The whole weekend

Hello there and sorry for the super short blog post yesterday. I just wasn't in the mood for typing and allowed myself a day off a long update. Here I am now, though, at the end of a busy Sunday ready to fill you in on all the occurrences (that I can remember) of the whole weekend.

The update starts the day before yesterday, Friday night. I was in bed reading and was just about to turn the light out and doze off when A came in to say that she had trapped the bat in the guest suite. Now the background to this is that we have had a bat flying around inside for the past week or so and haven't been able to get it to fly outside. Now that it was limited to one room we were able finally to get it out the window, after a bit of time as it flew around and around without seeing the open window. Since then we haven't seen it so fingers crossed it will not come back inside. Anyway after this excitement we were in bed and slept the night through.

Really cloudy, and rainy, to start

It was actually cold when we woke up the next day; I was woken about 5 or so by thunder and didn't really get back to sleep after that as I was counting the gap between flash and bang. A woke after a little while and thought I was asleep so just went to make herself a brew. When it was clear that she wasn't coming back I went to join her for a brew of my own. As it was raining we didn't go onto the balcony this morning but sat and drank our brews inside.

A off to sort the birds out

It was a very slow start to the day but sometimes one really needs to just chill out and not rush around. Our plan was for a trip to town to look for tiles for the living room, get some more electrical stuff for me so I can rewire the roof lights, and also lay the cable round for the living room, and do a full food shop. After I munched a large bowl of yoghurt and Pear Preserve to keep my energy up we were off and on our way. It was a fully successful trip and we even picked up a new log-splitting axe so now we're pretty much ready for the winter. We also ordered curtains for the living room and the bedroom, though we'd forgotten to measure for Room 13 and the interior window so we'll have to order them next time.

Teddy gets his first meal

It was on our way home that things changed. We were just getting close to our turnoff, nattering away as we always do, when suddenly a small creature stumbled out of the undergrowth and into the road. As A said "puppy!" I swerved to avoid it, then slammed the brakes on causing all our shopping to slide off the back seat into the foot well. When I had stopped A jumped out, ran back and picked it up then ran to the car and passed it in through the window. We had another puppy. It was tiny, skinny and absolutely covered in burrs and a boy. When we got back we looked at each other, wondering if we had done the right thing and this thought I think dominated both our thoughts from that point onwards. I held him and pulled burrs off his fir while A got some food together for him and when we put the bowl of yoghurt, milk and bread in front of him he wolfed it down without even taking a break to breath it seemed.

Teddy hiding under my desk

Our initial reaction was that we had made a mistake to stop and pick him up however it was clear he was nearly dead and certainly the car behind us (which blasted its horn as it went past me, stopped) would probably have killed him. I guess that the dog I saw completely flattened on the road was his mother and he was hanging on near where he saw her last. Poor little mite. A spent a fair amount of time deburring him and eventually he had no burrs left at all. He was also fed through the day several times on pellets which he wolfed every time as well. For the rest of the time he was sleeping around our feet and hiding in dark spaces and running around playfully and generally being super cute, confusing us even more. The girls were SO unhappy, however, about the presence of another puppy and sulked pretty much the whole day, with Thelma growling and barking at him a lot.

Much tidier now

I did have a task to get on with other than looking after the new puppy and this was to put another light up in the roof, in the corner behind the chimney, and then rewire the small junction box by the consumer unit using the new technique that my dad used for his junction box. It didn't take long to get the new bulb up and turned on which was great; that now means I can tidy up the mess around the model railway stuff. I then drilled and fitted together the joint strips inside a larger junction box and finally carefully labelled the old wires before taking it apart and rewiring in the new larger box. Everything switched back on fine and I can now easily wire in the lights that will go down the corridor towards the roof terrace. Brilliant progress.

Louise covered in mud

Thelma slightly less muddy

The girls seriously had their noses out of joint with the appearance of the new puppy and even though it was raining they were outside a fair bit. It did stop raining eventually and so they disappeared for a fair while and then suddenly came bouncing back in completely covered in mud after obviously having had a really good time on the back bank and the mud pit (previously known as the dust bowl). It was so strange how they were reacting to the puppy so it was good to see them enjoying themselves.

Lots of paint stripped

Before we ate I went into the living room to carry on with scraping the walls and then A joined me. We didn't realise quite how late it was, though, and when we went through to finish cooking realised that the stew would not be ready in time to sate our hunger. The decision was made to leave the stew until the next day and to have pizza while watching a film.

Teddy sleeping through the film

We watched "What we do in the Shadows" which we both enjoyed and then made our way towards our bed. I had decided that the little puppy looked a bit like a bear and so he has been given the name Teddy and we put a bed in the living room for him to sleep in over night.

I was up in the night to go to the toilet and Teddy was up and about when I went back through the living room to bed. He cried for a little while after that but pretty soon dropped back off. When A went much later on, about 4am, however he didn't settle back down after she came back. He even slipped at one point and almost fell through the hole and when we heard this we ran through to save him; he was stood on the metalwork and holding on tight. After this A decided she would get up and let me sleep in, and then go back to bed when I woke up. This is one of the main reasons we were so worried about keeping him; we have Thelma and Louise to think about and this disruption to our schedules is not sustainable.

Flat packed kitchen units and other stuff

When I woke up a few hours later I found a bowl full of hot water for washing up with (which I did) and a Teddy asleep in Room 13. A went back to bed gratefully and slept for a fair while. After the washing up Teddy woke up and I headed downstairs to do the first of the chores I had picked for today. We are hoping the other building firm will come tomorrow to make a start on replacing the balcony/flat roof and so we need to clear the kitchen units out from under the roof incase it rains while this is being done and leaks occur. With only a little bit of a distraction from Teddy who was following me like a shadow I shifted it all out into the actual kitchen before A woke up which was brilliant.

Stones with which to line the driveway

Carrying a heavy stone

I had worked up an appetite and A was also hungry so I cooked bacon and eggs for us both before heading off for the next job. We wanted to save some of the good stones from the wall Sally knocked down however before we could shift them (my fault for not just doing it straight away) they were covered over by loads of other rubble. I set to and dug out a fair few and lifted them into the back of Thomas to be taken down and put into a pile near the driveway for that job, whenever that gets done.

Little and Large

A had helped me to load that last huge stone into place as while I could lift it I am not wanting to destroy my back, and she brought the whole menagerie (minus Sassy) with her. Rambo had taken a shine to Teddy and the feeling was reciprocated and a few times there were nose to nose but the camera wasn't quick enough to catch them. Thelma and Louise were still firmly not impressed, though.

Blind in one eye

We went back to sit on the porch after this and decide exactly what we were going to do with Teddy. Yesterday I had put an appeal on twitter for help and we had ended up contacting a rescue centre not far from us who, sadly, replied pretty quickly to say that they had no room. I'd also put feelers out through facebook and received negative responses from everyone. Finally this morning I rang Bekir who said he had enough dogs, understandably, and that he would ask his friend however we didn't hear back. We decided to pop down to the builders merchant as I needed to get some more circuit breakers and hopefully the lady there would take him. On the way we saw the sheep farmer who said no and when we got to the shop the lady wasn't there but the really friendly man was. He was very taken by Teddy but said his other big dog would eat him so we were back in the car and contemplating having to keep the poor little mite when we drove past the Special One and offered Teddy to him and he said "yes" and off Teddy went to his new home. Relief.

It was not that we didn't like the puppy but the change AFTER he went to how Thelma and Louise were acting was enough to convince us we were doing the right thing, on top of the fact that we were both stressing about him a lot and wondering what would happen if we didn't rehome him. It's so tough here, with so many strays, and I'm going to try to be really strong and not stop whatever, no matter how young the puppy looks that staggers into the road. We'll see how well I succeed in this.

It is a bigger pile than it looks

For some reason today I have been suffused with a burst of energy and so rather than waste it once we were back and I'd eaten some baked beans on toast I went back out with the shovel and wheelbarrow and spent half an hour shifting a pile of rubble from one place on the patio to another. There was more reason for this than just to move it; I want to build the wood store against the wall of the balcony and this pile was in the way so it had to be moved. It was pretty hot work and when I came in I was sweating but feeling really good about myself.

Enjoying the afternoon sun

I decided a rest was a good idea and as the weather today has been cooler but lovely I decided to go onto the roof terrace with my kindle and the relaxing chair. I read for a while and then almost dozed off and then A came up to join me which was awesome. It was very nice indeed up there, really hot when the sun was out from a cloud and then cooler when it went in, and just perfection to be up there relaxing and enjoying the amazing views. We even got to see Teddy as he ran around with our neighbours.

Did some more electrickery

I wasn't quite done with working yet for the day so when I felt rested I was up and at it again. My task was to run the 2.5mm cable round for the lights and plugs that we will need in the living room. I then wanted to get the junction boxes made up and wired in. The didn't take me as long as I thought even though I needed to put a few more of the metal cable tidies in the wall but I have now completely run out of cable ties so that will need to go on the list. I went down to start cutting up the screws to put the distribution boxes together and this is where I stopped as the hacksaw fell apart; I will have to get a new one and finish this off another day.

Lovely stew for dinner

So, earlier than has been happening recently I was able to start this monster update and half way through the stew started yesterday was ready and so we went onto the balcony for hopefully the last time before it is redone and tiled and had a lovely meal sat there, with the puppies sleeping on Bertha which as their bed is still on the roof terrace.

A has moved us into the spare room today so this evening we'll be in there for the first time. I really hope this building firm does turn up as we've done quite a lot to get ready for him, and we need the work to be done before we head off on our brief holiday to Italy. It's back to the grindstone of desk work for us both tomorrow though. I did malign Sally slightly on Friday by saying he had put the sixth step in place on the stairs; he did the sixth, seventh and eighth! Let's see how far they get tomorrow.