Surviving the decorating

You'll be pleased to hear, I'm sure, that we survived the first day of decorating and came away relatively unscathed.  It was stressful but the interesting thing was that it made me realise how few stressful days I have now.  I have the odd day when I feel sick at the thought of what's to come, I have moments when Social Services create totally unnecessary difficult situations with regard to my mum, I have periods of time when I wish things could go back to how they were but on the whole life is, oddly, much less stressful than it's ever been before.  So why might this be?  I think it's because I'm settling for less than perfect and in doing so am finding that life is just easier all round.  This manifested itself yesterday in the decorating.  The yellow paint on the ceiling?  I just won't look up; the yellow paint on the door frames? it can be wiped off (I think but have yet to put this to the test); the fact that the new paint is a darker shade of yellow than the one we used before?  we're going to leave the wall already painted in the original shade and paint the other three in the new colour giving us the feature wall that Ash really wanted; the untidy corners where Ash splashed the new, darker shade onto the old, lighter one?  he's going to fix some architrave to each corner to balance the wall and paint them cream to match the rest of the woodwork.  So all good and it will still be my sanctuary, a place to which I can escape.  All of this then led me to contemplate what else I've relaxed about.  Where once the fact that the ceiling lights no longer work in the bedroom would have sent me into orbit now I've put a lamp at the side of the bed.  Not only that but the fact that the only socket is on the other side of the bedroom meaning we have an extension lead trailing to said lamp doesn't irritate me; having to open kitchen cupboards and drawers on an almost daily basis to find Ash's latest hiding places for pots, pans and cooking utensils is now just part of daily life and on and on.  The thing is that I've never been the most patient of people but that's been ok because all I've ever had to say in the past is 'I think we need .............' and he did it.  That's no longer the case but I find none of the usual irritations of life really matter.  As long as we're warm, dry, have enough to eat and life is relatively free of pressure we're ok.  It may no longer be a life of fun and adventure but I do know I'm sleeping better than I have in a very long time which enables me to face the world more easily so once again I realise that life with dementia isn't all bad.

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