Teetering on the brink

EatingBeans

So, after getting too keen and trying to do too much at work and then crashing yesterday, today I woke up feeling better but deliberately just took baby steps towards normal. 

My biggest accomplishment was a good sort out of my bedroom with the help of dd2. I sat and sorted, and dd2 helped by moving stuff around. Great teamwork, and I now have more items added to the ‘to sell’ pile, and a much clearer room. I can now sit in my recliner and enjoy my morning cuppa in the peace of my own room, rather than having to retreat into the living room to escape the clutter. I used to get up at 5am to have an hour of ‘me’ time before the house woke up and I found it really beneficial fr my mental health. Since I have been ill, I have been barely able to get up in time to scramble to my desk in time to start work so I am hoping this little space in my bedroom will give me the quiet ‘me’ time but without losing so much sleep to get it. 🤞

Tomorrow’s no.1 goal is reconciling the budget. It keeps being on y to-do list but I keep running out of steam before I get to it so, in true ‘Eat that Frog’ style, I am plan to do it before anything else tomorrow. 

I at least know I got my £175 switching bonus from Nationwide today! 😁

EatingBeans

Budget finally reconciled and it is not as bad as feared. 👍

Still on track to be paying down debt rather than adding to it. 🎉 So much so that if I stay on track for the rest of the month I look on target to have paid down enough to be back to where I was last August (pre purchase of little dog 😁). 

I am also on track to have 100% saved up for the window in advance. 😱 Breaking the cycle of paying for house repairs on credit. Big milestone for me!

And, whilst the surveys I have been completing haven’t been paying out this month, the few bits that have, means my fivers target for the month now stands at £183.50/£250 aka 36/50 £5’s! 😁


What can I say, today has been a good day! I slept for 9.5hours last night and woke up feeling better again. Still not pushing it, I took the pups out in the garden for a good stretch of their legs this morning and when they came back in dd2 bathed them while I stripped their beds and got new bedding ready. I dried each one as they came back down the stairs (the dogs go up and down on command so dd2 and I just have to wait for the next one to arrive - it’s great teamwork!), and once done and fed they got snuggled up in their clean crates for a good snooze while I had a bath and the Friday Fairy dusts the house with fairy dust (I am sure that’s how it works, right? 🤔🤣).

I am pleased to report that the bathroom palms have bounced back from their near death experience and each now has a respectable number of big healthy leaves so I think they will be ok to go outside in a couple of weeks. They are happy where they are though so no need to rush them. Rather than plant them in the ground when they go out, I have decided that I might see how they do in just the large pots this year to give me the opportunity to return them to the bathroom next autumn if necessary. Ideally I would like to get them in the ground but they are not really hardy enough to withstand the winter until properly established and it would be such a pity to lose them. That said, I might change my mind if they are 5ft+ by then which is entirely possible given the speed they seem to grow! 🤣 I’ve always loved gardening but this new venture into tropical plants only started a couple of years ago. I fear it may be addictive. 😬

EatingBeans

Time to get up, pop some washing on and potter down the garden methinks. I deliberately stayed in bed this morning as I woke up sub par and I didn’t want to push it and put myself back again, but after checking all my accounts first think and celebrating again for still paying down debt despite paying dd2 for cleaning and the more expensive meals, I feel ok now so time to crack on with the day. 

Tbf I don’t think feeling blergh this morning was down to being ill this time, rather it was attempting to share my single bed with big dog! How on earth people sleep with their dogs every night and still manage to sleep is beyond me. Normally both dogs sleep in their crates at night but someone was having a party down the street and little dog was getting all worried about being on her own bless her. After a few attempts to settle her, and realising the outdoor party was unlikely to wind down any time soon, I brought her into my bedroom and popped her in big dog’s crate instead. That left big dog to free roam all night for the first time ever! As it happens, I’d sorted the washing into piles yesterday but not managed to get through it all, so the first 15minutes was him just bringing me various bits of washing and dropping them next to me. Eventually he realised I was not going to play and started trying to get comfy on the bed. He tried laying on me, squished up next to me, sitting on my head, digging up the quilt, spinning in circles to get just the right curl…it was not conducive to a good nights sleep! Eventually he gave it up as a bad idea and slept on the washing pile next to the end of the bed, just with the occasional lick of my toes to make such I was still there! 🤣 

So yeah, now my already dirty washing is extra ready for the machine after having a dog on it all night. I am just glad we had bathed the dogs yesterday or it could have been much worse! haha

dawnybabes

I’m not sure how people sleep with them either (that said at 42kgs she’s a little larger than most) but she snores when she’s upside down, I’d have to kill her ! She has the full run of downstairs so not hard done too. 

EatingBeans

When I woke up this morning I was absolutely convinced it was going to be a no spend day. Not so. 😞 Thanks to little dog coming into season today I have now forked out £91.93 on a combination of dog pants and calming treats after last night’s fiasco. It might have just been the people outside disturbing her but since noises outside have never bothered her before, I am taking no chances as bringing her into my room will not be an option whilst she is in season. Crates, gates and doors will be staying firmly closed while I am asleep as I don’t want any accidents!

This does mean that walks with big dog will no longer be optional. He now loses all access to the back garden as he will be kept in the front half of the house and little dog in the back. So, regardless of if I feel ill or not, he will have to go out several times a day. Little dog will be fine as she will be able to race around the back garden and no doubt keep me company while I am gardening, but it does mean I will have to tire big dog out first so he is happy to just sleep in his crate when I am not there. We haven’t done properly long daily walks since before I caught covid so this should be fun! 

I am just grateful that:
1, I am on annual leave for a week to give me chance to readjust to all the fresh air and walking, and,

2, that my room got sorted as it means I have somewhere to chill and keep big dog company, letting him stretch his legs a bit and have his morning lap cuddles!

The timing is not so great for dd2’s DofE though. It has thrown a spanner in the works for dd2 to start training little dog again (her DofE skill), but if necessary she might have to have a go with big dog. 😬
He’s lovely and always wants to learn, but he is very big (tall, long, and full of muscle not fat), plus he can be strong around other dogs, and is very much a mummy's boy, whereas dd2 isn’t very tall and hasn’t done much training with him before, so it might be an interesting combo! I did float the idea of her taking him back to flyball, but she gave that a hard pass! 🤣 (He loves flyball and is VERY enthusiastic!). Whatever she chooses, I am guessing the extra walking and calming treats will come in handy! 😁

EatingBeans

Crikey, is it only 4pm? 

Woke up this morning to Amazon hammering on the door with yesterday’s purchases. Can’t fault them for efficiency! 

I was absolutely knackered having kept awake by the neighbours music again - I went out back to locate to noise and go have a polite word, but then realised which house it was coming from and opted for reporting it to the police instead as the guy that lives there is the one that tried to break into my house half naked about 2years ago and it’s still unclear if it was drugs, drink or a mental illness. The police told me not to talk to him directly, so I took that as an indicator that their records indicate my gut feeling to be wary of him is pretty sound. I am not sure if they attended but there was less music and loud voices out back soon after, so I suspect word got to him in some fashion. It was still gone 11:30pm mind!

So, after my rude awakening from Amazon, I crawled back into bed only for d2 to join me having had a nightmare. Bless her, she is still just a little kid at heart sometimes. 🥰  To cheer dd2 up, we got up and ordered our allocated Easter McDs breakfast for £20.88. That did the trick. 😁 I had put an extra £20 in my budget this month especially for this treat and the extra 88p came from my monthly spending money, so all good, no budget stress.

Then the first day of dog separation for little dog’s for season, began. Big dog got his new anti spill water bowel for use in my bedroom and was more than happy to pee in the front garden on command which I was relieved to see. If I can get him to toilet in the front garden before I go on walks it makes like a lot easier as I can pick up after him and put it straight in the bin so I have my hands free during the walk. Normally I take them out into the back garden to do this but now it is off bounds I wondered how big dog would respond to it. It is a work in progress shall we say, but since I have never asked him to do it before I was pleased to see he was happy to at least try. 👍 Treats at the ready, we set off for our first long on the lead walk in ages. Big dog was awesome on the lead until he hit puberty and now he is a bit hit and miss. Practice obviously helps but the long covid means we are completely out of routine and when I have been taking him out it’s been further afield to quiet places where he can run off lead without me having to walk too much. Sadly, many of the local green spaces are being built over so what were his daily butt tucking spots have all vanished and the paths that are left are full with kids and other dogs. He genuinely gets a better chance to let off steam in the back garden than out on local walks which means I need to cover more ground when  taking him out for his exercise. It’s my main reason for being so desperate to move! Anyway, one decent hour long walk later, big dog got to stretch his legs, say hello to a few dogs and came back glowing with his happy grin, desperately trying to contain his joy and heel like a good boy at the same time. I however, came back exhausted. Pleased that I chose to take him on a long line as a middle ground between on leash and freedom, and happy to see that he hasn’t completely forgotten his manners, but equally aching from the general walking and pulling from when he got a little too keen and forgot himself.

Little dog was slighted less keen on her new living arrangements. She misses her brother far more than he misses her (at least for the moment 🤣), so I gave her his favourite blanket as a comforter. That cheered her up a touch but it was short lived. She has never been a dog that gets dressed up so she was not overly keen to have her new pants on. Lots of distractions and short bursts of time with them on is what I am going for. That and more washing! 🤦‍♀️ To make matters worse, little dog seems to have some how hurt her leg yesterday. It’s just a slight limp and given that she didn’t go anywhere yesterday to really do any damage, I am taking a watch and wait approach for now. I suspect she has just jumped off the sofa a bit funny and twisted or something because she is happy to have me touch all her paw and leg. The last thing I want to dog is take her to the vet when she is in her first season as I don’t want to add any more stress to her life right now. 

The new calming dog treats went down well with both dogs. No idea if they will do anything (I have never tried them before with any of my dogs), but if it helps them feel a bit better about the change to routine then I think it will be worth it. 🤞

EatingBeans

I ended up having a two hour nap to combat the tiredness of the 1 hour dog walk. 😬 I then spent a couple of hours with little dog and having dinner, only to feed and take big dog out for another half an hour, followed by an hour cuddled up with him. I realised that by splitting the dogs up, I also have to divide their toys and chews which they currently share and a lot have ended up in the bin over the past couple of weeks so they are a bit thin on the ground. Cue going back to Amazon when I realised they will need more. It is proving to be an expensive month dog wise! 😕

LzzyIsGod

I'm afraid I know very little about dogs but the maccies breakfast sounds great 🤣😂

EatingBeans

Another day of alternating between dog walking and recovering from dog walking. Big dog is loving being back out and about and is coping very well with being ousted from the living room and garden bless him. Little dog’s limp has not improved so I wrestled her onto her back to take another look at her paw in better light and it looks like she has something stuck in it right between her toes. I have no chance of being able to do anything with it so she will need the vet, no doubt at great cost, and with the window coming up I will have to put the vet bill on the credit card. 😞

EatingBeans

Got up, fed and let out little dog this morning, only to see that the limping has gotten worse. The vets didn’t open until 9am so I thought I would have one more go at trying to remove the splinter in her paw. Trying to get an almost fully sized Labrador that still has a puppy brain and currently going through the hormone throws of her first season, to lie still flat on her back while I poke around a paw that already hurts is no easy feet! But, with a lot of patience and a fair bit of ham, she finally got the idea and I was able to remove what was stuck between her toes. 🎉 I would have expected it to look more inflamed than it was given the degree of limping but I am going to give it a day to see if she starts putting more weight on it now that is out. 🤞I don’t want her to suffer but I really would prefer to avoid the vet bill if I can help her at home.