Back to real life

I’ve spent the past couple of days immersed in the game world of Elvenar. It has paid off – our fellowship exceeded themselves! There are still too many ‘duds’ for my liking, but I think if we keep up the activity, they may leave by themselves … trash taking itself out. If not, we’ll boot them – but only once we’ve attracted more active players & need the room!

I also spent hours and hours obsessing over my city’s layout. Every time you level up, buildings change their size when you upgrade them, and until now I’ve pretty much just muddled along. It works, but it’s not efficient – I’m low on some needed buildings, not having them is slowing my progress down to a crawl. Well, I’ve finally found a way of squishing everything in, so now I’m working on re-arranging my entire city. It’ll take a while, too, because I need to upgrade some buildings first – and at my level, it takes nearly a full day for each upgrade! I can do 3 at a time, at the most. But, at least I now have a plan!

What about my German Passport, you ask? Well, for that I need only three items, my birth certificate, my passport, and … a document from the South African Home Affairs Office. Sigh. It’s called ‘Determination of Citizenship Status’ and for that I need my whole family tree! It’s going to be a nightmare – so I’m procrastinating. I have got the form and a list of needed documents, but that’s as far as I’ve gone. For now.

Today I’m spending some time in the garden, tending to the carnations in the first bed. Ziva caught a young pigeon, Mewthos & Lady Jane stole it off her and brought it into my kitchen – it’s still alive! So I took it off them, put it in the library on a towel with some water and seeds. And opened the window. I don’t know how badly it is hurt, it’s missing a lot of feathers on its back. For now it’s in shock, so I’m keeping it warm and hydrated.

Right, that’s it for the garden, I’d say. The bed is in the shade now, and that makes the breeze quite cold. Well, I’m happy with my progress: I’ve untangled the carnations in that bed, pulled all the weeds and then planted some more peas! In that far bed on the other side, where only the hardiest plants survive, I’ve not stuck some Spekboom cuttings in the ground and watered it well. On that side of the path, I really struggle to get anything to grow – even the Nasturtiums are now being attacked by parasites and not coming up again. So I’ve decided to try growing a nice little Spekboom hedge there. Rose has quite a few Spekboom and my cats just love to sit under them! She generously gave me some cuttings and offered I could help myself anytime. Once they’ve taken root, they should also survive the garden demolishers, since I’ve cut some nice thick branches.

As I’m cooking my dinner, Mewthos goes and steals a piece of my sausage! He is becoming quite a brat! Since I’ve changed over to the Royal Canin, he no longer bawls for treats half the day – and I only give them a sachet at night. And tonight they polish off two in a row! Cleaned out their bowls completely. So, I give them a third sachet, and only Mewthos and Lady Jane eat some of it – Ziva is full.