Back to Work

I have often tinkered with the idea of joining in with NaNoWriMo because it sounds such a lot of fun – and a great idea to just let yourself go with the flow, but once again I’ve chickened out.

Considering I only managed to cough up 6 extra words on one of my Big Projects in all of October and actually lost over 1000 from another I don’t think I would have done very well anyway.

All those of you who are going for it - good luck and keep those fingers flying over the keyboards.

I’ve had my granddaughter from away to stay again since Thursday, hence the absence from the computer. There is nothing to compare with sitting up in bed on a Sunday morning having a cuddle and watching Spongebob on the telly after sending down to room service (Grandad) for a cuppa.

It’s been a lovely week – we took both two year olds to the park and to feed the ducks on Friday. One of the ducks flew over the fence and joined us, then jumped back in the pond for a bath which the girls thought was great.

On Saturday we went to my daughter’s for a Halloween party – she’d made up a bowl of treats for the Trick or Treaters with dyed black cooked spaghetti in amongst the bags of sweets so the kids had to delve in – it felt horrible, but they loved it.

There seems to be an unwritten rule around here that if you have a pumpkin outside your house you welcome Trick or Treaters and they don’t tend to bother people who don’t.

Last Tuesday we got up to find Tilly couldn’t open her right eye. So off we went to the vet’s. We were in there for twenty minutes while her eye was examined. First he looked in her eye with a light very close up like the optician does.

She was so good for all this. She is such a nervous dog and she was shaking like a leaf, but she put up with it all. Then he put drops in to numb her eye before he checked all round under her lids for foreign objects – thankfully finding none. This was followed by drops of dye. We looked at her eye with the light and he showed me where she’d poked a hole in her cornea – again!

This isn’t the first time she’s done it and she also suffered an eye injury from a cat scratch when she was a pup (before she came to us). But spaniels being spaniels like to get their noses into bushes and undergrowth. Her pupil had gone into spasm and she must have been in considerable pain so he put drops in to relax the pupil and we came home with painkillers, antibiotic drops and drops to keep her eye moist.

Richard asked if his work experience lass could come in and observe and I said of course she could - she was a lovely girl and made a big fuss of Tilly.

Reminded me of the time when I was in hospital, supposed to be in isolation when a woman came in with about a dozen students. She told me that I wouldn’t mind them all having a look and when I looked a bit uncertain she told me this was a teaching hospital after all and proceeded to undo my bandages. She had them all gawping at me – without another word to me. Then she put the bandages back on – I ended up looking like something out of a Mummy movie with bandages dripping down round my neck – and left without so much as a goodbye.

The sister came in minutes later having seen the woman and her entourage leaving the unit and was furious. She said the woman had no right to come in with her students, hadn’t asked her permission (because she wouldn’t have given it) and wanted to know if she’d asked mine. “Er, not really,” I admitted. She re-did my bandages and went off to raise hell.

Next time I need medical treatment, I’m going to see the vet!

On Saturday Tilly had her follow up and the eye is healing and looking much better. At least now her pupil is back to normal she doesn’t look like a canine version of Mad Eye Moody any more. A couple more days and should be all done with the drops.

I did start to panic about the fact that I cancelled my pet insurance but the fees this time didn’t even come up to the excess on my former policy so – so far so good.

And large bags of Maltesers have instructions on how to reseal the bag . . . am I missing something here? I mean who in the world opens a bag of Maltesers and needs to reseal it?