Merry Christmas

Song of the day: “Chandelier” not by Sia, but rather by Jasmine Tompson, who did a wonderful cover of the song. Hah.

Right, another blog from the UK. No worries, I’m not driving y’all bonkers by being back here permanently, it’s just for the holidays, so the friends that we made over here, could have a break while the dogs were taken care of.

Wasn’t looking forward to it, I’ll admit, but that was emotional rather than realistic problems. Annoying, really, how in your head things get blown out of proportions and a part of you starts to forget that it is only for a few days, and not indefinitely. Strange how that works, in particular that panicky feeling that gnaws at your chest, while everyone was happy to see us, and welcomed us heartily. Messed up, for sure.

As to what has been happening since the last blog…well, there was the usual stuff at the house in Spain, added to the fact that the day before we left we spent several hours cleaning up the yard. Mom had a visitor coming, and the place was a mess, of course. Had been focusing more on the inside of the house, rather than the outside. *sigh*

Mom went to the doctor and got the OK to walk again, which is hard, of course. Having been pretty much immobile for the past six weeks, being bed-bound and everything, muscles are incredibly sore after one trip to town, meaning that she’ll have to start with little bits here and there.

Did manage to post several recipes on my other blog, you know, the one about cooking. At the moment I’m using basic pictures, and a prefab background, but as soon as I get a little more time, I’m going to take pictures of my own for it. Way more fun…but time. Time. TIME!!!

Had several weird dreams, but they didn’t stick, so no harm no foul. I do remember bits and pieces about it involving family members I haven’t seen in more than twenty years, at the very least. Odd that.

Heard from tenant, who isn’t doing all that well. She has a catheter in her kidney (again) due to a kidney stone that got stuck in the tube. She was once again forced to go to hospital with the infection, making her too week for the operation, which should be done on the 29^th…but regretfully, about two weeks after returning home, she got ill again, this time severe diarrhea bringing her near to dehydration, and therefore hospitalized, in hopes of keeping her strength up for the operation. Poor tenant. If only she didn’t find drinking so bothersome…otherwise she would have so much less trouble.

Managed to get some stuff done here in the UK, though, so that’s good. For me it’s hard, since the animals take a lot of time, so while big brother gets to put some backbone into whatever we need to do during the day, I have to interrupt all the activities for their daily care. Ah well, one does what one needs to, right?

Been putting up a fence, which is not bad work to do with weather that turned chilly, but sunny, at least. Fixed a gate. Did some serious cleaning, naturally. Sorting is part of it too, seeing as I left rather abruptly at the beginning of the month.

Also been doing bits and pieces all over the place, so luckily we’ve been outside a lot. I’m managing the cold reasonably well, at least. It helps that there is no wind at the moment, just cold and sunshine, the latter which was rather wonderful on the early morning walk…getting lots of walks in again, meaning that my feet are bugging me considerably. Seriously, by the end of the day I wanna remove them, violently, but what else is new in that regard, eh?

I heard from my pilot buddy, pen pall, yay. Alive and well, different location, but still saving people. Was such a pleasure to hear from him, in particular since it had been so long, and I had been thinking of him for about a week, and whether I should write to him, or just let the friendship fade naturally…in other words, or NOT bug him with senseless letters about my messy life. Hah. And suddenly there he was, out of the blue. Very nice.

Dax is doing really well. The reason, I think, is none of the meds we have been giving him. Nope. It was a week or two ago, late at night, me picking him up and something snapping in his spine (seriously, I freaked me out, it was such a loud pang) making me fear he’d broken his back, or something. No such thing, thankfully. Almost the next day we could see a change in him, his strength coming back. Yay.

On the down side, Knight II isn’t doing well at all. He is rapidly losing muscle tissue in his back legs, making grandpa afraid to have him going up and down stairs, because he has a tendency to topple over, poor darling. Added to that, grandpa is a little worried that Knight is depressed, because he doesn’t want to go up, and is just sleeping a lot. Poor baby. Just a couple more days.

Well, it is late now, so I gotta go. I’ll try to write another update soon.

Until then, I hope that all you readers have had a marvelous Christmas and are heading straight for a wonderful New Year.

It's that time of the year

Song of the day: “Love is in the air” by…gawd, I don’t remember his name. I just know that the song was for Strictly Ballroom. Fun song, even if he does have a bit of a wonky voice.

First off, let me just get this one out of the way:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

*phew* Almost forgot it, but I didn’t. Kudos for me. Hope you’re having a splendid one.

Right. Let’s get to it then….

Well, today was a total bust, so I’m just going to ignore if for no other reason than the fact that we didn’t manage to do much today. Only thing we did was the piping for the future kitchen, which wasn’t much. Normal stuff, too of course, hauling some wood for the stacks, laundry, dog food, and cooking, but nothing remotely fun, so let’s turn this toward yesterday’s market which…well, which wasn’t a big success either, I fear.

Packing-wise, it was a lot easier seeing as big brother opted to go along. Loading, and unloading was a matter of an hour, rather than two in that regard. Had it all set up before noon, in fact, and we did manage to get home before sunset. Yay. But that was the only real plus to yesterday.

Not that I minded, on the overall my day wasn’t a bad one. We sold for the wondrous amount of two and a half bucks, and my day was…well, okay. Hah. The market was a slow one. If there were fifty customers it was a lot. Did manage to get some nice chats in with Dutch and German folk. There was a couple, who were vacationing these parts, who loved dogs (they weren’t in the market for a dog bed, regretfully, because their dog was killed through the means of poison) and we ended up chatting for a long time about how to train dogs.

Then with a father and son, who were there enjoying the day with friends and family and their little girl. Lots of laughter there, which was fascinating to observe. Big brother and I took a couple of hours in the middle of the day to sit down in the back of the restaurant where we edited over coffee. Managed about five pages, which wasn’t too bad, all things considered.

Also had a chat with the nice lady who organizes the market. She was a little down, as is the case these past few times. She’s taking it rather harshly that the customers are not coming, and since that makes the stand holders unhappy, she gets tossed in the middle a little. Not her fault that folks are watching their pennies, if you ask me, but I can relate. She is putting lots of work into it.

But anyway, afterward it was rushing to get to town in time for the weekly donation bit. Still haven’t managed to arrange it for a different. Well, we did sorta, seeing as Saturday we had another. That guy I met at the market the other week, who wanted to get rid of his stuff before moving back to the UK? Well, I got around to calling him, and we made an appointment at the mall for him to give over his stuff.

Gawd, that guy had some stories. Turns out he’s been away from the UK since ’66. And has basically traveled all over the place. First off he traveled all the way to Timbuktu, and then hitchhiked from England to South Africa. It took him a year, but he got stuck over there in…Mozambique, I think, for the following twenty year.
Then, he somehow ended up here in Spain where he put up this cute little business of designing terrace gardens, which he also maintained. And now he’s returning to the UK to take care of his 90 year old mum, which he feels he should do (as is the right thing, of course) but which he also dreads since he hasn’t been in the colder countries for more than thirty years. Yikes.

Did have a very good edit day on Saturday. It made yesterday’s five pages less disastrous for sure. I think we managed a total of twenty pages, so we’re not actually behind with today’s nine. Yay.

Cooking…well, I didn’t do any yesterday. We settled for fried stuff. But Saturday I made an Indian dish that didn’t work out the way I’d planned, and today there was a rather nice pasta fungi that went down really well.

Digging was part of Saturday, preparing for pouring the concrete foundation (which we didn’t get around to today, darn it). Finished digging the gutter for the tubing, set the concrete blocks of the wall in place (I carried two up while big brother used the wheelbarrow…almost wrecking it…with the remainder) and basically scraped as much rock as possible away.

Still haven’t gotten around to cleaning Chaos’ ear, nor Carla’s. That is something we’ll have to do tomorrow…after the edit. *sigh*

Weather wise we’ve been very lucky (except yesterday, since Funny Beach Marbella was completely in the fog) with clear skies and a warm sun. Strangely enough the valley has been mostly obscured by this thick blanket of clouds that lay on the hills and valleys like a thick fog. Up here, we’re not bothered by it, but the village, town and the sea have been utterly obscured for days. The only thing visible is Africa. The mountains are higher than the clouds, which makes for a rather splendid view. Jutting peaks of green in a blanket of cotton. Fascinating. Reminds me of horror movies, really. You know, the Mist, the Fog. Ya can just imagine dangerous creatures lurking within, or some sort of acid raining down and eating your face right off, or something along those horrible lines……I know, I have a rather gross imagination going there. Hah.

Well, that’s about it. I’m sure I’m missing something vital, but since you won’t know if I do, we’ll just leave it at this. *snort*