Shingles, Tinkerbelle and Rain (or lack of)

Ian has been suffering from the shingles for the past week or so. He actually spent the afternoon of his birthday at the hospital as the pain was so bad, and at that time the rash hadn't really started so it wasn't clear what it was. But the rash started so he popped down to the doctor and the doctor confirmed it was shingles and sent him home with some tablets to help stop the shingle process and to relieve the pain. Ian suffered a lot from the pain in his back to start, but has found that by moving around during the day and changing chairs, the pain is less at night.

Tinkerbelle has still not been eating well so we went back to the vet yesterday. It is possible that she has become fussy - but I can't help thinking this is unlikely. She will eat pasta, but nothing else, so I think if she was fussy it would be for more exciting food than pasta! Also, I've noticed the food falls from her mouth. So I wondered if she has problems biting - it's sort of similar to Horace and the tendons aren't properly formed in his jaw which is why he doesn't eat well - which is what made me think of whether there was something that was stopping her eating well. She can sort of hoover up pasta, in a way she can't other food.

But they didn't find anything and checked to make sure that there were no other problems with her teeth. She does have a lump under her eye, so that might make things uncomfortable. So there's not a lot really that we can do other than try to encourage her to eat more than just pasta. She is eating quite a lot of pasta, so she's not getting underweight - but it's plain pasta so she'd not getting a lot of vitamins or other nutrients. If there's no physical reason then I guess we'll have to get strict about moving her back onto balanced food, but I'll wait until this lump under her eye has gone. It's pea sized and moves around, the vet called it a ganglion.

And still no rain! My predictions of the rain arriving at the fiesta were unfounded, and it's the big Feria in Zafra this week and next, and it looks like there's no rain coming then. I haven't seen the resevoir at Llerena, but I imagine that's pretty empty now, as it was low last year and we didn't have a very wet winter. Of course, when we do get rain, it will be about 10 minutes in before we start moaning about how wet and cold it is!

Tinkerbelle goes to the dentist

Tinkerbelle wasn't eating well so we took her to the vet. She had a tooth infection and had to have her teeth cleaned and a tooth remove. She had to stay in over night as they also found that she had anemia and wanted to give her a treatment. Her anemia is chronic, not related to her not eating, and she has special food. But she isn't really up top eating much as I think the tooth removal and cleaning was quite painful.

Hopefully she'll be back up to speed soon. I was quite relieved that it was a tooth thing that was stopping her eating and not something worse.

It's the fiesta this weekend and my fine predictions about rain starting now are unfounded. Still no rain on the horizon....

Scrumping!

We celebrate Ian's birthday by scrumping figs. I guess we could say we foraged for them, except for the fact we are in someone's olive grove. BUT we do know that they don't pick the figs so we don't feel too bad!

This year, we celebrated early and scrumped some almonds too. Again, we know that these don't get picked because we see them still on the tree when we pick asparagus in the spring.

So we filled a bag with figs, a small bag with almonds, picked our own harvest of the smallest apples in the world (we will be picking the smallest pomogranates in the world soon too - they are so tiny I might make them into earrings) and our grapes which had started turning into saltanas and I made up a batch of chutney with it all (except the almonds). So we are ready for the cheese feast that we are looking forward to for Ian's birthday!

I can see the weather forecast through to the 14th, and still no rain, so imagine that it is going to come with a  force during the fiesta next weekend...                  

Back on the road again, but still no rain...

Well, the bit arrived for the car, the nice people at the garage fixed it and we went to the MOT centre yesterday to be retested - and the car passed for another year. Hooray!

The process was quite painless. You don't need an appointment for a retest. They do the appointments at half hour intervals and then do the retests when the appointments have been done. I suppose there might be a long wait if a load of people wanting their cars retested came at the same time, but we were in and out almost instantly.

The long awaited rain didn't come to anything. Well, I guess technically it did rain, but we say that if we can count the spots of rain on the patio, then it doesn't count! However, they did have heavy rain in Llerena, so it was obviously very localized.

I think that both Charlie and Horace have just had their one year birthdays. Charlie doesn't show much signs of slowing down, still spends most of her waking hours running round in circles. And Horace remains Horace. Yesterday he nearly made his way over to Ian's side of the living room, but then he came scurrying back. Horace has his own little area and sticks to it - which is fine.

Our grape harvest this year isn't as successful as last year. We seem to have a harvest of saltanas!