A tantrum, and better things coming

 This is the result of Betty having a tantrum because I took her 2 cuddly toys away from her after her allotted 10 minutes this morning:-

Flung her bed cushions around, little monkey.  I just ignore her whilst she's doing it, trying hard to resist the temptation to laugh.  Although she's over 8 years old now, she still acts like a foot-stamping toddler or grumpy teenager sometimes....I do love her to bits though.  We've been watching the Pete Wicks (of Strictly fame last year) dog programme, it was the last one last night, it's on one of the more obscure channels, U & W I think it's called.  Well, they had a Shar Pei on last night that had terrible eye problems, Entropion, it's where the eyelids on very wrinkled dogs roll inwards because of all the excess skin and the eyelashes are therefore constantly rubbing against the eyeball, resulting in pain and infection.  Fortunately, Betty has never suffered with that, her face isn't quite as wrinkled as some pure bred Shar Peis and she's had no eye problems at all.  It was a beautiful dog though, the same colour as Betty, their vet (it's a Dogs Trust charity) did an operation to cut off the excess skin and resolve the problem.  That's the trouble with some unscrupulous breeders, they'll deliberately breed dogs to have overly pronounced features (like lots of wrinkles) because they look attractive and can then be sold for lots more money.  No thought given to the health consequences.

It's a bit cloudy today but dry, slightly warmer and no wind!!  The forecast is looking much better for the next week, hooray.  So I shall be able to catch up with and clear the washing, which has built up a bit as it's so miserable having to have the washing on airers, dragging it in and out of the car port and clogging up the hallway in the evenings.  Husband has just got back from the gym, much to Betty's delight - he's only been gone an hour but whenever we (or either of us individually) go out, she acts like she hasn't seen us for days on our return.  Nice to be loved!

I've had an inspection of the garden, front and back, this morning.....another week or so, especially as we're forecast some sun for the next few days, and some more of the bulbs will be flowering.  Some crocuses out in flower already, but the narcissi will be out soon.  Leaf buds are beginning to appear on the roses, so I really must get out there and prune them this coming week, I've been waiting for better weather.

So things are looking up - it's amazing what the promise of some better weather and some decent sleeps (I had another fairly good sleep last night) will do.

Good sleep, and ploughing on

 I slept really well last night, only woke up twice and quickly went back to sleep both times.  I also didn't wake up finally until 07.30 this morning, which is more than an hour later than I normally get up, so I've well and truly caught up on lost sleep.  Consequently, I feel so much better today, pretty much raring to go, in fact (steady on woman!! 😂).  I've done a few little housework jobs I've not had the energy or inclination to do the last few days, and have made 4 individual pies, 2 for tonight and the others for the freezer.  They're pork sausagemeat (4 skinned sausages), sage & onion stuffing, finely chopped shallot and grated carrot, with a tablespoon of apple puree.  I used a sheet of puff pastry cut into 4 and cut the sides into strips to make lattice plaited pies, I sprinkled them with grated cheese before baking them later on.  I've prepped the veggies to go with them later.  

We'll be popping out after lunch to Matalan, there's one near Taunton, on the outskirts thankfully so we don't have to go into the town.  We need some new hand towels and bed sheets, I might look to see what they've got in the way of winter boots too, mine have started leaking.  It's raining, but only lightly, and the wind is dropping, it's supposedly 8 deg but feels colder at the moment because of the wind, I suppose.  The rest of the week looks like better weather, thank goodness.

Thank you for the supportive comments, it really helps when I'm feeling down.  There's nothing I can realistically do about the way things are, except grin and bear it and just get on with things - it would be nice to have a fairy godmother to wave her wand and it all magically gets done so I don't have to.  But of course that's never going to happen, so I just have to accept it and plough on.  

So tired, brain shuts off

 I think there are several reasons why I'm struggling at the moment, time of year and almost continual bad weather being two of them.  It's sunny at the moment, we're having brief sunny spells in between dark clouds and showers today, heavier rain and strong gusty winds forecast again later on, continuing through the night and into tomorrow, in fact it won't be until Wednesday lunchtime before the bad weather calms down.  And just to annoy me and Betty even more, we had a loud thunderstorm around 4.00 am, fortunately it didn't last very long but sleep disrupted once again.  At our last house disturbed nights were the norm for me, I hardly ever had a good night's sleep - since moving here my sleep has been so much better, I get a bad night maybe once a week but have generally been sleeping pretty well.  However, I've had 4 very bad nights in the past week, I would estimate I got only perhaps 2 or 3 hours sleep each of those nights.  Consequently, I feel like a limp, wrung out dishcloth.  I know why I'm sleeping so badly - I've got a couple of things on my mind, one of which is something I need to do but which I keep putting off, for various reasons.  Yes, the answer is - get it done!!  But it's easier said than done.

Over the weekend, it was a case of whatever could go wrong, did, and there were loads of other minor irritations and frustrations.  Some things can't be helped, or are inevitable....others could be avoided if only....well, no point in dwelling on that, what's done is done.  And it was just bad luck I guess that PR chose to be a giant pain in the ar*e at a time when I was least able to deal with it.  It started off with a very minor problem he had, which to anybody else wouldn't be a problem at all, not even an inconvenience, but he chose to make the usual mountain out of a molehill, he was clearly in his full-on attention-seeking mode, oblivious to any real problems we might have.  That's one of the symptoms, if you like, of his mental illness - he is totally self-absorbed, incapable of seeing just how trivial his 'problems' are (they're only real problems in his head), and completely unable to grasp that others have more pressing (and real) problems.  It got resolved in the end, but not without hours of frustrations for me and others.

I've got so much on my plate at the moment, and it's really only me that can do it all.  The responsibility does weigh heavily on me at times, which does feel overwhelming when I'm so tired that it feels like my brain is shutting down.....I've also found myself making silly little mistakes recently.  E.g., forgetting to get my milk out of the freezer, putting clean clothes I'd got out to get dressed in yesterday morning after my shower into the dirty laundry basket.  Absentmindedly putting a teabag in my coffee cup along with my coffee, and only realising after I'd poured the water in (I hardly ever even drink tea).  Giving Betty breakfast twice (she didn't mind, she still ate the 2nd one!!).

I'm going to be kind to myself today - we're having a very easy supper, husband will have cold roast pork from yesterday (there's enough for him to have it in some form or another all week) with a microwaved jacket spud, beans and chutney, I'll have the spud with beans and cheese.  So no cooking involved.  I'll do a few menu plans this afternoon - well, just a list of main meals I can make from what we've got in the freezer and veg box.  Then I'll just sit and read, or doze, in the recliner chair in my bedroom.  

I'm fed up!!

 The weather is bleedin awful again, yet another named storm battering us, galeforce winds and rain being hurled at the windows.  Stuff being blown around the car port and garden again last night, keeping us awake - well, me and Betty, she jumps up woofing at every noise outside, the wind seems to be worse in the back garden (my bedroom is at the back, husband's at the front) so it doesn't have as much of an impact on husband.  The green plastic cover on the raised bed that husband built last year has already ripped in the winds a couple of weeks ago, I have asked husband to remove it (he pinned it to the wooden base all around) several times already, but of course he forgets as he doesn't do things immediately when I ask him to.  So the damn thing is rattling noisily in the wind all the time and ripping even more.  I'll probably have to do it this afternoon when the rain stops, I'll just cut it off, it's so damaged already that there's no point in keeping it.

I can feel my mood is on a downward spiral at the moment, I'm so fed up with the weather (can't do anything about the weather, I know) and feel like we've been cooped up inside 4 walls for what seems like weeks and weeks.  I know the saying "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes" or something like that, blah blah.  But I really hate being out in cold, wet and windy conditions, regardless of what I'm wearing!  I can't cover my FACE up so my nose and cheeks get really cold, I hate getting wet, and the wind is so strong that it feels like it's going to blow me off my feet, I'm already unstable enough with my bad back, hips and left knee.  And if I fall (get blown) over, I'm worried I'll break a bone and who's going to pick me up anyway?  Husband couldn't, he's unstable enough himself.  I couldn't pick him up either if he fell over.  What a pair of old crocks we are.

I've got to get myself up out of this black pit.  Betty is sleeping peacefully, gently snoring, on my bed again.....oh to be a dog, fall asleep within seconds of lying down, and nothing to do when awake other than playing with toys (I've had to throw 2 of the new ones away already as she's ripped holes in them), eating and curling up on a blanket on the sofa, not a care in the world.  And to top it all off, the problem relative has reared their ugly head again this morning and is being a complete pain in the backside for no good reason.

Oh for a desert island!

Cuddly toys and yet another one

 Forgot to mention.....I got a bagful of cuddly toys for £10 in the charity shop.  One I had to throw in the bin straight away as it turned out to have a hole in it and the stuffing was already protruding - Betty would have pulled all that out straight away.  Still, there's around a dozen more for her to play with (shake to death and then chew), that'll keep her going for a few weeks.  She gets 1 or 2 to play with a couple of times a day, for about 10 mins at a time - I have to restrict the time as she'd just chew them to bits in no time otherwise.  I give her a small treat when I'm taking them away from her, she gives them up with no trouble.  The lady at the till in the shop chuckled and said "You must have a lot of grandchildren!" - she looked a bit startled when I said no, they were for my dog 😂.

Icy outside this morning, still at least the wind has died down and it's forecast to be sunny all day, albeit still cold, so I'll take the chance of putting washing on the line.  It's the calm before (yet another) storm though, it's going to be raining and extremely windy again Sunday and Monday.  So frustrating!

Good news though.....I've got crocuses in flower in a pot out the front, and we've seen a few daffodils in bloom round and about, not yet in my garden but it won't be long.  The 3 cyclamen I planted in a pot in the front garden last year have been blooming their little heads off all winter, one each of white, pink and red, they're gorgeous.  I must get some more this year to put in the back garden, it's lovely to have colourful blooms in the winter to see from the windows, even if it's too nasty to go outside.

We've escaped the worst weather, garden plans and *Updated

 It was a bit blowy in the night and a few things got blown around in the garden and car port, which Betty heard and woofed at.  But nothing worse than that and no damage, I hope all of you have escaped the worst of the weather, although it's obviously worse further north.  Right now it's sunny, although still blowy.

Husband has got the dentist today, he's thinking he'll probably have a tooth out so soft food only tonight.  I've got a homemade veg casserole out of the freezer, that'll be soft enough to just slip down with minimal chewing.  I could even whizz it up with the stick blender if he feels he can't chew anything at all - he would have to be in a lot of pain or feeling very unwell to not feel like eating.  He'll drop me off to do a bit of shopping, it's in Bridgwater so I'll be going to the big charity shop there for books and cheap cuddly toys for Betty, I'll also pop into Aldi there and see if they have my frothy coffees in.  We hate going to Bridgwater now, the traffic on the way is diabolical, especially since a huge new housing development is being built.  Husband's dentist is there though, so we have to go.  

We got Betty weighed by the vet nurse yesterday, she's 1 kg more than the last time she was weighed there - winter weight!  (I know the feeling).  She's booked in for her annual jab next month, and claw clipping.

We've been thinking about the garden, what we're going to be doing with it, plants and veggies to grow, that sort of thing.  We'll be getting another raised bed for veg, a little bit of prep will be needed where the bed will be situated.  I'll need to prune the roses shortly (when the weather improves enough for me to work out there!) - I did a partial prune at the end of autumn, now they need proper pruning before they start growing.  Husband always offers to do it, but his idea of pruning anything is always to hack it to bits and cut things back to the ground, he's just too drastic in his approach.  If he had his way, we'd have no trees for a start - he's got an aversion to trees!  I want more dahlias this year, they come in such a wide variety of colours and flower shapes and provide lots of colour later in the growing season.  I do like colour in the garden.

*Updated

Yay!  Aldi had my lovely frothy coffees AND my lactose free milk, so I got a month's worth of each.  Doesn't take much to please me 😁.  Oh, and husband didn't need a tooth out after all, the dentist said it should be fine for another 9 months or so, it's not hurting so he's fine with that. 

Is this our new normal? (weather)

 We've just been out to the vets with Betty, the library, a quick stop off at the supermarket and then to pick up our own prescriptions from the GP on the way home.  Glad to be home, it was blimmin horrible out there - freezing cold (supposedly 7 deg but feeling much, much colder because of the wind chill) and wind gusts of 50 mph.  The sun's come out now and the wind is starting to die down - apparently it's going to pick up again with gusts of up to 55 mph throughout the night.  HH and Jackie, I agree with you, I don't recall having so many storms years ago, whereas it seems to be almost our new normal now.  And 'they' say global warming/climate change doesn't exist!  Doesn't it (the repetitive bad weather) get you down?!  It does me.

The homemade baked beans done in the slow cooker were nice, husband enjoyed them, as did I.  However, I did have a very gurgly and upset stomach last night which kept me awake - combined unfortunate effects of the gas-inducing pulses and too many carbs - I had a slice of sourdough bread with it too.  Oh, and a slice of fruitcake with our visitor yesterday morning, so a real overdose of carbs.  I'm starting to crave fresh green veggies and citrus fruit, that's a sure sign (for me) that I've overindulged on carbs.  That's what I went to the supermarket for.

The bread is in the oven, it's a 50/50 white/wholemeal loaf with mixed seeds, it smells heavenly.  However, I think I'll be slicing and freezing most of it, my guts really can't take any more carbs at the moment.

We're having salmon fillets tonight, I was planning on doing potatoes in some form, or noodles or rice to accompany but not now, it'll be courgettes, mushrooms and red pepper strips done in the air fryer, and no starchy carbs.

Re the weighing thing.....yes I know the meds dosage goes on Betty's weight, I said as much.  My point was that this is the first time we've ever had to take her specifically to be weighed when requesting a repeat prescription, we've never been asked to do that before.  Her weight is fairly stable, just a kg or so difference either way (always has been), and the dosage of flea/tick tabs she's on covers dog weights between 25-50 kg, a more than ample leeway either way.  Well, if them's the new rules now.....

Oh, and because I had several things on my mind (and husband never remembers anything anyway), we forgot to go pick up our own meds from the GP on our way home.  Drat!!  Fortunately, we're not in desperate need of them, next Monday or Tuesday will do.