Autumn has passed and winter is definitely on its way. Temperatures have dropped dramatically from the 1st of May, which by the way was my Mum’s 89th birthday as well as the first day of winter. I must admit one of the reasons for going away in February last year was to miss winter. I’m sure I have mentioned in the past how much I dislike cold weather. Cool I can handle and love but cold – anything below 20 degrees centigrade is a little too cold for me. We have been having 10 to 16 degrees which means I’ve added more blankets to the bed and doubled the clothing layers to keep warm. Praise the Lord the past week has been glorious! Warm and sunny with temps in the mid to high 20’s. Just perfect! I think, like many others, Spring and Autumn weather are my favourite times of the year. Cool nights warm sunny days.
Mum’s birthday falling on the first of May was a Sunday this year. My eldest sister took her out for morning tea while I was at church. During this time I received an SMS from my sister Jen, in Broome, wondering if mum was out or had she just left her phone of the hook as she was unable to contact her or leave a message on the answering machine. I messaged her back to say I was at church and would check when I got home. Sure enough Jen had guessed correctly, not only was Mum out but she had also left the phone off the hook. We all know our mum pretty well now! Mum’s grandson had also been trying and with the phone off the hook was unable to leave a message. The rest of the day Mum received greetings from friends and family including her sister and an old school friend in the UK. The following weekend was mother’s day, this time we made sure the phone was in order to receive her calls.
At the end of April my youngest sister Kathy flew in. She works as a cook, out on the barges that take supplies to the oil rigs. She is what we call a FIFO (fly in fly out) worker. Its lovely catching up with Kath when she comes to visit. She often stays at Mum’s as she commutes south, north and east to visit friends. While she is in WA I lose the use of her car but this time it worked out well as Mum’s drivers licence had not yet been renewed.
Over 80yrs drivers, in Australia, need to do a yearly drivers licence assessment. This means they do a phyc, physical abilities and cognitive assessment before their drivers licence can be renewed. Mum was very confident she would pass. Unfortunately she was a bit slow on her cognitive test but was offered two drivers lessons to see if she could improve. She did but the waiting in between the assessment, the lessons and the receiving of her new licence nearly drove her and me crazy! She kept thinking she had her licence and I had to keep reminding her she had to wait till a new one was sent out to her. This period of waiting was very stressful for us both. She didn’t want to put me out having to drive her around, especially if she had to wait for me to take her and the dog to park for their walks.
The good thing was I then had the use of her car when Kath was home on her second fleeting visit before heading back to sea. I saw the hand of the Lord working through all our challenges.
The thing I have noticed most is the frustration and 
debilitating definition of memory loss. Most of the time I don’t think Mum realises how much she forgets things and then other times it throws her into deep depression. I also have to remember not to expect too much from her and not to expect her to remember the little things and to overlook the constant repetitive questions and occasional arguments. It truly is sad to see your, once vibrant, Mum so troubled.
During this time I was also trying to set her up with her own mobile phone (my old iPhone, with one of the SIM cards I was using at the time). I had just purchased a new phone and decided I would go with a different provider who I hoped had better internet reception and who was also offering me an amazing deal at the time. 7GB of data for $30 per month, unlimited SMS and $1000 worth of calls. They also gave me $29.05 credit as I needed to wait for the macro SIM to arrive which meant I had to extend my data on the old providers plan. You could say it was too good to be true!
I loaded up the old SIM I was going to give to Mum and waited for my new SIM to arrive. Lorna, my friend from church, leant me one of her spare phones so Mum could use my old one. During this time Mum changed her mind! Her reasoning was she would no longer need a mobile phone as she would soon have her driver’s licence and would not need to use the gopher which was the only reason she wanted a mobile phone. She thought if she ever got stranded on the gopher she had a phone to call for help. She is also rather concerned that she wouldn’t be able to pick up the 21 Century technology.
Fin
ally I received my new SIM but then the new provider made a few blunders and put up the cost of my plan to $70 without consulting me. After several calls and them calling back to try to work things out, I was told that there was no such plan and the one I had should never have been offered to me. So was it really too good to be true? I insisted that they check their recorded conversations with the original marketer to check the plan that was offered. Eventually after several hours of phone calls to and from the provider I was given what I originally been offered for $30 per month but with 8.5GB! I’m sure I will never use that but wow! Thank you.
Since arriving back in Perth I have been attending the North Beach Baptist Church (NBBC) and becoming involved with some of their programs. I have joined the Missions Team although have only been to one meeting as the second one was on Mum’s birthday. I have also been to a special training for Kid’s Hope which does an amazing program of mentoring children in local schools. I have attended a ‘meet the pastors’ fellowship and been warmly accepted into NBBC community. I’m always greeted by name by many when I attend church which is a bit embarrassing as I have a terrible time remembering theirs! After the service I often hang around chatting with a freshly ground cup of cappuccino in hand.
In the last update, over a month ago now, I mentioned I was planning to do some renovations in my two bedroom unit (villa). I have had a few tradesman around to get quotes so I have a vague estimate of what I’m looking at. Every person I have had around gives me a few new tips or ideas or sees a new challenge I haven’t thought of. I wasn’t going to touch the old kitchen but since the plumber said that the old kitchen plumbing may be affected when the wall comes down between the kitchen and the laundry, it looks like I may have to re do the kitchen plumbing too. This then leads to the kitchen tiles needing to be replaced. One thing leads to another and now it look like I may have to do the whole kitchen too! Then because the wall between the carpeted lounge and the Lino in the dining room is coming down, I need to replace the whole floor coverings! The walls coming down also means holes in the ceiling so that will have to be patched and of course repainted as do all the walls and then that leads to the doors being repainted too because they are now in the wrong colour and will look old next to the new painted walls!
It seems one thing continues to lead to another and the 
job is becoming bigger and bigger.
A young electrician came to give a quote, he gave me his father’s contact for the ceilings and his grandfather’s number for painting. They both came around making more suggestions. The painter who was not that much older than me said if I wanted to give him a hand he could give me a cheaper price as we could do it faster doing it together. Bargain! I was in for that!
I had two builders come around to check what I wanted done. One had already worked on three other units in my block so knew the layout. I bought the original plans from the council then passed them over to the draftsman who then emailed me the changed ideas. Having been down to the house a few times I noticed a discrepancy in measurements of one of the walls. I took my own measurements. I was right. The draftsman then came around again to do more measurements as the original plans were incorrect. Once changed I emailed the plans to the engineer for his assessment. The draftsman’s original changes I had already sent in for a thermo energy raging which needs to be done for council approval. They came back with flying colours! Thank you Lord.
All this took over two weeks from when I got started with the draftsman. I waited over two weeks for the engineer to finish his assessment. During this time I measured and remeasured the kitchen/laundry area. The draftsman’s second measurements were still out! The wall where I want to put a laundry/pantry area is 70mm longer in my estimate! Too late I’m not going to change things now! But this will alter what I put along that wall. I don’t know how many times I have tried a variety of different ideas. God willing I have the one that will fit now minus a wall the draftsman had put in. The draftsman changed his measurements and emailed them after the engineers and surveyors reports but this will not alter things except for the builders.
Th
e first tiler I had around offered to send a young guy to remove all the old tiles with labour at $50 per hour! I told him I’d rather try to do it myself.
It was not long after this when I had just started to remove the bathroom tiles by hand that I suddenly had a thought I shouldn’t be doing the bathroom if the kitchen also needed doing. I should have left the bathroom for another time and just done the kitchen, laundry, lounge and dining area! Too late now I had already removed many of the tiles. I had a half dug out floor too!
The second tiler I had in was very helpful and friendly. He was even going to offer me the loan of his jackhammer to start removing the floor tiles in the bathroom. He showed me how to use the jackhammer and how far I needed to dig up the cement beneath the tiles so that the floor would slop correctly for properly drainage. Now that I knew how, I needed a jackhammer.
It wasn’t till I was down visiting my friends in the south that I remembered my dear friend Pastor Ken who had leant me the paving tools last year. I dropped in to see him and Trish, his wife, and picked up his jackhammer. The next day I bought some protective eyewear, earmuffs and masks. I’m so glad I did as it was a very dusty dirty job with cement dust, shards of tiles and muck flying everywhere. Unfortunately I didn’t realise the jackhammer also needed protective gear! The dust was sucked into the machine and after two days there were sparks coming from the engine. I rang Ken horrified! He told me I should have put something over so that the dust wasn’t sucked into the machine. He then suggested I try to blow it out.
That afternoon when I was taking Mum and the dog for their walk I drove past a service station where a lovely young man helped me out. He not only opened the filter of the jackhammer but used a commercial machine to blow the dust out. I was so grateful. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough and I had to return the damaged machine to Ken who took a closer look. In the meanwhile I needed to get the rest of the tiles off so looked around to buy a replacement then made a comparison on a new one. Ken suggested I get a new one and he would go halves. So that’s the way we went. With new one in hand I pressed on to finish taking off all the tiles in the bathroom except the one under the vanity as I needed first to remove the vanity and the sink which I’m hoping I can reuse.
Kathy was back on the 14th of May after a couple of weeks away with friends in the eastern states. She often took mum and the dog to the dog beach for walks. Sometimes I joined them. It was often a windy walk with the tide coming in which nearly washed us away. Kath was a great support while she was here, I was able to get on with a lot of work and not have to think about running mum around or taking the dog and her for a walk every afternoon.
One afternoon, the day Kathy flew out, Mum was once again depressed. She is finding it hard to accept she is losing her independence. Not having her driver’s licence I think has really brought it to her attention. It seemed to be taking a very long time to arrive. I decided to ring to see where it was up to in the process and was told we could come to pick it up. We made a mad rush to get there before closing at 4:30pm and then to my doctor’s appointment at 5pm. We got lost along the way as the GPS took us to another end of the same road with the same address. Fortunately we arrived with enough time to be seen and with a preliminary licence in hand we rushed off to my doctor’s appointment arriving on the dot of 5pm, even with peak hour traffic. Thank you Lord for helping us to achieve all that we needed to do in the time period we had.
More good news. After ringing the engineer I finally received all the papers needed to send to the surveyor who approved all plans which means now all I have to do is submit them to council and wait for a building permit. God willing that will not take too long.
Photos: 1. A rose in Mum’s garden 2. Mum’s birthday with grandsons family 3. Kath and Mum on the beach with dog Suzie 4. Mum relaxing before dinner 5. Double rainbow over North Beach 6. Mum taking Suzie for a bush walk 7. Mum relaxing on the beach
Prayer & Praise Points:
Praise the Lord for His provision, leading, guidance and patience which I call upon daily.
Praise Him for a wonderful time with Kath while she was visiting.
Praise the Lord for all my supportive friends and prayer partners. I really do appreciate you all.
Please continue to praise Him for His protection, provision and Mum’s and my general good health.
Please pray for the Lord’s favour in applying for a building permit with the council and in finding the right builder and tradesman for the renovations.
Please pray mum’s friend Jane B has a speedy recovery as she broke her leg while house and pet sitting for her friend.
Pray also for Mary who doesn’t have private hospital cover and if doesn’t receive a Miriam will need an operation for her back.
Thank you for your prayers for Mum especially for during these difficult times. Pray that she stays safe on the road now that she has renewed her licence. Pray also for her acceptance of the aging process especially for her memory.