Irony

The snow has gone, as has Mr WithaY's sinus infection, also his scary red vampyre eyes. Relief all round, I can tell you.

We only had a couple of days of snow, but the temperatures rarely went above freezing for at least a week.  According to the thermometer in my car, it was -7 (Centigrade, sorry, American readers) at 9.30 one morning.  A neighbour had a reading of -10 on their garden thermometer, so it was pretty brisk outside.

Mr WithaY eventually went off to his bushcraft course 24 hours late, having spoken to the trainers about it, and also booked himself into the nearest hotel, rather than camp in the snow.  Ordinarily he would have done, along with the rest of the course attendees, but given the fact that he was still on antibiotics for his sinuses, the likelihood of developing pneumonia was too high.

So, he went off, did all his bushcrafty things in the snow, passed the exams relating to this part of the course, and came home triumphant and decidedly less snotty and septic than he had been when he left.  Result.

I spent the few days while he was away frantically boiling anything and everything possible, for fear of infection.  It was like a Victorian cholera hospital.  Bedding, towels, clothes, dressing gown, scarves, gloves, pretty much anything that had had any chance of touching his conjuctivitus-y skin was put through the washing machine at environmentally-destroying temperatures.  Sorry about that, environment.

I got it all washed and dried, and then thought "I'll get some of this ironing done, as it's too cold to go out today."

Things escalated.

By the end of the afternoon, I had ironed everything in the basket.  I was deedily putting my clothes away when it occurred to me that I ought to put Mr WithaY's away too.  There were two reasons for this burst of domestic philanthropy:

1)  He was away for a few days, so unless I wanted to leave them on the floor, I'd have to climb under them to get into bed that night.

2)  It was fairly likely, on past performance, that even when he did get home, his clothes would remain in a tidy heap in the corner of the bedroom for some time to come.

So, I started putting things in drawers and on hangers.  But wait...what's this?  A wardrobe with non categorised clothing hanging in it?  Shameful.  I moved a few things, just to make it look tidier...all the trousers hung at one end of the rail.  Oh, and the dark trousers hung at one side, and the lighter trousers hung at the other.  But if you do that, then the shirts ought to be sorted out, with all the white shirts hung together, and then all the countryman check ones, and then all the heavy green moleskin ones.   And the short-sleeved ones should all be up together so that when the weather improves they're easy to find.

Gah.

Other news:  Remember my friend I mentioned?  The one who had been all-but-given-up-hope-of just before Christmas?  I went to see her last week.  She is making remarkable progress.  There's still a very long way to go, but she is sitting up, talking - albeit a bit mixed up at times - but able to chat, eating "proper" food, and will hopefully begin physiotherapy shortly.  It's pretty damn close to a miracle.

So hurrah for unlikely and unexpected recoveries, I say.