Still negative, Betty's 'friend', Carnival

 I've done another test this morning, it's still negative.  Still not feeling well though, I was feverish, hot one minute, cold and shivering the next, again last night.  It's been almost a week now, I feel reasonably ok during the day, but come late afternoon/early evening it changes to feeling like crap again.  Husband is ok, thankfully, he doesn't seem to have caught it.  My appetite has been reduced over the past week and I haven't felt like cooking my usual healthy meals, so it's been a mixture of ready cooked things out of the freezer, the sausage stew I made which did us for 2 days, and things on toast.  Not big meals at all, but a bit too carby so it's not been doing my guts and aching joints much good.

Husband came home from town yesterday with a big bunch of roses for me, 2 dozen red, pink and cream ones, they're beautiful.  Pity they don't have any smell though (I'm guessing they're foreign, probably hot house grown) - native seasonal British roses smell gorgeous, it's one of my favourite smells.

A couple of weeks ago I bought Betty a very large stuffed toy dog (did I mention it before?), it's almost as big as she is, I got it in a charity shop.  I thought, fondly if wrongly, that it could be a sort of friend for her.  Nope, no way.  She's got a very strong prey drive and treats all soft toys the same - as prey, she shakes them in her mouth and generally throws them around.  Eventually of course she rips them and at that stage they get thrown away.  As this one is so big, it's lasting longer than usual, husband had to cut off one of the ears this morning as she'd ripped it.  We allow her to play with it for just 10 minutes at a time, once or twice a day.  When we take it away from her (she's often a bit reluctant to give it up, but does so fairly readily) we give her a little chew treat.  The toy gives her a bit of stimulation (we play with her whilst she's got it) and subsequently wears her out for a short while!  She doesn't get as many walks and certainly not long ones during the bad weather we've been having for what seems like ages, if it's raining quite hard she simply refuses to go outside.  So she needs a bit of extra stimulation and play.

Speaking of the weather, it's a mixture of (brief) spells of sunshine and rain again today, the fields around us are bogs, the little local lanes have turned into shallow muddy streams.  The ditches and gullies beside the lanes, supposed to take the run-off of rainwater from the fields, are full and overflowing.  A couple of the neighbours have gardens which are underwater in places, our front path disappears underwater which soon goes, but we are very fortunate that none of us here have had water invade our houses.  It must be absolutely devastating to have your home flooded out, destroying your home and possessions, and knowing you won't be able to move back into it for months and months.

As we now can't go out for my birthday lunch on Monday, I've decided to cook a king prawn dish as my birthday treat.....I do love king prawns.  It'll probably be a stirfry in sweet chilli sauce, with coconut rice and a swirl of sour cream on top.  I dare say husband would cook it if I asked him to, but he'll only be asking me questions (How many prawns shall I use?  How do you want the vegetables cut?  How long should I cook it for?  What should I cook first?....etc etc) every 2 minutes, which will irritate the life out of me, so I'd rather do it myself.  I think I'll make some lemon & raisin pancakes and we've got a tub of chocolate & orange ice cream in the freezer, that'll make a nice pud - I rarely eat puddings but will make an exception on my birthday.

It's the Bridgwater Carnival tonight, we've been several times over the years and I'd love to go again sometime.  It was raining quite hard one year, which wasn't pleasant, and of course it's generally cold, but the heat blasting off the 1000s of lightbulbs used on all the carts (they're called carts here, not floats) keeps you warm.  It is a fantastic spectacle, well worth seeing.  However, you have to get into town by 6 pm as they close the roads then, and don't open them up again until around 1 am, so it's a long time, certainly longer than we're happy to leave Betty home alone.  Also, as it's always held around Bonfire Night, there are usually fireworks going off in most areas, although not so many where we live.  But Betty hates fireworks so we wouldn't want to leave her home alone at this time of year - we haven't done ever since we've had her.