Salt and corrosion

Hello, f-list. New job is going well. I think. Seems to be. I haven't accidentally set fire to the building or anything, so let's call it positive. It involves a lot more looking at a computer screen than my previous jobs, so I'm doing less of that at home to give the old eyes a rest. Which means I have a month's worth of words jotted down that should have been entries. Let's do this.

Chester
One night a few weeks ago there was a knock on the door just before midnight. That's never good, is it? I opened it to Brian Next Door, who said, "You haven't seen Chester, have you? Someone opened the gate and he got out." Chester is Next Door's little terrier, very old now, mostly blind and arthritic. He's run over here other times he's escaped, so I helped Brian search the garden, but we didn't find anything. I felt terrible thinking about him lost and lonely in the night; Next Doors would feel worse.

The next morning as I was heading off to work, Next Door's car pulled into their driveway. Brian got out of the passenger side and waved to me, holding up Chester so I could see his wagging tail. Kim got out of the driver's seat and came over to the fence. "He found his way home then?" I said.

"No, we had a call from the vet on the highway at half-past seven. Someone picked him up on the highway last night and dropped him to the vet this morning and they got our number off his chip."

So that ended a lot better than it could have.

Extra day
It's a leap year, and there was a lot of fuss about 29 February, the extra day. What did I do with my extra day? I had two naps. I had a cold, you see. An actual cold, which has been going around the City by the Sea, and not the novel coronavirus. (Although it could be *A* coronavirus, said my mother helpfully, there's lots of them.) It was all over quickly, but I do feel robbed of my extra day.

The unwanted guest
Mister Alistair Cat was sitting outside in the potted bay tree when I shut up the house last night. I turned off all the lights and went to bed. Five minutes later I heard PADPADPADPADPAD as he trotted up the passage. So far, so normal... but something wasn't right. He normally meows, I thought, and turned the light on to find out why he was being uncharacteristically quiet, just in time to see him come through the doorway with a mouthful of mouse. I said, "No!" and he dropped the mouse, which turned out to be still alive. It ran into one of my slippers; he jumped on it; it ran behind the open door; he sat at the end of the door and settled down to watch. The mouse ran under the door, down the passage and into my mother's room. Alistair stayed where he was, convinced the mouse was still behind the door.

I woke my mother and we searched her room unsuccessfully for the mouse. No help at all from Alistair, who was still staring behind the door when I finally went to bed.

That will do for today. Tomorrow (or whenever): updates on flowers, soaps and knitting.

February books read

* Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor (1971) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Provence - Katrina Nannestad (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne - Katrina Nannestad (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* With a Bare Bodkin - Cyril Hare (1946) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* Death Walks the Woods - Cyril Hare (1954) ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* The Wind Blows Death - Cyril Hare (1949) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* Tenant for Death - Cyril Hare (1937) ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

"I thought you should know," said my busybody colleague, and, I mean, that's never a good start, is it, especially when followed by, "we were talking while you were out at lunch and we all agreed...".

Unexpected twist: the sentence ended with "...you’re doing a great job."

Oh. Well, then. I take back what I said about her being a busybody.

I took Alistair out for a walk before, which was fine. He pootles about in the front garden, scratching his claws and sticking his nose into bushes. He likes to put his front feet on the fence and stare across the road where he has seen his arch-enemy, the Grey Cat. He was doing that today when along the footpath came a Very Scary Thing. So scary! F-list, he fled. Turned tail and ran, flat to the ground, back up the driveway and straight inside, far away from the Very Scary Thing. Or: the old lady with a purple umbrella, as I saw her.

I came back from my shower this morning, ready to make the bed — only to find it occupied. This is new. He will sleep on the bed, not in it, and never when I'm not there. I don't know why he decided today was the day to try getting into the bed, but he seemed to like it.

This week being Race Week, the biggest week in the City by the Sea, there have been police everywhere. My mother was breath-tested as she was driving round the cemetery one morning. I mean, they were testing everyone, not just here. (She passed.) A couple of days later I went for a walk one evening, and ended up being glad I was on foot. There was a traffic jam on the highway and as I walked further I found out why: there was a police block with ten separate breath-testing stations. And three old men standing by the side of the road, watching all the action. "They've all been waved on so far," one told me as I passed.

This morning my mother and I went for our usual Sunday morning walk by the beach, which happily coincided with the fortnightly farmers' market being set up. We usually go to the farmers' market after breakfast, and so miss out on the devilish hard to get almond croissants, which are usually sold out before we get there. Not today! We were there, right there, as the baker's van pulled up, so we nabbed the first two almond croissants of the day.

Today I came across a recipe for beetroot chocolate cake with beet icing. No, thank you.

The cat enclosure is a big net that cordons off the patio and part of the garden so His Lordship can enjoy the outdoors in safety. It keeps him in and keeps the birds out (of his reach). Usually.

I got up the other morning and looked out the kitchen window to see Alistair sitting in the middle of the patio, head swivelling wildly as he watched five sparrows fluttering from one side of the garden to the other. So many birds he didn't know which one to stalk first, poor lamb. I put him inside and opened the gates and shooed them all out.

And then I spent the rest of the day and the day after that and the day after that doing the same thing. Usually just one at a time, mostly sparrows, but also one finch. Sparrows tend to look the same, but I've noticed that one of them has a distinctive white feather on his right wing. I've had to let him out seven times over the last two days. Now when I hear a whirr of wings and metallic rattle (the sound of White Wing landing on the net), it's my signal to make sure Alistair is asleep (or pick him up if he's prowling about), open the gate and wait for White Wing to swoop out — which he does very quickly, because he's worked out where the gate is. Which is clever of him, but I'd rather he worked out how not to get in.

I had some sort of virus a few weeks ago. A vomiting and dry cough sort of virus, which is an odd pair of symptoms, but there you go. Then I had a couple of healthy weeks, and now I've got a different sort of virus. Or perhaps it's end of the first one. Who can say? At any rate, I have been running cold and hot for several days now. Freezing cold and burning hot, that is, all accompanied by what they call a productive cough. So that's all been delightful. Today I'm feeling slightly more alive and I haven't needed a nap yet, so I'd say I'm improving. I was supposed to go to work tomorrow — they accepted my one day a week offer — but I called New Me and said I'm no good to anyone like this, so I'll have to wait another week to find out what's happening there.

The bathroom renovations have begun. On Monday, Scott the Builder stripped the bathroom. Stripped it bare. Bath, shower, vanity, walls. All gone. In between doing that, he had a string of visitors: his plumber and electrician, come to scope out what they were going to need; someone delivering a rubbish skip; someone delivering all the new bathroom fittings. On Tuesday, he started to rip up the floor. It was raining out, and he discovered that rain out means a lake under the bathroom floor. If it wasn't raining at just that time, we would never have known. So he and the plumber sorted that leak out, and today he is lay the new floor down.

In a way it has been useful to be sick. We have an old sofa in the dining room, which I don't often use but which is as far away from the noise in the bathroom as I can get without actually taking to my bed. So I've been napping and resting there, which has lured Alistair, who rarely spends any time in the dining room, to snuggle in my blanket. I'd been worried about how he would cope with (a) the building work and (b) not being allowed out during the day (he's confined to the house so the builders can leave his enclosure gate open outside), but he seems to have decided that sleeping on the farthest sofa is how to do it, even when I'm not there. He is also a bit of a comfort eater, it turns out. I don't know if he thinks the builders are going to eat his cat food, but he has taken to scarfing down his morning and evening meals and licking the plate clean, instead of being Mister Picky Nibbler.

Not having a bathroom does rather make life difficult. I am bathing in a bucket in my room and washing my hair in the laundry trough, and will likely be doing so for the next fortnight. Fortunately, our loo is in its own separate room next to the bathroom, but we have been forewarned that it will be out of action for one day. One whole day, while the old loo is removed, the lino on the floor ripped up, new tiles laid, and the new loo is installed. We have purchased camping toilets in readiness. Buckets, in other words, with a toilet seat and lid, "with a clip shut for peace of mind". Quite.

My old iPod Classic died a couple of weeks ago. Just gave up the ghost, as they say, after eight good years. I liked just having music and nothing else. I mean, I suppose it did do other things, but I never needed a stopwatch function. Anyway, after a couple of days sulking about how I just want a music player that plays music and doesn't bother me with anything else, I gave up and bought an iPod Touch, which means I can now listen to music and take photographs of the garden while walking Alistair.

( For example... )

Today my mother and I went to look at tiles for the bathroom floor. In a surprising development, she came to a decision quickly and easily. We are going to have this tile throughout the wet rooms (bathroom/toilet/laundry). That's today's plan, anyway.

Tomorrow being Australia Day means that tonight was the announcement of Australian of the Year. ( Was it me? )

There is a pet meme going around my f-list, in which people are posting pictures of their pets. So here's my contribution: ( Mister Alistair Cat )

I'm not generally very good at remembering specific dates. Christmas. My birthday. My mum's birthday. All horses' birthday. D-Day. The introduction of decimal currency in Australia. Some of those dates are more useful to me than others, but these are what my brain chooses to remember.

Not by the date, but the event, this weekend marks one year since I decided to get a new cat. It's my mother's May quilt camp. This time last year, that meant she organised John's son to come and stay with him for the weekend, which meant I wasn't required to assist with him. I had the weekend at home by myself, and the weather was too cold and wet to go out, and the house was so quiet. And here we are a year later: it is cold and wet, my mother is at her camp, John's son rang yesterday to say his step-daughter has moved into John's house as a house-sitter, and I am squished up one end of the sofa while Alistair stretches out across the rest of it.

As it happened, I found Alistair at the shelter one day after he had his final vaccinations, so he has had a blissful, vet-free year. That's going to end in the next week or so, poor lamb. (He's not good with people.) I have a dilemma, though. Since moving to the City by the Sea, I have always frequented, let's call them Vet #1. They've always been pretty good. Until Percy. They forgot to chip Percy the first time round, which is no big deal, just that I had an illegal cat until l took him back a year or so later. His second round of visits led to his disastrous final surgery, which... I mean, things happen. Surgery goes wrong. A cough can be a precursor to something much more serious. I know all that. But they never billed me for his final surgery, which I find... a bit weird? Also, I still feel a bit sick when I think about Percy alone and in pain there.

Then there is Vet #2. I've never been to them, but as well as their surgery, they have the RSPCA contract, so they did Alistair's last vaccinations. I don't suppose they would remember him from all the other cats at the shelter, or he them, but going to them would be a stab at continuity of care. Decisions, decisions.

This week, I took some old stuff to the electronic waste disposal workshop. I had to walk past about one hundred TV monitors neatly laid out on the floor like an army of eyes.

"Knit Every Day" May continues. ( My weekly accountability photo )

I bought a new packet of cat treats, which are, hilariously (to me anyway), called Party Mix. Party mix cat treats. It seemed appropriate to give some to Alistair this morning, and they did indeed go down a treat. So festive!

My Christmas bonbon (or cracker, if you prefer) joke:
What do you call a carton of ducks?
( Answer )

My mother and I had four invitations to Christmas dinner from various relatives, but she decided she would like to have a quiet day at home, which suited me. Then we heard the weather forecast was for a hot Christmas, so we decided to have a fresh seafood platter instead of roasting anything, and what a wise choice that turned out to be. Instead of the predicted 31^oC, it was 39^oC by lunch time. Weren't we cool with our smoked salmon, prawns, scallops, calamari and bugs (and rainbow salad)? And so quick! One hour from preparation to washing up.

Also, my pistachio and Turkish delight pudding was a welcome icy treat:


That's not just for us, I should say. We've guests coming for leftovers tomorrow.

Instead of individuals ones, I halved the recipe and made one big one, which I don't think I would do again. Individual ones wouldn't need to be cut. The other thing I would change is to chop the Turkish delight even smaller than it said. Frozen Turkish delight is, it turns out, extremely chewy.

On Thursday evening, I went out to dinner with friends. Walking across their lawn in my sandals, I felt an awful stinging sensation in my right little toe, and looked down to see a bull ant attached to it. So that was painful. I felt the sting for about two hours, and for the same time I had the shivers. I thought that was the end of it, but on Christmas Eve the top right quadrant of my foot turned red and swelled to twice its normal size. I've spent the last 24 hours applying ice to my elevated foot. One of the many things my mother brought with her when she moved in was a tube of corticosteroid ointment from when she had a plant-induced rash last year, so I've been using that too. The swelling has mostly gone down, but it's still pinker than normal and extremely itchy. So that's... just typical of this year, really.

There are bushfires along the tourist coast a couple of hours east of the City by the Sea, which are being evacuated. So that puts my itchy foot into perspective for Christmas problems.

I have just about been juggling the last month or so of doing my current job plus all the extra work for winding up and starting a new company plus starting on my new job, until this week. This week, I am exhausted. I have had Meetings every day. I am so over Meetings, let me tell you. And the more Meetings, the later I have to work to catch up on, you know, actual work. So yes, very much looking forward to this weekend to psyche myself up for more Meetings next week.

Today I have paid a deposit on a cat run. I am also so over this cat run. We have been having Meetings at home about it. I can't get away from Meetings. Anyway, I had hoped that Alistair would become a free range cat like every other cat I have ever had: inside at night, free to come and go during the day. But! He is scatty. Six months after his arrival, I don't trust him outside alone, so I don't let him out unsupervised — but he is annoying my mother, who is at home with him during the day, by constantly squeaking to be taken out. So I said if she organised it, I would pay for a cat run. So that's been my mother's little project recently. After a recommendation from her hairdresser's mother*, she's chosen a specialist cat run firm based in Brisbane (!) to surround the patio and part of the garden with mesh. It's unobtrusive and classy, apparently. And it will be good for Alistair, obviously, to be able to go out safely, and good for the local birdlife that he can't get anywhere near them. Not so good for the garden's skink population, who live in the herb garden that will be incorporated into the cat run, and who Alistair has decided are his sworn enemies. Run, little lizards!

As you can tell from his demands to be let out, Alistair is now very much at home. In his first few weeks, he insisted on eating nothing but the dry food he had at the shelter. Expensive yellow biscuits. I was happy enough to oblige until I realised they were grain-based and were cause of his terrible wind problem. So I finally got him to try other things and what do you know? Other things are DELICIOUS. Who wants old yellow biscuits when Wild Salmon Florentine In A Delicate Sauce is on offer? In the beginning, too, he would make this funny little huffing noise that I eventually worked out was his attempt at purring. He has purred a lot since then, and has now worked out how to do it properly. We have still not worked out belly scritching though. He was not having my early attempts at it at all. Just lately he has started rolling over occasionally to show me his belly, but if I touch it he curls up like an armadillo and gives me a look that says, what did you do that for, you weirdo?

My mother is also very much at home now. I had forgotten the fun of watching TV with her. Look at that lump on that actor's neck! He should get that seen to. That man on the news has an enormous pimple in his ear, can you see? That actress has puffy cheeks, I bet she's on Prednisolone. I can't tell you how much this photo I bought home from work thrilled her. (Don't click that if you're squeamish.)


* Jenny/NewAngela recently passed on some piece of news or other, as heard from her nephew's ex-wife's stepmother. A totally reliable source.