Last day . . .

Today is my parents' last visiting day so my stepkids are here to spend the day with them.

I know I will have more time to reflect after my parents have left but these visits always leave me a bit of a sour taste. At the same time they are too short and too long. 11 days to live almost 24 hours a day together is a lot for me and probably a lot for them too.

Age doesn't help, character doesn't help either ( my mum likes controlling everything and
I do hate when I get told what to do 100 times a day ), so it causes frictions. They are not dramatic and I recon they are normal but they also create some guilt in me that's a bit hard to deal with, like " why can't I just bite my tongue for 11 days ? " Well I can't because the problem, as this French humorist I often mention used to say, is that : your give my mum a hand, she wants an arm. You give her an arm, she wants half the body and before you know, you don't even exist anymore.

I have a good friend having such a kind of mother too and we exchange our loss of patience and problems and frustrations, that helps a bit.

That's why I left home and decided to live abroad, in order to prove myself  I was able to do things on my own and if you ask me, I did develop a great life for myself. Sadly that's what my brother did too because he had the same kind of frustrations at home.

I do adore my parents and I would do anything for them if they were in trouble but it just appears that there is a limit of time during which I can stand them non-stop and that makes me sad. What makes me even sadder is that it's much easier with my dad and I could be with him for much longer.

Anyway...

This morning the skies were telling it would rain at a stage, so I decided to go to the park short after breakfast.

I found a way to have Rhea walking a bit more. I basically make circles still in view of the house and she is happy to go along. It's when I start walking as I did before, straight ahead that she seems thinking she won't make it so she doesn't want to go.

By the time we started walking, the skies were looking better.

The sight below looked really pretty " live " but the result on the photo is a bit disappointing.

I didn't have time to even have a look at my birthday presents, my parents keep me much too busy for that,  especially my mum ( I do maintain that late eighties are like terribles 2's . . . ) so I haven't started getting familiar with my new camera. I would have needed it today for the next photo.

I saw this squirrel that Bubbles didn't see, so he was quite low in the tree. I walked towards him cm by cm. It's a miracle he didn't spot me earlier because I had a red whale costume for rain, bright red and blue. Anyway the photo isn't very good, too green and obviously
I didn't use a flash not to scare the hell out of him, but I love it.

Packing has started and we will have to get up at 4 am so I recon everybody will be in bed at 8:30 pm !



Project 365+1 - Day 158 : Reaching up

With my mum around, that was an easy one.

She used to be 1.54 m high ( the 4 was important to her, lol ), no idea how much it is in inches, but now with age she is only close to 1.48 m so obviously she hardly can reach things. You can't see that on the photo but she is already on the top of her toes !

Take care everybody, xxx