Not much writing, darn it.

Song of the day: “Dream a little dream” by The Beautiful South…I can’t help it, seeing as I looked up the video the other day and have it tumbling through my head since then. Hah.

Very little writing again these past two days. Yesterday was grocery shopping day and let’s face it, I was lucky to be able to pound out one page; two would have been nothing short of a miracle, and three would have been nigh on impossible. *sigh*
A little disappointing to get so little “real” work done these days, what with all the outside obligations going on. Heck, I find myself jealous of grandpa who manages to paint the façade of my cabin, clean out the rain gutters and clean up the carport while we were out and about. Right now I would give my left pinky to be able to do so. Aaargh!

Yesterday (effing grocery shopping day) was pretty darn painful. You see, while putting on the supportive sock around my foot during the night, I put on the one that is for the right-side foot, rather than the left. This (I’ve noticed twice before, but thought it was my imagination) caused my foot to hurt like heck. I don’t get it really, considering it is just elastic that is sewn together as mirror images, but there is a difference, apparently. It’s almost as if the left pulls the foot different than the right. Anyways, I didn’t realize my error until late in the evening, found the left-side foot sock and felt instant relief. I was at the verge of spilling tears of relief, seriously. *sigh* Never doing that mix-up again.

But enough whining, considering tenant’s caregiver has been working elsewhere more to make ends meet, I’ve been picking up a lot of slack with tenant’s needs. Not necessarily a bad thing, since we always end up chatting, or singing, but it does take a lot more time than I anticipated, meaning that we get a lot less done around the yard, but what the heck, life continues on gradually and on the overall it is a fun trip. Hah.

During groceries I had to make a slight detour with the Opel, the Daewoo was ready so I had to go and make the exchange. There was a traffic jam so I backtracked and decided to take a short cut through the country…where I promptly almost drove into a roving pit bull. It was sweet as heck but also dumb as a doorknob, seeing as it decided to park its butt right in front of the car until I ordered him into the car so I could pull over to the side of the road. Considering traffic was coming past in rapid succession I decided that it might not be smart to stay in the middle of the road.

But anyway, it took me fifteen to thirty minutes to locate the dog’s owner in the area, a cumbrously shaped little man who gruffly thanked me for getting his dog back and then roared off on his motorcycle. Gawd, I was soooo late. But anyway, I got at the car sales place where Ray (I don’t know why but I find that a very typical car salesman type of name. If you met Ray you would agree with me, I assure you) informed me that everything was fixed and that I could just leave with the car. I got him copies of all my legal papers so the transfer could be made and I left with the Daewoo.

The speedometer still isn’t working, and neither is the right-side door handle, but considering the time they take for everything (almost two weeks) I rather fix those things ourselves than leave it to them, again. The important thing, the transmission, was fixed, so, yay!

That was about it, I guess. Time to get to work, maybe make some pumpkin for brunch and then see what the day will bring. I’ll be back.

Out and about, darn it!

Song of the day: “A perfect 10” by The Beautiful South. Cute song, if you’ve got the time, look it up on youtube. If you know it already, you know what I’m talking about hah.

So, I’ve got very little time today…well, I usually have little time, but these past few days have been downright hectic. Which has its good points, I assure you. On the plus side I’ve had hardly any time to think either, and in light of the Prama and Camera debacle that was good. On the minus side, I havent’ had any time to think about writing either, darn it. Did reach 100 pages, but it’s been teaspoon sized efforts for as far as I’m concerned.

It seems like we’ve been out of the house every single day since the weekend…let me rephrase that, we have been out of the house every single day since Saturday and it’s driving me bonkers.
The Land Rover is back (definitely a plus) but it was a hassle, I tell ya. Jeez. We could finally go to pick it up yesterday even, but somehow the garage had messed up. And when I say messed up, I mean seriously fucked up (pardon the language).
1. They didn’t fix the hand brake, which had been the deal.
2. They insisted on 800 bucks instead of the agreed upon 600.
3. When I started the car up everything went haywire.
4. Did I mention haywire. Gawd, I almost had a conniption.
5. The mechanic insisted that it was just a short, so I took it home.
6. We checked and it was not “just” a short.
7. I’m never going to that place again. Grrr.

We brought the car, had to wait for the mechanic for an hour to insist he fix it for free. Did I mention the not going back? Ever? Grrr!

But anyway, the guy fixed their error…of course this was after we went to another mechanic who was nice enough to tell us what the problem could be, allowing us to actually sound like we knew what the heck we were talking about. Jeez. Once we came there to pick the car up, the owner (he’s an arrogant little snot, if you must know. The only reason we always went to this garage was because the manager is a good guy) came up to us, grandly declaring that we didn’t need to pay for this particular fix. DUH! When he called a very pointed “Hasta Luego” (loosely translated into Seeya) I rolled my eyes in a “Yeah, yeah, hasta luego…never again” and got the heck outta there. Gawd! They’ve so lost a good customer.

Due to the nice dude at the other garage, you know, the one who suggested the problem which proved to be correct has earned himself a new Daewoo customer in the near future, but anyway, he suggested and Land Rover specialist in Malaga, to whom he brings his own Freelander as well. Though such a remark does not inspire great confidence in a mechanic (you know, being in the profession himself and everything) he did make a point that the Land Rover is not necessarily a difficult car to fix, but that it is very different from the cars people drive these days. We’re bringing the Defender to this specialist next week so he can fix the hand brake proper. *sigh*

Oh, did I mention that we’re finally getting the Daewoo Matiz tomorrow (knock on wood etc.)? Yeah, well, if Ray the car sales dude isn’t flapping his mouth without saying a single sensible word, we will have both cars safe and sound where they belong before the end of the week.

Next bit of “good” news: In all likelihood I’ve got a second route with the distribution job. The main distributor and I will discuss it on Monday, so keep yer fingers crossed. Got that Land Rover bill to take care of after all. *double sigh*
It’ll be interesting to set up a route from scratch, seeing as the main distributor is just now starting with the expansion and will leave that to me. Or at least, that’s the plan. It’ll be a lot easier to remember personally found spots, rather than those from someone that you have to keep to.

Of course we also had to pick up our friend in Marbella, which was another two hour trip. It went fast, but still cut sharply into the day. With all the driving going on we have been able to do very little project wise, darn it. Grandpa has been doing most, for crying out loud, since whenever we were out for a day (we already did a dry run through the second route, just to familiarize ourselves with the areas) we would come home, have a late breakfast/lunch and dinner combined, and then head into the yard for small harvesting and watering.

Today we did manage to do a little, after bringing the car back to the garage for the fixing of the screw up. I painted the new shelving for our gas supply, and put higher legs underneath tenant’s armchair, since the poor woman has been having the worst time getting out of the dratted thing.
With a few inches added to the height, she should manage just fine. At the same time big brother did some masonry on the new storage spot, and hung shelves above the dog food that’s already in there, yay.

We were just about done to, ready to head into the yard for today’s watering, taking the dogs along with us, (they’ve been missing us somewhat fierce these days, what with all the trips going on) when I got the call that the car was fixed and we could pick it up.

Gawd, I’m so glad that I actually managed to catch the monumental 8 hours of sleep last night. Seriously, these past few days have been so exhausting; I just want to sleep all the time. Hah.
Well, I should be getting back to book writing ‘cause tomorrow is grocery shopping day, darn it!!!

Two losses in one morning.

Song of the day: “Wacka Wacka” by Shakira. Strange that I have this particular song in me head today. Not at all appropriate unless you change the lyrics into whacky whacky…because the past couple of days have been THAT.

I’ll tell you why: (If you can’t stand bad news, don’t read to the end, ‘cause I need to go over the full routine just to get it out myself.)

Yesterday started like any other; I got up, went through the morning rituals, got to the house to hang laundry and devour coffee and then headed down into the yard with big brother because we would be unable to water the plants in the evening. Considering the Land Rover’s still at the garage, as well as the Daewoo Matiz, there was no choice but to do the route in the loaner. Seriously, you do not want to have to get in and out of an Opel Astra a hundred times or so. Gawd, it’s like I’ve done four hours of squats.

But anyway, since the Astra was the only option, big brother had the brilliant idea of going with me, saving me a lot of time getting in and out of the car, parking, etc. since he would do the driving. Sweet, ain’t it? Ah well, no problem there, it was an arrangement easily made for us.

So we were about to have brunch up in the old paddock…we’d taken about two hours in the yard…when Knight II (the arsehole) decided it would be a good idea to grab Fortuyn (pointer) by his throat and toss him around a bit. Seriously, I thought there’d be dying involved, but luckily it was only a flesh wound, for which we immediately headed to the vet. Though the young vet was going to try, she doubted she would have him done in time for us to pick him up again that evening.

Seeing as I had to meet my main distributor at five, it was all very last-minute-arrangements. So we got to town in time…talked to the distributor about a possible second route, none to late either, considering he was interviewing someone else that very afternoon, but he appears to see merit in the idea, so we’ll talk about it either on the phone the next few days, or next week.

After yesterday, big brother and I have decided to do the route together, however, seeing as it shaved a full hour off in the end. If we had actually started on the right time, we would have been home at midnight. (Missed the Land Rover like mad, by the way. So much better.)

But anyway, we had just about finished loading up the Astra when the phone rang. It was the vet informing me that we could come and pick up Fortuyn who was all done. This meant another hour driving back to the village, picking him up, doing the village route since we were there anyway (otherwise we would have had to do it in the morning), which took another hour.

We brought Fortuyn back home, rushed to the bathroom, took another bottle of ice water and then headed back to town. (Gawd, I am so looking forward to when we’ve got the cars back.)
Didn’t get back to town until eight thirty at which time we had to do town itself and then finally head out onto the official route.

We missed two turns, found the very last location as well, and were done at two in the morning. Yay. So, there are some seriously strange people I meet on my route. If I’d written about them in my books I would be afraid that they’d be too…I don’t know, theatrical, I guess. I would be hesitant to go in the extremes of those I meet in this rather touristy area with clubs and bars aplenty where a pint too many is quickly drank. Seriously, I had no idea that complete stranger will call you angel, love, sweet stuff, sweetness and whatnot. Heck, I felt like a friggin’ teen. I wonder if maybe I look younger than I am. Or maybe it’s the clothes. Had on floppy jeans with a linen top today…and my baseball cap, of course. At the end of the evening it got cold, by the way, so the next time I will probably be adding a hoody or a vest.
Came past several location where they were smoking pot, by the way. Jeez that stuff is potent in its scent.

Be that as it may, once we’ve got the route down pat, we should be able to get it all done in record time, allowing for a second route, which should go a ways in paying for some of them veterinary bills.

Which brings us back to this morning, the whacky whacky, you know? It ain’t pretty, I assure you. I woke up sore as heck, hurting in many places, least of which my foot. The friggin’ Astra didn’t help much in that regard, I assure you. There at the end it felt like I was walking on glass again, so it was a good thing big brother was there to do some of the walking for me on the way back.

So, this morning…I’ve gotta stop procrastinating, ‘cause I’m going to have to write it down at some point anyway. We’ve lost two dogs: Not ONE but TWO, which I’m going to have to explain, don’t I?

Strangely it is not the dog that got hurt yesterday, instead this morning when big brother let the main pack out of the patio, Prama and Tadaika (crossbreeds with pit bull in them) decided it fun to jump on Camera (Golden Retriever) which resulted in her premature death. We are still not entirely sure what happened, it literally happened in a second so I suspect she broke her neck (those two crossbreeds are so incredibly strong). Not a good way to start the day, and incredibly shocking. This has never happened before. Sure we’ve had the occasional fight, a little rip in the skin here and there, but never anything this severe.

Of course Prama has been a problem for quite some time. We have been paying close attention to her, having made an agreement that if she ever crossed the line of what is “just fighting a little” we would have to put her down…which is why we are now two dogs short.
This, of course would not do, and since Prama is always the one who instigates the fight, at which her sister Tadaika joins in quite cheerfully, we had to make that horrid decision, to which every part inside you screams objection.

Seriously, having a sick dog put down is an entirely different thing from having to put a physically well dog down for aggressive behavior. It goes against the every grain, and yet it had to be done. Luckily the vet realized the same and agreed without demur to our decision once we had explained what had happened.

Which concludes this rather miserable beginning of the day. I am REALLY looking forward to getting down to some serious physical labor, because just sitting somewhere thinking about it is not going to help at all. So I’m outta here. Let’s hope I have better stuff to write about the next time because this really isn’t very cheery, is it?
Ah well, such is life, I guess. It’s got its ups and downs.

Early post...workday tomorrow.

Song of the day: “Puppet on a string” by…ehm, I forgot. It’s a classic though…albeit slightly annoying.

So I’m a little early with the blog, technically I should write one tomorrow, but since tomorrow I need to work and would like to get some writing done prior to leaving this will just have to do, won’t it?

The majority of yesterday was spent working on the new storage facility. The floor is in, poured it before noon. Masonry was done on-site too, putting two layers down underneath the wooden wall we erected during the course of the day. Walls are up by now, so’s the ceiling, and as of this morning so’s the roof. Went easy enough too, looking as if it is a part of my cabin, seeing as the materials match.

No writing yesterday, since we sent a package to a publisher. It’s a relatively new company, and they don’t have a big list of what they’re looking for yet, so who knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll like Saving Nina. It’s possible of course, since the editor last year suggested that I sent it to this publisher. We’ll see.

I slept more than seven hours this night and my mind (and body) were agog when I woke this morning. Sure, I could have slept another ten hours or so, but I got to sleep in at long last. Yay.
Even my doggies worked along this time, sleeping well through the night, even though mom and the sibs left to go to the market this morning.

Nice summer weather today, by the way. I wouldn’t mind at all heading into the garden tonight, but since the sibs do the weekends that’s not in the schedule today. Instead we’ll hang a couple of doors in the new space, transfer the dog food into it and then maybe ad a lick of paint. I made pictures. Yay!