Long Time, No Post

Well, it's been an interesting (and busy) few months. A few highlights:

 - Cracker got an abscess on her face. We're still not entirely sure how, as normally cats get abscesses after being bitten in a fight with another cat, but as Cracker's an indoor cat and the only other cat she's in contact with is Lily the flump, and the two of them just don't do fighting (the worst they get is the occasional wrestle where Cracker gets scared and cries till Lily lets her up), but she did. At first we just thought it was conjunctivitis, as for the first couple of days it was just her eyelids that were slightly swollen, but when we saw her on day three and her eye was swelled shut and she looked like she'd been in a prize fight, we figured it was time to take her in for a vet visit. In fact, she ended up having four vet visits over the course of two weeks, first to drain and clean the abscess (which smells like nothing on this planet and is something I never wish to experience again), and dose her up with antibiotics and painkillers till it was healing well enough on its own. This led to a stoned Cracker sitting in her cat carrier for seven hours, staring wide-eyed at everything that moved around her. Of course, now everything's healed up and she's growing back the fur on the side of her face, so you'd never know anything happened to her except for the amount of money we had to spend on taxi fares to and from the PDSA.

 - I developed sciatica. Basically an inflammation of the sciatic nerve in the lower back, it has to be one of the least fun things to get ever, about on a par with planar fascitis. In fact, it might even be worse, as I was laid up for two weeks, and on some days literally unable to walk because of the pain in my back. The bad news is that it is something that can reoccur now, so I probably have more bouts to look forward to in the future. The good news is that we eventually discovered the optimum amount of painkillers to take so that I could at least sit up for a few hours at a time.

 - I started going to a knitting group at my local carer's association. This was primarily so that I could try to socialise and get out more, isolated as I am here at the moment; that turned out to not work too well as I'm the only one who turns up. On the other hand, it's a nice, quiet, air-conditioned building, so I go every fortnight anyway because it gets me out of the house and the staff/volunteers there talk with me even if I am the only one there knitting/crocheting. I do, however, appear to have been recruited into helping them with things to make for their craft stall at Christmas. I've been looking at a good few patterns for small items (washcloths, small bags/purses, scarves et al) so we'll see how I do there. Hopefully some more people will one day turn up, as with my speed of working they'll be lucky to get more than a few items by Christmas...