Kind of glad the holidays are over!

Nipper will only attend school for five and a half days in total this month what with the Easter break, the bank holidays and the Royal Wedding. I was getting pretty stressed about how I was going to get through the month quite frankly. However, it went better than expected with regard to keeping Nipper happy (and me not having a nervous breakdown in the process!) but was a bit of a disaster in several other ways.

The family worker at our local children's centre told me about an inclusive holiday playclub which is able to cater for kids with additional needs. This was a godsend! Nipper went from 9am to 3pm for a several days across the holidays and had a lovely time of it. We'll definitely be doing this again.

Our family has otherwise spent a good deal of time in the company of the NHS and the local vet over the holidays. Not really how we wanted to spend our time.

First incident - my Dad being rushed in to hospital in the middle of the night with suspected heart problems. Luckily it was Angina, they gave him some tablets, he'll have to go back in a few weeks for some tests, and three days later he was up a ladder re-felting his shed roof!

Next - we are due to visit Mr Earplugs' parents but get a phonecall the day before to say that his Mum has fallen off her push-bike, dislocated her ankle and broken her leg! Scratch those plans then. His Mum is in plaster but so far no need for any surgery and she's feeling pretty ok.

Then - Tiddler falls over the stairgate, goes airborne, and crashlands with his forehead against the edge of the cupboard resulting in a nasty split which requires a 3 hour stint in A&E. I won't have a rant here (much as I'd like to but it's getting late!) but they did a crap job of steristrip-ing it and after 5 days it was very nasty, swollen and 'oozing' so we spent another 3 hours in there to be told that it should have been stitched but it was now too late. It's still bleeding intermittantly (10 days after it happened) and he'll be left with a scar!

Onward with the holidays and Nipper gets a nasty bug and has a raging sore throat and temperature for 2 days. I dose him up with Calpol and on day 3 he comes out in a horrendous rash all over his body. I consult my 'kiddie diseases' book and it looks like it might be German Measles. We go down to the walk-in health centre (as it's the weekend) and we wait 'in isolation' for 3 hours to see a nurse who says it's not German Measles, just a nasty virus which presents like it. Apparantly they'd been inundated with kids with the same symptoms and had problems finding rooms to keep them all isolated until they could see the nurse. He's much better now but still has the rash.

Then the cherry on the top was the untimely demise of Scooter, Miss Muffett's guinea pig. She couldn't have chosen a worse moment as Miss Muffett had just gone off on holiday for a few days with her Dad! Poor Scooter has had a couple of difficult months, bless her. She had an injured eye and a small abcess which meant that we had to give her eye drops twice a day, and both oral antibiotics and painkillers by syringe. We had 5 trips to the vet with her and she made a remarkable recovery, much to the vet's surprise, given that she was an old lady in piggy terms at six and a half years old.
She was doing ok, then, all of a sudden, she was behaving oddly and couldn't balance. I took her to see the emergency vet (£103! Why do these things always happen at the weekend?!) Turns out that if a small animal looks ill then they are really ill, and if they look in a bad way then they really, really, really are in a bad way! I was prepared to give her all the medications again etc but the vet said she had little hope of recovering and it would be best to put her to sleep. Once she was dead he was able to examine her more fully and found that she had a lump in her tummy so most likely had a tumour. 

We dug a big hole in the garden and popped her in it and Nipper was very pleased to know that Scooter was now going to be buried treasure!

He then announced that when she was better he'd be able to dig her up, before going off to fill up the watering can to water her, since we had just planted her! I think I'd better plant a shrub above her to stop him from digging her up (as I know that he will try to as and when the mood takes him!)

RIP Scooter (hopefully!)

Yes, I'm definitely kind of glad that the holidays are over!

Kind of glad the holidays are over!

The Gallery: Here Come The Girls

I recently came across The Gallery  and decided to join in.

Tara, who started it, says "Photography is my 'thing', my love, my passion.That's not to say I'm particularly good at it or even know what I'm talking about, but I do appreciate good photos and love taking them.And so, to this end, I launched The Gallery, a weekly feature for people like me to participate in.I want to encourage other bloggers, offer inspiration, give them all a place to showcase their work.It's essentially a virtual art gallery of photographs which opens its doors every week for everyone and anyone to join in.Every Friday I give a prompt, an idea, a notion and you go out and take a photograph using that prompt. Or just use a photo you already have.The prompt could be one word, an object, an idea, a phrase, anything, and you have to post a picture which you feel represents that prompt.Post it on your blog and write about it."

This week's prompt is 'Here Come The Girls'.

For me the phrase 'the girls' reminds me of our guinea pigs as that's what we call them. And here they are:

We got them for Miss Muffett's 8th birthday and she wanted to call them Rosie and Sophie. But that made them sound like Sally Webster's 'girls' from Coronation Street and that would have been a bit sad. So, Sophie stayed as Sophie, and Rosie became Scooter as she scooted away across her cage when we tried to pick her up. Sadly Sophie is no longer with us having popped her clogs last year. I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to get this large and very dead guinea pig out of the cage! She was quite a grumpy old girl and very greedy with it. Poor Scooter never got a look-in. Although guineas are very social animals, and should be kept in pairs rather than alone, Scooter is having a whale of a time without her domineering sister and seems never to have been happier, bless her.

The Gallery: Here Come The Girls

RIP Sophie Guinea-Pig

I was going to 'introduce' our guinea-pigs since I introduced the cat a while back, but one of them has only gone and died on me! I must have put a hex on it or something. One minute it was fine and a couple of hours later it was lights out time! I know they don't live very long but I think this one was only about 4 years old.

We got 2 sisters for Miss Muffett's 8th birthday. As is usually the way with these things the shine rapidly wore off and there was always a lot of moaning when they had to be cleaned out. But I managed to resist the job being dumped on me as I told Miss Muffett she had to live up to her responsibilities (how harsh is that for an 8 year old - lol!) Initially theye were going to be called Rosie and Sophie but I realised that these are the names of Sally Webster's girls in Corrie and that would have been rather sad. So instead Rosie was renamed Scooter as she scooted off when we tried to pick her up.

They were quite a pair with Sophie being the dominant greedy and grumpy one - she's the one in front in the photo below. Poor Scooter never got a look in. They had a large indoor cage for the winter (they can get bad chests if left outside in UK winter weather conditions) which we used to keep in the family bathroom. During the summer they had a rabbit hutch with a large run so they could run around and scoff the grass.

Miss Muffett was terribly upset, especially seeing Sophie lying lifeless in the cage, but this prompted a discussion on how small animals usually live shorter lives than bigger animals, which is no bad thing really. I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to get her out of the cage. Stupid really, but I had to cover her up so I couldn't see her before I could manage it. Mr Earplug's very dutifully dug a hole in the garden border (I was tempted to put her in the wheelie bin but everyone looked at me with horror when I suggested it!). And so she was buried - hopefully deep enough so I won't be digging her up when I add plants to the border.

Scooter seems quite happy on her own, no doubt enjoying the fact that her greedy and grumpy cell mate is no more. And Miss Muffett was soon over it saying at least the grumpy one went first!

RIP Sophie Guinea-Pig

Introducing Tykes!

Thought I'd introduce you to one of the family ( a colleague of mine used to say "cats are people too").

He's a total moggie - no pedigrees of any sort in this household! He has a couple of years on Miss Muffett so is getting on some. He really doesn't get as much attention as he should these days but he seems to have taken on board the acquisition of a husband and two children quite well. Having said that he does get rather too much attention from Nipper at times!

I'm pretty much down the pecking order in his life though. He only comes to me when he wants to be fed. He loves sneaking upstairs and hiding under Miss Muffett's desk but his absolute favourite place is snuggling up with Mr Earplugs. Me too!


Edited to add: This is my 'Air Your Archives' post for 21st November 2010 - subject 'a post you'd like to have more comments on'. I chose this post as I wrote it when I first started blogging and so it didn't get any comments at all.  Tykes is an old moggie (16) and has been a bit of a poorly puss recently and no longer looks quite as perky as in this photo!

Introducing Tykes!