February 24th 2023 Random Ramblings; #Blogging #WritersLife #Imbolc #ValentinesDay #Cooking #LoomKnitting #Crochet #Pets

For those who might be interested...

 

Smashwords and Draft2Digital now distribute their books to Palace Marketplace, which increases the chances you can get my books via your local library.  You can read more about it in this post on the Smashwords blog.

 

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I've created blog lists on my sidebar to keep the blogs I follow in one place so I can (hopefully) remember to check them more often, since I'm no longer getting notifications for most of them.

 

Of course, this idea comes with no guarantees I won't still miss blog posts from time to time, but at least there's a better chance I'll visit the blogs I want to on a fairly regular basis again.  Anyway, there are three of them (as you'll see if you take a look) and they're lists where the most recently updated five blogs show, but you can expand them to see the rest when you want to.

 

If you follow my blog, know I generally visit yours, and don't see your blog on any of the lists, let me know - and drop the link in the comments - so I can add it, please.

 

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I'm learning fast that the key to getting anything done is to keep my to-do list for each day short, and rest regularly.  But it's not easy.  It's a constant juggling act between what I need to do, what I want to do, and what my body will let me do.  Not helped by the fact how I'm feeling varies from day to day, and I never know how I'll be doing today - and how much energy I'll have - until the day starts.

  And even on good days I tire easily, which means how I'm feeling could change at some point during the day.

As those who have followed my blog for some time might already know, this isn't actually a new struggle.  It's just that - as those of you who read my post from a couple of weeks ago may remember me saying in that post - it's at the point now where I can't just expect to be able to push through, and I've had to accept that I need to admit to it, as well as reduce my to-do lists for each day.  Which, unfortunately, has also meant reducing the amount of calls I'm involved in via the ACB community.

 

I'm still on the morning crew and crafters admin team.  I'm also still doing the cooking call and hosting sometimes.  I'm just reducing how many calls I'm committing to in a day so as to give myself plenty of time to rest (and potentially deal with other things) as well.  Because, with how drained I've been lately, keeping up with all the calls I was participating in meant I was literally too exhausted to do anything else besides that most days, and pushing myself harder than I should on good days to attempt to make up for it, but actually still not managing to catch up.

 

Maybe now I've done this I can even create a little time - on one of my good days - to work on some of those in progress writing projects I've been meaning to finish.  Can but hope, right?

 

Anyway...

 

We don’t typically do much for holidays anyhow, but with me having my hospital appointment to tire me out on February 2^nd, our Imbolc celebrations were basically non-existent.  Well, dinner had a dairy (or, in my case, dairy alternative, since my cheese was dairy-free vegan-friendly cheese) theme to it, so at least we did sort of do a little something.

 

Valentine’s Day is another holiday we don’t make a big fuss about, which involved takeout, like it usually does for us.  Also, Kelly brought me some Trinket the bear slippers, which you can see on my feet with Lilie checking them out in the below photo.

 

 

Unfortunately, Trinket already has some battle scars, since Lilie decided leaving them unattended was an invitation for her to claim one of them, even though they were unattended on the shoe rack, which she knows she’s not meant to take things off of.  Luckily we discovered this before she did too much damage.  But, as I said, Trinket does now have some battle scars from the encounter.

 

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I've been wanting to try and make flatbread for a while - had the recipe for who knows how long, and just never tried it - so was glad when it was suggested as a potential thing to make on one of the cooking calls, giving me an excellent excuse to give it a try.  We made it this past Tuesday, and I think it turned out well.  I took a photo of some of mine before I ate it all, so here's the photo:

 

 

Also, I finished a couple of small craft projects.

 

One was this little multi-coloured loom knitted stocking, which I made when I was learning to do a heel for socks.  I was going to make a pair of socks, but I just grabbed a small loom, and I had the wrong one, so it’s too small to be a sock.  I figured it would make a cute holiday decoration though, so added a loop to it with an icord so it could be hung up.  Anyway, here’s a photo:

 

 

The other was this crochet key.  It’s an old-fashioned style key with a heart-shaped piece at the end where you’d attach a ring to hang it up or put it on a keyring.  I did it in white, because that’s the colour the ball of wool I grabbed turned out to be.  Anyway, here’s a photo of it:

 

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Lilie often went to the petshop with us when we lived in Hastings, but – between him being a more nervous dog so needing longer to get used to go out, and lockdown happening shortly after it was time to start taking him places – Logan has never had the opportunity to go to one.  So, when Mam needed to take Cai to be fitted for a harness yesterday, we decided to take the boys to the petshop.

 

Both boys were a bit scared, though Cai especially.  The sight of all the food and toys seemed to help Logan deal with his fear and anxiety.  Not to mention, since most people were crowding around Mam and Cai rather than Logan – since Cai’s a smaller dog, plus clearly still a puppy – they were giving hme and Logan plenty of space, which is what both of us prefer.  Logan’s a big fan of social distancing, and I’m right there with him.

 

I’m actually very proud of Logan.  He was a very good boy.  No accidents in the petshop.  No stealing things from shelves (though he did clearly want, and almost take, a particular treat, which – since it was something I was fine with him having, and we’d planned on buying the dogs something anyhow – we did buy for him).  Also, when there was a point when one of the people who worked there needed to lead me somewhere, so I told Logan to follow her, he followed the woman well for me, despite not having had any guidedog training.

 

Both Logan and I were very glad to get home though, and are still trying to recover from the outing.

 

And, as I’m sure you can imagine, Lilie was incredibly happy when we got home.

 

I’m glad Logan had the experience, and he coped with it better than I thought he would, if I’m totally honest.  But I know Lilie would be much more enthusiastic about the idea of going for another trip to a petshop than Logan would.  I mean, he enjoyed the outing, but he was clearly a lot happier getting home than he was while out at the petshop – there was no wagging of his tail while we were out, but it wagged enthusiastically when we got home, and he spent half the night being sick.

Edited to add: Logan was still being sick, and also having issues from the other end to the point where he was bleeding, so I took him to the vet, who gave him 1.5ml of an anti-nausea medication called Vetemex Antiemetic while we were there, and has given us something called PROMAX to give him 18ML of once a day for the next couple of days to help settle his stomach and… Erm… Firm things up.  Logan is also on a chicken and rice only diet for a few days.  He seems physically fine, so the theory is it’s all anxiety-based, and the hope is the medication combined with a quiet few days at home will have him back to his old self by Monday.

Catching Up On #NewYear Celebrations, #Snow Reports, #Dog Photos, And #Crafting Creations

Mostly we don’t bother much about doing anything to see in the new year, but there were fireworks around here (which we didn’t get photos or videos of) and I spent new year’s eve participating in the ACB communityathon.

 

I hosted for it during one of the hours, spoke to highlight some of the events I’m involved with that happen in the community during a couple of the other hours, and just listened to what others had to say during other hours.  It was a long night for me, but it was fun.  Plus, there’s a fundraiser that's held during it, and we raised a good chunk of money to help keep the ACB community going, so that’s definitely a good thing.

 

Yes.  Yes.  I know we’re already basically half way through January.  But I figured, since I hadn't done so, I’d go ahead and tell you about my new year’s eve celebrations anyhow.  Better late than never, right?

Hope you enjoyed whatever you did - if anything - to see in the new year.

 

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Speaking of being slow to share things:

 

 I’m slow posting these, because I had a load of other things I wanted to post first.  But we’ve had a little snow a couple of times since the start of December, and I wanted to show you the photos.  I know it’s nothing compared to what some people have had, but I’ll take what I can get when it comes to snow, as those who know me well already know.

 

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The first time we got snow was on December 10^th.  It was a light dusting, which was only just enough to frost the ground, and which later turned in to slush and then ice.  But here are some photos we took of it while it was still snow anyhow:

 

 

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Then there was an even lighter dusting of snow on December 16^th, which didn’t last long.  But at least it lasted long enough for us to notice it, as well as to get a photo of it…

 

 

And for me to take Lilie and Logan out to see it…

        

 

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They keep predicting more snow.  I’m crossing my fingers the predictions come true.  I always keep hoping.

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I also have a couple of photos of Lilie I had yet to show you.

 

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We took these photos of Lilie by the coffee table on December 30th 2022, while we were playing with her in the living room that morning, but I didn't get a chance to share them before now.  So, here they are:

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Also, last week we got the dogs some new beds, because Lilie's leg issue makes it tricky for her to jump on to the metal framed ones we had (which kind of resembled camping beds for dogs, in my opinion).

 

We'd brought the other ones because we were having trouble finding baskets big enough that they could share if they wanted to, but when I was looking for baskets to make it easier on Lilie, I found the large dog baskets I'd been looking for in the first place, so I grabbed a couple to replace their old beds.

 

Here's a photo of Lilie trying one of them out:

 

Since I never get the cushion things for the baskets (due to not being sure if Lilie has outgrown her puppy habit of shredding those, them not being easy to wash, and them costing almost as much as the basket itself) they usually have a pile of blankets in their beds, so there should have been more of them in that basket.  But I was washing the pet blankets before letting them go in the new beds, and those were all I'd managed to get washed and dried in time to have them in that basket before bed time.  Lilie seemed to consider it enough for the time being, so that's the main thing.  The rest of the blankets for that basket will have been added by the time you're reading this though.
 

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Lastly, I have a couple of completed craft projects to show you.

The first is this little loom knitted drawstring bag:

And the other is this crocheted snowman hat toilet roll cover:

The holly leaves weren't officially part of the pattern, but I'd learned to do them for the dogs' holiday collars, thought they'd be a cute addition, so added them because I felt like making and adding them.