A DAY IN THE LIFE
4.00am. Wake up and go to the toilet. Try to get back to sleep. Daisy, the 6 month old kitten, climbs on top of me and purrs loudly.
5.00am. Ted wakes me up either by miaowing or touch my nose or both. I get up and let him out. Try to go back to sleep.
6.00am. Get up, go downstairs, let cats our, put outside any cat litter trays which have been heavily used. Put food down for cats. Eat cereal while trying to fend off Little Bob the 3-month old kitten.
Little Bob
(handed in at the shop two weeks ago and taken home by me)
6.45am. Switch on computer and check emails for any overnight Amazon marketplace sales. Read the Daily Mail Online hoping to get righteously annoyed by some of their over the top right-wing pronouncements. "Red Ed, the new Labour leader, refuses to condemn all strikes outright!" I paraphrase but that is the gist.
7.15am. Get dressed, make Susan a cup of tea, let cats in, put down more food, clean out litter trays and replace litter. Collect cat from its overnight stay in a cage in the garage; clean out its used litter tray, put it in the van.
7.40am. Arrive at Raich Carter Sports Centre for a half hour swim.
8.20am. Drop off cat at Williams and Cummings vets for neutering.
8.40am. Pick up cat from Carol's and take to W&C to have staples removed from its tummy at 9.15.
9.30am. Put cat back in van and go back inside to wait for Susan who is bringing Little Bob for 9.45. Little Bob has been sick a couple of times and has developed extremely runny diarrhea and we're worried about him.
10.15am. Take cat back to Carol's and go home to clean out more cat litter. Do some housework. (Oh yes I do, Susan!). Check emails and potter about on the Internet checking some of my favourite sites.
12.00. Tired and decide to take a nap.
12.05pm. Phone rings.
12.06pm. Tired and decide to take a nap.
12.10pm. Phone rings.
12.15pm. Make a couple of sandwiches and have a cup of coffee.
Most lunchtimes I watch an episode of a tv series I've taped (i.e. recorded on the black Virgin box's hard drive) from the night before. Currently recording as I'm typing this is Waterloo Road. Others include: Smallville (current series coming to an end), The Vampire Diaries (just started and much better than people who haven't watched it realise), True Blood (waiting for Season 3), Glee (waiting for Season 2), Skins (waiting for series 5), Castle (with the great Nathan Fillion without whom it probably wouldn't completed its first season and the only thing worth watching on the Alibi channel), and stuff I've forgotten.
1.45pm. Susan rings and tells me to pick up some stuff from a house round the corner. I call in at the shop before I realise she means that I have to get some stuff from a house round the corner not pick up stuff from the shop to deliver to the etc. I get some bedding for Carol while I'm there and then go get the stuff which I take back to the shop.
2.30pm. I collect the cat from W&C and take it to Star Rescue (actually defunct but they still help out occasionally) at Seaburn from where it will be transferred to a new home in Newcastle the following day. It's a nice little black and white two year old female in case you were wondering. Then it's back up the road to Roker Park Vets to collect two cats I'd left there the night before. One had tests of various kind. The other, Megan, a surprisingly active 21 year old (and that is not a typo) long haired tortoiseshell had a lump removed from her back which manifested itself as an open wound. The lump is probably cancerous but the operation will give her a few months more at the very least. she now looks like Frankenstein's cat having a bald central patch with a long stitch from her ribs, over the spine, and down to the other set of ribs. Both go back to Carol's where is pick up a dozen black sacks full of used smelly bedding and take it to the council tip. All this takes me up to-
5.00pm. Make a cup of coffee, feed the cats, clean up any used cat litter, check my email, etc.
5.45pm. Head off for Houghton-le-Spring four miles away to pick up a cat. To be honest, I don't usually have evening pickups to do but this is a fairly accurate record of my activities on one day this week. I collect the cat from an elderly lady who seems to take in local waifs and strays and take it back home to spend the night in a cage in the garage.
6.30pm. Can't be bothered to cook so I get some fish and chips on the way home. After eating it and watching a bit tv together, Susan goes upstairs to watch tv (Alibi channel or any crime series showing) in bed and I go on the computer.
9.00pm. Slide in a DVD and pour a glass of wine (and later a couple more). I'm currently rewatching the Firefly box set, Joss Whedon's brilliant. SF series.
I could, if I had the energy or the interest do a blog called DVD A DAY as I do do that every evening at the same time (except on the couple of nights a month when I go out for a drink). I don't always watch a complete DVD disc every evening as it may be a tv series box set as in the case of Firefly (starring the great Nathan Fillion, see above) or Glee, but usually it's a movie which, if it's too long or I want to watch some of the extras (this latter being infrequent as I usually don't bother with them). Often it's Horror or SF or Fantasy but not neccessarily.
Here's what's on my to watch shelf: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish, read the book and its two sequels), Gone Baby Gone (thriller directed by Ben Affleck), Hard Revenge Milly (Japanese action/gore), Exte (Japanese horror), Red Cliff (epic John Woo Chinese historical), Ran (Akira Kurosawa's historical epic based on King Lear), The Good the Bad and the Ugly (and if you don't know what that is you're reading the wrong blog), The World At War (complete 11-disc DVD documentary series remastered and to be reviewed for Amazon Vine), and Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki's latest animation). But tonight, Firefly continues.
The crew of Firefly
Some time between 11.00 and 11.30pm I go to bed.
Post Script.
I've put in a couple of things that happened on different days and it might be a little more packed than a normal day but it really isn't untypical. It's a lot of little things separated by varying spans of time which aren't really long enough for me to settle down and get my head into doing something constructive (like actually writing more of the novel which I write mentally while I'm swimming, and blogging, and several other things I keep putting off doing).
Today I took Daisy, our second newest cat to be neutered, then Carol rang and I had to take Clara (which recently had to have an emergency hysterectomy) to Roker Park as she thought there was something wrong with its side. The vet couldn't find anything but he did discover a very erratic heart rate and has kept her in overnight to X-ray her heart under anaesthetic in the morning.
There's always something unexpected.
(This is also being published in my Freethinking blog.)
(This is also being published in my Freethinking blog.)
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