It was the night before Christmas....

Well, it's not night yet. It's late afternoon, the roads are very icy and it's cold but we still don't have any snow.

I've got plenty of food in the fridge, biscuits in the tins, books on the shelves and we won't run out of tea either.

All that's left to do is wish you all a very Merry Christmas in good company. And if it's your own company that you'll be spending Christmas in, then all the better as you won't have to fight anyone over the last biscuit in the tin.

Enjoy!

You gotta stop at some point...

I know I told everyone I haven't been feeling very Christmassy at all. And it's true. I haven't. But the recent cold spell we've had here (and still have, -2 Celsius this morning, yay!) has me at least feeling wintery.


So I've been baking biscuits. Lots of them. And I have now officially run out of storage tins for them. But please don't think that I have turned our house into a 'cookie factory'. It's nothing of the sort. I just don't have that many storage tins. And then I had to give one of them up to put my baking ingredients into, the ones in open packets at least.

The reason for that is a mouse that had moved into my 'baking ingredients and general biscuit and sweet snacks storage cupboard' in the kitchen. I found out about her moving in by finding the plastic bag in which I had stored my flour bag in shreds one morning. I started to move out everything from that cupboard and found holes in packets of

flour
sugar (dark, caster, plain, icing)
cornflour
poppy seed (the mouse probably slept very well that night)
almonds
raisins
hazelnuts

and, worst of all, 5 out of 10 of my German 'Pudding' mixes (kind of a flan or blancmange type dessert).

I had to throw out all of them, obviously. I cleaned out the cupboard, thinking the mouse was probably long gone. Not so! The next morning she had eaten a hole into my one remaining packet of semolina.

That was the last straw. In went the mouse trap, a nice piece of cheese as bait. And, having all the other treasure removed from the cupboard, the mouse went for the cheese later that evening. End of mouse.

You wonder sometimes why we have one cat and two dogs (one of which is a mouse hunter, at least outdoors) living in the house...




Aaaanyways, this is why I had to give up one of my big biscuit tins - for safekeeping of my newly bought baking ingredients. In case the mouse had invited a few relatives for Christmas who are going to show up any day now. So now I'm a tin short.

But no matter, I'm only making one more batch anyway. Tuesday I've got to make a batch of cranberry biscuits as a present for one of my friends. I'm making edible presents this Christmas. So it's biscuits and pickled peppers & thyme in olive oil this year. Oh, and my own Christmas cards of course.

Are you ready for Christmas? Christmas itself is going to be quiet here, just the two of us. Or rather, the five of us (provided those mousey relatives don't turn up after all). Although neither the cat nor the dogs give a hoot about Christmas. And for the human members of the family it means, books, films, good food and lots of sleep. I'm definitely ready for that!

A new family member - for a little while

Well, she's not so new actually. And she isn't really a full family member either. Still, I can't think why I never told you about her until today.

You may or may not know that we adopted Honey from the West Cork Animal Welfare Group. As the name already gives it away, they are a welfare group located in beautiful West Cork and they are run by a lovely lady called Jennifer. They have a website and ever since we got Honey from there I paid visits to their site.

But this is like sending a child into a candy store, just to inquire about something. The minute I clap eyes on those gorgeous dogs, all abandoned for one reason or another, I start thinking about whether our house could take another dog. Truth is, it can't. Neither can our bank account. Three animals, whether you want to think about it or not, cost a lot of money. Not only do they have to be fed, they also need to go to the vet's every now and then. At least once a year, for their vaccinations. If we go away where we can't take the dogs, they have to go to a boarding kennel. OK, this only happened once, for this summer's trip to St. John but it costs money.

And in times when salaries are being cut, extra taxes and levies imposed, we have less than in the previous years.

Unfortunately, this also means that more animals are abandoned than ever. The kennels at the welfare group now house almost double the number of dogs they were actually built for. This year they also opened up a cattery, to deal with the increasing number of homeless cats they encountered.

Anyways, a couple of months ago, during one of my irregular visits to their website and finding at least three dogs I would take home straight away, I came across their Sponsor A Dog section.

See, amongst all the dogs they take in are some that cannot be re-homed, for various reasons. Mostly it is, though, because the dogs have been too traumatised and don't trust any human enough to let them go to a family home. So the welfare group keeps those dogs in their kennels. They have an animal behavourist who comes and does some training with them to help them build up trust and confidence, but some dogs are simply staying there forever.

To make a long story short, we decided to sponsor Bailey.


Bailey is about three years old and has spent most of her life at the shelter. You can read up on her sad story here (please scroll way down the page).

Today we received a Christmas card from the welfare group and also their latest newsletter with an update on Bailey. We found that, hopefully, she won't be a part of our extended family for much longer.



It turns out that, while she is still timid, Bailey has been making good progress with the help of the animal behavourist and will soon be ready to go to a permanent home. From the New Year on she will be in the re-homing section of the website and hopefully she will find a good home that way.

This is great news and credit is due to the shelter and everyone who works for them. I expect that we will transfer our sponsorship to one of the other dogs that can't be re-homed.

That was November

That's right, November is over. And I haven't posted in ages. When people start asking whether you're doing OK because you haven't posted in a while it's time. High time. So what have I been doing? Good question.

November was an eventful month. In a way. We've been busy.


Running and jumping through the woods. That's the dogs. I just walk.


Busy making cakes and cards:





Going to concerts, courtesy of our local Amnesty International group:


I got to go and see Steve Earle for free. It was one of the most amazing concerts I've ever been to and it had me buzzing for days afterwards, even carrying me through a routine visit to the dentist. (All my photos are so shaky and wobbly because this guy never stood still for even a second. I can't even pretend they're artfully blurred.)


Oh yes, and then Cork City and big parts of the county were flooded. You can see photos from the road going down past our house in my previous post. Ironically, many households in the city were without water for over a week but I think most of them are now back to normal.

When I haven't been doing all the above I've been busy avoiding to study, reading books (other than my anatomy and physiology book), watching DVDs and starting on my case studies for my massage training.

Yes, I have actually made a start on that. We have to do 5 case studies until about Easter. That's 5 people I have to do a series of 4 massage treatments for. They all have to be documented and those files are handed in to the examiners before we sit our exams in May. It was a bit of a leap to actually start practicing on someone other than Felix. I took the easy option and approached my friend Gina who was more than willing to be my first victim. We've had two sessions now, so I'm halfway through my first case study. Yippee!

It's actually going OK, apart from the fact that I keep messing up the sequence we're supposed to follow. Obviously, when you're practicing properly after you've qualified it's up to you how you massage and you adapt everything to suit your clients' needs. For the exams, however, we have to follow a specific sequence which goes through all the techniques and body parts in a certain order. This is to demonstrate that we are trained in everything and that we are able to perform a full body massage according to approved standards.

And I keep messing it up. I know all the techniques by now and I don't miss out on anything, it's just that I rearrange things when I'm actually massaging someone. However, I'm fairly confident that I will have the proper sequence down pat by the time the exams come around, it's just a matter of practice. Do the same thing over and over and over again and you'll remember. At least that's what I hope is going to happen.

And that was November. We're now into December and while I have worked out what I'm going to cook for Christmas I'm still not much in the mood to put up any decorations or start making biscuits. The perpetual rain here doesn't help me get into the proper mood either. Has the Christmas spirit arrived at your house yet?

P.S.: I'm currently thinking about putting the verification option back on my blog because I get quite a lot of spam comments, usually about 2 to 3 days after I have put up a new post. I hope you don't mind too much typing a few letters before you are able to post your comment. It will make things a lot easier for me.

Rainy Thursday

We've had rain for the last week or so. Maybe even longer. I can't remember. Sometimes we managed to walk the dogs in the morning without getting wet. That was an achievement.

Yesterday things got worse. It got very windy and the rain got worse. We lost power four or five times within an hour or so. Thankfully it only lasted a short while and we didn't have to resort to reading books by candle light.

I got totally soaked walking the dogs last night before bed time. The wind was so nasty that neither of them wanted to do what we went out for. Sigh. Not only was I drenched, it was also totally pointless.

Today, the road that leads past our house and goes down the hill is flooded in the dip before it goes back up the hill. I know because I could see cars coming down the other hill (towards our place) this morning, they stopped and then turned back. The little stream in the dip below has totally flooded the road apparently.

You can see that brown band coming from the left in this picture, this is the stream. (This is the view from the study window where I'm sitting right now.)



With the weather being as it is, I'm not going outside today. Felix rang me from the way to work, saying that many roads are badly flooded and he just about made it in to work. He'll have to find another way back home tonight I guess. Problem is, almost all the roads are near rivers at one point or another. They'll probably all be flooded if it keeps raining like this. And so far, there's no end in sight.

Thankfully I don't have to go out today. I'll wait with the dogs' afternoon walk until they're close to bursting. That way they'll have to come out with me. They are already complaining but I don't think they know how bad it is outside. Jack will definitely change his mind the minute I open the door.

The plan is to weather this storm. I'm still in my pyjamas. I will keep drinking tea and eating mandarins. And maybe some banana bread later. As long as the power doesn't go again I'll be grand.


(Hope the weather is better where you are and if it isn't, just stay indoors and you'll be fine.)


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3pm update: I have just been down the hill with the dogs and this is what it looks like down there:

And now, one for the Ladies

Although, let's face it, who else is reading my blog regularly?

For years I've suffered from PMS. Well, I guess Felix has also suffered but in a slightly different way. About a week to 10 days before my period was due I would already start to feel crappy. And crabby, yes. Add to that the actual days I had my period, about half of every month would be crappy for me. What a life!

A friend recommended Evening Primrose Oil to me as it had done wonders for her. I dutifully took the tablets for 5 months or thereabouts. Nothing. Absolutely nothing changed. Since I couldn't figure out anything else, I gave up.

Then, about a year ago I guess, I started drinking green tea again. I had tried it before (on recommendation of another friend) and hated it. It tasted like boiled grass, or what I imaged boiled grass would taste like.

At the time I had given up drinking coffee and was looking for an alternative to drink during the day. I ended up trying green tea again because Twinings had come out with some interesting new flavoured green teas. There was even one with cranberries! Turned out if you poured the water just before it boiled and only let the tea steep for a maximum of 2 minutes it didn't taste like boiled grass but was actually quite tasty.

So I started drinking it daily, some days I had one big mug, others I had two.

A month later I was shocked to have my period very suddenly (but on time) without having had any prior symptoms that would've alerted me. Odd. It took me a while to figure out what I had done differently that month. In the end I came to the conclusion that it was the green tea as I hadn't changed anything else in my diet or habits that month.

One month could well have been a fluke, though. So I paid attention for the next one and the one after that, all the time still drinking my daily cup or two of green tea. And the result was the same. No PMS or hardly any.

I did some (Google powered) research and ended up reading articles about why green tea would either help alleviate your PMS or would do nothing at all for you. So I knew as much as before.

But, either way, I found my PMS "drug" of choice and was able to get rid of this:

With a little help from our friends...

A big Thank You to everyone who's clicked so many times on the link to that competition. When I entered this photo we started out as number 352 or something like that. We ended up on 12. Not bad for an old dog, eh?

The first 3 are getting dog (or cat) food, every entrant gets a money off voucher for an order from Husse and the top 50 also get a food sample.

Considering I order our dog food from Husse anyway, dutifully every month, a little money off voucher isn't bad. And someone's going to be happy with the sample. Being 1st would have been fantastic because we would've had dog food for free, for a year. I think it's my fault we didn't get to number 1 because I didn't realise that the number of hits per photo determined the winner until the competition was in its closing stages.

As you can see here, the winner is (predictably I might say) a cute little kitten and so is the 3rd placed photo. Taking this into account, a 12 year old, smelly, black and white Border Collie cum Jack Russell making it to number 12 is actually quite an achievement.

Thank you everyone!

To lighten up my day. And yours.

I picked these from our garden the other day. And there's another pink rose in another vase. Yes, our roses are still in bloom. It's the middle of October.

But yesterday's weather was horrible and I fear it may have finished off at least the calendulas. The roses seem a bit hardier.

Have a lovely Tuesday!

I couldn't resist. Could you?

I saw it and knew I HAD to have it. I'm not the world's maddest shopper. I love comfy clothes, like jeans and chunky sweaters and comfortable shoes. You definitely won't see me at a fashion show. It's more likely you'll spot me on "What Not To Wear" or whatever these clever advice and makeover shows are called.

But every now and then something just jumps out at me. And it happened on Sunday. I got an email from Lands' End about their latest offers and I ended up looking at their Sales section online. And then this lovely, cosy looking cardigan popped up. And with Autumn already here and Winter on our doorstep (well, almost) it looked very tempting.

What clinched it for me was the price, though. Reduced from GBP 70 to GBP 14.50. Wow!

I emailed my friend Gina the link because I knew this would be right up her street, too. And even though I had determined I wasn't going to spend any money on clothes anymore for this year (I had to buy two pair of jeans recently as my old ones are falling apart), we ended up ordering one cardigan each. Because we're sharing the postage, this lovely cardigan is going to cost us a bit less than 20 Euro each. Bargain or what?!

Now I just have to be patient until it's delivered. Which should be at the end of this week or early next week. And then I'm prepared for the chilly season!

A quick update

Today is one of those days where I have a million and one little things to do. Well, some are littler than others. But they have been piling up. I'm just on my way to empty the dryer before folding the bed linen that's currently in there. And after that I'm taking the dogs for their afternoon walk. After which I will have to sit down and study. Before cleaning the kitchen counter. Or after?

But definitely not before I've shown you this photo of Salem who, for a change, is not sleeping on our bed but who snuck into the guest room to have his nap there. Right on top of Felix' clothes which were lying on the bed.

He is a lot better. Still limping but that's going to take a while. And just occasionally he still steps on the back of his paw as his leg is still weak. But we're getting there. Maybe the anti-inflammatory that Felix and I force into him once daily (and we've got the scratches to prove it!) is helping him along, too. At least I like to think that. Otherwise that little daily fight would be all for nothing.

Have a good Monday all!