A hair-free week

It never ceases to amaze me how much black dog hairs appear upstairs where Vespa isn't allowed. Every morning when I wash my face I find umpteen hairs in the sink and when I vacuum my bedroom you'd think he'd been lying around on the floor there. So much so I'm almost wondering if he has a sneaky trample around when I'm not looking.

I'm off to London tomorrow to my brother's retirement party and I'm staying in London until Saturday with places to go and people to meet. In some ways I'm looking forward to it, but in other ways I'd far rather be at home in front of the telly watching Wimbledon, but you can be sure that the very last thing I'll find while staying with my mother are black dog hairs.

I won't miss long black hairs everywhere, but I will miss my morning cuddle and the general ambiance of having an affectionate personality around, because you can be sure that the other very last thing I'll find while staying with my mother is a feeling of 'someone loves me'. No I'm heading for the land of bad moods and criticism.

You know what? I think I'd rather have the black hairs!

The wonders of the internet

I opened my email this morning to find this message:

Dear sir or Madam, Good day .

I'm Ms. Kathy Liu from Ningbo of China. Who is the supplier of welding metal. We are supplying following welding metal for more than 8 years.

1. Tin solder wire (Bar),such as 99.7/0.3; 60/40

2. Brazing wire (Rod),such like bcup-2,(Harris0)

3. Aluminum flux cored welding wire, CU-Al, and Al-Al, such like TC150

4. Solder Iron , wooden handle ,30W-300W .

5. Brass rod,

6. Electrode ,include :E6013 ,E308 etc.

7. agent Brother fatory produce: Zinc alloy for diecast. Zamak#3-#8

Recently the metal cost in China has dropped, we would like to send you our updated quotation list for your reference if you are interested on above products, one more choice to get the better products with lower prices.

Please kindly contact us or send us your detail inquiry.

Thanks and best regards!

First of all I'd be fascinated as to who in that company spends their time trawling through the internet to find people's email addresses so they can send off their emails, but even more so I wonder if they ever get any replies?

I was thinking it might be fun to email them back and tell them that sadly, being a three-quarters-about-to-be-seven-eighths retired Clinical Psychologist means that my interest in welding metal is absolutely nonexistent. But do I really want to open up communications with them? Probably not.

Sometimes the internet is beyond fascinating! 

Signs of ageing

It must be about 10 years since I last had any real dental work done, so when I discovered I needed a crown (my first ever) I think it was lucky I was lying down in the dental chair with my mouth clamped open when I was hit with the price.

I hate going to the dentist at the best of times, but now I have a temporary filling and a sore mouth and will have to go through it all again in 3 weeks time when the crown is fitted. I can feel my dental phobia coming to the fore. Still, needs must sadly.

The signs of ageing are now fully fledged. What with my new hearing aid and my cracked tooth I'm wondering what part of my body is going to need attention next. On second thoughts I don't think I even want to think about it!

Writing news

Recently I took part in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with Iowa University in poetry. The course itself was excellent, but the massive bit was too much for me. If I posted a comment on an instructor's post I was inundated with (literally) hundreds of emails and I just couldn't cope, so I ended up not posting comments, which in some ways was a bit of a shame.

About a month ago Iowa University put out a message about a free online course they were going to run for folk interested in creative nonfiction. I've recently been writing short stories and, as I'm about to write a book for my kids about our family company (and it's just for them and my nieces) and I've been struggling to make it readable, I thought I'd learn a lot if I had the opportunity to take part.

The course was by application form and a short piece of writing that the uni gave a prompt for. The prompt was 'lost' and we were asked to write about a time we were physically or psychologically lost. I had a lot of fun writing about an incident that happened when Mountain Man and I were in Venice some years ago and trying to find the Grand Canal when MM told me he knew how to get to there and, needless to say, we got lost and found we'd walked in a circle.

Well... I received an email to tell me I'd got a place! They only accept 20 people from across the world and I can't believe I'm one of them! I'm super excited (can you tell?) and I can't wait to get on and be part of it.

Roll on July!

It's a puppy walker's life

Yesterday necessitated a visit to the hearing aid people and they have a lovely 9 month old Parsons Russell terrier, Mack, who sits in the office. Vespa was excellent with him and, as he had his coat on, he wasn't allowed to play. Mack was put on his lead and came to say hello, but was jumping around while Vespa lay on the floor looking a little surprised at Mack's yips and barks.

I was so pleased with him and even more so when he lay on the floor quietly while I did my hearing aid business. However, an hour later when we went to see the Puppy Supervisor at the Gyle Centre in Edinburgh for a check up and she had her supervisor with her from Forfar, it was a different story. For some reason Vespa decided this was the time to behave like an idiot and show me up no end.

David (the PS's S) took over and marched Vespa off for behaviour 101. I'm not sure the PS nor the PSS believed me when I said he'd been behaving better.

Today another PW came round for a coffee. She's currently GD puppyless as she's just got a new pet puppy herself and needs to focus attention on her, but we went for a lovely walk round the woods and she was telling me how impressed she was with Vespa and how well behaved he was.

It seems that the life of a Puppy Walker is one of pride through to embarrassment in the blink of an eye.

Tweezer rescue

Late last night, as I was shutting the velux window in my bedroom, I managed to drop my tweezers out of the window and there they were on the roof - don't even ask how that happened! Tweezer rescue was on.

With Mountain Man away I had to get on with it myself, so I got the steps out and leaned as far out of the window as possible, but they were just out of reach. Next, I cleared the top of the chest of drawers that live just under the window and knelt on them, which is quite something for me as I have no knee in my right leg and kneeling is very uncomfortable, but when there's a rescue in operation there's nothing for it but to bear the pain and get on with it. This time as I leaned out my fingers just managed to grasp hold of the tweezers. Success!

But success comes at a price. As I clambered back I caught my knee and shin on the edge of the chest of drawers. Boy was that painful or what!

Next time I drop things out onto the roof I think they'll just have to stay there... or wait until MM is home... or actually a better way of managing would be to make sure I wasn't multitasking in the first place and just close the window. Simples.

Bathroom smells

After managing to throw a whole bottle of Tea Tree oil around my bathroom on Thursday morning I went into Edinburgh to see a client followed by a trip to the dentist, where I found out one tooth had a crack in the filling and another tooth was cracked. This was not great, but at least it explains the pain I've been having on eating and at least the crack in the filling was dealt with. I have to go back for the next episode next week.

After the dentist it was a quick trip to the hairdresser, where I didn't dare drink a cup of hot anything in case of numb lip spillage, and then after that I zipped back to No. 2 Son's to drop my bag and change into my jeans and head out for dinner.

Dinner at David Bann with my friend and his son was a fun evening and I've decided that I'm going to do drinking wine through a straw more often, but by the time we'd finished my tooth was incredibly sore and I was pleased to get back to No. 2 Son's to down some painkillers.

Yesterday was an all day workshop, which went ok I think, but it was a long day and by the time I got home I was exhausted and only good to slob in front of the telly.

Today, when the weather has returned to Autumn status, Vespa and I took a trip to the Championship Dog Show at Kelso Border Union show ground, where we spent a happy hour traipsing up and down watching doggies doing their thing. Vespa was actually pretty good and apart from a couple of 'play with me' dives at a dog or two I was very pleased with him. So much so I bought him a fluffy dog toy, which lasted approximately 10 minutes when we got home.

And then there I was, prepared to settle down to watch Andy Murray for the afternoon, when Autumn reached Queens Club too so that was rained off.

Not the most satisfactory end to a week, but at least my bathroom smells herbally antiseptic!