A spice by any other name

 I spend a fair portion of my weekends at my parents - they are well into their 80s now and Mum has "memory issues" (because we aren't allowed to call it by the D word in Dad's world, because people write people off if they say that word).

This has put Dad into the position of carer, and he does it as well as he is able - but Dad does have some frugality issues that border on him calling his children crazy about expired food etc.

I mean, I have to give him he is still alive, but I think part of that is because Mum did pay attention to such things for a large portion of it.

He recently ran out of pepper for the table.  Rather than buy some more pepper, he figured that Mum had many spices in the cupboard unused since - well, in some instances since the 1970s (because everyone knows that spices don't go out of date *).

He figured Paprika would work, since it added some colour to what was being seasoned and sounded like pepper.

Inevitably, his paprika ran out - I did pull him up and make him buy pepper in preference to his next choice - Nutmeg...

I don't think that his sense of smell or taste are all that crash hot these days. 

Four photos

I am a terrible blogger - its not that I don't have ideas and its really not that I don't have time - although that is my excuse.  It is that I don't have ideas when I do have time all too often.

 

So to kickstart myself today, I thought that I would find four random photos from the last few weeks and just give them. 

 

This is a photo taken at an afternoon tea that my Dad had for "a few friends with cake" for his and Mum's 60th wedding anniversary.  The few friends numbered 25, which lead to a bit of a mad scramble on my part.  In this photo, Dad is seated and his primary school classmate Laurie has the floor.  Laurie was the postmaster and tennis coach from my childhood, but apparently Dad and he had a few adventures when younger, and he told them with a great deal of wit on this occasion.  We were really there with the tiny trailer and the 60" concrete pipe at this point!

One of the blessings of spilling a half a cup of water on a bench when the drawer beneath is slightly ajar is that the 15 years of accumulated "stuff" has to be taken out and organised.  I am not by nature a tidy person - it takes effort EVERY DAY to not be able to be tracked by the detritus left in my wake - but I consider organising therapy at times.

 

I must admit, this really tickled my fancy - but some people just didn't get it.  Do I have a weird sense of humour?

 It is amazing how much this cat has grown, even since this photo.  She can be very "helpful" in the office.

To quote another blogger that I read today, just got rid of a whole lot of blah-blah-blah that really only needed to escape my head, didn't need to go to yours.

Have a lovely day - its now Thursday here and my mother-in-law's 80th birthday.  HB RB (and Uncle B too)