Sick dog, battered car - does life get any more glamorous?

I realise it has been some time since my last blog post. Combination of all three children plus dog taking it in turns to be ill has proved once and for all that Florence Nightingale is a role to which I am completely unsuited. The dog has had a sore paw at which he proceeded to gnaw and lick, until we were forced to incarcerate his head in a plastic ‘Elizbethan collar’ as they are known in veterinary circles. Being a sensitive dog he found the whole experience of wandering around with his head stuck in a see through bucket, humiliating and deeply embarrassing. Likewise the girls and Simon who flatly refuse to be seen in public with ‘cone head’.

It’s been wet and grey in Sydney all week, though not nearly as wet as areas of Queensland where they have had ALL their normal annual quota of rain in the last three days. As a result of the intermittent, very heavy showers in Sydney, my washing has been hanging morosely on the line for days. Yesterday the resulting clothing crisis was such that I was reduced to putting on a pair of Drama Queen No. 1’s pants as all of mine were hanging sopping on the line. Apart from being a bit of a medical miracle that I managed to get into them, DQ no.1 being built like a racing snake, I was then overcome with horror at the thought of being run over and taken unconscious to hospital clad in a pair of red pants with ‘cupcake princess’ emblazoned on the front.

The car has been in the smash repair outfit all week. It is a sad reflection of life, or perhaps my driving skills, though I have to say this time I was completely the innocent party, that I am on first name terms with the smash repair man. He waves me a cheery goodbye after each visit whilst presumably making a mental note to reorder more of the sickly green, metallic paint necessary to restore the car to gleaming good order. The only upside of the whole thing was that courtesy of the other party’s insurance I got a very flash Audi to drive round for the week whilst the dents were being bashed out and lashings of paint applied. As usual with any car I drive, the indicator and windscreen wipers were swapped around with the result I have spent the whole week waggling my windscreen wipers suggestively at motorists rather than indicating.