Alert! …Engaged Bathroom!

Hi All

I have just taken a swipe at a baby wasp with the kitchen knife and killed it. What are the chances? And now, even though it was a wasp, and it was sitting on my spatula, the one I am using to stir my ‘pot luck’ veggie chilli, I feel gutted. Poor little bugger. It was only a baby. But I guess it would have grown into an angry adult at a rate of knots and then swooped back to give Chea her fourth sting of the year. Silly cat never learns. She has taken to galloping the length of the lounge after flies. Any fly. She prefers the big, horrid, blue-bottle type. They are actually worth catching, in her mind, because they taste jolly nice – to her. Listening, yes listening, to her chomping her way through a stunned fly is the stuff to put you off your ‘pot luck’ veggie chilli.

It is so-called because it really is pot luck what is in it. Today’s delicacy consists of the dreaded runner beans, (the ones that almost killed me last week – well, not the same ones, obviously) kidney beans, baked beans, black-eyed beans, mushrooms, courgettes, onions, tomatoes, tomato purée, garlic, ginger, whole chillies, crushed chillies, olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar and something else that has now skipped my mind – hopefully not half of a wasp!

I told Richard, the other day, that he needed to increase the roughage in his diet. He asked, “what’s roughage?”

It is far easier to show him than to try to explain, so tonight’s meal will be the answer to his question. This my dear Richard is roughage. Don’t feel sorry for him. It’s the weekend. He has the comfort of being able to use his own loo for the next two days!

Chea has now lost four collars with attached name tags and bells. This morning she had to go out in a plain red one with one bell and no name tag. The name tag is only for the ease of anyone who might find her in their lounge chasing flies and wonders who such a crazy cat belongs to because she is micro-chipped. I guess it is reassuring to know that the collars will release and fall off but then again it also poses the question of what kind of tight scrapes is she getting herself into to keep causing collars to ping off?

I didn’t post anything yesterday because I was a bit on edge. Not worried or stressed you understand, just a bit irritated. I was booked in with the doctor to pop along and have a lipoma removed in the afternoon. It wasn’t huge but it sat between two of my ribs and just at the spot where the bottom edge of my bra sits. Sometimes it was of little bother and then it seemed to flare-up and cause considerable discomfort. So, as I said, I was booked in to have it removed.

I guess I’m weird – or maybe I’m not and some of you are like me? If something is on the horizon I tend to go inward and quiet. I do it with everything. It is like I can’t have the outside world getting in the way and interrupting my concentration of the coming situation.  I used to do exactly the same thing when I did competition obedience with our border collie, Meg. On the day of the competition I would go quiet, within myself, and if anyone attempted to speak to me I’d give short, sharp answers. And then, the moment I stepped into the ring with Meg I was fine. No nerves or anything. And it is like that with other stuff. So Richard didn’t get much out of me yesterday. I had gone to Gail’s world. I do think it is a kind of quiet, nervous anticipation. But the moment we are off and running I’m fine.

Yesterday was also fine. Fun actually. The doctor and nurse were lovely. In fact, it was the same nurse that sticks me with my B12 jab every two months. The worst part was getting the table at the right height, making the angle-poise lamp work and finding a pillow for my wreaked neck. The height of the bed seemed a problem throughout and when I helpfully, I thought, suggested that the doctor lower the bed and then perform the op on his knees, he said that was a good idea and he was beginning to think along the same lines. I’ll do anything to get a man on his knees!! I said afterwards that I should have taken my camera so that I could have shared the little beauty with you all. Or maybe that would be pushing our friendship a little too far?

Today the wound is sore but hopefully, as soon as it has healed, the discomfort won’t return. Well it can’t can it? Because I have bravely gone under the knife and had the fatty lump removed. I did ask if they could suck out a bit of extra fat from around the belly and thigh areas whilst they were at it. I mean, I was there. They were there. I thought it made sense. Bloody good sense actually. Because then I wouldn’t have to be cooking ‘pot luck’ chilli that leaves the body before the fat content has had time to be excreted into the blood stream.

Right, me hearties, have a super weekend, catch you soon. Off to stir the roughage!

Pot-luck chilli

Take care my lovelies x