If it barks like a dog it's a...parrot?

Song of the day: “Mmmmmmbop” by Hanson. I know! I’ve no idea where that one came from. I haven’t even heard it recently. Hah.

Well, I’m instantly drawing a blank here, seeing as it is already half an hour to midnight, it’s not all that strange, but what the heck. Let’s see if I can remember SOMETHING of the past three days, eh?

There were the visiting dogs to walk in the mornings, which is a bit of our special time. They rush outside, jump against me a few times, and then head on out into the bushes to do their thing. My dogs will be bouncing up and down in front of the cabin windows, going downright bonkers. Poor darlings. They don’t like to share me. Hah.

Then, while I’m doing laundry, the visiting dogs will be at the window of the porch office, and I will chat with them a little. Which reminds me. This morning, Charlie (the new green parrot) joined in on the melee when the dogs started barking. I kid you not. He barked at the top of his lungs, mimicking Micky, I think. I almost choked on my laughter, really. That is so like us. We end up with a parrot that tries to go for our throats when we let him out of the cage, and barks like a dog. *sigh*
You’d think that Tika would do the same, but nope. Not our pretty red and blue Tika. That would be totally beneath her…she’s an arrogant little bugger. Hah.

Though there was rain on Saturday still, the weather has vastly improved since Sunday with the appearance of the sun and a cool western wind. Seriously, this weather is heaven. Fresh air, bright sunshine, makes you want to stay outside 24/7 just to soak it all up.

Grandpa and I spent some time cutting glass. Seeing as we finished hanging the old terrace doors in the carport, the remaining sections of the opening still needed to be closed. We could just have hammered the lot shut, but since we’ve decided to do it nice this winter, we went for glass.
An interesting thing, cutting glass. I did a small glass every now and then, in the past, and always messed up, but all in all, this venture of cutting four large windows, didn’t go all that bad. Gotta be careful doing glass, though. Ended up with a few cuts, one glass splinter and a scrape on my palm because I braced on the table where small pieces were lying about. *sigh* I would like to state for the record that I never claimed to be the smartest of the litter. Hah.

But anyway, except for one window, where I apparently went wrong somehow (big brother had to fix that since he usually does the glass cutting round these parts) everything fit and is in place. Works well too. Once the stove is on for the dog food it gets real nice and toasty in the carport. Yay. I am so going to enjoy that this winter.

Gada is not doing all that well. Her front paws are starting to hurt more now, and I think that the pain pills are only taking the edge off, darn it. Then, of course, I did something stupid. I started calculating, and came to the conclusion that Knight II will be six this year, which gave me a faint panic attack, since that means that he is rapidly approaching the average age of Great Danes. Double darn. Seven to nine years is the marker, and though the sensible part of me says that the statistics don’t mean anything and that he could live to a solid ten years, but what do emotions have to do with sensible, right? *sigh*

Right. The Opel. Had it towed this morning, and got the report in this afternoon. The alternator went again (darn second hand stuff) and there’s a hole in the tube of the gas tank, meaning that we’re looking at a repair job of about 300 bucks. Aaaargh. What is it with these cars, for crying out loud? Soon I’ll have to start selling my organs or something. Won’t have it back until Thursday or Friday. Stupid cars.

There was the whole carglass debacle. Remember the broken back window of the Land Rover? Our appointment was today, and though we arrived on time and were told that the replacement would take about 45 minutes, we ended up waiting for a solid two hours. *sigh* Practically snoozed in the chair while we waited, which seemed to be the theme of the day since I was friggin’ nauseus when we got home, and ended up going to bed for half an hour, to try to sleep it off. Was a little better afterward.

Dogs caught a rat today. Since our wild cat has been snacking on the dog food, he’s been catching less rats, meaning that we’ve got about ten of them haunting the carport. Nasty little buggers. They did chase the mice off, though.

Funny thing ‘bout Chaos. He was barking on my porch this evening, and get all excited, so I finally got the hint and chased him inside the cabin. He dashed ahead of me, threw his front paws onto my bed and stood their barking, and hopping on his hind legs until I lifted him up. Jeez. Crazy dog. He’s some character. You could practically follow his thought process. “Finally she gets it. Come on, Boss. Lift me. Lift the Chaos. That’s it. Time for bed.” And then he flops down on the mattress and promptly falls asleep.

There was a donation trip again. You remember the friend with the store, right? Got a nice batch of veggies and bread for the dogs, which is always a plus. In particular since we also got a full bag of overdue meat, which had the dogs quiet and salivating while the lot boiled on the stove. I kid you not, they were gathered around the stove, staring at the steaming pan as though they were hypnotized, occasionally whiffing the air in full appreciation of the aroma. It was hilarious…just as the next morning when they got to eat the treat. Not a crumb was left in the end, and I literally had to drag Chaos and the fat girls out before they stuffed themselves too much. Even Knight II ate his full bowl, which I could have notified the press about for the rareness of the event.

Cooking was part of the days, of course, with today as the most prominent one. Seeing as tomorrow is a working day (putting up a fence, of course) I also made a potato/veggie salad, added to the mash potato, pumpkin, pepper, leek and onion mix. Gawd that worked out well. It was seriously delicious, and I almost ate too much.

Went for a jog tonight, which was high time, and didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. The most important thing is I did it anyway, so who gives a fig about the quality of the jog. The distance was met and I survived. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that. Hah.

Been doing some random reads through the book before starting on the first edit. I need to feel confident that most of the scenes I added fit, and that the flow is right before I start on the epilogue. Added to that, I’m curious. I remember writing the broad strokes of the main idea on which I started to write, but as for the details, they’re blurry at best. What I’ve read so far works, though.

The pool is starting to become downright nippy at the moment. I took a dip yesterday as well as today, and it isn’t funny anymore. The coolness hurts your head, and my skin actually itches afterward. Soon, once the temps really start dropping, it will be too cold for dips, darn it.

Been dealing with loads, and loads of laundry. What with the bad weather last week, laundry piled up, didn’t dry, and thus there’s plenty of it at the moment. Got overfull baskets and lines, but if this weather holds up, I’m confident that I’ll hack my way through it in the end. Now I’m only hoping that the weather will hold.

Loaded up the car this afternoon. Sand, cement, fence, tools and whatnot. All’s packed up and ready for tomorrow. Got lunch prepared, bottles are filled, and if only I manage getting to bed in time, I’ll be a happy camper. Heading out. It’s past midnight.

Time passes fast when waiting.

Song of the day: “White Houses” by Vanessa Carlton. Had it before, and probably will again. Very catchy tune and fun to sing, can’t ask for anything better when it concerns being stuck with a song in my head.

I seriously overslept today. For some unfathomable reason I forgot to set my alarm last night so I was at least an hour late when I woke up this morning and blinked at the clock in confusion. I could have sworn that I set it before going to bed and yet…well, apparently I didn’t, darn it.

Since I was late, I pretty much hurried through the morning rituals…which were interrupted by grandpa, who delivered a package that had arrived today at the postal office. My book “W.I. Investigations: Volume 1-4” finally came. The post took 2 weeks, but luckily, it got here in time for me to send it out for Operation Desert Swap. It is so annoying that the publisher has made some sort of change in the mailing stuff. So send a single book to Spain costs me close to thirty bucks, for crying out loud…and I really need to get a few copies more for this kind of thing.

Ah well, at least I can support the troops on the “front line”. This way they’ll have something fun to do too, while they’re far away from home.

But anyway, once I’ve properly inspected the book and stored it again, I head down to the house for the morning chores, such as the laundry. The monster boxer is a tad annoying again today. For some peculiar reason she still thinks that, she has to put her teeth in something while we’re walking down to the house. Aaargh.

The morning chores over and done with, big brother and I get down to the most important thing of the day: proofreading! Yay. I know. This is so unusual…NOT. But what can I say, we want to be thorough, just in case the publisher wants to see the rest, and of course because we want to have the manuscript as perfect as we can possibly get it. Hah.

We work for a solid four hours before our brains begin to go mush from this particular task. While we were doing the corrections, I got this rather brilliant scene in my head for one of the sequels of “Saving Nina”…I have no idea what the title of the sequel is going to be, but the story is shaping up nicely in my head. I think it’s going to be a doozy, and I can’t wait to be done with both SN and “Commanding Morgan” so I can dig in.

After writing a page and a half for the sequel, it is time to head outside and figure out what it is we’re going to do first today. A short discussion ensues, a variety of possibilities come up before today’s pleasant weather makes it a perfect day for the chemical bath for the dogs. Considering that October means fleas, we really shouldn’t postpone it much longer.

Big brother drains half the pool…it was starting to turn green anyway, since we haven’t swam for almost two weeks now…and then throws in the vile stuff that is supposed to keep the little pesky buggers at bay.

Even though I don’t much fancy the idea of getting wet (it is inevitable nonetheless) and cold, there really isn’t much choice in the matter when the sibs start herding the dogs into the pool, with me dunking the mutts when they pass me on the stairs.
It takes a couple of hours, but then the task is done. There were several reluctant little buggers in the pack, of course, but in the end, it was a relatively painless venture for all parties involved. Once they’re all through, I head for the shower to wash off an get warm, and then it’s on to work on the veranda office and critter cages.

With the latter some haste is warranted, considering the rabbits are preventing two of the chinchillas to come down for food. I never would have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it myself. But rabbits, apparently, are a tad territorial. Heck, they’ll even attack human…without doing much damage, of course, but still.

While grandpa and big brother work on the cage, middle sister and I start clearing shelves in what is going to be our office. Little brother has offered to bring the excess stuff down to the storage room, and little sister makes a nice batch of tomato soup for our dinner.

After a couple of hours, with me hosing down the batch of drawers we found stacked under a batch of piled up…stuff, today’s project work comes to an end. Since mom likes to watch a show around this time, I take the small table from the courtyard and set it on the veranda, so I can work in peace and quiet, on this morning’s writing and the blog, of course.

Which brings us to a quick update of yesterday:
The publisher was kind enough to send me a "Got it" message...I'd asked in the letter, 'cause the last time the worrying drove me bonkers. So now it is all about waiting for the editor to read through the first few chapters and get back to me about whether she likes to see the rest of the manuscript.
I'm actually surprised at how accustomed I've become to the waiting. Yes, I'm still freaking out, but it's on the inside now, and no longer in the front of my brain, where it'll stop me from doing anything else. Hah.

Okay, gotta stop thinking about that. It needs to stay in the back of my mind, thank you very much. Grrr.

We were in the midst of finishing putting in the slats of the office wall, when a phone call from the garage disrupted the day. It brought the rather troublesome news that we’re going to have to shell out another 600 bucks (on top of the 500 we already had to pay for the repair job we’d brought it to the shop for) because the latter had caused damage to the new damage. Aaargh

So, instead of finishing up with the wall, and removing what was left of the big rabbit cage, (poor younger sibs had to finish it alone) we had to go to the village to check it all out. We also had to rent a car for the next few days because we really do not want another snafu like the last time, when we didn’t have a car. But boy, this is seriously going to eat into our savings. In all honesty we had counted on some repairs when we bought the Land Rover second hand, but it would have been nice if the “maybe” had stayed just that.

After talking with the garage, we decided to go to town too, and get some groceries that should tide us over until next week, when we have our own car back. Gawd, the tiny Hyundai really annoyed me. We barely managed to fit in a week’s supply, for crying out loud. It makes me really appreciate the big car. Aaargh.

The puppies were and are doing grand. They got some medicine for parasites and have shifted from porridge to puppy kibble, so their intestines are quieting down. Our tenant’s caregiver absolutely adores them; so the little ones are definitely loved, which is really the only requirement when it concerns pets.

So, that pretty much brings the past two days to an end. My dogs are exhausted…I don’t think they’re all that appreciative of our efforts to keep them parasite free, ‘cause even though they’re clustered around me (as usual), whenever I glance in their direction they’ll huffily turn away. Hah. Idiots!

That’s it, I guess. I wish I had grand news, but life is pretty much going on as usual over here. I am going to enjoy expanding about the office project in the near future, though. We’ve got a grand plan, that’s a fact.