Dogs and Cats and Metal in Diary

Jay explained what he meant when he said I didn’t know what I was doing. Turns out he wasn’t criticising me, he just has a habit of opening his mouth before his brain engages. He sent me a long email explaining it all; he wasn’t being critical, he was trying to offer support in areas where I needed it. It’s quite annoying that he can’t have a serious conversation face to face, it always has to be over email. I much prefer face to face; I can read body language, intonation, pauses etc. But he likes to take time to think about what he wants to say so all of our serious conversations always happen over email.

Anyway, alles klar.

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The weekend just gone I was house sitting and pet sitting for two little dogs and a cat. Oh my goodness the house is enormous! It’s on six different levels with two kitchens, two bathrooms, five bedrooms, two living rooms and two offices, not to mention the massive garden and two huge duck ponds. It was like a hotel.

This it the room I was staying in, complete with dogs, one of which is busy jumping onto the sofa.


Whose house has this many stairs?? Come on!

Night time was properly dark and completely silent, it was so weird. But I heard a female tawny owl calling each night and I could actually see stars in the sky with no light pollution!

I’m not sure what the set up was, the family cleaner employed me to stay there, I think they were on holiday, apart from the son, who I think was about 20 years old. He was still staying there which was very strange as I was staying in a complete stranger’s house while one of the residents was coming in and out; you know how uncomfortable you feel the first time you go to someone’s house? Yeah, that, except the other person is a complete stranger. Thankfully the house is big enough that we didn’t see much of each other.

Anyway, he came home on Saturday afternoon and said that the cat was on his pillow covered in blood and she had a massive cut on her leg! I didn’t know anything about this as I was told not to go into his bedroom, so she must have sneaked up there at some point. So he drove her to the vet and they said it looked like she’d been attacked by another cat. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that as he was asking me if one of the dogs had attacked her! I knew they hadn’t because the dogs were like my shadow and followed me EVERYWHERE so they hadn’t been out of my sight.

So tha cat came back with a bandage on her leg and a cone on her head with instructions not to go outside for 48 hours. Also, the dogs had to be kept away from her as she couldn’t run away and one of them has a tendency to chase her. This made the rest of the weekend interesting, trying to keep them separate in the same house.

And this is the exact reason I have my customers sign a “Cat Flap Disclaimer” which relinquishes me of responsibility if a cat has free roam outside and gets injured.

At least it was made easier by the fact that the dogs never let me go anywhere without them so I knew where they were the whole time. Although it was quite annoying as I couldn’t eat, go to the toilet, use my laptop or knit without them trying to crawl all over me.

Honestly, this is how close they were to my face about 90% of the time.

So week two of self employment earned me £141. This week I have bookings worth £155 so it seems to be pretty consistent at the moment. One man has booked me to walk his two cocker spaniels twice a day while he’s away. The round trip takes me over an hour so it’s hardly worth my time, but I can’t afford to turn anything down at the moment.

If I continue with the current earning trend, it’s enough to pay my half of the mortgage, bills and groceries which is great news and means at least we won’t be homeless. It just doesn’t leave anything for my car, phone, roller derby, Lovefilm, birthday and Christmas presents or socialising so I need to up my game for that.

This is especially important from the end of October as we have two comedy gigs and two music gigs booked in the space of six weeks; all of them booked by Jay because he knew I’d want to go, and then asked me for the money. One of them is Dave Gorman, without whom I would never have Jay, or my previous boyfriend Pete, who I was with for five years. I think I’ve seen Dave live five times, including a book reading and a TV recording, and I’ve met him twice. Basically he’s entirely responsible for how the last 10 years of my life have panned out so far.

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Today I’ve been rediscovering Slipknot by working my way through their back catalogue. They have four albums and I’ve listened to two so far today, they have another album out this year. They were basically one of my favourite bands from the age of 18-21 and a little known fact about me is that I was seriously considering having the Slipknot S as a tattoo at one point.

This is just a random photo I found on Google, I have no idea who this is.

I still think it looks pretty badass, whether you associate it with a band or not. I’ve been well out of the metal scene for years now, mainly because the only people I socialise with now are Jay and his friends, and they don’t like metal. Jay will come to a rock club with me occasionally, but he’s not all that keen on the heavier stuff. I’d love to try and get back into it. Hey, quite a few of the roller derby girls are into it, I should probably buddy up with them a bit more.

I should also probably do some more work; I’m working my way through an SEO book at the moment to try and get my website up the Google rankings. On it!

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Last updated September 23, 2014