Life..and the losing of it.

The recipe for chutney will appear next post. It's my Mother in Law's, which is kind of fitting as the week has been about her.

If you are looking for quilty content click away now...the most quilting I may get to is some cutting out, therapy almost as good as sewing!

The MIL relationship fascinates me, i see plenty of girls with MIL's I would quite appreciate-who are always on their backs and complaining about them. There seems to be a competitive streak there and it isn't always MIL's fault that the relationship is sour...but then not always the DIL's either.

We could have been doomed to failure, my Dh had lived with her for 40 years, 15 without Dad; we built a house 20 metres from her door..and she had grandchildren my age already! (Hence, I have never called her anything but Grandma!!)

But it has gone quite well. The biggest challenge for me was her attempted kidnapping of my husband on any occasion where I was home even one minute after 12 o'clock lunchtime. THE MAN MUST BE FED!! Don't ever tell her he made his own salad sandwich at home every lunchtime anyway..I would never put enough Mayo on!! She would permanently kidnap him back! Like the owner of the Gingerbread house (in the nicest possible way!!) a full lolly jar, biscuit tin and icy pole freezer has been the lure that meant my kids first steps were normally in the direction of grandma's house.

But grandma was taken off from her house a month ago by ambulance. It was a wet, cold and miserable day, she stayed home from Church and fell sweeping the car port. She says staying home from Church was her mistake, I say her mistakes were; 1. Sweeping the carport-I will never fracture a pelvis doing this at 88, i don't do it now!! 2. Thinking a straw broom is good enough support to sit your walking stick down and 3. getting off the Couch with a bad foot and knee in the first place!!

She had a lovely social time in hospital until last Sunday when she has inexplicably started experiencing the kind of pain the doctors have rarely seen. No painkillers are doing more than hitting the sides and there is no way to stop the suffering.

This is when her life long dedication to her family is reaping it's rewards, her 3 children are taking turns ensuring she is never alone. My Dh has been doing the nights and trying to get some sleep during the day. He had been working up to 21 hour days getting the crop in and now this.

Today I did the afternoon shift with my other non related SIL ( all three siblings were called in last night for what looked like the end) and it is amazing how a relationship changes. She may not have quite spent the last 17 years doing the hallelujah chorus about my existence, but when she reached out and wanted her hand held for hours this afternoon any of that was forgotten.

So I only ask hope that grandma will soon get whatever healing is required.

But there is another aspect to the grandma story. Last night I sat here and played with my recently downloaded Picasa3, i am having fun with that and have solved my photo storage problem by buying a 1 TB External hard drive and installing Picasa there. It is permanently set up on my computer and surely 320,000 photo capacity should take me a while to fill!!

I was trying to find some nice photos of grandma, and herein lies today's lesson.

NO matter what size you are, how many new wrinkles have appeared and how much you wish all the pics looked like they did when you were 18; when you are approached with a camera for goodness sake, pull your shoulders back, stick out your chest and smile!! Then these laughing smiling happy snaps will be the everlasting memory of you. No one will worry about anything else. My MIL hated photos so in the few we have she is making an angry looking face, has her head down or is generally not looking great. You should see our wedding pics, you would think someone was holding a gun to her!! A smile would fix everything! My kids have real memories, but what a pity very few lasting photos.-and none that truly depict the generous Grandma they love.

I'll finish with one photo picasa did find somewhere on my harddrive. I think this explains my kids love for reptiles.....are you looking closely enough to see there isn't just a dog? That's me about 38 years ago...

World according to Tracey......Have a great day and smile in your next photo!! (Do you?)