Wednesday 19 April 2023: Busy day Tuesday

I was going to try and squeeze in a blog yesterday, between appointments, but then thought I may as well try and get a day ahead again. So I’m writing about yesterday today.

We had a bit of a mad start to the day with the poet getting up late for work and having to rearrange two of his plans around and me having to get ready to drive across town to the vet. We could get a vet closer, but we like the one we have. They’re a very small family firm that fall somewhere in the middle with their prices and we have yet to find anything to complain about. They know our pets and they have our pets’ best interests at heart, rather than their own bottom line, and that’s why we drive across town to see them.

There wasn’t a lot of traffic, so they were only 20 minutes away after all. Add that to getting the dog in the car, fastening his harness, opening the gates and getting off the drive, it’s a bit longer. Plus we can’t park outside, we have to park in a shopping precinct/small retail park across the road and up a bit. But because the roads were relatively clear, it didn’t take the best part of the hour it usually takes. We were in the consulting room for a good 20 minutes or more too. And then I think it was something like 22 minutes once we’d got back to the car. So it didn’t take the huge chunk I thought it would.

Rufus isn’t very well. He has a typical dachshund degenerative spinal thing going on that’s likely to be neurological rather than skeletal or muscular. We’re trying him on anti-inflammatories and opiates (😱) for a week to see if they have any effect and will take it from there. He doesn’t seem to be in pain and he’s his usual happy, cheerful, daft self. But he’s not very well.

When we got back home, and I’d got on the drive and closed the gate and got the dog out of the car, etc, I gave him his first doses of the pills, and he did seem to be a bit more comfortable in his basket (a new memory foam one the poet bought him at the weekend). But I think the opiates might have had a sedative affect on him as he wasn’t as hyper as he usually is. Which is good, because the doctor told him he needed to rest and only have gentle exercise.

I hung out some washing, caught up on emails and social media, played a paid game, played an unpaid game, completed a paid survey, did the daily job search, made myself a sandwich, and I started the blog while I ate. When I’d finished dinner, I did the gig list admin and the Monkey Dust admin, the latter of which took longer than usual as I had to create three lots of posters for the next two gigs and I’ve given the monkey a hat for each of them. These are the Instagram posts.

I really like the way the Irish hat has come out, but I’m not sure about the bucket hat. I’ll see what, if anything, anyone else says out loud to me. I also had to resize them for the Facebook posts and for the regular band posters. I added the gigs to Diane’s Gig List, created the Facebook event for the first of these two gigs, and then I did the sharing. I’ll create the other FB event next week, but at least the graphics are done.

While I was on Facebook I spotted that Son #2’s band The Thieves has released their latest song (first one in 10 years) on Spotify and Apple Music. So I shared their post as well. They made a special mention for the poet too, for helping with mastering the tasks.

Within a few minutes of me sharing the Facebook post for Monkey Dust’s next gig, the venue called in a panic. Someone had doubled-booked them in a different book, and Monkey Dust were postponed. The poet had just walked through the door, so I handed him over and let him deal with it because I had to get ready to go out again. I had just enough time, while the poet called his band mates to tell them, to make three new posters with ‘CANCELLED’ written across them and then share those.

I had a follow-up appointment at the doctor’s. It seems I’ve developed asthma and it *might* be a post-Covid thing, especially as we’ve both had it twice. Not only that, but we dug into my history to look at an x-ray I had taken in 2016 but nobody had told me the results… and the result was I had ‘wear and tear’ of the spine as well as a ‘slipped vertebra’ that *might* be pressing on a nerve…

That would be the sciatica pain I’ve been having, then. I have struggled with back problems for years and they knew this but didn’t tell me? Thank goodness we finally have a decent doctor, eh? Now, though, we have to go right back to the beginning again, I have to read a leaflet, try some lifestyle changes, see if it gets any better, and we’ll take it from there.

Anyway, I was in the doctor’s longer than any of us thought I would be and then I had to wait for the inhaler prescription. By the time we got home (the poet came with me to make an appointment of his own – and got one! – next week too. <GASP!>), the day was over. I brought the washing in, and it was time for tea.

I went to schedule this post and WordPress didn’t like the above image. I tried a few times, but no, it wasn’t having it. So just to check, I came out of Opera and into Chrome and tried again. And BOOM!, there it is. I’ve had this problem with WordPress before and it was one of the apps. I’m having tons of problems with Opera, though, so its days may be numbered on my devices.

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