I could wish houses built in the early/mid 1990s had been designed with gadgets in mind, but the truth is, when this house was built, the most you had to think about was a TV, (with a cathode ray tube burning hot and bright in he middle of huge box), a single computer in the home (probably cost as much as the car parked on the drive), and a microwave and blender having a fight over the powerpoint in the kitchen.
These days, it's at least ten gadgets per room, including the bedroom, and every house Dave and I ever lived in was literally rewired on the fly with extension cables and four- or six-socket powerboards to accommodate every conceivably gizmo. Uh huh. Problem is, they don't last forever, and when you get a duff board, you start to blow breakers.
Brill, Utterly brill. So here we go on the yearly pilgrimage to Mitre 10 for a new one or two. Dave asks, "How many of these are we going to replace?" I'm thinking, at least two. How about getting a spare, for the next time we start popping breakers?
Such excitement!
Still, we had a marvelous Saturday. Grabbing the chance to get away from care-giver duties for an afternoon, we headed south to Second Valley and Cape Jervis. The spring-like weather continues ... technically we're still two weeks off the beginning of Spring, but you'd never believe it was winter ... and we took a walk from Leonard's Mill to the old port of Second Valley and back before driving on south to the point where the Sealink car ferry takes on passengers and vehicles for Kangaroo Island. So --
Here's Dave at Leonard's Mill with the just-delivered coffee -- the deliberate wide shot shows you we're on a mezzanine, with the foyer of the cafe-restaurant down below:
And here's Jen at the Cape Jervis lighthouse, a few hours later ... neat lens flare:
Getting away from carer duties even for short sprints into the fresh air and sunshine is not important; it's vital. Chore by chore, hour by hour, caring is usually dead easy. It's just stuff you do. But it goes on and on, it never stops. The routine is mind-numbing, the work is mostly only one step above sheer drudgery; and if you're not careful, the care-giver's whole life (and brain) will slow down to the pace of the patient. You can find yourself literally crawling along at the speed of the disabled 86-year-old. If you happen to harbor any secret dream of "getting your life back afterwards," it's a killer.
I haven't chucked the towel in yet; not 100%, anyway. I do want to have a life after caring, and one of the things I desperately need to do now is CHALLENGE MY BRAIN. Wake it up, Get it into gear. Make it work properly again. Lately, I've been wondering seriously about (don't laugh) writing. I used to write a lot, but it's been years. How's about if I just put the hands on the keyboard and started to write stories? See what it'll do for this old brain, which is -- seriously -- idling along in neutral with infrequent, brief, difficult kicks-up into bottom gear!
Writing, then. O...kay. Actually, blogging helps. Makes me focus on a thought for long enough to finish it and get something "down on paper." Is it just me, or is blogging become something of a lost art lately, since facebook ran away with everyone?
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