Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Mad Cat Lady

After cleaning out the cats' litter trays the cats always line up to be brushed and this evening I caught myself discussing with them their bowel habits. OK  -  so I talk to my cats.

My fixation on their bowel habits stems from the three of us experiencing an unusually sudden transition from winter to 36 degrees Celsius within 24 hours which triggered a sudden and heavy moult.  Parsifal managed alright but Poppy got fur balls and blocked up, needing medication usually used for people to unblock her.

We have had some weird weather this year with unseasonal storms, gale force winds and hot, humid days.  Thank goodness for air conditioning; at least I can regulate the temperature in the apartment and all the shops are just downstairs in an air conditioned shopping complex.

Cricket lovers who watched the last day of the third Ashes Test Match yesterday would have sampled a bit of our current weather.  The day before yesterday there had been intermittent rain and with possible storms predicted for overnight so the covers were put over the pitch.  They blew off and play was delayed for a couple of hours while leaf-blowers were used to dry a wet patch, and the pitch was scored with cracks  -  a bonus for the bowlers  -  and there were near-gale force winds.  Australia won . . .

The odd weather has triggered my asthma and I have been wheezing for several weeks and my hayfever has been worse than usual but all is settling down now.  A good thing as Christmas is only six days away.  D1 is flying in from Sydney on Friday evening but is only staying for five days.  Tomorrow I need to "do out" the spare room which is usually kept closed and therefore easily ignored until it is needed.  

I will be spending Christmas Day cooking for the family for Boxing Day as Ex and Exette are officially having the family for Christmas Day this year but the family seems to have dug in their toes and D3 will be cooking dinner for them on Christmas Eve.  Maybe it is time for me to dig in my toes and pass on my recipes for potato salad and trifle and let someone else do it.  I wish!

Friday, December 1, 2017

Sumer is Icumen In . . .

Despite what the calendar says, today was not very warm although tomorrow is predicted to be hot.

Management  sent around an air-conditioning person to check our systems today.  Mine was fine but I need a couple of new screens as the ones which I have are showing some sign of wear; not surprising since I have been here for over six years and they have not been serviced in that time.

Poppy is finally a well little cat again after a rather traumatic time was had by all.  A couple of weeks ago she ripped out a claw so that it was hanging by a thread so I took her off to the vet who sedated her and removed the claw.  When I got her home she was a very happy little cat and because I know that she has arthritis I assumed that it was the pain medication.  Back for a check-up and the vet suggested that maybe she should have regular pain medication. 

That was fine and she liked the taste so it was easy to give to her but she became very constipated (but no vomiting this time around) so the vet decided that the constipation might be caused by the pain medication and put her onto faecal softeners instead, which worked after a couple of days and she hasn't looked back.

The two of them have almost finished moulting and are looking very sleek and shiny but I am still vacuuming up great heaps of black fur.

COTA has finished for the year, just in time for a huge upgrade by Microsoft which left me floundering in a mass of requested passwords and exhortations to register to the Cloud, a thing which I have managed to resist so far.  I am keeping my options open as to whether or not I keep teaching next year.  Windows 10 is not easy to teach and I feel that I should not have to provide on-line access for my clients if they bring their own computers and twice now a client's computer has totally drained my hotspot of all its 4 Gb in short order.  It will cost me $50.00 to recharge it so I will see how I feel closer to the start-up date next year.

I seem to have reached the limit in my genealogy research into the descendants of one of my maternal grandmothers.  I am a bit short of data on a couple of the families and in one case I have gained far more information from the archived newspapers than I have from the cousins themselves but there is no information at all on a few and they will have to be delegated to the great unknown as even "Lady Kitty", the queen of the Advertiser Newspaper's social column in the 1950s did not manage to glean any gossip about them.

But it was fun reading through some of her writings; so many familiar names.