Skull crackers
I had a massive migraine the other night, brought on by a combination of caffeine withdrawal hitting me at exactly the wrong point in my menstrual cycle. I don’t think I’ve had one that bad since I was a teenager. I was very close to barfing. Paracetamol didn’t touch it. I had to sit under an alternate hot/cold shower for twenty minutes to make an impact. I also ate a hot bread roll and drank a cup of warm milk. Bread often makes me nauseous when I eat it by itself, but toasty buttered bread is the only thing that can take off a bout of nausea.
Then I annoyed my partner by sitting in front of an infra-red/visible red light in bed for ages when he wanted to go to sleep. It’s amazing how it undoes the tension in my shoulders and back. Something to do with endorphins. The pain was less after the shower and the food, but the red light took it off completely.
Sugar soap
I inherited two lovely white wicker Lloyd Loom chairs from my grandmother. Our cottage was too small for them! When we moved to Nether Edge we suddenly had lots of empty rooms with no furniture. My Dad bought the chairs up from Nottingham for us. They are a bit battered and have been serving us as garden furniture. I decided they were in need of sprucing up, so I’ve bought some new seat pads for them and some spray paint. I sugar soaped them and scrubbed them down, and they’re astonishingly white now. Ready for the paint job.
The sugar soap is bright yellow and has a nasty additive in it – probably tartrazine or sunset yellow – that gave me a red bumpy rash all up my arms. It may have made me cross too, but that might just have been because I was fighting Jasper for the scrubbing brush the whole time.
My grandma bought the chairs when she lived in Portsmouth Southampton, in a sale from a cruise ship that was being renovated. This was in the 1950s. Lloyd loom still make the same chairs. I was astonished to discover that they would be worth over £300 each if they were new. I’m not sure they will be garden chairs for much longer!
Alarmed
Yesterday was eventful. We were woken at oh-jeesus-wtf-six am by a phone call from the alarm company who monitor J’s office; apparently the alarm was going off. When this happens they are supposed to send someone round to investigate for us, but apparently “no one was available”. I stumbled out of bed to drive him down to work. Total silence when we got there. No alarm.
There was no point going back to bed, so I dragged Jasper out for his walk. Poor Jasper. He looked knackered. There had been a festival in Endcliffe Park and there were empty beer bottles and cans and the remains of barbecues all over the field, which were very interesting for a four legged creature with a big nose, far more interesting than catching a ball.
Jasper is a water dog and spends most of his time leaping in and out of the stream when we go to the park. It was still very early and quite cold when we left. We crawled home in the car in commuter traffic, and Jasper shivered all the way, despite being wrapped in two towels.
Jasper at twelve weeks
Jasper is growing very fast. He can now jump up on the footstool in the living room all by himself, and from there jump onto all the furniture. Nowhere is safe anymore! He’ll grab any piece of mail, mobile phone or remote control he can find!
Psychopuppy
Jasper being an ankle biter
Originally uploaded by EJD
Sometimes Jasper goes into psychopuppy mode. You can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s building up for a big explosion.
He starts tugging at the hems of people’s jeans and biting their ankles and makes excited yapping noises. I think he just wants to be played with, but he’s got very sharp teeth!
He loves eating furry, woolly things. I have a very long woollen cardigan that I wear around the house, and this woollen cardigan is like a red rag to a bull when it dangles in front of his nose.
When he gets in this state it’s impossible to control him or discipline him. He’s like a little tornado!
Jasper barking at a plastic bottle
Yesterday Jasper found his voice. He learned to bark like a grown up dog. The culprit was a plastic bottle that made an interesting scraping sound when it was kicked across the floor. He was very scared of it and kept circling around it and barking and mock-biting the air. Maybe he thought it was a funny looking snake?
