind and he decided to share his opinion that we did not look disabled and should not have been in a disabled car park. I pointed out to him we had the correct signage to allow us to park there and that it was approved by council in which I lived and my application supported by my doctors, you know the actual people with the appropriate credentials to make such decisions.

Ironically, he was a parent who had taken his kids to the local pub close by before midday and no one thought to work out if he was qualified to be a parent.

Dont judge disability