A house becomes a home - In the name of Thiago - Day 152

I had to chuckle today when Dad turned up at the house shortly after 9am. He’d already been to Hanley to buy a drill by the time he got to ours. He also turned up with a bag full of washing. I always thought it was meant to be the children who came to their parents with their dirty clothes. I suppose the boot’s been on the other foot for long enough. And tomorrow he should be getting a washing machine delivered, so he is getting there.

Angelica has been over to his bungalow again today, helping him to get settled. I do feel slightly conflicted about this. Angelica’s first instinct is always to help anyone, quite literally, anyone. The problem is that Dad’s first instinct is to be helped by anyone, quite literally, anyone. As far as Dad getting his independence back is concerned, it’s a dangerous combination. But he’ll get there.

I must be fair-minded about this though. He is settling into the place gradually and he’ll never be rushed. Nope Dad does everything extremely fucking slowly and that’s the way it is. I’m amazed in a sense that it ‘only’ took him seven months to move in somewhere. But now he does have a place, he is getting some pride back and that’s good to see.

As you can see from the image above, the back yard was a bit overgrown when Dad moved in, and we’d not got as far as doing anything about that until Angelica decided to go on a bit of a mission this afternoon.

My good lady has been hard at it pulling up all the weeds. It’s fair to say that once she gets stuck into a task, there’s very little that can stop her. Unfortunately, as I was committed to a staff video meeting at 2pm, she had to abort the task today and go and grab Elisa from school, otherwise I’m sure she would have seen the task through.

We’ve made a plan to head back there on Sunday however, to finish things off. I might see if I can lay my hands on a jet washer. It will be interesting to see whether Dad maintains the momentum that Angelica is helping to build. I actually think he can do it and it pleases me greatly to even think that.

I’ve been laid out on this beauty today for a bit this evening but unfortunately my class got curtailed as the instructor had a domestic emergency to attend to. But the benefit of the class being cancelled was that I had a bit of 1-2-1 time to discuss my physical challenges and also got to find out about a 20 minute session that she’s putting on at 7am tomorrow. I looked for the positives in the situation and I found them.

The evening ended with a quick game over at Draycott with Leo. I was a bit anxious about the muscle injury I have at the moment but after doing some yoga before I went out, I felt a little more comfortable this time. We managed a set and a tie break before the light caved and the clouds opened. For the record 7-6, (7-5) 10-8 as you weren’t asking.

Keep the donations coming if you can guys. I know most of you reading this probably have already donated, so any sharing you can do with your contacts would be really helpful too. Just got to keep getting that message out there..