Happy New Year – I think?

I enjoy writing my blog – I love having the blog to encourage me to be more creative.  It’s somewhere to “show off” artwork that I’m proud of.  I also enjoy writing and I have always tried to keep a very positive and encouraging feel to my writing and blog.  Over the holiday I’ve made several attempts to write something interesting and meaningful, or to create some inspiring artwork to share.  I have abandoned several draft posts in the last week because I just couldn’t find my normal upbeat voice.  Sometimes though, you just gotta tell it like it is – it hasn’t been a great start to the year.

Adrian’s dad has had another stroke and is back in hospital.  I won’t bore you with the details, the hours we waited in the corridor to be seen, the 8 hours it took for him to be admitted … etc.  I will try very hard not to rant about the short sighted politics that closed our local hospital’s A&E department so that we now have to travel to Durham to see him – almost three times as far.  He’s doing ok, but not allowed to eat as his throat muscles mean he isn’t safe to swallow food or drink.  Until routines get back to normal next week, he hasn’t been assessed by a stroke specialist yet, so there’s not really much more to report.

The most positive thing that has happened today is that Basil killed a poor little jenny wren.  That might sound apalling and believe me, when it happened it was completely surreal.  Basil is very poorly and will not eat at all.  Over the holiday he has eaten less and less each day, and now he will only lap halfheartedly at a little fresh cream.  He is crying a lot less and I’m sure he’s getting very dehydrated.  Heartbreaking to watch and definitely the main reason I’ve been feeling low all week.

So when a wren suddenly flew into the lounge this morning (what? .. how? ..) we were shocked to see Basil leap up from the sofa and hurtle to the windowsill where he very efficiently dispatched it with one swipe and started to tuck in.  Our normal reaction in the past would be to gently remove the poor bird and have stern words with Basil about keeping his hunting activites outside the house.  We both stood there astounded and looked at each other and apart from picking him up (bird and all) and moving him to the tiled hallway, we guiltily left him to it and tried to work out where on earth the bird had come from.

The day we built Gertrude and Rocky, I spotted Basil inside the house eating a bird.  I thought at the time it was a robin, so didn’t really want to tell the world on Christmas eve that we were responsible for one less robin in the world.  Now I’m wondering if it was a robin or another wren as we think we’ve worked out where the wren came from – the hole in the ceiling left by our boiler installation a few months ago!  We really must get that fixed.

This is all that’s left of Gertrude and Rocky now …

We have a headless chicken in our garden!

Add into the picture another fault on the phone line at home which left us with no broadband or voice line for a few days and a frustrating week at work trying to get everything done for our new computer system and coming up against a few problems, and you’ll see why I’ve not really had the energy to blog much.

I have carved out pockets of time in the craft room though.  I downloaded a blank colour chart from the Copic website and did my own colour chart.  It’s a great way to see what you’ve got and much more accurate than relying on the cap colour or number alone.

We are exhibiting Elusive Images stamps in America at the end of January, so I’ve been prepping up some samples for the show and working on Guild projects.  Here’s  little sneak peek of some new EI stamps – watch out on the Elusive Images blog for release info.

Even though it’s not been a great start to the year, I still find I have things to be grateful for:

• Derrick hasn’t had a fatal stroke and not even a major one from the initial signs, so we’re hopeful he will recover his mobility again like he did with the last two;
• Even though we know we haven’t got long left with Basil, we have had the luxury of leisure time at home with him this last ten days, so we have had lots of opportunity to hold him and stroke him and just be at peace with him
• The wren – I’m sorry for the wren, but pleased to see Basil has some life in him yet
• The new boiler – boy oh boy have I been grateful for the warmth inside this winter
• My craft room – a haven in times of stress
• My inner strength -  I’m grateful Adrian isn’t having to deal with his family problems alone and has me to lean on and share it with

So that’s my New Year – I do hope yours has been better.  And if there’s any readers from the Carribbean, please would you send a warm weather front over here pronto – the snow is very pretty, but I’m thoroughly bored of it now and would really like to see the back of it.

Happy New Year!