Sort of waterlogged

The weeks have flown by again as I’ve been really busy and a few family issues have been thrown in.

 After visiting the Swedish Chef at the beginning of the month, I decided to experiment with drinking three liters of water a day. I’m still in a little pain from the bout of cystitis. All the antibiotics in the world won’t help if you don’t keep your pee as diluted as possible. The last check up I had came back with no bacteria at all. I don’t find it easy to drink large amount of water. Little and often is the secret. I also refill a half liter bottle so that it seems a little less like Mission Impossible. I'm truthfully managing between 2 and 3 liters a day.

Olivier now knows where he will be working and roughly when, but not for a few weeks yet. He’ll be replacing someone on maternity leave so it’s a short contract. At least he will have his foot in the door and will be able to put experience on his CV. By coincidence it is in the same town as the lycée that J-M is teaching in!

Dom phoned during the week, she has now driven in the snow for the first time. No snow here – just cold.

M-I-L is in hospital. She’s very weak. This month she celebrated her 91st birthday! I hope that they let her go home soon, she hates hospitals.

Twenty-five years ago today

I remember it was quite misty as we drove off in the early hours of the morning. When we got into town the market traders were setting up and the road was blocked by someone unloading a van. I thought that I was going to give birth there and then in the car!

A couple of hours later, a beautiful baby girl was born and I shed a few tears. I never thought that I would have the privilege of having my own daughter. Today is Dom’s quarter century. The first of many, I hope.

Happy birthday Dom!

Death and destruction

I can’t believe that time has gone so quickly – again!

We had a bit of an adventure last weekend. On Saturday, I was sat at my computer and looked over to the farmyard across the road to see that there was a dog attacking the hens! I went across straight away to see if the farmer was there – he wasn’t (the windows of his house don’t face the yard where the hens roam). So I headed for the piece of land he has behind the town hall. On the way a man in a car stopped and asked if I’d seen a husky dog so I told him yes, the dog was in with the hens. In the meantime, Rob was shouting from the office window to try to distract the dog and saw that the man had difficulty trying to call the dog, the dog ran off down the road.

We saw the farmer on Sunday morning and told him what we had seen. The dog killed 6 hens. Anyway, because of this, I found out what kind of hens they are: Poules de Maron. They are very special hens that lay “golden“eggs

   

Image from Wikipedia

 I’ve seen the farmer since then and the dog owner hasn’t been back to apologise.

Death of a million Hamsters

As anyone who uses iGoogle knows, it will be closing down in a few days. All over the internet there are people like me worrying about their pet hamster. Mine is purple and called Jupiter. She’s lovely and I’m going to be very upset when the plug is pulled out.

Jupiter was invented by a very nice person called Adam Bowman who has shared his work with millions of people over the years.

I've created a new home page using NetVibes.com   It’s not the same, but I will make it into my home very soon. Fortunately, Mr. Bowman has made a new hamster to live in the NetVibes home page and you don’t have to fiddle with code like I did for hours and hours and get nowhere. On your NetVibes page there is a button in the top left hand corner called “Add”, click on that and type hamster into the search box that appears. There is a choice of hamsters, click on ‘hamster widget’ and you can follow the instructions to put your hamster on the page. I haven’t found a way to change the colour so I have a pale grey Jupiter this time.

How else would my computer get the electricity to work on?

Houses and stories

Today I updated all of my blogs! Some of them have been really neglected of late.

The main events of the last few weeks are having to continue antibiotics for a few more weeks. Fortunately, I only need one dose of orange flavoured power in water once a week. (and)  More pleasantly, we helped Dom and J-M move into their new house. It’s rather cutting edge, built to be ecologically kind and has solar panels and super dooper insulation. It was built this year. They have their own bathroom off the master bedroom. They were looking to rent an older house (including an old mill, but the ceilings were too low). Just goes to show, you never know what might turn up. J-M’s mother, brother and a friend as well as Olivier were helping too and Dom and J-M took us to a very good restaurant in Poitiers for lunch as a thank you.

All of a sudden it is autumn. The weather has changed, the leaves are falling and it’s becoming much darker in the mornings and evenings. I don’t know why this year a feel quite sad that the year is drawing to a close. We’ve had a good year and managed to fit in three visits to the UK.

If you’re interested; I updated my official writing blog with the next chapter of a longer story and I’ve started a new short story on my ‘culture’ blog. Inspiration is not flowing from me - I wrote both of the stories 3 or 4 years ago.

We've come a long way

Thank goodness it's not 1952

Back from the UK

We had another week in the UK. It was a little strange at first as we didn’t get to stay with Christian and J because they were in Florida for a couple of weeks.

Mainly the visit was to see M-I-L again. She told us that she’d gone downhill since our last visit, but you wouldn’t have noticed. Despite a couple of days of wind and rain we managed to take her for a couple of walks (or wheels?) in her wheelchair in the sunshine and a cup of coffee in the Colwall Coffee Lounge. We managed several cups of coffee there and scones and lemon drizzle cake. If you’re in and around Colwall, near Malvern, it is well worth a visit. We also took her for a couple of drives around. The country side is beautiful on the verge of autumn.

We saw my sister and my mum too and met up with some friends – more coffee and cakes wherever we went!

We decided that we do not like motorway service stations. They don’t seem to have any real food outside of burgers, chips and fry ups. The escalator down was broken in one we visited and I hurt my knee as the steps are very deep (not noticeable when it’s working). There didn’t appear to be another way down. I would have used the disabled toilets on the ground floor if I had known.

There is nothing like Boots in France

On hold

In the last 6 months I've had to take antibiotics 4 times for different ailments. My eye and salivary gland have recovered, but now I'm enduring cystitis....

What did I do to deserve this?

The wonderful thing about tiggers

It took me a long time to get anywhere near this cat. I don’t know her real name or even if she is a she. "Tigger" was what sprung to mind when I saw the stripes. The first time I saw her she was pretending to stalk the hens in the yard across the road. Needless to say the cock was keeping a careful eye on her. On our evening walks we’d find her sat looking down on us from a high wall in the fading light, just like the Cheshire cat in Alice.


The first time I found her in the garden she was lying in the shade of the clothes horse on a hot day. At first I was not allowed to go near her, but over time she got used to me. I’m allowed to stroke her head while she talks to me in her whiney voice; she doesn’t have a normal cat mew. Then she’ll roll over and squirm around showing me her fluffy tummy which I am not allowed to touch.

She’s been told not to catch the birds in the garden, so when she sees me coming she pretends to be intently looking for a mouse under the hedge. She’s not allowed to roll around on the carrot tops so they are all squashed flat where she’s been. Her favourite trick is to lie down behind me when I’m putting out the washing so if I don’t pay attention I’ll tread on her tail.

When I go back indoors my last sight of her is of a majestic queen sat up straight with her tail neatly wrapped around her front paws.

I'm still alive!

I seem to have been too busy to visit blogs, let alone write a blog post. Olivier is home for the summer and Rob has had some time off, so I haven’t had much time to myself at all. In three weeks we will be back in the UK again to see M-I-L.

I’m suffering from conjunctivitis at the moment. It’s not at all painful, but my eye waters a lot. The vision in my left eye is blurred most of the time which is quite tiring. I’m keeping my eye clean with diluted cider vinegar, it stops the stickiness at least. If you know of any good home remedies please leave a comment!