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!

A limpy cat and the referendum

Last night Salem came home limping badly on his left front leg. It was a very odd limp because he didn't seem to be in pain and afraid to use the leg, it was more a dragging of his left leg. It was like he couldn't feel his paw and was dragging it on the floor.

He didn't seem to be in much pain as he let us handle him almost as usual. Still, we were worried.

So I drove him to the vet's first thing this morning. Peter the vet had a good look at him and concluded that nothing was fractured and there were no injuries to his skin either. Salem seems to have somehow damaged his radial nerve which is the largest nerve in the leg and in charge of extending the leg, wrist and toes. How this damage occurred, we don't know. Peter said it could have been a hard bump or a very awkward fall.

Prognosis depends on how bad the damage is. Peter's assessment is that about 60% of the nerve are currently "out of action" as Salem is able to occasionally use his leg like normal. There should be a slight improvement within about 2 weeks and if that's the case then he should be back to normal within a month. However, sometimes the damage is irreparable.

Salem got a shot of antibiotics, just on the off chance that there was a bite wounds somewhere that we missed and then we have a liquid anti-inflammatory to give him once daily for about 4 weeks. That'll be fun!

Since Salem is an outside cat we won't be able to keep him inside for a month or there would be murder. So he's now gone outside and the last time I saw him he was sitting on top of our compost box in the back garden. I'm obviously worried about him being outside but I hope he's clever enough to stay away from the roads and other dangers. There is no way he'd stay inside for a month without a fight and driving us around the bend.



Oh, and in other news, today Felix and I took the chance to exercise our rights as Irish citizens for the first time by voting in the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Different from the elections, this was just a matter of one X in the right spot. What the right spot is is obviously up to you, if you're allowed to vote. But whatever way your thoughts run, please do go out to cast your vote today!

Intermission...

While I should be studying right now I also had to walk the dogs. After their afternoon walk they usually get a small treat, Jack gets a special one that's good for his joints and Honey gets one to help keep her teeth clean.

Because I was feeling generous today I cut one pig's ear in half and gave them each one half of it. Now, I usually don't give the dogs bones or anything like this because Jack's teeth are pretty worn down and they're happy with their regular treats. I still had this pig's ear left, though, that came with my last order of dog food. Treat time for the dogs it was then!

So, this is Honey chewing on her half of that pig's ear:

After an initial sniff she was convinced this was a special treat and started chewing happily.


Now, and this is Jack with his half of the treat:


He sat there like this for about 15 minutes. Drooling, half of the ear in his mouth, the other half poking out like this. Whenever I came near him he started to growl.

Thinking he didn't know what to do with this special treat (as far as I remember he'd never had a pig's ear, not in the year he's been with us at least) I couldn't help but laugh at him. But then, once Honey had finished hers and had gone upstairs, he started to chew on it.

He was just waiting for her to leave the room! And for me to leave him in peace because once he was on his own in the living room I could hear him chewing away. He was guarding his special treat!


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(P.S.: Jack resolutely rejects the idea of him not knowing what to do with food. He was simply guarding it from Honey who is known to steal food from him. He also likes to draw your attention to his new Swedish dog bed, courtesy of IKEA!)

Back to school

You may remember me telling you about my plans for 2009 which included going back to school. If you don't, you can read it again here.

Well, it's taken a while but last Tuesday I finally started the massage course I'd been wanting to take for nearly a year now. Last time I was just too late to sign up for it as classes had already started. So this year I made sure I was one of the first to register once the prospectus for the new year had come out.

Not only did we get right into things last week, but we were also sent home with an A4 size list of things to get. These include stationery like folders and notebooks but also massage supplies like towels, couch covers and of course text books. The best things on that list is the 'uniform' which we're supposed to wear. For the exams at least. It's black trousers, black shoes and a white tunic type top.

So I spent a lot of time last week shopping for the right things. Not having black trousers, except for a really dressy pair (for the one big do I attend once every decade) and black jeans, I had to go out and find a pair that was cheap enough and fit the bill. Lucky me, I ventured into the cheapest clothes store in Cork and came out with a very plain pair of black trousers for 5 Euro. Success!

Continuing the bargain hunt, I didn't go and buy the 3 books on the list in the local school book store but turned to Amazon instead, making a saving of about 6 Euro (and that's after the postage was added).

Most of the stationery supplies I ended up buying in Tesco's, a big supermarket chain, instead of the usual shops.

Now that I'm almost all sorted (some items were out of stock and will be delivered at a later stage) comes the hard part: I only have to make myself sit down to study.

The teacher was most insistent that this is a serious course (of course, you do get a proper diploma at the end, after I pass the exams at the end of May, IF I pass them that is) and we should start setting time aside for study now, instead of leaving everything till later. The lady is probably right.




So now I'm sitting here, staring at a chart of the bones in the wrist, hand and fingers. How the heck am I going to remember which one of these tiny bones is the Trapezium? And how is is different from the Trapezoid?! While I've never taken Anatomy in German I still knew the names of a lot of bones and muscles in the human body. Funny though, they've got entirely different names in English.

I don't think it's a matter of vocabulary, though. It is just that I am embarking into completely new territory. And you know what? It's dead exciting!

Sunday afternoon

It's been so long that I don't even know where to start or what to say. Do you still know who I am? Have you missed me? Do I need an excuse for not posting for so long and being so lazy?

I had a great week in Germany with my parents. One day I met up with an old college friend of mine and we went shopping in town. Weather-wise that was the best day, it was just gorgeous sunshine all day. Which of course meant that we had to have some cold drinks in between our shopping escapades.

Other than that the weather wasn't so great, it was a mixed bag, not the week of glorious sunshine I had been hoping for. Maybe I jinxed it by packing my bikini, who knows. But that didn't matter so much. I read 4 books in that week, stuffed myself with cake and good food, tinkered with my parents' new digital camera (their first!) and didn't take a single photo of my own.

Back home then the weather just got worse. We had days and days of rain. The lawn in our back garden turned into a swamp. It was depressing.

But then, last Wednesday, our luck changed and the weather turned. It's now between 20 and 24 Celsius during the day and a chilly 7 or 8 degrees at night. There hasn't been any rain since last Tuesday and, according to the weather people, it's set to stay like this until next Friday. Fingers crossed.

So today we took a trip up the 'mountains' or what passes for it in our area here. We took the dogs, of course.


Honey loved it. She spent the whole time jumping around in the grass or sneaking up on mice (she never caught any, of course). Try and spot her in this photo! (Doesn't she have the perfect camouflage colour?)




Even Jack, who has been slowing down a bit lately and showing his (estimated) age of 11+, was trudging along happily.




And Felix and I enjoyed it, too. The view from up there is amazing and the sun was shining down on our backs and making the memories of all these dreadful, rainy "summer" months disappear. Sigh. This is why they're called "Sundays", I'm sure.

We are taking it easy this week...

... as you can see. It's not only that the weather is pretty bad, it's rainy and warmish at the same time, but we also have a visitor. Martha, a friend from university days, has come to visit for a week. We haven't seen each other for about 5 years or so.


So we're having a good time. We're going for drives to see things, like down to West Cork.




We're eating lots of yummy food, only some of it home cooked. We're watching DVDs, reading and lazing around.


Oh, and we're taking lots of photos. Like these on our trip to the coast:







And of course, these two always come along for the ride:






You'll hear more from me over the weekend. Before I swan off to Germany on Tuesday, to visit my parents for a week.

(Photos of myself and the last two of the dogs courtesy of Martha.)