Recharged

I was lucky enough to spend four hours with The Gypsy today.

90 minutes in a meditation class with three other people and 2.5 hours with her over tea and slice.

The time was healing and helpful and energising and therapeutic and cathartic.

I miss her regular classes and I wish we lived closer because I would attend all of her classes and retreats and probably use her counselling services too.

It has been 6 months since her life saving surgery and she is still recovering so she is still a little fragile.

I left at 8am and returned home at 2.45pm.

Adoring Husband and BGWLBH survived the caring duties of Harley and he survived as well! So it was a successful day all round.

I cooked duck with sweet potato chips, buttered carrot, broccoli and spinach and a salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumber, rocket, radish and charred pear pieces. 

We watched two games of football tonight and so far I’m doing well with my tips and have tipped them all correctly! 

It’s almost 10.30pm and I’m feeling a bit weary now.

Nite all.

First Big Scare

Poor Harley.

I had a plant like this …

It died. Adoring Husband hoped to resurrect it but it was too far gone. 

This afternoon, Harley found the stem/trunk of this plant, picked it up in his mouth like a big cigar and began to run. As he ran, the other end of the trunk hit the ground and with a sudden jolt the whole trunk jammed into the back of his mouth.

He released it with a mighty yelp and ran into the house.

As I followed him, I picked up the trunk to put it where he wouldn’t be able to reach it again but he came to the door and saw me holding it, yelped again and ran behind Adoring Husband!

I walked inside and sat on the couch so he very gingerly crawled onto my lap and put his head down for me to Pat him.

BGWLBH came out of her room and as I explained to her what had happened, he climbed onto her lap asking for sympathy.

After she left the room, AH sat beside me on the couch and Harley climbed on top of him!

I couldn’t see any wound or damage in his mouth and I hand fed him his dinner a bit early to make sure he could eat and swallow without issue.

He was unusually quiet all afternoon sitting beside me on the lounge for about half an hour and then happily staying in his crate for 3 hours sleeping on his back.

Before we came to bed, I led him out of the crate and I walked to the back door - he always pees before bed - and usually follows me, but he sat at the doorway of the lounge room and looked at me as if to say “I’m not going outside where it’s dangerous!”

I had to slowly lure him out with treats!

Once he was outside, he seemed fine and did what he had to do before returning inside to bed.

It was quite traumatic for me to see and hear that happen and I know it could have been much worse but the fear in his eyes was horrible and I don’t want my Harley to ever feel fear and pain like that again.

It was a morning of trivia and an afternoon of quiz shows.

BGWLBH and I drove out to Raintree to pick up our eggs from The Happy Hippy and visit Farm Gate for some fresh produce.

Tomorrow, I’m getting picked up early for a drive out to The Gypsy’s abode and a morning of meditation.

I am really looking forward to it.

I’m about to fall asleep watching the football.

Nite all.

This Too Shall Pass

I just keep telling myself that this too shall pass.

Four days down. Ten to go.

This morning I cooked breakfast and after I lured Harley into his cage, I attempted to do some art in the lounge room, but the light was dreadful so that was short lived.

Harley doesn’t like to be left alone in his crate and the crate is in the lounge room, therefore the lounge room almost becomes MY crate and that’s where I spend the majority of my time while Harley is incapacitated.

I let Harley out of his crate while I worked in the kitchen. He was mesmerised by a reflective light on the ceiling so he sat quietly looking up!

I made some cupcakes and while they baked, I made ham, cheese and tomato toasties for the others’ lunch. I chopped up all the vegetables to cook and add to Harley’s mince, mixed it all together then bagged and froze it.

My quiz shows took my attention in the afternoon and Harley slept in his crate.

For dinner I baked chicken in the oven with honey, lemon slices, salt, pepper, chilly and cherry tomatoes. I served it with mashed potato, beans and broccoli.

We played trivia for an hour before the football started.

I cant believe it’s almost 11pm.

Time for me to sleep.

Nite all.

Sleepless in The Heads

Another night of Harley banging and crashing his big plastic cone against the metal walls of his cage bed.

Very little sleep for me.

I feel that today he has learnt that his personal space is much bigger and there has been less running into walls and doorways now. Hopefully that will translate to the bed cage and there will be less banging there too.

It has been hard work attempting to keep Harley calm and relaxed.

When he heard BGWLBH arrive home in the car this afternoon, he jumped over the wall of his cage! He’s never done that before and I’m surprised he didn’t damage his wound! 

A couple of times when I took him outside for toileting, he got the zoomies and was tearing around the yard like a mad thing, so he’s obviously not feeling any tenderness or pain.

In fact, he’s pretty relaxed!

I dozed a little on the couch trying to catch up on lost sleep, but I wasn’t very successful.

Now it’s 10pm and I’m yawning uncontrollably so that’s my cue to turn off the light and get some shut eye while I can.

Nite all.

Totally Drained

Last night, all night, was loud, disruptive, broken and tiring.

Harley’s sleeping cage is only just the right size for him. Add a big plastic cone to his size and that big hard plastic structure bashes against the walls of that cage every time he moves!

There was much banging and crashing more often than hourly so sound sleep eluded me.

We were up at 6am and by then, Harley had renewed energy with no understanding of his physical restrictions or his supersized personal space.

He got the zoomies, on more than one occasion he almost amputated my legs with that massive plastic cone, he jumped up onto the furniture (and down and up and down and up), he ran around the back yard and he moved the entire room of furniture.

By 9am we decided that a crate was the only way we could keep him restrained and safe from himself so Adoring Husband drove into The Bay and purchased this …

I tied it to his bed cage and between the two, he has enough room to move freely while being safely restrained.

I’ve taken him outside every hour for water, peeing and pooping.

Of course he is not happy because he wants to play and he keeps walking me to the pool gate and standing there waiting for me to open it. I had to pick up all of his toys and balls and put them up high where he can’t reach them.

It’s going to be a very long week.

I’m supposed to be going into The Bay tomorrow to visit Best Cousin in the World while she is in treatment but I think it would be in all our best interests if I remain at home and continue to monitor Harley Turdburger. I think it’s too early to leave him in Adoring Husband’s care.

I need to go out all day on Saturday, so I think I’ll save it for then.

It’s not even 9.30pm and I’m exhausted so I think I’ll attempt to sleep now.

Nite all.

Testicles Gone

What an eventful day!

Before we even got Harley through the vet’s doors, he spotted a dog about 50 feet away and decided, for the first time, to go off his rocker. He seemed very angry and if I hadn’t held tight to his leash, he’d have been face to face with that dog in 2 seconds flat!

Normally, he’s a bit of a scaredy cat, so I doubt if anything would have happened because the other dogs owner explained that his dog just wants to play with everyone. He was a big dog too, and also going in for castration. 

We had six hours to kill so we drove to Bean Beat for breakfast, only to discover that their kitchen was closed for maintenance work. Very disappointing.

So we decided to eat at Aquavue …

What a beautiful morning!

I selected the Canadian pancake breakfast, which was delicious. Adoring Husband chose his usual Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon. I even ordered a small latte which was amazingly delicious.

Our stops were Rivers, BIGW, Su Jus cafe for a green juice, Nanas Pantry, Stocklands to drop AH’s broken glasses into Specsavers, KMart, the hearing Aid place, Sushi for lunch, Coles, Bakery, Petbarn and GD supplies for AH’s work stuff.

We still had 30 minutes to kill, so we drove to Point Vernon, found a lovely quiet seat looking over the water and just sat together for 20 minutes.

Harley was ready to come home about an hour earlier than expected so we were happy to go pick him up after his surgery and recovery period.

He was not happy to be wearing his cone and when we put him in the back of the car, within two minutes, he had somehow stretched his car leash enough to jump over the back seat!

We found a carpark and I reattached the leash to a lower point so that he couldn’t get over the seat. 

Before we had even backed out of the parking space, he had removed the cone!

So I again got out of the car and opened the rear door expecting to just reattach the cone, but he had actually slipped out of his harness as well and he jumped out of the car as I opened the door! Thank God I was able to grab him because we were on a main road and he could easily have raced out in front of cars to his death!

We decided that I would sit in the back seat with Harley, which meant transferring all of our shopping from the back seat to the rear area and then attaching his car leash to the seatbelt lock.

I didn’t have a hope in hell of reattaching his cone at that stage, but luckily, he was so relieved to be closer to me, he lay down with his head on my lap and went to sleep.

At home, I was easily able to reattach the cone and even though he has had moments of struggle when he has attempted to remove it, he listens well to me and settles quickly.

He was very dozy for a few hours and slept a lot. It also took him over five hours to have his first pee!

This is going to be a very tiring and stressful week.

No walking, no running, no exercise, no swimming, no jumping, no playing for a week to ten days!

Ugh!

He barely fits in his bed with the cone on, so I imagine my sleep will be broken … a lot!

I wasn’t allowed to feed him until 5pm and boy was he hungry!! 

I should try to sleep now - what do they say? Sleep while the baby sleeps 😊

Nite all.

Withdrawn

Yesterday at noon, I withdrew from the world, climbed into my bed and stayed there until this morning.

Actually, I got up at 7pm to claim some cold pork sausages for my dinner because nobody bothered to offer me any food when they made dinner for themselves. It seems that if I’m not cooking, I don’t get food. But don’t get me started.

🫤

I napped and watched the footy on my iPad.

At 8.30pm, Adoring Husband brought Harley to bed and my day was done.

Before I came to bed, I made some cupcakes with lemon butter cream icing to celebrate BGWLBH’s one year anniversary here with us. They were delicious.

This morning, after breakfast, I took Harley for a long walk along a different route and ran into quite a few locals who wanted to stop for a chat. Harley was quite well behaved and sat nicely while I talked. He just gets a bit excitable when people want to pet him.

I spent a lot of time doing art today and started this one, which is a practise run for something bigger.

I baked a whole chook with vegetables for dinner.

AH and I started to watch “Smokey and the Bandit” which was a favourite movie of my Dads. AH revealed that he had never seen it! Shocking! I thought EVERYBODY had seen that one!

We need to be up early tomorrow morning to take Harley into our vets in The Bay for desexing. It’s going to be a long day for us waiting until late afternoon to pick him up.

So it’s sleep time for me… but what if creatures had eyes in the front of their heads?

Nite all.