Hi everyone. This is Lilie the Westie.
Me and Logan went to the groomer a couple of days ago.
But Mummy and Daddy forgot to get photos of us. Sorry.
Only Daddy takes us to the groomer now. Mummy can’t any more. I don’t understand why, but Mummy and Daddy say that with Mummy being sick it’s easier if Daddy takes us by himself. And me and Logan don’t mind too much, as long as we get to go. We’re always glad to see Mummy when we get back home though.
Lots of licks,
Lilie
I’m sorry I’ve not been around the blogs lately. Between struggling with energy levels, health issues being a constant thing I have to deal with, and dealing with the mental/emotional aspects of the past couple of months, I’ve not been very productive. And our recent heatwave didn't help matters. I’m trying to get back in to doing things – reading blogs being one of those things – but I’m having a rough time adjusting to how things are now. I’ve popped by and read posts from time to time, but not commented, and I know I missed several posts. So… Sorry. And if there’s anything you spacifically hoped I wouldn’t miss, please tell me about it – or direct me to the post where I can read about it – in the comments section of this post. Thanks.
*~*
I got a couple of nice cards from Deanna from Life WithDee. One after she learned I’d been in hospital, and the other after she learned about my Mam’s death. Here they are:
Thanks, Deanna.
*~*
Kelly got me a glittery pink unicorn cuddly toy as a get well present when I was in hospital. Here I am holding it:
And my Mam brought me this bear holding a heart:
It turned out to be the last thing she ever brought any of us, since it was right after that she went in to hospital for the last time. When we were sorting her stuff after she died, I grabbed the little pink teddy bear that was the last thing I ever brought her (which I got her during one of her recent hospital stays) and the two teddy bears are now sat together on one of the shelves that my cuddly toys are stored on.
*~*
Mam got this clock when I was really young – Maybe about five years old or so? She’s hung in my Mam’s home ever since. I made it known years ago that when she died I wanted the clock, so now she’s mine. I thought I’d share her with you, and let you hear her chime the hour.
Yes, I did mean to say “she” and “her” in the previous paragraph. Mam said she was a Grandmother clock, because she’s a small Grandfather clock, so she’s always been a “she” to us.
Anyway, here’s the video of her chiming the hour:
The past month or so has not gone at all to plan. Plus, I’ve been a really bad blogger lately. I’ve not been visiting or commenting on any of the blogs I follow, or even responding to comments on my own blog. In fact, it was all I could do to make sure a post went up each Friday. And I can’t even promise I’ll catch up with your blogs soon, because I don’t know if I will.
Why?
Because it turned out the comment I made a while back – I forget if it was at the end of May or the start of June - about already borrowing spoons from July by that point was more accurate than I thought.
I don’t have the energy for a long post, but wanted to explain, so I’ll keep this short:
I was so busy worrying about my Mam (who isn’t doing too well, for anyone wondering) that I was not only pushing myself harder than I knew I should be, but also not paying attention to how I was doing physically, other than vaguely registering that I wasn’t feeling too great. The result being that I ended up very unwell, eventually ending up spending almost a week in hospital after being rushed there with a temperature of 40.3 C and drifting in and out of consciousness, because of a kidney infection that got out of control and ended up spreading in to my blood stream. It’s a good thing Kelly stepped in and called for medical help for me when he did.
Actually, if I didn’t have Kelly I don’t know what I’d do right now. After several days of IV antibiotics and almost two weeks of oral antibiotics I’m doing better. But I tire more quickly than ever, so I’m not achieving much each day besides the essential tasks. Even writing this has tired me out enough that I need a nap, despite my not having done anything else except have some breakfast this morning.
Sorry. I'll visit your blogs again when I can. And, sorry. This is the best I can do for an update.
We're already a couple of days in to June. Can you believe it? Where has this year gone?
Thankfully, we haven't yet seen any extremely hot
weather, though the weather has remained warm. I mean, it is sticking
around the high end of my tolerance for heat, but hasn't yet gotten
beyond that point. It's been around 20C in the day, and around 11C at
night (that's somewhere around 70F for the daytime temperature, and
somewhere around 54F for the nighttime temperature). I've got no complaints about the nighttime temperatures, and I'm even OK with the daytime temperatures at the moment, but my preference for cooler weather means I don't want it to get warmer. This is perfectly fine, thank you very much! If it was up to me, it would stay like this until it's time for the cold Winter weather to return. What? I can dream... Can't I?
Anyway, if I could have done exactly what my body wanted to during
the past week, most of the time would have been spent in bed, resting. The trouble is, when you spend an extended
period of time – such a s a couple of weeks, for example - neglecting any task
that isn’t completely essential, you eventually find yourself needing to tackle
many of those tasks, with the addition of any that crop up while you’re trying
to catch up. And that’s the position I
found myself in, so that I spent the week alternating between trying to rest enough to at least recover enough spoons to function, and trying to actually do all the things. Resting enough to regain a few extra spoons would have been even better, but I’m
just
grateful I was able to manage to rest enough to get enough spoons to
have the
energy to just about cope with doing what I did. I feel like I've been stuck in survival mode
to make it all happen, which isn't ideal, but it got things done.
Sometimes that
has to be good enough, and this was one of those times.
So, despite everything, last weekend was mainly devoted to catching up on housework and blog posts and such, with a couple of phone calls and Zoom calls thrown in, and rests where and when I could. I might have skipped the Zoom calls, but they were my book clubs, one of which I actually facilitate myself, so I didn’t want to not be there. I mean, even the one I facilitate I could have skipped; I could have had someone step in for me and facilitate the ACB Crafters book club in my place if I needed to. But I wanted to be there, exhausted and in pain though I was.
If you're interested: we'll be reading "The Chocolate Bear Burglary" (A Chocaholic Mystery, #2) by JoAnna Carl in June for the ACB Crafters book club, and the June book for the 18th and 19th century book club is "False Colours" by Georgette Heyer.
Then, with the weekend not even completely over, my Mam ended up back in the hospital.
Still being beyond exhausted from about two weeks of dealing with both Mam’s dogs on top of our own, I knew there was no way I could deal with both of them coming here again. But Izi is a relatively calm dog as a rule, so we agreed - with some reluctance, I admit, due to my level of exhaustion - to take her back if someone else would have Cai. I mean, I feel bad for Izi and Cai having to be separated from each other on top of being pulled away from Mam and their home again, but Cai is a very energetic pup, who becomes very easily overexcited, and having him here again when I’m already so drained from the last time would not have been a good plan. So Izi came back to stay with us Sunday evening, while Cai went to stay with someone else. At the time of writing this, Mam is still in hospital, and Izi is still here.
Lilie and Logan are accepting the situation, though with some reluctance. They like Izi, but are clearly not happy about their play date and sleepover lasting so long. All three dogs are wondering when Izi will be going home, and hoping it will be soon. They really don't understand.
Anyway, since I was hoping not to fall behind on things again, the rest of the week basically continued in a similar manner to how the weekend had gone, with trying to catch up on – and keep up with – things both online and offline, attending a couple of Zoom calls, and resting when possible - which rarely seemed to be. Only from Sunday evening onward we were doing so while having an extra dog around the house.
Despite somehow - and please don't ask me how - being reasonably successful at getting things done, I feel like I've been stumbling through the past couple of weeks in a haze of exhaustion, and would just love a few days where I can just rest and not need to worry about doing anything else. Unfortunately, things need to be done (and the things I'm doing by choice I feel like I need to do to retain enough of my sanity to be able to deal with the rest) so I don't see that happening any time soon.
*~*
In other news...
Just like basically everything else in the universe right now (or, so it seems) KDP printing costs are increasing, which means the price of the paperback versions of my books will need to increase to reflect that if I want to get any royalties from paperback book sales, which - though I'm not publishing with any hopes of becoming rich - I would like to do, as I'm sure you can appreciate.
Thankfully, they had a “bulk update” option they were offering on the author dashboard, so I was able to take advantage of that, rather than needing to update the price of around 60 titles individually. I do wish it hadn’t been necessary though.
I had hoped to say something before the update to the prices was completed, and to give you a chance to grab them at the original price before they actually increased in cost, but I forgot to mention it in last week's post, and then they did the update quicker than I expected after I clicked the "bulk update" button (they said it would take a couple of weeks, but I got an email saying it was done within a couple of hours). At the time of writing this, the changes haven't been reflected on their pages, so they're still at the original prices, but the price may have increased to the new list price before you have a chance to see this and grab them. Sorry. If you hurry though, you still might be in time to grab them at the old price...I mean, it couldn't hurt to check, could it? If you want to grab copies, that is.
