Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Replacing the TV in the bedroom

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I’d like to replace the TV in my bedroom. I have one of those old anolog televisions and it barely works. It never really worked all that well and because of that I never watched TV upstairs very often.

I know they say you shouldn’t watch TV in bed, don’t they. Who is “They” anyway? However, sometimes it is nice to have a TV in your bedroom. You know, when you’re sick in bed and can’t move – those are the times when a TV comes in handy!

So .. sometime this week I might go looking for a small flat screen TV. Not too small but I mean it will be smaller in dimensions overall than the analog TV and a whole lot lighter! If I find something I like for a good price I’ll have to check out the Premier Mounts Store for a TV mount that will fit the new tv. I don’t think the TV mount that’s holding the current TV will work.

Do you have a TV in your bedroom? Do you watch a lot of TV or do you only watch TV occasionally?





How Emergency Respite Care Can Help A Loved One

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Life will always throw something unexpected in our path and when you’ve got a duty to take care of an elderly or handicapped friend or relative, it can occasionally present really difficult situation for you to deal with.

Thankfully, emergency respite care is available when something unforeseen does come up and this blog explains what it is and when it is available.

What Is Emergency Respite Care?

If you have not already heard of it, you may now be wondering what emergency respite care is; well, as the name would suggest, it is care that can be offered in the event of an emergency.

Many local councils in the UK offer such a service for free. This is typically only for a couple of days, or, in exceptional cases, three days. Of course if you are unable to carry out duties for a longer spell than that, you will be best to seek out firms that offer a service for a longer period of time.

When Can I Seek Emergency Respite Care?

There are a number of situations that can lead to you needing to rely on this form of care.

Something as simple as being stuck in traffic or delayed from your duty can warrant a use of this form of service, after all time can be crucial when it comes to care, so if you are unable to provide care for your family member for a number of hours, it can lead to many difficulties.

Other situations in which you would call upon this form of care are in the event of a family emergency or if you find yourself ill or having to go into hospital and are unable to provide care.

What Does Emergency Respite Care Involve?

If you need to call on any form of emergency respite care, there are a number of services that either the council or the firm you contacted in regards to the service.

While a firm might provide someone to provide live in care, the council may instead have someone that drops in. either way, they will both provide a similar service which will cover everything from washing and dressing the person they are taking care of, to ensuring that they get food and water and assistance to the toilet if needed.

Sometimes they will even provide assistance to get to daily appointments. As an example, they may provide a lift or escort the person they are caring for to a doctor’s or dentist appointment.

Respite care is ultimately about giving the carer a break away from their duty, but in the case of an emergency, it is good to know that these services exist for you to call upon.

Louisa Jenkins is a care specialist who offers people and carers advice on topics including emergency respite care, home care and other forms of care.

Let the renovations begin – Again

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It looks like we’re starting to finish our renovations again. Last year we began finishing our renovation work .. the renovations that we’d started several years ago in our living room, dining room and well .. all over the house. Unfortunately several things happened and we ended up taking a long long break from completing the job and our house didn’t look so great for quite a while, but now we’re back on the job.

Yesterday my husband finished fixing an area of our hardwood floor at the end of the stairs that had needed repair for quite a while. Did you know that old hardwood floors had tar paper underneath them? We didn’t either until we replaced part of the floor and found that it seemed lower and saggier in that area than it didn’t in the rest of the room and that’s when we realized the paper that he’d pulled out when he took out the old floor boards had been important and started researching how they used to put in flooring in the 1920’s. The floor is in good shape now, but sometime in the not too distant future I think I’ll be putting in a new floor.

Chris has two more days off work this week so I expect that we’ll be doing a lot more reno work. I know we need to get some supplies and I think a replacement part – something called malleable iron handle nuts for an old piece of equipment.

Some day we’ll have all of our reno work done and I’ll get to truly enjoy this house.

Running around but not getting much done?

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Do you ever have one of those busy days (or weeks) where you feel like you’re just running around all day but you really haven’t managed to get much done at all? I think I’m having one of those days. Or weeks …

I’ve been going non stop all day. Doctors appointments, getting work done on my sites, running around getting stuff for the house/shopping … so busy that I didn’t even get home in time to make dinner and I almost always make a nice home made dinner.

Chris had today off work but he wasn’t around too much today. He was out with some friends doing some “music” related stuff. When he did manage to come back home – much later than expected all he could do was talk about this guitar shop that he’d visited and tell me about all the hand crafted guitars and cool equipment he’d seen like something he was calling the exceptional qchord which is an instrument that can apparently have anyone playing music in minutes .. I’m not sure how but he said it was pretty cool.

Anyway once he finally got home we had to go out to the pet store to get a special light for our turtles. Yes we have box turtles .. and while we were there we ended up getting a new harness for our dog because she’s a real puller and she can be very hard to walk. I’m hoping it works. She’s a great dog but it’s such a pain to walk with her when she’s dragging you along!

Ok I’m going to rest because tomorrow is yet another busy day. I had a thyroid biopsy a week and a half ago and it’s time to find out how bad the news is going to be. It wasn’t good last time and I know things have likely gotten worse. I’m just trying to hold off getting surgery again. I have a tumor and now a new tumor has shown up and both are quite large – for where they are … plus last time the biopsy results weren’t that good … so … we’ll see what happens.

Time to start thinking about the future

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It seems it’s time to serious start thinking about the future and investing what little spare money I might have to invest. By this I mean investing in my future so that I have a decent retirement income. It would certainly help if I manage to get back to work soon! I’m still working on that. I should have news on that front soon.

My husbands bank has been calling on and off for the last week or so. They seem to want him to reinvest his retirement savings in a different way. They’ve suggested a few things but we told them to hold on for a few days while we thought about it. This of course means we’re doing a little research on their suggestions.

The problem is that the interest rates they are offering are fairly low. Some of the products have higher interest rates than others. One of them is something called a hybrid annuity. I’m just learning about annuities but it seems that hybrid annuities combine aspects of fixed and variable annuities so that you get the best of both worlds investment wise if you like annuities as an investment.

My husband will probably make a decision as to whether he’ll change his retirement savings over to some other type of investment that earns him better interest in the next little while. I think I’m going to see what my bank is offering as well and see if I can do better on my savings too.

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