The glass is always half full!

YOU GET SOME DAYS WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG...
SOMETIMES IT’S HARD TO ALWAYS BE STRONG....
WHEN FATE DECIDES IT’S TIME TO BE MEAN...
I’M LUCKY I HAVE FRIENDS AND FAMILY ON MY TEAM!!


Hello again.

Do you ever get those days when it’s just one minor disaster after another? I think the story of the straw that broke the camel’s back is so true. Minor mishaps happen to everyone every day, but sometimes when you get one or two bad things all happen at once you end up exploding like a pressure cooker! Well I am speaking for myself here but I’m sure you know what I mean.

My bad day started last week with a gas and electric bill, not so bad so far you might think, but let me continue. My meter’s in the new house are in the garage so can’t be read unless I’m in, so it was an estimated bill. I always read the meter myself at that point as I don’t like to get a back log of payments due by underestimating. Sure enough when I gave the actual readings they were about four times the estimated amount. I decided to file the bills in a sensible place (shove them in the kitchen drawer and forget about them!) and go off to work.

When I returned to my car after work I found the next problem. Someone had obviously walked along the pavement next to my car with either a key or a coin in their hand and scratched it all the way down the side from bumper to bonnet. I had a little “Why me?” moment, as the back bumper is still not fixed from when someone ran into me in the snow and drove off, so my poor little car is really looking a bit battered now. It’s the sort of stupid mindless act that really drives me mad. Why do people do it? I just can’t imagine setting out to annoy and upset a person you have never even met for no reason. It’s not even as though I have a flashy sports car and someone is jealous, in fact my car is starting to look more and more like a dodgem car! Eventually I told myself there was no point raising my blood pressure over it as no one would ever know who did it. I wouldn’t have the time or money to re do the paint work so I just had to live with it and forget about it.

When I got home I found the next problem and the one that broke the camel’s back! I put the heating on as normal when we got in, but wondered why we didn’t seem to be warming up half an hour later. I checked the boiler and found the pressure gauge on zero. It has been needing topping up more and more lately, but this time it seemed to only last a few hours. I phoned the emergency boiler people and they said they could send someone out the next day but unfortunately I had to work, so the next available time would have been 3 days later on Monday. They also said if there was a leak I might need to “Get someone in to pull all the floor boards up,” as they didn’t do that! I put the phone down and sat and thought about having floorboards pulled up in my nice new house, and who could do it and about having no hot water or central heating for the next three days.

I have to admit, although I always try to be a “glass half full” person I felt a bit defeated by this point and did the only sensible thing to do in a crisis and phoned my mum and moaned! She offered to come and wait in my house all day so that the boiler people could come the next day, so I focused on the positives again and thought what a nice mum I have and that at least the heating crisis had taken my mind off the vandalised car. When they came it turned out I had a faulty “expansion vessel” so my vessel was successfully repaired and we were warm and clean again that evening and the glass was half full again!

At the weekend we decided the time had come to see how the dog would react off the lead as we have had her over four weeks now. We live quite close to the Ashton court estate in Bristol which is open to the public and has huge grounds, so after struggling with the dog car harness we were off on the next adventure. Pip hates the car and whined and barked all the way there and despite reassuring her it would all be worth it she still spent the journey fighting with her harness and trying to break free to get onto my lap.

As it turns out it was definitely worth it. We found a quiet spot and let her go. She loved running with the boys and I was amazed at her speed. She was very good at coming back when we called her and kept checking we were still in view. I wondered what she would do when she saw other people and dogs as she always barks on her lead if any man walks near her. She still ran up to a few walkers and barked, but then ran off again. There was one scary moment when she decided to chase a cyclist but other than that it was all O.K.

When she found some other dogs to play with she seemed very happy but made it clear she only liked to do the chasing and not to be chased! The funniest moment was near a small pond when she was chasing a big black Labrador who jumped into the pond with a big splash. I think she forgot for a moment that she wasn’t a big dog and jumped straight in after him. You could almost see the look of terror in her eyes when she realised her legs weren’t as long as his and she had to swim, so we got her to the side and quickly fished her out! Obviously she was quite wet and smelly by this point so we spent some time letting the boys climb trees while she dried off a bit. She actually showed us she was a good tree climber too which pleased Sam and Luke!

Once home it was straight in the bath and despite her earlier encounter with water she was very good and didn’t make any fuss in the bath. Now she is sweet smelling and fluffy and has proved once again how good a family pet she really is.

I have one more induction day left to do for my new job so please come back next week and I can tell you how the whole course went and if I have an official “start date” yet.

Thanks for reading

Ellie
X