The Bluestocking, where the short days shorten and the oaks are brown

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome all, regulars and newcomers, to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, a place of refuge and inspiration and camaraderie and silliness, where all alcoholic drinks are non-intoxicating, cakes contain no gluten, sugar or calories, but still taste yummy, and the attentive staff are small but very professional rodents wearing snazzy little outfits.

Other roles - such as acting as foot stools, looking decorative in the garden, or just being impossibly cute when you need something impossibly cute to go awwww at - are filled by a team of miniature pigs, quokkas, wombats, etc etc.

If real life is difficult, you can bring your troubles to the Bluestocking and a comfy chair will be found for you at a roaring fire, a miniature pig will settle down happily to support your tired feet, and a gerbil will serve you promptly with a comforting drink - very large G&Ts or massive mugs of hot chocolate with extra cream and marshmallows are popular choices [don't forget: no calories in the Bluestocking].

I think cyclamen have evolved these fatty lumps on their seeds that ants can't resist so they'll collect them and carry them back to their nests. That's how they help to spread 'em. Similar thing happens with the 3 cornered leek which is invasive and got all over my garden. I'm just getting on top of it. I'd rather have cyclamen. I think the vine weevils get it in my garden.

Are there two types of cyclamen? A spring flowering and an autumn flowering?

Yes …actually the RHS website tells me there are 3.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/cyclamen/growing-guide

we redid a little rockery a couple of years ago after taking out a conifer which had got too big. I was digging out cyclamen corms like potatoes! They’ve seeded themselves into the coarse gravel strip at the side of the house which I think exists to provide drainage rather than grow plants in.

Where on earth did three cornered leek spring up from? I’d never heard of it till the last 3 years or so but it seems to have displaced my chives.

Saw my surgeon this morning. I was able to be professional and not cry.

Operation is Friday. If they can't close, they will do a small skin flap, potentially in the same operation.

I may be eligible for oral antibiotics which would be great.

Plan is to discharge me towards the end of next week if it all goes well.

The shouty lady is genuinely frightening. It reminds me of my father's temper which put the fear of God in me.

They did washes before breakfast which was upsetting. I had just got into a routine and they broke it.

And I had a call with a recruiter which went well. The nurses showed me the family room and I was able to take the call there.

Hopefully I can have a shower tomorrow. I'm clean, but my hair feels gunky.

And the blackberry crumble was lovely.

I'm sorry about shouty lady. On one of my mother's last stays in hospital there was a woman (brain damaged after an accident was what we'd heard) who constantly shouted for attention without knowing why, and another very nasty complaining all the time woman.

It did mean my mother got brownie points just for being polite and thanking people. Everyone, particularly nurses and medics, wished there was somewhere more appropriate for poor shouty to get care.

Bottom line, hospitals are pretty hellish, but sometimes they are where we have to be.

That sounds positive, @MyrtleLion - fingers crossed it all goes well - the operation, the recovery and the results of the recruiter’s call.

FIL seems to be doing OK in the home - a few niggles because he can’t find his scissors and one or two other things, but that will be easily resolved when BIL and his wife finish unpacking his stuff and sorting it out. We are still working our way through all the admin - cancelling his electricity account, changes of address - all the fun stuff - but we are getting there. I say we, but it is mainly dh, BIL and his wife - I can’t really do much, apart from drafting his change of address letter and sending it to the people he wants told.

Ah, poor Myrtle. Well done on doing job stuff in the middle of all this emotional chaos. Fingers crossed & celebratory gerbils on standby.

Maybe the shouty lady will get discharged soon?

(The AI wouldn't/couldn't remove the person from your bed or put a door in that wall properly.)

This reminds me of a friend of mine who was a pioneer in her primary classroom with some composing software. She said not a single lesson went by where she didn't have to say 'please stop using the poo emoji'.

I keep threatening to use a certain well known game (one which involves digging things out of the ground and then making things, I'm sure you know the one) to teach soil science. I never have, because you can guarantee that as soon as I turn my back, a student will build a nether portal, or enslave some villagers, or punch a golem.

I know Myrtle is having a tough time but I really don't think she should SIT on shouty woman no matter how much she's been provoked.

I might have shed a sympathetic tear or two. It's all very well being brave and stoic but you need stamina too. You find an equilibrium if you're lucky but the oddest things can unbalance you. Sometimes it's someone being kind.

I grew an avocado from seed. It's dominating the kitchen window sill. I think it's got thrips and I want to compost it, but it's an anchor point for the web of a spider that lives on the window frame and helps control fungus gnats. So I don't have the heart.

Myrtle.
Kudos for having a good recruitment call, I’m glad they were able to find you somewhere to do that.

thank goodness it’s not a mixed sex ward… when I was a child, I was told that a, um, characterful great uncle had been admitted to a mixed geriatric ward (I’ve no idea whoever thought they could possibly be a good idea), where his swearing caused a nun to temporarily think she’d gone to hell. One of those ‘funny’ family anecdotes which isn’t.

wise words.

I grew two avocado stones this year - one of them doesn’t look too bad, the other is really not a thing of beauty. I brought various tender plants in before the storms, so it’s languishing in the utility room. I’m contemplating putting it back outside as an experiment to see how hardy it is, not remotely hoping it’ll succumb…
idk why I grew them, whenever the topic arises on gardeners question time the general consensus is not to bother.

otoh the umbrella plant which I turned into cuttings after it got too tall to stand up and also got infested with fungus gnats has yielded six or seven heathy plants - they all ‘took’

That's an idea. They're easy enough to grow if I decide I want another one. As soon as I can bring myself to I'll put it outside and see what happens. Tbf the spider's a bit crap at spidering. I've watched it wrap a fly then drop it, free one that was stuck and just ignore them until they wriggle free.

I live in a house with a big spider population [old bones and countryside round it] I get spider season every year as the summer ends and night time temperatures drop. The effect is a bit like wacky races where the larger ones [female I think] chase the smaller ones round the house in the evening. This goes on a for a few weeks. At one time I had a cat that chased after them but she is sadly is no longer with us 💔and the dog is not remotely interested. I hope the Bluestocking has plenty of spiders.

You know that's almost word for word what they DID say 😳

I swear there are cameras in this ward... she is in the bed by the window. I am not jumping on her.

She had post operative delirium a couple of months ago that triggered Alzheimers. Apparently she was as nice as pie before.

It's an orthopaedic trauma ward so most of the women have leg issues. External fixation (like a cage) around a broken legs, hip replacement, a screw that migrated out of a hip.

Shouty lady will scream for the police, call the staff cunts, yell at them for touching her property or her body. It's utter rage then tears. It comes out of nowhere and is worse at night.

She's doubly incontinent so it's worse when they have to change her pad and her bedding. She tries to get out of bed and they sometimes have someone sit near her when she's restless. Then she will scream at them to stop looking at her or to go away.

I wondered if it was anger at men involved in her personal care. They are good at single sex care. I have been happy for a male HCA or nurse to fetch a commode, but when I needed to be helped onto it, I asked for a woman and was given it. I'm fully mobile now (though slow).

So some of the men have helped her get changed and washed - though always with a woman. This would be unacceptable to me which made me wonder. But she shouts at everyone, even if it's a female team changing her, and she shouts at her husband who comes every day.

He just asked her if she wanted her drink and she yelled, No I don't want to go up there - twat. It would be funny if it wasn't so frightening and aggressive.

I have new noise-cancelling earplugs but she woke me up at 3am with the shouting.

When I was doing my nurse training, I worked for 8 weeks on the orthopaedic ward. On the women’s side we saw so many elderly ladies who had a fall, broke a hip, and then got dementia after having surgery. I don’t think I saw one who ever recovered from the dementia - they all ended up being discharged to care homes - it was so, so sad.

She's supposed to be rejoicing because the nurses are escorting shouty woman out of the ward to go home. Who the person underneath Myrtle is, is a mystery.

I twice asked the AI to get the image right, but it couldn't. Perhaps the person in the bed is there IRL & the AI knows that. Has @MyrtleLion tried looking underneath herself? Might explain why the bed feels lumpy... 😂

Hot chocolate bowser please bar gerbil, and make it snappy. I've run out of oomph entirely, thanks to problems piled upon problems piled upon yet more problems. And I've had a migraine all day. Takeaway ordered and I will be doing Lego later.

What causes the dementia after surgery? Is there any way to prevent it?

I honestly don’t know, @ifIwerenotanandroid. My experience was in the 80s - I haven’t kept up with the research since I left nursing. I would hope that it is, at least, becoming less common, due to improvements in anaesthesia, but I don’t know.

Terrifying.

For anyone who wonders about making AI images, a masterclass: Step 1

The AI misspells one thing, yet correctly interprets my own misspelling. Fair enough, you think. Easily corrected. See Step 2.

Step 2