Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Song of the day: “Disturbia” by Rihanna. Totally inappropriate for a splendid day like today, but there you have it.

Been incredibly busy for the past couple of days, and yes, I have held up to my part of the deal (one I made with myself, of course), I have exercised every single morning for the past three days. Three days ago I…well we decided that it was time to do some serious cowboy-the-f**k-up…ping (I know, it’s not a real word, but I like it anyway) and schedule in some workouts. And we have, in spades.

There was punching, kicking, weight-lifting, jumping kneeing, sit-ups, push up, Aerobics and everything else that fits into an hour and a half workout. I moaned, groaned and puffed, but I made it through three sessions so far…and paid for it dearly.

Muscles trembling, but wonderfully warm, I headed down into the yard with big brother. While he went down to water plants, I headed into the greenhouse and discovered a new pest in the young tomato plants: leaf miners! That sure is a first, pesky little bastards are eating their way through the leaves and since discovering I have cut out at least fifty of them from no more than thirty plants. *sigh*

After that came groceries, and basically I knew it was going to be vastly interesting by the time I realized I almost couldn’t step into my jeans. Hah.

Nope, yesterday was no walk in the park in regard to my muscles. Every step screamed complaint, and that while it was grocery shopping day. I kid you not, but my head didn’t even bother to complain about this particular day. Instead there was a constant “ouch, ouch, ouch” as I went in and out of the car (slowly, infinitely slowly) in and out of the stores (more than a little wobbly) and tried to ignore the persisting agony. Hah.

Seriously, though, it was not that bad. I know the pain of workouts and I actually kind of enjoy them, because I know that I did it right if I can barely raise my feet to get up a stair. My only miscalculation was that we basically started the day before grocery shopping, darn it. Like today, for instance I have basically gotten used to it.

Ah well, no harm done in the end, the groceries got done, and Nata got to stay at home since his fever was completely gone. We did have to go to the vet (after grocery shopping) for her to take out the drip needle, and to check his fever one last time.
He appeared fine, and his test results showed that his liver was having trouble, but nothing else, meaning that with a ten day antibiotic course, along with a thirty day diet, he should be fine. Nata for one was thrilled to go back home with us again.

Of course we were so friggin’ tired by the time we got back, what with unloading, storing, etc., that we didn’t get around to doing a lot of editing. In fact, we did a single sentence before we both decided to call it a day and head to bed early…good thing too, since the alarm went off seven hours later…time for another workout.

Starting went incredibly slow, but once I got my muscles warm it wasn’t half as bad as yesterday. Got all the way through the session and afterwards headed up to tenants to make soup for supper, and prepare chickpea patties for either tonight, or tomorrow.
That done I hung tenant’s laundry as well, considering caregiver was at her other job again, and then helped tenant out to the old horse paddock where she could read in the sunshine.
The plan was that we’d work on fixing the trailer, but then reconsidered and headed down to the carport (with tenant) to work on stuff there.

For the past few weeks so much has been going on that we have been unable to finish stuff. Meaning that big brother started to do woodwork and gadget fixing while tenant helped me sand and wax the cupboard that has been waiting in the carport for weeks now to be put in my bathroom.

Hung that, and then got so annoyed about the mess all round that I cleaned the bathroom, and washes all my windows. Hah. Looking good now.
That done, I went in pursuit of big brother to see how his cabinet fixing in his own room was going…and got annoyed with the spider webs in the patio and big brother’s room because of it.

There were so many of them that most of the woodwork had disappeared. So I tackled the lot with a broom (mom’s ceiling too) and then grabbed a cloth and cleaned the linen closets as well. Might as well go for broke, eh? It all looks a lot better now, and once we had that done, and ate soup with bread, we headed down into the yard once more.

Harvested six pumpkins, some tomatoes and several zucchinis. Supper is going to be good tomorrow, that’s a fact. Hah.

Well, Nata has been following us around most of the day, and having fun to boot. Just five minutes ago he came toddling up the slope with an empty carton box in his mouth. Next he proceeded rip the box a bit, which gave him tremendous satisfaction, I would say.

This is it for today’s blog then. Soon in about fourteen posts, I think, we will reach blog 700, yay. Who’d have thunk it three years ago that I would hold out that long, but there you have it. 700. I still have trouble believing it.

Vet troubles

Song of the day: “Mysterious Girl” by Peter André. I know, how weird is that. But anyway, I used to like this song a lot, made me giddy for some reason. Hah.

An eventful couple of days, mostly evolving around Nata one of our Golden Retrievers, who decided to get ill the evening before yesterday. *sigh*

But first allow me to relate yesterday to ya. It started off on the late side with me going through the usual morning rituals and heading down into the yard to water plantsies and such. We were a bit in a rush, considering we had several things to do, and be back in time to pick up Bakti, little brother’s dog at the vet. Bakti has come to an age where the opposite sex has become fascinating, so he had to have a snip-snip job done before any accidents happened (Bora is in heat at the moment).

Little brother and mom left at the crack’o’dawn (10 in the morning, hah) and once they got back, mom went to town with big brother and me. First we had to pay our bill at the garage. I hate unpaid bills, so we decided not to wait (as they offered) and paid off the last bit bright and early. Next, mom had to go to a medical center where she had her eyes and motor skills checked so she can get her Spanish Driver’s license.

A lot of pooha for something she had had for more than thirty years, but what the hey, the doctor was nice and she was helped immediately, meaning that by the time we have to go back to traffico, everything should be in order.
She was right in the middle of her check up when the vet hospital called and informed me that we could come pick up Bakti because he woke up from his anesthesia and was making a racket. Since the hospital would closer at two we had to postpone our other errands and pick him up.

Arrived about five minutes too late, but the nurse had waited for us. So we dropped mom and Bakti off at home, and went back to town to pay for grandpa’s insurance, and then get a few groceries, which will save time when on Thursday (tomorrow aaaaargh) we go for the big monthly groceries. *sigh*

That done, we headed home at around five in the evening, and I’d just changed into something more comfortable (work clothes that were really ready for the laundry pile) when big brother came to inform me that we really should go to the vet with Nata. He was looking bad, and since there appeared to be some swelling in his chest.

So there we went, out again, and arriving at the doc’s doorstep at around seven in the evening. There was the usual exam, and the possibility of us having to drive to a nearby lab for a blood-test, rather than wait for a pick up the next dry, when a test in-house showed that it was a liver problem, meaning that we’d need a more thorough test, rather than the one we could arrange on such short notice.

Since Nata was slightly dehydrated, he had to stay over so they could put him on a drip. Also, he was suffering from a fever of a 105.26, so they immediately put him on antibiotics. I hate antibiotics, in particular since I recently did some research on them and discovered that whenever you take antibiotics they kill at least one good bacteria in your body that you will never get back again. But then, there’s not much choice if you’re actually dying, is there?

So Nata got left behind for treatment and we went home more than tired of spending the majority of the day in the car. We had an edit session, of course, and then it was finally time for us to turn in in our respective beds for the night. None were happier than I…well, maybe my dogs. Lazy idiots might enjoy going to bed more than I do. Hah.

Got up an hour early this morning. Definitely wanted to have a workout again, and since for the past few months it appears to be practically impossible to get a session squeezed in at the end of the day, we decided to change the routine a little and do it in the morning. Workout was grand, by the way. Ended up exercising for about two hours and was properly warmed up by the time we finished.
Decided to make use of the warmth, and took a quick dip in the pool to wash off the sweat…I regretted that swim later (was cold, darn it) but once I got down to the yard for another quick check of everything (I love going down there in the mornings too) I warmed up nicely again.

After breakfast and locking up my dogs, we headed out to the village to visit Nata. He wasn’t much improved, but he hadn’t vomited, nor had he diarrhea. He’d been on the drip all night, and his temperature had gone down enough not to worry them anymore.

He was definitely looking at us with a hopeful expression to go home, but it wasn’t time for that. The results won’t be there ‘till later tomorrow afternoon. Poor Nata.
Anyway, we had to get a new load of cement bags, and finally got to pick up the future wood stove for the main house. It’s just as cute as I’d imagined, and it was loaded up right behind the cement bags for us to take home with us. It’s going to be so wonderfully warm in the house this winter. Just imagine how much we’ll be able to save on butane.

Once home, tenant and I walked down to the basin terrace where she helped me cook supper while big brother first helped out grandpa and then went down into the yard for more watering.

With tenant happily chopping away at veggies, I hauled a large garden lounger to the igloo for storage, and took out a mattress roll for morning workouts. I want to do some sit ups, but I am soooo not doing those on the cold hard floor, hah.

Knight II is upset with me at the moment, seeing as I’ve been away so much these past couple of weeks. He really doesn’t like it, and Chaos is often staring at me as if he is not entirely sure if he is able to trust me any longer. *sigh*

Ah well, no helping it, I suppose. Supper on the heater, I headed down into the yard to plant chard on the dams around the new onion fields, harvested two small melons, and then joined tenant so we could eat supper together.

Properly stuffed it was going back up the mountain, tenant right there with me, locking up my dogs again, and then heading out to go to Nata again. Poor Golden Retriever hasn’t been away from us for more than a few hours at a time since he was neutered some odd ten years ago, so we don’t want him to feel as if he’s been abandoned again.

He was doing marginally better, (a liver problem, as I feared) and when I asked, we were allowed to take him home with us during the night. Yay. Once he realized that he was sprung from his prison, he carefully trotted after big brother and settled on the back seat of the car without complaint.

The rest of the dogs were ambivalent about his return. Some were wary, others were psyched. In particular Rammi, who considers herself his personal groomer. The moment he was standing amidst the rest of the pack, she started cleaning his ears.

So now I have an edit to do, and then…then I’m fully intending to go to bed early. Yay.

Pumpkins galore!

Song of the day: “Irish Son” by Brian McFadden. Such a beautiful song, yet strangely enough it doesn’t get stuck in my head all that much.

The past couple of days were deceptively busy, and didn’t go at all according to plan.
First off: yesterday. Big brother and I first headed down into the yard to water what needed to be watered. There were of course the usual chores before it. Laundry, cleaning glass surfaces inside the main house, etc. It’s an incredibly intense *snort* job, but someone’s gotta do it, right? Hah.

But anyway, we went to the yard, spent about an hour checking stuff, watering, yanking out weeds and talking bracingly to the new seedlings, which were looking decidedly limp in their pots. Something had been eating them.

That done, we headed back to my terrace to start on the rush job that we decided on the night before. You see, we’ve been hearing a peculiar gnawing in the beams of my porch, and as it turns out, the beam in question was infested with longhorn beetles. In fact, there were places where the wood had turned into pulp on the inside. So we broke the boards out, (took the chance to clean them) cut out the beam that was compromised, started preparing a new one. Next we painted all the un-compromised wood, only to discover that the one in the back, against my cabin, was also infected. So we had to take that one out as well. This meant another beam, and that while we had just painted that one. *sigh*

But anyway, we found another beam in storage, painted the thing, added another one, just for safety to make my porch sturdier, and then started relaying the beams. Oddly enough, no matter that nothing changed size-wise, we still were two boards shut. How’s that for weird, huh?

Be that as it may, we got the whole lot done during the course of the day, only thing left to do is hammer in a few more nails (we ran out while big brother was putting the boards back in) sometime tomorrow…if for no other reason than that we forgot today.

That was followed by 30 minute map, because let’s face it, we had to go out later in the evening, and edit for a few hours. Shuteye was essential for that.
Basically, I passed out. Which is nice if it happens, but a pain in the behind when you wake up at the sound of the phone, all disoriented. *sigh*

The edit went fine, thank you for wondering, even though we did have too little time for it. Had to go out, get another donation for market stuff, clothes mostly. Got lost in town in the process, which got us acquainted to a couple of really nice coppers, who were looking worried until they heard out accent and figured out that we were just stupid foreigners. Hah. Seriously, you should have seen the most forthcoming one of the lot come to big brother’s side of the car, where he looked over the edge of the window all worried, as if big brother possibly had a gun or something. Right. A gun. *snort*
We’re old fashioned that way; we use bow and arrow. Hah.
No harm done, though, we shot the breeze a bit, explained where we were heading, where we lived (you see this look of boredom come in their faces when we mention our neighborhood. Sooooo unimpressive) and then followed them for a bit before our turn came up.
Afterwards I did have to congratulate myself for stopped at the stop sign while a cop with flashing blue lights was driving right behind me.

Well, we got our donation, and headed home…I even made it there keeping my eyes open. This is usually a problem for me on our way back, which is why big brother always drives the last bit.

Okay, that was yesterday, let’s move it along to today.
The usual happened, chores and such, more glass to clean, shelves to dust, yadayadayada, followed by a trip up to grandpa’s kitchen where tenant, Dani and I spent the morning experimenting with pumpkins. Yup. Made my first pumpkin/lemon/cheesecake this morning, and though I am not completely satisfied with it yet, it was a success.

We were in the midst of concocting the fruit, when we heard this massive smash from the carport. A shout towards brother, asking what the heck was going on, let us know that the wire holding the pumpkins snapped out of the hook, letting up to 25 smash to the ground. 13 were broken, meaning that we had a long afternoon ahead of us. Yep, we had to peel all those broken pumpkins, cut them up and then bag them for freezing. There was just no helping for it.

Of course this was something us ladies ended up doing, while big brother and grandpa worked on hanging steel wire on heavier hooks in the carport roof for the remaining pumpkins. It took a while, about three hours, to get it all done, but we ended up with a creamy soup for supper to pay us for our efforts. Yay.

Before supper, though, there was stuff to do in the yard. Watering had to be done, two more pumpkins to harvest, along with a basketful of peppers, some tomatoes, and transplanting more cauliflower into bigger pots. While I was doing that, big brother planted two of the new tomatoes in the new pots that we built inside the greenhouse. They look so cute. I gotta say, that being in the yard, messing with plants and dirt is still the bestest way to end the day.

The soup was good, and so was the cake that came afterwards. Though I was pretty full, I did manage almost a whole piece with a dollop of cream on it. A plus was that tenant loved it, and grandpa and mom too, so I would say that’s another one for the books, just as soon as I figure out how I can change the texture a little.

We’ll, I’ve got an edit to do still. I better go.