Sorry - I was So Terribly Busy-Busy!

Good morning You, everywhere,

So sorry not to have posted anything for weeks!
I have been awfully busy at both work and my home. Not having a lot of money means knitting wooly hats for Christmas presents and making my own decorations and doing the cooking for pre-Christmas parties from scratch instead of going to the delicatessens, and sewing my own party frock.
Fun as this all is (and it was!), it it also extremely time-consuming. Coupled to the pre-holiday panic at school (know that? You only know that when you actually know that...) in both pupils and colleagues, I haven't had the time to upload anything to Blogger.

There you are.
This must be the longest introduction I have written so far.

So, how have you been? I bet you have been awaiting my next post with baited breath!
Yeah, sure.

Well. My Christmas tree is standing in pride of place. And young Bowie has ignored it so far, I'm very pleased to be able to tell you!

He is such a bundle of joy! I know Viggo doesn't quite agree, but to me adopting this cat has been the most positive action of 2016.

What has been yours, I wonder?

We all adore him. This is my Mum, by the way. She will be 89 next month, and she's very frail. A constant worry, in fact, as she is not-so-slowly becoming more and more muddled. This week she locked herself out (she's done that before), but the worry was in the fact that this time she couldn't remember my name nor where I work. So the neighbours had to call out the locksmith.
So...immediate action was to order a name tag  with my name and cellphone for her to keep with her and to leave my name and number with the neighbours. Quite a thing, in a well-to-do flat where everyone keeps to themselves.

I have had the medical centre do an Alzheimer's test on her, and their conclusion (after 30 questions out of which she answered 27 correct - yes, she still knows her own name, thank you very much! And she also knows where she lives, what year it is, etcetera) was that she is "too good" to get help. With only one child (middle-aged me) who works to feed and house  two of her own (my kids), the help thus is whatever I can provide.
Well-meaning people who hear about this, all say the same thing: oh my, you cannot leave her on her own anymore! No...so, what should I do, take her to work with me? All those well-meaning people don't offer to go see her, mind.

Sorry. Didn't mean to bug you.
So. Instead of offering you my woes, I'll promise to upload a new book review very soon. And I know Viggo also cannot wait to upload one of his monologues.

One more week to go until the holidays. Can't wait!

Mum has finally grasped the concept of a 'selfie', isn't that sweet? This was at the Christmas market yesterday.