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APRIL 201030thWell, a spectacular fall yesterday but would probably have looked very funny on film. I had just sorted out the litter box and was putting the litter bag back when Kitten Cat decided to leap from the window sill and sort of curve round from across the room and into her litter box, just like a cartoon cat. Unfortunately the body of moi was in the middle of this route and she flattened me, I hurt several bones, hit my head, may have actually cracked my ribs and was covered in (thankfully clean!) litter. Now, I know she likes the litter box when it has just been refreshed but that is taking things to extremes. She had the cheek to trot over me rather than round me when she came out of the box too. At times she is one aggravating cat. I wouldn't mind so much but I had got her a treat, a free sample of Purina One, and she loved it. So add ungrateful to the list of character traits! Marjorydaw cme round yesterday evening and we sorted some boxes out to be stored in the cupboard and spent more time than we should trying to plan how I am going to set out the rooms when the work has been done as opposed to actually getting the rooms ready. Girl Talk as opposed to Girl Power, but we had a lovely time anyways. My doctor has telephoned because this set of bloods were even worse than the last set so the medication has to be adjusted and we have another unscheduled visit to pick up the meds BUT we are lucky to live in a country where it is that simple. Imagine if the meds were not available or too expensive to buy. For some people that is a reality, so it may be inconvenient to go and get the meds but as I say I am very, very lucky. Not so lucky is the fact that the exhaust fell off the car today so that is another thing which has to be done at the same time as preparing for the demon boiler men. Seems to be our week for unscheduled happenings because Car Mechanic Dust Bunny is very worried about his dog so we have to take Doggie to be checked over today too. All go, isn't it. Those of you who read regularly will spot a pattern here. Yes, I did sign up for shopping cart software and I need to learn to use it and get the shop up. Which requires concentration. Peace. Tranquility. . . 28thWell Thunderbirds are definitely Go here and I have the most thumping headache. Little Lady will be day boarded out to Web Pages Dust Bunny for the duration of the works on the flat, and many thanks to him too. Those living in the South East may take this as an advance warning of storms and foul weather for not only is next week started by a Bank Holiday but also Chaos thinks he is going to work on the garden whilst the flat is more or less out of bounds. Taking Kitten Cat, who is usually a flat cat and who hates wateer, outside with him. Couldn't expect better results if you paid a Rain Maker, could you, sigh. On the plus side Chaos has unearthed a suprise which he bought for me, more than two years ago. BEAUTIFUL cream canvas cafe styled blinds for the bathroom! They are gilly gorgeous! I still do not intend staying here any longer than i have to but the bathroom will be like something out of Changing Rooms! As to progress here, well, as you know, I favour calm and Chaos favours, well, as the name suggests, absolute Bedlam and we surely have that today by the bucket full! 27thA busy day today, picking up a computer for car mechanic dust bunny a microwave for web pages dust bunny so we have two happy bunnies now, giggle. The chalets were finally wound up this week and are no more,and I am sad about that, but it does close down the focus for the family and that is one less thing to help out with. Timing could have been better in that I need all hands to the pump here to prepare for next weeks' repair works, but there you go. This year looks to be the year of tying up loose ends and we plan a return to the Coast next year although I have negotiated a few day trips to get my fix of the North Sea. 26thAnother day, another flood. Yup, I gave the goldfish a water change aided and abetted by Kitten Cat! I never learn and neither does she but the fish are very happy. Nemo is banging the tank with his log but it is his turn tomorrow, once the water has aged and warmed. Today is the seventh anniversary of my Mother's passing and it still seems like yesterday so this time of year is always difficult. Thank heaven for Chaos who decided today was the day that the vegetable rack could be picked up. It is a five tiered chrome thing which has to be self assembled and it took me about five hours because there are lots of silly little nut things which have to secure the rods and I kept dropping them and Kitten Cat kept playing football with them. Finally the thing is together and she has a new game - bop the vegetable out of the tray! I give up. What price a tidy kitchen? 25thA bit of progress today in that dead car is ready for removal and at last that job is done! Thought it would never, ever go! I am not sure if it is shock but I am sicker than ever today. Everyone else wants the fans on and I am shivering in jackets! I think I have finally chosen the shopping cart software, and if I am as good with this as I am with cash crusader scripts that is going to be great fun for the Foxies but much hair tearing and carpet chewing for me. There is a huge pot of stew simmering away because Web Pages Dust Bunny has now suffered the demise of both cooker and microwave so I am on cook rota today. There have also been wall to wall guests so an exhausting day before the computer was even switched on. Then again, we are heading for summer so I suppose it is time to go up a gear. I miss the Island but hopefully in about two years we shall have another coastal foray and the holiday season rhythm will click in once more. 24thWe have the most beautiful day here, blue skies, warm and no biting wind. Kitten Cat is sunning herself on the window sill and we have peace, perfect peace. If you live in the UK and want the link to the site from which you can complete surveys in exchange for your favourite store vouchers (I collect Argos vouchers!) please click here to email me and request details. The photos for the car parts on the carpartmart are being re-taken this week and hopefully whoever does take them will have the knack because the last lot were just not able to be used or resized. I have just told them to get on with it because when the work on the boiler starts they will have to wait another three weeks before they have a chance of getting anything done here. One week for the work and two weeks for me to recover, no kidding. You know I typed "peace, perfect peace" three paragraphs ago? Well, I AM GRATEFUL but Web Pages Dust Bunny has just hopped out to mow the lawns so peaceful it ain't no longer . . . 23rdHappy St George's Day to One and All Thank you for all the nice cards and messages in honour of my birthday. I can confirm that I had a quiet but happy time and yes, I did manage to squeeze in my favourite sin food, a Macdonalds Fillet! Kitten cat had a little of the ice cream from the desert so she was licking her chops for most of the evening also. Chaos has severely upset the four legged fiend though. He has taped down the carpet because she has suddenly started to pull up the carpet to see what is underneath. Is she cross!!!! She will not even look at Chaos, never mind respond when he calls her, giggle. There is more disruption in the pipeline for here. You will see from the notice on the Home Page that from 4th-8th May work is being caried out on the boiler and radiators and at times there will be no electricity or water, so that is not going to be a fun week. You may know that I had hoped to have relocated by now but it has not been possible because al the adaptations I need and available accommodation so it seems as if I have to buckle down to get a server etc and stay here for the foreseeable future. Maybe giving up on moving will make it finally happen, the way Lady Luck moves, but we shall see. 22ndYou will not be hearing much from me today because it is my 53rd birthday and I am not happy about this since I feel life has sneakd up and altered my birth certficate because I am sure I am 29. Really. I am getting lots of nice surprise visitors and some nice gifts and generally making a bit of a piggy of myself on cake etc. This IS the life . . . 21stAt last this thing is running faaasssst! About time too. I had to uninstal and reinstal Mozilla but wow! it is just so wonderful to be zipping along today. Much less stressful too. We have not been receiving much post and apparently this may be due to the lack of planes because mail is sent by air within the UK so I suppose I had better get the floor strengthened for the mass which will flump onto it at the weekend. poor Postman! 20thAnother good day and I won a whole ten cents forecasting regarding the new Grandson of the WM of ConfusedCash. Congratulations to Deb on her highly desired status of Grandma! She has been waiting so long for this and little Gabriel Joseph has now arrived, perfect in every way. He managed to avoid sharing a birthday with me but his birth weight was almost the same as mine, all those years ago, and I won the ten cents! Today is the birthday of my schoolfriend Lorraine. We lost contact years ago, but when we were teenagers we always shared a birthday because we were two days apart and therefore had a joint celebration on the in between day. I always think of her on 20th April and wonder where she is now. I shall raise a glass to her anyways. Connection wise we have had a bad day here and had to uninstall Mozilla, which is a shame as I much prefer this browswer. However, when the time marches on to 9pm and you have done nothing drastic measures are called for, sigh. Just to round off the day I have nearly broken my neck falling in the hall - Kitten Cat has taken full advantage of my preoccupation with browsers and connectivity and has hauled up the entire hall carpet to see what is under there. I said it before and I say it again. The people who say that pets lower stress levels have never met my critters! 19thWe still have summer! It will not last because it will soon be time for the Wimbledon tennis tournament and we all know that this eent rivals St Swithin in its rain making potential. I have had a few visitors over the weekend and my new air freshener has caused great entertainment, the visitors copying the advertisement for this product and repeatedly moving around near it in order to set it off. How to keep visitors entertained at very low cost! The device is switched off at night in case Kitten Cat investigates and sets off a puff of fragrance into her face. Since the air freshener is placed next to the plant she is not supposed to eat the only time she ventures up on top of the piano is when I am safely out of the way and fast asleep, so the day time risk is minimal. Another £10 of Argos vouchers arrived in the post today. If you live int he UK and would like to complete surveys to gain some vouchers please do drop me a mail (click here) and I will send you the link. We are basking in sunshine today after a night which was absolutely freezing so it is a bit like the Sahara at the moment. I should haved liked to go out but the weather is making everyone too sleepy, sigh. When we bought the shopping we bought some bleach which has an allegedly child proof top, which is fine but it is also me-proof so I need assistance just to open the thing so that I can carry out the weekly sink blach dosing. Is there anyone out there who can devise a child proof top which can be opened by people with weak grip? It would be interesting to know. After a frustrating week when very little has got done online due to the connectivity being a rat-pig, things are flying today, which is a huge relief. If this keeps up we may even get a few things onto the shop page - wow! 17thFinally this thing is whizzing along and I can catch up with all the sites. Some comedian has made me a lot of extra work by sending more than 600,000 (yes, that many) spam mails to one of the sites so I have had to change the email address there, just one more helpful way to waste the time of a web mistress, sigh. I have been out shopping and today is a beautiful sunny day. It was a real pleasure to be out and I did not really want to come home. I snapped up another half price air freshening gadget, this time one of those which automatically send out a puff of fragrance when they sense movement. So that is every room covered now and I must curb my fragrance addiction. I am going to update the picturs on the sites to reflect the oncoming summer season, and try to think up a competition to make up for the lost opportunity during Easter when there were server problems, so it is all go today! 15thWe have spent most of the last four days evicting a trojan which seems to love this computer and then good old Chaos downloaded some software for the camera phone and let the thing back in again . . . Harsh words were spoken . . . I am still pretty rough because I am not absorbing the Thyroxine and it does not help that Kitten Cat chose to sleep right across my throat last evening. I thought I was having an asthma attack but I was spluttering on cat hairs and was she mad about being disturbed! As some of you know, I regularly scare myself to death watching, not horror films, but programmes explaining earthquakes, flooding, tornadoes etc and of course, volcanoes . . . My friends think I am a silly billy but the curent situation whereby all flights are totally banned due to a cloud of volcanic ash has got them thinking! I am just glad that there is nobody in the immediate vicinity of the volcano and the progress of the eruption surely makes much more enthralling viewing than the coverage of the election (non) compaigns currently in progress, giggle. 11thWe have had a right palava here today. We lost Kitten Cat and could hear this frantic banging, so assumed she was trapped behind the wardrobe. She has become a little more rounder in the tummy and maybe she had just got that little bit too sleek to get into and out of her hidey hole. Anyways, after three rounds, a fall and a submission with the wardrobe we could still hear all this banging and see no cat. Eventually we tumbled that the banging was coming from outside the flat. She must have sneaked out! She had been frantically banging the door with her paws to get back in and I now have a heavy lump on my lap because she refuses to let me out of her sight, poor thing. 10thWe have just been late night shopping at ASDA and after scanning everything through I am cream crackered. I did get myself a little treat though. I have wanted a little air freshener puffer thingie whatsit, one of the ornamental looking ones, for a long time, and today there were some at a fraction of their normal price because the fragrance is going out of fashion. However, once this fragrance is exhausted I can buy other fragrances. The device only send fragrance when it is pushed, so in theory it lasts for a couple of months but good old Chaos can not resist puffing the thing every time he goes past, so I rather doubt it will last that long! Kitten Cat thinks it is the Devil incarnate and has had several cautious attempts at swiping it from the shelf onto the floor. I think it is the puff noise which is irritating her. Rotten owner that I am I don't care, giggle. I love the fragrance. 9thMarjorydaw came round last evening and bought me a lovely lamb faced mug full of chocolate easter eggs. Woohoo! Now THAT is the way to treat a Foxy Lady. Naturally Kitten Cat is trying to access the mug and eggs but chocolate is a no no so she has to sulk about it. Oh life is so hard for Kitten Cats. This thing is loading so slowly today that I feel as thought I am going to drop off to sleep waiting for each page. My sites are being repaired one by one so hopefully next week I shall be able to have a grand contest to make up for the down time. We are apparently expecting a quiet weekend here in Foxy Land and that would be very welcome so that I can catch up with online matters. However, I am not holding my breath . . . 8thI can not get warm today and the treatment to regularise the thyroxine absorption hasn't worked yet so we have a corpse in need of a shroud here today, big time. Kitten Cat is maximising this great opportunity to shred whatsoever she likes because she knows by the time I have managed to get to my feet she can be anywhere else in the flat that she wishes. She will still expect her treats this evening and like a soft fool I shall probably give them to her too because I love to watch her either chase or catch to command and she has become extremely adept at the catch too. I am trying to teach her to bring her toy to me in exchange for a reward because she drags it across the room then sits beside it with big, pleading eyes and expects me to haul myself over to pick it up and play with her. I got a sad newsletter today from my local MP to let everyone know he is standing down at the General Election, which is a real blow since I have come to know him well over the years and he has been extremely helpful to me. I suppose there will be no MP surgeries at all during the election campaign and that is also sad because every time I have been to a surgery it has been packed out with people. What are we all going to do! 7thWell, I have found out why I feel like rabbit pooh all the time, I have stopped absorbing Thyroxine and I is sick, sick, sick. This happens from time to time and thankfully corrects itself so although it is a pain and a nuisance at least I know it is not anything to worry about. I am back on monthly blood tests and follow up, sigh. The only good thing is that I get a monthly pick at the free books box in the surgery. Books are placed in thereby people who have finished reading them and other people read them. I have to admit to rarely taking a book back but I do take in a lot of magazines. Site wise I still have four sites to be repaired by the host but at least things are moving in the right direction at last. I filled a very satisfying survey today wherein I could thoroughly rubbish the mutant ninja washer dryer. Childish, I know, but it does make me feel good to let the world know about this defective machine. On the four legged front Kitten Cat's big (enormous, actually) sister has had to be fitted with a collar with a bell to stop her decimating the local wildlife. I give it forty eight hours max before the collar is hung from a branch, giggle. 6thI have been down to the coast today. One of the meetings was close enough so we took a smal detour. I did not go paddling, not this time, and probably this was just as well as it is absolutely freeeeezin here. I treated myself to some hanging files for the new pink cabinet too so it was a successful day. Another source of joy is that my Host is apparently well. Back ups hae started to come through for Victorianemails, so hopefully all sites will be running properly within the next few hours. Phew! Double rejoice. My Host is all right and the sites are all right. The only fly in the ointment is that I have been recalled to my doctor because the blood tests which were taken last week are not showing good results. Which is about normal for me. I do not think I have had an entirely normal set of blood results in all the time they have been taking them, and thankfully it does not seem to have any serious ill effect for me. 5thi hope you had a happy and peaceful Easter Sunday. I was hijacked by friends and forced to eat a delicious meal and lots of chocolate. Oh I put up a fight but I just had to go along, giggle. Tomorrow I am hoping to receive news of the host on five of my sites so that I can move forward on that, and there are some other meetings scheduled for the week, so it looks like a busy one and a good thing that I have rested up over the weekend. Hopefully there will also be more happenings to record here and liven things up a bit, too. 3rdIf you are a member of one of the five sites affected by the hosting problem, this is an update for you. I am going to telephone the domain registry on Tuesday and see if they can get a message through and hopefully an answer for me so that I can make some progress. I also have some items to go onto the shop, but until I know whether this site will also have to be transferred I can not really make any progress. Apart from that I hope everyone is having a very happy Easter weekend. In Foxy Land the bathroom is going to be painted next week, so I suppose I shall have designer cat print wallpaper in all the other rooms by the end of the week! 2ndThis place has been like Picadilly Circus with wall to wall visitors. It is always lovely to see people but even Kitten Cat is hiding, exhausted! Today is of course Good Friday and time for those of us who celebrate Easter to reflect on the whole Easter story, before our glorious celebration of the Resurrection on Sunday. Tomorrow I shall have another try to track down my missing Host so that all of my sites will work correctly. I can only hope that she is well. The pink filing cabinet has arrived and already there is a problem. The moment the drawer is opened Kitten Cat is in the drawer. I am under the illusion that I shall be putting my files into that same drawer . . . I bought the filing cabinet through eBay and it was less than a third of the cost of a cabinet from a conventional shop, in part because the lock was faulty. I am extremely fortunate in that one of Chaos's many skills is that of locksmith. He looked at the lock, said "oh yes, this should bend the other way" and hey presto. I have a perfect locking (and unlocking) cabinet! Now that doesn't happen very often, does it! Maybe at last my luck is changing. Links to previous months January , February , March
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