Sunday, March 27, 2016

We are all getting back to normal again.

Poppy can now eat without throwing up and she is actually eating kibble which is wonderful since she no longer has any teeth.  And she is playing again which is lovely  -  although it is going to take a bit longer to mend the rift between her and Parsifal.  After over a week of hissing and spitting at him whenever he got anywhere near her there is now a sort of armed truce but they no longer curl up to sleep together.  Hopefully with the coming of winter this will change but for the moment she has decided that I am a warm body and she has elected to sleep with me.

I have finished knitting the sweater which I have been working on for some time.  It looks gorgeous in its un-sewn state and I just hope that it will look as good when it is all put together because I would like to knit it again  -  many times.  It is quick and easy and looks as though it will be a casual sweater to throw on  whenever  -  a bit like comfort food; warm and comforting.  I will post a picture of it when it is all put together.

I have got back to spinning after a break to push forward with my knitting and I must say that it seems to work like a kind of meditation  -  mindless repetitive movements enabling me to switch off my mind and let it wander where it will.  I do listen to audiobooks sometimes but there is a limited supply at the library and I don't want to use my tablets to download them from 'borrowbox'.

I am currently reading a book called 'Road to Ruin' about Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin.  He seems to be a sad sack and she is obviously a female version of Kevin Rudd  -  foul mouthed and ambitious; not  a good combination.

I am also reading 'Baghdad Burning  -  girl blog from Iraq" which is horrifying, frightening and fascinating.  The BBC bought the rights to the Blog and Riverbend disappeared in Syria where her family eventually moved; but a couple of years ago  -  after people kept on enquiring as to how she was getting on there was one more post to say that she had moved from Syria before the trouble started, went to another Muslim country and from there moved on again to a country which she felt was safer and which I assume is probably Jordan.  I used to read her blog but came in a bit after the event and read the last posts but missed the first of them.  I have both books so I will be able to read from go to whoa.  D2 has asked to borrow them when I have finished reading.

here is the promised phot of my finished sweater:


Thursday, March 24, 2016

Things are getting better all the time

It is now a week since Poppy had her teeth out and things are sort of getting back to normal.  At least she is not spitting and growling at Parsifal whenever she encounters him and he, poor darling, cannot understand what he has done wrong.

To keep himself entertained he has been finding new ways to grab my attention.  To begin with he kept on tipping over and emptying the rubbish bin in the Cats' Bathroom.  I became tired of putting it upright and putting back the rubbish but since there is nothing in it but empty Milton packages which, by their very nature are clean and sterile, I eventually left the wrappers on the floor so his latest thing is straddling the porcelain inside the toilet and drinking the water.  Not a good idea, in my opinion but at least he is now too big to get flushed down.  Last time he tried that trick he was a tiny kitten and he tried to leap in just as I was flushing away the kitty-litter.  I backhanded him across to the other side of the toilet and still do not know if he was small enough to get flushed away if he had succeeded in jumping in.  I still get the shudders about it.

I have had several semi-sleepless nights where I have had to crawl out of bed to clean up multiple chuck-ups in the bedroom.  One spot would be bad enough but last night there were about four as she moved around the room and deposited her latest offering.  I have hardly a clean towel left and set the washing machine going at about midnight.  I know that she can't help it but I wish that she would confine herself to the tiles, not the carpet.  But she is finally managing to keep some solids down so hopefully things will start to get back to normal soon.

But to make things even more fraught I arrived hope from COTA yesterday and there was no Parsifal to meet and greet me which was unheard of.  I called him and searched every cupboard, drawer, cat bed and any other place I could think of but he just wasn't there.  My neighbour in 701, whom I thought might have taken him in if she had found him wandering the corridor joined in the search but still nothing.  Security hadn't seen him and as a last resort I went over to 'Zoo' where we sometimes visit when I am buying catfood,  Nothing!  I was sure that I could not have let him out accidentally as I went for the lift but he just wasn't in the apartment.  I arrived back from Zoo very despondent and there he was waiting to meet and greet me when I walked in..  I still do not know where he was; he obviously has a secret hiding place somewhere.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Sync or Swim

Having decided that it is time I gave more attention to the family of the man who is probably my REAL great grandfather rather than my legitimate great grandfather I entered his name into my Family Tree Maker program and suddenly I have about 25 of his descendants showing up in my own family tree.  That is great and, considering the dearth of information on historical data here in Western Australia, saves me a lot of work  -  although there is no information on my (half?) great uncle's eldest son.

The cats are  recovering from their ordeal and Parsifal has been no problem except that he is supposed to be on a soft diet after losing one tooth and he likes soft food which is usually given as a treat.  Poppy, who now has no teeth is on a soft diet and pain killers as well but seems to be very happy.  If her teeth were that bad they were probably giving her quite a bit of grief.  She had five teeth removed, the same number as this time last year so she has obviously lost a few in the interim since I am sure that she started with more than ten teeth.

Her sore finger is due to osteo-arthritis in the metacarpo-phalangeal joint of her fourth finger if you count her dew claw as her thumb.  I still need to clip the claw and will still muzzle her although she no longer has the wherewithal to bite me when I do so.  She seems resigned to the muzzle and lets me put it on without a struggle.  She shared my bed with me last night and kept me awake for ages as I was restless and reluctant to disturb her by tossing and turning and she spent today back sleeping in her 'little soft place' which is the pile of pillows on my bed.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Endentuous . . .

The word used by the medical officer at the hospital where I worked to describe the toothless.

Poppy, after visiting the Vet today for a dental checkup is endentuous except for her two bottom canine teeth which were firm and unwobbly and have been left in situ so that her tongue doesn't stick out.

She has a condition in which the roots of the teeth are reabsorbed and is prevalent among Oriental breeds.  Poppy seems to have it in spades but at least tooth scaling will be a thing of the past for her.

Parsifal lost one more tooth and is very chirpy about it  -  all bright-eyed and bushy tailed but at least he is leaving Poppy alone in her misery.  Actually she is not too bad, all things considered and very happy to be home again  -  ate her tea, used the litter tray and is re-marking all her face rubs on the door jambs.

The Vet Clinic decided to retain the kitty carriage and keep the cats there in familiar territory and from what they said it worked well and there was much less of a problem with the two of them

Today on Ancestry.com.au I contacted someone who used to be a half-second cousin and whom I think is actually a full second cousin since I suspect strongly that my grandfather and his twin brother were born on the wrong side of the blanket and although legally legitimate they, and their mother were disinherited by their legal father.  Anyway my now-second cousin was happy to hear from me and interested in the state of affairs.  She has sent me her phone number and we will talk.  I actually met her many years ago when my grandmother came to Perth to visit.  She stayed at the Karrakatta Club  -  very posh and decidedly lacking in comfort  -  and was shocked to the core when my cousin visited her wearing jeans!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

We are all fasting today

Thursday is always one of my 'fast days' because I spend morning and into the early afternoon at the computer lounge or travelling to and from there so there is little temptation to eat.  By the time I start to get really hungry it is my yoga time and that takes away my appetite so I manage from about 10.30 pm to 6.30pm  -  about 20 hours with only coffee and a dash of skim milk.

The cats, on the other hand, have food on tap at all times and are not taking kindly to being deprived this evening.  They are having their teeth scaled tomorrow and that needs a general anaesthetic so fasting from 8.00pm this evening is in order.  They are to be admitted to the Vet hospital at about 9.00 tomorrow morning.  Hopefully they will be resigned to their deprived state by then because they are both pacing at the moment.

I am concerned for them because both of my last pair died after tooth extractions and although they were both quite old when it happened it is still a concern to me.

I have almost finished the second sleeve of the kimono sweater which I am knitting and then it is just the sewing up.  It is not in my colours but is gorgeous and if the pattern turns out well I will use it again.  It will be loose, warm and comfortable.

A couple of days ago I had to attend an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Owners Committee to discuss the erection of two pergolas over on the north side of this building.  We sat and waited for 45 minutes before we were able to field a quorum and then found that we were obliged to 'vote without dissent' on the two motions which meant that we could vote for the pergolas but not against.  Anyone with objections has 28 days to submit their reasons to the inner circle.  By this stage I was getting very confused about it all and I THINK that we agreed to one of them but not the other  -  that one to be attached to a dividing wall.  The problem seemed to be security but anyone able to get over the wall should be able to do so from the pool area whether or not there is a pergola on the other side.

The meeting was supposed to be attended by the owners from both Apartment Blocks just in case anyone in Block A wanted to build a similar pergola  -  but since we were dealing exclusively with two particular pergolas in Block B it all seemed a bit much.  However, it was decided that any new pergolas would be of a particular design built by a particular company so I suppose that something was achieved for all the Claremont Residences.  And now we wait for 28 days to find out if the pergolas are to be allowed.  Since the areas are huge and open to the summer sun they are unusable during the daytime in summer and I think that the requests are reasonable but, of course, it doesn't affect me or my apartment.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Bollywood Burn

A week or so ago I decided that I was getting a bit bored with my Yoga DVDs and maybe needed a couple of new ones so I went online to see what I could find.  There were no new routines as far as I could see but there were two Bollywood DVDs.  D1 does Bollywood dancing and finds it great fun and good exercise so I ordered the DVDs which arrived a few days ago.  One is a 50 minute routine which I haven't explored yet but the other one has three 15 minute workouts which I figured was about my tolerance and went for that one.

The first day I didn't make it to the end and retired out of breath so I decided that I would master that one before I tried the other two.  I have just about managed it to the end now but need to keep up to speed a bit better as it is quite fast and a  brilliant aerobic workout  ...  but I have been so stiff that I could hardly move a couple of days ago.  That is gradually subsiding and the stretches from my yoga are helping as well. 

There was an article in the newspaper a few days ago which said that research has shown that people who dance are 40% less likely to have a heart attack so if I keep it up on a regular basis I should be good to go and it appears that the makers of the DVDs also produce yoga discs so I need to investigate them; Bollywood in the morning and yoga in the evening.

I have decided that spinning less and knitting more is the way to go as I am accumulating quite a lot of yarn  -  and faster than I can knit it  -  so I spent this afternoon with my current audio book knitting instead of spinning and will do that more often.  Autumn is starting to show itself in cold mornings and warm days so the sooner I finish the sweater I am currently working on the sooner I can wear it, terracotta being the new black for this season.

My "Windows 10 Bible" arrived yesterday after a bit of chasing around the suburbs.  The courier tried to deliver it while I was at COTA and then left it at a drop-off place which would have entailed a train ride, a bus ride and then a fairly hefty hike.  I phoned the drop-off place and the courier service and asked for a re-delivery and the owner of the drop-off place, a pharmacy in another suburb, sent the courier on his way and refused to accept the package  -  so it arrived in good order yesterday morning.

I realise that Windows 10 is constantly morphing but the book seems to be good for basics so I need to sit down at this computer and work my way through it to at least get an overall picture of all its little quirks and differences as I am still trying to find my way around some of the stuff and all my clients at the moment have 10 so I need to be able to at least teach the simple stuff.