Nearly back to “Normal” (??)

PeekaBoo - I see you.
PeekaBoo – I see you.

I have removed myself from several on-line groups that I belonged to. I really had not a lot in common with them to begin with – indeed the only thing we really had in common was our collective use of ringed planners i.e. Filofax. I was also finding that the vast majority of the members were female and at times the posts tended to stray very much away from planners to babies, illness, relationships, anti-men rants and I sort of lost interest. It was like being an Android user in an iPhone community.   I found myself thinking more and more of Charles de Gaulle – “The more people I meet , the more I love my dogs,”

So that’s the end of that. I am sorry because I have been a member for some time and it was interesting and enjoyable for a while – before it became more of a social gathering. I am still with one and  I hope that will remain on task. We’ll see. This afternoon I am taking Chienne to see the Vet. She has been drinking  a lot of water and peeing everywhere. She has even wet her bed in her sleep. We think she is diabetic but that’s really for the Vet. to determine. Chi. will be 14 this year but apart from the waterworks, she is seems healthy enough, still runs around

Chienne and her Thundershirt
Chienne and her Thundershirt

like a mad thing, is out walking with me most nights, so no problems about activity, eats well – so I really don’t foresee much in the way of problems with her in the immediate future. I miss the Man and I think Chi. does too.

I have been back working out in the garden – mainly cleaning up the neglect  that has taken place over the last few months. We also  had a little bit of rain – not a lot – which was enough to send the weeds into overdrive. I pour on weed killer – they laugh at me and  grow even faster and more prolific. But then again, I hit them with weed killer – Chienne pees on them  :o)  Helpful…

Although we have only had a miniscule amount of rain – we have had wind – lots of wind. Indeed many people have commented on the number of really windy days this year. What this has done is lay down dust everywhere – everything outside is covered in fine dust. Having  constructions going on, ( new houses) the land is cleared and the bare earth throws up considerable dust in the wind. A couple of times I have turned back from walking Chienne that direction.  Now that I am (almost) back to full activity again I can start to do a cleaning up, although, short of a flame thrower, I don’t know what to do about these persistent weeds.

The visit to the Vet yesterday was not as good as I hoped it would be. The blood sugar level was around 4.3, which sort of rules out diabetes, but it also brings other things into play that I don’t want to think about – liver and kidney problems I really should stop making any kind of prediction. I said the same about me on my first visit to the cardiologist and look how that turned out. Now about Chienne. However, Mustapha has taken blood samples and sent them off to the lab so we should know sometime next week. Her and me both – she waits on Lab results, I wait on Cardiologist final results, post cardioversion.   I am feeling good and spending the day out in the garden. In about an hour or so I have to go and collect John and we take a trailer load of rubbish to the dump. This evening, now that Andrew is back from Roxby, we are all getting together for a family dinner at Andrew’s place.

Thunderstorms and frantic dogs

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My cup (water tank) runeth over.

I paid my $5 to the ladies group for the Biggest Morning Tea this coming Saturday. I have not received an Agenda yet and if there is not a lot of business it may well be that things could be laid over until the August Meeting. If that’s the case I win because I have already paid my fee  :o)  On the other hand, I would like to be able to go out to Hackham West and  visit Alan. He sounds well enough on the telephone so it will be interesting to see how he actually is. The problem is that I need to know fairly quickly in order to book the hotel. I mean I have already had a few unkind words from the management because I forgot to cancel the booking for the last meeting – the one that I didn’t attend.  It used to be that we set the meetings at the AGM in February and  you could be certain that they would go ahead, now this is no longer the case and  that last performance was an example of the problem associated with  booking ahead in this current climate.

In the early hours of this morning we had a thunderstorm. This was not predicted so Chienna was not given any medication. As a result she went slightly gaga. Somehow or other she managed to get behind the ironing board and just about brought that down on top of the little man. That’s when I  got there – just in time to arrest its fall. Normally the little man doesn’t bother, but Chienna was so stressed that it started to worry him. I decided that the only course of action was to bring them both into my room. I put him on the bed (it’s too high for him to jump up) and Chienna decided that being under the bed was a good place to hide, so that’s where she finally went.

At times it seemed as if the thunder was directly overhead – it was loud and the house shook a bit and we seem to have lost the servers. You will read this, but as I write it I do so on MS Word because we have no WiFi and no servers. It’s a real shocker of a day.    We had two more thunderstorms and decided not to wash the dog beds after all. I took the covers off them and decided that they really were grotty with no chance of cleaning the inside stuffing, so we decided to keep the outside covers – which we can possibly use – and buy new beds. During a break in the  rain we went down to the store and bought three new beds. I have put the small bed (which The Man  has claimed already) in the laundry and when this rain stops I’ll get out and tidy up and put the new beds into their houses. – The covers of the old beds will fit so I’ll keep them and dump the stuffing. Thus far – according to the local news – we have had 36mm of rain. That was on Tuesday – on Wednesday we had a further 20mm of rain. This is getting beyond a joke. We are not used to this weather – cold yes, rain, yes ( in small doses) but not this. My water tanks are full so you can turn it off now!!!   My gravel has weeds I never knew we had. Meanwhile certain (Unnamed ) parts of the world swelter in 43c.