What a week!

Our week went very pear shaped...

On Saturday a week ago we noticed little Percy was dragging his back left leg a bit, but when we took him out for a walk on his own in the evening he seemed okay and managed to jump up on the settee as usual, although was a bit reluctant and had been for a few days, but I just thought it was because I had changed the type of cover for it and thought he must have sensed the change (being blind) and thus was a little unsure.

On Sunday he was walking very oddly, weaving and definitely not being able to put much weight on his left leg.  We phoned the vet on Monday and booked an appointment for Wednesday - the delay due to wanting him to see his normal vet due to his blindness, and because he didn't seem to be in any real pain as such.  He was just a bit irritable with Stanley when he bothered him.

By Wednesday though he could hardly walk, his left foot was 'knuckling' and I said to my husband it was almost like he had MS.  His right side was weaker as well.  We were very worried.  We took him to the vet and she immediately referred him to the neurological department at the Royal Vet Hospital which is fortunately local to us.  He thought he may have a degenerative disc disease and would require spinal surgery so ordered an immediate MRI and sent us home to wait to hear...if it was as he suspected they would check with us first but operate while he was still under anaesthesia.  We got a call later to tell us it wasn't that, but he his spinal cord showed inflammation and that they had taken a spinal tap from  just below his skull and from his lower spine where it seemed he had some pain.  The result was through early evening and it was confirmed he had meningeal myelitis (fortunately it wasn't a tumour) and would need to start aggressive therapy straight away as it was an autoimmune disease.  He started on steriods and the next morning had a 7 hour intravenous chemotherapy treatment. He would then stay another night and we could pick him up on Friday morning.  

Wouldn't it be amazing if the NHS could work as quickly!  Consultation, Imaging, Blood Tests, Spinal Tap, all done in one day WITH results!  None of this still waiting four months later for blood test results despite constant requests!)

Anyway I diverted...

We picked him up yesterday and he was bright and cheerful and they said they had never had such a lovely friendly little dog that was also blind (as most can be a bit snappy when blind if they are unsure) and I think he had won their hearts!  He had responded well to his first treatment and was walking a little bit better although his feet do knuckle a bit if he does too much.  He has to undergo chemo and have an overnight stay every three weeks for a while, and gradually it will increase to every four, then five, then six etc... as he improves.  The same applies to his steroid treatment, currently I have to give him a tablet twice a day.   The vet was very hopeful which was good.  As you can imagine we were delighted to take him home and even more delighted to see him want to play with his ball immediately upon getting home!  

We are  still having to keep him separate from Stanley as he doesn't really understand (still being a young dog) and wants to play with Percy and he is a bit too boisterous.  But as Percy continues to improve this should change too.

On top of all this we have had the decorator in doing the hallway (it had already been booked) and the 8.5 doors in our hallway mean that it has been a big job, and no doors can be closed at the moment!

So this week, no bird photography, no nature, and no walk.  Hopefully I might be able to go for a nice long walk this coming week.  Perhaps towards the end of it. My back has been particularly bad this week, probably due to more sitting down that usual due to decorating and a poorly dog that just wants to sit on my lap and snuggle!  Which means I have been knitting more, so my arm hurts more!  Ha ha.  The one gorgeous day we did have, as is per usual, I was stuck on a train going into London for my physio session, which will now of course have to be stopped for sure after my last pre-booked appointment in February due to the ongoing expenses for Percy.  

Decorating, Gardening and General Update Ramblings.

This Last week we had our lounge redecorated.  The last time it was decorated was in around 2005 if I remember rightly.  It needed freshening up and after the windows had been serviced and then painted this year it needed to be done.  We decided to go for a lighter colour than we had, but when the decorator put the paint up that a local shop had mixed, it was a completely different colour!  It was green instead of a very light yellow.  The shop refused to exchange it or refund and unfortunately as we hadn't paid the shop directly for it it we didn't really have a lot of comeback.  If we had bought it we would have stopped our Visa payment, but the decorator paid for it and then we paid him, and as it wasn't strictly his fault, and he is a good guy and decorator, we just had to swallow it.  But despite our efforts to support and 'shop locally' this shop has now lost any future business from us.  It was quite clear that it was a completely different colour.  In the end we decided to just play it safe and go and purchase the original colour we had on the walls which is 'Daffodil White'.  Fortunately I had remembered what it was!  It is now looking much better as the green just really didn't suit that room at all.

In the garden I have been quite ruthless with the pruning of my roses.  They had become far too big and straggly, so I have cut them right back and hopefully I haven't annihilated them and they will come back next year okay.  I have also really cleared out the bed beside the house as that had also got very unruly and overgrown.  Hope to plant a few wintering flowers in the spot if I can find something I like.

I've actually been staying up at my son and daughter in law's place while they have been away and have done a fair bit of gardening there as well.  I worked on their front garden, it was very weedy and had stumps and roots, and various unwanted saplings coming up, so I dug all of them out and dug the garden over.  

They live near a canal so I have been enjoying some walks along the canal (have already posted two of my walks) and also a lot of footpaths through fields and have been enjoying walking those as well.  They are very lucky to live where there are so many lovely walks to do straight from the house - especially without the constant roar of the horrid M25 which is what we have round here.

The fields are starting to get a bit muddy now so boots are needed, but still very pleasant to walk them.

I had a bit of fun using the black and white setting on my camera.

To be able to walk round such beautiful fields and the canal on a daily basis has been wonderful.  Wish we had such nice places to walk here at home.

Back home now.  

We had the plumber come out yesterday to replace a radiator valve that was replaced earlier in the year!  It was faulty so it was replaced under warranty which was good, and while they were out we had our kitchen tap replaced.  This proved to be a much longer job than expected, for a variety of reasons.  We ended up not using the tap we had bought for the kitchen as it turned out it was a quarter turn tap, which I hate as they are far more difficult to control the flow in my opinion and when your water pressure isn't very good, which is the case for our hot, it meant that it had very poor flow indeed.  Not only that it didn't sit right on our sink and wobbled.  Fortunately we had bought another and that had proper taps that you can turn and adjust the flow as you want, which meant the hot water flowed a lot better too.  Not only that but it sat on the sink unit much better.  We will return the other tap as it really was not fit for purpose.  Not only that, it should have said on the packaging that it was a quarter turn tap.  He also fixed our under sink water filter so we were able to reinstate that which is good.  So my above sink filter that I brought home from NZ with me, has been 'retired' for now.  It means we have more space which is good as well.  

This post is more for my records than anything else, so that I can look up the names of paints etc we have used and when things were done around the house.  It has proved an invaluable record for things like this.

I can't believe just how fast the year is going past.  I need to book my ticket to NZ in the next couple of weeks...I have been putting it off for a variety of reasons...as whenever I go, I never want to come back to England again!  It is so lovely spending time with my family, and so hard to leave them.

Welcoming in August

The blackbird fledglings left their nest at the weekend, and I can often hear Mrs Blackbird calling out to them, perhaps trying to keep them in line!  There was an awful lot of chatter going on this morning, and I managed to capture this shot.

We are currently having our crittall windows painted - this has resulted in a lot of dust, so today I have been working in one of the rooms that has been finished, dusting, vacuuming and polishing furniture and various things that are in the room.  Fortunately, although it is warming up again, it hasn't been too hot to do this.  This work has been ongoing for the last seven days, excluding the weekend, and should hopefully be finished tomorrow. The last room to be done is the lounge windows - it is amazing how much dust travels, this room will need a really good deep clean after he has finished.  To think I dusted the lounge at the end of last week, I obviously wasn't thinking, and should have left it! 

Does anyone know what this plant is?

It is at least a couple of feet high now and I thought it was a sunflower at first until this purple/pink flower came out.

These flowers are looking lovely in all their blueness.

'Thyme for Tea'

I finally decided what to do with my orange enamel teapot, and love the effect, plus it will be great to have this herb handy for cooking.

Percy enjoys soaking up the sunshine.  

I made our favourite loaf of bread this morning ready for lunch.

My new gadget!  My son got one of these as a wedding present and cooked bacon for me in the weekend when I stayed with him.  It was the best bacon I have had in a long time, I was very impressed so we bought one for ourselves.  Now I can get rid of the manky old frying pan that hubby insists on using for such things and this will mean far less 'fat splatter' and thus less cleaning up. 

This morning I cooked us breakfast with it.  Bacon, potato, onions and tomatoes and just fried us an egg each in my tiny cast iron frying pan.  It was delicious and so much less greasy.  It cleaned really nicely as well.  Of course where I am going to keep it when it is not in use is anyone's guess!  I did start to clear out two drawers today in the kitchen, thinking perhaps it could go in their, but it didn't fit, so that solved that problem, and also meant that I now have two nice clean and tidy drawers that were well overdue.  How do these things become so untidy?  Tomorrow I want to clear out the cupboard under the sink.  It tucks into a corner and stuff gets pulled around and shoved in it when I am not looking I am sure!  

Not a bad start to August, I can see progress being made.

Sunny Sunday

Our lounge still contains all our bedroom furniture and other items that were stored in the bedroom as well as the pictures that were on the walls.  Of course now we have new wallpaper I don't want to put anything up on the walls, at least not for a while, so I will package the pictures up and see if I can find somewhere to store them for a while.  

I bought a big roll of bubble wrap the other week for wrapping my ebay sales in, but really disappointed with the quality.  Almost as soon as you touch the bubbles the air disappears from them, they don't even pop! I will use this to wrap the pictures in and to use as extra packaging for parcels, but for anything fragile it is not really suitable so will have to get some more.

The last few days have seen some lovely blue skies and sunshine, although it has been cold.  I've not been feeling the best.  These train trips into London twice a week have exposed me to germs I wouldn't normally catch.  

Today I cleaned the light shade that had been hanging in our main bedroom.  It is dated, but it looks clean and tidy and has roses on it, so it will do.  I still quite like it.

It will be a while yet before we can even think about decorating for Christmas... still not sure when the carpet will be fitted, so until then we just have to keep living with the mess.  I do plan to try and go through some of the stuff this week though and see what I can 'sell, throw, giveaway, package up and keep'.  

I plan to write my overseas Christmas cards in the next week - the final posting date is coming up soon.  I had hoped to get some of my photographs made into cards, but just haven't had the enthusiasm, mojo, or whatever it is to get them done, so it will be going through my stash of cards instead.  We have plenty so might as well use those first, plus it will save some money.  Just got to remember where they were put!

The Sailor arrives home on Wednesday and I am looking forward to seeing him again, although this time he will be going to live in his own house and not stay here.  Seems he has flown the nest.  Although he hasn't lived here permanently for a few years, he always stays here when he is home on leave.  It was strange changing his room round when he left in June.  Although I have been sleeping in it since then, it was always his room.  I guess now it really is my room.  

The new guinea pig has arrived and he seems to be getting on well with Jay (Jeremy) which is good news.  Now just got to think of a good name for him.

Bedroom Progress

After working some crazy hours into the early morning my husband finally finished stripping the wallpaper and preparing the walls in our bedroom just in time for the decorator to come in on Monday morning to start work.

Some before shots of the walls.

Ceiling and coving/cornice painted first.

Above the wardrobe painted.

The door alcove, door frames and skirting boards were also painted.

First wall papered - the wallpaper isn't as yellow as it seems in these photos.

The 'fixed' headboard (one of 'Bob the Builder's great ideas!) was painted to brighten it up.  I would have loved to have had this removed, but knowing how other things have been fixed on in this house, it would have been a major job and I suspect some re-plastering would have been needed to have been done as well.

This is a bit more like the true colour. 

All walls finished by Wednesday!

Thursday we went down the road to the carpet shop to choose some samples.  I was pretty certain which one I wanted even before I bought them home.  The lighter blue, the first on the left.

I didn't change my mind.  

Today I cleaned the windows and frames.  The will need painting in the spring when we can leave the windows open for a few days to dry properly.

I scrubbed the curtain rails and attachments, they came up almost as good as new and then reattached them to the walls.

One of the hems had come undone on one curtain so I restitched that.  We will need new curtains, but these will do until we can afford to do so.  They could do with being shorter, but as they will be changed I am going to leave them the length the are.

I did the same with the bay window, but forgot to take a photo!

Next I started rolling back the horrid foam backed carpet - the foam had turned to piles of dust underneath it.  Pretty horrid!

The foam that was stuck to the floor was also scrapped up.

All the carpet is up now apart from a bit underneath the wardrobe - not the same colour, it must have been the original carpet and 'Bob the Builder' who used to own our house (yes he was a builder and his name was Bob) must have built the wardrobes half on top of the old carpet - he didn't even clear up the broken plaster that had fallen on to the floor from the walls!  Like everything in this house, it is not as easy or straightforward as you think.  The legs of the wardrobe are ON the carpet at the back but not the front, so not as easy to remove as you would think.  Good thing hubby has got fairly slim arms as he is going to have to lie down on the floor and reach in with a knife to cut the carpet up.  

Once that is done we will vacuum again and then mop the floor to make sure it is completely clean ready for the new carpet to be laid, which will probably be in about two and a half to three weeks time.  In the meantime our lounge will have to continue to look like a furniture warehouse as there is no point moving the drawer units back in until such time as the carpet is down,

While clearing out underneath the wardrobes, we found my framed music qualification certificates - not sure why they ended up under there.  I've cleaned the glass and the frames and I think once I have my sewing studio cleared I might put them up in there.

Day Thirty

Photo of the Day:

Our house really does look like a tip now - can hardly get in the lounge as I have moved a load of stuff from the bedroom into it to clear some more space for hubby so he can strip some more walls.  

Because the walls are so uneven we are going to have to wallpaper instead of paint.  I have hung a couple of samples up.  The one on the left is embossed, the one on the right isn't, but perhaps the bumps in the wall wouldn't be so obvious with that because of the patterning?  Not sure yet which we prefer...the one on the right, although having a darker background does reflect the light.  

Both feature roses, which seems rather appropriate. 

We had the flooring people out today and it wouldn't really be suitable to have a wooden or laminate floor put down due to the curved bay window and again the unevenness of the floor, so looks like we will have to have carpet after all.  He has measured up so when we go and choose a carpet we will be able to find out the cost straight away.

It was a beautiful morning today and it has been a lovely day, although I have felt very much out of sorts...for a number of reasons (including worrying about my Mum and Dad) ...and also because the mess is completely overwhelming me.  Still I just have to remind myself that progress is being made.  The car boot is loaded up with some stuff to take to the Charity Shop, so will hopefully do that tomorrow.

Have a good week!

Prompt for the Day: Own Choice

I sketched Jeremy, otherwise known as 'Jay'

Five on Friday

I thought I would join in with Amy's  'Five on Friday' 

As the theme also seems to be Christmas  and I have just started decorating this week, I thought well, why not?!

Initially I didn't really want to put a tree up this year...but on Wednesday I needed some distraction from pain so I thought just go for it, and before I knew it I had both trees up and decorated!

1:  Our Lounge.

Just a few of the decorations we have collected over the years.  All have special meaning and significance.

2:  Outside

The decorating outside hasn't really started yet as my husband has been unable to put the lights up this week due to work commitments so they will have to wait until Monday when he will have a bit more time.

From outside looking in, this Nativity Scene was made by my older son when he was about 7 years old if I remember rightly.  (or possibly younger)

This snowman was our last year's bargain at 75% off!

3: Dining Room

On my writing bureau

On top of the wall unit.

4: Kitchen Doorway

5: In my Garden

Not Christmassy, but still gorgeous to look at, it amazes me that I still have some roses and a Hebe blooming at this time of year.