I think my LDN is working so well that I am rejuvenating and turning back into a teenager, I am having the same strops as that age group, but of course being 48 and a half allows me to have a hormonal tantrum with all the wisdom of having had them decades ago. My predictable monthly flares are now non predictable and this week has seen me in bed a bit more. Also with my hormones doing their worst a cold attacked me badly and sent my Lupus into orbit, or maybe one of the others, whatever it was has semi passed. The last fortnight has progressed with it's normal rhythm - for the second day in a row the children have chased the school bus up the road, yesterday it was missed, school is ten miles away and I do not drive. Chasing the bus, with myself in the house doing windmill arms behind them, was then swapped for them chasing a friend of mine who works near their school and was out in her car, however she was in turn chasing her dog. A delightfully friendly hound who is rather large and hansom and has spend the last year cultivating a butter would not melt persona alongside fine tuning his skills and an escape artist extraordinaire. Help me catch the dog, then I will give you a lift to school was the order of the day.
Mr Dog does whatever he likes, when he likes, and can get over 6ft wire fences and out of maximum security dog kennels. He is at times found miles away having gate crashed local pubs with outdoor parties of ramblers, who arrive starving in mud covered boots to enjoy pub grub, He can see off several plates at once and escape rapidly, and is often seen with a large number of people running after him. His wolf like intelligence drives my friend mad, she is often seen early in the morning in a car bursting with children, knuckles white at the wheel trying to track his whereabouts and still get to work on time. Although he prefers to pack many miles a day under his doggy belt, he is sometimes found sprawled out across granny's best sofa, covered in mud and panting, having let himself in through the window while people search is whereabouts miles away.
Recently Mr Dog was packed off a couple of counties away to doggy boot camp, run by an infamous Mr and Mrs we-know-best-about-all-dogs, and do dog whispering etc. His arrival at HM Doggy Prison, had followed on from detailed phone conversations, with my friend giving detailed accounts of her young pooch's behaviour and training to date, accompanied by them on the other end of the phone, doing that over earnest and irritating humming that people do when not listening properly. Personally when I encounter somebody doing that I have to sit on my hands in order not to slap them. His arrival at camp brought on more non listening humming with them quite obviously certain that they knew everything about a dog never seen before, my friend's warning of his extreme escapology was deemed as probably a shaggy dog story, and then rapidly sidelined and of course, nicely humoured by they who knew best!
Once home with a house devoid of cheerful dog, but nice glasses of wine to hand, it was not long before many phones rang with messages coming in from the fringes of northern East Anglia. A local butcher quite some way away from Doggy Finishing School appeared to have a very eager and boisterous dog on his premises with my friend's phone number attached. He continued to escape daily until his early expulsion from the premises, with some rather sheepish people minus, their previous humming - saying perhaps it was not the right facility for him. Mr Dog is now back home and he learnt well at Doggy Boot Camp, he can now escape fences higher than 6 ft and with far more speed, and wags his tail even more.
I would have written about this earlier on, but have only recently acquired working internet again. My internet comes from a series of satellite dishes on church roofs with a wavering WiFi signal bounced into my house if lucky. The recent storm blew things off course. My man has been up on the roof several times, making my hair stand on end, re positioning things with me below trying to gauge the strength of signal reaching my computer, matched against his phone app which was guiding him as to which direction to point the dish. His hair raising antics do sometimes cause deep alarm, but all is well, However he is currently lacerated from head to toe with deep bramble scratches
. Late the other evening, between violent rain storms, just when darkness fell, he announced he was off for an evening walk. Having ignored the coastal path, and the keep out signs due to recent weather, he went bush... and found himself plunging in the dark down through deep holes covered with brambles, leaving a rather surprising 5ft drop down to the beach with nothing underneath other than deep estuary mud slime. His return to the house scratched violently with his clothes in tattered complete with an application of smelly mud from the waste down did nothing for me.
He has just arrived now in the bedroom to see what I am writing about and is wearing one of those lights strapped to his head normally worn by either miners or gynecologists. Luckily neither of those activities are imminent he is in fact going on a mission deep into the airing cupboard to do the central heating and hot water clock, having noticed my layers of gaffer tape over the thermostat to stop him turning it down. However his grim expression and hopeful voice about not needing the heating on much over the winter have brought about deep alarm. I do mainly rely on two stoves, but it does need to be on some of the time. Often when very cold usually with a thick white frost or some snow visible from the windows, I am normally told how unusually warm it is, and he is to be found sitting statue like in an office full of toppling balanced files getting colder and colder, this eventually culminates in him putting on a couple of fan heaters later in the afternoon due to how bitterly cold he feels, with sound effects of 'brrrr dear it has got very cold' etc.
Today's formula is not to get distracted by writing silly blogs and work my way through a list of foul jobs peppered with long rambling phone calls with no procrastination whatsoever. I always find the worst job is the best one to make busyness commence, oh a I do love a nice geriatric cat try clean! The best job is being my man's secretary, he is absolutely hilarious and we have bickering that should really either receive an Oscar or a Golden Globe Award, but nevertheless gets things done.
More fuss later. MaryF x