I’m the first to admit. I’m a terrible blogger. It seems the older I get, the worse I am at this promotion malarkey.
2022 has been particularly tricky, because straight out of the blocks in January, Son #3 had a workplace accident, cutting straight through a nerve in his calf and losing all function in his right foot. Cue his parents heading up to Perth for umpteen weeks to provide nursing while he recovered, and making sure he got to all the appointments he had to attend for medical treatment, assessments, physio and whatever else needed to happen. Fortunately, six months down the track he is almost (almost!!) ready to return to work.
To add insult to injury, being in Perth meant absolutely nothing was getting done down here in Bridgetown – remember how we bought that old house (built in 1904) which had bucketloads of work to be done to it, and we took it on as a project now that the DH has retired from the Air Force? Yep, that’s the one. And it’s now nearly two years since we moved in and we are yet to get the new shed up that we bought just before we moved in. Bridgetown is a lovely place to live, but the weather in winter is not particularly helpful for working on outside projects (it’s actually known as ‘Fridgetown’ during the winter months).
And then, not too long after we got back to Bridgetown, we were devastated to lose Angus McFangus, who crossed Rainbow Bridge at the grand old age of 13. He was such a character, and we were so sad to say goodbye to him.
Now the thing about losing Angus, was that up until his death, we had never NOT had a dog in 32 years. We’ve always tended to have a puppy and a middle aged dog, so that as the years pass we always have a younger dog bringing up the rearguard and are never completely dog-free. After McFangus left us, both the DH, the Bonza Babe and myself were like lost souls and we quickly found ourselves two new furry friends, a rescue Cane Corso X who has been named Mollie, and a sixteen week old American Staffy X who belongs to the Bonza Babe and is named Stanley.
These two have been our saviours since McFangus’s death, and they’re both beginning to reveal particularly entertaining personalities as they settle in here at Wilyerup. Mollie especially is proving to be a joy, because she has quite a vivacious personality now that she’s comfortable enough to reveal it and it’s delightful because she’s a rescue who has a very sketchy background and suffered a lot of abuse. She loves cuddles and kisses, and is quite OCD about the way things should ‘be’ in her life, but that’s okay and we’re learning to work around her little habits. Stanley (AKA ‘The Fluffy Muppet’) is growing like a weed, absolutely loves chewing and digging, and generally runs amok for quite a bit of the day. It’s a good thing cuteness makes up for his behaviour sometimes.
So that’s the first six months of the year done and dusted, with hardly any progress at all – but I did (finally, finally, FINALLY) finish ‘The Seven Sentinels of Camelot – Carnell’ – the first book in a new series. It’s currently with my editing SIL and my good friend Ange, who are giving it a thorough go-over before I hand it in to my publisher. It took a long time to get this one written, but as always there are hiccups with mental health and sometimes, life just gets in the way no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
So that’s a rundown of the first half of 2022. I’m hoping that the second half will have less drama, and much more writing. And maybe even a few more posts over here…
D.S. Williams 