Friday

I woke up from a wonderful dream: I dreamed that I could visit Germany and it was just a three hour flight – and the exchange rate also balanced in my favour, so it was actually affordable for me! In my dream I arrived at the airport and met my aunt and my cousins – it was lovely! If only, eh? The cost of living in Germany is 50% more than it is here (according to Numbeo) – it’s just way out of my league.

Well, I woke up unusually early and was at work almost on time. Work was quite busy, and I’ll be going in on Monday to do more follow-ups and some processing.

Back at home the garden disservice has not been – again. That’s four weeks in a row now. I was actually relieved, since the grass has grown so tall that it would have been one heck of a mess all round. And I’m sure they’ll mow down the cosmos that’s growing outside the bed alongside the grass. So I trimmed the highest patch myself today – I could actually cut the grass with hedge shears! I wonder if I can find one of those push-blade mowers, the manual ones?

Well, I did some research on these push mowers, and although they’re affordable, they’re not suitable. They’re not good on long grass, keeping the blades sharp is a mission and with all the rocks and stones on everywhere, it’d be junk in no time. An electric weed eater – similar to what the garden disservice uses, would be a better option. And when you keep the string at the recommended length – unlike what they do – I can actually trim quite accurately. It’s when you try to cover a wider area than it’s recommended for, that you start breaking stuff, like my planter. It’s not necessary, and purely due to unsafe operation. And those aren’t too expensive, either – so I might invest in one. The only problem would be the connection – the garden is too far from the flat, I’d need at least 15m extension. Alternately, there’s the garage, which would also need a 15m extension cord.

Romeo has popped in several times already and cleaned out all three bowls. Then he found the patch of carpet on the scratcher, where I give Ziva her catnip – and he went quite ecstatic! Started licking the carpet until I feared he might lick a hole in it – I gave him some catnip, and he let me scratch his head. He keeps looking at me with those soulful blue eyes of his and he keeps coming inside, hanging around, exploring. He’s even trying to play with the Mips now – he watched very closely when I sat down for a play session with my two teenagers. I don’t know what to make of this situation. Well, at least he’s caterwauling much less!

Actually, the first thing I did when I got home was to empty, clean and refill the sandbox. Having emptied it, I could still smell cat pee – turns out they used my freshly laundered bath mat! Yeah, that’s my Mips! Then, as I was filling the new sand into the empty box, both Mips started digging while I was still pouring – and then crapped in tandem! Well, parallel, actually, but ‘in tandem’ reads better. It was the funniest thing, the two of them sitting there with identical expressions, identical postures, identically plop plop plopping their little loads.

Well, Ziva is in, I’ve filled them up with jelly and the kitchen floor is covered with meat bits out of the jelly. Sigh. Better give that floor a thorough cleaning tomorrow!