The Flu...

I've been lying on the sofa under the red fleece blanket for most of the day, because I've come down with the flu. I'm coughing and sneezing and I have an aching body and I can't be far from a box of tissues. It is very ironic that I should get sick at the end of the winter, because I never get sick (hardly ever) and I certainly wasn't expecting it now when it is nearly springtime. I don't know how I caught this bug, but I'm not happy with it, because I generally feel miserable.

I'm not a very good patient and like to complain, but there's nobody here to complain to. I also like to be made a fuss over, but that's not possible either, so I'm being as nice as I can possibly be to myself and I'm drinking lots of cold drinks and keeping myself warm. The runny nose is the worst, because it leaks pretty much non-stop and I have to have a tissue handy all the time and make sure that Tyke doesn't tear apart the used ones. That's so gross!

I wish I could add a microscopic image of a virus to this post, but I'm too sick to go look for one. Instead I'll add something nice.

Have a good day, be on your guard against those invisible germs!

Ciao,
Nora

Rain...

It's been raining non stop since I woke up this morning and even Tyke can't be fooled into going out into it. He'll quickly go out back, but looks at the sky to try to figure out what this wetness is that's sprinkling down on him. I let him out often, because he comes in so quickly that I get the impression that he hasn't done what he's supposed to do. To be on the safe side, he goes out every hour or so.

This morning his special puppy food was delivered that I ordered on line at my favorite pet shop. I ordered a 10 kilo bag and I'm curious to see how long it will last. Tyke has a good appetite and has been eating Jesker's left overs, but now I want him to eat more specialized food. He is growing, because I've had to move his collar up two notches. It was too tight. I noticed that when I was giving him an extended petting session yesterday. I don't want him to get fat and am constantly checking his belly for leanness. He doesn't get any food if his belly still feels a bit round. If it's empty, and it's time to eat, he gets food. I feed him in the morning and the evening and he gets a little snack in between as a reward if he has gone outside and done his business.

He's pretty easy to distract from negative behavior. I don't have to get cross with him, but just call him over and get his mind focused on something else. He really does do his best, although some habits are hard to break, such as wanting to dominate Gandhi over and over again. Gandhi is giving out very mixed messages and goes to look for him and parks herself right under his nose, so it's very confusing to Tyke who thinks she wants to play with him. He thinks it's all a game and that she is willing. He doesn't realize that she's a reluctant participant and confused herself. Tyke thinks they're married for life.

It just stopped raining and I went for a quick walk around the block with him. We met one of our neighbors with her dog and her dog was quite taken with Tyke and made advances. It was a girl dog at the ripe age of 12. She put all of her charms into it and Tyke was quite amused and flattered. He longingly looked after her when she went on her way with her owner. He would probably jump her if he got the chance. He's not as innocent as he looks, that feisty little thing.

It's been a long time since I've felt happy. It's been many months, but the last two days I sometimes feel little pinpricks of it. They are so tiny that they are hardly noticeable, but they are there nevertheless. I hope these pinpricks become larger and that they will turn into seconds and minutes and hours, but I'm afraid to hope for too much. I miss being happy. You don't know what you miss until you start feeling it again and now that I do on occasion, I want more of it. I long for it very much. It is a state of mind that I miss as much as blue skies and sunshine. It's awful to always feel like the colors black and gray and to never feel yellow and red. I don't know how I've lasted through all these winter months. It's been such a hell. All that's kept me hanging in there was the thought that there would be an end to it one day and the end is coming in sight now. I´m plain worn out from it.

The fact that there are the tips of leaves of plants showing up in the dark wet ground now gives me hope. Some shrubs have buds on them. It´s all full of promise and soon I will put this dark period behind me. Next year I´ll be smart and use the sunlight replacement lamp again, though I did not really believe in it. I´ll have to believe in it if I´m going to survive another winter. But I can´t think about that now. First I have to get ready for spring and thoroughly enjoy that and come back alive. I can start sitting on café terraces with my friend Yvonne again and take photographs of the world. I feel like I´m about to be let out of jail and join the human race again.

Well, so much for those ponderous thoughts. I´ve felt so trapped inside myself and inside that entity called winter that loomed so large around me with it´s darkness and cold and snow and ice and rain. I´m ready to be liberated from it.

This is the end of my epistle. While I´m typing this, I´ve been liberating Gandhi from Tyke´s amorous hold many times. I do want to break him of the habit.

Have a good day! Wish the rain away.

Ciao,
Nora

Sensibility.

I didn't realize that all that walking I did with Tyke on Saturday would wipe me out so much on Sunday, but it did. I'm not used to so much exercise anymore, so I was very worn out the next day and did a lot of sleeping. It's really silly when you think that three long walks should tire me so much, but they did. You would have thought that I had trekked through a jungle all day and had suffered terrible hardships.

I did manage to go for a walk with Tyke in the afternoon on Sunday and I paid attention to people's gardens and noticed that all sorts of green things were happening. Bulbed plants were popping out of the ground, but there were also other plants coming up green and some ground covers were showing new growth. This all makes me feel somewhat joyful and gives me hope. Spring is near and I see the signs of it. There is irrefutable proof. Later on in the afternoon we made a short outing to my sister's house so I could borrow some milk. Any outing is fine with Tyke. As long as it has bushes and trees to sniff and pee on he is happy. I've got me another one of those dogs that needs to mark his territory.

It's raining outside like was predicted and we will not be going anywhere soon. We'll have to take a short walk in between showers. I don't know how Tyke feels about getting wet, Jesker never liked it very much. He didn't like to go out at all when it rained. Maybe Tyke hasn't quite caught on to that fact yet.

I slept late this morning. I was up briefly earlier, out of habit, but I really wasn't awake properly. I slept some more on the sofa and the animals slept with me. When I finally woke up, I thought I wasn't going to be able to get up, my body felt so heavy and tired, but once I got up and had a cup of coffee I was okay. Sometimes you just have to cross that threshold between sleep and wakefulness.

The sun has come out, so I am going out with Tyke now before it starts to rain again. Today I have to do some household chores. I have to be a little bit like a good housewife. At least act like one.

Have a good day, you all.

Ciao,
Nora

Sleep!

After I wrote my post early this morning, I have done nothing but sleep on the sofa under the red fleece blanket. It felt as though a cloud of sleepiness settled over me and I couldn't get out of it until just now. I'm having a cup of coffee to try and get the last bit of sleepiness out of my system, but I'm still yawning and the sofa still looks awfully appealing to me. I have one blind pulled halfway up and Toby is lying on the back of the sofa looking out the window. Gandhi is asleep on the sofa where I had been lying. Tyke is asleep by my feet and I want to go back and join Gandhi.

I always seem to alternate one active day with one inactive day. I was full of plans this morning, but I don't know yet if I will make a big walk with Tyke today. I have to see how I get out of this sleepiness first. The best thing to do, of course, is to put on my hiking boots and go for a walk. It doesn't have to be a big walk even. Just long enough to wake up and get my brain cleared up. I will tentatively plan on that then and do that as soon as I've written this post.

There's nothing nicer than lying on the sofa with the red blanket pulled over me and the sound of the TV in the background. I don't even know what's on and what programs I'm missing. It doesn't matter. It's just chatter in the background of my sleep. I dream a lot when I sleep on the sofa and I work out all sorts of things in my dreams. They are little analytical sessions that I have in symbolic language, but I understand the symbolism usually. I always dream about my children and my exes and the life I had in California. These elements repeat themselves in different stories over and over again.

It's cloudy and 4C outside, so it's not too cold. I see that no rain is expected now, though it rained and snowed during the night. Tomorrow it's actually going to be 9C, that's practically springtime weather. I did see green tips of bulb plants poke out of the ground yesterday. They must have been daffodils. I forgot to look if the snowdrops were still there. I'll have to do that today. If I get that far. I have a sore spot on my little toe. The same one that bothered me so much last year and I'll have to put a band aid on it to prevent it from getting hurt by my hiking boot. Maybe that's what happened last year and I just imagined I stubbed it. It may have been because of my hiking boots all along.

My eyes are getting better for close up such as working behind the computer, but they are getting worse for faraway. The one lens is not good enough for reading the subtitles on TV anymore, though if I look through both lenses it is okay. I suppose that's what matters in the end. It's just a curiosity I noticed when I was watching TV from a distance. I was watching text TV and couldn't read it very well and was wondering why. I suppose I'll blame it on old age.

My sister just called and we're going grocery shopping tomorrow afternoon, which is good, because I'm just about out of everything. We were supposed to go yesterday, but she had a 24 hour stomach bug. Unfortunately, the supermarkets are closed on Sundays, so we can't go now. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could? There's an ordinance against it.

Well, I suppose I'll take the four legged critter on a walk now. He's still sound asleep, but he'll notice the second I get up to put my boots on.

Have a good afternoon!

Ciao,
Nora

Walks!

It was cold yesterday and in the morning it very briefly snowed. I dressed myself appropriately and at 7:30 took Tyke for a half hour walk. I was planning on going for a longer walk, but I had forgotten my gloves and after a while my fingers were freezing, so I had to go home again.

At 8:30 we walked to the tobacconist, me with my gloves on, and that's when it snowed, much to my surprise. I was wearing a double layer of clothing, so I was warm enough, and I dropped off my purchases at home and continued on with Tyke in the cold for a longer walk. This time we walked for an hour on a route that I had not taken before and Tyke had a ball. There was so much to see and smell. We walked past the graveyard and the hardware store and over the path through the wild field and back through the old part of the neighborhood. There was no traffic where we walked, but luckily, Tyke understands the concept of a sidewalk and stays on it.

At 1 pm we went for another walk on another route we had not taken before in a totally different direction. We walked all the way to the children's farm, which is like a petting zoo, but the animals are all penned up, so you can't actually touch them. The first thing we saw on the path walking towards it were two big peacocks that got out of the way quickly when they saw Tyke, but Tyke was quite excited about them. Then we got to the meadow where the sheep were and Tyke stood in amazement at so many strange animals. There were more peacocks that moved to the top of their shelter when we got close and then we got to the chicken coops and Tyke was mesmerized by the chickens and the roosters that behaved just like they ought to have. They all clucked and the roosters strutted. Tyke thought it was great and we stood for some time watching them. Then we moved to the rabbit hutches which interested him not at all, and the horse which he thought was pretty neat. He was just a bit scared of it. He was not scared of the big ducks in the next meadow and wanted to chase them, but the ducks kept moving out of his range. They were very big ducks and would have made a nice meal. Peking duck... mmm! After that we circled our way back home and when we came back I saw that we had been gone for an hour and 15 minutes. So that was not bad.

You see how Tyke is getting me out of the house and into the world without me even realizing that he is. It happens without me thinking about it. I just do it. Before I know it I'm a few kilometers away from home. I do have to add that all these walks are followed by long naps on the sofa by the both of us and when we wake up he greets me as if he has not seen me for a long time. He's so full of love.

It is now very early in the morning and it is snowing just a bit, but it is nothing to worry about because it will be 6C today and whatever stays on the ground now will melt. We're going to have rain showers today and I hope there aren't too many because I do want to go for more walks with Tyke. There are more routes we can take that we have not been on before. I want to take him to the woods that are a few kilometers from here where the pond is and where dogs are allowed off their leash. I'm not going to let him off his leash yet, but it's a nice walk, albeit somewhat muddy at this time of the year.

Well, I'm going to sleep some more.It's too early to stay up. You all have a good day!

Ciao,
Nora

In the middle of the night again.

I fell asleep on the sofa at about, oh, I don't know, 9 pm or something like that, and I just woke up again and find myself temporarily wide awake. There is nothing of interest on the Olympics right now (cross country - classic style), so I have to entertain myself in an other way. Well, I'll be darned if there wasn't that computer sitting right there waiting for me to use it. It's true that the computer has been my best friend many times in the many nights that I've found myself awake, but you know how I feel about them now, so it is with a certain amount of wariness that I turned it on and started writing. I don't want to be seduced by its charms and suddenly be strangled by it in a choke hold of anxiety and stress. I'll just assume it's not going to happen and merrily go on my way. I can't write with the idea that I'll be doomed half way through this epistle.

So anyway, I took the cute little fur ball to the vet last night. Partly to get a little check up and make sure that everything was okay, but also to have him look at his eyes, because Tyke had surgery on his tear ducts prior to being put up for adoption. His lower eyelids had been red and his eyes had teared and I wanted the vet to look at the state of them.

To Tyke it was a whole new adventure and he checked out every corner of the waiting room and was very curious about all the people who came in with their animals who all turned out to be cats in baskets, so there was not one interesting dog to interact with. Suddenly he spotted a huge poster of a cat's head on the wall and he started barking at it very loud as if he was scared of it, so I walked him over to it to get a better look. He approached it with much trepidation.

The vet checked him over well and looked at his eyes and said that he had especially droopy eyes and that they were a little bit inflamed and gave me a tube of antibiotic ointment to be applied twice a day. I got the impression that the vet really liked him and thought he was a good dog. He gave him a denta stick as a treat, which Tyke appreciated very much.

I asked him about having Tyke neutered and he said, why would you want to do a thing like that? I told him that he kept pestering Gandhi all day long and he said not to worry about it, that it was just part of his youthful exuberance and that he would outgrow it soon enough. He said he did not like to neuter cocker spaniels unless it was absolutely necessary, because they tend to get fat and he had some very overweight ones in his practice. He said that Tyke was not an aggressive dog and that he really didn't see the need for it at this point. So, I'll take his word for it, because he knows best in the end after all. Tyke gets to keep his family jewels.

I have been walking Tyke on a short leash, which has been an exercise in frustration, because he nearly pulls my arm out of my socket and he doesn't have any room to wander from one spot to the next and really check things out. Yesterday I started walking him on the roll out leash and that is so much better. He has room to explore his surroundings and is not constantly pulling at the leash and he is getting more exercise, because he is doing a lot more running around. I don't constantly have to suddenly stop and go and have my arm dislocated. It is a much better system and I can reel him in if I need to. I always had Jesker on that leash and I don't know why I didn't put Tyke on it right away. He enjoys it a lot en generally goes in the right direction. Ach, you live and learn.

I'm getting sleepy now and will head to bed after I eat something. I will watch a little bit of the Olympics and hope there's something interesting on. I like cross country - free style, I hope they show that and I hope there is some speed skating on.

Have yourself a wonderful night!

Ciao,
Nora